Opening Line JUNKIE

Junkie was my first encounter with William Burroughs, the infamous beat writer. I can't recall my ag, when I read his first novel. Maybe 18. Maybe 20. His novel was not in the stacks of the town library to the South of Boston in the 60s. Imust have found it in a Harvard Square bookstore.

Junkie along with Last Exit to Brooklyn opened my eyes to the transgressions life. I survived my early years without imitating that life.

In the 70s I sometimes saw Burroughs shuffling across the marble floors of Grand Central Terminal, his steps whispers on stone. His eyes not saw me. I studied him for several seconds. In a suit grayer than his skin. Gaunt. Glazed by heroin or vivid with the need for heroin. I never said anything. His world was his and heroin. Not mine. Some times. Never no more.

"I suppose I'm a junkie, which is a fairly long story." First line Junkie 1953. I was one years old. I'm much older than that now, unlike so many junkies.

THE PRESENCE OF THE GONE by Peter Nolan Smith

Boston is a four-hour bus ride from New York. My brothers and sisters lived in the southern suburbs of my old hometown. After my return from overseas in September 2011 from my European posting I called several times to arrange visits, but my father’s death in 2010 had disconnected our present paths from the routes of the past.

We are still family and that December my younger sister asked, “Are you coming home for Christmas Eve.”

“I’m working late on the 24th.” I also had to open the safe at the diamond exchange the morning of the 26th and I apologized for my holiday no-show.

“I understand.” Pam was heading to her in-laws in New Haven for the 25th.

We wished each other ‘Merry Christmas’ with love, thinking that we might see each other until some distant date in 2013.

Happily Pam phoned from New Haven on the 26th to announce that her loving daughter and she were arriving at Grand Central Terminal that morning.

“We’re having a ladies day in the city with the various members of my husband’s family, but I could meet you for a drink at the Michael Jordan’s steakhouse after our shopping.” My sister had promised to take her daughter down to Chinatown to purchase cheap knock-off fashion bags and glasses. Sawah was an easy teenager to please.

“That sounds good to me.” My boss Manny wasn’t at work, so we could close early. “I’ll see you then.”

My co-workers were more than amenable to my suggestion of cutting out at 4:30 and we packed away the jewelry in record time. After Hlove and I double-checked the safe and security alarms, we were good to go.

Twenty minutes later I entered the Grand Central Terminal from Vanderbilt Avenue. The elegant train station was bustling with comings and goings of commuters and holiday shoppers. There was few open spaces like it in the world and I glowed in the power and beauty of New York before noticing my sister waving from a table shared with three other women and my niece, who greeted me with a kiss.

I shook hands with the older woman with a pleasant smile
“I’m Ryan’s mom.” She was married to my sister’s husband’s brother. Her son was serving his fourth tour in Afghanistan.

“I’m Ryan’s fiancee.” A pretty girl with long brown hair offered from across the table. “We met in Afghanistan.”

“She worked for intelligence,” Pam said to prevent my asking any questions. Her hair stylist had worked a miracle on her color, then again she was known as Auntie Stunning to her nieces and nephews. I was simply Uncle Bubba. “If she told you what she really did she would have to kill you.”

“I’m not a spook,” Marie protested with a laugh.

“My brother says the same thing.” My sister has joked that I have been in the CIA since graduation from college. “His last job was writer in residence to a British Embassy in Europe.”

“Unofficial position.” Madame l’Ambassador was a long-time friend.

“Definitely a spook.” Another young lady commented from the banquette. “I’m Marines too. Just back from Afghanistan.”

“Happy you could make it.” My sister hugged me with tenderness.

Whatever difficulties separated us during our youth have been buried under the hubris of time. The defense lawyer was my good friend and saved me with a timely loan after Hurricane Sandy. She knew me well and asked, “Care for a glass of wine?”

“A Mer-LOT.” I mimicked my father’s pronunciation of the wine and my sister laughed, “Glad to see that someone is keeping up the tradition.”

“Not only that, but I teach people about the milkman’s and lumberman’s handshakes.”

“Oh, no.” My sister and niece groaned in familial harmony.

My father loved to show children these handshakes on his travels with the Elder Hostel. The tour operators warmed him that parents might think that he was strange. We did the same. He ignored everyone and I demonstrated both to Ryan’s mother.

“Another Smith tradition.”

Their train was leaving in twenty minutes, so we rapidly conversed about our connections and histories. I told them about my petitioning to the Pentagon to get a pension for my anti-war protests in the 60s and my sister mentioned our entering Studio 54 with the legendary wrestler Andre the Giant.

“The greatest athlete of all time.” I liked saying that because it’s true and most people don’t realize how true it was.

“You must have lived a great life?” Marie asked with envy. She was young. Life in the 70s was nothing like today. “I read about those times. They seem like a dream. Everyone and everything was so free, especially the drag queens.”

“Really?” Her comment took me off guard. Maybe she was a spook.

“Yes, there nothing like that now.”

“There was back then.” I told her about Boston’s The Other Side, the trannies of the Meat Market and a transvestite trapeze show on 45th Street. “I think the place was called GG Barnums. I had a friend Dove. She was always trying to get me to go home with her. I refused her each time, even though she looked like a vogue model.”

“Some of them were so beautiful.” Marie cooed, while her future mother-in-law frowned with moderate disapproval. America was changing albeit step by little step.

“Dove was gorgeous and she saved my life once.” I recounted how Dove had stopped a beating at the hands of a New Jersey biker pissed that I had interfered with his roughing up a gay ballet dancer.

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. So many of them are gone like so many of my gay friends.” I think about them often.

“I know what you mean.” Her future sister-in-law was talking about fallen Marines.

“My brother died of AIDS. He comes to me in dreams along with my mother. They visited me at a Cape Cod cottage, then he runs out to a beach filled with all the gone like that movie LONGTIME COMPANION.” The final scene filled the empty beach with the dead and I started crying about the loss of my friends and family. I could feel the gone in the air. They were everywhere.

Pam put her arm around me as did the Marine, who said, “I know, I know.”

I stifled the tears with my palm.

The mother nodded with sympathy. Her son was halfway around the world.

“Thanks.”

“We all have these stories.” Marie grasped my hand. She shared the trauma. “Everything will be better one day.”

“I like to think that.” I wanted the troops back home and a cure for AIDS and to see my kids in Thailand soon, each a simple request complicated by hard times.

My sister signaled for the bill. She paid fast. The train departure was in four minutes. We rushed down the stairs to the platform. They caught the 7.05 to New Haven with a minute to spare. Pam hugged me with my niece joining her embrace.

It was good to be with family and I waved goodbye walking back into the terminal.

No one is really gone as long as we remember that they were here.

Not my brother, my friends, or the fallen Marines and soldiers or the Afghanis lost to decades of war.

We are all here.

Then, now, and later.

PTSD Too

Several years ago I was at Grand Central Terimnal with my sister's younger in-laws. All military back from the Endless War. A twentyish Ranger said with young envy for a lost time that New York must have been crazy back in the 1970s. I replied yes and then flashed on the ghosts. Too many to count or remember.

AIDS, ODs, Craziness.

They took their toll.

I broke into tears.

The soldiers gathered around and hugged me saying they knew how I felt.

Tyey had lost frineds too.

Too many firnds.

Same as me.

Suddenly I realized I had been repressing PTSD for decades.

And it was okay because these soldiers had it too.

All together without knowing it.

We are us.

BAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

In February of 2013 the president of a private jet charter service invited me to dinner at the Oyster Bar. I accepted without hesitation, because I was a born and bred New Englander and nowhere else in the city served a wider variety of oysters.

“You don’t mind if I my girlfriend and her daughter join us?” Enos liked to compartmentalize his world into separate entities.

“Why would it bother me?” I had met his lover once. Cheryll seemed a very nice woman.

“No reason. Just that I don’t want to hear anything about a diamond ring.” The portly fifty-year old executive was a devout bachelor

“Diamonds make women happy.”

Sandy had killed business in the Diamond District, so I wasn’t working for my old firm, but any profit went straight into my pocket. With four kids I could use the money from a sale to Enos.

“They’re a girl’s best friend.”

“And a dog is man’s best friend.”

“That’s true.” My puppy Champoo had loved me more than fried liver.

“So no talk about diamonds. Especially in front of Cheryll. She’s dying to make me an honest man.”

“Not a chance of that.” The Oyster Bar was about oyster and lobster.” I won’t say a word about diamonds.”

I hung up and later in the day traveled by subway from Fort Greene to Grand Central Terminal. I spotted Enos at the entrance to the subterranean restaurant. My friend had gained weight and more than a few pounds, but his curly hair had lost none of its spring.

“Good to see you.” The big man wore a tailored suit. Leasing jets was good business as long as you dealt with the rich. “I like the tan. How’s the family?”

“Everyone’s good.” I had just returned from a month-long visit to my kids in Thailand. “How’s your dad?”

“Holding on?” Enos and his elderly parents had weathered hurricane Sandy on Rockaway. “I thought we were goners, but the surge ended with the high-tide. The house is a wreck.”

“Any disaster from which you can walk away from is a good thing.”

“My pilots always say that about crashes.”

“True is true.”

We walked inside the restaurant. The Oyster Bar’s vaulted tile ceiling was a bastion of timelessness. Waiters in white apron shucked Malpecs, Blue Points, Belons, and Hog Islands. Diners were happy with their meals. It was a good place to be.

“My father loved oysters. He used to eat fried clams from Wollaston Beach and wash them down with a chocolate milk shake without a belch afterwards.”

“I wish I had that stomach.” Enos tapped his bass drum girth and signaled the counterman for oysters.

“Shouldn’t we wait for your girls?”
Enos and I sat at the counter. The dining rooms were for out-of-towners and couples.

“Cheryll’s daughter is a vegan. She doesn’t eat fish.”

“No oysters either?”

“None.”

The waitress handed us menus, but Enos waved them away. While he came from a good Jewish family, nothing was too tref or unclean for his palate. “Mind if I order for us?”

“Not at all.”

“Clams casino to start and a glass of Riesling for my friend. I’ll have water.” Enos had stopped drinking and drugs three years ago. It was either cold turkey or a cold grave. He looked better above ground. “Then an assortment of oysters and two lobster stews.” I ordered a glass of Chardonnay. Enos had stopped drinking three years ago. He was fine with tap water.

“I have a question.”

The waitress brought an Austrian Riesling blessed by the sun shining on the Danube’s northern slopes.

“What?” Enos asked, as if I needed a loan.

“This is a dietary question of religion.”

“Meaning a Jewish question.” The waitress placed the clams casino between us.

“Yes.” I had been a diamond firm's Sabbath goy for two decades and considered myself a scholar of Judaica. “It’s a simple query. Bacon is tref and clams are tref, right?”

“Right.” Enos lipped the delicacy with pleasure.

“So in physics and mathematics two negatives make a positive, right?” I popped a clam casino in my mouth. The combined taste of pig and shellfish was a sin of delight.

“Right.” A plate of oysters crowded the counter. They smelled of the ocean.

“So if bacon and shellfish are both tref and you eat them together, does that make them non-tref?”

“According to my calculations, yes, although my father would say no.”

Enos popped two oysters into his mouth. He might have stopped blow, but he was eating a little too fast for a man approaching 280.

“They’re fine as long as we eat them before my girlfriend’s daughter arrives. She’s a vegan Nazi.”

“Vegans hate us.” We were omnivores and devoted the next twenty minutes to devouring the clams casino and a dozen Malpecs, and two lobster stews.

As the waitress replaced our empty plate with lobster stew, Enos’ girlfriend arrived at the counter. She kissed my host with love and her twelve year-old daughter gave him a hug.

“This is Naomi.” Cheryll introduced her precious offspring. “She’s an actress in training.”

“Hello.” Her skinny daughter exuded a toughness hewed from a thousand refusals. She pointed a finger at my plate “You eat dead food?”

“We had a bi-valval feast.”

“You’re a bad man.” Her neo-ingénue eyes were trained to seduce casting directors. Her scrawny beauty might blossom into stardom with the right training and her succubus eyes disregarded my age. I was simply another old geezer to wrap around her accusing finger.

“You couldn’t believe how bad.”
Enos and Cheryll were deep in conversation, happy that I was diverting the little monster.

“How bad?” Naomi wanted to know.

“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.

"Not then."

"Another time?"

"Yes, there was a fish store in Boston's Haymarket that sold whale meat sandwiches. I went there with a college friend." Fred was a hippie. We all were in 1973. "I have to say it was the best thing I’ve eaten in my life.” Once was enough for a lifetime and I didn’t tell that to the little precious actress.

“You’re worst than bad.”

“What's worse than Evil?”

“Fucking evil,” Naomi whispered those two words with a biting accuracy.

"What was that?" asked Cheryll. Like all mothers she had good ears.

"Nothing," we answered with smiles. My evilness was our secret.

Cheryll resumed his conversation with Enos and I turned to He was good around other people’s children.

“I like how you sold those two words. You want me to give your headshot to a casting director?”

"Don't smoke smoke up my ass." Naomi was older than her years.

"I'm serious."

“You know someone?”

“Not just someone.”

I dropped the name of the biggest casting director in the city.

“You can get my headshot to her?" The skinny waif flip-flopped from disapproval to delight.

“Yes.” Nina was a longtime friend.

"You're not joking?" asked her mother, who had heard the name.

"No, I can send her the information." I had never asked my friend for a favor and this wasn't one. I thought that Naomi had something. "I can't promise anything."

“I know that, but thank you.” Cheryll understood that I was doing a mitzvah.

“Thank me, if something happens.”

Enos winked at me. He thought that I was lying to help him with Cheryll and Naomi caught the wink.

“You really know her?” The daughter was used to men using her mother.

“Yes.” Enos wasn’t a bad man and tonight he would be happy with Naomi asleep in the next room while he was on top of her mother. I leaned over to the young girl and asked, "So am I still 'fucking evil'?"

"As evil as Satan, but even the Devil has his good points."

“Thanks." I really meant and signaled for the waitress. "A half-dozen Wellfleets."

Naomi's eyes condemned my badness.

I smiled at her without saying another world

The Wellfleets reminded me of summers on Cape Cod and I felt like a million dollar, because it wasn’t every day a twelve year-old girl called a man my age ‘evil’ and Naomi knew bad, because like all girls she was made of sugar and spice and certainly not from oysters or whale.

A TRAIN STATION WITHOUT TRAINS by Peter Nolan Smith

A TRAIN STATION WITHOUT TRAINS is a collection of four stories set in New York's Grand Central Terminal. Millions of tourists come to view one of the largest open air interiors in the world and while I've traveled north from the station, I've also spent time eating and drinking at the fabled Oyster Bar and traversed the great floor of Tennessee pink marble countless times. My path is never the same and neither are these tales, because leaving the station is almost as pleasurable as staying there.

I love oysters.

EXCERPT

BAD MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

In February of 2013 the president of a private jet charter service invited me to dinner at the Oyster Bar.

I accepted without hesitation, because I was a native New Englander and nowhere else in the city served a wider variety of oysters.

“You don’t mind if I my girlfriend and her daughter join us?” Enos liked to compartmentalize his world into separate entities.

“Why would it bother me?” I had met his lover once. Cheryll seemed a very nice woman.

“No reason. Just that I don’t want to hear anything about a diamond ring.” The portly fifty-year old executive was a devout bachelor

“Diamonds make women not so much happy as happier.”

Hurricane Sandy had killed business in the Diamond District, so I wasn’t working for my old firm, but any profit went straight into my pocket. With four kids I could use the money from a sale to Enos.

“They’re a girl’s best friend.”

“And a dog is man’s best friend.”

“That’s true.” My puppy Champoo had loved me more than fried liver.

“So no talk about diamonds. Especially in front of Cheryll. She’s dying to make me an honest man.”

“Not a chance of that.” The Oyster Bar is about oyster and lobster.” I won’t say a word about diamonds.”

I hung up and later in the day traveled by subway from Fort Greene to Grand Central Terminal. I spotted Enos at the entrance to the subterranean restaurant. My friend had gained weight and more than a few pounds, but his curly hair had lost none of its spring.

“Good to see you.” The big man was wearing a tailored suit. Business these days was good as long as you dealt with the rich. “I like the tan. How’s the family?”

Everyone’s good.” I had just returned from a month-long visit to my kids in Thailand. “How’s your dad?”

“Holding on?” Enos and his elderly parents had weathered the hurricane on Rockaway. “I thought we were goners, but the surge ended with the high-tide. The house is a wreck.”

“Any disaster from which you can walk away from is a good thing.”

“My pilots always say that about crashes.”

“True is true.”

We walked inside the restaurant. The Oyster Bar’s vaulted tile ceiling was a bastion of timelessness. Waiters in white apron were shucking Malpecs, Blue Points, Belons, and Hog Islands. Diners were happy with their meals. It was a good place to be.

“My father loved oysters. He used to eat fried clams from Wollaston Beach and wash them down with a chocolate milk shake without a belch afterwards.”

“I wish I had that stomach.” Enos tapped his bass drum girth.

“Shouldn’t we wait for your girls?”
Enos and I sat at the counter. The dining rooms were for out-of-towners and couples.

“Cheryll’s daughter is a vegan. She doesn’t eat fish.”

“No oysters either?”

“None.”

The waitress handed us menus, but Enos waved them away. While he came from a good Jewish family, nothing was too tref or unclean for his palate. “Mind if I order for us?”

“Not at all.”

“Clams casino to start and a glass of Riesling for my friend. I’ll have water.” Enos had stopped drinking and drugs three years ago. It was either cold turkey or a cold grave. He looked better above ground.

“Then an assortment of oysters and two lobster stews.” I ordered a glass of Chardonnay. Enos had stopped drinking three years ago. He was fine with tap water.

“I have a question.”

The waitress brought an Austrian Riesling blessed by the sun shining on the Danube’s northern slopes.

“What?” Enos asked, as if I needed a loan.

“This is a dietary question of religion.”

“Meaning a Jewish question.” The waitress placed the clams’ casino between us.

“Yes.” I had been the Sabbath goy for two decades and considered myself a scholar of Judaica. “It’s a simple query. Bacon is tref and clams are tref, right?”

“Right.” Enos lipped the delicacy with pleasure.

“So in physics and mathematics two negatives make a positive, right?”

I popped a clam casino in my mouth. The combined taste of pig and shellfish was a sin of delight.

“Right.” The plate of oysters crowded the counter. They smelled of the ocean.

“So if bacon and shellfish are both tref and you eat them together, does that make them non-tref?”

“According to my calculations, yes, although my father would say no.”
Enos popped two oysters into his mouth. He might have stopped blow, but he was eating a little too fast for a man approaching 280.

“They’re a Fargenign or delight as long as we eat them before my girlfriend’s daughter arrives. She’s a vegan Nazi.” Enos loved interspersing his sentences with Yiddish.

“Vegans hate us.” We were omnivores and devoted the next twenty minutes to devouring the clams’ casino and a dozen Malpecs, and two lobster stews.

To order A TRAIN STATION WITHOUT TRAINS for $0.99 on Kindle, please go to the following URL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JAG86OW

It's a mitzvah for you and me both.

SOME CHOWDAH, BOBBY by Peter Nolan Smith

Last holiday season Richie Boy had hired me to help with sales and schlepping merchandise between dealers and jewelers. Hlove and I worked together to make sales, but business on 47th Street was murder. There was no foot traffic and my old customers hated the street and all the hawkers shilling to buy gold.

"Back in the 90s I used to make 150-200 thou in sales. Now I'll be lucky to break $20,000," I explained to Hlove who had been a jewelry manufacturer until five years ago.

"Back then I worked non-stop from September to December making rings, earrings, everything." Hlove had coined cash for decades, but finally closed shop in 2008. "All my customers deserted me to buy from China."

"Enough with the walk down Memory Lane." Manny looked up from his paperwork. The octogenarian had survived the end of the Depression as a young boy in Brownsville. He hated idle talk. "The past is the past. What have you done for me lately?"

Manny had bills to pay.

"Nothing today." I looked to the window. No one was standing before our display.

“I feel like I’m running a charity ward. You two are about as useful as a broom,” Manny stated in half-jest.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be rid of me soon enough.” I would be laid off after the New Year.

“You haven’t done a day of work since you came here.” The elderly diamond dealer was meaner than a flayed rattlesnake, but we had been friends over thirty years and I responded in kind, “The same could be said about you. All you do is shift papers from one side of your desk to the other and insult customers.”

“Customers? More like wastes of time.” Manny was on a roll. Only this morning he had called my main diamond broker a ‘gonnif’.

I regarded over to Hlove, who shook his head. Calming a barking dog wasn’t the guitarist’s forte.

“These papers run this company.” The Brownsville native slammed his palm on the bills, bank statements, and memos.

“Everything you’re doing could be done in a minute on a computer.”

“I ran this business before there was a computer and I will outlive the computer too.”

“I hope you’re right.” Manny and I went back to 1978. Our best years were ebbing on this side of the 21st Century.

“Right, only one thing is right and that’s one and one makes two.”

Hlove rolled his eyes.

Manny was on fire and his kvetching veered off the tracks.

“You’re useless. You’ve always been useless.”

“Like the time I sold a ruby for a million dollars and you stiffed me for the commish.”

Yiddish vindictives spewed from his mouth.

"I don't need to listen to this."

I went to the closet and got my cashmere coat. It was a cold winter.

“Where do you think you’re going?” “To get my lunch.” I waved to Eliza Randolph. The elegant brunette was Manny’s partner.

Years ago Richie Boy had hoped that the two of us became serious, so I could have been his partner. Eliza's father was glad that nothing came of our flirtation and in many ways so were we.

“Eliza, you want some chowdah.”

“Chowdah from where?” Eliza could fake a wicked Boston accent. She had attended UMASS-Amherst.

“The Oyster Bar where else?”

The Grand Central Terminal institution sold the best clam chowder south of Boston’s Route 128.

"Get me a New England chowder."

"What about you, Hlove?"

"No thanks." The jazzman was on a special diet.

Manny made a face, as his mind calculated the distance between our store and the Oyster Bar.

“I pay you to work, not to gallivant around town.”

“You want to buy me lunch?” I already knew the answer.

“What for?”

“So I stay here to make a sale."

"Stay, go, what's the difference?"

"Then I’m out the door." I decided to act nice and asked, "Manny, you want a chowder?"

“The chowder there tastes like old man’s underwear.” The old man liked putting in the ‘zug’ or dig to ruin anyone else's good time. It was an old school Brooklyn thing.

“More like from a young girl, but you wouldn’t know anything about young girls anymore.” I had learned how to make someone feel bad from him and left the store in a foul mood.

Our daily tete-a-tetes were wearing on us, but as I crossed 5th Avenue I thought about my family's teakwood farm bordering Thailand's Western Forests. I indulged the delusion of being with them soon on the ten-minute walk to Grand Central. I bumped into several groups of slow-moving tourists. Without them the city would be as empty as the New York of the apocalyptical film I AM LEGEND.

I turned off Fifth onto 43rd Street.

The steel syringe spire of Chrysler Building gleamed in the winter sun. I was used to the sounds of the city, but not dogs’ barking.

There was more than one.

The MTA cops' explosive- and drug-sniffing hounds were snapping at passengers entering the Metro-North terminal. They were looking for terrorists and the shepherd at the entrance eyed me with suspicion, but his master clocked me as harmless. I was white, in a suit, and over 50.

“Nice doggie.”

“He ain’t a doggie.”

“Doggies are cows, right?”

Same as all these cops.

All of them wanted to be a hero to stop someone from doing that something stupid.

I smiled and descended into the terminal.

Passengers hurried to catch their trains and I surveyed the crowds for anyone who might damage it or the people within the terminal. My inspection gave GCT an all-clear visa and I entered the Oyster Bar to sit at the counter.

I called Eliza from inside the restaurant.

“Anything other than Chowdah?”

“Chowdah be just fine.”

I ordered one chowder for here and three to go from a redheaded waitress. My counter mates were from the UK. His wife had a big diamond. I told them about working on 47th Street.

“We ain’t buying no diamonds.” The husband was adamant on this.

“He spent a fortune on this rock.” His wife brandished her stone. It glittered in the dim light of the Oyster Bar. She was happy with the now.

“Having a good time?”

“We love New York and love the Oyster Bar. In fact we feel safer here than in London.”

“I got robbed in Soho last time I was in the Smoke.” Somebody had picked my pocket.

“We come from Plymouth.”

“A nice town. I’ve stopped there a couple of times on the way to Cornwall.” I had friends out west.

I finished my chowder and signaled the waitress for a bill.

“If you change your mind about a diamonds, stop by our shop. It’s only five minutes from here.” I slipped the woman a card.

“Maybe.” His wife smiled touching her husband’s thigh.

“Cheers.” I paid for four chowders and hurried through the underground passages of Grand Central Terminal to Madison Avenue.

The dogs had left the exit onto 45th Street.

“Five minutes later I entered our exchange with three chowders.

“Chowdah, Bobby?” Eliza loved saying this. The words brought back her youth as a co-ed in Massachusetts.

“Chowdah and it’s piping hot.”

Eliza was so happy to receive her chowdah that she kissed both my cheeks.

I gave another to Hlove.

"I said I didn't want."

"It's Christmas. Enjoy."

“What about me?” asked Manny.

“Manny, you said no.”

“I didn’t say anything of the kind.”

“That's not the way I heard it.”

“This is wicked chowdah.” Eliza liked to rub it in.

“Just the way you like it.”

Manny muttered under his breath and I said, “Just kidding, Manny.”

He smiled with triumph, as I put the extra chowder on his desk."

"Watch the papers."

"Not a chance." I was his Sabbath goy.

“Incoming,” Hlove said, as the English couple entered the exchange.

“I met them at the Oyster Bar.” That meant they were my customers and the commish would be 25%. "They're my privates."

I motioned Hlove to sit and enjoy his chowder.

We split the sales 50/50 and sharing was always for the best in these hard times, especially if the chowder was from the Oyster Bar.

SOME CHOWDAH, BOBBY by Peter Nolan Smith

Last week my boss Manny hated me. The business was slow on 47th street. I had been hired part-time to help my replacement Hlove, but neither of us had made a sale between Xmas and the New Year.

"I feel like I'm running a charity ward. The two of you are about as useful as a broom." Manny stated in half-jest, as I set up the window.

"Don't worry, you'll be rid of me soon enough." I would be laid off once his son Richie Boy returned from a Vermont ski trip.

“You haven’t done a day of work since you came here.” The 80 year-old diamond dealer was meaner than normal, but we had been friends over thirty years and our weaknesses were well-known to each other.

“The same could be said about you. All you do is shift papers from one side of your desk to the other and insult customers.” I looked over to Hlove. He shook his head. Waking a sleeping dog wasn't his forte, but only this morning he called my main diamond broker a ‘gonnif’.

"These papers run this company." The Brownsville native slammed his palm on the bills, bank statements, and memos.

"Everything you're doing there couldn't be done in a minute on a computer."

"I made this business before there was a computer and I will outlive the computer too."

"I hope you're right." Manny and I went back to 1978. Our best years were ebbing on the tide of the 21st Century.

"Right, only one thing is right and that's one and one makes two."

Hlove rolled his eyes and I shrugged my apologies. Manny was on fire. His kvetching veered off the tracks. "You're useless. You've always been useless."

"Like the time I sold a ruby for a million dollars and you stiffed me for the commish."

Yiddish vindictives spewed from his mouth.

I went to the closet and got my cashmere coat. It was warm. The wind outside was cold.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To get my lunch.” I waved to Eliza Randolph. The elegant brunette was Manny’s partner.

“Eliza, you want some chowdah.”

“Chowdah from where?” Eliza had attended UMASS-Amherst.

Richie Boy had once hoped that the two of us became serious, so I could have been his partner. Her father was glad that nothing came of our flirtation and in many ways so were we.

“The Oyster Bar where else?”

The Grand Central Terminal institution had the best clam chowder this side of Boston’s Route 128.

Manny made a face. His mind had calculated the distance between our store and the Oyster Bar.

"I pay you to work, not gallivant around town."

"You want to buy me lunch?" I already knew the answer.

"What for?"

“Then I'm out the door and don’t worry, Manny, you don’t have to pay for a thing.”

“Don’t get me nothing either.”

“Who said I was in the first place?”

"The chowder there tastes like old man's underwear." The old man liked putting in the 'zug'.

"More like that from a young girl, but you wouldn't know anything about that." I had learned how to make someone feel bad from him, but I left the store muttering under my breath.

Our daily tete-a-tetes were wearing on us.

Manny was deaf and I was grumpy.

His present state was my future destination, although my version of his age was set in Thailand at a teakwood farm bordering the Western Forests. I indulged in this delusion on the 10 minute walk to Grand Central, ignoring the slow-moving tourists. Without them the city would be as empty as the New York of I AM LEGEND.

I turned off Madison onto 43rd Street. The syringe spire of Chrysler Building gleamed in the winter sun. I was used to the sounds of the city, but not dogs’ barking.

There was more than one.

The MTA cops had gathered their explosive- and drug-sniffing hounds to the Metro-North terminal to guard against a terrorist attack.

The shepherd at the entrance to the terminal eyed me with suspicion.

A half-joint stunk up the back pocket of my trousers. The dog growled and his master clocked me as harmless.

“Nice doggie.”

“He ain’t a doggie.”

“Doggies are cows, right?”

Same as all these cops.

All of them wanting to be a hero.

All wanting to stop someone from doing that something stupid.

I smiled and descended into the terminal. Passengers were hurrying through awe-struck tourists from Shawallagah, PA. I might be older than most of them, but I still was impressed by that great open place and surveyed the crowds for anyone who might damaged it or the people within the terminal. My inspection gave GCT an all-clear visa from the danger of terrorism. I entered the Oyster Bar and sat at the counter.

I called Eliza from inside the restaurant.

“Anything other than Chowdah?”

“Chowdah be just fine.”

I ate my chowdah with haste. I don't like making a woman wait.

My counter mates were from the UK. His wife had a big diamond. I told them about working on 47th Street.

"We ain't buying no diamonds." The husband was adamant on this.

"He spent a fortune on this rock." His wife brandished her stone. It glittered in the dim light of the Oyster Bar. She was happy with the now.

"Having a good time?"

"We love New York and loved the Oyster Bar. In fact we feel safer here than in London."

“I got robbed in Soho last time I was in the Smoke.” Somebody had picked up pocket.

"We come from Plymouth."

"Nice town. I've stopped there a couple of times on the way to Cornwall." I had friends up west. They didn’t know them.

"If you change your mind, stop by our shop. It's only five minutes from here."

"Maybe." His wife smiled touching his thigh. Diamonds were a girl's best friend.

"Cheers." I sopped up the last traces of chowder with a small roll and paid for my chowder and one to go. I hurried through the underground passages of Grand Central Terminal to Madison Avenue.

They were no dogs at the exit onto 45th Street.

"Five minutes later I entered our exchange with three chowders.

"Chowdah, Bobby?" Eliza loved saying this. The words brought back her youth as a co-ed in Massechusetts.

"Chowdah and it's piping hot."

Eliza was so happy to receive her chowdah that she kissed both my cheeks. Hlove sat at his desk with his.

"What about me?" Manny looked at me with disappointment.

"Sorry, Manny, but you said no."

"I didn't say anything of the kind."

"Maybe next time you'll be lucky."

"This is wicked chowdah." Eliza liked to rub it in.

"Just the way you like it."

Manny muttered under his breath and I said, "Just kidding, Manny."

He smiled with triumph. I was his shabbath goy.

"Incoming," Hlove said, as the English couple entered the exchange.

"I met them at the Oyster Bar." That meant they were my customers and the commish would be 25%.

I motioned Hlove to sit. We worked the sales 50/50 and sharing was always for the best in these hard times, especially if the chowder was from the Oyster Bar.

A Reunion of Bad Boys


That Thursday had been a long day at the diamond exchange. Manny was worried about money and Richie Boy had shown up late shikkah or drunk. His son was our big earner.

“Nice to see you.” His father checked his watch. It was after noon.

“Same for me.” His eyes the color of deviled ham and vodka vapors fuming from his flesh. Last night he had dined with clients. Entertaining customers was tough on the body

“Huh?” Manny at age 80 hears 10% of a normal person. I don’t let him answer the phone.

“Richie needs some OJ.” I used to be Richie Boy’s co-pilot. Nowadays I went home just as his customers wanted to have fun.

“And a bacon and egg sandwich. Don’t forget the cheese.” It was the cure for what ailed him.

“You got it.” I knew how he felt, because I had deja-vued too many mornings in the past. The rest of the day passed as fast as a train being dragged across a swamp by oxen. None of us made a sale and Manny decided to close early for once.

“Thank, Dad.” Richie Boy was very grateful. He had a busy tomorrow. “Two customers for $200,000.” The profit would pay a chunk of our debt and my weekly salary.

We left the store and Richie Boy headed home to his wife. Pillow time was his desired destination. I walked over to Grand Central Terminal for a bowl of oyster stew at the Oyster Bar. The train station was bustling with commuters rushing to their platforms. I turned on the western steps to avoid the rush of suburbanites and caught sight of a spectral apparition amongst the well-fed faces.

The man was gaunt and grey.

His head lowered in a heroin nod.

I stopped in his path, thinking I was seeing the ghost of William Burroughs.

Over the years I had spotted the grey eminence of heroin shuffling across Grand Central Terminal.

The transportation vault was close to where the infamous novelist scored his drugs. He didn't know my name. In fact he knew nothing about me other than we once shared the same affliction, albiet mine was a mere shadow of his colossal addiction. Still he had acknowledged our affiliation with an uplifted finger to his head and for a second I expected the same from the approaching man, except he was not William Burroughs, who had been dead for years.

The phantasm was familiar for another reason.

It was my old friend, Davy. The ex-doorman was younger than me by a decade. He had once been the desire of every gay boy in New York. He now looked twice my age, although just as likely to survive every person in the terminal with a junkie’s determination. I almost let him walk by, then called out his name.

Davy’s yellow teeth gleamed in the half-light of the sunset streaming through the terminal’s cathedral windows.

“Hey.”

“You look good.” I would have said the same about anyone whom I thought was dead.

Davy was happy that I didn’t ask many questions. Even happier that I didn’t ask him if he was holding any dope. I would have loved some. A little smoke would take away the pain of being in New York without my family.

I mentioned a soiree featuring punk rock.

“Emily and Pat are showing their film NIGHTCLUBBING at NYU.” Davy had loved punk rock, but said, “I really don’t go out much anymore.”

“Neither do I.” We had our reasons. His were more believable than mine.

“I have a picture of you, Barney, and Phillip. We look like an old rock band re-uniting for an oldies tour. I’ll send you a copy.”

“I’d like that.” My friend bid me farewell.

I wanted to say that I wouldn’t tell anyone about seeing him, for the mention of his name sets everyone’s heads to shaking with disapproval.

I wasn't ready to throw any stones.

Davy was a bad boy, but I was am glad that he was alive.

There were too few bad boys left on the books and one day I might need to ask him for help, because my days of being a bad boy aren’t over, simply delayed to a time near death.

My wife thinks that date is years away. For my son’s sake I hope she’s right. I wanted to live to 78. Fenway would be 20 then.

And Mem, my wife, only 46.

Ah, youth.

So fleeting and wasted on the young.