Souper Star
A washed-up star was face-deep in a bowl of onion soup. At the sight of this, the waitress moaned. For though she craved excitement in her life, she did not need this. The unvarying routine of her days, as of late, had left her nostalgic for the crazier times of her earlier days starting out on the job, back when she’d come to work visibly-impaired on a concoction of prescription medication and hard seltzers. That was the only way she could really tolerate dealing with the strange, eclectic clientele of this not-so-fine restaurant, a casual dining establishment with a three-and-a-half star rating (Yelp, not Michelin). But as her life outside of work continued to unravel, with her collection of unstable exes, acrimonious breakups with her closest besties, and repeated scream-matches with her relentlessly unaccommodating roommates, it became clear, at a certain point, that some life changes were necessary if she did not want to spend the rest her days in a hellscape of failure and bitterness. Sobriety was a necessary step towards a less shit existence, and for two years now she was doing fairly ok at it, keeping away from temptation, only longing to relapse in brief, easily suppressible periods of mild anxiety. On the days when the pangs for bad girl shit were particularly high, she would call in sick to work and stay in bed, huddled beneath a smelly blanket, watching episodes of Smallville with her cat Olga by her side, scarfing on a microwavable tray of highly-palatable cheesy, processed, frozen things, her eyes glazed at a screen of her cracked phone, doom scrolling on X and IG all day long.
Seeing the handsome movie idol there in this compromising position was not the strangest thing she’d encountered in her three years as a waitress, but it was certainly a novelty for that week. Truthfully, she would have been better off calling in sick that day, and yet there she was, desperately lifting this mess of a man from his bowl, praying that he was not dead or in the process of dying. Thankfully, he was still breathing. As she pulled the star up from the scuffed-up collar of his leather Versace jacket (the kind that screamed ‘mid-life crisis, but make it fashion), she could see the bubbles of broth gurgling from out his groaning, crusty lips, his entire matinee-idol wrinkled face dripping with beans, and greens, and intermingling with his tears. The parted lips let out a noxious stench of cigarette breath intertwined with several shots of Tito’s. His late-nineties slash early two-thousands aura had taken quite a dip over the last few years.
“Sir, wake up, sir you can’t sleep on your soup like that, ok?” She couldn’t believe the words she was uttering. The other patrons in the booths and tables behind were watching the entire situation unfold, several of them recording it with their phones. It was certainly a much more compelling narrative than anything he had starred in as of late. She sat him upright, head against the back of the glass window, now resting somewhat comfortably in the presence of this average-looking pink-haired guardian angel in his presence.
Why she was wiping him up with napkins and babying him like that, she was not totally sure. It certainly didn’t fit her job description. It wasn’t because she was a huge fan, because she most definitely was not. Of all movie stars she knew from her childhood, this was one that gave her several ‘icks.’ He always looked like he didn’t take proper care of himself, hygiene wise, and now she stood, semi-satisfied, semi-disgusted, realizing her worst suspicions were in fact very true.
She could have easily asked Ben the muscle-addled cook with the Peter Griffin tattoo to come in and escort him curtly out into the sidewalk, but she knew the business had enough mediocre, unwanted publicity as it did, and she perhaps hoped that there might be a decent tip in it for her if she turned out to be the source of his comeback story– think of it, she said to herself, me, the unlikely conduit to his showbiz glory renaissance. Maybe I’ll be the first thing he remembers when he’s accepting his little underdog story oscar prize, she thought. But then she shook her head. This guy was never particularly good, he was never very talented, and it was unlikely he was gonna win custody of his kids, let alone a major prestigious industry award. He may have put butts in seats back in the day, when he was younger and hotter, but those days were long gone. He needed to get his head out the past, and out of this soup.
Though it was abundantly clear that he would not be headlining any tent poles in the near future, in a way that did not matter much either. Hollywood tent poles just did not have the same cultural sway that they used to, not in an age of Gen Z influencers vying for everybody’s eyeballs every fifteen minutes. She really had no idea what this movie star was going through to have this very public, albeit modest, crashout in the middle of her workplace, but in the back of her mind, she thought– honestly, with everything going on right now, I can’t blame him. To some extent, as she was cleaning him up and wiping his mouth and trying to get him to sober up, she thought all this extra effort was something she hoped another kind soul would do for her if she were ever in a similar state of washed-up messiness.
When the movie star finally emerged from his soup-soaked stupor, he got up and tried to play it cool, but he was still a little too drunk to stand straight for long. He stumbled and staggered his way to the men’s room. In there, he loudly purged the undigested contents of his stomach into the scratched-up toilet. Then he cleaned himself up, flashed a well-trained grin at himself in the mirror, admiring the hell out of his camel-stained veneers and crows-feet covered eyes. With his hair slicked back and his Ray Bans coming down on his face, he was ready to get back on the streets and back to business. At this point, he was already several hours late for his call time to a straight-to-Tubi movie set in which he was the lead. With that, he briskly left the restaurant, haphazardly dropping a special little tip for the waitress who attempted to preserve his dignity. It was a five-dollar bill and a voucher for 10 percent off her next visit to a spa resort in another state. It wasn’t exactly what she’d hoped for, but it was better than nothing.
“Job well done”, she muttered to herself with smug satisfaction. Then she wiped up the mess before clocking out.