The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  Another knock now, and it was Eleanor. As she stood at my door she fingered the spit valve of her trombone. It was then a curious thought struck me concerning the good woman: she was somehow not as all together as she seemed, the trombone a sham, the valve in her hand a cult trinket, a clutching at straws.

  ‘Greetings to you, kind sir,’ she began, ‘I have tea and muffins at the ready in my place. Care to partake?’

  No, I did not wish to partake but I was not at the moment of any use to myself. So I followed her down the hall and through her door and living room into the inner sanctum, her kitchen. She said: ‘I guess Bob and Eggy are out getting drunk?’

  ‘That they are.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  ‘I gave it a go, but I couldn’t really afford it—in the spiritual sense, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘So what’s this all about?’

  ‘I want the pleasure of your company. I want to hear again about Sally McCabe and your old high school, scene of your trials.’

  ‘I should think you’ve heard enough.’

  ‘Because your motherland’s in a nosedive, and maybe, in your tales of McCabe there’s a clue as to why.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Eleanor looked short-changed by my response.

  ‘A Sleepy Hollow of wheezy Wurlitzers, sexual ghouls, the over-bright eyes of vampires? Pyscho beach parties? Isn’t all this reason enough? Wounded Knee. No Gun Ri, as Eggy says. Will the cure, proving worse than the disease, reduce us all to gibbering idiots or automatons or sieg-heiling fanatics?’

  ‘But you spoke of her as a goddess and so forth and so on. I remember distinctly you saying so, and I thought it hogwash, here’s a precious boy and all that, but now, I don’t know.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘And then I wonder if life’s nothing but a series of random acts like you say. Or do patterns form, and with patterns, predictable consequences, and with consequences, a tale of our own shortsightedness and egotism. I mean we do love ourselves so, don’t we? We love the effing stuffing out of ourselves. Hey, my little pinkie is worth a thousand times more than your little pinkie. Does anyone come to mind? How about Lucille Lamont, the effing witch?’

  ‘Have you heard from her again?’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor near barked, ‘and if she’d sent me another I’m-fine-wish-you-were-here-letter I would’ve thrown it out with the garbage, unread.’

  With an utter absence of ceremony, she slopped some hot water in our cups and dropped a muffin in my lap.

  ‘Eat, drink,’ she commanded.

  No wonder Dubois was in the Blue Danube, drinking himself insensible.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘better to love oneself than not. Self-loathing. So zero-sum.’

  ‘Too many people who love themselves are taking us to ruin.’

  ‘Shall we count the ways?’

  She gave me a nasty look.

  ‘The President is clearly self-enamoured,’ she said.

  ‘Well, when you’ve got God in your corner, it’s hard not to be a little smug.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  The tone of her voice, rather than a ringing endorsement of my thought, was more like the realization of the limits of her intelligence.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘I just don’t.’

  ‘Get in line,’ I drolled, ‘behind me.’

  We sat there quiet in her kitchen. It was a place in which Eleanor and I had so often conversed; and yet, how little I knew its particulars. Pots and pans on the gas stove. A fridge with those little magnets which pinned notes and lists and snapshots to the fridge door. A heap of unwashed dishes in the sink, the counters at either side of it sheer chaos, what with dishes and tins and boxes and scattered cutlery, bags and food bits and cookbooks. A young shoot of a plant on the sill just over the sink, the leaves touchingly optimistic. The window looked out on the same view as the window in the hall. Eleanor, too, would see Mrs Petrova raking her leaves. I decided to take matters in my own hands.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘when I go on about McCabe, I’m just blowing wind up my arse.’

  ‘How delicately you put it, Mr Calhoun.’

  ‘Who was she?’ I continued. ‘She was just a girl who once let me stammer in her presence, on ceremony.’

  ‘And you weren’t supposed to win that football game. You spoiled a perfect losing season.’

  ‘Yes, I certainly did spoil it, and the Furies have been chasing me ever since.’

  ‘You’re definitely off your nut.’

  ‘Oh but I am.’

  It was only then I noticed she had something else in mind, she exuding heat like a furnace; her breasts young, her smile a little foolish. Let a nation-state tear itself apart limb by limb; my hands could happily get lost exploring this woman who was all of a piece, our selfishness absolute. Then the moment went down like a plane shot from the sky. There were questions in her eyes and no answers in mine.

  Doing Moonface

  I wanted un-Traymorean diversion now, autumnal evenings beginning to hang in the trees. Lovers in the parks, as intense as peacocks in misalliance, were feeling the chill now, after dark. So Propertius might have viewed it, up to no good, wearing sun shades and a leather jacket, headed for some cult venue called The Sarajevo Club, verses breaking in his mind like news from a distant front. I would go downtown and pretend myself abroad. It had always been my fancy that, in my twilight years, I would live in Venice like one of those Victorian aesthetes in revolt against London fog and other rigours, against all complacencies. But I could barely afford dinner and a movie ticket, let alone a musty palazzo and a regimen of expensive coffees in the famous piazzas. I had failed at rapine and pillage, the rules of the game rigged, in any case. Was there anything anymore like honest thievery? I could not wait around for the Traymorean Moonface to reappear (we had planned to see a flick) and so I stuffed money in my pocket, grabbed a coat, went and boarded a bus of silent brooders.

  I finished off the cannelloni, washed it down with wine that tasted of cobwebs. I enjoyed the spectacle of people on the street, all bundled up, cares in abeyance. Frosted breath. Enthusiasm for life. I had great affection for the scene. Somewhere Moonface was being ignoble and her James noble, or so the script should read; but that, of course, it would not. How did we become clichés? In walked Minnie Dreier with a new prospect.

  Cogs and wheels and gears and springs that were Randall Q Calhoun disengaged, part from part. The mechanism crashed and scattered in pieces. I felt myself absurd. I read the telltale signs of what was uppermost on Minnie’s mind; it was neither love nor even a date. She was one of those women for whom sex is a preoccupation, only that, when the chance arose, she got skittish and would argue terms. I hoped she had not spotted me. She had streaked her hair and had it cut close. It did not flatter her. She had aged since last I saw her, but still she had her attractions—the dark eyes and full mouth, the lower lip of which was somewhat pronounced; it had a rather maddening and enticing way of pulling away from her strong teeth when she got drunk enough to forget her fears.

  If she had seen me, she did not let on, guiding her beau to the rear of the restaurant. He, and he was hard to read as to which of the honoured professions he claimed for himself, then walked back to the cashier and put in an order. By now, Minnie must have noticed me. Soon enough, as if the back of my head had eyes, I could determine that Minnie, my old passion, was working overly hard for scant returns. She was chattering on; he was all scorched earth. Perhaps he had character, a fact which might complicate things for her. In any case, I slid back my chair, rose, and went to pay my bill. I spoke two words of Italian to the cashier who was wearing a red apron. ‘Stai bene?’ I said, and he smiled obligingly, humouring me. This time, I caught Minnie’s eyes and she distinctly blushed as if caught out in a naughty act. I offered up a mock-wave. By the time I hit the street I had worked up a righteous and seething boil. Of course, I had no right
to it. Minnie was a world I long since put behind me; or rather it was the other way around. It did not even feel all that good, the anger in me, and the movie I had planned to see with Moonface—The Hustler –(and yes, I had seen it many times) did not entirely satisfy on this viewing. Newman’s performance seemed lazy, his smile saying, ‘Oh come on, I’ll ace this, just feed me the line’. Piper Laurie however was as doomed as ever as the drunken and lame-footed Sara who saw it all; saw what makes clowns of men. Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, pool shark, wearily wise, was a massive Buddha. Though the Buddha had stated otherwise, the squinted eyes of Minnesota Fats said that pain is real enough.

  All night the wind blew hard and further denuded the trees. I walked the last few remaining blocks to the Traymore, disembarking from a bus of more silent brooders. Apart from the ruckus of the wind, it seemed unnaturally quiet in the neighbourhood. It was Halloween, after all, and there must have been house parties; there must have been carousing in the bars. I passed by the Traymore, and in the wind and dark, it looked forbidding, something out of a horror flick; and I said to myself that on the other side of the door, I had a life of some sort. In the Blue Danube, incredibly enough, Eggy and Dubois were still at it, a pair of mewing kittens, silly, endearing, mildly destructive. The Slavs were at it, too, among their number a striking woman in furs, her face hard-bitten but somehow aristocratic, demeanor and attire suggesting money. I estimated her age to be near mine, and I wondered if she was not able to read my mind, disapprovingly, of course. She levelled haughty glares in my direction. The new Albanian waiter seemed quite at home, humanity in its cups a familiar enough spectacle. Dubois was on about something. He and Eggy hardly noticed my showing up, Dubois saying: ‘Kennedy welcomed power. He had no compunctions about it.’

  Dubois spoke like a man who actually knew something.

  ‘He didn’t always have to use it, but he had it should he need to make a point.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eggy, ‘like the Seventh Fleet.’

  ‘The current President is something else again. Here he’s got at his fingertips all the tools of an expanded Executive, but I don’t think he’s interested in power as such. He just likes playing the role. The real power is you know who.’

  ‘The Veep,’ said Eggy, supplying identity and role and scope for criminality.

  ‘The rain in Spain,’ he sing-songed, ‘was always in Espawnya.’

  ‘So yes,’ Dubois said, ‘I’d say there was, I’d say there’s a lot of difference between now and those dear old days of Camelot.’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll still tell me Trudeau was his own man,’ said Eggy.

  ‘I’ll still tell you that. Even in French the word maverick applies.’

  Moonface blew in, as it were, on the wind.

  ‘Happy All Saint’s Day,’ she said.

  Her cheeks were charmingly flushed, and the way her face was set off by the scarf, it imparted to her eyes a look of gusto, a Marilyn Monroe look, the one that knows the game is rigged but that it is still worth playing. Even so, I could see she had had a bad evening of it. More censure emanated from the woman in furs who really must have been a minx once upon a time. There was an epic in her face. She sized up Moonface and found her fluff, no match for the grind of history and the abysmal predilections of men insofar as they concerned sex. Well, we would see about that. I would give Moonface a backbone, if that was what was wanted; and Eggy would help and Dubois. Eggy, checking his wristwatch, challenged her: ‘All Saint’s Day? You’re somewhat early.’

  Moonface ignored him.

  ‘So how did it go?’ I asked.

  Her eyes suggested it was a matter best left for another time.

  ‘How did what go?’ Eggy demanded to know, unwilling to miss out on any fun.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dubois, ‘what’s the big mystery?’

  Moonface brightening, her neck still wrapped in the scarf, said that it was no one’s business, and if we were the gentlemen we claimed to be, one of us would treat her to a glass of wine, even if wine went hard on her stomach.

  ‘Oh sure,’ said Eggy maliciously, ‘we’ll get you drunk. Hoo hoo.’

  I searched her face for pain and trouble. Quite the chameleon that face was, now lovely, now plain, now intelligent, now vacuous; and she was just another woman setting out on life’s treadmill; and there was no reason to believe she would amount to anything, however dignified the treadmill was with notions of self-empowerment and equality of opportunity and all the rest of the platitudes by which the pursuit of power is disguised. Yet another glare from the woman in furs suggested I was close to the truth in this, but that she could state it better; and I was aching, strangely enough, to know her story; and it was not going to happen. I had visions of White Russians or Polish countessas or some such, but she was not decrepit enough for the lot, and the aristocratic cast to her face was, more than likely, an accident of birth. Still, she was clearly the personage to reckon with at the table at which she presided. I said: ‘Well, boys, I’ve already had a long evening of it. I think I’ll retire.’

  ‘You wimp,’ said Eggy, and a pair of Dubois eyes, glitteringly blue, said that no one abandons the field until it is time to abandon the field, so, sit down; we were not yet finished. But I carried my point, and Moonface, who did not really want any wine, followed me out.

  ‘They’ll be chin-wagging this,’ said Moonface, ‘forever’, and I said: ‘I know, I know.’

  I took her arm.

  Once we were in my apartment, and she had a cup of warm water in her hands (it was all she had wanted to drink as it soothed her stomach), she did not want to talk about it. Yes, bad evening, but she had expected as much. She was only surprised that James, her ex-beau, her prince of a guy, played the sex card and wheedled her with it; and it put her off. Then he got angry and slotted her in distinctly unflattering terms. I supposed nothing much had changed in the annals of revolution. I had spoken similarly myself in a far-off time when a grasp of history clanked oddly and dully with one’s inability to perceive the odd truth. In any case, I said nothing, out of fear of unwanted collusion between myself and her antagonist; and because, well, there was nothing to say. I leaned back on the couch, Moonface at my side; and she set the cup of hot water down, shivered gently, and laid her head against my shoulder. She was lost and not minding it so much. She had experienced some pain but she knew she would get over it. She was a shallow girl who operated according to predictable laws. She was a young woman who stumbled onto a world that she recognized as out of the ordinary; that was rich and impenetrable, perhaps impossible to get to the bottom of; that she was a pilgrim; that she was not entirely the author of her own life, and that it was not necessarily a bad thing; that she was not alone in this, at least, not all the time; and lastly, that her mind and body would astonish, one day, some prospective lover, that is, if she played her cards right and did not throw pearls at the feet of the undeserving.

  ‘From the sounds of it,’ I said, ‘James will sort himself out in due course. Meanwhile, there are Virgil and Beethoven, and there’s new music, too, popping up on the horizon, however shaky that horizon is. And maybe you’ve got poems to write.’

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘Oh Randall, give it a break.’

  I was being avuncular.

  As I said, the wind blew hard all night, and it woke me at four, a terrifying hour. I sweet-talked myself into thinking that everything was fine, life unfolding as it should. And I left my bed to relieve my bladder, and there in the living room, on the couch, was Moonface, looking cadaverous. Perhaps it was the darkness, I do not know, and it was as if she had died, grimacing. Perhaps it was a bad dream. In any case, the sight of her shook me, unpleasantly so. Why was she not in her own bed? How had I come to forget she was in my digs? What sort of lunacy had gotten hold of the both of us? The wind howling like it was, all the world seemed deranged. Were it a movie, this scene she and I were playing out, I would draw her coat to her chin and maybe blow her a kiss, and
humanity at large would say, ‘There, you see. We’re not such a bad lot.’ I would have to sweet-talk myself harder than I had, and I piddled and then I padded, barefoot, back to my bed; and tossed and turned a while. In the morning, she was gone.

  I went out my door and stepped into the hall, the Traymore somnolent. Not even a mouse and all the rest of it. Oh but there was Osgoode in his this-side-of-hideous attire, and now here he was, slamming his door and inserting his key into the lock with a flourish and turning it. He put the key in his pocket like a man about to set off on imperial business, his satchel his lethality. He saw me and said in his superior fashion, ‘Morning’, and he clambered down the stairs. I clambered after, and out on the street, he went one way and I went the other. I was happy to see the back of him. I supposed there is always someone in this world who may intend one no ill will but who always rubs one the wrong way.

  I wandered into a restaurant in the adjacent district. Posh neighbourhood known for its airs and pretentious boutiques. I ate hungrily and without a thought for table grace. My thoughts were peopled, as it were, with people quite other than those seated around me; with Clare, for instance, and Moonface. With Gar whom I could not actually hear or see. With Jack Swain, an honest enough man who, instead of pretending to poetry, began pretending to radical objections to the prevailing world order. I saw myself in Rome, and this seeing myself there was a frequent occurrence. Now I was in the Forum, negotiating the ruins. Now I was on the Corso clogged with teenyboppers brandishing shiny shopping bags. Now I was in a deserted Piazza Navona very late at night, the fountains drowning the noise in my mind. Now I was up in one of the gardens, the Pincio, I guess, and Nero was cloaked and disguised and up to no good, but that it was fun. Back in the restaurant, spawn with rubbery legs and a too-bright face approached me and his sleek mother called him back. ‘Evan’, she said collegially with her brisk voice and well-accommodated existence. Who, these days, was named Evan but one who was doomed to a life of lawyering and cynicism and failed marriages? So this was the sort of place I was in and I had best get out of it, and I did; though in the process of my escape, I endured the humiliation of the fact that my shoe was untied, and the laces slapped against the floor as I perambulated out the door. The food sat uneasy on my stomach, and there was a presence in me who was not quite familiar, a pagan assassin or a very wary early Christian.