Soup Style

Book One: Introduction

Chapter 1: Something for the Foodies

Ashley Mary Louise Cotter's cooking was perfect. Always. Perfect. Her soup was a product of love that she had delightfully presented for each of her styling clients to sample. Her clients, all of whom learned of her only by word of mouth, came to her grandfather's home as the venue for her to provide them with hair care. She almost always sent every client home with a tiny batch of her homemade soup.

Everyone who tasted her soup had, so far at least, offered praise. Everyone whose hair she cut or colored left her home with a little takeaway: a gift of about two small servings in size from her soup de jour. Not everyone always had a chance to taste Ashley's soup hot off the stovetop. Supplies were limited yet appetites were large. Anyone disappointed in the small serving size of the takeaway sample always encouraged her to repeat the offerings. There was never any display of abundance; the supply was clearly finite, even scant.

Oddly, when asked "for the recipe," she would shrug and say that it was just an experiment, without more to offer. When asked about the ingredients, sometimes with a pointed warning that she needed to be careful about exposing someone to an allergy-triggering one, she again would do no more than shrug.

Chapter 2: Something for the Social Influencers

Anyone meeting Ashley outside of her own home would see an exotic looking yet strangely shy woman who had the hair of an extrovert. Her hair? Nearest to the roots, a black color that matched her Asian features. But, only barely farther from those roots, her hair exhibited an artist's palate that explored shades from metallic blue through ever lighter coloring until the hair nearest her ends displayed the drawn down strands of at least three colors. Some strands became blonde, other strands of custom greys, while some strands boldly presented in white.

On the sides of her neck were what might easily be mistaken for dangling earrings. These were not jewelry. These were tattooed.

Exposing the tattoos for clearer viewing, especially during warmer weather, she sometimes braided her hair with some strands pulled partly though a small brightly colored bead.

Her bust? Small-ish. Remarkable for the nipples rather than for her slight breasts.

Her shyness was her most obvious behavior. An odd little waif is the first impression Ashley made on anyone she met. Always someone meeting her for their first time would wonder whether to feel pity for the young women who was seemingly shy beyond social norms.

She did light up in displays of pleasure at seeing someone with whom she was comfortable. However, she tried to hide her fear of almost everyone else who might notice her.

Ashley had a nervous habit of slowly clasping her interlocked fingers while, almost sensually, moving her arms and twisting her wrists as if in a dance routine. Dance? More about dance, but, not yet. We have only barely reached the parts of her life about soup and hair in this introduction within a series of books. So much begging to be told about these few parts before we adventure further. We can easily exclude her choice of clothing from our introduction. Why? Because she wore clothing as if an artifice. An artifice? Yes, as if to deceive anyone from noticing she was athletic, with the build of a dancer. Pointedly, also, her choices in apparel were intended to hide her remarkable nipples from any discovery.

Did she dance while styling hair? Not often, no. Usually her shyness stifled her from such display. This combination of shyness together with dressing to hide from being understood led, for the most part, to others feeling that she needed more than just a fee for her service, more than just an encouraging recommendation for yet other clients, more than just a review of her latest soup. Her characteristic combination of shyness and dressing artifice amplified the likely tendency for others to extend their efforts to advise her.

The totally unsolicited advice from her clients covered a spectrum of promoted changes, with little encouragement for her to continue without changes in her chosen pursuits of soup, haircare and dance.

Some of the advice was provocative. She had been approached by clients wanting to set her up with a son, nephew, grandson and even two with each of their ex-husbands. Some among such proffers gave her and her friends, sometimes also her grandfather, great amusement.

She had even had advances of sexual liaisons for lesbian lovers that she had -- well, more later. More now? As the survivor of rapes, she had a fear of almost any sexual contact. There were, nonetheless, ways to get her to have fun, to be frivolously engaged in sexual banter. Her besties numbered only a handful. Standouts in her friendship included almost a troop of other ethnic Asians from her youth, from her past schools. Her having been largely unsuccessful academically had truncated the normal social interactions. Accordingly, she had found more comforting friendships. In particular, her closest confidant and her most frequent buddy for outings was one of the ladyboys, the school dropouts who were also social dropouts who were also, well, transitioned by hormone therapies to be more pink than blue.

Her grandfather had been more socially graceful than Ashley, even with others her own age. He was aware of some of her pain and misfortune. He knew he could not always protect her, could not always be "there" for her, and he made a committed effort for her to know that she need never fear his reaction to any choice she might make for herself. When she did bring someone over or when she did invite him to one of her outside interests, he genuinely made the effort to be, for her to see and know, that he was at that instant truly "there for her." He seemed to her friends to be always appropriately charming or discreet. Discrete? Although he did introduce his "dates" to her, they enjoyed more privacy than could reasonably be afforded or suspected from so small a home. The needs for such privacy? Ahhh, those provide the fuel for firing later chapters here!

Her grandfather could ignore her by design, as when he left "to go fishing." He was often busy, but near, with his projects around the house. The house he himself had built, from his own designs, with his own labors, and his own odd sense of what was necessary. A small house on a small lot in a neighborhood of old craftsman houses that were also small-ish though altered by many versions of remodels as this was a neighborhood that had first had homes on the lots more than a century earlier than the start of this introduction.

A few of her clients had expressed interest in her grandfather. Most ignored him altogether, which he accommodated well. Those who did engage him, in conversation or flirting, sensed he was responsive albeit reserved in the protective stance toward anyone in Ashley's orbit. Didn't any of them score a direct hit with her grandfather? Of course! Read about them here? Only in chapters of forthcoming books.

Most of what Ashley received was advice about her business from its customers. She usually found it least troublesome to shrug away rather than pursue such advice further.

Chapter 3: For the Entrepreneurially Inclined

The advice from others was politely received. Without exception, Ashley was polite though most often overly reticent. Sometimes the advice was less than politely offered. Ashley did not have an effective way to blackball an undesired client, but she did have two partially effective ways. One way to curtail unwanted attachments was her ability to hide behind the lack of open time for adding appointments. The other? Her grandfather.

Open time for setting a return appointment with Ashley was easily manipulated. However, an initial appointment, handled, in context, when someone wanted to have her as a stylist, could only be accomplished if someone were to be brought by a client along for that client's own appointed time.

All appointments were always at the same place, where she usually was to be found with her grandfather, though he was often out on errands of his own coinciding with any return visits of her most favored (and trusted) clients. On the inside of the fence by the gate to her grandfather's house, as a whiteboard, was a calendar. No, not the digital whiteboarding usually found, but one that was digital without being internet-enabled. In other words, nobody from a remote site could log on to check Ashley's schedule. Nor could anyone log in for setting or changing an appointment with her. You had to already be in their yard to use the whiteboard calendaring system on which were displayed "blacked out" times after someone marked out any opening for choosing an appointment. For example, if the whiteboard showed the coming 90 days, there might be up to merely ten available for selecting an appointment during that calendaring timeframe. A return appointment being set, that time thereupon displayed as blacked out. Presumably only Ashley (perhaps grandfather as well) could display what was blacked out so as to see which client had a particular appointment on the calendar or, for that matter, whether some other conflict had posted to the schedule and itself had blacked out time from any competing opportunities.

Herself, as yet, uninterested in business, Ashley was facing off against a few clients who battered away at their ideas for her future. Their ideas. Hoping to connect from where she was already to where they thought she ought to be going, a commonly held misconception was to focus on having a combined eatery and salon.

The health department wanted them separate. The tax collector wanted them separate. She had the last choice, the last word, to make: call it Styled Soup? Call it Soup with Style?

Chapter 4: Grandfather's Odd Projects

That her grandfather was, well, an odd bird, would be undeniable. Almost no other description might do.

The most obvious of oddball interests to observation was that he had an almost wall sized aviary, an outdoor birdcage, within which were multiple levels for different residents, a wrapped area on all the exterior walls for garden-related uses, including more than one area on a wall for greenhouse use. He had added a basement in a neighborhood that had, up until this point in time, none. Allowed by more modern zoning rules, he had excavated the full allowable extent for a sub-grade parking and storage complex that included a genuinely usable wine cellar, as well as a radiation protected shelter. All compact. All extraordinarily hardened. Even the windows in the ground floor were all too high for any possible breach for invasion of privacy or home invasion.

Ashley's grandfather had built what were essentially separate suites for each of them, though supported by the central common areas and encapsulated by his odd choices in hobby rooms and outdoor activities. He had an empty enclosure that if anyone had investigated would have been realized as ready-made for falconry. He also had a netted backdrop for golfing chip shots. Amazingly, he had insinuated into the landscaped areas a yoga friendly par course. Unsung features of their home included rain collection reservoirs feeding multiple columns that had the full volume and function of cisterns.

Chapter 5: For the Perverse Kinks

In a preview of how odd her grandfather might be, her best friend had "discovered" that in her grandfather's bedroom was a large system or device, a sex toy, for women. One that included accessories for many deviant interests. Many? Oh, yes. Yes, many. But, patience, all to be explored in future chapters of this tale yet to be told.

We are merely now at the introduction to Ashley's talented batch of home-made well loved soup. Always in a small batch, produced in a volume sufficient merely for the scheduled takeaway gifts as well as meals of that day for Ashley and her grandfather. Other than soup, her grandfather himself had habits of preparing small batches of home brewed beer.

Whenever, as frequently occurred, Ashley was pitched by clients that she be sponsored to try opening a salon that would also offer soup, she usually laughed off the suggestion. As the idea began to seem more desirable to pursue, though, the question was whether to separate the two. After all, a salon was straightforward, just keep her own chair filled with customers while maybe having another few chairs to rent out to other stylists, right? But, a soup kitchen? Food service was beyond her capacity for trying to make into a business. Right?

More than one styling client had hung around talking with her grandfather about having Ashley leave his house to open up shop in a more conventional, commercial, salon. The idea, at least in the early years, always generated more laughter than serious discussions.

Her grandfather had a long-standing joke about needing her soup to keep himself in health, as if an excuse for her to avoid any pressure to take her business out of his home. Ashley, 26 years old by the time this story begins, but without the full normal course of formal education, had little success outside of the love she added to food and helping others to look pretty. She was a little too shy. A lot too emotional. Far too fearful. Afraid? Yes, afraid ever since she had been attacked, raped, and left for dead when too young to bear such suffering.

She didn't pay rent, but, yes, she did make him the best loved food imagined. Soups? Yes. More? Yes. She and her grandfather enjoyed a primitive version of fish and chips that used whatever fish he caught off the municipal pier together with potatoes from their own garden. They also, for many meals, managed to collect a few fruits and vegetables, but, not always. Mornings, he either went to the pier and tried his luck at fishing, or, he tried his hand at enhancing their small home garden.

Her mom had been an unwed mother. There had been no father in her life. Her mom and her had suffered in many ways, probably including periods when her mom experienced depression. Her mom often expressed bitterness about her life, but, thankfully, had more often expressed love for her daughter. At a point before she had reached three years of age, they had gone to her grandmother, who had also been an unwed mother from an earlier generation, and, when both her mom and grandmother passed away, the man she came to know as her grandfather had continued to let her make mud pies in his garden. As she grew, she did not realize that having a barber chair in your house was out of the ordinary. Why did he have a barber chair in his house? It was in a room by itself, actually it was mounted within metalwork and bolts within the concrete floor poured in place after the chair had been prepared to be set in the concrete. It was not the only strange, out of place, feature in his little house. He had poured the concrete in the walls as well as the floors, and the rooftop itself was his own concrete pumped creation. There was no dungeon but there were remarkable uses of the underground and rooftop spaces. More to come? If anyone expresses interest....

End of Book One: Introduction