Soup

[Mark. Gooley]

Soup.

[SCENE: The office of a secretary, ALICE, who sits at her desk doing nothing
in particular and looking bored. She is thirtyish, tolerably pretty in a
somewhat severe gray flannel suit with a long skirt; she has bleached-blonde
hair, and the bright aqua of her eyes is possibly from contact lenses. There
are three shut doors in the wall behind her; these lead to private offices of
the more-important.]

[Enter FRED: fortyish, a bit paunchy, incipient bald spot covered with wispy
hairs produced by assiduous use of Rogaine, gray flannel suit.]
FRED: Morning, Alice. Any messages?
ALICE: Just one. I'll print it out. [She presses the agate cabochon of her
large left earring, and with the usual noises the end of a roll of thermal
paper emerges from the decolletage of her blouse. After several inches of
purple print, the noises stop and she tears the message off and hands it to
FRED]
FRED [taking and reading it]: Thanks. Ah, they need soup over at Catering.
Rawlins, don't you think?
ALICE: More the sherry trifle type. Besides he's nice. How about that creep
Jenkins?
FRED: In trouble for sexual harassment, too. Good idea, Alice. Send for
him. [He goes to the middle door of the three, and we notice a tiny sign
on it: "Procurement." He opens the door and we follow him in.]

[FRED's office. At first it seems luxurious: panelling, vast desk, imposing
bookcases, objets d'art, the usual corporate trappings of power. A closer
look reveals that everything is of poor quality if not downright fake: vinyl
wood-pattern veneer peeling or scuffed off in places, mass-produced kitschy
doodads and prints too new and shoddy to be collectible, entire shelves of
obsolete legal books, Reader's Digest Condensed Books, etc. There is an
iron cauldron next to the desk.

FRED walks over to the cauldron and taps its edge. It makes a sound like
a cooing pigeon. He walks behind the desk, pulls back the shoddy old
steel-and-vinyl stackable chair, and sits. There is a sound like a chicken
clucking, and from a drawer of the desk FRED takes a smallish salmon, which
thrashes about trying to get free. The salmon emits more chicken-clucks,
and FRED pokes it in an eye. It goes limp, and FRED puts its mouth to
his left ear and its tail near his mouth.]

FRED: Yes, Alice?
ALICE [over fish-phone; the fish's mouth moves as if it were speaking]: Mr.
Jenkins is here, Fred.
FRED: Ah, good. Send him in.

[FRED pokes the fish in an eye again, and it resumes its thrashing; with
a little difficulty he returns it to its drawer. Then Fred reaches under
his chin and tears off what we had thought his own face and scalp.
revealing identical ones underneath. He puts the mask into another drawer
of the desk.

Enter JENKINS: tallish, thin, stooped, young and spotty. He wears a
polyester three-piece suit in a relatively tasteful gray.]

JENKINS: You wanted to see me, sir?
FRED: Ah, yes. You are soup.
JENKINS: Pardon me sir, but--
FRED: You heard. You are soup.
JENKINS: I'm sorry, sir: I don't understand.
FRED: Nothing to understand. You are soup.
JENKINS: Is this one of those Japanese management techniques?
FRED: Possibly, possibly. At any rate, you are soup.
JENKINS: I'm soup, sir?
FRED [nodding with vigor]: Yes, you are soup.
JENKINS: All right, sir, I'm soup.
FRED: Good. [Gestures towards the cauldron] Into the pot, soup.
JENKINS: This is getting a bit strange--
FRED: Remember, you are soup.
JENKINS: I am soup, sir.
FRED: Into the pot, then, soup. You are soup.
JENKINS [labored humoring-him tones]: Right, sir. Can't have soup like
me spilling all over the floor.
FRED: You are soup.
JENKINS [getting into cauldron]: I am soup.
FRED [projecting his voice]: You are soup! You are soup!
JENKINS: I am soup!
FRED: Feel your intrinsic soup-nature, soup! Be soup fully! You are soup!
JENKINS: I am soup! I am soup! I am-
[JENKINS, clothes and all, liquefies into the cauldron with a splosh.]
FRED [gently]: You are soup. [FRED goes to the desk, rummages around in a
drawer -- producing a sound like that of tubular bells -- and presently
takes out a silver ladle, heavily tarnished. FRED takes this over to the
cauldron, dips it in for a sample, and sips. He seems to enjoy the taste,
for he finishes the ladleful and has a second, but it's obvious that he's
not quite satisfied.] Japanese management. Hrmpf!

[The fish-phone clucks again, and FRED gets it as before.]
FRED: What now, Alice?
ALICE [over phone]: Is he soup yet?
FRED: Yeah. Some miso-and-seaweed concoction: not bad but not to everyone's
taste, I'd think.
ALICE: Yum! I'll get my bowl and spoon. Be with you in a jiffy.
FRED: Okay. 'Bye.
[A section of wall and bookshelf becomes nebulous and ALICE walks through it,
carrying a small bowl and spoon, both ceramic, as used in many Chinese
restaurants. Wall and shelf solidify again.]
FRED: Ah. [FRED takes the bowl from her and ladles some soup from the
cauldron into it, then hands it back to her.] There y'go!
ALICE [taking it]: Thanks, Fred. [ALICE takes a spoonful and sips it
noisily.] Great! I don't think that they'll like it over at Catering,
though.
FRED: That's what I was afraid of.
ALICE [finishing a few more spoonfuls with gusto, then handing bowl and
spoon to Fred]: Hold these a few secs, okay?
FRED [takes them, looking puzzled]: Sure, but why?
ALICE: This calls for a change of face. [She pulls off her face and scalp,
revealing those of an attractive Japanese woman of twenty -- apart from her
still-green eyes.]
FRED [giving her the bowl and taking the ALICE mask]: You look beautiful
this way, Alice.
ALICE [her body and clothes shrinking slightly and her complexion altering]:
Akiko, you mean. [Her eyes turn deep brown.]
FRED [tossing the ALICE mask into the cauldron of soup and stirring with
the ladle, which he then removes and puts on the desk; the portion of the
ladle that touched soup is now free of tarnish]: Of course. Sorry
about that, Akiko.
AKIKO [her voice faintly accented and a few tones higher than ALICE's]:
No problem, Fred. 'Bye for now! [She quickly changes into something
resembling a cardboard cutout of herself, front and rear views pasted on.]
FRED [taking hold of her and sliding her under the door]: 'Bye, Akiko.
[FRED goes over to the desk. A puddle of soup around the business end
of the ladle has caused the desk top under it to change into a patch of
ALICE skin. FRED picks up the ladle and fishes with it for something on
the bottom of the cauldron, immersing his right hand, wrist, and shirt cuff.
Presently he finds it, and brings it above the surface of the soup. His
right hand and wrist now look like ALICE's did, and the cuff is the frilly
one of ALICE's blouse. What he's fished up is a soup-sodden patch of
ALICE's hair and most of her left ear. with its attached earring.
Presently this liquefies and slurps back into the soup with a faint but
orgiastic moan. Finally FRED notices his altered hand.]
FRED [to nobody in particular]: This always has to happen, doesn't it?
VOICE [male, baritone, nasal and a bit petulant]: "Hasn't it," you mean.
Yes, it has to.
FRED: It's a cliche, you know. At least it's become one for you.
VOICE: Get on with it.
FRED: You've become _predictable_. You haven't moved forward in five years!
VOICE: Get _on_ with it!
[FRED says nothing, but he climbs onto the desk, waves good-bye with his
ALICE hand, and dives skilfully into the cauldron of soup. There is no
splash, no displacement of soup, no sound. After a minute or so comes
the clucking-chicken sound of the fish-phone. and FRED, transformed
entirely into ALICE as we first saw her and not at all wet with soup,
emerges from the cauldron. She goes to the desk and answers the fish-phone
as FRED did.
ALICE [into phone]: Hello?
AKIKO [over phone]: I knew it! I knew you'd become Alice!
ALICE: It's not my fault. It's, you know--
AKIKO: You seem pretty happy with it.
ALICE: Call up Catering and--
AKIKO: You're Alice the secretary now. Call them up yourself.
ALICE: You're the secretary.
AKIKO: Secretary to Fred and two other department heads, Alice, not to you.
ALICE: You bitch!
AKIKO [sweetly]: I've been immunized against doghood, Alice. [AKIKO hangs
up on ALICE.]
ALICE [into fish-phone]: Shit. [She presses an eye of the fish twice, so
quickly that the fish hasn't time to start thrashing between presses, and
then massages its lateral lines with a practiced touch. Hyena howls replace
the usual ringing sound over phone.]
LESLIE [over phone; luscious female voice]: Catering [moan of pleasure],
Leslie here.
ALICE: Leslie, this is Alice. I'm calling for Fred, and-
LESLIE [excessively masculine basso]: Is anyone soup yet?
ALICE [a touch of fear in her voice]: Yes, but he's become a soup that
probably won't be very popular--
LESLIE [lisping child of three]: I'll decide on that and get back to you.
ALICE: There isn't any Fred, and--
LESLIE [Marilyn Monroe only breathier]: Make someone into one. Meanwhile,
fax me the soup pronto.
ALICE: Will do, Leslie.
LESLIE [von Stroheim villain]: Goot! Goot bigh! [hangs up]
ALICE [pushing fish in eye and pitching it into drawer]: Androgyne swine.
[ALICE slips off her suit jacket and drapes it over the chair behind the
desk. With both hands she tugs at her decolletage. There is a ripping
sound but no sign of damage to her clothing. Then ALICE manically fondles
her own breasts, producing a series of noises: modem dialogues, fax-machine
tones, the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and so on.
With unnatural strength she lifts the cauldron by its edges and pours
its contents down her decolletage: they disappear, and presently the
cauldron is not merely empty but dry. ALICE gets her suit jacket from
the chair and puts it on. A thought strikes her, and she rummages in
the desk -- it sounds like random notes on xylophones -- until she finds
the FRED mask. She puts it on and sits down. Nothing seems to happen. She
presses the rubbery face against her own -- nothing. After a few minutes
she takes it off, and we see that ALICE's face has lost ten years or more
of age, and its complexion now matches what is now her genuinely blonde
hair; she is unaware of this. She gets out the fish-phone and dials.
AKIKO [over phone]: Hello. Akiko here.
[ALICE puts the fish-phone gently on the desk, grips the FRED mask tightly,
and turns herself and the mask into white smoke that the anus of the fish-
phone swiftly sucks up.

SCENE changes to the outer office with AKIKO at ALICE's desk, on the phone.]
AKIKO [into phone]: Hello?
[ALICE bursts out of the receiver as smoke, knocking the receiver from
AKIKO's grasp and throwing AKIKO from her chair. ALICE solidifies, with
her young face and naturally-blonde hair, the FRED mask in one hand. AKIKO
starts to get up, and ALICE jams the FRED mask over her head, its face the
wrong way around. AKIKO makes some incoherent noises and tears wildly
at the FRED mask with her long, red-lacquered fingernails, but quickly the
FRED mask changes her head and neck into FRED's, mounted backwards on her
shoulders.]
FRED's head: That wasn't very sporting.
ALICE: We need a Fred here. Hold still a sec. [ALICE grips FRED's head
and turns it right-way-around on the AKIKO body, with sounds of rusty old
machinery being forced to turn.] That's better. [The AKIKO body grows
to the size of FRED's, but its AKIKO shape and clothes remain.]
FRED [looking down at his body]: Why couldn't you have left me as Akiko and
become Fred yourself?
ALICE: I tried. It didn't work.
FRED: Yeah, sure. And you're looking younger and prettier, too.
ALICE: Really? I hadn't noticed.
[The phone on ALICE's desk rings -- but the ringing sound is that of an
ordinary phone played backwards. The whispered words "Satan is an asshole"
accompany the first ring, and "Tell him to go fuck himself" the second.]
ALICE [finally picking up phone]: Hello. Alice here.
ALICE [over phone]: No, Alice _here_. Eight Alices here in Catering --
everyone who tried that soup.
ALICE [giggling]: Tried dismasking?
ALICE [over phone]: Wimp! We're having a single-elimination tournament to
the death. The winner gets to replace you.
ALICE [a bit rattled, but trying not to show it]: Sounds good to me. Oh,
and what about the soup?
ALICE [over phone]: Get Fred to convert someone. [Hangs up.]
ALICE [putting down receiver]: Did you hear all that?
FRED: You are soup.
ALICE: Oh, don't be silly.
[ALICE bends her head, chin to chest, and pulls apart the nape of her neck
with both hands. She takes hold of her hair near her forehead and pulls
off the skin of her head; meanwhile her clothes and skin fuse into something
resembling a rubber bodysuit painted to look like her clothes and skin, and
a slit opens down the back of this. ALICE sheds the suit, revealing an
identical ALICE underneath.]
ALICE [shaking off the rubbery feet of the suit, and then looking at her own
body]: Damn!
FRED: You are soup!
ALICE: Shut up. [ALICE repeats the process, with the same result.]
FRED [grinning idiotically]: You are soup!
ALICE: Bullshit. There can be only so many Alices in me.
FRED: But how many? Better to seek refuge in your own true soup-nature--
ALICE [with a touch of hysteria]: No more of that from you, or I'll...
[ALICE peels off another layer and is again unchanged.] Oh, no...
FRED: You are soup!
ALICE [grabbing one of her shedded layers and shoving it into FRED's arms]:
Shut up and get inside this!
FRED [half-wit tones, as he finds the slit in the back of the suit and puts
his left leg inside its]: Okey...dokey -- soup!
ALICE: I am not soup! [She tears at her own face, then takes control of
herself and removes another layer -- to no effect. ALICE gives an angry
little scream and gets to work removing another layer.]

[Meanwhile, FRED has been calmly and methodically getting into his ALICE
suit. He slips the head over his, pinches shut the nape of the neck,
and moments later has become ANOTHER ALICE. ALICE, just having removed
yet another layer, is about to try yet again when ANOTHER ALICE takes hold
of her wrists.]
ALICE [trying to get free]: Let me go!
ANOTHER ALICE [gently but firmly]: I'll hold the fort, Alice. You go to
Fred's office.
ALICE [as if stunned]: Uh...okay, Alice. Thanks.
ANOTHER ALICE: You're welcome, Alice. Now scurry along!
WILLIAM SHATNER'S VOICE: Energize!
[ALICE dematerializes exactly as if she were being "transported" on the
original "Star Trek."

FRED's office: ALICE materializes, complete with sound effects. She rushes
to the desk and starts rummaging through the drawers, producing the sound
of a series of billiard-ball collisions. From various drawers she takes
out and tosses on the floor or the desk top: the wildly-flapping fish-phone,
an oblong can marked "MANSPAM: spiced human shoulder," an ocarina of what
looks like Dresden porcelain {it shatters as it hits the floor}, six copies
of _Self-Help_ by Samuel Smiles, a tenor krummhorn of bubinga wood, and a
stainless-steel meat cleaver. ALICE slams all the drawers of the desk shut.]
ALICE: Damn! [She begins to peel off another layer of herself.]

[ALICE's office: ANOTHER ALICE sits at the desk, idly fondling her own
breasts. The ALICE-suits are in a tidy pile to the right of her chair.
There is a faint rustling noise and ANOTHER ALICE gets up to see an
ant-sized figure emerging from under the door. It swiftly grows in
size, in moments becoming YET ANOTHER ALICE: she has the original ALICE's
thirtyish looks and bleached-blonde hair, but her clothes are torn and
bloody, both of her arms bandaged, her lower lip swollen and bleeding,
her face bruised, some of her hair singed off. She glares at ANOTHER ALICE.]
ANOTHER ALICE [polite, a bit hearty]: Hello, Alice! I was afraid you
wouldn't show up.
YET ANOTHER ALICE [exhausted]: I had to kill three of me to get this far,
Alice. You're the last one, I hope.
ANOTHER ALICE: Plenty of time for that. [She picks up an ALICE-suit from
the pile and offers it to YET ANOTHER ALICE.] Here, slip into someone
more comfortable.
YET ANOTHER ALICE [taking it]: Thanks. [YET ANOTHER ALICE puts it on with
some difficulty and suppressed grunts of pain. She tries to seal it up at
the nape of its neck, but she can't.]
ANOTHER ALICE: Let me help you with that.
YET ANOTHER ALICE: Thanks. [ANOTHER ALICE goes behind YET ANOTHER ALICE
and seals her into the ALICE suit. The suit changes into real ALICE skin
and clothes, but suddenly there's a noise resembling a loud if brief
fart, and the rejuvenated YET ANOTHER ALICE suddenly vanishes.]
ANOTHER ALICE: So much for her. [ANOTHER ALICE goes to the door of FRED's
office, opens it, and enters, shutting the door behind her. Novel, eh?
actually using the door, I mean. In FRED's office we see ALICE amidst
a litter of discarded ALICE suits, working on removing yet another.]
ANOTHER ALICE: It's okay, Alice! I got rid of her.
ALICE [slowly completing her current removal]: Thanks, Alice. Of course,
that still leaves two of us Alices.
ANOTHER ALICE: You wanna be Alice? I don't care.
ALICE: I'm just sick of all this.
ANOTHER ALICE: Understandable enough -- so is anyone who bothered to read
this far. Let me try skinning you a few times, okay?
ALICE: Don't we have enough Alice suits already?
ANOTHER ALICE: Actually, we need a couple hundred for the company's Third
Annual All-Alice Ball and Sapphic-Autoerotic Orgy Night to Benefit
Hemorrhoid Research-- oh, and there's the band, the waiters, the raw
material for the soup -- but I'll take care of all that.
ALICE: Good of you.
ANOTHER ALICE: Isn't it? Anyway, let me have a try.
ALICE: Okay.
[ANOTHER ALICE pulls open the nape of ALICE's neck and dismasks her,
revealing underneath a lithe young black woman with short natural hair
and a fashion-model face: VANESSA. As ANOTHER ALICE helps her out of
the ALICE costume, we see that she is wearing a well-tailored black suit
-- not that it matters by this point. Make it a fawn-colored suit of
camel-hair recycled from used watercolor brushes, if you like, or a
Wonder Woman (tm) outfit, or merely her own lovely skin.]
VANESSA [looking at herself]: Oh, I'm lovely.
ANOTHER ALICE: You certainly are, Vanessa.
VANESSA: How did you know my name?
ANOTHER ALICE: I've been keeping track of the stage directions.
VANESSA: Oh. Do you think I can leave now?
ANOTHER ALICE: I'm afraid you're Fred's replacement. I could try skinning
you to see if there's anyone underneath we can spare.
VANESSA: Okay. Go ahead.
[ANOTHER ALICE does. Inside the VANESSA suit is Tenniel's conception of
ALICE IN WONDERLAND, brought to life, right down to her striped stockings.]
ALICE IN WONDERLAND [extricating her from the VANESSA suit with the help of
ANOTHER ALICE; she has a distinctly American accent]: Well, I certainly
don't belong here now!
ANOTHER ALICE: No, you're definitely out of this league. Mind the accent.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND [amending it]: Thank you. How am I to leave, though?
ANOTHER ALICE: Just a moment. [ANOTHER ALICE tilts her head until her left
ear is parallel to the floor, raps her right temple smartly, and thereby
knocks out a nondescript wad of something onto the floor. She picks this
up, opens it up into something nebulous, and tosses that to the floor,
where it becomes a remarkably large rabbit-hole.]
ALICE IN WONDERLAND [jumping into the hole]: Good bye!
ANOTHER ALICE: Good bye! [She wads up the hole, puts it into her mouth,
and swallows it. Then she goes back to the outer office, again via the
door.]

[ANOTHER ALICE sits at the desk in the outer office. Presently RAWLINS,
the nice sherry-trifle type, enters without knocking. He is -- oh, never
mind. Let's get this over with.]
RAWLINS:x Hi, Alice! What's up?
ANOTHER ALICE: Hi, Rawlins.
RAWLINS: Isn't that a little formal?
ANOTHER ALICE: Well, your name *is* Rawlins R. Rawlins, you know.
RAWLINS: Is it? I hadn't known.
ANOTHER ALICE: There's a literary tradition of such names. Major Major
Major Major, you know, and Humbert Humbert.
RAWLINS: One can hardly call this literature -- unless one spells it with
two t's.
ANOTHER ALICE: Yes, and even that's stolen from Lewis Carroll. Pathetic,
isn't it?
RAWLINS: Any idea why I showed up?
ANOTHER ALICE: Have you any?
RAWLINS: Not a clue.
ANOTHER ALICE: I think we need someone to be Alice while I turn into Fred's
replacement.
RAWLINS: Another of those dreary sex-change things?
ANOTHER ALICE: 'Fraid so. I'd let you become Fred's replacement except that
it's a woman too. [She takes an ALICE suit from the heap on the floor and
hands it to him].
RAWLINS [taking it and starting to put it on]: Oh. Well, I'm better cast
as a subordinate anyway.
ANOTHER ALICE: Yes. Here, let me help you in. [She does. Presently she
seals the nape of the suit's neck, and RAWLINS turns into ALICE.]
ALICE [looking down at herself and shrugging]: Same shit, different day.
Oh, and shouldn't I be called something like Still Yet Another Alice?
ANOTHER ALICE: Not worth the bother. Anyway, I'm about to change into
someone else.
ALICE: Oh. 'Bye, then.
ANOTHER ALICE [going into FRED's office -- again via the door!]: 'Bye.
[ANOTHER ALICE picks up the VANESSA suit from the floor and puts it on.
Of course she promptly turns into VANESSA, who goes back to the outer
office.]
ALICE [getting up from her desk]: Hello, Vanessa.
VANESSA: Hello, Alice. Time we call it quits?
ALICE: Yes. You start, ma'am.
VANESSA: Okay. You are soup!
ALICE: Yes, but *you* are soup as well!
VANESSA: Everyone in this company is soup.
ALICE: Everything in this story, or play, or whatever it is, is soup!
VANESSA: We are all soup! All is soup!
ALICE: All is soup!
BOTH: All is soup! All is soup! All is soup! All is --
[Everything turns into soup, softly and suddenly.]

[Silence. Then a slurp.]

VOICE: She-crab soup -- my favorite!

END

Mark., you mean you've actually *read* all of this?
goo...@netcom.com