The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  The voice was Eleanor’s, she at her door. Heard Dubois being scooped up. Heard Eggy potter about with his cane. He was, no doubt, pouring himself a nightcap, settling into his armchair, the TV on; and he would soon commence to curse the fare.

  ‘Effing hell. More fundraising. No news? Does anyone care? What if they dropped the effing bomb?’

  Eggy thundered. I went out. Rain and wind. Even so, I had not far to go. Perhaps once or twice I had been to the bar in question; Eggy, so he said, used to go on a fairly regular basis, so much so a woman had photographed him there, and from the photo painted his portrait. This portrait now had pride of place in a downtown gallery. The homuncular little bastard. A bevy of cigarette smokers hanging about the entrance despite the rain and wind. I pushed through them, and inside, Celtic music was pitched at excruciating decibels. I saw at a glance that there was no Moonface. I squeezed between two young ladies standing at the bar. They were aspiring to the dramatic arts, by the sounds of it, their looks and appearance and patter utterly conventional, vaguely street edgy. As Moonface was not about, I may as well have been absent myself, a stranger unremarked by strangers, bored out of my skull, drinking too quickly a glass of wine that would not go down well. What did I think I would achieve?

  ‘Moonface, sweetheart,’ I might have said, ‘inebriation is lovely, I grant you that, but mindlessness is not the point of the exercise.’

  ‘Oh Randall,’ I might have heard, ‘you’re so effing avuncular. What’s real is not being real. Don’t you get it? Being real hurts people.’

  And her golden brown eyes, on occasion rich and inviting and seemingly paradisal, might have carried her talking-point, she puffing out her modest bosom, her hands on her hips, nails flashing. She might have been what was the going rate in the bar, her Champagne Sheridan a toy, Virgil the poet but a neurotic queer, no more than a press agent, spokesperson for empire, interpreter of the imperial whim. Emma pretty. Emma pretty. She was ready for the next wave to ride, one that just might silence, forever, all distinctions between truth and falsehood, she a dear girl and the nicest person in the world.

  Aviator Glasses

  Wind roars. Rain spits. Babies are getting born. Wall Street is set to panic. Hooded figures flit from pillar to post in pumps and wingtips and Rockports. My teenaged life was football practice, Holsts’s ‘The Planets’; gin, fried eggs and bacon; friends slated to die in ‘Nam, Johnny Unitas; the odd poet or two as swacked as Li Po drunk on the moon (this before I knew Lucan was a crank and J Caesar was a supper club comedian). My late teenaged life had very little to do with courtly love; but I do, of a sudden, recall seducing a girl who sold encyclopedias door to door, or perhaps she seduced me, she who paid me the tribute of her lust, from A to Z. Such recollections lie buried at the bottom of an ocean of memory. Girls randier than the Lydia Pinkhams of the hippy communes did it for self-respect.

  Cassandra admitted me early, Elias grunting. He had the look of a man who wished to make amends with some collective or other, but must first fire up the grill and put on the soup. Cassandra poured me a cup of coffee, serving it with a ravishing smile. She certainly was a sphinx. Perhaps her thoughts were really quite simple thoughts. Does my husband love me? Should I let my daughters wear lipstick? How much do we owe the bank? If there is a God, why is He so fickle with Greeks? I noticed her ears. There in the morning light of the Blue Danube, they struck me as miracles. Her hair swept over them, erotic burblings sweeping through me, one could see they were neither too large nor too small nor too thick; as ears go, they were perfection of a kind. A pleasing roundness of shape suggesting liveliness and mischief. I did not know why a man might become utterly fond of a woman with whom he could not expect anything remotely resembling intimacy, whose thoughts he would never divine; who was not, perhaps, as beautiful or as intelligent as other women of his acquaintance, but who was, nonetheless, in her own right, compelling. With her he might exchange an unspoken confidence—on a bus, for instance, the reasons for it forever unknowable, or to be left for another lifetime. I could not let her distract me; I had jottings to make, even if I had sworn off jottings; and yet she seemed to find my theatrical display of earnest endeavour amusing. She was not entirely indisposed to an egghead like me. More than likely, she had no desire to know the extent of the world’s parlous state; she had a household and a restaurant, troubles enough, and the French lessons for which she had signed up were on hold—insufficient quorum, and she was homesick for the Mediterranean sun. I worried for her happiness.

  At the stroke of noon, a dangerous trio entered the café. Dubois, Eggy, Evie Longoria, she wearing aviator glasses.

  ‘Beers all around,’ thundered Eggy, stutter-stepping with his cane, his afterburners still firing.

  ‘Why, we’re planning an excursion,’ he continued, ‘I always wanted to visit that pub in North Hatley again.’

  Dubois guffawed. Three desperadoes commandeered my table, Evie apologizing for her lack of make-up.

  ‘Hence, the glasses,’ she explained, ‘don’t want to frighten anybody—’

  ‘But you don’t need them,’ Dubois interjected.

  And Evie Longoria blushed, and was appealing as she did so.

  ‘Care to come?’ Eggy asked me.

  ‘Will there be room?’ Dubois put it to us. ‘We’ll have to hire a bus,’ he added, ‘if Moonface comes and Eleanor, too.’

  ‘Of course, there’ll be room,’ Eggy thundered once more, ‘there’s always room for knights of the table. I think we ought to become terrorists, seeing as no one is going to hang the bastards.’

  Once more, Dubois guffawed and Evie blushed, the temples of her forehead, however, pale.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

  ‘What’s to think about?’ Eggy said, severely.

  And I supposed it was to be another birthday bash, Eggy’s second or third, already, of the year. At the rate he was going, he was going to be as old as Adam was old when he died, three times over. Even so, Eggy was having too much fun to die. Now Antonio, come on shift, approached us, warily.

  ‘Beer,’ thundered Eggy, ‘effing hell. Damn peasants. Have to repeat everything.’

  But Evie was not having any beer, and I was having wine, and Antonio’s feelings were not at all hurt. He slid his arm around Eggy’s tiny shoulder and kissed the old pate.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Eggy spluttered and blushed, if blushing were possible in a man of his age.

  Evie, picking up on some earlier conversation thread, now said: ‘Clark Gable. He’s my hunk.’

  ‘Really?’ This was Dubois, incredulous.

  ‘Of course,’ said Evie, ‘and he never got over his wife dying in that crash, who was she?’

  ‘Carole Lombard?’ I suggested.

  ‘And he never claimed he could act,’ Evie went on, ‘he was just himself.’

  Evie Longoria adored The Misfits; it was one of her most favourite movies.

  ‘Oh,’ said Eggy, ‘I should think Errol Flynn’s more the man.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Evie protested, ‘not at all. Except that my mother used to tell me, because I think she had a thing for him, she’d say, “Never say in like Flynn to me.”’

  Dubois guffawed. He had a good working knowledge of Anglicisms.

  ‘I ride an old paint and I lead an old Dan, goin’ to Montana to throw the houilhan,’ said Eggy.

  ‘Feed ‘em in the coulees and water in the draw … oh, I forget the rest,’ softly sang Evie, swaying side to side.

  Dubois guffawed. Eggy, raising his finger, completed the stanza: ‘Their tails are all matted and their backs are all raw.’

  ‘Good God,’ I said, ‘folkies.’

  ‘Terrorists,’ thundered Eggy, ‘effing hell.’

  Original Sin

  There are moments which occur in life that, if successfully negotiated, vouchsafe a future free of doubt. And one’s gentleman’s agreement with God—He keeps to His neck of the woods and one will refrain from impugning His office—will most likely
remain intact. And, perhaps more importantly, one will not second-guess the operations of love. Such a moment arrived for me in the summer between my 4th and 5th grades of elementary school. Missouri. And when my mother described thunder as God moving furniture, though I appreciated the poetic element in her image-making, I knew it for a falsehood. Even so, I did not snicker or in any way fail to respect the point of view. Which made it all the more hard on me when, on a certain Sunday afternoon, no black clouds anywhere in the sky, a church picnic in the offing, I expected to be among the faithful for the softball and the food. Mother had other ideas. She got it into her head that she would much rather spend the afternoon sunning herself at some lake; that we did not need a church in order to have fun; that, as a family unit, we ought to be self-sufficient in the matter of fun. Father sided with her, if only to keep the peace. It was, in fact, the oddest behaviour on his wife’s part; she had no quarrel with the church; she had entirely conventional views on religion, politics, and the mechanisms of society; she was all for keeping up appearances. And yet here she was about to risk a future and interrogative visit from the local pastor, all for the sake of showcasing a scanty two-piece bit of beachwear at some mountain spa. Even my father, and in spite of the fact that his work provided him with scope to live in the shadows, beyond the banal reaches of religion, politics, society, not to mention questions of law, was shocked.

  In any case, I felt myself betrayed. I did not take the betrayal well, and worse, I discovered in myself a capacity for willful and obnoxious argument, for the vanities and specious pleasures of argument, father rolling his eyes as he drove the car, mother’s temper red-hot. This also was a development as new as the swimsuit would eventually prove to be. It could have been any moment at any point in my life in which my trust in the orderly procession of days and the satisfaction of my desires was to be challenged and essentially crushed; all the Big Questions rendered moot, as suddenly one lacked the leisure, could not count on the old saw that all would be revealed in the fullness of time. But it was not any moment; it was that particular moment at that particular juncture in my life when I was perhaps most vulnerable to a soul-jarring surprise. My mind was, assuredly, a pretty primitive enterprise, all ego, urge, and surly instinct; even so, it was then, just then, that the true lay of the land was revealed: life a caprice, there was no justice, middle-class comforts notwithstanding. It was an epiphany which, if kept before one’s gaze 24/7, would drive one mad. So that, as I grew older, I was not always mindful of the lesson that had been served me such as would, at other moments, in other guises, catch me up short of rope and wherewithal. And I could almost believe, given all the evil and wrongdoing so apparent in the world, that no one was to blame for it; it was part of the very substance of life itself, Original Sin nothing more than the recognition of the tenuous nature of human relations. As for the banking crisis now unfolding on Wall Street, Zeus-like Eggy took the Olympian view: there was only Moonface. Yes, the old bugger knew he was a hopeless old fool in this regard, his self-directed laughter a kind of tight-lipped chuckle.

  ‘Yes but,’ Eggy said, ‘I don’t know that going to Ecuador is such a hot idea. It’s not as if she’ll be cycling through the Lowlands, beer and cheese available every 10 kilometres of the way. Her epilepsy, you know. I tell her, you know, to get clearance from the doctors. She won’t listen. She thinks she knows everything. Well, I guess that’s what being young is all about. The rain in Spain. Always.’

  The evening turning nippy, he stubbornly bore up on the Blue Danube terrasse with his pint and his tough, old eyes. Darkness was settling on an old woman and her dachshund, those two loopy integers of an almost endearing farce. Clearly, she believed she and the mutt shared a wave-length. I had hoped Dubois would be around so that I might gainsay his faith in the system and score cheap debating points.

  ‘Oh, he’s probably skulking about somewhere,’ said Eggy, ‘you know him. One minute he’s all agitprop for justice and fair play and the next he’s financing a bridge or a shopping mall.’

  If I had taken Moonface to Rome, sat her down on the terrasse of a Janiculum bar beneath a pergola of vines, talked poetry and history, plied her with a deadly white wine, rendered her boffable, I would not have ventured to compromise her virtue. Drawing on the example of Plotinus or some Average Joe early Christian, of Rome’s infinite capacity to contradict her eternal reputation, I would have let Rome come to each of Moonface’s six senses and carry out the buggering of her soul. Otherwise, I would happily destroy the polite constructs as have already ruined the Moonface mind.

  Marjerie Prentiss was beyond the pale, and proud of it. She was in her person the sole repository of value as she saw it. And we, we rubes and marks of either gender, had not the wit to credit her with the fact. Nuke the Arabs. Rip up the safety nets. The market rules. And that a feminista without slaves is only whistling Dixie in a sterile academe, pissing on the possibilities. She forced me to give way on the Traymore stairs, no doting mother she, diabolical regina caeli, her retinue in tow, Hansel and Hansel brandishing amulets and snakes and golden penises. She was almost a revelation, and I could almost take her seriously and get behind her—in a political sense.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘esteemed crew.’

  I was answered with blank stares. Obviously, they considered my remark less than civil. I was headed for the post office, the envelope addressed: Jack Swain, Palermo, Poste Restante. I was sending him, for his amusement, my impromptu review of the latest work of Fidelio Snorris the poet, one of dismaying longevity. Jack, though he was dead, though he was probably in Hades knocking back some vodka and sucking on a tangerine, could draw his own conclusions. And what do you know, and speaking of other devils, I ran into Moonface doing the chicken shuffle on her way to work.

  ‘I’ll see you at the café,’ I said.

  She smiled, much preoccupied. I simply kept going. And back at the Blue Danube, Dubois was holding forth: ‘The value,’ he said, ‘of the asset is this, mark my words, it’s the price paid for it.’

  ‘Yes but,’ said Eggy.

  True love, too, was an exchange, but that what was exchanged was the rueful acknowledgement of one’s absurdity. Eggy’s sneeze was a Zeus-like furor.

  ‘Yes but,’ he repeated, attempting to block his nostrils with his forefinger.

  A bright, late afternoon, the maples reddening, looking somewhat glazed. A bus now delivered Blind Musician to the bus stop, his disembarking theatrical. He was not packing a violin. Had he failed to honour his union dues? His blind man’s stick was most definitely dispirited, so many Philistines about, five of his six senses reporting back on that score. I never much liked the man, but just then he had my sympathy. For he had the look of a man who would be the last man on earth to learn of his own absurdity. Dubois continued: ‘And the strongest currency—well, are you listening?—look, I won’t say it again, the strongest currency is that one which has the longest nose ahead in terms of stability, thus—’

  Another Eggy sneeze. A terrible violence done to his frame.

  ‘Effing hell,’ said Eggy recovering, ‘and why, well, you know, even if you don’t credit me for it, I generally make sense, but you, why it’s you who never listens.’

  And what was my excuse? I had none. And what was up with Moonface? For by now, she had brought me wine and seemed out of countenance.

  ‘But it was the grey parts of the TVs,’ said Eggy, ‘that assaulted my young adulthood. Even so, we still had a moral absolute or two.’

  ‘No wonder,’ said Dubois.

  ‘No wonder what?’ Eggy thundered.

  ‘That you’re so off base about things.’

  ‘Well, I remember the missile crisis.’

  ‘Yes, so?’ Dubois smirked.

  ‘I was scared.’

  Eggy’s tone was sheepish.

  ‘Moonface,’ I said, ‘why the long face with her?’

  ‘Oh, tarnation and bother,’ Eggy began to explain, ‘it’s someone she knows. Suicide. Moonface wonder
s if it’s any kind of answer.’

  What, was Moonface beginning to get moral?

  ‘The traditional banks, however—’

  It was Dubois, in full professorial mode.

  ‘Damnation,’ said Eggy, ‘here we go.’

  ‘The traditional banks, they’re obliged to play less fast and loose with our money. We lend them money. They, in fact, borrow from us. Most people don’t get it.’

  Moonface stood before us, hands on hips. I looked up at her without looking into her eyes, lest I behold more vacuity than I wished to see.

  ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ she said, ‘really sad.’

  I supposed it was. I supposed she had me convinced. She walked away, Dubois being rather ho-hum in respect to her pronouncement.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Eggy, ‘thank God for Churchill.’

  ‘Algiers was the opening bell,’ I said.

  ‘Vietnam was unnecessary,’ Eggy countered.

  And then, what was essential and truly of the moment, impossible not to have them—there in each their person, Miss Meow and girlfriend—filed past our table, each abreast of the other, the coats they wore blazing. Fire engine red. It seemed they had added to their repertoire, no miaowing this time around. Instead, the senior partner uttered: ‘Yummo.’

  The other chorused, ‘Mmmm.’

  They went giggling inside the café where Moonface greeted them as long lost friends. From the looks of it, it had something to do with solidarity among women, three male gasbags lording it over the terrasse.