Cockroach Soup

 

When Billy Wrangler was younger, his mother forced him to eat Broccoli Cheddar soup whenever he was sick. He was a slight child, sallow, and with a noticeable case of scoliosis -- sickness came to him often, and when it did, so came the broccoli cheddar soup.

 

The broccoli cheddar soup his mother made was thick, and it fumed, and often the broccoli would soak and turn from its natural color to a sickly, brownish-green. One morning Billy’s sister came down to find him eating it, and she had christened it Cockroach Soup. That name had stuck ever since.

 

His mother’s insistence on broccoli cheddar soup was solely due to the fact that broccoli cheddar was the only soup in the canned foods aisle of the local grocery store which could be purchased with food stamps. They lived in Alaska, where state regulation prohibited the purchase of very many foods at all with government distributed food stamps. And so, two cardboard boxes, each containing twelve cans of broccoli cheddar soup, were bought and stuck in the storage closet between months, particularly before winter, when Billy’s mother would anticipate his inevitable sickness.

 

Eventually Billy grew sick of broccoli cheddar soup, and of soups in general. As he grew older, he got sick less, learned to walk straight and puff back his chest, learned to live with scoliosis, learned to adjust as a normal teenager. Broccoli cheddar soup went from being a staple of Billy’s diet to not much more than a myth, an inside joke among family members.

 

When Billy was thirty, he never thought about living in Alaska, broccoli cheddar soup, or scoliosis. He was a successful tax accountant -- he worked for Walgreens, on a rented floor in the Time-Life building. He had an office, a big room with a sofa at one corner and a desk in the other, facing four paneled windows.

 

He was there in his office on the 30th of November. Billy was the head of Expense Accounts, and he was attempting to file his reports for the end-of-month General Purpose FInancial Statements. He was also deathly, feverishly sick -- and he was reminded again of that pallid, flaccid brown Cockroach Soup. He both hated and missed it at the same time.

 

He was thinking of his old Cockroach Soup when suddenly his secretary tapped on his door and ushered herself in.

 

“Mr. Wrangler, sir?” she said.

 

He looked up from the expense reports he was attempting to decipher. He couldn’t put heads or tails to anything just then.

 

“Yes?” Billy asked.

 

“Oh, God, sir, you look really pale,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. Jane was a lovely 26 years old, a somewhat recent alumni of the University of Oregon. She had come to New York to pursue a career in architecture -- she ended up working for Walgreens, as a secretary.

 

“It could be worse,” she would often admit to friends, relatives, or anyone who inquired. “It could be so much worse.”

 

Today she was wearing her hair up. She had auburn hair. Billy thought it looked beautiful, although he thought it looked beautiful every day. He was still registering her appearance as she began talking.

 

“What?” he asked.

 

“You look really bad, sir,” Jane repeated. “Would you like some tea, or something?”

 

“No,” Billy said, a bead of sweat dripping down his face. His throat burned terribly. Swallowing hurt.

 

“What would you like?” Jane asked.

 

“Oh, I don’t know, Jane,” Billy said, bumbling. He closed his report, and buried his face in his hands momentarily. “I’m really sick -- but, well -- down in the cafeteria, do we have any soups?”

 

“Would you like me to check?” Jane asked.

 

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Billy said. “I’d like to get my hands on some broccoli cheddar soup, ideally, but really, anything will do.”

 

“Okay,” Jane said. She smiled and then shut the door, on a quest to retrieve a cup of whatever soup she could find.

 

Billy sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on the looming pile of work before him. The numbers seemed to fly through his head, and as they did they became increasingly driftless and irrelevant. He continued to sweat, and would lean his neck back in his chair every time he had to swallow, so as to ease the pain. Every now and then, he would open his eyes again and glance down at the immense file of reports he was going to have to fill out -- but whenever he did, a sudden nausea would overcome him, and he would lie back down in his chair and close his eyes and try not to swallow.

 

He slipped into a light and painless daydream about his secretary, the beautiful Jane, who was sweet enough to run down and grab him a cup of soup. In this daydream, they were driving -- Billy did not know where, but they were driving -- across a great big, empty expanse. It was not even a road, but just an emptiness of flat dirt surrounded by trees. And they would go on and on in Billy’s SUV, a Land Rover he had recently purchased with his outstandingly large salary -- and when they would get hungry, Billy would reach over and playfully put a truffle or some immaculate caramel between her soft, red lips, and she would feed him in the same manner. And sometimes, while they would drive on and on, she would randomly lean far over the center console which separated the two of them, and she would kiss him on the cheek.

 

“Sir?” Jane asked. Billy’s eyes shot open. She had already come back.

 

“Yes?” Billy said.

 

“There wasn’t any soup, sir. I’m sorry. I got you some hot chocolate and a muffin instead.” Jane said. She looked beautifully sympathetic.  

 

“Oh, it’s okay, thank you -- and just put it right here,” Billy said, and he gestured towards his desk.

 

Jane smiled, and she left the drink and the muffin on his desk, and then she went and closed the door in that gentle, quiet way of hers, and the last Billy saw of her was a trace of her auburn hair -- and then he was alone again, and he thought of how badly he wished for that sickly brown soup his mother had made. And soon, lying with his head back, he fell asleep.

 

He dreamt again. It was a familiar dream. He was again in his Land Rover, driving across the boundless expanse of dirt towards whatever horizon was ahead -- and at his side was Jane, his beautiful, wonderful, loving secretary.

 

“I love you,” she said to him.

 

“Thanks,” he said, and in his dream, he was six-foot-five and muscular and he had a great, big, beautiful beard, and his penis was of an alarmingly immense width and girth, but he was still gentle and noble and humble, and above all, loving and caring toward his wonderful dream-wife and secretary, Jane.

 

“I love you too,” he said.

 

“You’ve never said that before,” said Jane indignantly, and she tousled his long, sensual mane of flowy brown hair. “You never, ever, say that.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Billy asked, and he turned to her almost alarmingly. He would never want to render his beautiful Jane-wife indignant.

 

“You never say anything to me,” Jane said. “We’ve never talked before.”

 

“We talk all the time,” said Billy. “We love talking. I love talking to you, and you love talking to me, because you’re my wife, and I love you.”

 

“You’ve never said a word to me this entire time,” Jane said, and she looked as though she had been crying and pouting a while. “All we’ve been doing is going across this huge expanse of nothingness, and all we do is feed each other truffles and occasionally I’ll tell you I’ll love you, or I’ll lean over the console and kiss you on the cheek. And where the hell are we going, anyway? We’ve been driving and driving. When are we going to get where we’re going?”

 

“Soon, Jane!” Billy shouted, and he felt his hair begin to fade, and he began to shrink, and then he felt his penis shrivel into its natural boring and flaccid length. “I love you, Jane!” he whimpered as she pulled on the handbrake and the car’s gears screeched and faded to a stop. The horizon turned gray and suddenly seemed much closer, until it was almost upon them, and then Jane looked up at Billy and Billy looked wide-eyed in horror around him. All around, the trees were falling, and the Land Rover was sinking -- the ground about them had turned into Cockroach Soup.

 

“What, Jane?” said Billy tearfully, and he grabbed her by the shoulders in comic alarm, his movements muted by the atmosphere of his dream-turned-nightmare.

 

“What the hell did I do?” Billy shouted.

 

“You didn’t do anything,” Jane said as they sunk below a large, cheesy expanse of soup, which filtered in through the vents and the cracks in his door, and then burst through one of the windows. Hot and steaming, he smelled burning leather as the demon soup corroded through the back seat of his SUV.

 

“You never do anything,” she said.

 

Billy screamed.

 

“Oh, shut up,” Jane scoffed at him right before the passenger-side window caved in and they both were engulfed in soup.

 

Billy woke up in a cold sweat. His throat felt as though someone had poured fire ants down it.

 

He pressed the button labeled “Jane” on the his intercom.

 

“Jane?” he asked breathlessly.There was a muffled beep, and then Jane’s voice.

 

“Yes?” she said.

 

“Can you come in?” Billy asked.

 

“Of course,” she said, and then there was the clicking sound of the doorknob being opened, and she was before him.

 

“Do you need anything? You haven’t touched your muffin,” Jane said worriedly.

 

Billy waved away the muffin. “Never mind the muffin. Are you busy tonight?”

 

“Do you need help filing reports?” she asked him. “I can call Timmy to stay behind and help, too, if you need it.”

 

“Oh, no,” said Billy. “Are you free tonight?”

 

“Oh--” Jane’s eyes widened in sudden realization. “Um -- Yes, I am.” She smiled. “Of course.”

 

“Would you like to join me for dinner?” Billy asked. His voice rasped, and his right eyelid twitched, but he spoke with a resolve common among men who act upon the impulse of strange dreams. Jane continued smiling.

 

“I suppose,” she said. “But I’m not sure you could eat anything off the menu, in your condition.”

 

“Oh, it’s okay,” Billy said, and he smiled, and for a second he didn’t feel the burning pain in his throat or the perspiration collecting on his forehead. He absentmindedly fingered open the expense report in front of him, and said:

 

“I’ll just get soup.”