Sup?
Today’s Disco Diaries contains the last of a three-part fan fiction story about Phyllis Vance. In order to really get in touch with the Phyllis energy, I’ve been watching The Office. I used to hate the show, but now I find it comforting. It’s one of my top choices for escapism, easy and light. Nothing is so serious that it can’t be turned around into something silly or warm. I like the structure of schedule, confinement, and coworkers. The absence of these things is much of what I love about freelancing, but a story set in that rhythm and predictability is grounding to me.
And like, whatever, it’s funny!
In other news, this week I became 15% more serious about wanting to buy a house, and in response to this Jake and I started a list of our dream house amenities. These include: a window over the sink; hardwood floors; big pantry; clawfoot tub; old and cool but not old and destroyed; possible fire place; and preferably an established fruit tree. Let me know if you see a winner.
The woman in plum, part III
This is part III of a three-part fan fiction story about going to Applebee’s with Phyllis from The Office. If you don’t know what’s in an Adios drink, read part I here, and part II here.
“Bob and I mess with the idea of being open as a sort of role playing,” Phyllis told me over her blue drink. Although this was her third Adios cocktail, she was carrying her gin, vodka, rum, and tequila with grace. “He wouldn’t lay a finger on another woman.” She sipped. “Wouldn’t have a reason to. I take good care of him.” Her lips puckered into a coy smile.
I made an impressed face — that is, raised my eyebrows as high as possible, tilted my head at a slight angle, and puckered my lips in reciprocation of this intimate secret that, unbeknownst to me, was no secret to this town.
“How long have you been married?” I asked.
“Thirteen years,” she said proudly.
“Wow! That’s a lot.”
She just smiled and nodded enthusiastically, and then we fell into a comfortable pause. Her gaze drifted over to a television that now displayed a soccer game with the volume turned up jarringly high against the classic rock that was still on the speakers. An employee dressed in a kitchen uniform — black pants, red t-shirt, and an Applebee’s branded baseball cap — sat at the bar with the remote in one hand and a glass of brown soda in the other, looking up at the game.
This was the first date pause. The desert between the busywork of initial small talk and ordering, and the main event of half-price appetizers. Presumably they were on their way. I could see them in my mind’s eye, once-frozen chicken being lifted from a vat of bubbling oil to enjoy a moment of divine, glistening-gold existence before they were drowned in a bright orange sauce. But until they were here at the table, what were we to say?
More movement from the kitchen, but still no sign of Derek with our appetizers. People were filtering in through the back door, exclusively reserved for curbside pickup and employee arrival and departure. I recalled my time working at another franchise in college, and remembered how sweet it was to leave that place after a long, terrible shift, walking out under the open sky at last. A group of three young twenty-somethings had just clocked in, and were clustered irresponsibly close, fiddling with their masks and their aprons and counting their banks of change.
I looked at my phone. It was 3:57. Dinner shift was arriving, and I had 15 minutes before I was due back at the car.
As if prompted by my sense of urgency, Derek appeared at our table bearing gifts. His left arm was stretched out in front of him at an angle, holding three plastic plates stacked like steps leading to his head.
“Mild,” he said, and presented me with a basket of boneless wings.
“Hot,” he said, and Phyllis smiled up at him as he handed them down to her.
“And skins for the table.” Derek set the final plate down in between me and Phyllis, and we gazed upon the scoops of greasy cheese and bacon, arranged like flower petals around a sour cream center.
“Anything else I can get for you ladies?” he asked us, with a hint of flirt in his tone, just to show he was willing to play for a better tip.
“Just another drink,” Phyllis said looking past him out the window. “My husband just pulled up.”
“And a box,” I said, but no one listened to me. Phyllis was waving at big man coming through the front door, and Derek had fled quickly for fear that meeting Phyllis’s husband would put to test his willingness to flirt with customers for money. I sat there, starving, but too polite to take my first bite before I had greeted the new stranger.
When Bob approached the table, Phyllis stood up to embrace him in a long, uninhibited kiss. I judged that it’d be best to dismiss myself, so I started to slide out of my seat to go look for a to-go box. As I stood, the kiss ended. Phyllis straightened her plum cardigan set.
“Bob, this is Katie.”
“Well hi, Katie. Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration.” The big man saluted me.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
They sat down, and as I followed their lead my eye caught sight of a tower of styrofoam containers stacked at the end of the bar. Derek crossed my line of vision and then swooped down upon us, placing a blue drink in front of Bob.
“Derek,” I said, catching him before he left again. “Can I have a box?”
“Sure,” he said. He took seven steps to the bar, said something to his coworker with the remote, who laughed, and then walked back, box in hand. “Do you want your check, too?”
“That’d be great,” I said.
“Oh, you have to go?” Phyllis asked. Her face was turned to me with a mix of concern and disappointment, but her body was turned towards Bob. She had her left hand on his shoulder, and her right hand lifted a fork of ranch-dipped chicken to Bob’s mouth.
Bob chewed and shook his head. “They never put enough hot on there, do they?”
“You’ll have to ask Derek for some more,” Phylis said, forgetting about my departure and reaching for her knife to cut up a potato skin.
When Derek dropped off the check, I had my card out and ready to go. He picked it up and swooped away, back to the computer screen under the big television. I shoved the smallest boneless wing on the plate into my mouth and dumped the rest into the box. When Derek brought the check back, I looked it over before writing in the tip, and saw that I’d only been charged for my drinks and the wings.
“It looks like he forgot to split the skins,” I said, interrupting the happy couple at the other side of the table. “Why don’t you just keep them all.”
“Oh no, sweetie, that’s ok,” Phyllis said, kindly. “Bob will get them. You take your three. You have a long drive ahead of you.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
Phyllis smiled and nodded at me. “It was nice to meet you. I hope you have a good time on your trip. Remember what I said about opening the relationship.”
“Ha! I’ll think about it.” I added the potato skins to my box, slid out of my seat again, and pulled my mask up to my face. “Take care, have a good night!”
“Bye, now!” Bob said. Phyllis waved.
As I walked out of the Scranton Applebee’s, half-price apps in hand and two Adioses in my belly, the lights dimmed and the music changed from classic rock to energetic pop hits. Dinner shift had officially begun. I looked back once more at the table to see Phyllis and Bob kissing over their drinks.
Outside, Jake was standing by the rented Kia, reaching his arms high up towards the sky. “What’d you get?” he asked in that strained voice of someone mid-stretch.
“Just some half-price apps,” I said. I got into the passenger’s seat and opened my styrofoam box, eager to eat my dinner.
A song for you
May you be well fed and well rested in the coming days.
xo
Katya