The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  ‘That’s when the trouble really started.’

  I took this as a shot at me.

  ‘It was bad enough with the Lamonts and Osgoode,’ I observed.

  ‘It’s worse. I don’t know what that woman’s game is, but she has a way, you know, of getting under your skin. It’s like she crawls inside, parasite looking for a host.’

  ‘Nicely put.’

  ‘She’s got Eleanor on her hook.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Démoniaque.’

  I believe I got Dubois’s drift.

  ‘So marry her, Bob. Keep the same arrangements, if you must. Credit the woman for some sense. She knows better than to set you against your will.’

  ‘It’s not been my experience of women.’

  ‘I know that when two people have been sleeping together for a long time, and maybe even cohabiting, and they decide to marry, it’s often the end of a good arrangement. But in your case, Bob, I don’t know, but you’ve got your apartment, she has hers, you come and go as you please, just that she knows she’s your port and you’re hers, come the storms.’

  ‘It’s what Eggy says. Make a respectable woman of her. The old-fashioned way.’

  ‘He has a point.’

  Dubois’s hamburger arrived. A friendly, middle-aged waitress imparted a loving look, Dubois so distracted with his troubles that he did not notice. An intense but briefly felt bout of loneliness on my part. Eleanor could very well spirit Dubois away, and then, Moonface off with her Sheridan in Ecuador, I would be left with Eggy and, good God, the Prentiss woman. Perhaps Dubois had partly read my mind: ‘You know about the equator, how toilets behave there?’

  No, I did not know.

  ‘Well,’ said Dubois, taking time now to swallow what was in his mouth, ‘you see, depending on exactly where you are, when you flush the toilet, the water either goes straight down or goes around counter-clockwise, not like here.’

  It was my turn to say it: ‘What has this got to do with anything?’

  ‘We Swear by the Men of Marathon’

  Moonface changed her mind, saying: ‘I don’t think I could bear it. No, really.’

  We stood in a queue, the old hockey arena now a Cineplex.

  ‘Haven’t we seen enough bad epics?’ she said, her voice a slight musical moan.

  She had a point. A film about Alexander the Great—well, what sort of cheap thrill was I chasing?

  ‘What do you propose?’ I asked, my tone avuncular.

  Which is to say I was playing the part of attentive suitor. The chameleon creature at my side, looking pretty for a change, despite her nondescript garb—the denims, the athletic pull-over, its hood framing her tresses and countenance—considered what she might wish to propose, rolling her eyes. It was as if her dimples had each an epiphany: ‘A drink, maybe.’

  Now Moonface did not often propose that we sit somewhere and drink. On the other hand, she often questioned my aesthetic judgment when it came to movies. She never read the books I wished for her to read as she was lazy; as she could argue she had gotten enough of the canon in university. It was bad reasoning on her part, but what could one say? Now and then I glimpsed something wild in her. I envied her Champagne Sheridan his opportunity to get to the bottom of her, if he did, in fact, get to that fabled bottom. And my guess was as follows: that which was wild in her was also tentative and lacked courage and was foolish, to boot. It landed her in situations she regretted. She was spooked, of course, by her propensity to fits, brain seizures and such. She must always be in control, and perhaps, it was why she did not drink much. Her mouth was drawn tight and small; she looked vaguely oriental, as per Madama Butterfly or Lady Kaeda. It gave pause to any erotic burblings as might be irrupting in me. Even so, just then I had an urge to rent a room in some down-at-heel hotel. We would draw the curtains, break open a bottle; and in the dark, our bodies become, as it were, spiritual, we would talk, and just let it flow—this talk, talking of whatever came to mind. ‘Oh, I hated my mother, you know.’ ‘Me, I ran over a kitten in the family driveway once, and the fact of it still shames me.’ Better the grungy room than a raucous bar, the music so intense it separates one from one’s thoughts. I feared that such a bar was what she wanted after all, that, and a bottomless pail of booze.

  A light drizzle fell to the street. Panhandlers were ghostly. Yellow trees were bathed in lamplight that was at once hot and cold. I might kiss the cool and clear complexion of Moonface’s cheek. I did not. I figured I might spring for the taxi fare and we would return to our neighbourhood, have an evening with Eggy and Dubois at the Blue Danube; but then I doubted this would much appeal to her who saw enough of them.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I know. Remember Gareth Howard, my old journalist friend? You know, we visited his grave once, and you said you didn’t like cemeteries … Anyway, we used to drink at a place nearby. The Cloister. Now I don’t much like the clientele, smug lawyers and their smug wives or mistresses, but it’s a fairly quiet place, and we could have a decent conversation. That is, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.’

  We headed for it, the sidewalk an excuse for leaves to fall, indeed, in this our faded Jezebel of a town, one I loved at times when I was not conscious of the fact it seemed to have little use for me. We might have been lovers, she and I, were it not for the difference in our ages. She had on her Marilyn Monroe eyes, the lashes prominent. That her eyes were laughing, were lazy, and were ripe with questions. She was worried for Evie Longoria, she let me know. It would seem that Evie Longoria was deeply unhappy. Well, who was happy? Happiness, like sex, was overrated. Perhaps justice was overrated, too, for all that there was so little of it about. Marjerie Prentiss was a horrid woman, was she not? Well, Eggy was a horrid old buzzard, but at least he liked poetry and the study of history. Beautiful women, of course.

  As I suspected it might (though I had been willing to chance it) The Cloister broke our mood. The usual clientele. One showed off one’s income and, failing that, one’s sophistication gleaned from travel books and best-selling novels. Or one simply sat there in a much humbler sense, letting the content of bottomless martinis slide down one’s throat, not caring in the slightest who knew it. But these older, more disillusioned spectres were dying off, all the comers, pretenders each, replacing them. Mercifully, there were two vacant stools at the end of the bar that would afford us a measure of privacy. The Ojibwa barmaid whom I had not seen in a long while recognized me. She sized us up, me and Moonface, and smiled, and it put Moonface at her ease.

  ‘Well,’ I said to the girl-woman at my side, ‘what will you drink?’

  Ah, a grown-up drink—whiskey. Neat. I would have a glass of red. My but the barmaid was a sight to behold, curiosity and irony and concealed contempt in her eyes; a great deal of intelligence, as it were.

  ‘Do you know her?’ Moonface asked.

  ‘No. I would like to have known her. But like I said, I used to drink here with Gar.’

  ‘So,’ I continued, ‘what’s on your mind? The war in Afghanistan? The demise of journalism? Exotic acts of copulation?’

  ‘Oh, you’re so clever,’ her dimples said.

  It seemed a good fit—Moonface at the bar, leaning her elbow now on the marble, and regarding me with bemused, almond shaped orbs.

  ‘There’s such a lot on my mind,’ she bragged.

  The barmaid brought our drinks. Her look might have been regarded as professionally neutral were it not for the barest sliver of mischief in her eyes.

  ‘But where’s it all going,’ Moonface thought to ask, ‘you, me, life, America, the Electee?’

  Well, there it was in a nutshell, the question of the hour. The barmaid mock-chanted: ‘Round and round she goes, and nobody knows—’

  What a fetching smile she had. And when she turned and walked away, I believed that a certain shimmy to her walk was meant for me.

  ‘You bring out the beast in women,’ Moonface observed.

  ‘Maybe,’ I sai
d, doubting it, as there was every reason to believe Moonface was having fun at my expense.

  On the way back, Moonface got out of the taxi at Sheridan’s.

  ‘Good night,’ she said, in control of things, pursing her lips.

  Other than this, she could not quite disguise the fact that she was drunk. Back in my digs, I heard Dubois and Eggy on the stairs. I heard quite clearly Eggy’s quaver: ‘Sir Eglamore that valiant knight, fa la lanky down dilly, he took up his sword and went forth to fight, fa la lanky down dilly. The rain in Spain. Oh yes. My oxygen level is at 98 per cent, I’ll have you know. Well, it’s what the nurse said.’

  ‘What next?’ Dubois guffawed.

  I heard Eleanor open her door. I could not see her but I could see her entreaty, Dubois summoned. That was what was next for him. As for Moonface, she did not yet know what she believed. She wished to know in what I believed. I supplied her my standard if inadequate answer: art and loose women, love if you could get it, and the good esteem of one’s peers. Hearing me out, she thought me stuck in a time-warp. I answered that if such were the case, it was a time-warp that had stood the test of time for five thousand years, and probably more. But did I not, she asked, believe in God and community and family and doing right? I did not think God required my belief, as my god was the god of Plotinus. But that was so much an eggheaded concept I kept it strictly to myself. Community? We had community—the Traymore, the Blue Danube. We did not need the sanction of society to make ourselves official in this respect. Family? I could not get far enough away from what family remained to me. But that, no, I would not like to see its destruction. And sex—what about sex? Moonface wished to know. My, but it seemed she had troubles there. Our brief gropings in some Toronto dark could hardly pass muster for the sexual act, but even so, it was not that she and I had had troubles as such; it was all between her and her Champagne Sheridans. So then, what exactly was troubling her? It was her own sexuality, as it turned out. Why, had she exotic fancies? Would not that just turn Eggy’s toes, were he to know? But no, no, it was nothing like that. Or that no, she meant she was not into women, but thought she might have a taste for pain. Well, whose pain? Would she be the inflictee or the inflicter? And if she told Sheridan about it, the problem was, he had his own fancies. Such as? None of my business. Anyway, it was not pain as such. Alright then, then what? She did not mean to mislead me in this—she … she … oh damn, she wished now she had not brought it up. Well, you know, confusion was a part of it. I was not going to offer any advice. See a sex therapist, if it came to that, see some dreaded ologist. If it was all about just feeling something, anything; if it was love she was desperate to feel, and I allowed my answer was lame, give it time. If she did not now love Sheridan, she might, later. If she could never love Sheridan, she would love another. Perhaps she was a cold fish, just that I did not think she was a cold fish, and we were all of us confused, just that, being young, her confusions ate up more oxygen. The look in her eyes suggested I had failed to satisfy her questions but that it was the best she had gotten in a while. By then she was fairly tipsy, the hood down, her countenance flushed, her hair radiant. It had gone back and forth like this—the Q&A, the Ojibwa woman with her chiselled but quite appealing features now and then checking in, as it were, as if to test the truth of what was honest and what was bald-faced lie. I thought I had scored a few points in her eyes. I was not likely to see her again. But now, just now, and what an unlikely hour for it, it would seem Eggy stuck his head out the door so as to assail no Traymorean in particular, but to put someone or another in the picture by his thundering: ‘We swear by the men of Marathon.’

  Oh dear. My lids heavy on my eyes as I lay on my couch, James Bond smooching with some lethal creature on TV, I attempted to divine Eggy’s meaning. And, in fact, I knew it, without equivocation, without a doubt of any kind, and he would, that 902-year-old bugger, address a sad world that thought it remembered what was once true and necessary but had, in actuality, quite forgotten.

  The Garden Path

  I could have done without the turgid heavy-metal grind emanating from Moonface’s apartment, the furor which helped crown the pursuit of mindlessness as a cultural and political boon, however much it had cause to disdain the liberal hypocrisies. No wonder the girl-woman was divided against herself. Perhaps she quarrelled with her Sheridan in the night, and it drove her to come seek her own bed. I stood at the window at the end of the hall. Rain pounded on a dead bird. Leaves fell in their singularities, and each seemed a sentient being. President Elect, or rather, the fact he had been elected in the first place, seemed a less marvellous event that it had been a few days before when people could not believe their eyes and ears, breathing now for the first time in years. What would he do to prove himself serious? And if serious, what would he be permitted to do by those whose main aim in life was keeping the money machine primed? The steps ascending the Traymore stairs were Evie Longoria’s. She greeted me while pointing at Eggy’s door, her explanation for being on the premises.

  ‘Be careful he doesn’t take your head off,’ I warned, ‘I think he had quite the night, last night.’

  ‘Oh, I’m used to it,’ she said, brightly enough.

  ‘And is Emma in?’ she asked, referring to Moonface by her proper name.

  ‘I guess,’ I said, ‘she’s got that godawful music blasting away.’

  Evie Longoria understood.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’ll be taking His Nibs to Walmart. He said he needed a new shirt and underwear.’

  ‘I hope he’s paying you enough to make it worth your while,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he is,’ she answered, just a hint of dubiety in her voice.

  She had the air of a woman who likes to sound firm and quite decided about things. I liked the looks of her. The light, all rain-gloom, seemed to divide and flow around me, reaching her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, waiting to see if I had anything else to say.

  I had nothing to say, really, except this: ‘Emma will probably try to tell you that I took her out last night and attempted to seduce her. It’s only partly true.’

  Evie Longoria was unsure as to whether I was jesting.

  ‘And Eggy’s oxygen level,’ I continued, ‘is at 98 per cent.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘robust health.’

  ‘We are incurables, we Traymoreans,’ I said, ‘and some day, maybe, I’ll tell you why.’

  ‘Incurables,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, incurables.’

  ‘Like in people who had leprosy.’

  ‘Yes, sort of. Like that.’

  ‘It seems rather rum.’

  I liked her for her use of the word rum.

  ‘But anyway, I’m on my way out,’ I said.

  Truth to tell, I had nowhere to be. For all that, in the course of a morning, I managed to raise a coffee shop, a cemetery and a sports bar, not necessarily in that order. But among the headstones of a riverside graveyard, the sky squalling rain, I made my hello to Gareth Howard and heard nothing back. I rolled a cigarette and smoked it, cutting a figure of a kind in my solitude there, advised as to the limits of reason, suspicious of abrupt mood swings, leery of emotion and yet, all the world was a stage, even as death was foreground and backdrop. ‘What about the election? I asked, and surely Gar must respond, he not one to have let history in the making go unremarked. Tyrants and their eventual demises came and went, but not black American presidents. And Gar’s silence did not surprise me; he was, at times, a surly bastard. What did surprise was the wreath on his marker. And because it could not have been Clare Howard’s, as she, too, was buried, but buried elsewhere, I could not imagine whose gesture it might have been, Gar a dear but far from endearing man who, it was suspected, had had mistresses, a consequence of his travels. No, Gar had seen too much of America and what it had done in the world to believe, of a sudden, that the elevation of a black man to the presidency was redemption for Iraq. Or so I interpreted the resounding quiet, one punctuated by the splatte
ring of rain on stone and the brooding calls of crows. And if Gar had viewed nature with suspicion, I wondered if now his bones were making peace with it, the effort consuming all his consciousness and his speech. Clare, or so I attempted to convince myself, had been the love of my life, she tall, beautiful, elegant, well-educated, deeply read, and as loyal to her husband as circumstances permitted. To characterize her as noble went against the tide, but there it was, and if an instant of passion, if one could deem it as such, had transpired between us, we quickly retreated from the possibilities, her mistrust of my lack of ambition fatal to one such as me. One might say her attitude to me was one of cheerful condescension, though when she laid my hand on her breast, her state of mind was not one of cheer; rather it was a turbulent state: contending measures of disgust and sorrow. She tolerated the fact I was Gar’s drinking buddy, so to speak, and his sounding board, for literary matters had been much on his mind as well as politics, and he was a frustrated novelist. Never had I more wished to make love to a woman as when we stood there, one afternoon, ceremoniously before the dignity of a casket, she genuinely devastated. Perhaps it was not possible to discern the fine line between betrayal and simple loneliness, but despite the sometimes troubled marriage, lack of love had not been an issue for her and Gar. In any case I began to shiver. The idyllic site—riverside patch of grass and stone and birch—now seemed a horror. It was not difficult to tear myself from the spot, though I was roundly defeated in my attempt to commune and hear the dead speak. That I brought my hand to the bill of my baseball cap dripping with rain in a salute was almost farce, and how his bones must have snickered at the spectacle. I bused it back, and downtown, and in a coffeeshop, the music, as usual, overloud, I committed a few words to a notebook; and though I subscribed to the notion that history is a continuity, I would have agreed that one, at times, could be hard put to discern what connected X to Y and Y to Z and so forth and so on. Grief, of course. Regret. That I had not managed to commit to a woman was, no doubt, cowardice on my part. We all of us had our sweet spots, that portion of our souls which the world could always find and strike, reminding us of our absolute aloneness. And then, I exchanged the students and the music for a sports bar and drink. A bank of TVs. College football. A pre-game show in which, by way of video cam, it was seen how it was a coach was whipping his charges into a spiritualized, competitive froth; and it was as if, given the history that had just been made, their time was running out, so go out on that field and take no prisoners, show America what real Americans are made of. And they were not the legions but the barbarians of a deep and impenetrable forest, rich in deities and barbecues. Yes, and it was an excuse to reach deep into my shot of whiskey for the consolations of skepticism. Athletes? How about brutes? It was no mystery to me why Jakes, my old history teacher, had blown his brains out. My second whiskey was landing me in waters too rough to properly navigate with my little craft of self. But that I slapped the counter’s surface with an imperious hand and called for a third from a weary-eyed barmaid suggested that I was claiming for myself an abiding clarity about things. I could see the merits of all arguments.