“Such logic might explain your surface motivations. But who among us can accurately report on what was truly going on in the depths of our psyches prior to some life- shattering decision? Still, if you’ll allow me to conjecture a mite, I’d speculate along these lines.
“I believe that at the moment you created spondulix, you grabbed a live wire direct to a very primitive but powerful part of your brain. You came into contact with that part of mankind’s mental heritage which was initially responsible many thousands of years ago for the invention of commodity money. Now I hardly need remind you, Mister Honeyman, that commodity money represents that phase in the evolution of the economy one step above barter. The adoption of one particular tangible asset as the primary medium of value exchange. Whales’ teeth on Fiji, rats on Easter Island, shells among our own native red men. Now, this notion of commodity exchange eternally hovers just below the thin surface of our so-called civilization. I need only refer to the way such items as cigarettes, candy bars and silk stockings easily became cash equivalents in Europe after World War Two.
“But these subliminal insights formed only the first half of your grand revelation, Mister Honeyman. Almost immediately after this first jolt of perception, I theorize, you realized that a modern lifestyle made it impractical for the average man to walk around with a pocket or satchel full of sandwiches which he could use to make his various purchases. You then recapitulated the next historical jump in the evolution of the economy and drafted a paper instrument which would stand in for the commodity.
“I think the readiness exhibited by the community in the acceptance of your spondulix is testimony to their intrinsic value and allure. You see, Mister Honeyman, your new currency boasts several attractive features which the dollar as it stands nowadays lacks. For one thing, spondulix are backed by something physical, which the dollar is not. The dollar has simply become too rarefied a concept for the average man to have complete faith in. Your spondulix change all that.
“And even more importantly, your spondulix are not bound by any prior legal covenants, treaties, agreements or limitations. You are off the fucking grid with this one, sir! No interfering WTO or World Bank or NAFTA honchos can tell us what to do with this currency. Do you know who really controls the value and supply of the dollar today, Mister Honeyman? Unelected Federal bureaucrats! Groups of anonymous Japanese and German and Swiss bankers! Hordes of Ay-rab oilmen! Cartels of Colombian cocaine growers! By buying and dumping dollars on the international markets they drive our proud national currency up and down like a gol-dang yo-yo! And while such a chaotic setup offers certain chances for big profits, you’re just as likely to blow through a billion or two like that Leeson fellow and find your head on the chopping block.
“Perhaps you have heard, Mister Honeyman, what the Canadian magnate Samuel Bronfman replied when someone asked him what in his opinion was the greatest invention in the history of humanity? ‘Interest,’ he said. Well, you won’t hear me talking out against interest, that’s for sure! But without a solid currency, all the interest in the world is just so much worthless bits and bytes and toilet paper.
“Mister Honeyman—in one stroke you have restored to America her freedom! You’ve given this blessed land of ours a solid footing on which to reach even higher pinnacles of greatness!”
Sterling paused to wet his throat with his own drink. The Heroes had retired with no runs scored after three men at bat, and the teams were trading places. This lopsided pattern of scoring insured that two full ballgames would not take an hour per inning. Nonetheless, nearly a whole day of unsportsmanlike behavior stretched out before a befuddled Rory, a torture as keen as being locked inside a booth with the most inane network sports commentators for six consecutive Superbowls.
Taking advantage of the conversational lull, Addie jumped in.
“Mister Sterling, just where are you coming from?”
Sterling smiled ingratiatingly. “Why, ma’am, I would’ve thought even a blind Chinaman could’ve spotted me for a son of the old Alamo.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I want to hear about your background. What kind of business experience do you have? Where are your references? First you hand Rory a card that claims you’re president of a Texas bank. Then you give him one that has you representing some new firm here in Hoboken. He told me all about the confusion. Now I’m asking you: which identity is real? That is, if either one is valid.”
“Ma’am, let me be upfront with you. I am no longer affiliated with that fine Texas institution. I had to leave thanks to a small misunderstanding involving mutual funds, in which several of our investors took small hits and experienced a percentage of bankruptcies. Luckily, however, I benefited contractually from what is commonly called a golden parachute deal. A mighty big separation settlement that has allowed me to capitalize Hoboken Savings and Loan. And this new institution is strictly on the up and up. We have filed properly with every institution from FSLIC and FSDIC and all them other dicks on down. You’re welcome to check the records, if you don’t trust me.”
Addie remained patently unsatisfied, but Sterling bulled ahead before she could register any further objections. “Your charming little filly’s honest questions brings me round directly to my proposal to you, Mister Honeyman. I wish to offer my new bank and my expertise to you, as kind of a venture capitalist. Now, I know it’s a generous offer, but you heard me right. I am placing my entire faculties and all my vast network of contacts at your disposal. I intend to make Hoboken Savings and Loan the central bank for the swift propagation of spondulix. You see, Mister Honeyman, your invention resembles a little child just learning to speak. At first the tyke’s vocabulary and grasp of the world are confined to a limited sphere. Then, little by little, it naturally expands its capabilities, bringing more and more of the world under its sway. I intend to be the foster daddy to your new currency, bringing it up right like a responsible godpappy, in an accelerated course of development. And of course all this entails generous provisions for your own financial security.”
At this point a thick sheaf of legal papers materialized under Rory’s nose.
“If you’d just sign here, here and here, Mister Honeyman, we can send your little boy off to the marketplace’s kindergarten.”
Little boy? When had he become a father? Rory could barely focus his eyes. So tired, so very tired. Every action involved superhuman effort. This nice man was offering to take all the onerous responsibilities off his shoulders. Why should he fear him? Someone stuck a pen in his hand. He scrawled his name once—
Addie’s voice filtered in from another galaxy. “Rory, are you really sure about this?”
—twice—
“Rory, please—”
—three times—
and the deed was done.
Sterling took the papers back and continued to rattle on. But now his speech had fragmented. “Money market … tee bonds … derivatives … debentures … takeovers … poison pills … futures … brokers … e-trades … stock splits … IPO … CDs … junk bonds … scalability … due diligence …”
The world spun around Rory. The boombox started a new version of “Ballgame,” droned lugubriously by Robert Smith of the Cure:
“I don’t care if I never come back, never come back, never come back—”
Rory heard Addie interrogating Erlkonig. “What did you put in that beer, Earl?” Then hands were tugging him up and he was stumbling off the field, missing the end of the first game, at a score of Visitors—110, Home Team—1.
The second bout was a shutout.
Chapter Eight
Seven with One Blow
The most exquisite mode of torture—as your average megalomaniacalThird-World despot would happily inform you (and didn’t Earl Erlkonig, Rory frequently thought nowadays, strut and bluster and threaten just like some banana-republic tyrant?)—did not consist solely of relentless and unvarying excruciations. By no means. Rather, to achieve maximal suffering in the victim, one m
ust judiciously administer an admixture of hope and even pleasure. By ephemerally blessing the poor sufferer with alternatives to his miserable state, providing the odd pleasure here and there, holding out the possibility of eventual freedom and relief, one could immeasurably heighten the ultimate pain quotient. Contrast was the secret to both art and punishment. Comedy amplifies tragedy, joy pales the cheeks of sorrow. A world of either unmixed happiness or unmitigated terror invariably produces only numbness in the oppressed or blessed citizen, who always knows just what to expect.
Rory’s paranoia had not yet reached the stage where he posited one massive, unified torture-plot against him. No single individual could be held accountable for his oscillating sensations and the effect they were having on his mental and physical well-being. For one thing, unlike the classic methodology, the angels and devils in his life were not united in their efforts. Of this much he was sure. Addie, the main source of pleasure in his current existence, had nothing to do with perverse Erlkonig and the Nuts. The barrier between the two camps held firm. Addie detested the squatters for the unfair advantage they had taken of her man.
Another point against any conspiracy lay in how ingenuously Erlkonig, the ostensible torturer, related his goals, means and motives. Now that he had gotten his way, he had convincingly put aside all duplicity. He firmly maintained, moreover, that he only wanted the best for Rory. Their interests were united, Erlkonig maintained, and both would profit from his schemes.
Nonetheless, Rory felt as if he were riding a Dantean rollercoaster whose peaks pierced paradise but whose valleys plunged into hell. And of course the ratcheting climb and free-fall plummet between lows and highs resulted in days that were merely purgatorial.
Down in the valleys, guilt and shame consumed Rory, mostly concerning his continuing role in the creation and spread of spondulix. The latest development horrified him most. No, don’t even think of it!
Every day he tried desperately to rationalize away his misery and sense of culpability. He had created spondulix only in the throes of fiscal desperation. He had continued to write them for Nerfball alone only thanks to inertia and the assumption of innocence on the part of both giver and receiver. He had funded the Outlaw Party out of simple goodheartedness. He had burdened Porter and other merchants with the funny money just to allow them to get bad debts off their books. And as for his deal with Sterling—Rory had been drugged!
Yes, drugged! Several days after the diabolical double-header Nerfball had revealed, after minor persuasions, that Hy Rez and Special Effects had whipped up a batch of some kind of date-rape drug in their newly installed Old Vault Brewery lab. His will had been chemically sapped! (But exactly how much sapping did such a weak will as his require in the first place? Not a hell of a lot.)
Despite all these rationalizations, Rory could not completely escape the immense burden of responsibility that constantly weighed on him. Again and again he tortured himself (and there you had the most insidious angle, self-torture!) with recriminations. And after that stage he’d fault himself not for the original sins but for worrying about them! Why did he have to be such a moralistic prig? His genes, his upbringing, the stars? Why couldn’t he just let all his troubles go, wash his hands of the past, absolve himself of all guilt? Didn’t living a modern happily amoral life require a Teflon mentality? But his subconscious or his conscience or some other autonomous component of his mind just wouldn’t cave in. This lonely but noisy dissenter in the society of his mind continued to pester him with ethical accusations.
Only Addie brought relief from his nagging inner voice. She alone had dragged him home from the shameful debacle at Max Parallax Field, She alone had nursed him through the next thirty-six hours, leaving his side only on Monday morning for work, and reluctantly even then. Meeting Rory for dinner that night, she had still been furious over the machinations of the Beer Nuts.
“What if that drug had permanently messed you up? What if you had fallen and cracked your skull? What if Earl had decided to dump you in the Hudson?”
Rory reassured her that his safety had never been in doubt. The Nuts and their leader did not harbor malice against him, they just wanted what they wanted when they wanted it, and went for their goals with hammer and tongs. Nevertheless, Addie insisted, Rory should confront Sterling, get that contract back, and rip it to shreds.
Rory hesitated. He was naturally disinclined to back out of any deal, however sneakily negotiated. A man was only as good as his word, he could recall Grandpa Honeyman often telling him. But also he secretly felt relieved to have signed his rights to spondulix away. Let someone else take over the day-to-day management of the fake money. Fewer headaches for him. Lastly, in reading over his thoughtfully provided Xeroxed copy of the contract with sober eyes, Rory had discovered that he indeed stood to profit immensely from the deal, assuming spondulix took off as Sterling and Erlkonig seemed to believe it would. The attraction of being debt-free, of actually having a little extra cash after years of penury proved too much to resist.
Eventually, Addie stopped pressuring Rory to “stand up for his rights.” She said she supposed that as an adult he knew how to protect himself. If he insisted, she wouldn’t even refer to the matter anymore. He would have to raise the issue if he wanted to discuss it.
“That’s fine by me,” Rory said a little stiffly. “Thank you. I appreciate both your concern and your tact.”
“Oh, Rory, I’m nagging only because I love you.”
Love. She had said the delightfully dangerous word first. Rory drifted on clouds of bliss. All his troubles momentarily vanished. Life shone whole and complete. His true partner and mate had finally manifested herself. About time. But maybe this event could not have happened any sooner. Maturity mattered, made the declaration of love sweeter, more keenly felt. Rory cast his mind back over his significant affairs. Surefooted, twin-grandparented Katie Stearn now stood in his memory as a youthful headlong infatuation with sheer glamour. Businesslike Helen Datura had represented some kind of pragmatic working arrangement between grownups. The wildly creative and willfully erratic Suki Netsuke emblemed a middle-aged fling with anarchy. Viewed as cars, his three women had been a teenager’s jalopy, a minivan, and a sporty two-seater convertible. And now Addie capped the sequences as—what? Reliable imported sedan? The analogy seemed to break down, and Rory discarded vehicular comparisons.
Once Rory quickly declared his reciprocal love, the rollercoaster of his life soared even higher and stayed aloft longer, compensating for the gloomy dips more vividly. Seeing Addie lifted his heart up; leaving her apartment (they had not quite worked up the courage to live together) only engendered the anticipatory thrill of reunion. In his joy he could almost forget about such scary moments as the daily delivery to the sandwich shop from Hoboken Savings and Loan.
A delivery which this mid-August morning loomed as large as usual, offset only by the parallel pleasure of Addie’s imminent arrival.
The city of Hoboken had generally prospered with the rest of the country during the latest economic boom, with the exception of a few blighted spots such as Honeyman’s Heroes. But now even this nexus of neglect was undergoing a facelift.
Hammers resounded on shiny nails plunging into fresh pine planks. Nailguns popped against sheets of plywood. Table-saws growled as they chewed two-by-fours. Drills whined. Workmen joked and cursed. All this noise drifted into Honeyman’s Heroes past a tarp hanging across a missing, recently demolished wall, a tarp that curtained off the sandwich shop from the formerly empty space next door (not Tiran Porter’s establishment, but a matching space on the other side of Rory’s).
The store itself hosted its own set of noises. At this moment Nerfball occupied the bathroom during one of his regular Nasal Irrigation breaks, and the honking he produced would have registered on the detectors of a city noise-abatement team. Moreover, the joint was packed with clamorous customers, and Rory’s surly staff spared no sarcastic rejoinders to the various requests of the customers.
&
nbsp; Combined with the construction racket, the store noises had left Rory feeling antsy. Supervising behind the counter, he longed to see Addie’s face.
But the next person to walk into the store was a young man clad in a security guard’s uniform. His authoritative costume might have inspired more respect had it not been bedizened with colorful eccentric patches and insignia, as if he held the rank of Ruritanian General. Moreover, the gun holstered at his hip revealed itself to even cursory inspection as a paintball device, a splat pistol.
Rory sighed deeply. Here came his daily crown of thorns.
The pantherish newcomer carried a large cloth money sack in his right hand, a clipboard in his left. A large thin nose shaped like a linoleum-cutting blade bisected his homely face. A droopy sandy mustache and long sparse hair so light as to appear almost white did nothing to improve his appearance. An old prison tattoo showed across the knuckles of his right hand, one letter per joint: m-o-n-e-y. This odd deliveryman’s name was Whitey Blacklaw, and he fleshed out the Beer Nuts roster as its latest member.
The Nuts had been actively recruiting lately, in this expansionary period. Erlkonig had personally brought Blacklaw into the fold. He had found the man acting as a bouncer at Maxwell’s, the rock club. Impressed with Blacklaw’s aggressive, no-nonsense, even frightening demeanor, Erlkonig had hired him as the courier for Hoboken Savings and Loan.
Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken Page 23