"Don't Care Guilty" by Charlotte Hamrick

We ate them on a muggy Spring afternoon. I skipped out from work saying I had a legal appointment, not entirely untrue. Sweat trickled down my belly and tickled my underarms during the two-block walk. I hoped I didn’t smell.

Stepping through the door was like entering another era. White tiled walls gleamed, a long bar with men shucking oysters stretched down one side of the front room, and a row of small tables ran the length of the other. One table, strewn with crumpled napkins dotted with sauce and sweaty glasses of limoncello, held three little old men who looked like they stepped out of a Martin Scorsese movie; another table held a twenty-something couple, their lithe bodies leaning toward each other, plates of crusty oyster loaves waiting to be eaten. 

Behind the bar, a small window a/c unit blew frigid air like life depended on it - and it probably did. I stepped in front of the flow, hoping it would dry the fabric sticking to my back while I sipped an Abita, the tangy brew soothing my parched throat.

The bell on the door jangled as he walked in fifteen minutes late, cool as a nectar cream snowball. He wore a seersucker suit and a litigator smirk. A waiter greeted him deferentially and whisked us off to a table in the back room. I sat facing the front door (always have an escape plan) where a clot of rumpled New Orleanians waited, jostling for a shot of a/c. My shaky hands beneath the table were in a burden-of-proof sweaty clench. 

I had to lean in to hear him above the increasing chatter and clatter around us (Do I smell?) while his twisty conversation made my stomach gurgle as much as the aroma of frying fresh seafood rolling through the restaurant after having rolled in Gulf waves a few hours earlier. I was thankful for the cicada-loud chorus echoing the length of the room.

Fresh drinks and an ice-laden platter of glistening raw oysters arrived looking like milky not-quite-full moons. I speared an oyster, placed it on a cracker with a healthy dollop of hot sauce, and placed it in my mouth, a burst of brine and sea breath filling my senses. As our eyes met, he snorted derisively, picked up an oyster, and slurped it down. Most people suck down the oyster unadorned, but I like the crunch of crackers mixed with the soft, salty flesh even if some think it’s a touristy way of eating them. I felt my face pinking like I’d been caught breaching some precious culinary law. 

Then I thought, Smartass lawyer.

I calmly grabbed another saltine and settled in for a stink.

Charlotte Hamrick is author of Offset Melodies, a chapbook of micro memoir and hybrid prose included in ELJ Editions’ Grieving Hope collection (2025). She is the founding editor of SugarSugarSalt Magazine and Managing Editor for Reckon Review. She writes from New Orleans where she drinks lots of coffee and wrangles a menagerie of rescued pets.

More at charhamrick.com.