by Norm Sibum
‘Well,’ said Evie, ‘got to go.’
For the first time, I saw something like scorn in her eyes, scorn of man who could not make up his mind.
‘Well, have a good going,’ I said, as silly as could be.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘a good going.’
In the Blue Danube I wanted soup and garlic bread. Antonio the waiter had three thousand years of skepticism going for him; even so, for me, he would bring a banquet. He kissed his fingertips.
And I went for a whiz and when I returned, Marjerie Prentiss was at table. She wore an old coat. A tuque narrowed her face, her eyes comically myopic.
‘You think I’m a monster,’ her voice dully thrilled.
She spoke like a woman who had every intention of humouring me.
‘Now that you mention it,’ I said, but only in the security of my mentations.
‘No,’ I lied.
Antonio had set the bowl of soup on the table. I offered the woman a glass of wine from my bottle.
‘Why not?’ she shrugged.
Johnny on the spot, Antonio brought her a glass, then walked away from a valued customer who was obviously in trouble. I poured and I toasted: ‘To you. You’ve certainly brought interesting times to the Traymore.’
‘Have I really?’
‘I would say so. For a woman who isn’t upscale society or celebritous, you do carry on.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Besides, my mother was well-connected. Until she married my father who’d been in the merchant navy. He didn’t like society. He read a lot of books. He encouraged me to think for myself. It’s my brother I hate. I could kill him.’
‘Because?’
‘It’s not a pretty story.’
‘I think I’ve heard something of it—from Eleanor.’
‘So do you think you have my number?’
‘Does anyone know anyone?’
‘I know my guys.’
‘Yes, I suppose you know.’
‘Anyway, so who do I remind you of?’
‘Messalina, maybe. Ever hear of her? Wife to a Caesar. Challenged a whore to a bout of sexual endurance.’
‘That’s how you see me?’ she replied, bemused.
‘I don’t know. Maybe the shoe fits. Maybe you’ve yet to find yourself. Anyway, it’s your life. I’ll tell you what I don’t like. You’ve got your hooks in Eleanor for whatever game it is you’re playing.’
Dead, watery eyes looked so unspeakably innocent.
‘What game am I playing?’
‘Well, there you got me, because I can’t say as I understand it. For some reason, you’ve got some kind of hold on her, and it’s like you need a witness, someone to watch you walk your tightrope.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes, but let’s not get too interesting. Know what I mean?’
‘No.’
‘Sure you do.’
‘Tightrope. What tightrope would that be?’
‘We all walk one. You seem to require extra degrees of difficulty. Naturally, you’d like the world to notice.’
‘You really are a nasty piece of work.’
‘I never claimed I was nice.’
‘You’re always saying that.’
‘Well, I’m saying it now.’
‘This is insane.’
‘I’m sane, but it’s not clear that you are.’
‘Lately, I’ve been thinking that sanity is overrated.’
‘I always assumed you were intelligent. Are you? What does your father think of your politics?’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘He doesn’t like them?’
‘Yes, he doesn’t like them. But he’s not terribly enamoured of liberals, either.’
‘Who is?’
‘Well, you’re one.’
‘You like thinking you can screw the worker in the name of realism. Nuking Arabs. Orgies in the palace. Proust on the half shell—‘
‘You’re a little vague.’
‘Just wondering how literary your literary turn of mind is.’
‘The worker’s such a dinosaur. I’m the economy, anyway.’
‘What, you charge for your services?’
‘I’d laugh, but you’re not all that witty.’
‘More wine?’
Marjerie Prentiss, as we used to say in the Sixties, split. She departed the café, resolved to be Marjerie Prentiss until her final breath. I could not change her even had I a magic wand. I was a little disappointed when she suggested yet again that I just wanted to sleep with her, as most men did. I replied that most women like to think of themselves as attractive, nothing wrong in that. But I did not believe most women wanted advances upon their persons 24/7. Nor did I believe that men, once past a certain age when they were apparently dominated by their hormones, so the ologists would have it, necessarily wished to be advancing all the time. Marjerie countered that Eleanor, not she, was the sexpot. I said I supposed it was true, but that she liked sex for its own sake; it was not for her a three-ring circus. I myself was a somewhat complicated creature. Prentiss tittered. Oh well. One tosses one’s enemies a morsel once in a while. She said she would contribute to the cost of the wine—in legal tender. Of course, she would not, so I put it to her. She was, perhaps, in good spirits when she left. Antonio approached the table, wiping his brow. It was to suggest I had had a close escape. I did not attempt to alter his opinion.
Admission of Helplessness
Moonface relieved Antonio, and the place filled up. Elderly women of a church social, the nicest women one could imagine. It struck me then, Moonface’s father United Church, that these were people she understood better than Darwin had his iguanas. At another table, two men wearing baseball caps talked the gold standard. The Americans would devaluate their dollar, the hoarding of gold to come.
‘And then,’ said the loudest of the two, ‘you won’t be able to buy diddlysquat.’
Besides being a child of Yankee positivism, I was also a child of the Sixties, apocalyptic thinking second nature. These men, much junior to me, thought doomsday a parlour pastime or a computer game. They would have a rude awakening. The last person I expected to see was Eleanor.
‘Eleanor,’ I said, a bit disconcerted.
‘Your tone, Mr Calhoun –it’s not exactly welcoming.’
She attracted stares as she seated herself, slipping her jacket off. She could care less for the good opinion of respectable old biddies. Two men wearing baseball caps were not oblivious to her charms. Still, they were more interested in gold, Eleanor’s gilded curls notwithstanding, her blouse providing revelation. She was frightened.
‘Never felt anything like it,’ she observed to me, ‘like I’m a puppet on a string. Or should I say strings? And Bob, well, we talk and he listens. He listens like the gentleman he is. And then he excuses himself, sometimes with a kiss. Early morning business to attend to and all that. What’s he trying to prove? That he’s so effing superior? That he would never get himself into such a sticky mess? I think of going away. But I’d only be coming back to the same situation. I thought she—well, you know of whom I speak—I thought she and Ralph were working on a house and she’d move away. It’s like waiting for the troops to come out of Iraq, waiting for her to get to her endgame. Alright, I made a fool of myself with Phillip. But we never really did it, you know. Just some petting, you know. Like you and me. Thing is, I liked it. You can put your hand up my skirt any time you like, but you won’t, not unless I plow you a road, give you a map and security clearance. And then Marjerie keeps talking about herself. Endlessly. And the more she talks the more I feel paralyzed, sex the only true privacy. It doesn’t make any sense, but there it is. Roll me a cig, will you?’
‘Obviously,’ I said, not pleasantly drunk but drunk enough, ‘the solution is, it’s staring you in your pretty face, don’t talk to her. Effing hell.’
‘I can’t not talk to her. Then she brings Phillip over. And she knows I can’t resist him. I turn into some silly twit of a
girl, like our waitress here.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You’ve been saying that a lot, lately. You going to roll me that cig? Shall we get more wine?’
‘I’ve had enough.’
‘No you haven’t. There’s never any having had enough.’
I could not console her. On the way back to the Traymore, it was not so much she cried, but that her eyes went glassy for reasons other than lust: grief expressed without tears. She had no idea what had come over her; she was separated from the core of her being. Or else she had arrived at that mythical place and did not like what she saw. When one goes mad, I said, one strips one’s world down to a besetting terror or two, the other terrors in their multiples being what gave one the appearance that one had been sane. She gave me a look. I had persuaded her to foreswear the wine; we would watch a movie and indulge a splash of amaretto each. Alright then, it was quite possible the movie would bore her, as she did not much like art movies, but even so, it just might distract her from her troubles, let the chips fall where they may. The TV was tuned to football. I explained that, no, I no longer had a great love of the game; but that it was still a source of jargon I would never employ; three and out, for instance, or negative yards or play-option. I would file these suggestive but essentially meaningless epithets in my inner archives along with Pantocrator or Unam Sanctum. She gave me a look. Was I always going to toy with her mind? So I put my arm around her, we on the couch. I rocked her a bit as she intently studied her folded hands. She choked something down, a spasm, perhaps, betraying her inner turbulence. I had always admired her selfishness, just that it was so often inconvenient. She had not a mean bone in her body, but even the gentlest of people may do damage, a play mistimed, frustration gathering force, then discharged blindly. She searched for a kiss I was not sure I had to give. I recalled Eggy proclaiming he could spend an eternity with Moonface, well, if the circumstances had been different; and I supposed he meant it, greedy, querulous, sometimes nasty Zeus-like Eggy the true romantic among us. As if it were an entity that possessed a corporeal body, I watched the eternal slip away from us, Eleanor and me on that bordello-green sofa or couch or divan, language inadequate and lost to chaos. I could have slipped my hand under her skirt as she had recently invited me to. I was on the verge of doing so when it occurred to me that, perhaps, I owed her an apology.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that I was mean to you earlier.’
‘Really? I don’t remember … oh, that, when you told me to go. Maybe I deserved it.’
She was confused.
‘I guess,’ she said, ‘I’ve made my bed. Best I lie in it.’
I had nothing to say to this.
‘Well,’ I said, that single word of mine cheap at the price. ‘Well,’ I repeated, and regretted the lameness of it.
I set my hand on her thigh; immediately, she covered it with her hand.
‘No.’
‘I don’t want to watch your lousy movie,’ she added. ‘But I don’t mean to be critical. I just want to be alone. Believe me, I haven’t said that in a while.’
She grinned now, and was appealing. A tear had finally formed. Perhaps it was all she had wanted, some material expression of a grief she was not even sure she understood or why it was there to understand in the first place.
‘Nice of you to have had the thought,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ I said, angry with myself.
She left me the amaretto.
Desire Does Not Sleep; It Slumbers
That it would be an ordinary day was fine by me. I would stay in as, footing on the pavement, what with rain slicking the ice, would, no doubt, prove treacherous. I would write or read. Would harass Zeus-like Eggy, putting questions to him as pertained to druids or Justinian or Charlemagne. Effing hell, man, how do I know? Mid-morning, and I heard: alley alley in for free, the voice a slightly musical moan. Moonface at the door. She rolled her eyes up and to the side. Was I not a lucky man to have her at my door? However, she was juggling schedules. Her Champagne Sheridan. Her studies. Her working hours. Add to these considerations was the fact of the trip to Ecuador. Lift off soon.
‘I’m happy,’ she said, long-bellied goddess settling on the couch like a bird.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘my boots. So sorry.’
She was not wearing her seven-leaguers, just old rubbers.
‘It’s alright,’ I said.
So she was happy and she was busy. Dropped by to let me know she would sublet her apartment. Now I was warned. I was mad with desire for her. The girl who would be moving in was also in classical studies; she had better grades than Moonface as the girl was more serious.
‘She really applies herself,’ Moonface explained.
I was to be nice to this girl. Eggy was to keep his hands to himself. She was kind of cute, the girl, and otherwise, pretty cool. Moonface then bussed my cheek and touched it with a cold hand. She was out the door. Love hurts. I supposed I could listen to Moonface forever in bemused patience, biting my tongue on account of her naivety, her horizons so endearingly narrow, that is, if she thought truth, beauty, love and justice would prevail. Yes, and America might go communist. As was Caracalla’s scowl, so was Current President’s smirk carved in marble. But these digressions were taking me far from Moonface, from her incisors, her modest bosom; from the way she blushed upwards from her strong throat, emotions quickly registered, as she was a chameleon-like creature.
A chill rain fell on ice. I stayed in. Now and then I stuck my head out the door, as when Evie Longoria, pounding on Eggy’s door, could not raise the old bugger. She was dropping by to let him know she would be away.
‘Locked?’ I asked.
‘Locked,’ she said.
I went downstairs to Mrs Petrova’s shop for the key. I managed to get my landlady to understand I must check on her oldest lodger. In her eyes was a girl’s awe at the prospect of death, though she must have seen death before. Eggy, dwarfed by his armchair, had only been sleeping. Effing hell, can’t a man sleep in peace? Her mission discharged, Evie Longoria now sat primly on the edge of my couch. Her feet were close together, her skirt long and black, boots shiny and expensive. And how exactly did I occupy myself? Well, I read a little, wrote a little. Published? Oh, there had been an item many years back. I flailed about a lot, waving my arms like a drowning swimmer. But do you think I could get the world’s attention?
‘Why,’ she asked, with irksome logic, ‘because you want attention?’
‘No,’ I chuffed, ‘because the world loves a charade, and I’m happy to oblige.’
It was, perhaps, for the woman, another occasion to suspect I was bonkers. Nothing flattered the senses more than knowing someone else was in even worse shape. Her reading was restricted to Booker Prize lollapaloozas. Was she edified? Whether she was or not, it was how she got her eyes to close at nights. Still, she had an appealing side to her nature, this Alberta cowgirl with a yen for the arts. The red jewel-like hair clasp just behind her left temple was a nice touch. Her brow was almost massive but not overbearing. It bespoke great intelligence, though it seemed she was at odds with this gift. I could have been mistaken; I often was. In any case, the warm feelings I had had for Moonface were, by now, dissipated. Conversation at a standstill, Evie Longoria remarked on the weather.
‘It’s disgusting outside,’ I said.
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied, like a woman consumed by stark realism.
Then she sighed. Christmas, and she would be in Mexico, and perhaps, sometime in the new year, she would relocate to British Columbia.
‘Don’t you like me just a little?’ she asked, her voice quite weak. ‘Oh,’ she said, rattled now, ‘I don’t know where that came from. But you seem so perfunctory, almost like you disapprove.’
She was deciding whether to laugh or cry. We had known one another for a thousand years; we had only just met, stunned by something like a family resemblance.
‘I’m just an old dog long in the tooth
,’ I answered.
‘I ride an old paint and I lead an old Dan,’ she half-sung, through her tears.
She brushed them away with the back of her hands. And she swore; and it was about as black and as private a curse as I had heard in a while.
‘Bipolar dysfunction,’ she said.
She was looking for a note we both could sing.
To sleep with her would be like sleeping with a white flame and yet, was it fire or ice that would apply the heat? It would be a lovely flame, no doubt, of choiring angels long since used to the fact they went unheeded, no god in the slightest bit interested. It seemed she had flamed like this for so long that, though outwardly she was well-constructed and apparently real, touch her and she would fluff apart, tissue gone to ashes. She knew me for a coward. Her men had been crazy men, crazy enough not to have noticed, until too late, her spiteful fragility. Failed golf pro. Failed novelist. Where was that cowboy, anyway, bad habits and all, whose imperious hands-on treatment of her just might keep her intact? It was very likely that, after this meeting, I would see little of her.
If I shut my heart to Evie Longoria, I had not intended cruelty. Or did someone else, inhabiting my thoughts, steer me toward rebuffing her? It was an overly ghoulish thought, but then Marjerie Prentiss lived just down the hall. I helped Evie with her heavy coat, she frantic to leave as I bit my tongue. At the instant of her departure, I would flail my arms about and talk at the ceiling. Why was the worst kind of pain that which one endeavoured so hard not to inflict? Eggy would not care to know, and so why bother him with it? Eleanor would have scant sympathy, as she thought most women clueless and the authors of their own tribulations. You can’t keep rearranging the furniture in the doll house—sooner or later you have to live in it. Yes, it was the sort of thing she would say. I recalled Dubois’s recent seeming interest in Evie. Had he stepped up to the line and then declined to cross it? The sentences of a book on druids danced off the page helter-skelter; reading was futile. I closed my eyes. Here was Sally McCabe, looking troubled, but charmingly so.