The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [18]
She stopped at a fruiterer’s shop and bought Shami apples and Osmani quinces and Omani peaches, and cucumbers of Nile growth, and Egyptian limes and Sultani oranges and citrons, and she stopped at an apothecary’s shop for tinctures of Aleppine jasmine and myrtle berry, oil of privet and camomile, blood-red anemone and pomegranate bloom, eglantine and amaranth …
Minutes passed before the colour forms faded, the dead mood passed, and the black-and-white film images impinged on his brain.10 He’d seen Wild Strawberries before so wouldn’t have to ask Norval about the opening. And after the movie he might even describe these passages to Norval, who would understand and not criticise. Although everything else was fair game, he never made fun of his synaesthesia, never angered at his lapses of concentration. Why? Because he himself was trying to see this kind of thing—in experiments with Dr. Vorta. And because he knew Baudelaire and Rimbaud—Poe and Nabokov too—and thought his friend might one day become as great.
When the film ended and the house lights went up, Noel readjusted the setting on his pager, slipped it back into his jacket’s inner pocket.
“What was that?” asked Norval. “A gun?”
Noel began to pull his jacket over a sleeveless T-shirt, his face crimsoning. “No, it’s a … beeper.”
This gave Norval pause. “And that?” He pointed towards a tattoo on his friend’s upper arm. “Very nineties. Let’s have a look.”
Reluctantly, Noel pulled his arm out of the sleeve, revealing a black bull’s head with silver horns between two red flags with black staves. The words HOLD FAST, in vermilion, arched over top. “McCleod crest.”
“Your mother’s clan?” said Norval.
Noel hesitated. Out of a fear of being called a mommy’s boy? He was used to that by now; it didn’t bother him a bit. He’d never thought about cutting the apron strings; they were never too tight. But some things are private. And he was tired of hearing that bloody Scottish twaddle every time his mother’s name came up. But maybe he’ll resist the urge just this once, to amaze me … “Yes.”
“Ay, yer daft aboot her, yer right radge. Och weel …”
Nimbus clouds had gathered outside—noctilucent plumbago and Mars-violet nimbostrati, Noel remarked—as Norval was about to hail a cab. But at the last second, as one came sharking to a halt, he changed his mind, waving it on its way. From the pocket of his greatcoat he extracted a fresh pack of Mohawk Arrows. Plain, heavies.
“How is it,” he said, piercing the cellophane with his thumbnail, “that I have not received a single invitation to your Outremont manor? We’ve known each other, what, six months?”
“We met at the theatre on the sixth of March, 2001. So that would make it ten months, one week, one day. Do you remember, it was just before rain, an ice-storm as it turned out …”
“I have no recollection of the weather.”
“… and we saw Zabriskie Point—”
“Or the film. The question is, why have I never been allowed into your house? I have waited at your door like a dunce, I have rung your ding-dong bell, but not once have I been admitted. What are you hiding? A crystal meth lab in the cellar? A lunatic mother, chained in the attic?”
Noel winced. “Not exactly, no.”
Norval paused to light his cigarette. “Is it true what they say?” His words sent a vapour trail into Noel’s nostrils.
“What do they say?” said Noel, sputtering, flapping his hand.
“That your mother’s beautiful, extraordinarily well preserved for a woman of …”
“Fifty-six.”
“Fifty-six. And that she has a passing resemblance—nay, a striking resemblance—to Catherine Deneuve. Or is it Charlotte Rampling?”
“Maybe a bit of both.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Mrs. Burun.”
“Her first name.”
“Stella.”
Norval nodded, ruminating. “I’ve also heard that the reason you’ve never had a girlfriend is that you’re blindly, unnaturally in love with the woman.”
Noel smiled bleakly. “Who’s been telling you all this?” Surely not Dr. Vorta …
“In the last week, how often have you seen her with her clothes off?”
Noel sighed. “Often enough.”
“Brilliant.