by Norm Sibum
—So shall we hear of shagging a gaucho on the pampas, of headhunting in the Amazon? The origins of the Peruvian flute are … fill in the blank. Calhoun, you are bad, and bad, you may darken the brow of Moonface the educator. No, you read of Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici rulers who lorded it over Tuscany; how he, a stinking drunk keeping to a stinky bed, surrounded by his bum boys and wenches, nonetheless repealed the more onerous tax burdens, circumvented the church to some extent, liberalized the laws and lightened up the general atmosphere of tight-arsed Florence; whereas his pious dunderhead of a father had brought about one catastrophe after another. There is, in this, a cautionary tale, history, as ever, paradox. Eggy, I suppose, is in his bed, convalescing from his fall. Dubois has glitter in his glittering blue eyes: boffo idea—to give Moonface the Animal Table floor and free rein, if only for an hour. There is a knock. Why, from the sounds of it, it has to be Prentiss. Shall I answer? Shall I activate protective camouflage? Nobody here but us grotty, pimple-faced scholars. In which case, you don’t want to know … For yes, we sweat, get clammy-handed. We forget how to breathe when a woman would proclaim herself as Venus, one seeking martyrs. And it is Prentiss, wouldn’t you know? And what a sight she is, from the pumps on her feet to the cloche headgear, the hat angled smartly over those ludicrous bangs. ‘Hullo.’ ‘What, are we doing a scene from the Great Gatsby?’ ‘That’s close. Not bad. I’m in mourning.’ Her voice is a sonic boom. Evidently, she spots the question in my eyes and she clarifies: ‘For high old times and robber barons.’ ‘I think, my dear, you’re out of synch.’ ‘I suppose I am. But so are you. So’s everybody. And when everybody’s out of synch, anything goes. Want to go?’ ‘Go where?’ ‘You know, silly.’ ‘I think not.’ ‘Yes, well—’ ‘Sorry.’ ‘Don’t bother. I’ll go and bother Ellie. She’ll get a kick out of this.’ ‘I think she will.’ ‘Toodle-loo.’ And the woman is louche all the way to Eleanor’s door, and she just goes right through, without announcing herself. In fact, what has happened is that I have just been reminded that one woman’s objectification is another woman’s shenanigans.
—Of the pending marriage of Eleanor to Dubois, no word. Eleanor just says, ‘You know Bob. He’ll get around to it when he gets around to it. Not that he’s a procrastinator, he isn’t. He’s just circumspect. In the meantime, I’ll just keep on keeping on, being moi, and randy now and then. You know how it is.’ Well, I suppose I do, and if I do not, perhaps I ought to. But in any case, because the good woman rarely receives in her living room, the space purely a formality to be incurred on the way to her kitchen, it strikes me I have little of it by way of a topographical survey in my mentations and consequently, barely a mention of it in my notebooks. ‘I guess,’ I say to Eleanor in her kitchen, she smoking the ciggie I rolled for her, ‘maybe Bob’s distracted, what with Moonface back, what with Eggy having had another tumble. And don’t you think Prentiss has been even more weird than usual, of late, doing her flapper impersonation? I think so. Well, it’s the time of year when I begin to get these little bursts of Rome in my head—smells, tastes, sights, sounds. But no matter. It can’t possibly mean a thing to you. It’s a kind of affliction such as used to revisit tropical travellers by way of residual fevers after their travels were done. I suppose now one just pops a pill. You know, I can sit here and look at you and muse upon what we could get up to, and I’m sure there’s a pill for that, too, a shut-down pill. Yes, and when it comes to the pleasures, we Traymoreans are, on the whole, amateurs. We haven’t the perks of celebrity. Just an idle thought. Oh the odd thing or two frightens me, but what terrifies me most is emptiness. Are we empty creatures?’ ‘Avuncular, Randall. How do I know and why would I care? As for Prentiss, yes, I’ll grant you she’s been a bit dolly lately. She brings out the mother in me. The wench wants mothering though, to be sure. She’s off the coke, by the way, so she told me. She was never really into it in the first place. A few house parties out in the boonies. Something with which to get a rise out of Ralph, only it got Phillip ballistic. Only I have to tell you, Randall me boy, Calhoun good sir, that thought of the wench brings me distinct unease, not because of what she can do to me, she can’t do anything to me or you, for that matter, she’s basically harmless, but—oh, I don’t know. Lost my train of thought. Maybe this is it: you see how old Eggy is but you don’t see his death. Know what I mean, jellybean? He could go another twenty years. Heaven help us. You and Moonface? I guess you’re still carrying a torch for that witless floozy. Even so, she’s at the beginning of the next leg of her journey. And it might be all downhill from here. Don’t give me that look. I know, I know—journey—another yuppie word. Don’t I know it? Now kiss me and bugger off.’
—It is my intention to meander over to the café at about seven and take a little wine, Animal Table in session, hockey playoffs on the TV. Who knows, Moonface might be working. And I do meander over, and I have a puff first before going inside; and I catch the hue of the evening sky. The trees that line the street are definitely up to something, branch tips knobbly. Commuters disembark from buses. And one separates the people that fill one’s eyes into categories: those who make a show of occupying their space and those who do not. Perhaps it has bearing on the future. And I go in as I have on so many evenings, thinking nothing of it, thinking nothing of myself; and I expect to offer and to receive breezy greetings as I settle in. Dubois grins, but it is a grin born of a crisis sort of grin; and he is holding Eggy’s arm in a peculiar way; and why, yes, he seems to be feeling for a pulse, Eggy’s lips and chin more green than blue. How frail, how bewildered, how chuffed Eggy is. How very tired. My questions for Dubois are unspoken, but he gets my drift. Has he called for an ambulance? And if not, should he not? It is looking bad. Is Dubois gambling here, cutting it extra fine? No, we will wait a bit and see where things go, and anyway, what with the hockey game, what with Moonface on the premises, and Eggy will not wish to go to the hospital just now. Indeed, Moonface is working a shift, a frightened grin drawing her lips tight against her incisors, dark eyes clouded. Miss Meow smirks. Lovers each inspect hand-held electronic thingamajigs. Gregory, having his dinner, is clearly resigned to the prospect of Eggy dying in his restaurant. And it seems the old man has urinated; and with apologies, Dubois asks Gregory if there is a mop. Gregory gets the mop and he swipes at the floor. Well, I would break the silence. ‘Has he eaten, today? We should get something in him. Some juice, maybe. Anything.’ Dubois inquires of the old man: ‘Hey, you still with us? Want some juice? A tumble in the sack?’ Eggy’s head tilted at a certain angle, and that troubled countenance of his—why, it resembles too much the crucified Christ in paintings I have seen. And even the two-pointer stuffed in his pocket seems wilted. ‘How about some coffee then?’ Dubois persists, but gently, and with the air of a man for whom a recurrent crisis has become routine. A weak Eggy response suggests he might spring for that. And Dubois signals Moonface, indicating that she should bring some coffee, which she does, setting the cup before the homunculus with an optimistic flourish. Somehow he manages to drink, Dubois supervising the effort. Perhaps Eggy has just seen the shades in Elysium and considers the storied place overly hyped. ‘How about some sugar?” I suggest. Eggy shrugs. Hey, it is a sign of life. I grab a sugar packet, tear it open, dispense the sweet granules. Eggy looks on, amused. But now he quaffs. Now his countenance clears. Mischief regains his eyes. The hockey game underway, well, is there a score yet? Will they drop the bomb? And Moonface, why, she does not seem much changed. She may as well have not gone away, for all the difference it has made.
Eggy, that’s a depressing thought. Effing hell, how should he know? And the dear girl goes and attends to Miss Meow, whom she considers sweet, though I do not see how she can. Still, life goes on, n’est-ce pas? Moonface returns to Animal Table. How are things? And if sweetness is wanted, Eggy would have some cheesecake, and, of course, it is not a proper dinner but it is a meal. ‘Ummm,’ says his waitress. A few moments later, and here is the sweetness: thick slab of cheesec
ake, monster strawberry on top; and Eggy looks upon it with the air of a man welcoming an old friend. Now Dubois needs a puff, and out he goes, and in the dusky light of evening he puffs and chills; and perhaps he ponders the transitory nature of life; its beauties and its perils. Eggy is methodical, wrecking that slab of cake. He is on about something now, and yes, certain bastards ought to hang; and it does not appear that Moonface, however high up she got on those Bolivian mountains, suffered any untoward effects. No seizures of the kind she may have expected to have. I mean, boffing at 10,000 feet … hoo hoo … maybe she’s cured. By now, Eggy has fairly demolished what was on his plate, his fork pushing the strawberry around until he can get a purchase on it; and yet, a spell is broken. Even the bloom that was on her tan has worn off, and Moonface is, what, a rather ordinary young woman of predictable plans and wherewithal. Silly me. Silly us. Ridiculous Traymorean males who, by dint of their collective breathing (Eggy’s episode notwithstanding), would maintain this chameleon-like creature as well as the dreams with which she would trouble herself. ‘Well, young lady?’ Dubois puts it to her, having had his smoke, reseating himself. Moonface shrugs. The night sky is upon us. Miss Meow has miaowed. Couples have dined and carried on (and loners, too), all oblivious to the little drama that was being played out at Animal Table, the crisis so much water under the bridge. Perhaps we will get to Quebec City in May, Eggy, Dubois and I. Of a sudden I recall that Dundarave never got around to those shelves he would build for me, but who effing cares? … Then, if some patriot stern and honour-laden stands forth, the shouting ends, the people stop to hear; his words bring back the public peace …Virgilian words. To do with Poseidon calming the winds Aeolus let loose on the sea, imperilling Aeneas and his ships and his crews.
Demon Love VII
—But did it really happen? Yes, and one minute I am in dreamland, and the next, and Eleanor is smothering me with hot, tearful kisses; and it is not to initiate sex so much as it is to quell the fright she has just received. Naturally enough, I am irritated. ‘Oh Randall,’ she wails, her bosom a blast furnace, her eyes two yawning gaps in her head repulsing light. Why do I not remember to lock my door at nights? At three in the morning or thereabouts, I had drifted off, the movie I was watching nothing but drugs and ludicrous sex and martial arts cops; and it was devoid, in the absolute sense, of anything remotely registering an aesthetic. And yet, would it have gone any better for me had I watched Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and with Death, discussed cinema? As a stricken Eleanor regarded me with an admixture of impatience and despair, Sally McCabe—but just for an instant—flickered in my mentations, she with her semaphoring pom-poms. She would alert me, but to what? ‘For God’s sake, Eleanor.’ ‘Calhoun—’ It is to say that, in pronouncing my name, she managed to reduce it to the monosyllabic; but that she must inform me of the medics and cops on the way, or they would be soon enough, Bob on the phone. Cops? Medics? What gives? ‘Phillip’s dead,’ she whispered, ‘but maybe Marj isn’t.’ And to the incomprehension she must have seen in my eyes, she said: ‘Oh Randall.’ I rose to a sitting position, and she had the full run of an embrace with me; and then she allowed me to extricate myself from the couch. Now I am in the Blue Danube, attempting normalcy, Cassandra upbeat, preparing for the day to come. Otherwise, the rain comes down pissily and without conviction. Music pours from the radio like raw sewage, the effect it produces in me yet more disgust with the capitalist game; but that I am no communist and I have not a clue as to what to suggest as an alternative to a rigged game. (I have no head, as Billy Bly would tell me, for this sort of thing.) And for some reason, and there is no rhyme or reason for it, I am put in mind of a woman with whom I once had an affair back in my twenties; how she liked to crunch on frozen peas for a treat, and I had thought it peculiar. She crunched, however, with so much gusto that it was endearing, her teeth strong, grin lascivious. Frozen peas, indeed. I only got a glimpse of the lovers Prentiss and Dundarave as, just then, cops and medics came trooping up the stairs like some counter-insurgency, Dubois having let them in. Prentiss was wearing one of her long nightshirts, and it was hiked up on her thighs so that one could see the rounding curve of a buttock cheek. She was on her side and turned to her swain, he on his back and staring up at the ceiling. It is all I can say of it, numbness everything for the moment; but that Eleanor kept repeating: ‘I knew it. I just knew it.’ Well, she must have known something somehow some way as yes, seven in the morning is not an hour when one might venture out to pay a courtesy call. In any case, coming on the lovers like that so still on their love-mattress, she had added to the string of corpses it had been her lot to discover. I left her and Dubois to the cops; and I suppose that Prentiss lives, Dundarave very much dead. And I wonder if there is anything to the fact that—back in the early days of her tenure in the Traymore—I used to address the woman in my mind as Ms Prentiss, and have long since dropped the courtesy title. Well, whatever. Hoo hoo. As Eggy might say. Speaking of whom, he had been nowhere in sight during all the commotion, and I worried for him. And I still have Moonface’s keys.
—Dubois pokes his head in the Blue Danube door, wondering if he is allowed, as it is not yet opening hour. I wave him in. And he settles to the table, folding his hands on the table top, his eyes almost those of a bon vivant. ‘What a morning,’ he guffaws. ‘Well,’ he continues, more soberly now, ‘to fill you in, from what I understand, Ralph is on his way into the city. Eleanor phoned him. Marjerie is in the hospital. I guess Phillip’s in the morgue, and Eggy slept through it all, so I was able to establish. He should be coming around pretty soon. Mrs Petrova got into a state, what with all the traffic. Eleanor will be off to the hospital when the cops finish with her. They’ve really been grilling her. What did she know and when she did know it sort of thing. As if she was supposed to keep it all from happening and was remiss in her duty. There’s always something out there to make somebody expendable and I guess Dundarave was elected, because Marjerie couldn’t choose which of the two men she was going to spend her life with. I don’t know if that’s a theory or not, but it’s what I’m thinking. What we used to call the hand of God, only I stopped believing in that hand before I even got to university. I suppose you have your own ideas.’ ‘Not really,’ I answer. Dubois shrugs. And I note that his jowels are getting loose. And I begin composing a letter in my head—to Jack Swain, old friend of mine from the early days. Dear Jack, it’s been a while. But keep an eye out for a departed soul soon to join you in your realm, a certain Mr Phillip Dundarave. He was not really a good man and he was not really so terribly bad. I didn’t like the way he played with the feelings of my good friend Eleanor. Anyway, he’s likely to be a little disorientated, this martyr to Venus and town and country Pan. Be a dear and give the man a leg up until he gets acclimatized. Gotta run. All the best.—RQC.
—And now Eggy is upon us with all the pomp and circumstance of a homunculus, being Eggy; Animal Table has its quorum. ‘Well, does the wench live?’ he wants to know. ‘So far as we know,’ Dubois replies, bending to his soup. ‘That doesn’t seem a very enthusiastic answer,’ Eggy notes, and then: ‘Oh, Cassandra. Spinach pie, please.’ It seems a miracle that Eggy leaves it at that; usually, his ordering of a meal is an excuse for theatre. ‘Yes but,’ he says, ‘so what happened? Very simply, just tell me what happened.’ ‘That’s what we’ve been discussing,’ Dubois answers, his tone neutral, ‘and we don’t rightly know. Suicide? Murder-suicide? Maybe. Randall thinks it was an overdose.’ ‘Oh, one of those,’ says Eggy, the word overdose almost foreign to him, though he has been knocking back the wine for centuries. ‘And how are you feeling?’ Dubois inquires of him, rather pointedly. ‘Well, I’m not going to drop dead yet,’ the homunculus thunders. He regards me, his finger raised: ‘And you’re coming, aren’t you, well, you know, to Mamselle MacReady’s little talk?’ ‘Of course,’ I answer, ‘like you, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ ‘Now don’t get cheeky. I don’t think she was a bad woman, that Prentiss gal. Seems to me the woman
liked being on her backside. Is that a crime? I don’t know, just suggesting.’
—I entered the Traymore, and climbed the stairs. Went straight to Eleanor’s in what seemed the unnatural silence of the place. Her door unlocked, I stepped inside and made note of some furnishings in her living room: the chesterfield, the complementary armchair; the rocker; the drop-leaf secretary with its maple veneer; the steamer trunk masquerading as a coffee table. And I was about to note the various potted plants and lamps and knickknacks, and the overall effect of these items in their aggregate when Eleanor emerged from her bedroom. ‘Calhoun,’ she drolled, ‘are you stalking me?’
Perhaps we both knew exactly why I was there. I had nothing but questions with which to counter the well-I-never-look in her placid eyes. Phillips’ dead, remember? Alright, you remember. In fact, you half-expected something like this would happen. But now that it’s happened, how has it affected us? What has his dying done to the Traymorean universe and its inhabitants? Could be Marjerie Prentiss has gotten her little triumph at last, unleashing her peculiar brand of cause and effect on people less evolved than she. Could be I’ve credited her with more powers than she actually possesses. Could be you’re the true beating heart of the Traymorean enterprise, after all, and it’s been in me all this time to watch your back, as the vernacular has it? Perhaps I’m yet again front and centre with my own absurdity. Surely, Eleanor R could read my mind, but she had no such mind-reading talent. She simply stood there in a formless, floor length nightgown, her gilded curls oddly still, she downright dowdy and not at her best. ‘Well,’ she, at length, offered, ‘now that you’re here, you may as well roll me a cig. I’ll break out the amber.’