The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  ‘How did he come by having Gloria at his side?’ I wanted to know, just a little curious.

  ‘You know who she is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m so mortified.’

  ‘I’ll bet you are.’

  ‘I mean, it’s all just sex to him. And here’s he been telling me how much he loves his daughter and wants to do right by her. That I would ever believe it.’

  ‘Maybe he does love her, but even so—’

  ‘Oh even so yourself. He’s an effing loser.’

  She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm.

  ‘Caramba!’ she said, almost comically, ‘idiot.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I mean, one night, just one effing night and—’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I wasn’t asking for marriage—’

  ‘Neither was he, from the looks of it.’

  Eleanor gave me a look, her head cocked.

  ‘I’ve cooked my goose with Bob.’

  ‘He’ll come around. He loves you.’

  ‘Don’t be telling me lies.’

  ‘No, really. He does. Well, after his own fashion.’

  ‘And what fashion might be that be?’

  There was not going to be any telling the woman anything.

  ‘I’ve used up my three strikes. I’m out.’

  Marjerie Prentiss materialized, barefoot, sullen, stuporous.

  ‘Well, what do you want?’ asked Eleanor, and she was livid.

  Our neighbour stood there, saying nothing, intent on studying our faces; just that her mental operations were, perhaps, compromised by drink. Perhaps Phillip came to fetch her, as now he was on site; and he placed his hands on Marjerie’s shoulders. She shook them off.

  ‘I think you should both go,’ I found myself saying.

  It seemed Phillip thought it a not bad idea.

  ‘Come on, Marj, the party’s elsewhere.’

  One heard Gloria Jarnette’s tinkling laugh; one assumed she was engaged with Ralph or with a tinpot dictator or Prince Charles.

  A slow grin broke out on Marjerie’s face; it was one of the more deadly grins I had seen in a while.

  ‘Oh, you’re a cunning woman,’ a dull voice boomed.

  I rose to my feet. The atmosphere was heating up.

  Crépuscule

  One might in old age consider that one had arrived at the end of the road, anticipating that one had finally cleared the mystery up, and here was what one had been all this time. And yet, here also was laughing Death, and the core of one’s being was no more than sparkling sunlight on the sea, and there had never been any knowing in anything like a final sense. In other words, when Moonface put it to me, saying she did not know what to believe, I would simply provide stock replies. Art, literature, love—these endeavours would always do in a pinch.

  Evening, and I was angling for virtue. Sobriety. Wisdom. Compassion. All for naught. I was reading words, and they did not register. How was one going to mount an understanding of things if the words would not register? The news of the disasters that had befallen the Holy Land was brought to the Pope, Urban III, who was then in Verona … One stared into the televised eyes of Current President, seeking his reasons. One might forgive an utter fool, but him? An homunculus named Eggy, 900 and some years of age, was still interested. If it was contemplation of Moonface’s backside that kept his brain fluid enough so that he might pass his attentions to political memoirs and accounts of Genghis Khan, all the while he vitiated against talk shows, so much the better. Crépuscule, so he had told me, and I could not remember when, was his all-time favourite word in any language, the word French for twilight. Had he gotten it from a poem? And twilight in what sense? A Montreal summer, resplendent maples so many erotic burblings? The long shadow of the Austro-Hungarian empire? I lay on my couch, eyes growing heavy. When Josias, the Archbishop of Tyre, arrived in Palermo from Tyre in the summer of 1187, sent by the barons of Outremer … Why, was not Eggy born around that time? Sally McCabe thought it possible, just then manifesting her beauty and her gentle irreverence.

  ‘You’ve still got it good,’ she said, this pom-pom girl and object of desire. VIP’s daughter. Teen-aged queen. Immortal.

  ‘Here you are,’ she continued, ‘with your Eggy, with your Moonface, both of them so, well, what, so eternally smitten with life, you old cynic. And now Jarnette, too. When it rains it pours.’

  Sally McCabe wrinkled her delicious nose.

  ‘Yes, what of it?’ I answered.

  ‘They’re what the show’s all about.’

  ‘Really? Would you, say, pass the time with Eggy?’

  ‘With that old bean?’

  ‘That dry old bean.’

  ‘Well, I might, if he amused me enough. I’ve had stranger tumbles.’

  ‘I suppose you have.’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you recall our tumble?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of? Is that all?’

  ‘The memory only torments me.’

  ‘You poor dear.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Alright then. Be a stick in the mud.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be a stick in the mud, just that—’

  ‘Look, I know you better than you know yourself. We should be cutting a grand figure by now, you and I, after all we’ve been through.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m young still. Well, I’m eternal, open to adventure. A little whiskey, moonlight, commodious car, desert wind—none of that ever hurt.’

  ‘Yes but, Mr Jakes blew his brains out back then.’

  ‘It’s what you get from teaching history to louts.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say for that poor man?’

  That Sally McCabe chose to yawn at that moment was all she had to say for my life’s first suicide.

  ‘You’re such an egghead. But I’ll give you this—it’s what I always liked about you. With a little training, shaping … Well, you kind of got away from me. It was like you got religion or something only it was just that you went to Canada.’

  ‘Yes, there was that.’

  ‘Too late now.’

  ‘Too late.’

  ‘But we can still have these chats off and on.’

  ‘We can.’

  ‘Good. I was worried, you know.’

  ‘Worried. Why?’

  ‘That you were going to think you’d out-grown me.’

  ‘Oh no. Nothing of the kind.’

  ‘Well then, bye.’

  Voices not in my head but in the hall brought me out of my swoon. Phillip Dundarave wheedled. Marjerie Prentiss’s dull voice boomed. She was hurt and confused. Trampings down the stairs. Then Eggy thundered and Evie Longoria said that, alright, she would come around again in a day or two to take Eggy to a hardware store so as to get the spent fluorescent replaced; but Eggy supposed he could live without it, only that Evie reminded him he would complain of it at their next meeting. She sounded tired. More tramping down the stairs. Awake now, and I reached for a magazine Dubois had left on the table beside me. CEO of the year had weathered a storm, one precipitated by the fact his food plant put polluted meat into stores and people died, eating it. Ah, one must needs have redemption, a wringing of hands.

  It was now a point of contention between Eggy and Dubois, that word crépuscule. Eggy was saying, his finger raised, and we were in the Blue Danube, carrying on: ‘Effing hell, crépuscule. You know, du soir.’

  But none of us knew, though I had a suspicion.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Dubois.

  ‘Eff you,’ Eggy thundered, and he continued, Dubois cringing as he did so: ‘Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel; il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup; le ciel—’

  ‘Stop,’ said Dubois, in obvious pain, Eggy’s French a tribulation to his ears.

  ‘What a guy,’ he added, proud, perhaps, of his cultured friend.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Eggy, ‘a lover to
ld it me. That’s how I got it.’

  ‘Lover? What lover?’ Dubois guffawed, looking to get a rise.

  ‘Alright,’ said Eggy, ‘have it your way, but she said it to me, and that’s all I can remember.’

  ‘Likely story,’ said Dubois.

  ‘Why, it is the story, and that’s that. Bloody effing hell.’

  And man is tired of writing and woman of making love. Baudelaire: crépuscule du matin.

  And they were all that had stayed in my mind of the verse, other than that of men in barracks, in their bunks, restive with unhealthy dreams. We were gathered, Eggy, Dubois and I, for the occasion of Current Prime Minister’s address to the nation. So, he would ask to have parliament suspended, after all. Or he would have all the first-born rounded up and put to the sword. Moonface had a stately air, perhaps in light of the speech to come. Behold the sweet evening, friend of the criminal—At a table of their own, in a world far distant, Marjerie Prentiss and swain were having a lover’s quarrel, only that one knew they would kiss and make up, soon enough. Phillip Dundarave, like Dean or Brando, had the air of a man gobsmacked by the incapacity of the female to understand, and yet, he was too smitten to deliberately alienate the affections. Marjerie’s face was stained with tears, and she was blinking and frightened. What an act, so I put it to myself. And a vapid fool was blundering into the trap, the more so because he was so pleased to put things right.

  A Dream or Not

  Had I dreamed the following: that the Current Prime Minister, addressing the nation, had wrapped himself in the flag; while Current Leader of the Opposition, in his field holler, wrapped himself in the sackcloth of duty and humility? Were all Traymoreans regarding the TV with sex-inflamed eyes, making no more sense of the images on the screen than if they had been cats? And Quebec was, as ever, the whipping post of a phantasmagorical land, Blue Danubians of the moment, willy-nilly, seditious. The winter dark outside was debilitating to the spirit, the wine so much liquid light of the sun, Moonface pleased to pour.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said.

  She dimpled from ear to ear. Elias, husband to Cassandra, partner to Gregory, overseeing things, regarded us with astonishment. What manner of creatures were we, and he a Greek? Marjerie Prentiss and Phillip Dundarave rose to leave, having attained rapprochement, her face soft, more so than I had ever seen it. Phillip, stepping up to the cash so as to settle the bill, grunted in our direction. He assumed he was very much in control, and perhaps, for the time being, he was. Nothing could have been more transparently obvious: Marjerie was due for a hosing, she pretending her Traymorean neighbours here at table did not exist.

  ‘Sois sage, ô ma douleur, et tiens-tois plus tranquille,’ said Eggy, almost with a sigh.

  It was as if he had been to every Paris of which the world could boast, and knew each intimately, cognizant of all their mysteries.

  It was Dubois’s turn for a display of astonishment, even as he cringed at Eggy’s mangling of French vowels, however soft-spoken the delivery was.

  ‘Now that’s Baudelaire,’ he observed, his voice as husky as a lover’s.

  Eggy beamed.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ he said, ‘but it came from somewhere, but which woman, oh, I don’t effing know. The rain in Spain.’

  Not all hooded figures were necessarily malevolent; some stole what kisses they could amidst the rubbish piles of alley ways or in the shadows of Roman ilexes. One did not know about Eggy; either he had come to his sweet melancholies late in life, and he was something like 902 years of age, or he had more of a track record than he was willing to let on, always obfuscating the details. I found two notes slipped under my door. Evie Longoria. The one invited me to lunch on the morrow. The other, with abject apologies, rescinded the offer. Perhaps I should have thought more of the gesture but I did not. She entered a vision before my eyes, she appealing enough, a ton of unhappiness in her. She passed through and was gone.

  Eleanor Addicted

  The season’s first true snowfall had been, as ever, like a dream in its silence. And now, one crunched along, each step one took, even on a city street, as solitary as any taken on remote tundra. Christmas ornaments festooned with electric bulbs were affixed to lamp posts. Stars, bells, candy canes. A woman, waiting for a bus, sang to herself, her lips bright red, eyes anxious. I thought her harmless, if barking mad. My heart went out to her, yes, for some inexplicable reason, though there was something mean in her anxiety that repulsed. How much of the drama of our lives is contained in these wordless exchanges of an instant? The shovels were out. Dogs snuffled, poking their snouts where snow had banked up. It was not unusual that I would run into Eleanor at the poor man’s super mart; and there she was, peering through reading glasses, inspecting the fine print of a tinned food item.

  ‘It’s the gift that never stops giving,’ I said.

  ‘And to what do you refer?’ she asked, not at all surprised to hear my voice.

  ‘Eggy. His lecherous turn of mind.’

  ‘Oh that.’

  She was in a mood.

  ‘Corruption, American style.’

  ‘Yes, there’s that, too.’

  Middle-aged stock boy, sallow-faced, disenchanted man who would die lonely and bitter and beyond the reach of miracles, was pricing the goods on the shelves. What, he might have wondered, was this an outreach clinic, this aisle of bean and tomato tins and bags of pasta, men and women discussing the mental health of old sots and a nation-state?

  ‘I think I’m addicted,’ Eleanor announced, going for the haricots, after all.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, intensely skeptical, ‘to what?’

  ‘To sex.’

  This assertion caught me off my guard. Stock boy sniffed.

  ‘Nonsense,’ I thought to say, ‘what silly rag have you been reading?’

  ‘It was something I read. Men get all the reportage while women suffer their compulsions in silence.’

  Body heat poured through her winter coat. A look of utter helplessness swept her face.

  ‘Want to drive yourself nuts,’ I suggested, ‘then subject your every whim to some ological inquisition. Want to conduct your life in a strait jacket, it’s easily enough done.’

  It would have been my pleasure to help her through this latest crisis, but life is not always amenable to convenience. There were complications. We were obstructing traffic, as well. The poetry of whim was my raison d’etre.

  Eleanor’s kitchen. Amaretto. Conversation in lieu of boffing, of relieving delinquent urges. I was getting off easy, though I was, perhaps, if not the cause, then the excuse for the look on her face; how it confessed her embarrassment, as the good woman had gotten glassy-eyed as she trapped me against her kitchen counter.

  ‘See?’ she said, her husky tone one that might get her stoned in a biblical time.

  In me, Boffo the clown muttered. An entity, one Randall Q Calhoun, was not doing him much good. They were tired and old refrains, me pleading Dubois, Eleanor her need.

  ‘So roll us a cig,’ she said, and she was weary.

  I complied, shredding tobacco with some energy. An insistent breeze threatened the still hopeful flame in her grey-green eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said, pitting my plea against what had been hers.

  ‘So don’t say anything,’ she snapped.

  ‘You’re not addicted,’ I offered.

  ‘I’m lonely. Can you get your pointy head around that?’

  ‘Eleanor.’

  ‘I mean, I’m getting shut down on all fronts. Bob. He’s so intermittent.

  You, you’re all the time mooning me with your eyes but when it comes time to put the pedal to the metal, oh no, you’ve got scruples. Phillip? What a prince, ready, willing and able, can make a girl feel she’s of no more account than a box of cereal. What gives? Since when did men decide to behave? And since when did they decide to behave even worse? And what’s with this Jarnette woman, anyway? Don’t tell me you gave her a ride? I mean, effing hell, she’s a, she ma
y as well be some effing grave robber. A vampire. I know her type. And you think Marj is bad news. I mean, why should I feel so effing apologetic? And why should you prefer Moonface to me? I know you do. She has no more sex appeal than a turnip.

  What’s she got that I haven’t got? She hasn’t got tits, for one thing. Come on, fella, out with it. I mean, what are the rules, anymore?’

  Eleanor very nearly wailed. I handed her a cigarette.

  ‘And don’t change the subject,’ she said, smiling grimly.

  My turn for some effusion, I said: ‘You’re right. And when you’re right, you’re right. I love all of you. I let you all down in a million ways. No, there’s nothing lovelier, more a sight for sore eyes, than a warm, willing, comely wench with mischievous eyes. What else do you want me to say? You’re a very good friend, alright? Only it would be a lot less trouble taking Marj to bed. For her, it’s research. If she could but test her political convictions to the extent she tests the soundness of her sexual notions, she just might have a mind, after all. Well, I’m as curious as the next man, but she would cost me my self-respect.’

  ‘Really?’ a dull voice boomed.

  ‘Eleanor,’ I said, without missing a beat, ‘I wish you’d lock your door once in a while.’

  Barefoot Prentiss in a night shirt now stood behind Eleanor, throwing her arms around the good woman, all the while she regarded me with what was for her a companionable grin. Eleanor blushed, all her command of a situation in tatters. I had not blushed in years; even so, I counted myself as having been exposed.

  There were committees for everything, from garbage collection to counting the dead. And yet, no committee was going to prevent Marjerie Prentiss from following me to my digs. She padded behind me in a parody of a tribeswoman, whose only lord and master had declared her an outcast, effectively sentencing her to death. She was tearing at her hair; she was wringing her hands, having a grand old time of it. It was in my thoughts that it was not until they were conquered and confined to the margins of existence that druids took up writing; not because they lacked the art but because they would protect what they knew. Could I not see the Gazans, for instance, in this light? I was angry, angry with Eleanor, angrier still with my pursuer, for she had caught me out in a vulnerable moment. I did not believe that the revelation of a soul in its entirety was a good thing, no matter what romantic comedies and the Eleusinian mysteries and a father confessor might suggest to the contrary; but an overly-cloistered soul was equally injurious to well-being. A soul had to breathe. I was mid-point in my living room when, like a cornered animal, I turned, Prentiss much amused. She might as well have said: And you thought, what with all the magnificent volumes in your library, it would take me many lifetimes to read them, and here, I’ve snapped my fingers and I’ve read you in an instant. Yes, and I had not the faintest idea of what I might say. But, as when in a movie, the delirious are besieged with fragmented and haphazard memories and voices, so it was with me; and here was a smiling Sally McCabe, a friendly warning in her eyes. Here was the only woman I married, she who tossed herself from a high balcony, her expression both gentle and impassive as she fell. Here were lovers whose names, let alone their faces, I had forgotten. Here was Jack Swain in full thrall to his self-mockery, so great his disdain of North American hypocrisies. Here were the Howards and the Klopstocks, every one of them dead. And so forth and so on. They had only me to rely on for a memory of their existences. Prentiss minced forward, her hands grabbing at the hem of her night shirt, drawing it tight across her hips. She was grotesque. With all the grandeur of truth on her side, as if truth were the sole divine presence to which her mind would grant a hearing, she was mocking the notion of sex itself; she was saying that, in fact, there was no such thing as this sort of congress, not in any elevated human sense; that what was about to ensue amounted to nothing more than some other function of the body; that our souls were no more than dead leaves such as we trample beneath our feet. Pagan lust? Secular lust? No, what she had going was more than a clinical outlay of hormones. She looked straight into mine with her hateful eyes. It occurred to me she had never been taken for all she might have been abused and coerced in her past. It was the source of her insufferable certainty. Come on, silly man, take me, and see where it gets you.