EPISODE 4

Bosco was sitting at his desk when I came in.  He smiled warmly.

“There’s Michael!” he said, motioning for me to sit down.

“Hey Bosco.”

“Glad to see you back, Michael.”

He picked up his phone and punched in 3 numbers. 

“Allan, can you come in here for a minute?”

He hung up and looked back at me.

“I want you to meet Allan.  He’s been taking on a lot of your old job and working with me on some of the changes around here.”

I looked around and noticed that most of Bosco’s normal clutter was missing.  When I’d worked for him before, there had been all sorts of brochures, notepads, hair samples, videotapes, DVDs and stray paper lying in piles on his desk and all over the floor.  Today, all of that material was gone and the office looked almost empty, except for Bosco’s desk and chair, a long table with 3 computers set up on it, and the chair I was sitting in.

“We’re moving Michael.  I sold the whole company to SlipNot.”

SlipNot was Bosco’s biggest account, a huge firm that had hair factories all over Asia, distribution centers on both coasts of the US and its corporate headquarters in New York City.  As Bosco stood up from behind his desk, he appeared even taller than I’d remembered.  Then again, when you’re only 5 foot 4, everyone seems pretty tall to you.  I guess Bosco was about 6 foot; he had a deep tan from spending time outdoors, riding his horses and taking care of his horse farm.  He really loved those animals and during the summer, it wasn’t unusual for him to skip out of the office at around 3 to spend the afternoon taking trail rides with his wife, Leah.  Leah was quite a character herself.  When she and Bosco were first married, Bosco had an old donkey.  It was ancient.  From what I heard, Leah was after Bosco to do something about it.  All the damned animal would do is stand around inside the barn and shit.  She got tired of cleaning it up and so one day while Bosco was out of town on a business trip, she hired a backhoe to dig a big hole in the field.  She led the donkey out to it and shot it.  Then she had the backhoe guy move the donkey into the hole and cover it up.  Bosco came back and he walked all over the farm, looking for the donkey.  When he couldn’t find it, he asked Leah what had happened to it.

“I killed it, Bosco,” she was supposed to have told him, “and I’ll do the same to you if you ever do anything to piss me off.”  I was never sure whether I should fear the same treatment were I to cross Leah, so I had made it my life’s work to keep out of her way.

Bosco strode across the room and poked his head out the door. 

“Allan!  Are you coming?” he bellowed down the hallway.  He walked back to his desk and sat down just as a 6 foot plus tall giant came through the door.  He looked to be about 5 years or so younger than me, with more hair on his head than I had and a lot more on his face as well.  Without saying a word, he placed a chair that he’d brought with him next to mine and sat down.

Bosco introduced Allan and began a detailed description of how the company had been sold and what that meant to us.  It turned out that SlipNot had been courting Bosco even while I was last working for him.  All three of us would be moving to New York in 3 weeks to become SlipNot employees. I would be working with SlipNot’s sales staff and with Allan on new marketing and advertising strategies.

“It’s going to be a tough project” Bosco assured us, “But there’s a fuck of a lot of money to be made.  You guys are going to get real jobs for the first time in your lives.  Hell, Allan might even have to get a haircut and Michael, you’ll have to actually have to wear a tie!”

I don’t think I even owned a sport coat back then, or a tie, or a pair of slacks for that matter.

By that fall, I owned a couple sport jackets, several ties, five pairs of slacks and a suit.  Allan was pure though.  He’d refused to adopt the company dress code and had arrived in New Orleans with a pair of khakis and three polo shirts.  Neither of us was dressed for work though as we’d purposely booked an early flight so that we’d have a few hours to tool around the French Quarter before our 3 o’clock meeting with Bosco and the SlipNot brass.  Apparently, Bosco had found an even earlier flight.  He strode up to us, beaming.  He greeted us warmly and then studied us carefully.

“You look like shit,” he announced.  “Go get changed and head upstairs to the main conference room on the second floor.  There’s a sign in the hallway that’ll point you there, so you can’t miss it.”

“I thought we weren’t presenting until later this afternoon,” Allan pointed out.

“You need to do a meet and greet” Bosco replied.  “A lot of our clients have already arrived and you need to schmooze ‘em.”

“I’m going to grab some lunch first,” I said.  We were in one of the great cooking cities of the country and I can promise you that there was no way I was going to miss an opportunity to feed at the trough. 

Bosco protested, but he finally agreed that it would be a good idea to grab a quick bite before heading into work.  He liked the idea so much that he joined us.  He suggested the Redfish Grill, but I prevailed on him and we walked another couple blocks to the Cajun Cabin.  During the evening, the Cajun Cabin is a noisy nightclub that features local Cajun music and a lot of drunken patrons shouting to be heard.  At lunchtime, the place is almost as loud with the sounds of tourists and locals enjoying some of the best home style gumbo, alligator sausage, crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, and shrimp creole you can find in the French Quarter.

 

You walk in the door and the smells from all of those rich dishes just goes right through you.  People were laughing and shouting to each other from table to table, there was music blasting through the stereo, and you could hear the oysters being shucked at the bar on the right side of the room.  I stepped over to the barstool closest to where a guy was plating out a dozen oysters and motioned for Allan and Bosco to join me.  Allan sat down beside me and Bosco took up the next stool.

“And good afternoon, guys” the oyster shucker greeted us, “What do you need?”

Bosco made it clear he didn’t want oysters and so he and Allan consulted the menu.  I smiled and ordered a dozen oysters and a pint of Abita Amber Ale.

“No, sir” the shucker replied.  “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“No?” I asked.

“No.  I think you’ll order a dozen and then I’ll serve you what you need.”

Oysters are dirt cheap in New Orleans.  They’re not the salty delicacies a Malpeque is or a Blue Point oyster might be.  They’re a little bland actually, when you compare them to the varieties harvested in the North Atlantic.  But that in no way diminishes them.  Like any good oyster, the Eastern oysters of the Gulf are salty and their flesh literally explodes in your mouth when you bite into one.  I had one guy at a raw bar on Long Island once try to convince me that the best way to eat an oyster was to let it touch the front of your tongue, so as to enjoy the taste and then let it slip whole down your throat.  My feeling is that unless you taste the entire oyster by biting into it, you’ve missed the whole point of the business.

I ate my dozen oysters and finished my ale.  The shucker refilled my glass and placed another six oysters in front of me.  I thanked him and continued to eat.  When those were gone, another four appeared.  Bosco, who’d ordered a bowl of shrimp gumbo, was enjoying the scene and he chided me for eating so much. 

“Jesus!” Allan exclaimed in mock disgust.  He’d detailed his dietary needs to the bar waiter and been offered an enormous salad made from hearts of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, julienne vegetables, and cucumber slices.  His remark was not directed at his lunch, but rather at the appalling sight of me downing this third offering of raw oysters.

The shucker just laughed.  “I think you’re done now,” he told me and he took away the empty plate from in front of me.

I sure was.  The second ale was beginning to give me a low-level buzz and combined with the richness of the shellfish, I felt a lot more up for a nap in front of the TV than an afternoon of meetings and presentations.  But Bosco was there to stop me.  He produced the company credit card, paid the bill and herded us out the door, back to the hotel.

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The next installment will be posted on September 30.

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