The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [19]
Here Noel tuned out. Samira had crept back into his brain. There was something irresistible about her. Her voice, for example. A good sign! Low and rich, a trifle husky, it caused indigo diamonds with blue-tinged halos, like the rings of Saturn, to revolve inside his head … And her incredible eyes, twinkling with irony, the colour of … what would you call it? The human eye, he knew better than most, can distinguish some ten million colours, so there obviously aren’t names for all of them. Nor in his own lexicon of two thousand colours was there a name for that shade. It was a complex hybrid: Roman umber certainly, but with lurking black opal and smoky topaz and a tinge of …
“Noel, I seem to be talking to myself here.”
“Amaranth!”
“Yes, but we’ve moved on from that subject.”
“Sorry, what’s the new subject?”
Norval sighed. He had a theory, which he now repeated, that the only woman Noel would ever be able to make love to would be someone very close, someone he had known for a very long time, someone he trusted with his life, someone whose voice didn’t vandalize his thoughts.
“ … to conclude,” said Norval, “in this house from which I am barred, are you acting upon Oedipal impulses? Are you sharing an incestuous bed? Are you in diabolical love with your mother?”
Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive: mother’s love for her child, and child’s love for mother. “Well, on some nights we do end up sharing a bed … And I do love her, more than anyone else in the world. Don’t you yours?”
“Leave my mother out of it. She’s a sack of excrement. Answer the question.”
“I’m suspicious about why you’re asking it. Are you yourself, by any chance, hiding some dark secret? A homoerotic adventure? Sex with a minor? Sex with a student? An incestuous relationship of your own?”
“Homoerotic adventure? At boarding school every form of transgressive sex was openly indulged, from mutual masturbation and circle jerks to sadomasochism and gang sodomy. Sex with a minor? Every boy of good looks, myself included, had a female name and was recognised as a public prostitute. Sex with a student? In the last five years, I’ve not got through a single semester without bedding fewer than three students. Incest? My father remarried, had two girls. Before either had reached their teens, I’d slept with them both. For Claire, the eldest, it was the first—and last—orgasm of her life. She married a book critic.”
Noel laughed. “You’re making all this up, it sounds too … too Byronic to be true.”
A new cigarette appeared magically between Norval’s fingers, which he lit with its predecessor. “I shit you not. The point is that you, not I, are hiding something.”
Noel sighed, bit his lip. “I’m not really hiding … I mean, the thing is … I suppose I should have … well, explained things a long time ago. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come back to the house and see for yourself?”
“A Highland welcome at last. Grr-and. I’m dying to see the … the sink of iniquity and mère fatale. Not to mention the alchemist’s den. In which I suspect you’ve been doing a bit of designing, synthesising—”
“I have, actually. But as for the house, I should warn you that—”
“Put that thing in the trunk of a cab.” He nodded towards Noel’s mother’s bike, which had collapsed against its pole, front wheel upturned and handlebars askew. “En route, I’ll tell you more about the latest member of The Alpha Bet.”
Noel’s expression darkened. “Did you take advantage of her?”
“What was that expression? Something from your mother’s era, I believe?”
“Did you have sex with Samira?”
Norval inhaled nearly a third of his Arrow and sent a volcanic cloud of smoke and vapour up towards a crippled maple, its limbs scarred or shorn by ice-storms. “Hardly. When we arrived at the loft she was practically sleepwalking. In fact, we should probably stop there on our way, see if she’s sentient. Do you mind if she tags along?”
I couldn’t possibly have them over, thought Noel, I’ll make a complete stooge of myself … “No, I don’t mind at all if she, Samira, tags along.