The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  ‘Randall,’ she said, ‘we have to talk.’

  Well, I was enqueued.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘bugger this.’

  It was going to require a bit of a hike, away from the Traymore and the Blue Danube, as she wished for us some privacy. I balked at this and was overruled. And so, in a boulangerie smelling of warm pastries and country bread, just down from the little park that looked depressive under the pall of sodden snowflakes, Eleanor unloaded: ‘I was over there, you know, there, at Marjerie’s.’

  Her cheeks were flushed, grey-green eyes animated. A knitted cap was pulled down on her gilded curls; she was very appealing.

  ‘Well, we were just talking, kicking the can around, Marjerie saying this and that, nothing of any great import. Ralph heard her out, as stoic as ever, Phillip pacing the floor with his cigarette and beer. Then Marjerie started going on about what men find attractive in women, and I thought it so much bollocks, and just then, and I think he jumped in without thinking, Phillip said he liked women he could put his arms around. Maybe he was saying he liked his women large, I don’t know. Anyway, and I don’t think he’d meant to imply any criticism of her, but Marjerie took it wrong. She gives me this look. Well, I’m not exactly large but I guess I’m larger than her, more, how shall I say it, oh effing hell, I’ve got more meat on the bones. She gives Phillip this look. Could’ve been the light in the room playing tricks with her eyes. It was something, at any rate, and Randall, here’s the upshot, I could’ve sworn that if looks could kill, Phillip was a dead man. I got shivers. You know. That feeling I get, sometimes. How did I know Lamont was dead when he was? Fast Eddy, too?’

  ‘I hate that feeling,’ she added.

  It was then she took my hand and held it a while, her eyes asking me whether or not she was crazy.

  ‘Yes, you’re crazy,’ I said.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Marjerie’s a prima donna, a Lamia, too, but—’

  Eleanor shushed me.

  ‘Actually, you know, I don’t want to hear about it. Here, let me pay for this.’

  The interview was over. We parted ways at the bank; I still was in need of some cash, and I planned to dine at the Blue Danube, Moonface scheduled to be on shift.

  Lucan against Alexander

  Most of the time, Moonface patrolled her realm with an eagle eye. If Miss Meow wanted her water topped up, she got water. If the Whistler thought his coffee not hot enough, he was served another, no matter that his thank you patronized her. If Mr and Mrs Civic Smile wished to compliment their meal for its Greekness, Moonface was sure to pass on the commendation to the galley, even if she could not quite refrain from rolling her eyes. Dubois, at table, sharpened the crease that he had already applied to his Globe and Mail copy. I opened a book I happened to be reading at random. Here was Lucan fomenting against Alexander the Great and adventurism. Here was Eggy the Great, braving the elements, making his grand entrance into the café, he thundering:

  ‘A glass, damn it, and I don’t care who knows it.’

  His cane was lethally brandished upright. He was a hulking sparrow of a man in his winter coat, his bolshie cap suggesting that history was just around the corner, mind yourself. A dear girl went to get wine glasses.

  ‘And I suppose,’ Eggy continued, addressing me now, ‘you’ve got your usual quota of doom and gloom to report.’

  ‘Three bags full.’

  In truth, I did have as much: the economy, Iran, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, posse comitatus, smarmy bookstores, and the fact that, fewer worthwhile books being sold, fewer worthwhile books were being read.

  ‘Oh,’ said Moonface, returning with glasses, ‘here’s Evie.’

  Moonface waved at Evie Longoria just coming through the door. And she, the collar of her pea coat high, warily approached the take-out counter. She acknowledged the presence of male Traymoreans with a distant smile.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said in Moonface’s direction, ‘that I might have a pizza for taking out.’

  And now she asked Eggy: ‘Do you want me to come around, tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to give the place the once over, I suppose, but it means I’ll have to clear off.’

  Eggy was chuffed.

  ‘You can give me a once over,’ Dubois said, attempting a joke.

  Evie avoided my gaze. Her hair was drawn back tightly from her forehead and temples, her brow revealed as expansive. She had the air of a woman suffering a migraine.

  ‘I don’t have to come tomorrow,’ she said, now unsure of herself.

  ‘Effing hell, don’t come, just sit with us.’

  Dubois gestured at the wine. She was tempted.

  ‘Uh oh,’ I said to her in my thoughts. ‘Have a care.’

  She caved.

  ‘That’s better,’ Eggy observed.

  Dubois signalled Moonface to bring yet another glass. S’il vous plait. And Evie Longoria got quite drunk, and soon enough, tears were moistening her cheeks. Convivial people at a convivial table did not notice or were kind enough to pretend not to notice. I lost track of which man had done her the worst, though Evie liked men, loved them to pieces, and why did everything always have to get so hellish, anyway? Moonface had no opinion, she overhearing one of these outbursts as she replenished our glasses with more wine. She rolled her eyes up and to the side—characteristic gesture; she had troubles of her own. Well, was Ptolemy Soter one of them, or so I wanted to know, misfiring on a point of levity? I could not deny I was interested in Evie, though something about her caused me to hang back. Were I to respond to her depictions of her relations with men, I would fall through space, and fall forever. Either I was a coward or I was eminently sensible not to respond. She was a movie buff.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘The Philadelphia Story. Love that movie.’

  ‘How can you not love Jimmy Stewart?’ I said, relaxing my grip on my tongue.

  ‘I know. He’s so sweet.’

  She was smiling, the tears on her cheeks very nearly naked things. Dubois and Eggy went silent, eavesdropping.

  ‘I know,’ Evie repeated.

  I wondered if I could believe her. But did it matter or ought it to matter, she a woman who, perhaps, had not failed to love? It was just that she had had bad luck. And once again I noted she was tall, but not that tall, large-boned, her teeth small, even, sharp. She was a devotee of the arts and cowboys—her singular charm. I was beginning to believe she was a great deal more intelligent than she was willing to let on. I was also beginning to believe she was not especially able to defend herself against the machinations of certain people, be they husbands, lovers, or just anyone. So then, why? Despite the meal I had been eating—some spinach concoction, the wine was getting to me. I would, with a verbal backhand, sweep away all the nonsense that lurked in the woman’s complaints, and it would be a violent act, and I would regret the act, even if I could not but believe she was inviting it.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ I said, rising from my chair.

  ‘What’s with you?’ Eggy thundered.

  ‘Effing hell, man, sometimes I think you’re afraid of a little fun.’

  ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ I lied.

  Dubois, knowing it for a lie, guffawed.

  ‘Since when?’ he said.

  A giggling Moonface was at my door.

  ‘Mithradates,’ she said, by way of a salutation, invoking the name of an old enemy of Rome.

  She was accompanied, Evie Longoria embarrassed and somewhat pale. The other woman I recognized from the neighbourhood, she quite the looker. They commandeered my couch, these three wise ladies come a great distance.

  ‘To what,’ I burbled, ‘do I owe the pleasure?’

  I switched off the TV which was broadcasting images for BBC of calamity in Mumbai.

  ‘Well,’ said Moonface, ‘Gregory closed up. Slow night. But Bob and Eggy are still down there, being admitted into the brotherhood. Greeks and Albanians. Eggy’s horrified. Gloria here, this is Gloria … Gloria, meet Rand
all … he’s cool … Gloria came in just after you left, but Gregory wasn’t going to serve any more food. So here we are.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to feed you with.’

  ‘Do you have a phone?’ Gloria put it to me.

  A measured tone. Plush chestnut-coloured hair. Fatal. The heavily made-up eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Moonface said. ‘We can order out from my place. Anyway, we just popped by to say hello. Now we’ve said hello.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said, ‘what’s the story here?’

  ‘The blues bar,’ Moonface explained.

  Well, that explained something, at any rate. If Clare Howard, wife to my oldest friend dead in his grave, had borne some resemblance to Sally McCabe the lovely beauty queen of a year in my youth, Gloria was an even more striking resemblance. And yet, I could see at a glance that she was stuck on herself, which Sally had never been though she would have had her excuses. A cold amiability. Or perhaps she was just awkward in the company of a stranger.

  ‘Gloria Jarnette,’ she said, holding out her hand for me to shake. Awkward? Her voice was assertive and usually got what it wanted.

  I shook the hand. It was neither the hand of the idle rich nor the hand of a peasant.

  ‘She sculpts,’ Moonface boasted, ‘and she’s awfully good.’

  ‘Well then,’ I said.

  The sculptor gave me a look; apparently, I was free to challenge this news at any time. Evie, meanwhile, looked to be ill, and what could I do to alleviate her discomfort? She had obviously had too much to drink.

  ‘Tea,’ she managed to say, with the ghost of a smile.

  But I did not have any tea in my stores.

  ‘I have some,’ Moonface announced, ‘it’s herbal. Is that alright?’

  And it was alright. Evie indisposed, Moonface gone to her apartment for the tea, I was left to make conversation with the Jarnette woman.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘I take it you like blues.’

  ‘I just go to pick up men,’ she said, without a trace of irony.

  Boffo the Clown in me was beginning to get restive.

  ‘And you?’ she asked.

  ‘It seems I’m retired from the fray—’

  Moonface, the dear girl, was back with the tea.

  ‘I would’ve put the water on,’ I explained, ‘but I was distracted.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Moonface responded, rolling her eyes.

  And now, Evie really was ill.

  ‘Going to be sick,’ she proclaimed.

  Perhaps it was the whiskey that brought Jarnette to my bed. It was certainly wine that did in Evie; she would pass the night in Moonface’s digs, the world spinning hideously for her. At a certain evil hour, one heard Dubois and Eggy on the Traymore stairs, Eggy singing: ‘Bongo, bongo, bongo, don’t want to leave the Congo—’

  and Dubois saying: ‘That’s not nice,’ and Eggy saying: ‘Yes but, there’s a divinity that shapes our ends.’

  ‘Just get those pins moving.’

  ‘The rain in Spain. Hoo hoo.’

  I, too, had too much to drink; even so, I asked Jarnette if she had ever experienced a premonition.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I am.’

  She was, just then, beginning to remove her clothes in the dark bedroom. She was shaking out her hair; she seemed very business-like.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said.

  She could not, in fact, recollect having had such an experience. But wait, yes, there was this: she knew a doctor, had been his mistress, actually, and once, at a party he remarked to her of some stranger in the room that he knew would be dead in three days. Well. Bang on. Internalized clues on the doctor’s part probably explained the accuracy of the forecast. I supposed it was so. I was warming toward her. It seemed she might be the equal of anything life might throw at her.

  ‘You’re an odd character,’ she said, and for the briefest of moments, she looked for a reason to like me and found none.

  Even so, she alighted on my bed. And a vision of allure rose on her knees, Jarnette attending to herself, her head thrown back. I attempted to kiss her, but she pushed me down, the look she gave me pleased, mischievous, spiteful, utterly innocent. No, it was she who was decidedly the odd character. And in the morning, I watched her dress with the air of man who was not likely to behold such a vision ever again; watched her pull on wool socks and lace up her hiking boots, her fingers sure and expert even if, truth to tell, they were only dealing with footwear and not sculpting deathless items of clay.

  ‘Well,’ she said, leaning back now on the couch, looking around at a room to which she was not likely to return.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said.

  There was nothing to say.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, in any case, draping a scarf around her neck, her eyes some tawny colour.

  I nodded. She made for the door. And I figured that if she stopped to look back at me, it would mean … I had no idea what it might mean. She did look around and immediately regretted doing so.

  ‘Well,’ she said once more, the drama of her exit spoiled.

  We humans were but shabby creatures. She was angry now; I wished her gone. Later, from Moonface, I learned that Evie, despite her condition, had simply walked home, thinking the air would do her good, she very much distraught and tearful and above all, embarrassed.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I commented, Moonface drinking of the tea she had brought over the night before.

  ‘And you?’ asked Moonface, her voice a slightly musical moan, a rising question.

  ‘And me,’ I answered, ‘well, I’m not sure what happened, if anything. I think I was blindsided.’

  It was clear that Moonface got my drift.

  ‘Was it pleasant?’

  ‘Let’s say it wasn’t unpleasant.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Why should I be jealous?’

  ‘Don’t know. Just wondering.’

  The dear girl never seemed to think the worst of anyone.

  ‘And Evie?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll remember much about last night.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t. What was up with her?’

  ‘Can’t say. We’re friends, but I don’t know her that well.’

  Moonface’s tone was matter of fact, and she was beginning to lose interest in our conversation.

  ‘And you,’ I said, ‘have you ever experienced a moment of premonition?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her countenance brightening to the question, ‘but I’m having one now.’

  ‘Having what now?’

  ‘That Eggy is going to knock on your door.’

  Well, sure enough … And it was Eggy. It was some homunculus in a state: why, effing hell, why hadn’t he been invited to this little shindig?

  And before he could settle down, before he could feast his good morning eyes on Moonface his complementary function, I said to her that I worried Evie was suffering.

  ‘Oh Randall,’ said Moonface, ‘avuncular.’

  ‘Evie? What’s this about Evie?’ Zeus-like Eggy demanded to know.

  §

  Book V—A Ward of the Traymore

  Caprice and Beguine III

  —It is the anniversary of a fatal bullet, how one such projectile rocked JFK’s head back; and Jackie, in her famous suit, crawled across the limousine for the rapidly disappearing promise. Judge as you will the thousand days of roses and fizz and elegant chatelaines. Yes, and once more, expectations rise, like a wave that would grasp at beams of light as it rolls across the stench of a sea. Or, like I saw it, last night, leafless maples parade so starkly, so therely in the winter dusk, the sky blue-black, but glossy as a football helmet. Once again, Cassandra, wife to Elias who would be a philosopher-prince and a restaurateur, has admitted me early. I assail my notebook, pound to the thickness of onion skin the unwanted and unlooked for and long twitted grief for a dead president. Drum rolls. Echoing hooves. Janus-faced tears. No warlord, no
monarch, no Caesar, no head of state was ever put to rest with such agonized solemnity. ‘It’s Sunday. Sunday all day,’ Cassandra points out. It is our little joke, the jest of which helps her acclimatize to a phantasmagoria.

  Caprice and Beguine IV

  —I stand on the Blue Danube terrasse, having a puff. Morning commute. Sparrows shiver in a hedge, plaintively twittering in below zero sunshine. That Eggy has been spewing verse-oddments of Baudelaire. (For example: Voici le soir charmant …) That Dubois revealed to me he was once president of the Chamber of Commerce in the good city of Sherbrooke, some 150 km east of Montreal the fair. That Eleanor R has loved and lost. Or rather she has lusted and been burned, her wings carbonized. That Moonface contemplates life beyond Ecuador. One assumes then that she expects to have a future. That Mrs Petrova perhaps slips into madness, but that it is barely noticeable, hardly worth mentioning, the operations of her shop and the Traymore in no jeopardy. It is the look she wears in the morning as she, with verve, arranges the shop window with the gewgaws she sells; that she, at 80 plus years of age, still gets a kick out of life. But that Eggy’s tree, the scrawny piece of work by the liquor outlet—it looks pretty pathetic. Evie Longoria? Is she not panicked? I believe she has made herself a to-do list, and has yet to check-off—just below the pick-up-the-dry-cleaning and get onions—the getting of a man. If only she would not ascribe all human behaviour to bipolar disorders; this sort of relentlessness on her part grates on my nerves. Some people genuinely dislike their family members. Watchful starlings high in unleafed, sun bleached maple twigs … That Augustus Caesar, the more deeply he was in hock to his private deities, or what we call vulgar superstitions, the more he troubled himself to run the empire on a rational basis. History is the gaudy display of ironies.