The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  —A new photo of Moonface arrives from Ecuador. In the Blue Danube Antonio the waiter, as if in receipt of a holy relic, hands it to me. There she is, standing in a brick plaza, much greenery about, colourful shops the backdrop. She has gotten free of the phantasmagorical mediocrities. Well, perhaps. But hers is very nearly a come-get-me-boys-if-you-dare pose. Denims. Black tank top. Arms bare. Her face is quite red—from the mountain sun, most likely. Her smile (or is it a leer?) is just this side of unattractive, coyly raunchy. Her eyes are different, her head turned somewhat from the camera so that she looks out at one sideways. Ah yes, a new Moonface. One that has not been seen before by these eyes. For good? For ill? Eggy, no doubt, looking upon the photo, will have much to contemplate. Flashing nails. Hint of midriff. Antonio: ‘Maybe she drunk.’ The photo, roughly a 3 X 5 affair, raises more questions than it answers. Is she happy? Is she getting properly boffed? I cannot believe she can be missing us.

  —We quarrelled, Dubois and I, last night. There in the Blue Danube, where else? Dubois reported that he believed Americans to be benevolent. ‘Benevolent?’ I answered, and went on to say: ‘That would imply a certain amount of disinterested virtue, and the Americans no longer do disinterest or virtue.’ Dubois seemed stunned. Meanwhile, all that mattered to Eggy was Moonface and the fact that, upon examination of the newly-arrived photo, she did not look preggers. Perhaps Dubois was peering through a dark tunnel for signs of an oncoming gale in the form of a migraine. ‘New President,’ I said, ‘will have to perform the work of both Hadrian and Diocletian. The former scaled back the empire and put a more humane face on the imperial fist, Jerusalem excepted. The latter took the economy in hand which was in a parlous state, and he imposed reforms, albeit in draconian fashion.’ Dubois continued to sit there, bewildered. ‘And in any case,’ I said, flirting with frivolity, with signature cynicism, ‘the solutions only brought on new and more onerous cans of worms.’ ‘You’re a piece of work,’ Dubois let me know, wondering if it would be worthwhile to spring for another bottle. Yet, there being no Moonface about, there was no one to audit our debate and so, what was the point? And I thought that in his glittering blue eyes old age was beginning to get him over a barrel. Even so, I wound up agreeing, it seems, to some wager or another: that, in 2012, we would reconvene—Dubois, Eggy and I—at Animal Table, and know that the world was more or less intact, I having indicated that I lacked confidence in this regard. And then, it was on to Duplessis, a sort of Huey Long figure; how that Quebec premier played the church and its cardinals like a violin; and if Eggy had resided in the province for fifty years and did not yet understand this, he did not understand Quebec. On this point, Dubois enjoyed all the ascendancy, and neither Eggy nor I would dream of gainsaying the man. ‘Oh,’ said Eggy, ‘to be a sailor, and sail the wide, wide sea.’ (He sang this refrain, later, as he attempted to coax his drunken pins up the Traymore stairs.) ‘Oh to be a sailor, my arse,’ said Dubois, ‘you’re forever changing the subject.’ ‘Oh, eff you.’ But now, did Moonface, the dear girl, have delicate paps? What was that look of hers in the photo? Well, I was drunk. Dubois, equally drunk, considered there was no such thing as a broken system; all was evolution; systems merely evolve. History, I believed, proved him wrong. But what was history?

  —Will I cave again, Eleanor up to her old tricks? We sit at her kitchen table, she in a mood. ‘Who cares, Randall? I mean, listen to yourself. And if you’re not going to stick some effing something up my twat, then get the effing hell out of my kitchen.’

  —I wake with the crows, and in the day’s first light, I stand at the window at the end of the Traymore hall. Leafless trees. Snow heaps. Brick dwellings. The crows, screeing across the sky, alight on this or that tall maple. There is a certain apocalyptic quality to their communications and yet, it is only nature testifying to the fact that life goes on and one is alive. The Traymore is silent. Ah, but that is Dubois’s clattering keyboard. Has he been checking his stock portfolio? Squirrels nimble out of a squirrel’s nest. Prentiss whispers at me the softness of her thighs, her smile a tryst-offering, her dead, watery eyes gateways to a mirage. Well, perhaps one ought to enjoy it, the old hourglass of time not as rich as once it was with either chance delights or random treacheries.

  Demon Love II

  —When I last saw Dundarave and Suzie Q together on the Traymore stairs, suspicions formed. Aggressively neutral looks advised me I should mind my own beeswax. Trust Dundarave to spot the promise in an unpromising package—the humourless and methodical Suzie Q. Am I jealous? I would go and complain to Eleanor of life’s essential unfairness, but then it would only incite laughter on her part, and besides, it would exacerbate a jealousy of her own. Though she insists that relations between her and Phillip are strictly Platonic, it remains obvious that she regrets this state of things. Speaking of Plato, I have reached that part in his Symposium when wily Socrates, pleading ignorance and lack of speaking polish, nonetheless turns all the previous arguments honouring love on their heads. And so, love is not a god but a spirit, a demon, if you will; and, as such, it consecrates humankind to a longing for immortality by way of the procreative and the creative. Even the finches in their couleurs nuptiale know as much.

  —I took Suzie Q to the movies. Going to the movies was an activity sacred to Moonface and me. Suzie Q, I am certain, only agreed to the proposal so as to spite my moral drift. I was convinced of this when something like a hot branding iron came to rest on my thigh, and it was her hand. The sweeping new epic on the screen, all melodrama, was gathering momentum, and one was growing accustomed to the actors drawling away in Australian. ‘What are you doing?’ I hissed. Heard, and the voice, irritatingly reasonable, stifled bemusement: ‘Always wanted to touch a man in the dark.’ Well, for the love of God. Yes, was she feral in her mind? I dislodged the hand. And the movie eventually fell apart into bits and pieces of such platitudes as would ennoble the human heart and only cheapen sentiment. Back on the street, and I said to the amorist: ‘You know, despite the advances in man-woman relationships, I think I preferred it when women were demure and still got what they wanted.’ Heard: ‘What could you possibly know about getting?’ Indeed. Even so, I did not consider that the girl meant me injury; it was just that her notions of love and lust were theoretical: her hand had had all the rationale of an experiment. I sprung for a taxi and it was a silent ride through the city. Drab snow in lurid street lights. The phantasmagorically smug in the windows of tony bistros. One was weary of winter. ‘So what did you think of the flick?’ I ventured to ask. ‘It was kind of silly.’ ‘You’re probably right.’ ‘Why only probably?’ Well, she had a point. Our respective Xs and Ys and Zs were meeting in neutral space, looking one another over, and concluding there was not much to be gained from the one set gainsaying the other. That Suzie Q was most likely a better scholar than Moonface, a sounder intellect; that she might even make someone in life a more steadfast partner (as she was fundamentally a serious person) was evident; but apart from her study of the classics, she had not an iota of the poetic in her; or there was none that could be reached and wakened. Even so, I thought I might as well add to the iniquities I had committed against the memory of Moonface and stand the girl beside me to a drink. This she refused. ‘You’re not so hard to handle,’ she added to her disinclination to swill. Oh yes? Since when? But I was bored now by the game, bored with the girl and her false claims to a knowing air. I lacked the patience, or so I said to myself with the air of a man headed elsewhere. I paid off the yawning cabbie and bid the girl good night, hoping that for her it had not been entirely a waste. Eggy was alone in the Blue Danube. Which is to say, Dubois was in his rooms, under the gun, pain run amok in his head. ‘Rogue gene,’ said Eggy, ‘and it’s about time someone came to keep me company.’ The homunculus had already worked his way through most of the wine but there was enough in it for a glass, and Antonio, winking, set one on the table. ‘So,’ said Eggy. ‘Oh well,’ I answered, ‘I took Suzie Q to the movies.’ Eggy was nonplussed.
Or rather he raised his finger and declaimed : ‘Her lips suck forth my soul—’ I tried to imagine Eggy alone in life, no one at hand to badger with rabbit-like leaps of logic.

  From Dubois

  To: Randall Q Calhoun:

  The widely recognized best investment management performer in the world tries hard never to make predictions.

  Best regards.

  Robert Dubois

  Conseiller d’affaires sr / Senior Business Consultant

  §

  Book III—A Dying World

  Back in the Saddle

  She was back, and everyone was to know it. Barefoot and perky, despite the dead, watery eyes, she knocked on my door.

  ‘Hullo.’

  One might have said that, her business completed, she scampered away. What now for Ralph her intended, and Dundarave her pick me up? What now for Eleanor? And me? Dubois, when he heard the news, only grunted. The cluster headaches had taken him to a new level of consciousness, different priorities. To rich holding patterns, as when he lay on the floor in agony. But we were in the Blue Danube, he, Eggy and I.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the Prodigal Daughter has returned.’

  ‘What, Moonface?’ asked Eggy, something like hope lighting up flinty eyes.

  Dubois guffawed, and then, addressing me: ‘You see, you see of what his thoughts are made?’

  ‘It’s Prentiss of whom I speak,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, her,’ said Eggy, ‘well, she’s not so bad. Never gave me any trouble. Hoo hoo.’

  We sat there at table, at Animal Table, to be precise, three defanged lions gorgeous to behold. And so far as I was concerned, a mortal enemy was among us once again in much the same way that certain agents of President #43 were still yanking strings in Washington and ponying up in the new casino. Prentiss had restyled her hair; brown bangs careened down to her made-up eyes. Cleopatra had employed a variety of hairstyles with which to proclaim her power and efficacy in the rough and tumble Roman world.

  ‘Well,’ said Eggy, ‘I guess you think trouble’s coming.’

  ‘You’re nothing but trouble,’ Dubois declared of Eggy, albeit with affection, ‘and you know, this time around, speaking of Prentiss, of course, I don’t much care.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t?’ asked Eggy, somewhat incredulous.

  ‘Getting through a night without pain—that’s what I care about.’

  Dubois helped himself to more wine. The late winter dark had settled on our noble boulevard, and one did not know, anymore, about the Habs. Either they would win the Stanley Cup or they would stink up every arena on the continent.

  It was a misty evening in Montreal when I checked myself into the Blue Danube, Eggy saying: ‘You just missed Bob. Why, soon as he ordered his dinner, he had one of his attacks. Had to go. Effing hell.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Don’t oh dear me and don’t oh dear him. It’s what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe it’s something in the ambiance. Too many Albanians. The rain in Spain. Always.’

  Homuncular eyes brightened with mirth.

  ‘You’re getting cheeky in your old age,’ I noted.

  ‘Why, I suppose I am. So effing what? But you may as well hear the news. Prentiss and Dundarave had a row. Over that woman who was coming around. What was her name? Schneider, I think. She could’ve come around to me, but I guess she didn’t see fit to do so. Eleanor, the loon, she tried using her charms—well, on Bob. She thought she might distract him from the pain. Of course, it wouldn’t work. Any idiot could’ve told her that. Bob went out of his tree. You might better go see her. Poor woman. She tries, you know. I fell in the elevator going up to see nursie. Hit my head. Might’ve bled to death but for the meds I was on. Well, that’s what nursie said. Anyway, I’ll live. Well, you can see that.’

  Lunch with Dundarave

  Perhaps Dundarave got the idea from Prentiss who got it from Eleanor: a certain Traymorean mode of communications. For when I woke the next morning, I found a note shoved under my door. The unusually flowery scrawl was Dundarave’s. It recommended that he and I have lunch. No hint in the words of or else as one might expect from a man who had no patience with the subtleties. A warm front had parked in the area. March did not show the town to its best advantage, the streets filthy with accumulated debris that receding snow revealed. One felt rather than observed that the sparrows were thinking it high time to breed. Was there more to Dundarave than met the eye? One could see in him a top-flight Roman general in conversation with Caesar, gossiping about poets and courtesans, military operations on hold for the moment. Did not the better sort of bathhouses include libraries on their premises? A practical people, those Romans.

  Dundarave had already claimed a table at the Blue Danube when I showed. Eggy and Dubois were also there, Dubois with his Globe and Mail, that mind-teaser. I signalled that something was up and I would not be sitting with them. Eggy turned his face from me, disgusted. What was so effing important he could not be a part of it? Dubois arched his brows and swallowed a guffaw. Antonio, meanwhile, seemed to be showing a girl how to use the café’s billing apparatus, some touch-screen gizmo. So then, a new waitress was on the scene. Her name was Mercedes, as it turned out, at first glance, a beauty. I hoped Elias would keep his hands to himself. Cassandra looked to be keeping a sharp eye on things. Then Dundarave said (he had the air of a cowboy who, having departed the outback for a town’s innocent pleasures, was now disillusioned): ‘I’m going nuts.’

  It seemed an astonishing statement. And yet, in exactly what way was he going nuts? I would like to have asked, and did not, fearing how the question might seem to the man once I put it to him.

  ‘I’m already there,’ I drolled.

  The look I got from Dundarave suggested he was not amused.

  He was difficult to sum up in a sentence or two. That he was stereotypically a man’s man; that he had a deadly effect on women. That he presented himself to the world as a simple carpenter, one who did not pretend to fathom the motives of his superiors, but that they would surely exploit him if they could. He was more intelligent than he let on, and he enjoyed the ruse. Perhaps he had read a book or three. He was intimate with fast living and country solitude, the Townships his fallback position when the city got to be too much. Drugs had ruined his marriage; he had a daughter he seemed to dearly love. But why would he confess to me the state of his wherewithal? I was on my guard.

  ‘And I might as well tell you, Ellie put me up to this.’

  By Ellie, he meant Eleanor, she who had been something of a confidante to him.

  ‘She thought,’ Dundarave went on to say, ‘that I might find your perspective useful.’

  ‘She did, did she?’

  Well, if it did not turn out well, this little exchange of views, I would have Eleanor to blame.

  ‘So,’ I asked, in the most casual and inoffensive tone I could muster, ‘what gives?’

  ‘You know what gives. Marjerie.’

  ‘To be sure,’ I said, ‘to be sure.’

  By now our orders, by way of a nervous Mercedes, had been brought to the table. A simple burger for my interlocutor. Lentil soup for me. I would like to have paid more attention to the fact of the new waitress, but now was not the time. So, to the matter at hand: Dundarave and his apparent torment. What does one tell a man who is about to divulge that he has lost his wits on account of a woman who toys with him at her leisure and then twits him with his own helplessness? I was certain words like these were coming, even as, perhaps, he wondered how he would frame his sentences. It had not occurred to me that he might have reason to fear me a little; that Eleanor would have talked me up to him in such a way as to suggest I was wise and could read his thoughts. Then again it was equally possible he was not in the slightest bit intimidated.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you’re in love with Marjerie but she’s going to marry Ralph.’

  Once more Dundarave had occasion to take exception to something in my tone.

  ‘No, it’s not lik
e that. I don’t love the silly bitch. Pardon my French. But she’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and I’ve got to have it.’

  ‘And there’s a price to be paid,’ I suggested.

  ‘You got that right.’

  It seemed he was cramming half the burger in his mouth.

  ‘What about Jarnette? That Schneider woman? Eleanor, for that matter?’

  ‘I was never going to do anything with Ellie. I respect her.’

  ‘Oh you do.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he affirmed, reaching for a serviette.

  There was always something in the man of menace.

  ‘Are you willing to pay the price that comes with doing business with Prentiss?’

  ‘I like the way you put that,’ Dundarave said, grinning for the first time in the proceedings.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘my opinion in respect to Marjerie isn’t favourable, if you must know. I don’t understand what she thinks she’s up to. But she certainly needs to have a show to run. The show’s more important to her than the well-being of the cast. Give her a good cause and she might actually do some good. Just that she’d get bored with it. She likes to be bad. Wants to be bad. Ralph? He’s her insurance. Good man who, one of these days, is going to walk. Get my drift?’