The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Anyway, you don’t need my advice,’ I said with an involuntary surge of authority.

  ‘Well,’ said Dundarave, the burger devoured, ‘I do know what I’m going to do. I’m just going to keep on doing what I’m doing until I really really can’t stand it, anymore.’

  The look he gave me suggested I ought to feel free to second-guess his decision. I shrugged. And he would boff Marjerie and she Ralph, and they would have their three-way; and then Marjerie would, perhaps, seek to extend dominion where she could; it was just her way of having fun.

  Dundarave picked up the tab and left, but not before I heard him suggest to Mercedes that she would do fine in her new job. Was it a line or was he sincere? I joined Animal Table.

  ‘Good God,’ I said to all and sundry there—to a Dubois tested by migraines, to an Eggy contemplating a snooze.

  I supposed my tone of voice was overly dramatic, but I wished my companions to know I had had words with something like the devil.

  ‘Yes, what was that all about?’ Eggy wanted to know. ‘As if we didn’t know.’

  ‘Prentiss,’ I said, ‘getting your brains boffed out but not sure you’re liking it.’

  ‘What’s not to like?’ Eggy asked, forgetful, perhaps, of his now ancient travails in the boffing department, he wise after the fact.

  ‘Oh, he likes it, but he doesn’t like the price tag, which is Prentiss and her whims,’ I said.

  ‘There’s always that,’ Eggy agreed, demonstrating that he, too, had an ounce of sense in him.

  His chin began its precipitous drop to his chest.

  ‘Going, going—gone,’ Dubois guffawed.

  And it seemed to me he did not rate Dundarave as worthy of further discussion, Mercedes appearing like a dream, coffee pot in hand. And when I got back to the Traymore and was about to climb the stairs, the Schneider woman manifested at the top of them, and she was distraught.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said, and there was no mistaking her tone.

  Oh dear God. She was the sort of woman who signed up for classes at the golf academy. Perhaps she had already put in some time at life-studies, drawing nudes.

  ‘Must we?’ I countered.

  ‘We must.’

  How could one argue with an expensive pair of boots and perfect hair? Well, someone had, from the looks of it. There was loud music now in the Prentiss apartment. A thudding bass. One could safely assume there was boffing in the works. I trudged up the stairs and unlocked my door, taking it for granted Schneider would follow me in. I would hear the woman out, but nothing more than that; and she started in on me once we were in the living room: ‘I don’t like games.’

  ‘Really? I don’t like games, either. But what I really don’t like is pettiness.’

  ‘Pettiness?’ she said, somewhat taken aback. She continued: ‘I’d say it was petty of you to tell Phillip to dump me.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then what’s going on—?’

  ‘You’ve been downsized. Or else you’re just a tourist on the premises. I don’t know how else to put it.’

  ‘I went to bed with you—’

  ‘I rest my case.’

  Unspoken

  Wisdom? What was the thing? The avoidance of pain as came of excess, so the ancients had it? Yet they, too, had their Bacchic frenzies as mitigated against convention and stuffiness. I considered that of wisdom I had precious little; all was, in any case, evolutionary drift. But what had been haunting me of late were certain memories, ones to which no events in particular, let alone faces, were attached. Some amorphous but palpable sensation would take hold of me and stop me in my tracks. And finally I realized these incidents had to do with the first time I sensed that the world was a construct of infinite sadness; as when, for example, I was twelve and tossing a football back and forth with a friend; and the world was fine; and I loved the autumnal smell of fallen leaves and the feel of the leather object in my hands; and the running and the leaping, and so forth and so on; and then I was suddenly on the verge of tears for no rhyme or reason. Perhaps it was as simple as understanding that it was a transient hour, and the beauty of it all was perishable. I described this early epiphany of mine to Dubois and Eggy, and asked them: ‘Well, how about you two?’

  It seemed strange to sit in the Blue Danube at an evening hour and it was not yet dark outside. Inside, we were the only customers, the Habs on TV. Eggy wished to withdraw his wager as to whether the Habs would take the Stanley Cup, Dubois saying: ‘See? I knew it would come to this and you’d change your mind.’

  ‘Oh eff off. If you insist, I’ll be a gentleman about it.’

  Then Dubois put it to me: ‘So what’s this business you’re on about? Epiphany?’

  ‘Never mind,’ I answered, a bit peeved.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Eggy, ‘“Ozymandias”’

  ‘That’s not quite what I had in mind—’

  ‘Ozzy-what?’ Dubois guffawed, ‘and there you go again. You don’t listen.’

  ‘I do too listen,’ thundered Eggy, ‘I always listen.’

  ‘Yes, he listens,’ I sighed, ‘but sometimes it’s not clear to what he listens.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Dubois agreed.

  ‘Oh, we love you,’ said Antonio the waiter to a homunculus.

  ‘Eff off.’

  ‘Dundarave isn’t particular where he puts it, is he?’ so Dubois put it to us out of the blue.

  ‘A man’s man,’ said Eggy, very nearly giggling.

  Dubois gave me a look, one that asked why he did not just stomp on the old bugger then and there and have done with it.

  ‘“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’”

  Eggy had orated, finger raised; but then Dubois interrupted:

  ‘Ozzy-what?’

  And then the Habs scored one, tying the game. And not too long after, they scored another.

  Antipathy

  I do not know who was more strange, Dundarave suggesting that what I needed were more shelves for my books and TV, and he was the man to do it, he being a simple carpenter; or Prentiss garbed in some tunic and black tights at his side, lollipop in her mouth. All she was missing were bells and a jester’s cap. Perhaps the clown in me experienced antipathy to the spectacle of a rival, she unnaturally nubile, as jiggly as a teenager. And then, because my door was open, in walked Evie Longoria, her face drawn, eyes anxious. Prentiss registered the fact of her with a grin, one that said: well, would you look at this? What have we here? One always had the sense with Evie that she was about to sit for a job interview. I could not recall if Evie and Marjerie had had the pleasure of each other’s company; I did not offer introductions. Dundarave, as ever, sized Evie up with his quiet eyes; and perhaps he found qualities about her person to admire.

  ‘Sure,’ said Dundarave, ‘no problem. I’ve got the wood. I just need to measure the TV. Hell, a few screws and voila!’

  The man was enjoying himself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Prentiss, ‘you live like you’re just passing through. Hang up your coat, Calhoun, stay a while.’

  Who was she to command? Then Evie spoke and said she would come back around as I was busy, and I told her to wait.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Dundarave, ‘why are you doing this? I can slap together my own shelves if and when I think I need them.’

  ‘It gives me something to do,’ the man replied, giving Prentiss a significant look. He continued: ‘Anyway, it’s been decided. And they won’t have been slapped together. It’ll look decent.’

  Prentiss’s eyes, fixed as they were on me, seemed far away, and they were full of plans.

  ‘The man’s got company,’ her swain observed, and then to me he said: ‘I’ll be back.’

  It seemed a threat.

  Dundarave and Prentiss now out the door, I invited Evie to have a seat on the couch.
It was an offensive item of bordello green furniture getting shabby. But I would have no one, especially Prentiss, doing over the décor. And Evie sat there, knees pressed tight together underneath her ankle-length skirt. A tear had formed in her eye. She dabbed at it. She uttered an expletive.

  ‘There I go again,’ she said, ‘what is it about you that always causes me to cry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I suggested, ‘but I have to say I find it disconcerting.’

  ‘Me,’ she said, ‘I would find that woman disconcerting.’

  ‘You mean Prentiss?’

  ‘I guess. If that’s who she is.’

  ‘She is a trial.’

  ‘Are all women a trial for you?’

  ‘What gives you that idea?’

  ‘The way you distance yourself.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually, no,’ she answered, beginning to brighten a little, ‘I came around to see Eggy about our schedule, but he’s either asleep or he isn’t in. So I thought I would just say hello. Hello. And I thought to tell you that I can’t make up my mind whether to stay in Montreal or go out to B.C. and live in the boonies with my daughter. I hate my indecision. How’s Bob?’

  ‘He’s been having headaches,’ I answered, wondering if my tone was not verging on cruelty.

  Evie Longoria was one of those women whom one would never wish to hurt, and yet somehow, it seemed she was forever drawing cruelty to her person.

  ‘Well,’ she said, rising to her feet, ‘we all have our crosses to bear.’

  There was something in her tone that wished to injure me, her smile a half-finished thing, her eyes rueful. She began to approach my door so as to see herself out, looking back at me as she did so. I resented the inadequacy she aroused in me. There was something like hatred now in her gaze. She backed out the door, and I could almost hear on her lips effendi.

  So I crossed the hall to Eleanor’s, and she was not having my complaints, as I was a mature and responsible adult, and should know how to manage my affairs.

  ‘You probably led her on all this time,’ she said, in regards to Longoria. ‘You men are silly enough, but women, well, I have to say they’re sillier, most times.’

  This last pronouncement seemed to exhaust the possibilities of conversation. I sipped my amaretto. And the look she gave me was one I would have placed as being somewhere between fancying a tumble in the sack and wonderment as to why God made such creatures as myself.

  ‘Well,’ I ventured to ask, ‘how are things with you?’

  Things might have been less than satisfactory for Eleanor, her kitchen in disarray, the counter a horror of heaps of unwashed dishes and food left out and what not. If the woman was not the most fastidious of housekeepers, she was no slob, either and so, one could only surmise she had her reasons for her inattentiveness to the room’s condition.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I have this sense of foreboding, like something bad is going to happen. Maybe Bob has a brain tumour. Maybe somebody will shoot the prez. Maybe the next flu bug will wipe us all out. You could fall in love with a woman and she whisk you away.’

  ‘Why, would that go hard on your feelings?’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself, dearie. It’s the woman I’d pity.’

  ‘Alright then, what’s really eating you?”

  Eleanor gave me another look. None of my beeswax.

  ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘Prentiss seems to have a new lease on life. If there’s a woman who gets even more of a kick out of reducing men to mincemeat than she does, I haven’t met her.’

  ‘Can you believe it,’ Eleanor countered, ‘she tells me she’s lonely. She’s getting older and this frightens her to death. Her looks, you see. And she still can’t settle down with Ralph. The idea gives her the willies. And then Ralph calls me up, practically in tears, at wit’s end. He knows Marjerie and Phillip are boffing one another senseless like there’s no tomorrow, and then the wench she’s just going to show at his place and announce that it’s time to play house, like there’s nothing going on, and even if there is, it’s nothing he should worry about. Good God, Randall, when do people ever get wise to themselves? She sort of overdoes it, you know. That’s really her problem. Otherwise she’s not such a bad girl. And then me, well, I’m not much better. Still carrying a torch for Phillip. The effing arsehole. But you’ll be pleased to know, my good man, that I’m behaving. I’m a lady. Can only take so much humiliation. There are limits. Even for this old girl.’

  And here, the good woman, she of the gilded curls and pompadours, patted her heart as if she were having a case of the vapours.

  Her New Routine

  The world might have been dying, capitals in trauma, outbacks seething, but Marjerie Prentiss’s new variety routine trumped it all. She had, that morning, wound herself and Dundarave in a sheet each, yes, in imitation of Roman dress; and there were garlands, too, purchased, presumably, from a florist. And then, so outfitted, she and her swain had pranced up and down the Traymore hall, intoning carpe diem all the while. It brought a smile to Eleanor who stuck her head out. It flustered Eggy who did not mind hoopla, but this seemed de trop. God only knew what Mrs Petrova thought of it, if she was even aware of what truly went on in her asylum. Mid-afternoon, and Eggy in the Blue Danube said: ‘Why, it puts me in mind of the amateur theatrics the good folk of my hometown used to stage.’

  ‘When?’ asked Dubois, ‘back when you were feeling up the wenches and popping grapes in your mouth, oh round about Nero’s time?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Phillip,’ I said, ‘is building me shelves.’

  ‘How nice of him,’ said Dubois.

  ‘At no charge, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be a cost,’ Dubois observed, ‘only in what currency?’

  ‘Well, from what you tell me,’ Eggy mused, ‘the woman is into some risqué behaviour.’

  ‘You wish,’ said Dubois, ‘but there’s your answer, Randall. Him. Just send the old bugger to her and he’ll pay your debt.’

  ‘Are you trying to kill me off?’ Eggy beamed.

  ‘It’s crossed my mind,’ Dubois drolled.

  Behind Enemy Lines

  It was irregular, to say the least, Prentiss and Dundarave already in situ, the latter nursing a beer. At a glance, one could see that his eyes were bloodshot, though his demeanor was cordial.

  ‘Calhoun,’ he said, with a sloppy grin.

  Prentiss nodded, her mind busy. Red button-up sweater. The Cleopatra bangs. In fact, the Blue Danube seemed rather crowded; Gregory, Cassandra, and Elias were entertaining a young couple whom I guessed were just over from Greece, and were either family or friends; and who were looking over the place they had obviously heard about. Antonio stood at their table with a coffee pot. I grabbed a table of my own. The bright sun showed up the smudges in the window glass. Now and then the wind screeched.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dundarave, ‘don’t be stand-offish. We’ve got room.’

  He waved me over, reveller in charge of revelment. He gave Prentiss a look, one that said there was no telling about people; that life could be so much simpler if its constituents had a notion of how to relax. And with some show that it was, after all, a bit of bother, I exchanged my table for theirs.

  ‘I’ll have those shelves for you soon,’ Dundarave announced, as I took a chair.

  And from his tone I had reason to believe that, in regards to those shelves, he had lost interest.

  Antonio walked over, his eyes disguising their own intelligence.

  ‘Ko-fee?’ he asked me.

  ‘Hell, have a beer,’ Dundarave suggested.

  ‘I’ll pass,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll have some more coffee,’ Prentiss’s dull voice boomed.

  ‘Sure,’ said Antonio, ‘no problem.’

  He topped up the woman’s cup and then left us, imparting to me a look of infinite pity.

  ‘We were discussing fellati
o,’ Prentiss said, dead watery eyes burning holes in mine.

  She was the sort of woman, so Eleanor said, who would always display her charms to best advantage, despite the hand-me-down clothes she liked to wear. Somehow that sweater, buttoned primly to her throat, sheathed endless delight.

  ‘Priming the pump, as it were,’ Dundarave chimed in, ‘a lost art.’

  The man was pleased with his witticism. In any other circumstance, I might have thought myself among like-minded friends; in this instance, I was appalled. I allowed Cassandra to distract me. Her countenance seemed so sweet, as there she was, tickled to death with her company. It was the most animated I had seen her eyes in a while. Elias wore a goofy smile, he the last man in the world to think of bringing anyone harm. Gregory had the look of a saint who would play down his own substantial contribution to some successful venture. Antonio had one foot in the old world and one in the new.

  ‘Look,’ said Dundarave, indicating me, ‘I think he’s a little nervous.’

  ‘Why should he be?’ Prentiss wondered.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘he’s been around. Haven’t you?’

  If it were possible for dead watery eyes to sparkle, they had just done so. It seemed that what there was of air in the place would suffocate me.

  ‘Sex keeps you young,’ she said.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Dundarave, ‘I’m a regular teen.’

  ‘You do have a knack,’ I said to Prentiss, ‘of making light of wickedness.’

  ‘Who? Me wicked?’

  ‘Well, aren’t you? And proud of it?’

  ‘Hang on there, boy,’ said Dundarave, ‘let’s not get carried away.’

  Even so, I would have wagered he was eagerly anticipating trouble.

  ‘Well, what if I am,’ Prentiss cheerfully countered, ‘you like it. He likes it. Everyone likes it. I’m in tune with the times. I’m all for death squads. Get those loons before they get us. You have a problem with that?’