Miso Soup (Revised) (standard:other, 944 words)
Author: Robert L. Revland	Added: Jul 30 2001	Views/Reads: 3571/2281	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A young couple converses over soup and braves a hard winter in New York City

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

trying to control you, I’m just concerned." 

"I know you are, Lucas, but, well...." 

"Janet, listen."  I touched her cheek.  "I’m not going to make you do
anything.  All I’m saying is to think about what you really want to do. 
You, not your mother." 

Janet leaned back and sat, thinking.  A few seconds later, she said,
"Well, I don’t know.  I want to go home with you, but...." 

"OK.  Here.  I have an idea.  Let’s ask her."  I pointed to the old
woman. 

Janet burst out laughing.  "OK, go ahead." 

I stood up, walked over to the counter  and leaned my arms on it.  "Hey
grandma!" I said, "What do you think?" 

The old woman just smiled and shrugged.  I could have told her that her
grandchildren were dying of cancer and she would have just smiled and 
shrugged.  She had no idea what I was saying. 

"Well, she wasn’t much help." I said, sitting down and smiling smugly at
Janet. 

"No, she wasn’t, was she?" Janet answered, still laughing.  I turned
around and saw the old woman leaning on the counter and looking at us, 
smiling and shaking her head. 

"Well," I said, once we had calmed down, "What’ll it be?  You coming
home with me?" 

"Well, she’ll kill me, but I guess that doesn’t matter so much now." 

"You hear that?" I said to the old woman, "She’s coming home with me!" 

A smile and a shrug. 

"All right then," I said, wrapping my scarf around my neck, "Let’s go! 
So long, Bloody Mary, we’ll see you again.  Wish us luck!" 

As we walked out the door, the funniest thing happened.  We heard behind
us a small, old, heavily accented voice.  "Goo luck!  Stay wom!"  Janet 
and I froze where we stood.  We turned slowly to see the old woman 
standing at the counter, grinning at us with her old, yellow teeth.  We 
began to laugh.  I almost fell on Janet giggling.  The old woman 
started laughing with us.  "Bye bye!" she called after us, once we had 
finally stopped laughing. 

It struck me as so funny that I laughed again.  With that, we walked out
the door into the cold wind. 


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