Very Hot Soup and a Potted Fern

So there Plotnik sat, in the Salvadoran lunch counter inside that little arcade under the corner of 22nd and Mission, where it's cozy and warm and there are Latino shops and butchers and restaurants and it reminds Plotnik so much of the Grand Central Market in Stiletto City, only smaller. Anyway, he had an hour to kill between two shows at the Marsh, both of which were excellent, more later.

Plotnik took the last seat at the small counter. The 49er-Jets game was on, only there was a plastic potted fern hanging from the ceiling which blocked the top of the screen, where the score is. He ordered sopa de res, beef soup, and tried to watch the game, but the plastic fern made that pretty well impossible, and there weren't any other seats. Also, the soup hadn't come. Every other person at the counter and at the tables below got served, but still no beef soup.

Finally, with ten minutes left until he had to get back to the Marsh, two women brought over his lunch, which was big enough to feed half of the Mission and send the rest home to El Salvador. The soup bowl was filled up to the absolute rim with scalding liquid. Plotnik could see chunks of fatty beef and beef bones and tons of cabbage and half an ear of corn. He took a big sniff of the delicious soup, and a few careful spoonfuls, and therefore took his eyes off the screen.

The next thing he knew everyone at the counter, all of whom must have been from New York, started cheering in Spanish about the touchdown the New York Jets had just scored against the 49ers, that Plotnik couldn't see.

You know what happened next: when Plot tried to jerk his head to look under the plastic fern, he put his elbow on the saucer with the enormous bowl of soup with liquid up to the very rim.

Let's not talk about what happened next, and the few spoonfuls of soup he actually got to eat, and the large tip he gave the old lady at the counter, and how courteous the guy next to him was, seeing as he now had soup on his shoes, and how fast Plottie beat it out of the arcade and back to the Marsh.

We can just concentrate on those Salvadoran thick tortillas dipped in a very Mexican salsa. Plottie had eaten so many of those before the soup ever came that he wouldn't have had much more room anyway. And it was 3 o'clock and Zinfandini was already standing in front of the Marsh, with his family, calling on the cell.