Care For Some Chowdah, Bobby - 2009

My boss Manny hates me. I don't fear him or his threats to fire me. I'm not indispensable. Merely very cost-effective as well as one of his son's best friends. That be said I know blood is thicker than thieves and regard this run in the diamond exchange as a temporary distraction from my life of leisure.

"You haven't done a day of work since I hired you."

"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." Only this morning he called my main diamond broker a 'gonnif'. I couldn't put up with his kvetching and got my coat from the closet.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To get my lunch." I waved to Eliza Randolph. She was Richie Boy's partner. "Eliza, you want some chowdah."

"Chowdah from where?" Eliza attended UMASS-Amherst. We were good friends. Richie Boy had once hoped that the two of us became serious. 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. "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?"

I left the store muttering under my breath. Our hourly tete-a-tetes were wearing on us. Manny was 80. I was going to be 58. Neither of us were young dogs. He was deaf and I was grumpy. His present state was my future destination, although my version of his age was set in Thailand at my teakwood farm. I indulged in this delusion on the ten minute walk to Grand Central, ignoring the slow-moving tourists. Without them the city would be as empty as the post-apocalyptical New York of I AM LEGEND, another zombie movie.

I turned off Madison onto 43rd Street. The syringe spire of Chrysler Building gleamed int he winter sun. I was used to the sounds of the city, but not dogs' barking. More than one. More than a dozen. The MTA cops had gathered their explosive and drug sniffing hounds to the Metro-North terminal to guard against a terrorist attack. Only the other day a Nigerian extremist attempted to down a NYC-bound flight by lighting his underwear on fire. He succeeded in setting himself on fire and complicating the travel plans of everyone going somewhere over the New Year's holiday.

The shepherd at the entrance to the terminal eyed me with suspicion. I had a half-joint in my pocket. A contribution to the cause by my fellow worker Hank. 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 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 Schawillagah, 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.

"Anything other than Chowdah?"

"Chowdah be just fine." Eliza sounded hungry. I ate my chowdah with haste. My counter mates were from the UK. They loved New York and loved the Oyster Bar. They said they felt safer here than in London.

"I got robbed in Soho last time I was in the Smoke." He and his family came from Plymouth. That port was on the way to Cornwall. I had friends up west. They didn't know them. I sopped up the last traces of chowder with a small roll and hurried back to the diamond exchange through the underground passages of Grand Central Terminal. They were no dogs at the exit onto 45th Street. Eliza was so happy to receive her chowdah that she kissed both my cheeks. Manny looked at me with disappointment. He was Jewish, but liked tref too. Maybe next time he would get lucky. Their chowder is damn good. No wicked good and you might as well enjoy your life as much as you can without worrying about another man's underwear.

They never taste good.

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 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.