Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “I guess so—”

  Erlkonig moved within Rory’s personal space and whispered, “Say, pard, you got any money?”

  “Um, yeah, a little—”

  Bouncing away from Rory, Erlkonig exclaimed, “Great, great! Our new friend’s gonna buy us a case of beer!”

  “I am?”

  “Sure you are! Just like you promised me a second ago.”

  Bemused at the albino’s effrontery, Rory fell in with his proclamation. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, and don’t forget the nail polish, too.”

  When Rory returned with drinks and cosmetics, the assembled cockroach-racers gave him a lusty cheer. He immediately felt heartened and welcome.

  They spent the rest of that afternoon watching roaches scurry. The squatters rounded up an entrant for Rory, and his bug eventually took several heats. The medium for bets was bottlecaps.

  By the end of the day, Rory knew he had found his real social set.

  His past two decades in Hoboken had certainly not constituted a life as hermetic as that of the Stearns. Still, Rory could basically call himself a loner. He had maintained amiable relationships with a flood of more-or-less temporary workers in his store. Sometimes the young kids he serially employed actually enlisted Rory in a night out, which he usually enjoyed. Rory’s next door commercial neighbor, hardware seller Tiran Porter, amounted to the closest thing Rory had to a best friend. The two men often went bowling together. They had made a few trips to Atlantic City. Tiran’s family—wife Val and numerous little Porters who called him “Uncle Rory”—had hosted bachelor Rory at numerous holidays. And then of course there were Rory’s parents. Still spry in their senior years, Roz and Rudy Honeyman visited their son two or three times annually. The visits followed the identical touristic pattern established by Roz during Rory’s youth. Roz would run her companions ragged, and Rory could gauge their day of departure accurately by his father’s increasingly laconic remarks.

  Rory’s love life remained a more problematical area. A number of one-night stands (including an incredible but essentially unrepeatable marijuana-fueled ménage with Leather ’n Studs), two on-again, off-again affairs of some duration, and an actual live-in relationship of nine months with a magazine editor. Helen Datura, however, had fickle-heartedly left Hoboken and Rory for the swankier charms of a dot.com millionaire from San Jose named Handel Washington.

  But Rory’s most significant squeeze since Katie had certainly been Miss Suki Netsuke, née Susan Bollingen.

  Arriving in Manhattan in 1987 with her freshly minted degree from Rhode Island School of Design, Netsuke had naturally gravitated to the still-decadent Alphabet Streets of the Village to pursue her artistic visions: the marriage of origami and pornography into a form she called “pornigami.” Not only were Netsuke’s folded constructions sexual in nature, depicting organs and arrangements of organs, copulating couples and fornicating fauna, but her raw materials consisted of colorful pages torn from various X-rated sources. Despite the undeniable brilliance of her conceit, over the next decade gallery and museum success eluded her. Yet she persisted, living in squalor and supported only by frequent checks from the Bollingens back home. Gentrification had chased her all over the island, until finally every neighborhood of go-go Manhattan proved too expensive for her budget. Netsuke crossed then to Hoboken.

  Rory met Suki Netsuke one chill December night in Maxwell’s, Hoboken’s most famous venue for live music, shortly after his breakup with Helen Datura. Lured by an air of sorrow that contrasted interestingly with the discernible laugh lines of her face, Rory made a shy overture that led to them sharing a table and sipping Coronas with lime. Netsuke confided portions of her life story to him, concluding with the news that her parents had finally cut off her funds after a decade of support. Still determined to pursue her art, she faced imminent eviction and starvation with an equable front.

  Rory found her dedication and insouciance in the face of disaster to be alluring. Why, he thought at the time, couldn’t he find his own visionary center so firmly? Why couldn’t he shrug blithely in the face of defeat? Why did he have to angst so much over every little upset? Maybe, a little voice proposed inside Rory’s head, living with this devil-may-care woman would help him. He had the routines of cohabitation down pat after sharing his life with Helen. Why not stay on track before the track rusted?

  Almost before Rory knew what was happening, a few more dates led to Netsuke moving in, a process that consisted of shifting a few small tidy bundles of possessions (which reminded Rory of ceremoniously wrapped Japanese packages) in a couple of short trips.

  Their wholesome, satisfying, albeit tepid relationship lasted well over a year. Then Rory made his fatal mistake. He introduced Suki Netsuke to the Beer Nuts, his newest friends. She took to that crowd like a lost wolf rejoining a pack of its fellows. And the alpha wolf, Erlkonig, exerted the strongest pull on her. Apparently the edgy lifestyle led by Erlkonig and associates appealed to her rebel side more than Rory’s boring, sedentary, no-risk existence did. At least so Rory had assumed. Netsuke never made quite clear her exact reasons for moving out. One day she had simply announced that she was leaving him for Earl Erlkonig, and that was all he could get out of her.

  Rory’s emotional recovery had taken months. For weeks he felt only slightly less crushed than he had when the Baroness bought the farm. Everything always hit him so damn hard!

  Netsuke’s betrayal had since kept Rory pretty distant from the Brewery and its crowd of weird people who seemed intuitively able to jerk his puppet strings.

  And now his cat carried a Beer Nuts litter! Too predictable! Knocked-up one way or another by those irresponsible freaks!

  Rory set Hello Kitty down. Nothing he could do about it, so he might as well go to work.

  Outside, the morning’s oven-hot air was freighted with a Pacific’s worth of humidity. By the time Rory had walked from his apartment on Jackson Street out to the deli on Washington, he felt like one hundred and eighty pounds of pastrami in a giant steamer. His beard clung to his face like a sodden wool scarf. He considered shaving the fur off, but the facial renovation seemed like too much work, and pointless as well. He had worn this disguise so long that he could not imagine himself without it. The beard seemed some fuzzy albatross that he had willingly donned shortly after his failed protest in Mexico City, and which over time had bonded to his soul.

  Much to the wrist-watchless Rory’s surprise, although neighborhood clocks read only nine-fifty, his store loomed open. Rory advanced tentatively over the threshold, not quite knowing what to expect. A break-in, perhaps? If so, he hoped the robbers had been content with pickles, since no cash lay ready to placate them.

  The interior of Honeyman’s Heroes smelled like Lestoil and Murphy’s Oil Soap. Despite their gouges the wooden eating-counters shone resplendently. The floorboards on the patrons’ side of the store gleamed wetly, and the formerly grungy tiles on the employee side revealed remnants of their showroom condition. All the chrome on the fridges and freezers twinkled. Although their blades were racked and hidden, the cutlery seemed to speak pridefully of recent sharpening. Cobwebs near the ceiling in the far corners of the store had vanished. A few dirty pans left in the sink last night stood scrubbed and drying.

  Rory discovered Nerfball kneeling beneath a worktable at the far end of the store, the crack of his buttocks showing above the waist of his pants. At first Rory imagined the big man had withdrawn into one of his sulks, as when Rory had found him huddled beneath the desk in the Brewery. But closer inspection revealed that Nerfball was employing a stiff-bristled brush to scrub a stubborn old dried mess.

  Utterly bewildered, Rory asked, “Nerf, what’s going on?”

  Nerfball ceased attacking the blotch and looked back over his shoulder. “Remember that egg sandwich I made last month for Tiran and it didn’t come out just right and I got mad and threw it against the wall and it slid down to the floor and you said, ‘What the hell, Nerf?’ and I s
aid, ‘Screw it, I’m not picking it up!’ and you said, ‘Well, that’s where it’s gonna stay then!’”

  “Er, yeah, I’ve dredged up the incident easily, thanks to that helpful narrative.”

  “Well, I just realized I was wrong and I should clean up my mistakes.”

  “Very thoughtful, Nerf. Very thoughtful. But what about all the rest of this housekeeping?”

  A disingenuous expression swept over Nerfball’s face before he replied. “I don’t know, really. When I woke up this morning, the notion just popped into my head. I had a lot of energy this morning from doing some special Pranayama breathing exercises and I said to myself, ‘Judd’—I still call myself ‘Judd’—‘Judd,’ I said, ‘Honeyman’s pretty swell to employ you and you’re always giving him grief. Why don’t you head over to the sandwich shop a little early and show your appreciation?’ So that’s what I did.”

  Rory replayed Nerfball’s words mentally once or twice to make sure he had heard them correctly. Still baffled, he contemplated several possible responses running the spectrum from ironically dismissive to fulsomely grateful. He finally settled on carefully neutral words.

  “I appreciate your extra efforts, Nerf. But you don’t have to overdo things.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I love to work here!”

  “Uh, right. Of course you do.” Rory began to back nervously away. “Well, it’s gonna be lunchtime before we know it, and we’ve got to warm up the meatballs and stuff. I think I’ll just get a little head start.”

  Once safely distant from Nerfball, Rory called cautiously back, “Maybe you should stop now and wash your hands and put your apron on, Nerf.”

  “Sure, Mister Aitch! Whatever you say!”

  Nerfball clambered up from the floor, scrubbed up, donned his apron and set to work, whistling as he did so. His tune of choice: “Pop Goes the Weasel.” After a while Rory found himself subvocalizing the lyrics. “Penny for a spool of thread, penny for a needle. That’s the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel!” He was driving himself crazy with the repetition of the inane words, but after Nerfball’s earlier manic display Rory did not dare ask him to stop whistling.

  Rory continued to watch his employee warily from a certain distance, convinced that some dire eruption commensurate with the surface good cheer lay in wait. However, as the day swung into high gear and Nerfball exhibited only his usual range of behaviors, Rory gradually lost his sense of trepidation.

  At days end Nerfball did not repeat yesterday’s sullen tantrum concerning his pay Instead he seemed practically gleeful.

  “I worked extra good today didn’t I, Rory?”

  “You sure did, Nerf.”

  “You think maybe I could have a raise then?”

  Rory’s peace of mind collapsed faster than a Ponzi scheme. Nerf’s wages. Somehow he had managed to put the whole matter out of his mind. Now he was forced to consider it.

  The original unique spondulix had flown the coop, carried off yesterday by the fat Beer Nut. In Rory’s thoughts, spondulix (despite the mixed singular/plural connotations of its name) had always stood for the co-opted electric bill alone. Suddenly he had to confront the alarming notion of duplicating the currency. Very unwise, his conscience warned, the first step on a deceptively sunny road to perdition. (Or second step, counting his initial drafting of spondulix as the first.) Reproduction of the sandwich coupon could only lead to catastrophic ruination. Rory could not say how or why, but his gut told him so.

  Rory cranked open the till. “Okay, Nerf, I agree. You do deserve more pay. Now, let’s see. I was giving you minimum wage before, when I paid you in cash, wasn’t I? I’ll up it now by, oh, say, twenty-five whole cents! Just think, every four hours you work, you earn an extra dollar! Two extra dollars a day! Before taxes, of course.”

  Nerf lifted his eyes to the tin ceiling and blew out a horsy breath of exasperation. “But I don’t want to get paid in dollars.”

  Rory stopped counting bills out. Now that Nerfball had actually said what Rory had somehow feared he’d say and all sanity had departed from the world, Rory found his temper surging. Struggling not to grow angry, Rory said, “Yesterday, all I heard was how you wanted some real money. Today my cash is suddenly trash. Okay. I won’t ask for an explanation. I’m not sure I could handle one. Just tell me exactly how you’d like to get paid.”

  “With more spondulix, natch.”

  “I see. We have a bull market in spondulix this afternoon. Did the exchange rate with Russia go up, or what?”

  Nerfball said nothing and Rory found himself disinclined to push any further for an answer. He admitted to himself that he was scared to learn what made spondulix so suddenly attractive. He’d find out sooner or later anyhow, he realized.

  Rory struggled to regain his early-morning certainty about the harmlessness of spondulix. Achieving a little glib self-confidence, he sensed himself about to capitulate. And if he were going to mount the gallows under his own power, he might as well do it with a certain grace and nobility. French duke holding his soon-to-be-guillotined head high. (And hadn’t the French Revolution in fact been precipitated by currency troubles? Something about assignats and mandats, Rory dimly remembered from Mr. Parker’s grandfatherly lectures.)

  Adopting a strained smile akin to one which a man digging his own grave might wear while pondering life’s ironies, Rory said, “All right. What kind of raise did you have in mind?”

  “How about fifty percent?”

  Rory imitated Nerfball’s previous melodramatics, but did not argue. He took a pen from his pocket and grabbed a paper napkin off the counter. He inscribed a new spondulix for fifteen sandwiches, tagging it boldly with his signature.

  Nerfball took the payment with ill-concealed happiness. “Thanks, moll.”

  “No problem,” said Rory with all the meager manners he could muster, all the while secretly hoping that the fragile napkin would quickly fall apart. Perishable media, that was the key. Must lay in stocks of disappearing ink.

  “See you bright and early tomorrow, boss,” said Nerfball on his way out.

  The customer bell chimed a dirge in the empty store. Ah, yes, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Rory foresaw an endless stream of spondulix flowing out from the shop, mortgaging his whole future. He held his head in his hands. Like the thoughtless little girl who had slipped into the devilish red dancing shoes, he had doomed himself to an eternity of repetitive folly.

  Inexorably, like ten coins falling into a wishing well and producing ten failed wishes, two work weeks passed. Against all his better self-counsel, Rory inscribed ten more spondulix. Only thus could he keep Nerfball working and the shop open. And he needed to keep the shop open because—Well, exactly why did he need to keep the shop open? Certainly not because the enterprise provided a lavish lifestyle. Just a way to kill time? “As if we could kill time without injuring eternity…” Someone had said that. Exactly what did it mean, though? If only Mr Parker still walked this earth to gloss such truisms.

  Every now and then during this spurt of guilty and wanton fiscal creation, Rory considered just chucking all his responsibilities and habits and lighting out for the territories. But he always stopped just on the verge of ditching. Where would he go, what would he do? Too old to join the circus, even if any would have him. That had been the once- in-a-lifetime fulfillment of a spontaneous dream, and he had already enacted it. Back to the farm, to herd bees for the rest of his life? Too many memories there, like living in a haunted house. Dzubas’s gruff introduction: “You are going to whack your head, young man, if you don’t get closer to the edge.” No, plainly his strongest roots now clutched the concrete-and-asphalt-concealed soil of Hoboken, the birthplace of his first love, Katie Stearn. And although these roots had rather arbitrarily been transplanted here, they could not now be so summarily pulled up.

  At the end of this uneasy period Rory’s store was mortgaged to the tune of roughly one hundred and fifty sandwiches. He had no idea where the eleven spondulix resided in
this wide wide world. He had broken down and bluntly asked Nerfball one day, but the Ayurvedic Beer Nut refused to say. Rory could only hope that they had all been stashed somewhere in the Old Vault Brewery, someplace where the rats would chew them to pieces, eating the promise of sandwiches rather than the expensive sandwiches themselves, lining their nests with Nerfball’s nest egg.

  As the days passed with no trace of the potentially boomeranging spondulix Rory managed to convince himself that they would never surface. Apparently the notes had gone on a one-way journey to Monetary Never-never Land, the Sargasso Sea of Bad Debts, the Elephants’ Graveyard of Promissory Notes, the Bermuda Triangle of IOUs.

  One night around suppertime, when Rory was helming the store solo, Tiran Porter strode in. The hardware-store owner had his hands jammed into the baggy pockets of his big belted sweater. His kinky curls scintillated with metal dust discharged by the pipe-cutting machines. His broad black face wore the look of a man who had just solved an intractable problem of long standing.

  Porter stopped in front of Rory, the counter separating them. He tugged the waist ties of his sweater tighter as if choking an enemy. Then he spoke.

  “Rory, old buddy, you know how you’re into me for that wiring work I done?”

  “Sure, Tiran, I haven’t forgotten. It’s just—”

  “Good, good, glad to hear the old memory’s keen as ever. Well, I’m here to say you can pay me in sandwiches.”

  Rory’s heart began to pump something thick as mayonnaise. “What—what do you mean?”

  Porter dug into one pocket and came up with a napkin.

  Rancid mayo, that’s what was running in his veins.

  “This here is what I mean. That Nerdo dude you got working for you convinced me to take this scribbled napkin in place of thirty dollars’ worth of electrical equipment. Now, I nearly laughed him outta the store till I seen your name on the bottom. Rory, we’re friends, right? I known you for a good long stretch now, and can say you’re a straight-shooter, a righteous dude. But this mean old world don’t always reward the straight and upright types like they deserve. To be exact, not hardly never. The facts of the matter, as I see ’em, is that you’re always broke and will probably always be broke, ’cuz you got no head for money. However, you make one hell of a sandwich. When I seen this here spondulix coupon of yours, I got to thinking. I figured, ‘Shit, Rory ain’t never gonna pay me no cash, but I can always get a sandwich off him.’ So I’m here to say that if you’re willing to write me another one of these spondulix, we’ll call it square on that old bill.”