The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [63]
“Hey, I love you too man—”
“Can I come back to-m-morrow?”
Norval, for the next half-hour, spoke in falsetto French about childhood games he played in Paris, a pet bunny named Mitsou, a sword made of tinfoil and, moving clockwise, his love for each person in the room. He then went to the bathroom, where everyone thought he was going to throw up.
Instead, he reappeared with a smile on his face. He had draped a stole of pink toilet paper round his shoulders and was beginning to perform fencing manoeuvres with a plunger. Abruptly, he then sat on the floor in a lotus position, insisted they were all in heaven, and fell asleep.
“He maxed out,” said JJ. “I warned him. Moderation is the best policy.”
Noel was feeling good from breathing in the ambient fumes. His mind was colourless and clear, his confidence at a high level. “Norval is a foe of moderation,” he said proudly, while gazing at his best friend. “A champion of excess. Which is one of the things I envy about him.”
Samira nodded. “I agree. The road of excess, as they say, leads to the palace of wisdom.” She had changed her mind, sampling two different blends. She too was feeling euphoric and shockingly clear-headed. She smiled at Noel, who suddenly looked extraordinarily handsome. She closed her eyes and was drifting off when a troubling sound infiltrated her brain. A voice from that night, the black-out night …
As JJ spoke to no one in particular, Noel’s gaze shifted from object to object in the smoke-filled room: from the brass bongs, like ancient oriental hookahs, to the rows of scented candles (bergamot and myrrh?), to the cigar-store Indian and stuffed cat. He glanced at Samira, who seemed in the midst of a blissful dream. He inhaled the mix of perfumes and mystic smoke, closed his eyes and watched the room transform itself into a grotto, its objects into beautiful statues. It was like a page from The Count of Monte Cristo, when Aladdin smokes hashish offered by Sinbad and the statues suddenly advance with smiles of love, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, holding him in a torturing grasp, delighting his senses as with a voluptuous kiss …
Noel opened his eyes. His body felt soft and pliable, like Plasticine. And the carpet in front of him seemed to be moving, the cigar-store Indian advancing towards him—but now as an Indian princess, flanked by a cat-eyed maidservant! He rubbed his eyes, turned towards Samira, who was reclining on the divan like a beautiful houri. She was made of marble but her sensuous lips were pink, like the inside of a seashell … As JJ continued to speak, in a tongue that sounded like Arabic, Noel reclosed his eyes and re-entered the grotto. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Aladdin, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips … His senses yielded and he sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses …
Noel half-opened his eyes and watched Samira’s lips move … Was she seeing the same things? Were they on the same page? He looked to his right. The Indian princess had retransformed into the cigar-store Indian. And the feline maidservant? Noel was searching for her when a loud boxy voice distracted him.
“So that’s my idea!” said JJ excitedly. “We all write down our favourite poems of all time. A Hit Parade. And we’ll all—”
“How about a Shit Parade?” said Norval, adding a lunatic gunshot of a laugh. He then went entirely inert, regarding Samira with glazed immovable eyes, like the stuffed cat.
“We’ll each use a pen with different coloured ink and then—”
JJ’s sentence was never finished. First came the sound of a dog barking and then, from the back of the house, a crashing sound, the sound of splintering glass. Something metallic, with hissing smoke, came scuttling down the hall.
Samira let out a scream, a blood-red explosion in Noel’s head. “Fire! Over there! Look!” She sprang from the couch and pointed towards the bathroom,