Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “Holy cow!”

  “Merely our regular Friday night line-up, sir.”

  Addie interrupted with a request. “Can I have chocolate ants on my sherbet?”

  “I—I’ll check.”

  Marie returned shortly with demitasse cup from which protruded a small silver spoon. “The chef made some shavings off a block of Swiss chocolate. I hope his substitution will pass muster.”

  “You bet,” said Addie. She removed the spoon from the cup and upended all the shavings on her sherbet. “Ice cream without chocolate is like frottage without a subway.”

  Marie sniffed peevishly, pivoted on her heel and stalked off.

  Fifteen minutes later the veal dish made its entrance, flanked by two bottles of wine.

  “They’re really trying to get us drunk now,” said Rory. “Something must be rotten in Denmark.”

  “Bet the chef burnt that pork roast.”

  “Maybe Rosemary’s got a sore throat.”

  “Wynton bit his lip.”

  “Hee hee hee hee!” Addie was giggling so hard she had dislodged a shoulder strap.

  “Ha ha ha ha!” Rory roared until his bulging, sloshing stomach hurt.

  They finished the veal and most of the wine. The candle flames had doubled in size in Rory’s vision, acquiring a flickering aura around their hot cores. Suddenly the flames jumped in intensity while the rest of the room plunged into dusk.

  “Hey, what happened? This booze musta been cooked in a bathtub! I’m going blind!”

  “Shhh, the show’s starting.”

  “Oh. Hey, Addie, listen, I’ve got to ask you something important over coffee. Don’t let me forget.”

  “If you can’t remember what makes you think I’ll be able to?”

  “’Cuz you’re better’n me. Better in all ways. That’s why.”

  Diana and Audra took the stage. Sprightly show tunes filled the air.

  The rest of the meal passed in a vinous haze. Rory vaguely realized he was eating superb food and chugging glass after glass of expensive wine. But the details had vanished, as if he were inhabiting a line drawing, or living on some more rarefied plane. At one point he felt inspired to quote part of one of the only poems he remembered, drilled into him in an Iowa schoolhouse: the Rubiyat.

  “‘I offen wunner what the vent- vent- vintners buy, one half so precious as the stuff they sell.’”

  Addie responded in kind. “Could you ’n’ I with fate conspire—” she began, then tapered off with an expression of fleeting sadness.

  Rosemary finished up her set just as Rory and Addie scooped the last spoon of fancy pudding out of their goblets and licked the last pastry filling off their fingers. The plump lounge songbird closed out with Ellington’s “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So.”

  If you should ask me the amount

  In my bank account,

  I’d have to confess that I’m slippin’.…

  The lights came up, their table was cleared, coffee and liqueurs served, and polite conversation replaced applause throughout the room.

  Addie’s languorously unfocused yet glowingly ardent eyes rested on Rory’s face. He seemed to see his whole future therein.

  “You had something to ask me, honey Honeyman?”

  “Oh, right.” Rory reached both hands across the table, knocking a coffee cup slightly so that its contents sloshed. He grasped both of Addie’s hands and tried to compose his whirling thoughts.

  “I know I don’t have much of a future right now, and I know you could probably do a lot better’n me, you’re so gorgeous and special. But no one loves you like I do. And they never will. Whoever the bastard is! No one. And I think maybe you love me the same way. In fact, I know it. So what I’m saying is—Atalanta Swinburne, let’s get married and blow this crazy town.”

  Addie’s eyes opened wide in amazement, then squinched tightly shut. At the same time she jerked her hands involuntarily out of Rory’s grip. Tears began to leak out from beneath her lashes. She started to hyperventilate, sucking in big excessive breaths.

  Rory panicked. “Hey c’mon, what’s the matter? Don’t flip out, Addie. I’m sorry! Forget I ever said anything, okay? Addie, don’t— C’mon, Addie, get a hold of yourself—”

  Addie was plainly struggling to resume control. Her chest heaved. She had clutched her napkin and was wringing it She tried to talk, but only succeeded in making gulping noises.

  Alarmed, Rory got up from his seat and came around to her side of the table. “Calm down, girl! No big deal. We can leave things like they are for awhile. I know it’s a big step. Maybe we could try a five-year engagement. That’s a joke, you know. Yeah, a joke. The whole night was a joke. Just a bad joke, Addie.”

  Addie managed to gasp out a few words. “No, don’t say— Not a joke— Never a joke— You can’t know— Too much— Everything’s too much—”

  “Look, let’s get out of here and go home.” Rory helped Addie up and they headed for the exit, the object of massed stares.

  In the lobby Nerfball awaited them. He appeared genuinely concerned. “Is everything okay, Rory? It wasn’t the food, was it?”

  “No, no, Nerf, don’t worry. The meal had nothing to do with this.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that. I’m sorry you’re going to miss my little after-coffee surprise. We feature a post prandial Nasal Irrigation Menu. Various scented waters—rose, jasmine, hyacinth—plus individual discharge bowls. I think you would’ve enjoyed trying it.”

  “Another time, Nerf. I’ve got to get Addie home.”

  “Okay. See you at the Brewery party tomorrow.”

  Rory did not reply, but hustled Addie outside, where the doorman already had a cab waiting.

  In the cab, at first Addie slouched in one corner, against the door and away from Rory. Blotchy from wine and crying, her anguished face tortured him. The lenses of her eyeglasses had misted over from the saline humidity of her tears. Rory didn’t know what to do. He contemplated wordlessly hugging her. But she seemed unapproachable. He tried to image something else he could say. Nothing sounded relevant. Then he started to get a little angry. What kind of response was this to a sincere marriage proposal? Her reaction was downright insulting, come to think of it. Rory felt his anger rising. You’d think he was some codger propositioning a sixteen-year-old virgin. Wait a minute. His anger deflated. Could that be it? Addie did lag behind him by a couple of years. But that shouldn’t matter. She had never mentioned the disparity before. Oh, Jesus! What good was all this guessing? Too confusing. Who knew why Addie—why any woman?—had reacted as she had?

  Just as Rory felt himself dropping into a bottomless pit of miserable self-pity, Addie threw herself on him and began kissing his face, causing their rearview-mirror-focused driver to grin.

  Now Rory was really confused. The kisses felt good, sure, but they clarified nothing. After a few seconds he gave up trying to rationalize the actions of this woman he loved and simply responded in kind.

  By the time the cab pulled up in front of Addie’s, Rory was insensate from kisses and a surfeit of expensive wine. He tossed the driver a handful of spondulix.

  “Gee, thanks, Mack. Hope yer honeymoon’s swell.”

  Rory and Addie tumbled from the taxi. Leaning on each other, continuing to kiss, they stumbled upstairs to Addie’s door. Fumbling with the housekeys, dropping the rattling ring twice, both of them kneeling to recover the keys in the darkened hallway, halting their groping of the carpet to kiss while kneeling and groping each other, finding the keys for the second time, pulling themselves up using the doorknob and each other while still sloppily smooching, leaning against the door while turning the handle, half-falling inward, Rory kicking the door shut, Addie stripping off her dress, Rory nearly strangling himself with his tie, both making themselves naked as fast as possible, grappling skin against skin, toppling backward onto the couch for a period of heavy petting, then Rory picking up Addie and carrying her to the bedroom, tripping a yard from the bed on a rucked-up thr
ow-rug and launching Addie a few feet through the air and onto the mattress, converting his awkwardness into a leap that landed him beside her.

  Rory awoke at noon. Addie’s sweet weight did not indent the mattress beside him.

  He tried calling her, but his voice emerged a croak: “Urghie.” He cleared his throat. “Addie, are you in the bathroom? I gotta use it myself.” Rory got reluctantly and unsteadily up. He made his way to the john. Addie had taped a shakily scrawled note to the mirror.

  Dearest, dearest Rory,

  Please forgive me. I’ve been living a lie all these months we’ve been in love. I never wanted to hurt you. But marriage is out of the question. Forgive me. Someday you’ll understand. I promise.

  No matter what happens, I still love you with all my heart. Honest.

  Goodbye.

  Addie

  Rory sat down hard on the toilet. Luckily, the inner seat had not been left raised, but rested on the ceramic rim. Always leave the inner seat down when a woman lived in the same house. Simple courtesy. Meant you were always thinking of her comfort. Even when she was gone. Gone. Where, how far, and why? Forever? No more to hear her voice forever?

  He felt like Bluebeard’s wife. He had ventured into a room he had been told never to enter, and now he must pay the price. Off with his head!

  What a Olympic-grade, gold-medal-winning fuckup he was! Everything he touched turned to shit. Hot tears coursed the thicket of his beard.

  Somehow he got dressed. Ransacking the closet for jeans and shirt, he noted the absence of a familiar suitcase otherwise seen every day. A quick inventory of Addie’s clothes revealed big gaps. She could be halfway across the continent or the Atlantic by now, while he was wholly in hell.

  Robots and puppets clanked through the city streets, dimensionless, emotionless silhouettes of people and machines, all moving in obedience to clockwork impulses, all invisible when you looked at them edge-on with hardened eyes. Cruel and flinty as Addie’s heart, the sidewalks slapped his aimless feet. He trod pavement until the weariness in his limbs matched the numbness of his soul.

  The Old Vault Brewery, late afternoon, Saturday. That much of a spatiotemporal fix was within his capabilities. Party. A party tonight. Party hearty. Have a ball. Live it up. Go for broke. You’re a bachelor again, you’re out there. Really out there.

  Rory mumbled something to convince the guards to let him past the fence. Once inside the Brewery itself, he encountered caterers and decorators busy with party preparations. They hailed him, but he headed single-mindedly toward Vat Number One, and through its partially open door.

  Earl Erlkonig sat on his curving couch, a pair of headphones clamping his skull. He was perusing a stack of reports through drugstore reading glasses. Sensing Rory at the door, he removed both ’phones and glasses.

  “New CD by the Millionaires, pre-release pressing. Number One next week on all the charts, or I’m not Charlotte and Wolfie’s little boy. Makes reading this crap almost bearable. Can you believe that I’m the only one working this late on a Saturday? Even Sterling’s got the day off. Is it fair, I ask you, moll? But who’ll dance this mess around if not me?”

  “Addie left me.”

  Erlkonig blinked three times fast. Making clucks of sympathy, he got up and ushered Rory to a seat.

  “There, there, moll, don’t take it so hard. She had some stone-cold moves, that fox, but there’s plenty of fish in the sea. You just gotta bait your hook with the right stuff, if you get my draft.”

  “‘Get my drift,’” Rory wearily corrected out of long habit. “You mean ‘Get my drift.’”

  “Drift, draft, who the fuck cares! Grammar ain’t gonna change the fact that you got royally screwed, moll. Here, what you need is a beer.” Erlkonig opened the concealed fridge. “How about—no, not that one. Nope, nope—ah, here’s the good stuff! Got your name on it.”

  Erlkonig fussed with the beer for a minute with his back presented to Rory, then handed it over. Rory nearly inhaled the stuff. The brew bore the faint undertaste of the poisoned beverage he had consumed at the Little League game. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore.

  Really, what reason to go on living existed?

  “Hold on, moll, I have to check the setup for the festivities.” Erlkonig vanished, leaving Rory in stasis. The albino returned after some unquantifiable time. “A lot of the Nuts are here already, man. I told everyone about your bad luck, and they wanna like commiserate with you,”

  “Send them all in. I don’t care who knows. I don’t care about anything.”

  “Not enough room in here for the whole herd. I’ll pass one at a time through.”

  Leather n’ Studs entered as an inseparable unit, their fidelity to each other an unintentional mockery of Rory’s plight.

  “She was a bitch, Honeyman,” said Leather.

  “Yah,” agreed Studs. “You’re much better off without her.”

  “Maybe later on, when you’re feeling better, you could use a pity fuck.”

  “Let us know, okay?”

  Hilario Fumento cautiously entered next. “Uh, Rory, here’s a good sentence that my editor made me chop out of my novel. It might help you put your problems in perspective. ‘When we are traveling in a distant state, the sight of a license plate from home always inspires a sharp but transitory melancholy.’”

  Ped Xing came third (or fourth). “KWATZJ” he bellowed, his Zen utterance racing around in the vat even after he had departed.

  Whitey Blacklaw followed on Xing’s heels. “Man, you want me to pound that slut, just say the word.”

  Suki Netsuke. “Sorry, Rory.” She planted a chaste kiss on his brow, dropped a pornigami rose into his lap.

  Lastly, Beatbox. He carried a large cardboard carton. Cardinal Ratzinger trotted and frisked at his heels, “Look, man, this gonna cheer you right up.” Beatbox set the carton down. Rory peered apathetically inside.

  Hello Kitty lay purring with four enormous three-colored, quarter-Kalahari-Anthill-Tiger kittens feeding greedily at her teats. Rory tried to feel happy. But the sight of the shut-eyed kittens only made him say, “Helpless. So helpless.”

  Beatbox sighed and removed the carton. Erlkonig reappeared. “Finish your beer, shell, and have another. The party’s gonna start soon.”

  During the next hour or so Rory continued to sit in dull lassitude. A montage of sounds drifted—or drafted—into Vat Number One. Clanking dishes and pans. The road crew for the Millionaires distributing equipment. Eventually the band themselves could be heard arriving; soon they began to noodle around. They played a few snatches of Elvis Costello’s “Love for Tender.”

  Well, you won’t take my love for tender,

  It’s time to put your money where your mouth is.…

  Shortly afterwards, noisy guests began to bounce into the Brewery. Laughter and the clinking of glasses echoed from the high rafters and into Rory’s ears like so much molten lead. His deep funk was blacker than Satan’s underwear. His universe had contracted to a shell no bigger than his bowed shoulders. He felt like a counterfeit of himself.

  Erlkonig kept darting back into Vat Number One from time to time to check on Rory. Around ten pm Erlkonig fed his charge a third beer. Rory drank a fraction of it willingly, then let the bottle fall from his lax hand, spilling its contents across Erlkonig’s expensive carpet.

  A little before midnight Erlkonig came in for the final time. He helped Rory to stand on wobbly legs.

  “Time for your act, moll. Your public awaits.”

  Act? What was Erlkonig talking about? The circus. Lispenard must need him. Under the big top, the show must go on! Couldn’t let Lispenard down. Where was the Baroness? Got to climb on and dive. Okay, Ma, I’m coming! Wait a minute, Mister Brundage, I won my medal fair and square! Tommie, John, right on, man! Power to the people! Hey, where is everyone? Don’t leave me here alone.

  Leaning on Erlkonig, Rory left the Vat. The albino guide hurried him across the partygoer-crowded floor towar
d a door at the southwest corner of the building. After opening the door by keying a code into a pad, Erlkonig ushered Rory through.

  They stood inside the huge Brewery smokestack. The faintest remnant of smoky odor circa the Stearn Twins clung to the scrubbed walls. An elegant wrought-iron spiral staircase corkscrewed up the chamber’s middle. Lamps in fancy Art-Deco sconces studded the walls for the entire height of the stack.

  Erlkonig brought Rory to the foot of the staircase. “Let’s go, moll. Ten stories, and we gotta climb them all.”

  Rory began the ascent.

  Halfway up, where the stack soared free of the buttressing Brewery, enormous girders had been retrofitted to brace and anchor the original bricks. Rory paused to stare dumbly at them. “What …?”

  “We’re putting some enormous stresses on this old chimney tonight, shell. You’ll see. Let’s get going, though. Hup, hup!”

  Near the top Rory paused unexpectedly, causing Erlkonig to bump into him and ask, “What’s the problem?”

  “Where are we going, Earl? I’m dizzy.…”

  “Don’t worry, shell. The rest of your path extends nice and level after this. Just one foot in front of the other, that’s all you’ll have to manage. C’mon now, push that trap door open.”

  Rory did as Erlkonig instructed and ascended headfirst into the poshly appointed penthouse which Erlkonig had pointed out to him weeks ago from their perch on the Brewery’s roof.

  Joining Rory, Erlkonig ordered, “Okay now, out that door.”

  “Another door?”

  “Don’t sweat it, moll, this is your final door.”

  The two men stepped outside. They stood on Erlkonig’s famous pissing platform, a small railed balcony that seemed to float two hundred feet in the night sky. Far below Rory could make out a large crowd gathered in the lighted parking lot and street, tiny people all looking upward. A few dozen yards away the Hudson lay like an oiled snake. The skyline of Manhattan reared up like the crenellations of some far-stranger Oz.

  Erlkonig picked up a bullhorn. His amplified voice bellowed out. “SPECIAL EFFECTS, HY—HIT THE LIGHTS!”