Hunting Midnight • Ep 6 • Part 15: Cream 🦞
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Part 6-15: Cream
The idea to start a soup shop came to me a few years ago. I’m actually not a great chef or anything, but I could always make a mean soup. Lobster bisque being the meanest of the crew.
The secret to a good LB has less to do with the actual lobster and more to do with what flavours you can infuse into the cream. That’s my secret souping weapon—solid creamsmanship.
My last name is just a happy coincidence. It’s also how I thought bisque was spelled until I actually started planning out the shop. Who knew?
A massive line of credit got me the space and the equipment. Opening the shop was a rare moment for me—the real start of a real dream.
Which makes the fact that I’ve missed my sales targets three months in a row more than a little depressing. Three more months and I’ll be bankrupt.
As it were, when Deluxe visits again I am sitting at one of the tables, hunched over a notebook filled with desperate promotional ideas.
“You’re not at the counter!” she says by way of greeting, crashing through the door with a stop-the-presses kind of suddenness. Lobster the Lizard is nowhere to be seen, but she is carrying a cage of some sort.
“Yes, standing watch over the crippling tranquility of the soup vats gets me down, so here I am, trying to figure this business out,” I say. I knock a fist on the notepad.
Her eyebrows arch quizzically at me as the door settles back and forth from the force of her entry. Eventually her eyes grow distant and she says, “I could name a spaceship Crippling Tranquility.”
“And what would you name a soup shop?” I ask, squinting at my list of possible renaming candidates. Many are puns.
“Meet my frog, he’s not hungry though.” The cage comes near my face. Indeed, inside is a frog.
I put down the notepad and swivel to face the duo. Strange as she is, she is the only human I’d really had contact with in about three hours and I am glad for an excuse to break away from my ever-darkening thoughts.
“Do you call this guy Cat or something?” I ask her.
“His name is Lobster.”
“Of course it is.” I lean back in my seat. “I don’t suppose either of you would like any lobster bisque?”
“You wouldn’t eat anything made of Alena Bisk, would you?” She plops herself down in the chair across from mine. I rescue my notepad from the bottom of Lobster the Frog’s cage as she places it on the table.
I shrug. “Depends on what’s in the cream.”
“No, but for real,” she says, sounding sombre for the first time.
I think about it, absurdly. Would I eat something made out of me? The obvious answer is no, but I am compelled to dig at the reason behind the obviousness. I mean, I wouldn’t know… but I assume with the right technique me-soup could probably taste pretty good.
“I would maybe be curious to try it…” I offer. It seems honest enough.
She leaps at it. “And if it was good would you sell it?”
“I personally am in limited supply; not a great business model.”
“Say I have a cloning machine.”
The discussion has gotten philosophical a little too fast, and I am now even more curious about this diminutive woman and her possible army of similarly-named pets. So I take a page out of her conversational repertoire and pivot.
“What do you do for a living, Deluxe?”
“Financial analyst.”
“No shit.”
“10-K’s all day all way. Debt to assets. EBITDA and the weighted average cost of capital.”
I pretend to comprehend and shoot back along the lines of the only thing that I understand properly. “So why aren’t you at work now? It’s two in the afternoon.”
“Long lunch. By night and by lunch I am here to represent the interests of Lobsters.” She motions puckered lips in the direction of the cage.
“You disapprove of my wares,” I say.
“Would you eat something made out of you?” she asks again.
Before I could answer, the door opens again and a new customer walks in, peering at the menu board. I hurry to serve them, and by the time they have their takeout bowl of lobster bisque and are off, Deluxe has disappeared.
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She doesn't seem to be protesting. She's quiet when the customer comes in. So what is Deluxe's goal?
Thanks so much for the episode 🙌
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Interesting backstory. I wonder why Deluxe was unable to help Alena save the restaurant.
I would eat something made of me actually.
I have a creeping premonition that I taste delicious 😋