The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  ‘I’ll have a coffee,’ I said, without looking into Mercedes’ eyes, fearful of what I might see in them.

  ‘Yes but, what’s your excuse?’ Eggy still wished to know.

  And why was the world so indifferent to his wishes? Had it not yet been ascertained that he was a hanging judge; that Moonface was his complementary function for all that she was more than likely on her backside on a tropical beach, and in the embrace of a pretender?

  ‘None,’ I answered.

  ‘Says you.’

  ‘Now boys,’ Dubois tut-tutted.

  ‘New President,’ I said, ‘can’t decide whether he’s the leader of the free world or a satirist.’

  ‘We’ve covered this ground, already,’ Dubois observed, ‘and what matters is if they’re going to play a game of hockey, tonight, or just go through the motions.’

  Dubois referred to his beloved Habs, those low-lifes who were currently self-destructing. The look in his glittering blue eyes suggested he had seen it coming all along, his belief in the good sense of the American people still rather shaky but not yet shattered. I would spare that belief of his the fatal body blow it deserved.

  ‘Yes but,’ Eggy interjected, winding up to thunder, raising his finger, ‘there was a mutiny and the coach was blindsided.’

  ‘Could be,’ Dubois mused.

  And it could have been that Eggy had not the game of hockey in his squirrelly mind.

  It was evening in the Blue Danube, Animal Table reconvened. Antonio did the honours on the floor. Miss Meow was reading a newspaper. La Presse. Quotidien montréalais. I was just in from a puff outside on the terrasse, and in the course of that puff, two goals had been scored, none of them by the Habs. Dubois gave me a look. He squelched a guffaw.

  ‘Merde,’ he said.

  Eggy’s chin had raised his chest, and so he missed the disaster unfolding on the ice.

  I had passed the afternoon on my couch, Eleanor at my side. Now and then she sobbed for no discernible rhyme or reason. She had not the slightest bit of interest in March Madness or college basketball, all that American hoopla. Now and then she placed my hand on her knee. Now and then I gave her a consoling squeeze.

  ‘God, they’re ugly,’ she intermittently observed of mid-western tall and gangly physiques, the hair close-cropped, the faces Teutonic and humourless.

  Replicas of the Stars and Stripes were stitched to every jersey, without exception.

  She understood Florida, so she would claim, but Minnesota or Oklahoma? She had lost the sartorial Dundarave to the machinations of Prentiss. She had lost Dubois to Dubois. At least she could say she had not lost me, as she had not really had me, so to speak. After a while, she sighed and summoned up a sloppy kiss for my person, and then drolled: ‘Don’t know what you see in any of this, but I’m going.’

  ‘My youth,’ I said.

  ‘My arse,’ she said.

  She shimmied out in her pompadours, thoroughly disgusted. And my eyes must have closed, and I must have dreamed something; and when I next woke I was terrified—for no rhyme or reason. I hoped Animal Table was in session. And it was, and there was comfort in this.

  ‘Well, what’s the score?’

  Eggy had come to, his homuncular peepers blinking.

  Dubois guffawed.

  ‘It’s a catastrophe,’ Dubois offered, by way of catching Eggy up to speed.

  ‘Oh well,’ Eggy shrugged.

  He looked around the café for an attractive woman to ogle, and there was none. Miss Meow did not rate.

  ‘Oh damn,’ he said, ‘it’s the Albanian.’

  ‘Eggeee,’ Antonio sing-songed, passing by, ‘we love you.’

  ‘But he’s half-Italian,’ I corrected.

  ‘Little good it does him,’ Eggy snorted.

  His peepers fluttered. It looked like he might swoon.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Dubois queried.

  ‘Of course, I’m alright. I was just between someone’s legs, that’s all.’

  ‘I hope it was worth it,’ Dubois said.

  ‘Always,’ Eggy responded, if a little grimly.

  Along with the wine, melancholy had by now settled in my gut. In my mentations, the dead sounded off. Old friends. The Howards, the Klopstocks. Jack Swain. My first and only wife. Fast Eddy, too. There was the absent Moonface, Eggy’s complementary function. A game of hockey on TV was exceedingly unimportant. It might snow, overnight, and the next morning the ground seem virgin. On the terrasse, as I stood there and puffed, geese flew overhead in loose formation, there in the darkening sky; and to their calls, I exulted. For no rhyme or reason. A child holding on to his father’s hand had noticed them, too, pointing upwards. One of life’s little, unscripted moments that might or might not attach to memory in someone’s dodgy old age.

  ‘Well,’ said Eggy, ‘what’s the score now?’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Dubois answered.

  ‘Oh, that bad,’ Eggy responded.

  It was time to order a meal before the wine destroyed us.

  Crows called from one end of the sky to the other, contrarians to a feather. It snowed, as was forecast. I made coffee. And then, as was sometimes my wont, I took a cup of it to the window at the end of the Traymore hall, birds, squirrels, cats and dog my metaphysics. Heavy, weary steps on the stairs. And why, it was Dundarave not so sartorial, returning from a late night of it. His grin was briefly sheepish, his bleary eyes carved from stone. He raised a hand in greeting, one that simultaneously warded off questions. Even so, I smelled the blues bar on him, and possibly Jarnette. Perhaps she had allowed the man to do some of the heavy lifting as pertained to her pleasuring. One assumed that Prentiss would have something to say in regards to her swain’s lateness and prowess, too proud to admit to jealousy, but just petty enough to engineer a catty observation or two. Dundarave unlocked a door and was gone. Plumbing. Dubois had just gone for a whiz. In my digs again, I put on Faure’s Requiem. The music suited my mood. Fallen leaves, sweatered girls, football—was all that the boy I once was? All those amorphous longings. The sweet sissboombahs of an imperishable civic order. At precisely which moment did I cease to believe women in loafers and men in hush puppies? Famished, I prepared a pot of oatmeal. As I buttered and sugared a bowl of the gruel, I was treated, so to speak, to another blast from the past: my parents’ loveless kitchen that I always knew would not break my spirit but that would attune me to the hypocrisies of love and the ephemeralities of lust.

  A Woman in White

  Someone knocked. And it was Marjerie Prentiss all in white, but barefoot. High-collared, somewhat faded blouse, the buttons mother of pearl. Capris.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re in.’

  Dead watery eyes mocked. Her eyes were a mounted challenge. And yet, given that her bangs very nearly reached those eyes, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Moe of Three Stooges provenance.

  ‘Needing sugar again?’ I drolled.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘just cruising. Phillip was out catting all night, and now he’s crashed.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘You always keep me standing here.’

  ‘I’m busy reading.’

  ‘Reading?’

  One almost heard the nyuk-nyuks of a Moe in her dully booming voice.

  ‘A verse written by a Roman who’s having trouble getting it up.’

  ‘Ah, a tragic lament.’

  ‘No, some jesting at his own expense for the amusement of his god.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘There’s more to the ancients than we credit them for.’

  ‘Are you going to invite me in or not?’

  I shrugged. I watched as she occupied the couch. There was a pile of books on the coffee table. Plato. The British-French wars. American imperialism. Marjerie Prentiss gave each a cursory thumbing-through, and none seemed to gain her interest. I put it to her: ‘So, did you ever watch someone die?’

  And she, caught a little off-guard, had not. />
  ‘Did you ever have a deeply metaphysical conversation with a child?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No, but I continue to believe it’s possible.’

  ‘And you,’ she asked, ‘did you ever achieve mystic union whilst having sex?’

  What, was she making promises? The lilac tree in Mrs Petrova’s yard was sprouting shoots. The sparrows were burbling. Time for glee and the old maypole.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, a touch evasive.

  ‘Will you roll me one of your cigarettes?’

  ‘I suppose I could.’

  ‘Well then, why don’t you?’

  And she sat there and smoked the cig, her touring eyes on reconnaissance, she giving me her Cleopatra profile, what with those bangs she sported. It seemed the conversation had nowhere to go, and I had no intention of winding up in bed. If she had had any idea of what she wished to get from her visit, she either decided there was nothing to get or it was clear to her that I was in no mood to cooperate. She shrugged.

  ‘Hey, it’s been a hoot,’ she said.

  ‘Likewise.’

  She might have stepped out of a beatnik poem, its heroine. She might have been some novel’s slutty housewife, one bored beyond any language’s capacity to measure. Even so, as she fascinated herself, she was incapable of the bored state. Or so I supposed. She was, of course, working her magic; and I had an image in mind of a bewildered Priapus, a silly and twisted grin on his mug. I attempted to telepathically convey to her that she was near wearing out her welcome; that I had things to do. She got the hint.

  ‘Ta-ta,’ she said, as she rose from the couch, and on the heels of her feet, was comically sinuous.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ she added, as she went out the door.

  Now here was Dubois poking his head in. He gave me a look, one to which he was entitled, seeing as he had just witnessed Prentiss absconding with my integrity.

  ‘Busy, busy,’ he clucked.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Are you fucking her?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Alright then. Look, are we on for Quebec City or not? In other words, are you up for Eggy and high maintenance? Is this thing a go?’

  ‘Sure. I already said so.’

  ‘I just want to be clear on it, that’s all. I’ll do some checking around for rental cars. For now, I won’t bother you with such things. When the time comes, I’ll let you know what’s what.’

  ‘Look, I can help—’

  ‘No, that’s fine. Really. See you later at the café.’

  Moonface Debriefed

  Mid-afternoon, a cold bite to the air, and the Blue Danube was quiet, Cassandra wiping the sides of the soup tureen. Eggy snoozed. His slumped inverted triangle of a face was transparent: that he was guilty, guilty in respect to all his sins, only that his lips slyly demurred. Dubois studied some mind-teaser of a newspaper. An article, no doubt, on derivatives. Now derivatives was one those words that had gotten to be one of those words; I visualized it flying around bat-like (irregardless of the fact that it was March) at the onset of dusk, the sky a darkening blue. I slid into place at Animal Table, which brought Eggy to wakefulness. He raised a finger and was about to thunder or perhaps orate verse, but then thought better of it.

  ‘Effing hell,’ he said.

  Cassandra, leaving the soup tureen, moved to one of her potted ferns. She was singing to herself the lyrics of some pop tune on the radio, the TV programmed to a soccer match. Dubois looked on, he a paternal figure, his charges in each their proper niche.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked me, archly civil.

  ‘Fine,’ I answered..

  Eggy’s cheese pies untouched, the bottle half-full or half-empty, depending on one’s theology, I was in the mood for a vigorous discussion of X, Y and Z; my fellow conspirators were not. No, it was a sleepy cantina in a sleepy border town, never mind that drug wars raged all about; that the dogs on the street were rabid.

  ‘New President,’ I said, attempting some gambit or another, ‘is already up for a lynching. That didn’t take long.’

  No comment. No takers.

  ‘T-shirts are going the rounds in Israel, ones that read 1 SHOT 2 KILLS. Any guesses?’

  Eggy shrugged in the vernacular. Nope. Dubois waited for the kicker.

  ‘Arab women who are preggers are targets of opportunity.’

  ‘Hang the bastards,’ Eggy thundered.

  Dubois simply looked out the window. Perhaps he wished I would keep to writing poetry or something.

  ‘Any news of Moonface?’ I asked.

  This drew a blank, an elongated geometrical construct, one that stretched from hell to eternity, along which three pilgrims, each an unhorsed knight—Eggy, Dubois and I—continued to heed the rumoured grail of love, but that it was a slog.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Dubois said, ‘of Moonface. I was thinking of her as an old woman, getting debriefed. What I mean to say is I see her seated at some table, all her old lovers seated with her, and everyone’s comparing notes as to what they’ve been and where they’ve been and so forth. There’s a song to this effect sung by Renée Claude. Maybe you could end your book on this note.’

  Dubois guffawed, pleased with his pun.

  ‘What book?’ I asked.

  ‘The one you’re supposed to be writing but evidently are not.’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  ‘Oh, are you writing a book?’ asked Eggy, the soul of mischief.

  ‘No. So don’t worry your pretty little head about it.’

  ‘Eff off.’

  ‘I can’t quite remember the lyrics,’ said Dubois, ‘but I wrote them down somewhere. I’ll pass them on to you.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ I answered, endeavouring a polite response.

  Once in a while, Dubois got so awfully earnest. He was vain and impossibly handsome, and he truly meant well. Eggy, on the other hand, was a rotter through and through.

  Equinoctial Ceremonies

  Yet again, I missed out on the action, as when a pistol-packing Prentiss not so long ago, wearing only a pink boa, traipsed about in the Traymore hall. This time around, or so I was told, the action began with me, even if I had been dead to the world, Eleanor and Prentiss regarding me on the couch. Some mirthful debate as to whether I should be wakened, Eleanor all for letting sleeping dogs lie. So now it was the morning after, and the summing up was underway, there in Eleanor’s kitchen, commodious room, Dubois and Eggy in attendance. Eleanor, banging a spoon against a pot, had roused me, exhorting me to come and get it. Hotcakes, sausages. Eggy chuckled, bits of sausage falling to his bib with which he was outfitted, his open maw—target zero—still pristine. Even so, he was in possession of some intelligence that, sooner or later, was going to impinge on me. I steeled myself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dubois, slabs of hotcake neatly skewered on his fork, ‘you should’ve seen it. And when Eggy saw it, he fainted.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But you did. At first I thought you were having one of your episodes, the way your blood pressure goes and falls off a cliff. I figured you had no idea what you were seeing, but then it dawned on you—’

  ‘What do you mean I had no idea? Think I was born yesterday?’

  ‘A few centuries ago, maybe—’

  ‘Eff off.’

  Even so, and though he was getting the worst of this exchange, Eggy beamed.

  ‘What, for God’s sake,’ I put it to those stalwarts, ‘are you on about?’

  ‘Why, hanky-panky,’ said Eggy, his finger raised, ‘sport in the hen house.’

  Dubois guffawed.

  ‘A little divertissement you might say,’ Eleanor drolled, her lipstick bright, her curls gilded, her voice shimmering with mystery.

  I began rolling a couple of cigarettes.

  ‘Yes but,’ Eggy said, ‘Suzie Q—’

  I shook my head, evincing the air of a man who knew he was being toyed with.

  ‘Yes, she gave it her all,
’ Eleanor attempted to explain, ‘but in the end—’

  ‘Gave what all and to whom?’ I interrupted.

  ‘She was polishing His Nibs’s knob,’ said Eleanor, like a woman who had seen everything and would write the primer.

  ‘Did I hear right?’ I asked.

  ‘You did.’

  Well then, Prentiss must have had her latest revels, good time had by all, only I slept through the festivities.

  ‘You missed the party,’ Eleanor crowed, relieving me of one of the cigarettes and promptly lighting it, ‘not that anything happened that you haven’t seen before, I’m sure.’

  ‘Dundarave done up as a Roman—’ Dubois said.

  ‘In a sheet,’ Eggy hooted.

  ‘Dyed red,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘They were taking turns,’ Dubois duly noted.

  I gave Eleanor a look as if to say, what, you too?

  She answered, and it seemed she blushed: ‘No, dear. Not me.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Au contraire,’ Eleanor rebuffed, ‘sure you do. The effing minx invited. We watched. How they roped Suzie Q into it, there you’ve got me.’

  I threw up my arms and shrugged.

  ‘Why,’ asked Eggy, child-like, ‘do you think it was very bad? Will they drop the bomb?’

  I ignored the homunculus.

  ‘Well, I guess I wouldn’t have put it past her,’ I sighed, and then continued: ‘So, you all enjoyed yourselves? Slave girls tooting on flutes? Dundarave festooned with floral wreaths? Were you served deadly mushrooms? I wouldn’t put that past her, either. But I guess you weren’t as here you all are.’

  What began as an innocent query on my part got dismissive; and, after a spate of silence, Eleanor answered: ‘Oh, I don’t know—’

  ‘And Eggy,’ said Dubois, keen to retain in memory what comic highlights of the scene had been on offer, ‘when he came to, he lit out of there as fast as his pins could carry him.’

  Eggy beamed.

  ‘Anyway, that’s enough,’ said Eleanor, suddenly prim.

  ‘No it’s not,’ Eggy thundered, ‘more details, please. Why, as Bob says, I didn’t see it all.’