The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [71]
What he did mind was JJ’s grunts as he listened, on his headphones, to his mother’s Hits from the Sixties box set. Without Noel knowing it, JJ repeated three in particular, over and over, perhaps for luck: “Do You Believe in Magic?”, “Love Potion #9” and “Magic Carpet Ride.” Also for luck, with Noel very much knowing it, JJ wore his bubblegum-pink socks in the lab, day after day.
After four and a half weeks of toil and quest, on the first Sunday in March, Noel got a flash of inspiration, a glimmer of supranormal insight. He was at Mount Royal Cemetery, watching cloud-shadows sweep across the fields, when a rustling sound distracted him, a squirrel or bird perhaps, foraging in graveyard grass. He turned and saw a shaft of sunlight illuminating, ever so briefly, the chiselled letters of his father’s headstone. Back home, he scrambled up to the attic for books from his childhood, then flew down the stairs like a five-year-old at Christmas. For the rest of the day he worked in the basement, alone.
Around nine, JJ came down with a tray of sandwiches. “Your mom made these for you. You must be famished.”
With a magnifying glass Noel was examining prismatic beads and globules frothing inside an Erlenmeyer. He replied with a grunt.
“Hey Noel. Two travellers are crossing a desert. What would they live on if their food ran out?”
“Just a sec.”
“They’d live on the sandwiches there.”
Satisfied with the colour change in the emulsion, Noel lowered the flame beneath it with fingers blackened by chemicals. He replaced the magnifying glass in its sheath, copied some entries into a notebook.
“They’d live on the sand which is there,” JJ repeated.
Noel looked up from his notebook. “Is that tuna? Good, I could use some brain food. I’m trying to make a leap here …” Of imagination, he nearly added. He felt it as though it were a new sense, arriving late, like wisdom teeth.
“What are you up to?”
Noel nodded towards the flask. “Pyridoxal phosphate.”
“Cool.” JJ leaned over and examined the billowing liquid. “What’s that?”
“It’s … well, involved in the synthesis of two neurotransmitters—serotonin and norepinephrine. There’s something about it in my dad’s notes.”
“Very cool. Everything on track?”
“I think so. How about you, JJ? How are things going?”
“Rollin’. All four tyres pumped.” He grinned, gleamed.
JJ was always gleaming—his very blood must be high-gloss, a special glaze or lacquer. Which protected him from things like loneliness or boredom or depression, which allowed him to go through life with a smile on his face, to see life as a treasure hunt and the world as Aladdin’s cave. “Do things ever go badly for you, JJ?” said Noel, between mouthfuls of white tuna. “Are you ever unhappy?”
The question made JJ shrug. “I guess I’m hardwired for happiness. Every day there’s something new and magical in life. Although I have to admit I’d go back to my childhood in a second. The past is safe ...” JJ let the sentence trail. “I remember one time after a baseball game—”
“You were carried on your teammates’ shoulders, I know. But as an adult do you never get sad or depressed? What about … I don’t know, after losing family members or … friends?”
“Well, I was sad when papa met his Maker in ‘97, and when Jesus welcomed maman to heaven in ‘91, and when my girlfriend dumped me in ‘86. Of course I miss them. But I’m grateful for the time I spent with them. You see, no one can take that happiness away from me. It’s mine, for ever and ever. I still have that love, inside me. I carry it around wherever I go. It lives on in memory.”
Noel nodded, swallowed. “And those three times are the only times you’ve been unhappy?”
“There’s been other times. But heh! If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Under the snow lies summer, remember. If everything was perfect, we’d appreciate nothing.” JJ poked one of his nostrils with his finger, causing Noel to look away. “When life zigs, zag!”
Noel smiled, his mind drifting to something Norval had said about JJ, about his “fatal penchant for potted