Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “How—how much do I owe you again?”

  “Forty-nine dollars and thirty-three cents.”

  Rory considered. “You know, Tiran, at an average price of five dollars per sandwich, a fifteen-sandwich spondulix is worth seventy-five dollars. You’ll be making out pretty good if I pay you thirty spondulix.”

  “You, too, seeing as how it don’t cost you nowhere near five dollars just to make one lousy egg sandwich. And besides, you get to spread out the payment. It’ll probably take me a month to eat all these sandwiches. Val wants me to watch the old cholesterol, you know.”

  Full of sudden bravado, Rory whipped out a pen. “It’s a deal.”

  When Porter held the second spondulix, he craftily said, “Okay, now I’m gonna make sure these babies work as advertised. Give me an Atlantic City on white, hold the poker chips. Me and cucumber slices don’t get along.”

  “Sure thing, Tiran.”

  As Rory built the sandwich, he realized that he would somehow have to make change. So far there existed only two denominations of spondulix: the original and unique ten-sandwich electric bill, and several fifteen-sandwich napkins. Now he would have to create a third.

  Rory passed the wrapped sandwich to Porter and took the scribbled napkin in exchange. He put the napkin in the till, then scrawled a new one: One spondulix redeemable for Fourteen Sandwiches. This he returned to Porter.

  Porter nodded sagely. “I see, they just like food stamps.”

  “You got it, Tiran.”

  Porter smiled, satisfied. “All right, this is gonna work out fine.” Poised to exit, Porter paused. “These ain’t backed by the mob, are they, Rory?”

  Rory was shocked. “Of course not!”

  “Excellent! See you tomorrow then, my man.”

  Porter left. Rory tried to decide whether he should be relieved or worried. He no longer owed Porter any real money. With the flick of his pen he had erased one of his outstanding debts. However, a new spondulix had been created. But one had come back into the till. And the newest spondulix represented only fourteen sandwiches, not fifteen. But wait! The spondulix in the till would leave the store tomorrow in Nerfball’s pocket. Hydra’s heads! For every one cut off, two sprang up!

  By the end of tomorrow, Rory calculated, he would owe almost two hundred sandwiches to whoever possessed his spondulix. The single sandwich Porter had just redeemed was a pitiful chip off the Gibraltar of his obligations. But as his friend had reminded Rory, the sandwiches didn’t cost Rory as much to produce as the public valued them at. Oh, Lord, his head was spinning! Like a good-news/bad-news joke, every positive hid a negative, every downside showed an upside. Too much to contemplate. Only someone with a degree in higher economics could possibly unravel this mess.

  One thing Rory knew, however. Nerfball was going to have to do a lot of explaining tomorrow about his promiscuous exchange of spondulix for goods and services other than the specified sandwiches.

  But the next day brought Rory a change of heart. Although he teetered several times on the point of confronting Nerfball, each time he stopped himself. A certain desire to be morally honest stood in the way of any interrogation. After all, the spondulix really no longer belonged to Rory once he passed them over to Nerf, who had honestly earned them. The hard-working Beer Nut had every right to utilize them as best he could, for maximum return. Rory felt lucky he could get the man to employ his talents here at all, considering that he was technically violating the Beer Nuts credo, never work! No, all the blame sat squarely on Rory’s shoulders, and chastising the hapless Nerfball would solve nothing.

  Watching his sweaty employee transform heaps of coldcuts into works of art, Rory resigned himself once again, both to his past and to whatever might yet transpire.

  God, what a precarious existence this world afforded at best! And what a cockup Rory had made of his one and only life, ever since that day under the hot Mexican sun, before the eyes of the whole world.

  By the end of the day Rory’s existential angst had faded to a dull ache. Only one thing continued to puzzle him. What had prompted Nerfball suddenly to put the spondulix into general circulation? Such a move required more initiative than Rory had always assumed Nerfball could readily call upon. Had Rory underestimated Nerf all these years? Was he that bad a judge of character?

  Wait: could other, subtler minds be lurking behind this campaign?

  Rory shuddered as a phantom albino face leered at him.

  No customer tried to tender spondulix during the next several days. But finally one afternoon a group of workers from the Stahl Soap Corporation came in at shift’s end, smelling sweetly of their product. It was as if someone had opened a giant box of bath salts in the shop. At first Rory couldn’t suss out why they had traveled all the way over from Park Street down by the river, since that distance precluded an impulsive drop-in. Then they revealed the two spondulix they carried, and placed their order for thirty sandwiches.

  While he was slapping the heterogeneous sandwiches together—credibly, but without Nerfball’s finesse—Rory tried slyly to learn where they had gotten the spondulix. He couldn’t figure out what Nerfball might have traded for, since the man’s Ayurvedic tenets apparently did not include frequent bathing. Anyway, the Brewery lacked running water.

  At last Rory asked outright. “So, guys—where’d you get my coupons?”

  A skinny fellow who seemed capable of consuming an infinite amount of “free” but not inexpensive pickles spoke up around a mouthful of dill spears. “Harry Lieberman—you know Harry, he drives our company truck—well, Harry in his downtime hauled a bunch of stuff somewhere for those hippies that live in the old brewery, and they paid him with these. Harry gave ’em to me as payment for his bowling league dues. So I’m sharing them with the whole league.”

  Rory nearly sliced the tip of one finger off. Bad news, this. The exchanges were growing more complicated. Assign Rory himself the role of primary transmitter, Origin Node of spondulix. Nerfball occupied the second link in the chain of exchange. Tiran Porter and Harry Lieberman had parallel spots as third parties, people who for whatever reason obviously trusted in spondulix enough to accept them for future redemption without ever contacting Node One. Much worse, these bowlers here in the shop, fourth parties, also seemed willing to accept the spondulix without personal knowledge of Rory’s honesty or willingness to make good on them. Wasn’t this property a known characteristic of real money? Didn’t economists have some complicated way to measure circulation, the number of times money changed hands?

  Christ, this insane faith scared him! What were people thinking? How could they trust his personal signature on dozens of napkins roaming the city of Hoboken like prodigal children on Halloween, masquerading as real money. He had to abandon spondulix! But he couldn’t. His business would go under if he did.

  Piling slices of tomatoes atop rings of Bermuda onions in a stack as tall as his worries, Rory wondered where, when and how the farce would end.

  And in the back of his mind resided another, lesser worry. What were the Beer Nuts up to? First, purchases of electrical equipment, then haulage of (maybe) the same. Everything pointed to something dangerous, no doubt about it

  At home that night, feeding the voracious, fat-bellied Hello Kitty her kibble, Rory could think only of the unforeseeable entanglements that awaited him, lurking in the shadows of futurity like tall, featureless, hooded specters, fluid and wavery, their ectoplasmic spines curved into the shape of dollar-signs. His only hope: that his doom would materialize soon, cutting short the suspense.

  The next day Rory got his wish.

  And as with most such answered prayers, he derived little comfort from the event.

  Rory stood with his arms in dishwater up to his elbows. The clapper of the bell hung from the front door swung and sounded. He turned, soapy water dripping from his hands.

  Earl Erlkonig strode boldly into the shop with Suki Netsuke on his arm, and all Rory’s specters suddenly coalesced into a tangible form
.

  The couple paused at the counter. Both were smiling. On Netsuke’s ginger-colored face the expression was charming, spiced with just an agreeable hint of mischief. On Erlkonig’s hereditarily blanched face the proportions of the expression were reversed: mischief—nay, danger—outweighed any charm.

  The sight of Netsuke’s arm linked through Erlkonig’s knifed into Rory’s guts. But he straightened his back, wiped his hands dry, grinned painfully, and started toward them.

  Erlkonig anticipated Rory’s movements by trespassing under the hinged-bridge portion of the counter and closing with Rory near the sink.

  “Hey, Rory, my molecule, I’m paying a personal call to invite you to an Outlaw Party.”

  So. Here came the Trump announcing Armageddon. The hazy scheme had crystallized, proving just as frightening as Rory had feared. Anxiety gave way momentarily to annoyance, as from the bathroom came the distracting honking of Nerfball performing his regular Nasal Irrigations.

  An institution of several years’ standing, the Outlaw Party resembled a rave combined with a Hell’s Angels rally, tinged with Wigstock and Spring Break. Sans permit or permission, the Beer Nuts and other assorted fringe folks from as far off as Boston would take over a public location come nightfall on a grapevine-specified day, declaring the site a “Temporary Autonomous Zone.” Hordes of boho volunteers would string decorations, tap kegs, pile food on tables, roll joints, stack speakers and generally mount an Anarchist D-Day. Invitation to each Outlaw Party generally arrived by word of mouth among a select group. But after a certain critical mass of blabbers had been reached, the attendance always swelled to include the hoi polloi.

  The Hoboken police generally tolerated the random, infrequent Outlaw Party insofar as their authoritarian genes would allow, knowing that the motivation was sheer fun, not vandalism or riot. However, the rush of events often overstepped the limits of police tolerance in ways that the authorities could not ignore. Always beneath the jolly festivities grinned the face of Dame Chaos. Take the time the Nuts had chosen the Manhattan ferry station down near the PATH subway entrance for their site. Apparently the spectacle of a full orchestra atop the building’s roof, with stoned dancers threatening to fall off the gables and kill themselves, had been too much for the cops to stand. The subsequent dispersal of the revelers had eventually involved two fire companies and a contingent of National Guardsman.

  Rory supposed he was just getting older, but for some reason he didn’t relish the idea of an Outlaw Party as much as he once had. The prospect of confronting the police at this time in his life, when he was already guilty of perpetuating spondulix, rather knocked the wind out of his sails.

  Rory regarded Erlkonig’s inscrutable face: broad white African nose and tintless eyebrows, his smile so seemingly transparent, yet well-known to conceal depths of cunning. He sought to detect the exact magnitude of Erlkonig’s duplicity, but failed to register any accurate reading. Rory looked to Netsuke, hoping to discover in her demeanor any hidden traps in this invitation. But his ex-girlfriend had her head bowed over one of his shop fliers, her nimble fingers creasing it along mysterious lines. Lost in her art, she seemed oblivious to the conversation between the two men.

  Rory looked back to Erlkonig. He tried to work up a little resentment at the Chief Beer Nut for stealing his girl away, but couldn’t quite do it.

  “Oh, what the hell,” caved in Rory, his loneliness overcoming his suspicions. “Sure, I’ll come.”

  “Great, my moll. I knew we could count on you. And maybe you’ll contribute a little something—?”

  “No problem. I’ll make up a few platters.”

  Erlkonig brushed this offer away. “Ain’t real sandwiches I’m after, Rory. The food angle is pretty well covered. But we need to purchase a few other things, and our treasury is, like, empty.”

  “Earl, you know I’m always broke, too.”

  Erlkonig’s smile widened. “Ah, my moll, you’re too modest. All you have to do is write out a few more of those spondulix things you’ve been giving Nerfball, and we’re all in the long green.”

  Complete confirmation of Rory’s hunches did not make him happy. It did not cheer him to learn that Erlkonig had been the secret master behind Nerfball’s perversion of spondulix. Rather, he grew even more dismayed, once forced to acknowledge that his innocent fiscal brainchild had fallen into the clutches of a wily, intelligent, guileful kidnapper.

  “Earl, you’re asking me to spend wildly against an unknown future earnings stream. Every spondulix I write amounts to a loan drawn on potential profits I can’t even realistically project.”

  Erlkonig did not dismiss Rory’s assertion out-of-hand, but instead received the older man’s words with serious mien. He draped a comradely arm over Rory’s shoulder and steered him confidentially into a corner.

  “No, man, you’re all wrong. You see, ever since I heard how you was paying old Nerf I been thinking a lot about this whole matter. Doing some reading too. This money business gets very complicated, a lot more intense than most people realize. Take these spondulix of yours now, for instance. Experts would identify them as one step removed from commodity money, which is like if we were all to trade actual sloppy sandwiches back and forth. But that single step is everything! Once you make it, not only is there no chance of going backwards, but you’ve leveraged your product into the heavenly realm of insubstantiality. All your spondulix are never going to be redeemed simultaneously in some worst-case scenario. Most will just circulate forever. Take my word for it, I’ve done the math. And history bears me out. Money for nothing, Rory, just like having a money tree growing in your backyard. All that stands between you and fortune is your irrational fear of success. You gotta kill that demon, moll! Go with your bliss!”

  Amazingly, Rory found himself wanting to believe Erlkonig’s spiel. Life would be so easy if his argument were true. All economic insecurity banished forever.

  Rory opened his mouth to agree when Erlkonig pushed him one step too far with a teasing urgency

  “C’mon, man! Take the leap and don’t be cheap! Spend the shells and let ’em all go to hell!”

  Rory fantasized steam streaming from his nostrils. “Cheap! You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me cheap! I’m just trying to keep my head above water by providing a wholesome product. When have you ever been as generous as me, Earl? What have you ever done for anyone but yourself, old Number One? How many people do you support? What good are you to Hoboken?”

  Erlkonig did not answer these justifiable charges, but merely sought to calm Rory. “Hey, moll, chill! Ain’t no need to impute my motives—”

  Rory knew now he had truly lost control. But he didn’t care. Tossing his superego overboard felt good. He decided that he was just getting rolling.

  “And that’s another thing I’m tired of, all your intellectual pretensions. Half the time you use the wrong word. Like just now, you meant ‘impugn’ but you said ‘impute.’”

  “No, man, impute is correct.”

  “You are so wrong. It’s impugn.”

  “Impute.”

  “Impugn.”

  “Impute!”

  “Impugn!”

  “Fuck you!”

  The two men seemed ready to come to blows. At that very instant, Netsuke coughed. Both combatants turned to eyeball her.

  Finished with her paper folding, Netsuke revealed a simple paper bird held up in her palm. Having captured their attention, she tossed the advertisement bird aloft, like a magician releasing a dove of peace. The origami construction clearly flapped its wings several times, then glided to a landing on the floor between Rory and Erlkonig, whereupon it promptly melted back to its original flier form, only now intricately creased.

  Netsuke said nothing. The two men regarded her beatific smile, then turned sheepishly back to each other.

  “I wish I knew how she does that,” said Erlkonig.

  “Me, too,” said Rory. Then: “Oh, Christ, Earl, I’m sorry I got mad. I didn’t mean to sh
out.”

  “Me neither. Hey, you can tell me to fuck off if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Shake?”

  “Sure.” Rory wiped his wet hands on his apron and they shook.

  “Now, about the spondulix we need—”

  “Oh, Christ, here’s your spondulix.” Rory bent and picked up the magic bird. On its blank side he wrote one spondulix for the largest denomination yet: five hundred sandwiches. In for a penny, in for a pound. Or should that be: hung for a wolf rather than hung for a lamb?

  “Thanks, moll,” said Erlkonig cheerily, putting the draft carefully away in a shirt pocket. He rejoined Netsuke on the far side of the counter.

  Nerfball emerged from the bathroom. “Hey, Earl, did it go like you planned?”

  Rory swiveled his gaze among the three complicitous Beer Nuts. Their utter audacity and gall!

  “Nerf,” said Erlkonig.

  “What?”

  “You are a total idiot.”

  Erlkonig and Netsuke hastened to depart. Completely drained of the energy necessary for renewed confrontation, Rory only lamely asked, “Where is this party anyhow?”

  “Ah, that’s the beauty part, moll. We’re gonna commandeer the entire campus of the Stevens Institute.”

  The Stevens Institute of Technology occupied a spectacular bluff above the Hudson, and afforded a gorgeous view of Manhattan. This bash would surely mark a highpoint for the Outlaw Party tradition.