The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [96]
“Yeah, but only because he paid me. It was Norval’s idea. Vorta took blood and urine samples and then turned on a tape recorder for some article he’s writing. Then enlisted me in an amnesia study.”
“It was GHB, right?”
Samira nodded.
“And were you … never mind.”
“Raped? No, thank God. Or rather thanks to Dr. Rhéaume. I was in a back bedroom, don’t ask me how, and she came in—either to get her coat or say good night, I’m not sure which—and saw the guy scrambling out the window, onto a fire escape.”
“Are you serious? Did she get a good look at him? Did she give the cops a description?”
“It was pitch black in the room, and it all happened so fast. And she didn’t know what was going on. She may have thought I was making out with the guy.”
“And you … don’t remember a thing.”
“Just that one detail, about hearing that bit about ‘excess and the palace of wisdom.’”
“Right.” Noel saw the line from Blake. “I wonder if we should try that same blend of herbs again, see if it triggers anything more.”
“No, it’s probably nothing, I’m probably imagining things …”
“I’ll talk to JJ about it. Because it did some strange things to me too.”
“Nothing to lose.” Samira emptied her glass and stood up. “OK, time for my bath. Wow, my legs feel like rubber. Listen, Noel, are you sure it’s all right if I stay here? I mean, just for a couple more days?”
“Stay as long as you want. There’s lots of room. And I think the world … I mean my mother thinks the world of you.”
“Thanks, Noel. You’re a sweetheart. I wish I could fall in love with a sweetheart like you, I really …” She stopped, realising she’d said something stupid, something insulting, and not knowing how to take it back.
Noel winced. The words stung. His lips began to move: a mumble rose to a gabble, the words tripping one another, his brain out of step with his tongue.
“I’m sorry?” said Samira. “I didn’t quite catch—”
An orangey orb distracted them both. JJ was peering round the door with a brattish boy’s grin, as if holding a water pistol behind his back. “Hope I’m not being a budinsky … Hey, are you guys into the shine, the giggle-water?” He held two large books under his arm, which he plunked down on the desk. After low-fiving Noel he gave Samira a long bear-hug. Overly long, it seemed to Noel.
“Have I got news for you, my friend,” he said to Noel, with a wink and a wag of the head. “I found the clue—for the cure! In The Arabian Nights! Open sesame!” He feverishly opened the two volumes at various bookmarked pages, to which there clung the faint tang of peanut butter. Each had some underlining in pencil:
Then he followed the highway leading to the neighbouring city and entering it, went to the perfumers’ bazaar, where he bought of one some rarely potent bhang …
Nay, more, doth she not drug every night the cup she giveth him to drink before sleeptime, and put bhang into it?
Now she had been drugged with bhang, but when she awoke she remembered …
And for the rest of the remedy she made a China dish of the daintiest sweetmeats that can be made, wherein she had put bhang …
Then the Caliph crowned a cup, and put therein a piece of Cretan bhang … So he took it and drank it off, but hardly had it settled in his stomach when his head forewent his heels and he fell to the ground like one slain …
“Cretan bhang!” said JJ, running his finger along the words, as if taking an impression from braille. “That’s got to be it!”
Noel eyed JJ’s pudgy forefinger, then his popeyed face. “But bhang is … hashish.”
“Exactly.”
Noel nodded. “Thanks, JJ, but I … I’ve already ruled that out as a clue.”
“Right. I’ll keep on looking. Oh, I almost forgot—your mom wants to see you. Sorry for barging in like this, eh?”
“No problem.” Noel glanced at Samira, first at her beaming face, then downwards, at the fingers of her left hand. They were entwined with JJ’s. He closed his eyes. No, this cannot be happening … He heard voices and knew they were for him, but he heard them as a drowning man hears people on the shore. With a rigid grin and red face he stood there half blind, half deaf, watching