The Memory Artists

by Jeffrey Moore

  “Just add water and stir. Got that from a lab in Delaware. It’s listed on my website. Very popular among university students.”

  “You smoke it or snort it?”

  “Neither. It’s fake excrement. You can smear it anywhere. It’s very lifelike. But completely harmless, of course.”

  “I know I’m repeating myself,” said Samira, laughing, “but …”

  “What’s it for? Frat parties, revenge on teachers, parents, enemies. You name it. It’s very big in New Hampshire. But most of this stuff is from a former life, from my misspent youth—I’ve left it all behind. I’m about to toss most of it onto the bonfire. I’m now into CAM. I’m a CAM artist.”

  “You’re a cam-artist,” said Norval.

  “Exactly.”

  “And that would be …?”

  “Complementary and alternative medicine—everything from meditation, acupuncture and herbalism to chelation, colonics and leech therapy. This, for example, is a colonic irrigation kit. You run this tube through your rectum in order to cleanse the intestines with warm water. This one’s an iridology kit. You diagnose illness by studying the iris of the eye. And this last one is for Hopi ear candling—you insert a burning candle in the ear canal to remove impurities from the brain and sinuses. And these three are for aromatherapy, this one colour therapy, this one for acupressure, this one’s Bach flowers, and these three contain the Schuessler Tissue Salts.”

  “Bach flowers?” said Samira.

  “Oh, I forgot one. This one here’s for magnet therapy, based on the belief that blood circulation can be improved by mounting magnets at various points on the body.”

  “Haven’t all these procedures, without exception, been debunked as useless or dangerous?” said Norval. “And hasn’t the FDA banned the importation of ear candles?”

  “Well, I …”

  “I think,” said Samira, “that its proponents are practising religion or philosophy as much as science, isn’t that right, JJ?”

  “Yes, that’s very true. The testing data on CAM suggest that there’s another dimension to human life and healing that’s not material. A lot of traditional drugs—like Prozac, for example—have been found, in study after study, to be no better than placebos. So something else is going on, in another dimension.”

  “Herbal cures haven’t received much attention from pharmaceutical companies,” said Samira, as the three made their way back into the living room. “Have they, JJ?”

  “If they can’t patent ’em, Big Pharma won’t touch ’em. Take Taheebo tea. It’s been around since Christ was a carpenter. Everyone knows it could eliminate cancer. So what’s the drug industry’s reaction? Not interested. Taheebo can’t be patented. It’s the bark of a tree! God made it! Pfizer and Merck can’t patent it!”

  Samira picked up a cookie from a plastic bowl next to the cigar-store Indian and put it in her mouth. “Oh … what the … These taste like dog biscuits. No, these are dog biscuits.”

  “I keep them for Merlin, and other strays. They’re herbal—made with stone mint, fennel seeds and tincture of stavesacre. A nice canine mouth detergent.”

  “They aren’t too bad, actually,” said Samira, while crunching. “Would you like to try one, Noel?” she said, articulating each word, as if he were a child with learning disabilities.

  “Hey Sam,” said JJ, “which animal keeps the best time?”

  “I give up.”

  “A watch dog. You hear that one, Nor? A watch dog.”

  “Side-splitting.”

  “You’ve got some great books here,” said Samira, smiling. “Are you a writer yourself?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. I started off in the entertainment industry. I used to write film teasers and taglines. After taking a creative writing course at a prestigious non-accredited university. I’ve worked on lots of films.”

  “Really?” said Samira. “Which ones?”

  “Well, the latest one hasn’t been released yet. There’s some legal snags. It’s called Lord of the Rings: The Assistant Editor’s Cut. I worked in the field for years. Freelance, like. I wrote some stuff for Sony—you know, fake reviews? And I’m the one who came up with the tagline ‘A film about blank blank and other blanks.’ It was me who started all that. And now I’m thinking of suing the companies that stole it. A film about blank blank and other blanks. That was me.”

  Norval shook his head, not knowing or caring what JJ was talking about. As far as he was concerned, all conversational value had been squeezed out of the fact that JJ once worked in the entertainment industry. “So how about we start stuffing these bongs …”

  “I’ve got an article about it, from the Hartford Courant.” JJ reached for a knob and yanked repeatedly at a blocked drawer. He pulled at a crumpled newspaper, which ripped as he extracted it. “Listen, all these are mine: ‘A film about husbands, wives, children and other natural disasters.’ ‘A film about life, love, airplanes and other bumpy rides.’ ‘A film about work, marriage and other forms of combat …’”

  “We get the idea,” said Norval.

  “‘A film about friends, families and other vicious animals.’ ‘A film about kidnappings, car thefts and other rituals of dating.’ All those were mine. You may have heard them. And then everybody started to steal the formula. Like High Fidelity: ‘A comedy about fear of commitment, hating your job, falling in love and other pop favourites.’ Which is way lame. And Panic: ‘A story of family lust, murder and other mid-life crises.’ And …”

  “Yes, fine,” said Norval.

  “Wag the Dog: ‘A comedy about truth, justice and other special effects.’ You see now why I want to sue?”

  “Yes,” said Norval. “Got anything else in that drawer, preferably illegal—”

  “I also worked in the music business. I thought up misspelled words. In fact, I’m the one who got that whole thing going. It’s huge now, eh?”

  “What … exactly do you mean?” said Samira. “Like Led Zeppelin or Def Leppard or Limp Bizkit …”

  “I’m the one who extended it to songs. You know, like ‘Majuk Karpit’ and ‘Toolz4Luv’ and ‘Sk8er Boi.’ That really took off. Musicians love misspelled words. It’s rebellious. Then I moved on to an ad agency. I wrote tons of slogans. Here’s one I did for Funds-o-Rama in Vermont. Are you ready? ‘Don’t just invest. Upvest.’ That was mine. ‘Don’t just invest. Upvest.’”

  Norval looked vacantly at him. “And that would mean … what, exactly?”

  “I’m not sure. Everyone liked it, though. They ended up selling it to another company for big bucks.”

  Norval nodded. “How about ‘Up your Assets’?”

  “Here’s another one: ‘It’s not a fridge. It’s an ideology.’ That was mine. ‘It’s not a fridge. It’s an ideology.’”

  “That was big, was it?” said Norval.

  “No, they never used it. I also did that vitamin-pill equation? That was a classic, eh. You know, number of pills plus x. That was mine.”

  “Which … what are we talking about now?” said Samira.

  “Well, you don’t get 100 pills anymore, do you. You get 90 + 10 free. You don’t get 50 pills. You get—”

  “Forty plus ten.”

  “Correct. It was me who started that. And then I quit the ad agency to write a novel. I got a hundred and forty-three rejections. Which I believe is a record. I sent the file to Guinness—you know, for publicity?—but they said they didn’t have that category. And weren’t planning to.24 I did get a nibble from the biggest publishing company on the Falkland Islands. Anyway, I ended up paying for the publication myself, at least a bank loan did, worth every penny too. The Laurentian Bank’s still after me.” For some reason JJ here erupted in a loud belly laugh, not the irritating kind but the infectious. He walked over to the bookshelf and got down on his hands and knees. Squeezed under the bottom shelf was an entire row of hard-cover books, of uniform colour—dun—with nothing on the spines. He extracted one of them. “Here, take a look.”

&n
bsp; “What’s it about?” said Samira.

  “Lost love united. Getting a second chance. It’s not a novel of traditional form. It has no plot—it’s symphonic in design. I composed it in eight weeks at white heat. It didn’t get great reviews, but I tried to put a positive spin on things. That’s what my mom used to tell me. Look for the silver lining. I Fed-Exed a copy to Oprah.”

  Apart from his eyes, which were rolling reflexively, Norval was keeping his natural sarcasm and vehemence in check. Not because he cared about hurting JJ’s feelings—the man was shatterproof—but because he was too easy a target: he’d been wearing a self-hung “Kick Me” sign for years. It was like ridiculing Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber or Sir Elton John. Besides, Norval had something else on his mind: the promise of ecstatic herbs. Feigning interest, he picked up one of the books and read the back cover: “This is a joke, right?” said Norval.

  “It’s PR parody—and self-parody. It’s postmodernism squared. And those are real quotes—I didn’t make them up!”

  “It … it works,” said Samira, tentatively. “I like it.”

  “I learned lots of things in my creative writing course. Like how you should use similes whenever you can. Because critics and jury members like them. I’ve got thousands: ‘… like a vine clinging to a dead tree,’ ‘… like being shaven by a drunken barber,’ ‘… like broken kites in an attic …’”

  “OK,” said Norval, “we get the—”

  “‘… like an idle race car,’ ‘… like an asterisk for a missing footnote,’ ‘… like birds entering the mouths of crocodiles and cleaning their teeth,’ et cetera, et cetera. I’ve got them all on floppies, in alphabetical order. I just have to find the bits that go before.”

  So far, Noel had not understood everything. Not only because of his aural visions, but because Samira’s presence made him dumbstruck, his lips numb and stuck. Whenever her eyes—those midnight eyes of the East!—gleamed into his he could feel his legs soften and melt like a cheap candle. Inside he was a mess too, his ears taking pictures his mind couldn’t develop. He mimed attention.

  “But you know what? The book flopping was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because I know now that I’m no writer. But I had to give it a shot, you know what I mean? I still do it as a hobby. But now I’ve found something I really enjoy. That I’m good at. And can make money at.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” said Norval, “what that might be.”

  “CAM.”

  “Right.”

  “But I seem to be fielding all the questions!” said JJ. “What are you guys up to these days? Who wants to start? Put up your hand.”

  “Norval,” said Samira, “why don’t you tell JJ about your latest project. Your performance art.”

  “Why don’t you?” said Norval.

  “All right. Norval has set himself the challenge, the considerable artistic challenge, of making love to twenty-six women in twenty-six weeks. In alphabetical order.”

  “Get out of town!” said JJ. “You scurvy knave! Hey, I might be able to get you a condom sponsor. How far have you got? On target?”

  “Ahead of schedule, actually,” said Norval. “I started in the middle of last semester, so I just went through my student lists.”

  JJ nodded. “But isn’t that against … regulations? And ethics?”

  “That’s the point. The guiding theme of French Symbolism is that objectivity, particularly in morals, is a sham. Morality is devised by human beings with no ground or sanction in reason or nature.”

  “But aren’t morals there to prevent people from hurting each other, hurting themselves, or to prevent us from falling—”

  “No one was ever hurt by a fall—it’s the halt at the end that does all the damage. In fact, since the invention of sky-diving and bungee and BASE-jumping, free-falling has become a sport, a kind of suicide practice, where you can savour the aesthetics of descent. Metaphorically, that’s what I’m doing.”

  JJ scratched his head. “I guess that makes sense. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to take on the alphabet project myself, but it’d take me a bit longer than twenty-six weeks. In fact, unless I paid for it, I don’t think twentysix years would be enough. I’ve never been much of a horndog, a babe magnet. But isn’t anyone, you know, protesting? Isn’t the word getting around?”

  “Yeah, some asshole informed the Head of Women’s Studies.”25

  “Oh dear. But … why alphabetical? Why so many?”

  “Because,” said Samira, “it’s worth twenty-six grand. And because he’s like one of those characters in Greek mythology—half goat.”

  “The alphabetical order allows me to explain to my collaborators,” said Norval, “after they fall in love or clamour for an encore, that it was a limited run, a one-night-only performance. It gets me off the hook, in other words.”

  “And because of his sex addiction,” said Samira, “Sir Thunderpants would be doing this kind of thing anyway. Might as well get paid for it.”26

  “You’re a sex addict?” asked JJ, staring at Norval with his eyes grown big.

  “It started out recreational, ended habitual.”

  JJ let out a yodel-like guffaw. “Lots of fish in the sea, eh? Can’t settle on one?”

  Norval took another gulp of wine. “Are you familiar with Baudelaire’s flâneur?”

  “Uh, no, not really.”

  “It’s someone who wanders through the city seeking deliverance from the miseries of the self—first through drink, then sexual depravity—in search of an elusive ideal: perfect love. But because people are not naturally loving and monogamous, but essentially self-seeking and unfaithful, this quest will never be … successful. So he goes from woman to woman, affair to affair, ever questing, never finding.”

  How brilliantly phrased, thought JJ. A true poet. “So you’re a man with a mission.” He gazed at Norval humbly, reverentially, as though he were his manservant or page.

  “More like a dog with an erection than a man with a mission,” said Samira. “I’ve never heard such bullshit.”

  “All right,” said Norval, “here’s another explanation. There are two pleasures in life: food and fornication. In that order. All the rest is rat-ass futility.”

  “What are you going to do with the money?” asked JJ. “Buy food?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I respect that,” said JJ.

  Noel lifted his nose from a bookmarked page of The Count of Monte Cristo. “He’s giving it to the WWF,” he said quietly, prodded by Norval’s rudeness to betray a secret. The three turned to look at him. Glower, in Norval’s case.

  “He’s giving twenty-six g’s,” said JJ, scratching his head, “to the World Wrestling Federation?”

  Noel squatted, returned the book to the shelf. “No, the World Wildlife Fund.”

  “All right!” JJ exclaimed. “Nor, you da man! Yeah, baby!”

  “It was either that,” said Norval, “or the Canadian Centre for Misanthropy.”

  JJ blew loudly through his mouth, his cheeks full like a gopher’s. “So how far have you got? What letter are you on?”

  Norval paused before answering, slowly extracting an Arrow cigarette from its sheath. Noel held his breath, braced himself for the answer. But seconds ticked away and no answer came. A hissing sound broke the silence as the red phosphorus of a match ignited, a safety match that must have been JJ’s.

  “I think you said you were on S,” Samira said finally. “Did you not?”

  Norval regarded her coldly, blew smoke in her direction. “Yes, S is next.”

  JJ waited thirty minutes for other guests to arrive—none did—before announcing the name of his new club: The Alchemical Poets of Persia Society.

  “I just made that up now,” said JJ. “On the spot. I was going to call it ‘The Alchemical Troubadours,’ but then I found out Sam was from Persia. Plus troubadours are men, aren’t they?” Here JJ paused to click keys on a computer. “And here’s how we’re going to fund our new club. Che
ck it out, it’s on the screen now!”

  “I know the founder and CEO of the company!” said JJ. “Personally!”

  “You know the founder and CEO,” said Norval. “Personally.”

  “Yes! He’s an old school buddy!”

  “Do you really mean that?” said Norval. “You have no idea how this news fills my cup. The skies are suddenly opening—”

  “Norval, isn’t your performance project posted on the Web?” said Samira, with searing eyes and tone. “I’m sure JJ would like to see it.”

  Norval said he was just as sure JJ would not.

  “Au contraire!” said JJ. “Is it the Fed site? Hold on, it’s in My Favourites. Right. So I punch Lit? Then … Funded Projects?” As JJ squinted at the screen he began to resemble a schoolboy, tongue protruding as he frowned in concentration. “Then … ‘A’ for Alphabet?”

  “In two words,” said Samira, looking over his shoulder.

  “Let’s see … here’s something called The Acrorats, an ‘ephemeral in situ water-ballet proposal to fill a barge with rats, then set it on fire to watch them dive off …’ OK, got it!” said JJ. “Voilà!”

  “Jesus Chrysler!” said JJ. “That’s awesome! Although I have no clue what it means. Except for the bottom line. Way to go, Nor—”

  “JJ, the moment has come. The chemical phase of the evening. Now, or I’m fucking off.”

  “Motion seconded. The tribe has spoken. Follow me, guys.”

  In what may have once been the dining room, JJ kicked aside a carpet and opened up a hatch door. The faint sounds of an old French song could be heard as the three guests followed JJ down a wooden ladder with rungs missing. Although less than six feet high, the basement was surprisingly spacious. It was also extremely bright—there were six 1,500-watt growlights—and extremely hot. Exhaust fans spun, sucking air through charcoal filters, while a series of ducts vented air out the side.

  “Exquisite,” said Norval, bending over, examining some dozen plants in two-gallon buckets, between four and six feet tall, not far from harvest. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen plants like these. What kind of system are you using?”