The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [81]
“I wouldn’t worry about him. It’s also sold on the street as an aphrodisiac. It’s big in France.” Maybe his mother told him about it, Noel silently conjectured.
“Oh. Maybe that’s it. It’s none of my business anyway. Sorry, I … I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. And, well, mistrusted a friend of yours.”
“I’ve made worse mistakes.”33
In the silence that gathered Noel could hear his own heart beating. Chloral hydrate was a nightmare. In severe overdose, death occurs within five to ten hours. He’d have to tell Dr. Vorta about this … theft. He looked at Samira’s face. It’s obvious she’s in love with him. Or is she? Why don’t I simply ask? He cleared his throat and cursed his own cowardice. It was a perfectly easy thing to say. It would be over quickly, like a dentist’s hypodermic. “Are you in love with him, Sam?” he finally asked, in a near-whisper. “With Nor?”
“No!” she replied, with a quickness and force that surprised them both. “Not at all, I mean I’m … I don’t know, physically attracted and … intrigued or something, like being on the edge of the cliff and this voice is telling me to jump off … I’ve done that kind of thing before in my life, but it’s something I’m trying to … put behind me.”
“It’s really none of my business …”
“But it is. I mean, I want it to be. I’m pretty mixed up about him, I can’t figure him out at all, and thought maybe you could help … clarify things.”
“I wish I could, believe me. But he’s a mystery to me too. He just won’t talk about himself, about personal things. His past is full of blanks and gaps. ‘Don’t expect me to tickle your idle curiosity,’ he once told me.”
“Do you think he was ever in love? With someone who dumped him, or died? Do you think he’s capable of love?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t.”
Samira thought of the ring she had discovered. “Does he … could he, well, prefer men? Sexually, I mean?”
“That would surprise me. But you never know. Byron had male lovers—which for Norval may be a seal of approval.”
“Every heard of Terry?”
“No, who’s Terry?”
“He’s just … a name I saw somewhere.”
“Where?”
This was not something Samira wished to divulge. “I’d be surprised if Norval was ever in love, with anyone—male or female. It seems no one’s good enough for him, everyone’s inferior—intellectually, socially. And he’s a misogynist par excellence.”
“He dislikes both sexes.”
“He’s the most prejudiced person I’ve ever met. Like some old fogey.”
Noel paused to think. “Yeah, in some ways Norval is fogeyish—old at heart, prematurely conservative. He can’t stand the new generation— their consumer products and diction and garish clothes and brand names. But he hates the older generations too, the Establishment, especially law firms and drug companies.”
“He’s your best friend, right?” said Samira.
Noel opened the door of his bed table, a converted apothecary chest with Hermes’ staff carved in high relief on the sliding door. He pulled out a bottle and stoneware goblet. “He’s my only friend.”
“Why is he such a … sack-artist, a midnight plowboy? You don’t believe that Baudelaire crap, do you?”
“No, that’s all a snow-job, government-grantism. He’s got this theory …” Noel paused, as if confused by the objects in his hands. “Would you like some port? It’s my mom’s, it helps me sleep—or used to.”
“Thanks.”
Noel poured. “Hope you don’t mind, this isn’t the right glass and I only have one. I’ll get another—”
“Don’t bother. We’ll share it.” She took a sip and handed back the cup. “You were saying …?”
Noel hesitated before turning the goblet to where Samira’s lips had touched it. He closed his eyes and drank. Footage of Heliodora Locke began to appear …
“… about Norval’s theory?”
Noel shook his head and his neck crackled. “Right, he …” He felt his face reddening as he groped for the thread. “… he thinks that sensation … that the great object of life, or sole object of life, is sensation, what Byron calls the ‘craving void,’ which drives us to things like gambling and war and travel and sex. Especially sex. That the sex instinct dominates all human thought and activity, that it’s the