Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

Rory expressed his disdain openly. “Is this all you managed to get out of Sponco?”

  Studs smiled and her whiskers lofted. “This branch represents only one out of two hundred franchises opening nationwide today. Our PBS show starts next week. And you’ll find our videos in Wal-Marts everywhere soon.”

  “Oh.”

  Rory walked the rest of the way home with a vague apprehension that he would imminently encounter other Sponco-sponsored Beer Nuts living out their wildest dreams. However, he made the rest of the distance without any more such revelations.

  Once inside his apartment he felt slightly less uneasy. He tried to put the Beer Nuts entirely out of his thoughts, so he could be calm enough to say what he had to say to Addie tonight.

  Rory called for his cat. No answering mewl greeted him, and the keg-shaped Hello Kitty failed to appear. She must be holed up finally having her kittens!

  Rory began to search.

  The apartment held no trace of Hello Kitty.

  Rory noticed the open window only at the end of his search. The window led to the fire-escape. He could have sworn he had left it open only an inch. How could it have raised itself to its present height? Thieves? Nothing was disturbed or missing. The cat must have done it herself somehow. God, what a catastrophe! Parturition-prone Hello Kitty loose on the streets. Why hadn’t he pressed his landlord for window screens? Couldn’t he do anything right?

  Rory spent the next half-hour futilely searching the immediate neighborhood for Hello Kitty. About to admit defeat at last, Rory had an inspiration. Why not investigate the neighborhood of the Brewery, where he knew Hello Kitty had often wandered, and where she had first been impregnated by the heartless Cardinal?

  Rory set out for the waterfront.

  Clots of unexpected traffic clogged Fourteenth Street. On foot, Rory avoided the jams and quickly reached the river-fronting property.

  Since his last visit, the unstoppable forces of change had demolished a vacant building next to the Brewery and transformed the space into a parking lot. The freshly painted aggressive yellow striping on the fragrant black macadam aligned the flashy new cars and SUVs of Sponco employees. A city cop directed a steady stream of vehicles in and out of the lot. Every fifth car or so was a black stretch limo studded with antennae, all of them sleek as mechanical panthers. The half-lowered tinted window of one car revealed a seated Lewis Sterling holding a phone to his ear. He waved brusquely to Rory before powering up the pane of smoky glass between them.

  The Old Vault Brewery itself now gleamed like the trademark fairy castle at Disneyland, set amidst expensive landscaping. The copper flashing, newly buffed, threw off dazzling reflections. The freshly washed bricks exhibited the faded rose shade of old damask. Flags bearing the spondulix sign flew from roof-mounted masts. Worshipful tourists, forbidden entry, nonetheless clustered on the street side of an elegant wrought-iron fence surrounding the headquarters, whole families from junior-shorted Pops down to pop-shirted Juniors. The only touch missing was Tinkerbelle whizzing around the smokestack penthouse, trailing pixie dust.

  Avoiding the chimneyed corner of the building, just in case Erlkonig had chosen that moment to asperge the town by micturition (which way was the wind blowing?), Rory made his way to the guarded gate. The rent-a-cops accepted his ID and passed him through.

  At the main door Rory paused. Studded brass had replaced the splintered wood, although the architects had retained the tripartite setup, biggest door subdivided into smaller and smallest. A larger-shaped knocker beckoned in place of any bell. Contemplating this entrance, Rory felt like Dorothy waiting timorously at the door to the Emerald City.

  A sense of utter and complete strangeness, jamais vu, overwhelmed him. How had this day arrived? Hadn’t he stood outside this same door only yesterday, searching for a delinquent Nerfball in order to open up his store? The place had seemingly been transformed overnight, from dilapidation to nouveau~riche splendor, a miracle accomplished while he himself slept his life away in Rip van Winkle oblivion. Yet in that long drowse, what allied changes had been incubating in him?

  Something hard smacked up then against Rory’s shins, interrupting his ruminations. He looked down.

  The large two-way pet door with Cardinal Ratzinger’s name picked out in gems had swung partway open, stopping against Rory’s legs. He took a step backward to allow the door to open fully. Perhaps Hello Kitty would appear.

  The head of Beatbox emerged, followed shortly by the rest of the man as he crawled out. Remaining on all fours, the wiry Latino said, “’Scuse me, Rory moll, but I can’t talk with you right now. I took the day off from my food lab—Beatbatch International—just to make with this important detective work like.”

  Food lab? Rory decided to inquire no further in that direction. “What detective work?”

  “The Cardinal’s been missing since this morning, and we’re trying to trace him. We figure, you wanna find a cat, you gotta act like a cat. So I’m out to prowl the neighborhood.”

  Beatbox rendered a convincing horny cat yowl. Rory winced as the imitation passed into the upper registers. The man made ready to pad off.

  “Wait,” said Rory, “my cat’s missing, too.”

  “Hey, join me down here then, man. We’ll be a pair of toms living la vida loca.”

  “Uh, no, I can’t spare the time now for your method. But listen, if you see any sign of Hello Kitty, let me know right away.”

  Revealing too much childhood exposure to Mister Rogers, Beatbox replied, “Meow-sure-meow-thing-meow.”

  Rory watched as Beatbox crept off. The catman’s progress halted for a plaintive yelp now and then whenever a sharp piece of city grit bit into knee or palm.

  Rory passed into the Brewery through the human-sized ingress. He immediately confronted a novelty: a receptionist he didn’t recognize seated behind a hi-tech desk. A waist-high mahogany gated partition prevented further unauthorized access.

  The pretty woman was busy speaking into her headset phone, so Rory utilized this opportunity to look around the space he hadn’t visited since that momentous day when his shop had been excluded from the new economy.

  The few vats and kettles that had been retained gleamed with a mirror finish. Gilded sunlight poured in through big lofty spotless windows. Exposed pipes and ducts in pastel shades recalled the Beauborg Museum in Paris. Pillars sported faux marbling. Pricey artwork dotted the walls. A bronze plaque near the entrance detailed the history of the building. (Prominent mention of the Stearn Twins sent a surge of conflicting emotions through Rory, and he thought briefly of his new daughter.) The text on the memorial followed the history of the structure right down to its ultimate renovation by the same famous architect who had done that new museum out in L.A. Out on the open floor, flunkies carrying documents dashed madly among desks scattered across the immense carpeted area. Phones were ringing, printers chattering, monitors flickering and fax machines purring.

  Could this possibly be the same filthy, haunted building where Rory had fairly recently stumbled across the naked bodies of Erlkonig and Netsuke on a dirty mattress, where he had tracked down the insulted, sulking Nerfball in his dank lair? Impossible, yet true.

  The perky, charming receptionist had finished her call and now fixed all her bright attention on Rory. “Yes, Mister Honeyman?”

  All thoughts of Hello Kitty had temporarily faded from the forefront of Rory’s consciousness. The sight of all this opulence had brought other matters uppermost in Rory’s mind. Certain internal balances had shifted and his priorities had altered. Like a tightrope walker striving to maintain her footing—Katie just before her fatal fall?—he had made intuitive adjustments. The formerly tentative plans for his future—held in suspension until he could learn how Addie would react to what he planned to broach that night to her—had now assumed a more solid shape and thrust.

  “I need to see Earl,” he told the woman.

  “You’ll find him in Vat Number One.”

  “Thanks.”

&n
bsp; “And Mister Honeyman?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to you for making my job possible. You’ve done so much for so many in this city. I think the plan for your statue at City Hall is the least we can do.”

  Rory grew embarrassed by the woman’s earnest gaze. “Right, sure, you’re welcome, of course.”

  She buzzed Rory through the barrier and he headed toward the brewing vat labeled with a big gold legend: NUMBER ONE. Halfway there, he stopped. A statue? Of him? He felt his temper flaring. He would surely kick Erlkonig’s butt. He stomped toward the Numero Uno kettle. Once close to the vessel, he detected the hairline crack of a curving door in its side, further indicated by some steps. He reached up and knocked.

  The door swung open smoothly, as if on pistons. The café au lait face of Erlkonig showed. “Hey, shell, good to see you. I was gonna call you today sometime anyhow. C’mon in.”

  Rory climbed three steps up into the vat.

  A circular crimson-cushioned couch ran all the way along the interior wall of the vat, save where the door intervened. Various audio/video components, telephones and computer monitors, as well as their controls, were mounted on the wall. In the center of the carpeted floor a hookah big as a child emitted pungent fumes. Efficient ventilation and cooling occurred through a pipe in the center of the ceiling that had formerly fed in the liquid contents of the vat. Autographed pictures of various moguls —Trump, Gates, Allen, Turner, each portrayed smilingly side by side with Erlkonig—decorated whatever space didn’t host a gadget.

  “What luxury,” Rory said in a voice he hoped dripped with sarcasm. “Does Hugh Hefner know how much you idolize him?”

  “Hugh and I have talked,” said the unflappable Erlkonig, lazing on the couch. He lifted up a hinged section of seat and reached inside a refrigerated compartment for a beer. “Rest your butt and share a drink, man.”

  Rory’s anger began to swell. “I’m not sitting down! Jesus, Earl, look around this bordello! For once, just ask yourself how you got here.”

  “Through you.”

  Rory stopped short in his denunciations. His anger dissolved in a bath of guilt. “Okay, you’ve got me, Earl. I own up to full responsibility. I started everything. But now I’m finishing it. At least I’m writing a period to my involvement. I’m pulling out of this whole fucking mess, and there’s no way you can stop me.”

  Earl sat up straighter, actually appearing a bit disconcerted. “Whadda ya mean, moll?”

  “Simple. Tonight I’m proposing to Addie. If she accepts, I’ll convince her to leave this rotten town. We’ll go far, far away where no one has ever even heard of this funny money. I’ve had enough of spondulix. And you can’t buy me off like you’ve bribed everyone else. No, not even with some damned statue! And as part of my leaving, I want to sever all my ties with spondulix. I’m resigning all my positions, handing back any profits. Moreover, I want my name and picture taken off all the new notes. You’ll have to get altered plates engraved. Ideally, I’d like all the old notes withdrawn from circulation. But I realize that’s impossible, so I’m not going to push it.”

  Erlkonig laughed patronizingly. “Man, even half of what you’re stipulating is so ridiculous we cant even think about it. First off, we don’t want to introduce any more changes into the system that might undermine people’s faith in the currency. Folks are barely getting over the conversion from the sandwich standard. And while we rode that ripple out easily enough, I don’t want to risk any more such disruptions. And second—well, take a look at this.”

  Digging into his pocket, Erlkonig withdrew a crumpled spondulix and passed it over to Rory. He smoothed it out and studied it. The quality of the bill was very poor, both in texture and the resolution of its images. The façade of Honeyman’s Heroes looked more like an assemblage of matchsticks than a building. The portrait of Rory himself appeared to be that of man with a wen on his nose, misaligned eyes and a muffin atop his head, rather than a baseball cap.

  “So you’re having quality control troubles at the mint. So what? That doesn’t matter to me.”

  Erlkonig took the note back. “You don’t understand, moll, Sponco didn’t create this particular spondulix. It’s counterfeit. A gang of elementary-school kids turned it out on an inkjet printer.”

  This revelation took a moment to sink in. When it did, Rory felt personally violated somehow. Bad enough to have the Beer Nuts making free with his face and good name, yet at least when all was said and done they constituted a known enemy. He had even licensed them in that drugged stupor at the Little League game. But to have strangers illicitly propagating his image, as if he belonged to some out-of-copyright, public domain storehouse of icons—He felt sullied and sick. Now he knew the shame that must be experienced by the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty whenever some stupid tchotchke surfaced to rip them off.

  “We’ve got to stop this,” said Rory, “before the counterfeiting goes bigtime, when it’s not just kids anymore.”

  “Whoa, shell, hold up a minute. You’re looking at this all wrong. We don’t want to stop any counterfeiters, we want to encourage them. This is a major phase-transition for spondulix, like going from water to steam, if you dig science at all. We’re not the government, and we don’t necessarily want a monopoly. The more spondulix in circulation, whether perfect or not, the more power Sponco has. In the public eye, all spondulix rebound to our credit.”

  “Redound. Redound to our credit.”

  “Now you’ve got it. We’re the spondulix people, no matter who mints them—at least at this stage of the game. Although we might have to exterminate the fleas later. Hey, speaking of bugs, have you heard our new slogan yet? ‘Sponco: we make money like bees make honey.’”

  “Beautiful. Now you’re even dragging my parents into this. Who wrote that drivel?”

  “Hilario. But back to your demands. Forget ’em! They’re crazy anyway. Why the hell are you bothered by your picture on spondulix? It’s an honor! You’re helping to free up all the wealth in this great country from stupid and timid government strictures. Taxes, inflation, exchange rates, trade imbalances—Spondulix are immune from all that crap! They’re a universal solvent! Money as an entirely abstract concept, free from all earthly bonds! So let kids and gangsters and Third World tyrants duplicate spondulix, including your furry face. They’re just helping us undermine all those outmoded currencies. And remember—no matter how tangled they get, the reins of power eventually lead back to us.”

  Rory flopped down onto the couch and held his head in his hands. “Power, power, power. I actually forgot for a minute what matters most to you. How could I have been so stupid as to imagine that friendship and honor counted for anything with you? Why should you let even one miserable sucker like me out from under your thumb? Letting me go would diminish your fun by a single selfish iota.”

  Erlkonig shifted over closer to Rory. He said nothing until Rory looked up at him.

  For the first time since he had known him, Rory saw Erlkonig’s naked face. All subterfuge, bravado and cynicism had fallen away, like the seasonally withering leaves on the trees outside. Only the immature features of a thirty-six-year-old child remained, the visage of a youth abandoned by his biological father, forced out onto the streets, kicked from boot to boot without ever knowing why.

  “You think I’m having fun, man,” Erlkonig hissed. “But you don’t know shit, moll. Oh, I thought I’d be having fun, too, by now. That was the plan. Every busy day that went by I kept waiting for the fun to happen, to fill me up and make me feel like I was really on top of the world for the first time in my life, like I really counted for something. But the juice never flowed. So I grabbed at more and more strands of the web, Rory, pulling at all the levers I could find, always thinking that one more connection, one more shot of power would put me over the top, into that safe and comfortable zone where all the lucky, well-off normal people seemed to live. But it never happened. And then one da
y just last week I woke up and found out that I was snared in the web and mashed in those gears I thought I controlled.”

  This disclosure astonished Rory. He briefly considered admonishing Erlkonig about his mixed metaphors, but decided not to. He did not want to shatter to fragile moment of true communication.

  “I’ve seen things lately, man, seen some bad things, stuff you couldn’t even imagine, you’re such a goddamn baby. When you start to move on certain rarefied levels, you learn the real facts of life. You learn who runs things behind the scenes, you get introduced to the big boys who pull the strings of the average joes. And to the bigger boys who pull their strings! You think me and Sterling and Sponco have power now, moll. Well, we’re nothing! There’s ranks and tiers above us, powers and dominions, man, up to infinity. And that’s the main lesson I’ve had to swallow this week, moll. I ain’t never gonna feel in power, because there’s always gonna be someone above me, no matter how high I go. I’ll be pissing out my penthouse enjoying myself, but my selfsame head’ll be getting sprayed from above! But at the same time I can’t climb back down. Once you’ve climbed the ladder of power, the rungs disappear behind you. And that’s why I can’t let you go. I have to keep all my subordinates under control. Bad as my current life is, anything less would be worse. And if you’ll just be honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re partway up the same ladder yourself.”

  Rory admitted no such thing aloud, but knew the idea had lodged in his mind like a thorn.

  “I don’t really give a fuck what you think of me anyhow,” Erlkonig continued, “but just don’t imagine I’m having fun with any of this. No more than you. It’s just something I’ve got to stay with, a tiger to ride. You know, keep whipping that Juggernaut along or else you’ll fall under it yourself.”

  Rory stood. A small portion of him still doubted Erlkonig’s confession, but ultimately he had to accept him at face value. “Earl, I’m sorry for you and I understand how you feel. But I can’t agree with your way of dealing with your dissatisfaction. I still believe I can turn my own life around. So I’m cutting out. And, if you offer me any resistance, I’ll go to the authorities with all I know.”