Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “Get back here! Were gonna settle this now, Earl.”

  Erlkonig began to run.

  Rory took off after him.

  He caught up with the easily winded younger man near the fireworks display, dozens of mortars aimed skyward, alternating with wooden trellises to which had been lashed stable fireworks—candles and spinners. All the pyrotechnics had been wired to a Master Control Panel (just so labeled in Netsuke’s calligraphy). Guarding the MCP was a bored Special Effects.

  His path blocked, Erlkonig looked frantically about for an avenue of escape. Frantically, he began to clamber among the fireworks themselves. Arrayed over a broad patch of ground, the upward-pointing tubes resembled the kind of tire-popping barrier placed around a foreign embassy. In his haste, Erlkonig toppled mortars left and right.

  Special Effects yelled, “Hey, careful! You could cause some big trouble!”

  Rory hesitated a moment, wary of adding to the destruction. But as Erlkonig seemed about to escape, Rory set off into the minefield after his quarry. Looking backward, Erlkonig spotted Rory and zigzagged wildly, kicking more tubes over. Rory hesitated, his foot having snagged in a wire, and Erlkonig poured on the speed, victory in sight.

  Right on the edge of success, Erlkonig tangled his legs in a framework and brought it to the earth, going down with it.

  In falling, he upset the adjacent Master Control Panel, clawing for support at its sliders and switches. Special Effects shrieked and bolted, abandoning all responsibility.

  Everything seemed to go off at once.

  Rory finally felt he knew what he had missed in ’Nam.

  Saucisson rockets zipped by at knee-height above the grass. A complex sequential display traditionally known as “Battle in the Clouds” became “Battle on the Ground.” A chaser chased a howling Cardinal Ratzinger. Happy Lanterns bounced off a building’s cupola. Pillboxes, strobes and tourbillons cascaded out over the river, to fall sizzling into the water. Gerbs, crackles and mortars shells raced each other across the lawn. Fireballs burst against the sides of buildings, shattering windows. Great crimson and lemon-yellow starbursts broke at treetop level. Fiery chrysanthemums flowered, only to shatter short-lived the very next moment against the sides of parked cars. Flare-carrying parachutes popped open like radioactive jellyfish. Roman candles ejaculated load after load of hot charges. Catherine wheels whizzed by like DUI UFOs. No sane effort could rival this display, a regular Brocks Benefit, the largest conflagration since the Crystal Palace caught fire.

  One array of starburst shells, partially intact, went off in a skewed matrix, spelling out in the night sky an enigmatic message:

  H I ?H AY kO *

  Screams, secondary explosions, wild feedback as The Millionaires, unfazed, improvised Hendrixian chords to accompany the unexpected light show. Police, ambulance and fire-company sirens announced the imminent arrival of angry saviors.

  Rory had thrown himself to the ground at the same time as Erlkonig. In the midst of the chaos he could only think, My white shirt will never come clean again. As he tried to inchworm his way to safety, he managed to spot and decipher the aerial salutation. “Happy Birthday, Rory” my ass! I’ll never live to see another one!

  Fireworks continued to roar and rush above his squirming butt. An array of fixed rockets carried a burning dollar sign inches above him, scorching his trousers.

  Some yards away, he encountered Addie, also on her belly.

  “I followed you!” she yelled.

  “Thanks! Lets get out of here!”

  She nodded mutely. They soldier-crawled at an angle they hoped would take them away from the densest flight paths of the seemingly inexhaustible fireworks. When they dared to stand up, they looked back.

  The partygoers were engaging the police in pitched battle, seemingly intent on recreating the defeat at Thermopylae, with the police playing the Spartans. Erlkonig was nowhere in sight.

  Rory grabbed Addie’s hand and they trotted off, not stopping till they fell into Addie’s big soft bed.

  Chapter Seven

  “I Don’t Care if I Never Come Back!”

  Sophisticated preset digital mechanisms activated the television at 7:15 am. The barbed voices of an infomercial hooked Rory’s consciousness like a marlin and dragged his mind out of the sea of sleep and into the harsh air of awareness. At first Rory was exceptionally confused. His doddering tv couldn’t perform such tricks. Moreover, his set lived in the parlor, Yet here he lay, in a warm, rumpled bed, eyes half-focused on the surreal sight of a man in a tuxedo and chef’s hat holding a writhing lobster aloft. Rory was having trouble focusing. The interior of his mouth seemed to have been sprayed with quick-drying house-insulating foam, and his skull ached as if some solicitous Mayan mother had strapped a forehead-shaping board onto him and cinched it tight.

  Where was he? How late had he been up last night? Who—?

  Addie. Of course. He rested in Addie’s bed, an increasingly common situation he still could not automatically access upon booting up. To test this insight, Rory extended a tentative hand. The hand encountered a warm soft haunch of decidedly feminine contours. This result might not be scientifically valid, but Rory felt his conjecture had been proved.

  Addie stirred but did not wake, despite the loud-voiced television and Rory’s touch. Rory recalled her illustrative anecdote from some time during the past week about what a heavy sleeper she was: while on vacation in San Francisco several years ago, she had slept through that city’s most recent earthquake, waking on the floor only after the main rumble had passed. Addie always set her loud television alarm way in advance of any actual necessary arousal, so long did it take her to emerge from slumber. (Rory, on the other hand, still obeying some deeply grooved Iowa apiary routines, as well as harkening even subliminally to a nervous, guilty, self- reproachful nature, never lingered long beyond the sounding of his own alarm, and frequently beat his clock to the buzz.)

  But this morning Rory allowed himself some time for quiet reflection. How strange, how delightful, how wonderful, that he should find himself in such a pleasant environment. Not only the physical setting, but the knowledge of intimate details about a woman’s past life. Miraculous! And after so much time spent alone. Strangers only seven days ago, Addie and Rory now spent all their free time together, as friends and lovers. “Lovers” had a nice ring to it. No need to define their relationship more categorically than that. Rory had a fear of doing so. Why tie down their feelings like Gulliver with small-minded ropes of words?

  The television nattered on while Rory allowed his thoughts to drift. He had actually slipped back into a drowse when the program changed at the half hour. The screen flooded with hectic animated credits, and Rory suddenly recalled that today was Saturday. That explained the early alarm.

  Those TV credits had launched The Bullwinkle Show. Rory watched with half his attention, the rest of his mind preoccupied with nebulous daydreams of imminent permanent cohabitation with Addie.

  Rocket J. Squirrel was querying his cervine pal with all his June-Foray-supplied innocence. “Gee, Bullwinkle, where did you get all those cereal boxtops?”

  The goofy-voiced antlered one replied, “Some fella sold them to me on the street cheap. They’re just what I need to send away for my Captain Mudfight decoder ring.”

  “Well, they don’t look quite right to me. The printing’s all messy and every word’s misspelled. What kind of cereal tastes ‘sweat’ instead of ‘sweet’?”

  “Duh, the Breakfast of Olympic Athletes Who Don’t Shower Much?”

  Quick cut to Boris and Natasha. Squat Boris was rubbing his hands together gleefully, while slinky Natasha smiled over him.

  “So Moose took the bait?” asked Natasha.

  “But of course. Moose is so dumb he does not know Pottsylvania from Frostbite Falls. And when he mails expertly counterfeited but completely illicit boxtops to Americanski cereal corporation, our unstoppable subversion of world economy will be underway.”

  “Dahlink, yo
u’re a genius.”

  “You expected maybe Mister Wrong-Way Roger Corman instead?”

  The show segued to a Fractured Fairy Tale. Rory had come wide-awake now. Counterfeit cereal boxtops? He had never seen such an episode before, and he had grown up on Bullwinkle. Had new shows been created to go along with the recent movie? He awaited the next segment, but only got Aesop & Son and Peabody’s Improbable History until the hour changed and a different show arrived.

  Rory dismissed the anomaly from his mind. He slid out of bed and gently shook Sleeping Beauty’s shoulder. The reason for their early weekend awakening still loomed ahead.

  “Addie?”

  She said something that sounded like “Mrmf?”

  “Addie, we’ve got the game today.”

  Addie raised the lid of one eye perhaps a millimeter. Without her glasses, Rory now knew, she was blind as an umpire. Rory imagined he looked to her now like a big hairy pink blob.

  “Game?” she croaked.

  “Honeyman’s Heroes. The Little League team I sponsor? They’re playing a doubleheader today. Starts at nine, remember?”

  Addie groaned. “All I remember is my fifth margarita.”

  All too vividly, Rory recalled his own matching drink. They had overindulged last night, hitting all the clubs, starting with Maxwell’s and working their way down the list. Rory was unused to so much excitement. However, Addie apparently thrived on nightlife, and held the belief that anything worth doing was worth overdoing. But the loud music and mixed drinks had finally taken their toll. Addie and Rory had stumbled into her apartment at two am and done nothing more salacious than exchange a few sloppy kisses, before setting the alarm and plopping into bed. And now that the inevitable morning had shown its cheerful face, they had to pay the bodily price of their carousing.

  “I want to be much younger right now,” pled Addie.

  “No can do. But you can stay in bed a few more minutes while I get breakfast ready.”

  “Unhuhn.” Addie’s one slitted eye had closed and she was already half asleep again.

  Morning people and night people: could they ever find true happiness together?

  Rory donned a bathrobe over his birthday suit and padded into the kitchen. He washed the fusty taste partially out of his mouth with a glass of water that accompanied two aspirins, then set the coffee to brewing. He cracked four eggs in a butter-slickened skillet, started some raisin toast, and stuck two quarter-inch-thick slabs of Virginia baked ham in the microwave. Plenty of calories: that was the key to obliterating a hangover. Give the body some resources to fight off the stupor. Good old Iowa common sense.

  When the eggs had gone opaque and the microwave had dinged, Rory called out loudly, “Addie, c’mon, it’s breakfast!” He heard clumsy noises from the bedroom which convinced him he could safely serve the food. He arranged everything nicely on two plates. The toilet flushed, offering further proof of conscious ambulatory activity. Impossible to accomplish that function from the bed! Rory poured the coffee, and Addie stumbled in. Her glasses rode crookedly on her nose, reins hanging down under her chin. She fumbled a cup of black coffee to her lips and sipped. Little by little, in stages Rory had already precautionarily codified and charted, she reached the point of being able to converse.

  “I’m glad I decided not to try to open the store today,” said Rory. “And Nerfball seemed to appreciate hearing yesterday that he could have today off.”

  “Are all the Beer Nuts out of jail?”

  “I guess so. I haven’t dared question Nerf too closely. I believe only Earl was held longer than a single night, and even he’s been released. I think. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to talking to him again. I know that he and that Sterling guy are planning something crazy with spondulix, and I don’t care to lend my name to their insane schemes. As far as I’m concerned, spondulix are on life-support, if not already dead.”

  Rory had disburdened himself of his financial troubles to Addie the very day after the catastrophic Outlaw Party. He had told her everything about spondulix, how they had been invented in a feverish moment and eventually entered general circulation within a limited sphere of local folks. She had listened attentively and made no judgments about Rory’s fiscal brainstorm. And when he had further told her that he fully intended to abandon the alternate money as soon as possible—once he was on his monetary feet again—she had simply nodded. Addie seemed to accept this weird speculative currency as just another bizarre component of Hoboken life.

  Addie mopped up spilled yolk with a corner of toast. “Do you think the Nuts will come to the game today?”

  Rory’s nerves jumped. He hadn’t even considered the possibility. But factoring in the Beer Nuts’ propensity for free entertainment, for spectacle of any sort, the chances of their showing up at the field suddenly soared.

  “Boy, I sure hope not. But if they show their faces, we won’t let them spoil the game for us.”

  “I like baseball. Is your team any good?”

  “Well, as good as a bunch of ten-year-olds who’d rather be at the mall ever get. The Heroes have a pretty decent record so far this year.”

  “Who are they up against today?”

  “Gee, I don’t actually know. This is a specially scheduled game. Their coach told me something about a late-starting team needing to play some make-up games to come even with the other clubs.”

  On her second cup of coffee now, Addie began to shine. She smiled at Rory and he felt warm all over. “Well, I’m counting on having fun.”

  “Me, too. Especially with you by my side.”

  “You say the sweetest things. Give me a kiss.”

  Rory eagerly complied. A major detour to getting dressed ensued.

  They left the apartment only a few minutes before nine. Luckily they didn’t have to travel far. The Elysian Fields of the Stearns’ era, putative birthplace of baseball, had long vanished under the developer’s steam shovel. But Hoboken retained its place in baseball history. As recently as 1973, the small city had made the national news. In that year the Maria Pepe case had resulted in a court ruling that opened up Little League play to girls. Today Hoboken still boasted more than its share of baseball fanatics.

  The home venue of Honeyman’s Heroes was a small community park—named after a Korean War veteran, Max Parallax—which was bordered by apartment complexes whose windows gleamed just barely a safe distance away from any probable home run. Ringed by trees, circumscribed by benches in various states of repair, the field boasted an outfield more dust than grass. The baselines needed chalking and the chainlink backstop was sagging from its supports. Yet however prosaic, even tawdry perhaps, the park had witnessed many a Homeric struggle, hard-fought ball games of Trojan proportions, where the sweat of an ten-year-old Achilles might mingle with that of a rival Hector as they collided at home plate, where feats of superhuman athletic prowess passed directly from reality to legend, with hardly a stop at mere news status, while thin-voiced shouts of camaraderie, proud encouragement from parents and random curses of “Yo’ mama.’” filled the competitive atmosphere,

  Addie and Rory approached the park from the north, walking hand in hand. Elderly members of the community already occupied the shadiest benches beneath the gently soughing August trees. Hordes of relatives had set up beach-umbrella-shielded encampments closer to the scene of the upcoming horsehide-and-hickory battle. Coolers, lawn chairs, blankets, radios. Hadn’t civilians come to watch certain battles of the Napoleonic Wars as if for picnics?

  Rory spotted his team and their coach clustered contentiously around the umpires. The visiting team apparently hadn’t shown yet. Rory and Addie went to see what was fueling the hullabaloo.

  The Heroes—looking on wide-eyed and silent now—protectively surrounded their coach, Otis Spann. Spann, no shrinking violet (a used-car salesman by day), weighed approximately three hundred pounds. Beneath his cap, he always carefully arranged his sparse tawny hair across a large bald spot. His mustache resembled a rogue tropic
al centipede. His XXXX-L team T-shirt had necessitated a special factory order.

  Spann now argued with the home base ump. Umpire Urbano Prignano, a seventy-five-year-old leathery fossil of pure Neapolitan descent, often failed to make English perform as he might have wished. He compensated with a large vocabulary of gestures, many of them obscene.

  “And I say they’ve already forfeited the game!” yelled Spann.

  “No forfeit! No forfeit tilla I say so!” countered Prignano.

  Rory stepped between the two men. “What’s going on, Otis?”

  Spann wiped sweat from his high forehead beneath his brim. “The rules clearly state that both teams are to be present at least fifteen minutes before game time. It’s ten minutes past nine now, and they’re still not here. I say these new guys have blown it.”

  Prignano sternly crossed his arms on his chest and shook his reptilian head. “You boys can talk, talk, talk tilla you blue in the face. But it all comes down to wotta I say!”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Spann, yanking off his cap and tossing it to the dust. Rory grabbed the fat man by the elbow and steered him one side.

  “Otis, calm down. What’s the matter? I’ve never seen you so upset before.”

  “Sorry, Rory. But I’ve got a bad feeling about today’s match. First off, we’ve gotta play some unknown team with zero notice. Then they get a break when they’re late. I just don’t know—Rory, I think the fix is in on this one.”

  “C’mon, don’t be paranoid, Otis.”

  “Paranoid? That’s New Jersey’s state byword!”

  An interruption. Rory noticed that everyone in the park was suddenly looking north. Above the noise of nearby boomboxes, Rory detected the sound of an out-of-tune marching band, growing louder by the moment. On the verge of the park soon appeared the leader of the procession.

  Earl Erlkonig, high-stepping gleefully, waved a baton aloft, essaying a few awkward tosses from time to time (the baton hit the ground more often than it was caught). Behind him strode the rest of the Beer Nuts, each playing an instrument to the best of his or her abilities. Beatbox banged a drum and Nerf clanged cymbals. Leather ’n’ Studs blared on trumpets. Hy Rez and Special Effects worked portable synth keyboards like a pair of pasty-faced Herbie Hancocks. Netsuke tootled a flute. Ped Xing elicited moans from a Tibetan horn. Fumento daintily dinged a triangle. That unknown quantity, the Texas banker Lewis Sterling, was proving himself fairly adept on an acoustic guitar.