The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [74]
“I believe you,” he said. The light in her eyes remained fine as pearl, but she was clearly distressed, underslept.
“Did I get you out of bed, Noel? I’m really sorry …”
“I wasn’t in bed.”
“I feel so stupid, this is so embarrassing. The thing is, to make a long story short … I’ve had a really heavy load of courses and lots of expenses and I … well, couldn’t pay my rent. So I was kicked out, evicted. So I went to stay with this guy, this friend, but then his girlfriend, well she sort of … kicked me out. Tonight. In a jealous fit. At like, midnight. But I’ve got money coming in, a student loan, and Vorta owes me a bit and … JJ said you had a big house and … I mean, I could go to my mom’s now but … well, I was wondering if, just temporarily …”
“I’ll show you your room.”
In a room down the hall from his mother’s, Noel was carrying in fresh bedsheets when Samira emerged from the bathroom, an Arctic white towel wrapped around her, as in a Doris Day movie. “I took a whore’s bath, hope you don’t mind. I’ll go back tomorrow for the rest of my stuff. Like all my clothes. Do you have something I could wear to bed? It’s silly, I know, but I don’t feel comfortable … sleeping naked.”
Noel glanced at Samira’s square neckline for a discreet microsecond, then at the skirt and tights she clutched in her hand. “Yes … of course, I don’t sleep naked either. Though I probably should, I’m so incredibly hot. I mean the house is … incredibly. The temperature … I’ll get you something.” He remained rooted to the spot, staring at the floor, visualising the patterns—plaid, pinstripes, fleur-de-lis—on his three pairs of pyjamas. Which ones would be most suitable? He darted out of the room as fast as Mercury, as if delay could be fatal.
Samira, when he returned, was stroking away creases from the bottom sheet, leaning over the bed, still covered by the towel but only just. Noel looked at the ground and other unresponsive objects. Samira hadn’t heard him enter. When she saw him she straightened her torso and towel, eyed the tartan pyjamas. No, I meant a T-shirt, she was about to say. “Thanks, Noel. That’s perfect. Listen, this is just for one night, OK? I really don’t want to cause any problems for you … and your mom.” She took the pyjamas, opened Noel’s closet door and stepped behind it. As she was putting on Noel’s top she began to think about what she had seen in the bathroom. Not only the signs on the wall, but its general condition. It was a shambles, it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Like the rest of the house.
Noel stood awkwardly by the door, wondering whether he should still be there.
“Is your mother … here?” Samira asked, peering round the closet door.
Noel nodded. “She’s sleeping down the hall.”
“She won’t mind if I stay? Just until I find a place …” Samira stepped out from behind the closet door, holding the towel and pyjama bottoms. “Your mom’s getting worse, isn’t she. In the bathroom I noticed …”
Noel could not believe what was happening, that Heliodora Locke was standing before him, dressed only in his pyjama top. Was it a mirage, a product of stress or sleep deprivation? A creation of some jinnı¯, formed in an instant and destined as quickly to dissolve?30 Had he been slipped one of his mother’s neuro-drugs or Norval’s hallucinogens? He closed his eyes and saw the opening scene from Zappavigna’s The Bride and Three Bridegrooms. A cor anglais playing merrily in the background …
“Noel?”
Water racing up sand, her beautiful voice, an orchestra of hues …
“Noel, are you all right? Noel?”
He opened his eyes, one at a time, and seemed startled by what he saw. “Sorry, I was just … spacewalking, a bad habit of mine, I really have to cut down. We were talking about …”
“I asked if your mother was getting worse. The bathroom …”
“Right.” He shook the film footage out of his head, replaced it with the signs in the bathroom, the handiwork of the Bath Lady. “I’m not the one who put those signs up. They’re really not needed. Or all the other crap either. My mom’s getting better all the time, she really is. JJ and I are … working on things.