Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “A big mistake. I’m sure the place had more character when it smelled like sweat and fish instead of Avon and Old Spice.”

  Rory fell silent. He contemplated his place-setting for lack of any better response.

  After a few seconds he felt Addie’s hand cover his. He looked up. Tears floated behind the lenses of her eyeglasses.

  “Oh, Rory, I’m so sorry. What an awful nasty bitch you fell in with! It’s not you or this place, it’s just—I don’t know. Me, or my job, or my whole life. My job at least. I really hate it. You don’t know the kind of things that rotten Mister Caesar has me doing.! I feel—I feel like I’m continually compromising myself, being false to who I really am.”

  Rory squeezed her hand. “Quit, then. You don’t have to kill yourself for a paycheck anymore. I told you already I’d support you with spondulix.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet, but I can’t accept. I wish I could, but I just can’t. I’m into my job too deep now. I mean, they need me at work. At least for a while longer. And besides, we can’t realistically rely on spondulix. Who knows how long they’ll last?”

  Rory laughed ironically. “We should be lucky enough to experience a collapse! No, I’m afraid spondulix are here to stay.” Rory recounted some of the letters he had received, although he deliberately avoided the subject of his possible lovechild. “You see how spondulix are spreading. And Earl has some kind of big news to deliver tomorrow. I expect spondulix will be leaping to a new plateau. We’re just too over-extended now not to go through some kind of reorganization.”

  At that moment their waitress arrived. Addie took a Kleenex from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Rory, you order for both of us, please.”

  “Ah, two drafts and two Fisherman’s Platters, please.”

  “Coming right up, dearie.”

  Rory turned back to Addie. “I certainly know all about compromising yourself, Addie. I never wanted all these headaches I’ve got now. Somehow my life just got away from me. This whole enterprise has outgrown my original intentions, taken on an existence of its own. Sometimes I wonder if I invented spondulix or if they invented me.”

  “I understand. Look, let’s talk some more about these problems in the morning. Tonight, after we’ve both had such a hard day, we should just try to enjoy ourselves.”

  “I’m down with that.”

  Their drafts arrived in plastic steins. “Another touch of class,” said Addie.

  Rory merely quirked his lips and lifted one bushy ginger eyebrow.

  “Sorry,”—Addie lowered her eyes and grinned—”dearie.”

  Rory broke up laughing. He sipped his beer. “Well, at least it’s fresh and cold.”

  Soon their dinners arrived. A heap of batter-covered objects on heavy china plates. Only the french-fries were immediately recognizable.

  Addie cut a finger-shaped object in half. “Can you tell me what’s inside this?”

  Rory tasted an identical item on his plate. “Yes. No. Listen, just cover everything with ketchup and tartar sauce and pretend you’re at Coney Island.”

  “Yes, sir. May I ask a question, please, sir?”

  “Permission granted. So long as the question is not sarcastically phrased.”

  “Never mind.”

  They finished their meal with weak coffee and two slices of “cheesecake” made with pre-formed graham-cracker crust. The “no-bake” recipe.

  Rory tipped twenty spondulix on their thirty-five-spondulix bill. Addie noticed. “Mighty generous.”

  “The size of the tip has nothing to do with the food or the service. Its just a habit from my day job, pumping as many spondulix into the economy as possible. Earl wants to flood the marketplace.”

  “Do you do everything Earl wants?”

  “I guess so, judging by my past.”

  Outside, Addie said, “Tell me again why we ate there.”

  “A Hoboken tradition.”

  “I marvel that any Hobokenite has survived to perpetuate the ritual.”

  “Please try to forget your poor abused stomach for a minute. The next item on our agenda is some serious dancing.”

  “Now you’re talking, Mister. You know, sometimes I remember why I first let you pick me up that night.”

  “Me pick you up? Who crawled after me when the fireworks went off and practically dragged me back to her bedroom?”

  “I thought you might have been hurt. I was just acting out a long-standing fantasy of being Florence Nightingale.”

  “If that’s the kind of treatment Florence dispensed, I can see why the Light Brigade hurled themselves into the Valley of Death.”

  They strolled hand-in-hand to Maxwell’s on Washington Street. Rory experienced a fleeting memory of all the times he had brought Netsuke here, but the nostalgic twinge soon evaporated. Rory inquired about the musical act that night, and learned that The Millionaires—aka Yo La Tengo—were playing.

  “Are they using that Outlaw Party moniker consistently now?” wondered Addie.

  “Yes, since Earl bought up their recording contract. But they’re very happy with their new label.”

  Addie and Rory finished a New Amsterdam apiece, then switched to margaritas. By the time the Millionaires loped onstage, Rory was feeling weightless.

  The Millionaire’s vocalist took the microphone and surveyed the room. Spotting Rory, he called out, “Hey, folks, we’ve got Mister Spondulix himself here tonight. Let’s have a big hand for the man who’s doing so much for Hoboken. C’mon, give it up for Rory Honeyman.”

  The whole crowd began to applaud and cheer for Rory. He felt his face turning red. Luckily the attention of the audience soon swung back to the stage as the Millionaires launched into the B-52’s “Legal Tender.”

  Down in the basement we’re learning to print.

  Ten, twenty, thirty million, ready to be spent.

  Stack them up against the wall, dead presidents.

  Rather self-consciously, Rory took Addie out onto the dance floor. She slipped her glasses into her purse and began to shimmy. Rory followed suit. After a while his body began to assert its own imperatives and his mind followed his bones and muscles into a carefree sensual zone. This had been a very good idea.

  The Millionaires segued into “Money’s Too Tight To Mention,” another cover. But their next song was an original: “I’ve Got A Yen To Make My Mark (But Baby Only Loves Spondulix).”

  Baby needs lira, baby needs bucks!

  Baby say an empty purse just sucks!

  Baby wants francs, baby wants pounds!

  You can’t give ’em, she don’t want you ’round!

  Baby needs yen, baby needs marks!

  Baby will even take your stocks!

  Baby need money for lots of kicks!

  Baby like me, but she love spon-du-lix!

  The hours flew by. Rory and Addie’s clothes sopped up quarts of sweat. Only steady infusions of alcohol staved off dehydration. After a while Rory couldn’t even remember why he was supposed to feel bad.

  When the club closed at two in the morning, they could barely walk a straight line, their senses buzzing with kinesthetic hyperstimulation as well as booze. They staggered down Washington Street, laughing at nothing and holding on to each other for support. When they came to Elk Lodge Number 74, with its life-sized golden statue of an elk positioned on a pedestal outside, Rory got a sudden brainstorm.

  “Lemme show you somethin’. This is how I usta ride inna circus.” He climbed atop the elk. “Dive, horsey, dive!”

  Addie was sitting on the sidewalk, back against the pedestal, holding her sides and laughing. Hiccups and gasps began to intersperse her laughs. Just then the cops arrived.

  Rory dug his heels into the elk’s flanks. “Giddyup, c’mon, faster, faster, lez get outta here!” Addie tried to stand but succeeded only in kneeling.

  “Get the hell down offa there, buddy! You’re coming with us to the station.”

  “Hold on a minute, Al. That’s they guy with his picture on the mone
y in our pay envelopes.”

  “Mister Honeyman, is that you? Christ, I’m awfully sorry, I didn’t recognize you in the shadows.”

  “Ish awright. No shpecial treatment. I’m comin’ down right now.”

  Rory nearly slipped headfirst off the elk.

  “Stan, help Mister Honeyman. I’ll get his ladyfriend. Look, Mister Honeyman, you shouldn’t be cutting up like this so late at night. You might get hurt. Let me and Stan drive you home.”

  “Mush obliged. Here, have some money for gas.”

  “But Mister Honeyman, that’s a thousand—”

  “Stan, don’t argue with Mister Honeyman.”

  The next morning Rory woke around ten with a headache big as the Grand Canyon. He was wearing just his jockey shorts. Addie, dressed only in panties, sprawled sideways across the bottom of the bed, pinning Rory’s legs down. Painfully, Rory turned his head. Hello Kitty regarded him curiously from the neighboring pillow. Rory gently extracted himself from the human deadfall without waking Addie. He left the room and the tubby cat followed, her pregnant condition still painfully obvious.

  One shower and several cups of coffee later, Rory felt somewhat less lethargic. He looked idly up at the clock. After eleven. He vaguely recalled an appointment. The Board meeting! Shit! Hurriedly he dressed. Addie, wearing a robe, stumbled into the kitchen as he was tying his sneakers.

  “What’s up?”

  Rory explained.

  “I might just as well head home then. I’ll see you later. And remember—try not to let Earl boss you around so much.”

  “I’m captain of my destiny,” Rory lied.

  Rory set out alone for the Old Vault Brewery. Late August showed its sweetest face: crisp air, bright sun, the barest intimation of autumn in the occasional fading leaf. People nodded to Rory as he walked down the streets. Silly, but their friendly attention made him feel special, as if he really belonged here. Home at last. He guessed all the trouble associated with spondulix was balanced by the happiness the easy money engendered.

  Trucks clustered around the Old Vault Brewery, modified cherry-pickers, huffing compressors. Men in yellow slickers and safety goggles occupied the elevated baskets. They wielded water wands fed from hydrants via pumps, spraying high-pressure jets on the aged bricks of the enormous building, cleaning away the soot and grime of over a century. Rory stood fascinated for a few minutes, watching the rejuvenation of the structure, the building visibly regressing in time to the days of the Stearn Twins. He wished Kerry could have been here to see the spectacle.

  Jumping across the puddles on the sidewalk, unavoidably getting misted despite overhead tarps, Rory headed for the scaffolded Brewery entrance. He knocked on the medium-sized of the three doors. From inside sounded the whine of power saws, the popping of nailguns, the clatter of lumber. When he failed to get a response, he pushed open the human-proportioned door and entered.

  The Brewery glowed in a wealth of electricity. A constellation of temporary dangling worklights boldly lit the interior. Rory stopped dead with a hand on the door. He had never seen the Brewery by anything other than the beam of a flashlight or the glow of a candle or the chance infall of sunlight through dirty-glassed windows. Now a jungle of antique tanks, vats, pipes, controls and debris lay revealed to him, an impressive museum of the brewing trade. Hordes of workmen, all clad in coveralls bearing the insignia Mazuma Construction, clambered over everything, polishing, scraping, sweeping, painting, erecting partitions, tearing down old walls, trundling wheelbarrows, driving forklifts, mixing cement and plaster, running wiring, laying pipes, hanging false ceilings.

  Someone hailed Rory amidst the organized confusion. Erlkonig. He scythed an arm to summon Rory over to him. Rory went.

  “Hey, moll, how d’you like it? Can’t see the forest for the shrubs right now, but its gonna be great!”

  “Earl, exactly what are you doing with this place?”

  “You’re looking at the future corporate headquarters of Sponco, shell.”

  “Sponco?”

  “You’ll hear all about it at the meeting. But look, here’s the plans.” Actually looking for the moment like his old, fun-loving self, Erlkonig unrolled a tube of blueprints he had been carrying. “Offices, sauna, gymnasium, swimming pool, childcare center, meeting rooms of course, a splat gun shooting gallery. We’re even installing a penthouse at the top of the smokestack. And we’re going to retain some of the tanks and vats on the first floor, as kind of a reminder of our humble origins. Great PR. Well, what d’you think?”

  “Earl, you’ve gone completely insane.”

  “Good, good, I knew you’d approve. But let’s go, the meeting’s about to start.”

  Erlkonig conducted Rory to a relatively quiet corner of the ground floor. There temporary sheetrock walls had been erected to form a medium-sized uncapped room. Erlkonig took Rory inside.

  Around a table improvised from a sheet of plywood and sawhorses sat many of the Beer Nuts. Holstered splat pistols lent them the aura of the James Gang. At their head presided Lewis Sterling, immaculate in vested suit. Sterling chattered on a cell phone. By his elbow a fax machine disgorged a steady stream of documents. In his lap rested Cardinal Ratzinger. The fat and sassy half-Kalahari Anthill Tiger wore a collar studded with stones that Rory prayed were only cubic zirconia. Sterling petted the Beer Nuts mascot absentmindedly as he talked. All Rory could think of was a third-generation degraded-Xerox of a villain: Blofeld to Doctor Evil to Sterling.

  Sterling pocketed his phone. “Good to see you, Honeyman. We can get down to business now. Mister Fumento, I believe you have a PowerPoint presentation for us first.”

  Hilario Fumento stood, hitched up his baggy carpenter pants, and began to fiddle with a laptop computer. A sleek wallscreen came to life. Fumento began to lecture, his usually diffident voice imbued with the confidence of facts and figures.

  “You see here a map of the Tri-State region and a portion of the surrounding states, with Hoboken at the center. Ground zero, if you will. Now watch as we display the dissemination of spondulix during the first two weeks of operations.”

  The map shivered as fat animated tendrils of spondulix spread out from Hoboken before finally freezing.

  “The figures next to major metropolitan areas represent total number of notes in circulation at this point in time. You’ll observe that at the end of two weeks we had penetrated as far north as Boston, as far west as Buffalo and as far south as Baltimore. Some interesting and unforeseen fallout to our campaign was the quick adoption of spondulix by both the Atlantic City and Connecticut Indian casinos, who quickly altered their slot machines to accept our coinage. The total value of spondulix in circulation after two weeks amounted to approximately ten million. At this point, something utterly unanticipated happened.”

  A global map suddenly occupied the screen, with certain cities blinking.

  “Due, we believe, to the nature of modern air travel, spondulix began to be reported in use in these various locations around the globe.” A dancing spondulix sign cavorted over each of the cities, which Fumento obligingly named. “Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Cairo, Zurich, Tokyo, Montreal, Austin, Dallas, Sydney, Capetown. The pattern that soon emerged resembled nothing so much, we realized, as the modern spread of an influenza epidemic. We immediately hired several researchers away from the Center for Disease Control and were able to plot future outbreaks before they occurred, with a large degree of certainty. We shipped huge amounts of spondulix to contacts in these infected cities, and so were well positioned to meet nascent demand as it swelled. By the end of our fourth week, we were floating upwards of one hundred and fifty million spondulix around the world, almost every note backed by an equivalent amount of hard currency on deposit in Hoboken Savings and Loan.”

  Sterling had nodded sagely throughout this lecture, with a self-satisfied expression. Rory felt like knocking his block off.

  “If you examine this chart”—Fumento activated an animated bar graph—”you’ll a
gree that our growth can only be described as exponential. We’ve since bought more presses and are running them around the clock. If you listen closely, you’ll hear them in the basement, humming under the capable hands of Ernie Trapezitai and his many new assistants. We project ten billion spondulix in circulation by the end of the year. By then we should have established a small but significant presence in the economy of every G-8 nation, as well as in many lesser countries. And since unlike every other currency-provider, we lack the huge burden of running any government, our expenses remain minimal.”

  Finished speaking, Fumento triggered one final screen: a shot of the United Nations plaza, in which every fluttering flag slowly morphed to a waving spondulix.

  Sterling gestured appreciatively. “A fine job, Mister Fumento. Thank you. Earl, I think we’d all like to hear from you next.”

  Erlkonig magnetized the massed attention of his audience. “Folks, spondulix has definitely gone bigtime. We always knew it would happen some day, but never this fast. Naturally, this growth necessitates some changes in the way we operate. First off, in order to fully take advantage of all the opportunities being offered us, we’ve had to incorporate as an entity separate from Hoboken S & L. Banks are still irrationally forbidden to do certain things. There are some very enticing areas of investment and action where the Feds would be constantly looking over the shoulders of Hoboken S & L. But they won’t be watching Sponco in the same way. Our papers have already been filed in Delaware. Our company logo is, natch, the spondulix sign. When and if we go public, our Stock Exchange symbol will be SPX.

  “Now, new duties and titles are in store for everyone. As well as a lot of hard work. But the gravy will flow, folks. Sponco will be bigger than Microsoft soon. In addition, many of you have already come to me with pet projects of your own. You’ll be pleased to hear that Sponco will be funding all of these individual schemes.”