Strange Trades Read Online Free PDF Page B

began to giggle, and didn’t stop.
    I went up to her and lifted the feathery hair from her neck. The white tab of estheticine blended almost invisibly with her alabaster skin. The three dots of coding looked like red freckles.
    Rummaging in her purse, I found the rest of her stash: a dozen tabs, bought at such a high price.
    I held them in a hand that trembled only slightly as I thought about what they contained: easy relief from the pain of Charlie’s death.
    But I didn’t use them on myself.
    Instead, I applied them up and down her pretty legs, pressing firmly to establish diffusion. She didn’t resist, although I’m sure that in the back of her mind she knew as well as I did that twelve was way over the threshold of permanent brain damage.
    “Life’s so ugly,” she said when I was done. “Did I ever tell you about my mother? I couldn’t let them take my one comfort away.”
    “There’s no need to worry anymore,” I said. I took the self-contained player-cassette from my jacket, set it down, and flicked it on. I thought about how Charlie had really loved the old songs.
    “Oh, how nice—music,” she said.
    The old lyrics poured forth:
    It’s all so beautiful,
    It’s all so beautiful…
    Before I left, I snuffed the candle out.
     
     

 
    “Spondulix” is a story close to my heart, dealing as it does with the triumph, downfall, and salvation of an underdog character with whom I easily identify. (I envision Rory Honeyman played by Jeff Bridges in the movie version of this story, by the way.) I liked this tale so much in fact that I turned it into a novel, published by Cambrian Press. In that expansion, you will find many new characters and scenes, as well as a crucial artistic rethinking: I refer to Rory only by his first name, not last, throughout.
    If you ever visit Providence, Rhode Island, be sure to drop in on the original model for Honeyman’s Heroes, Geoff’s, on Benefit Street. You’re certain to be insulted by the surly art students who man its steamers, a masochistic honor equal only to the pleasure of noshing on one of their “Rich Lupo” sandwiches.
    Finally, all my renewed thanks to editor Scott Edelman for taking a chance on the original publication of this piece of “fiscal science fiction.”
     
    Spondulix
     
    1.
    Beer Nuts
     
     
    The sign read honeyman’s heroes, and featured a cartoonish illustration of a Dagwood-style sandwich: two slabs of painted pumpernickel separated by approximately six inches of various lunchmeats, cheeses, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, sauerkraut and hot peppers, dripping with mustard and mayo. The name of the artist was scrawled in the lower right corner: Suki Netsuke. In the lower left: established 1978.
    The sign hung above the door of a small shop on Washington Street, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The time was noon, on a vibrantly sunny Monday in June. The door to the shop was locked, a placard in the window turned to closed. The placard was fingerprinted in ketchup.
    Washington Street was busy with two-way auto traffic, with pedestrians and cyclists. Moderate-sized buildings lined each side of the broad avenue, businesses below, residences above. There was a faint odor from the river to the east lying atop the scents of exhaust and cooking. The Maxwell House plant, down where Twelfth Street met Hudson, diffused an omnipresent odor of roasting coffee, like a percolator of the Gods. Spanish chatter, hiss of air brakes, thump of off-loaded cardboard boxes hitting the sidewalk, infant squalling, teenage brawling, sirens, music—the little city was noisily alive.
    Down the sidewalk a block away from the sandwich shop a man walked absentmindedly along. He had a thick, ginger-colored beard, longish hair under a Mets cap. He wore sneakers, jeans and a baseball shirt that bore the legend SPONSORED BY HONEYMAN’S HEROES on the back. He was trim, gracile rather than muscular. Twenty years ago, he had been certified a world-class diver. Good genes and a moderate