By Jenny SpeerBACK BAY – Richard O’Brien, Jr., looks up from his sizzling New York strip steak. After finishing the bite he is chewing, he lays down his fork and focuses his attention.
“His middle name is Cotter,” says O’Brien, 45 – “O.B.” to those who know him – of his friend, John Walsh. “Charlie, Oscar, tango, tango, echo, Romeo. That’s called the phonetic alphabet. I learned it when I was in the military.”
While the glass of cabernet and personal supply of sea salt are a far cry from his days at West Point, O’Brien is not as jovial as he typically is in his usual spot – barstool 213 – on Thursday nights at Fleming’s on Stuart Street.
After nearly eight years as a salesman of custom computer chips at Lattice Semiconductor Corp. in Woburn, O’Brien is faced with a crippling choice: take a promotion in Chicago and leave behind more than 16 years’ worth of legacy and friendships in the Back Bay or stay in his Marlborough Street apartment and forego the active social life that his well-paying job affords him.
“Do you see how many people are here tonight?” observes Kelly McCabe, 36, of Quincy, O’Brien’s friend of three years. “There aren’t many people here who won’t be getting on a plane to Chicago to visit him if he goes.”
While he will miss his friends if he decides to accept the promotion, the prospect of such distance is also a mutual concern of his parents’.
As the youngest of Ann and Richard O’Brien, Sr.’s five children, he has made a point to be close to his family since his military career took him to the South. After graduating from West Point in 1985, he spent six months in Ft. Still, Okla., in a field artillery basic course, followed by three years as an executive officer in the 5th infantry division in Ft. Polk, La. He moved to Boston in 1989, eventually settling on Marlborough Street in April 1992.
O’Brien’s favorite spots in the Back Bay have led him to acquire a following of friends from the neighborhood and beyond, as well as a guaranteed barstool at several bars and restaurants. His crawl through the neighborhood runs from Joe’s American Bar and Grill to the Capital Grille (both on Newbury Street), to Spasso (Commonwealth Avenue), to Papa Razzi (Dartmouth Street), ending at either Abe and Louie’s (Boylston St.) or Fleming’s (Stuart Street).
“He’ll make friends with anyone, whether it’s the CEO of a major corporation or a construction worker or a dishwasher,” says Rick Reardon, 43, of Quincy, a bartender at Fleming’s and O’Brien’s close friend of eight years, with tears in his eyes. “He treats everyone the same.”
Tom Monahan, 37, of Somerville, another Fleming’s bartender, describes his own variation of friendship with O’Brien.
“[O’Brien] is the other side of an inside joke,” he says. “We have a symbiotic, non-verbal relationship that is constantly funny.”
Whether he’s relishing in Abe and Louie’s’ veal Oscar special on Tuesday night or bringing holiday-themed ties for the entire Fleming’s staff on a Thursday in December, O’Brien’s “fan base” is never short on members, and his glass – be it filled with Miller Lite, Belvedere vodka on the rocks, the bartender’s choice of red wine, or Sambuca – is never empty.
“Nothing’s going to close [if he leaves],” McCabe says. “But he’ll be so fondly and sorely missed all over the Back Bay. But, it’s deal or no deal. He has to make the right decision; it’s not O.B.’s character not to.”
O’Brien will submit his decision on Sept. 26.
