The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  Mikki, the Albanian waiter, had not lasted. Or rather he was fired in absentia, he having absconded with some petty cash. A young woman was hired to fill his shift, and Melody and Moonface hit it off. Immediately Eggy asked Melody to marry him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you can at least let me take you out once in a while.’

  Melody, a redhead, was not shy about her charms. Her knee-high socks were a great attraction until, one evening, and perhaps it was a grease spot or something, and she slid on her high heels and nearly fell. The Slavs applauded her acrobatic recovery, and she had the job. It was slacks from now on and flat shoes. I could not imagine what she and Moonface found to talk about; it could not have been poetry, but perhaps it was all for the best. In any case, despite the added inducements for stepping out by way of wine, women and song, I was, in fact, staying in more, dealing myself hands of solitaire.

  It was Eleanor who noticed. She knocked and I gave her entrée into my grotto. She said: ‘You haven’t been around to visit me.’

  I told her I figured she had her hands full with Dubois, seeing as he had been to the hospital and was eating pills.

  ‘Bob can eat pills on his own time. What are you doing here? Plotting a coup?’

  ‘I’m playing cards as you can plainly see.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ she said, unimpressed.

  ‘Well, I’m noodling.’

  ‘Well yes, you’re always noodling. I didn’t expect you to be doing otherwise. Why aren’t you out with the boys? I hear there’s a new waitress in Dodge. I hear she’s a honey and the Blue Danube has been painted red.’

  ‘Yes, it’s something like that, and Melody, that’s her name, she’s vivacious enough but she’s not, how shall I say it, my type.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is,’ the good woman said, ‘you’re in love with Moonface.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Eleanor.’

  ‘Am I wrong?’

  ‘You are. If I’m in love with anyone, it concerns someone you know little about. That’s the way it shall remain.’

  ‘I see,’ said Eleanor, suddenly much less seductive and rather matter of fact, ‘Mr Calhoun has the hots for someone and we Traymoreans don’t deserve to know who.’

  ‘You see, it’s hopeless with you people. And besides, if love it is, it’s a love going nowhere kind of love. Too late and out of the question.’

  The eyes of Eleanor R could not quite conceal the fact that she had by now guessed the identity of the mystery woman; she had almost broached the name.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, ‘and I can see you’re occupied and I’m in the way.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll come over later.’

  ‘Sure, if you want,’ she said, indifferent, and now on the go.

  Eleanor took the amaretto from her cupboard and two wide-mouthed glasses with ceremonious stems. She kissed the bottom of each glass with a touch of her favourite substance. She set the glasses on the table, attempting to read me all the while; and she sat and lit a cigarette. I rolled one of my own; and as soon as it was hanging off my lip, she started in: ‘I’ll bet that Clare is the sort of woman who wouldn’t give Traymoreans a second thought. I’ll bet she’s elegant and as sharp as a tack. I’ll bet she’s au courant with everything; with fashion wear and foreign affairs and the latest books. Yes? No? Much too wide of the mark?’

  ‘For starters, Clare is no snob. But why her? What’s this about Clare?’

  ‘Because,’ Eleanor said, a hint of triumph rising in her throat, ‘she’s the one you’re smitten with.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I said, exasperated, ‘really? And now I suppose I’ll get on my charger and gallop to the ends of the earth to save her from infidels. She, and how can I put it, she’s a one-man woman, and, Gareth deceased, there won’t be another soul mate. And even if there appeared a successful contender, he’d only ever have a small part of her.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Eleanor said, her tone of voice dangerous, ‘because the picture I have of her, and how I have it I won’t tell you, is of a woman who isn’t shy when it comes to extracurricular activity. Know what I mean?’

  ‘You’re uncanny,’ I said, the game up with me, ‘and the truth of the matter is unavailable. In deference to you I will allow that I’ve had my suspicions. Even so, she’s a one-man woman.’

  ‘As for that, I’ll bet Gareth was quite the skirt-chaser, one in every port.’

  My silence betrayed my oldest friend.

  ‘Look,’ Eleanor said, ‘it’s not for me to judge. Frankly, I don’t care. It’s you I worry about; and if Clare is necessary, well then, she’s necessary.’

  ‘I thank you for your concern. But silly you. Necessary for whom? Huge assumption. She’s not most on my mind. Nor you, nor Moonface. Not Eggy. Not Dubois. Not any of the people I knew before I knew you. Not McCabe. Not Virgil or Tacitus or Harry S Truman, for that matter. Though here, I’m beginning to get warm. The republic, yes? We’re hanging from the trees, twisting in the breezes.’

  Eleanor looked a little stunned. A long drag on her cigarette ensued. Her spit valve had magically materialized, and she was rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. I added: ‘And you’re whistling Dixie through that thing.’

  ‘Calhoun, good sir, this is Canada. Besides, it’s nothing new, citizens hanging from trees. An honoured pastime.’

  ‘Well, we’re used to it. You on your part of the tree and I on mine—we wave at one another. We talk the talk of lust and Caesar and the price of tea and our snot-nosed love brats; and we pass the salt and freshen up the drinks and maybe make a little money in the marketplace.’

  ‘I think you’re blowing wind up your arse, Mr Calhoun. I surely do think that,’ my hostess and good neighbour pronounced.

  ‘Besides, like I say, this is Canada,’ she added, ‘you know, the frozen tundra, True North?’

  ‘Yes, and my arse aside, what a wind,’ I said, oblivious to the finer points of geography.

  I rolled another cigarette. I drained the last of the amaretto from my glass. I had half-ways vindicated myself in the eyes of Eleanor; and I might have frightened her, who is to say? But I had no idea what I was talking about. Perhaps one may only discern the lineaments of some intangible presence, of an avenging ghoulish god, for instance, by throwing everything and anything at it so as to see what sticks; and listen for the little mewings of recognition. No, no Moloch here. False alarm. I had not intended to frighten Eleanor. She was, in any case, a big girl. I had frightened myself so often in recent times that the only spectre I had left with which to frighten myself was my mortality; that, and a few other items not worth the mention. There was the item of Virgil’s ninth eclogue, that bucolic (‘who’ll cast green shadows on the spring?’) hinting at the failure of poetry to amount to much in the real world; no happy endings for the shepherds; across the board disillusionment with the program in general.

  Calhoun, Lover

  It was a shocker—the latest news: Osgoode a sexual predator. I nearly exploded with a guffaw when I heard of it; it was no secret how much I disliked the man. The police had been around to interview Mrs Petrova who had referred them to Eleanor, she who was always in the thick of things. The details of Osgoode’s personal history had struck the police as a little vague.

  ‘Well,’ Eleanor informed the two community-minded patrolmen, ‘it’s vague to us, too.’

  As for his supposed connections to the Faith Light Church, and, good God, what sort of church was that, this, too, was a mystery; and there had been those women who would congregate in Osgoode’s rooms, only that the visitations had ceased fairly early on. The police believed Osgoode was not as devout as he made himself out to be; he simply drifted from cult to cult and preyed on the unsuspecting. He had, apparently, crossed over a line when he shifted his attentions from a mother to her pubescent child. No charges had been laid as of yet, but he was currently being held for questioning. So much for my view of the man as a young Caesar in the making; he was but th
e filth-infested underbelly of the beast, not the head. A meeting of Traymoreans was convened at the Blue Danube.

  ‘Another blow for Priapus,’ said Eggy, relieved to have discovered that the Blue Danube had not, in fact, cancelled its liquor license.

  ‘Our dear Traymore,’ said Eleanor, ‘is now truly a den of iniquity, what with Marcel and now this. Poor Mrs Petrova. She must think she’s rented out to sleaze bags and perverts and worse.’

  Eggy, petulant, continued, ‘Well, if some woman lets herself believe the Lord God Himself is shagging her, she deserves what she gets.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dubois, ‘the woman is one thing, the child another. Sets my skin crawling.’

  I did not know what to say. I supposed I should have pitied Osgoode rather than sit there with my I-told-you-so smirk of satisfaction on my face. Then Eggy turned his indignation on me, saying: ‘You, sir, have been awfully quiet. No doubt you have something to say on the matter.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I’ve got nothing. I completely misread the man, if you must know.’

  ‘So did I,’ interjected Moonface.

  ‘Yes, we all did,’ added Eleanor, ‘live and learn.’

  It was beginning to dawn on us Traymoreans, we innocents in a corrupt and dangerous world, that we would have to face Osgoode in the hall.

  ‘Carry on as normal,’ said Dubois.

  ‘More wine,’ said Eggy, banging his glass on the table.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ he said to Moonface who was lost in thought; who, in the light of a dreary day, was my muse; and if she had the soul of an accountant, no matter.

  ‘Yes, as normal,’ Eleanor said, ‘and yes, maybe we should have more wine.’

  Moonface went for another bottle.

  ‘In my day,’ said Eggy, and then stopped. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

  ‘In your day,’ said Dubois, ‘and when was that? When they burned witches at the stake?’

  ‘Well yes, in my day, in the town where I grew up, we just sort of worked these things out amongst ourselves. Of course we didn’t have police so much as we had a sheriff. He’d just nip things in the bud. When Sniggers got drunk, the sheriff put him in the slammer to sleep it off so he wouldn’t go around bothering the women. Hell, my sainted mother was a slut, and she’d go around and bother the men, the sheriff included.’

  ‘Sounds positively idyllic,’ drolled Eleanor.

  ‘I guess,’ said Dubois, ‘there’s a line, and the thing is, where is it?’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t play the ologist.’

  Moonface brought the bottle and, wordlessly, she poured. I could see she was apprehensive. At length she spoke: ‘He’s going to know we know and it’ll be creepy.’

  A woman passed by the window of the Blue Danube, her bag stuffed with rolls of bright Christmas ribbon. I numbed myself with the thought that it was already that time of year. I recalled how Jack Swain, back in a seemingly simpler time, used to convene his friends in his apartment on Christmas Day, hand each a towel, measure out generous portions of mulled wine in mugs, and turn the TV on to A Christmas Carol and instruct us to drink and weep. An afternoon of Dickens and Che Guevara. Yes, back when we could still pretend we believed in America. I said, playing the reason card: ‘Obviously the man did something that was not good, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be locked away. You know, they’ll just feed him drugs.’

  ‘Come on,’ snapped Eleanor, ‘you don’t really believe that.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I answered, ‘I don’t. He’s a shining head. But Bob’s right: we carry on as usual. It’s not a medieval village we’re living in. The ologists built this world, so let them play cat and mouse with their lab rat. No doubt they’ll pounce on him when it suits them.’

  Eleanor went out to smoke a cigarette. Eggy fumed, his fingers pinching the stem of his wine glass. If the world was utterly strange to me, imagine what it was for Eggy, this sparrow of a man, one who had come to maturity in a simpler time when the innards of a car were comprehensible and for all that his sainted mother had been a slut. He would have had a lot of fun cracking jokes at Freud’s expense. To do so now would only date him in some hopeless way. Or there was this old saw: you get the president you deserve. Or if one out of every five men and women on the street were ologists of one kind or another, then what did that say for the rest of us? It was one thing to say we have our demons; it was another that we were phenoms, every man jack, woman and child, the world in its entirety a laboratory. What next? That I would come across Osgoode in the hall standing over Moonface, she on her knees praying; he going on about his Christian duty to get rich and she service his sacred hard-on? A morbid thought, to be sure. I disliked myself for thinking it. If there was such a quality as innocence in the world, it was, as the poets had always said, a lovely thing but oh so accessible. I was more certain than ever we were not moral creatures, not even we Traymoreans. Yes, we could make ourselves disappear, according to a certain theory of physics, simply by the way we were poking around in our minds so as to satisfy a so-called thirst for knowledge; ah, the thing observed and measured. There was no metric system for perversity. Eleanor threw her cigarette on the sidewalk, re-entered the Blue Danube and looked out of sorts.

  ‘Come on, Bob,’ she said to Dubois, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  What had she enough of? Panic was settling in me. There was a new edge to her voice, admixture of dread, rage and sheer indifference. It was as if she had wearied of seeing the world through my eyes, but that were I to see it through her eyes, the spectacle would bore me. Here was the nub of culture wars, the good Traymorean days at an end, a blip of unreality all along.

  ‘So soon?’ said Eggy, ‘we were only getting started. Bloody hell.’

  In Kamarouska a kiss and a thought for Algonquins.

  ‘Anyway, what’s with everyone?’ Eggy asked.

  The party was indeed breaking up. I said I would look after Eggy. Eleanor and Dubois departed. Soon after, Melody arrived to take over from Moonface. A few Slavs drifted in.

  ‘Just leave me here,’ said Eggy, ‘I’ll be alright.’

  Moonface and I stole away.

  We walked a little and shivered a little; we stared up at leafless maples in a park, trunks, branches, twigs more and more visible in the evening light of approaching winter. I turned down the collar of Moonface’s coat and kissed her on the cheek. She did not protest.

  ‘How about pizza?’ she said.

  I fiddled now with the rolling of a cigarette, my fingers cold.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘pizza.’

  And as it turned out, we had not much to say. We sat in a place called Pepe’s, listened to grinding and energetic music; and what was it for, to enable our digestive tracts? It was a smothering smell, the smell of baking pizza dough. We watched a young crowd; we ate and drank. Finally, Moonface asked: ‘Do you worry about Eggy? He’s getting so old. He drinks so much. One of his eyes is beginning to droop. He’s shakier and shakier on his feet. I’ve gotten so fond of him even if he’s such a bother at times, and he’s always groping me, and, well, you know.’

  ‘Look, I worry, too. But he is what he is. He’s much too old to change. He’s simply saving us the trouble of a wake. He’s having it now while he can enjoy it and he’s the star attraction. It could be so much worse. He’s the last of those who, with a little luck and a little help, got somewhere, read a few books, had a few thoughts, and certainly had more to say about life than knuckle draggers and ranting evangelists.’

  ‘You make him sound so ordinary.’

  ‘He is ordinary, as much so as are we, shepherds about to lose the farm. Osgoode’s ordinary, too, but who wants that sort of ordinary? Or maybe I’m wrong, and Eggy is not as ordinary as all that. And maybe we aren’t either, given the crowd in here.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s to apologize for? You can’t escape it. Always louts or arty pretenders or money men—what happened to people
just being people?’

  ‘You’re a snob. These people are just people.’

  ‘Of course I’m a snob,’ I said, ‘Self-defence. In any case, you’ll get married and have kids. Or maybe you’ll write poems. Or maybe you’ll teach the classics to those who couldn’t care less. Or all of the above.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Moonface, her cheeks bright from the heat of the restaurant and the effects of the wine.

  For singers heavy is the shade.

  We might have become lovers, she and I, were I much younger and not so soured on things.

  Calhoun Jealous

  After closing time in the Blue Danube, to the light of a candle, Moonface read a letter. She had extricated it from an envelope opened earlier in the day. I may as well not have been there. Her lashes nearly brushed her cheeks as she read. Her lips were parted, I was sorry to note. She held the missive between both hands, elbows tucked in at the sides. It seemed she hardly breathed even as she lived only for the words some lover boy had spirited in her direction. Clearly, these were words that spoke directly to her of intimacies and declarations. Had I not written words that were spoken directly to her? I had failed, I supposed, to effect this transformation of her face. I looked for somewhere to be in the candle-lit wine. Had Dante punished Francesca because she loved not him but Paolo? How awfully tiny—those ears of Moonface, her hair bound in a ponytail. Someone banged on the glass door wanting admission. I waved off a trio of drunken Slavs who looked to get nasty. They lurched across the street to the doughnut shop, one of them grousing at the night sky. He flipped a motorist the finger. I drank some wine. By the time its burn hit my stomach, I had done the entire circuit of jealousy; been to every part of her body and come away at a loss. I attempted banter, saying: ‘That’s some letter you’re reading.’

  She looked at me with loving eyes but the fact of my presence did not register. She helped herself to my wine.

  I distracted myself with Eggy’s mention of No Gun Ri. I assumed that whatever happened there had been awful. I looked around the small café and was lost in a vast expanse of space that bore down on a single point of flame, Moonface pure concentration in its light. I tried another ploy: I was a poet in the receipt of a gift. And the gift was Moonface so thoroughly rapt by a sequence of words. She looked my way again with those love-conquered eyes. It was getting comic now—this situation, I some Cyrano without a chance. She had come to the end of the words and would now need to decompress.