Bad Influence

Last winter the president of a private jet charter service invited me to dinner at the Oyster Bar. We're old friends, even though his family forced him to quit drugs and drink. Overweight and overdose. Death was knocking on his heart. 2 weeks of cold turkey rehab and Enos was clean for eternity.

"You don't mind if i bring my my girlfriend and her daughter?" Enos liked to compartmentalize his world. I had met his lover once. She was older.

"Why would it bother me?" I was dying for a good plate of oyster followed by a pan-friend lobster stew.

"Just I don't want to hear anything about a diamond ring." My boss Richie Boy constantly bugged Enos about not making his girlfriend his wife. He was thinking about a diamond sale.

"We're go back before I was diamonds." My cousin Ty Spaulding had introduced us. "The Oyster Bar is about eating fish, oyster, and lobster."

"Exactly." Enos was more interested in pussy. He said his girlfriend was great in bed. That was good enough for me.

The Oyster Bar had a few good selling points. Best oysters in New York. The vaulted ceiling. A timelessness permanence. Fish fresh from the ocean and I descended from the main floor of Grand Central Terminal with an appetite bolstered by memory. I spotted Enos at the entrance. He greeted me with a smile. Toothy happiness.

"Where's your girls?"

"Her daughter is a vegan. She doesn't eat fish."

"No oysters?"

"None." Enos came from a good Jewish family in the Rockaways, but nothing was tref or unclean for his palate. We entered the restaurant and sat at the long service bar. We didn't need to look at the menu. "Clams casino."

"I have a question." The Bangladeshi waiter brought an Austrian Riesling. "Bacon is tref and clams are tref. So if you put them together, is that like two negatives equal
a positive?"

"Like bacon and shellfish aren't tref if you eat them together?" Enos might have stopped blow, but he regained an unhealthy appetite for a man approaching 250 at 50.

"Yes."

"As long as we eat them before my girlfriend's daughter arrives. She's a vegan Nazi."

"They hate us." We were omnivores and finished the clams casino, a dozen Malpecs, and a lobster stew before his dates entered the restaurant. I liked Enos' girlfriend. She was older, but smart and funny. Helen also liked Enos, which in many ways was better than loving him. She introduced her daughter. 12 year-old, a child-actress, skinny, cute, and more than precocious. Her name was Naomi. "Did you eat dead food?"

"We had a bi-valval feast." The Malpecs tasted of cold Atlantic ocean.

"You're a bad man." Her neo-ingenue eyes were trained to seduce casting directors. her beauty would blossom into stardom with the right training. At this point her Lolita power could overwhelm the weak. Her succubus eyes disregarded my age. I was simply another old geezer.

"You couldn't believe how bad." Enos and Helen were deep in conversation, happy that I was diverting the little monster. "I was brought up along the coast of Maine. Every summer a whale would get confused in the shoals and end up beached on the sands as the sea retreated on the tide. The fishermen fought off the sharks and cut off the best pieces of whale meat for their families."

"You ate whale?" Her eyes widened in horror. She was no longer acting.

"And it tasted good. No, actually it was the best thing I've eaten in my life." The story was bullshit, based on a A Whale for the Killing by Farley Mowat. I has tasted whale meat in Boston's Haymarket. 1970 with a hippie friend. We both agreed it was better than beef. Once was enough for a lifetime. I didn't tell this to the little precious actress.

"You're worst than bad."

"Evil?"

"Fucking evil." Those two words got her mother's attention off Enos' cock. Her daughter and I smiled without explanation and I lifted a finger. "I like your conviction. You want that I give your headshot to a casting director."

I mentioned a name. The woman was the biggest in the city. The skinny waif flipflopped with delight.

"Could you?"

"It'd be my pleasure."

After all it wasn't every day you got called evil by a 12 year-old girl.