Buzzkill Phil

*a chapter from a novel in progress*

         Tiffany Brown leaned in closer to the police scanner and turned up the volume. She heard muffled voices speaking in code, quickly uttering numbers and letters that meant nothing to her untrained ears. Over the course of the afternoon, she had jotted down the words Fort Benning, Fort Gourd, female, and gun, with a heart dotting the “i”. She added black 2-door sportster to the bottom of the list, clicked her pen and rapped it on the yellow legal pad. Something was going on but she couldn’t quite figure it out. Tiffany’s high school friends had always told her that she had a knack for knowing random things and solving problems. Like the fact that ears never stopped growing, which was why old men looked so funny, or that using duct tape was the best way to keep from flashing a nipple. The truth was that Tiffany’s friends were only interested in shopping and boys so they crooned over her when she spoke of anything else. She was always careful to say things in just the right way, though, to keep from being viewed as a dork. She learned how to reveal the nugget of wisdom first but then always follow it up with a notion of self-deprecation, to keep her audience from feeling belittled and risk being ostracized from the group. She watched her older sister, a real smarty pants, eat lunch alone every day and refused to follow in her footsteps. It was hard to make friends when you didn’t look like the other kids but Tiffany hid her book smarts well and secretly thought that her Asian heritage made her prettier than all the other white girls. In her mind’s eye, she was the best of them all and took every precaution to make sure that they all saw it that way, too.
         Tiffany steadied her pen and brought it up to her lips. They were thin yet bright with red pigmentation, as though a painter had artfully swiped a brush across an empty space. Without realizing it, the pen slid into her open mouth and she started to bite down on the cap, the pressure punctuating the grey plastic with pops of white. Eventually, Tiffany knew that she would get the facts straight on this but the environment she was forced to work in was frustrating.
         A familiar piercing screech shot through the speakers and she nearly broke the cap in two. A vision of the News Director’s coy smile popped into her head. He had been explaining what she should listen for through the static, standing in the doorway just to her right. She now knew that she hadn’t imagined the slightly malicious look in his eye, it was only there for a second, but she thought now that perhaps he took pleasure in assigning new interns to the police scanner.
         “Turn that down,” Matt barked. Tiffany turned her head and saw the back of his. She looked at his thick brown hair and wished that she could shave his head and put it on her boyfriend’s. It wasn’t fair that fat men who wore flannel shirts and dirty jeans everyday got to keep their hair. If Phil had it, at least he would wash it. Matt was sitting at his usual end of the long conference table. It was in the middle of the newsroom and surrounded by twenty cubicles, most of them unoccupied. He shuddered, as if to reset himself, picked up the giant red Scattergories dice and rolled it across the game board.
         “I think something’s going on,” Tiffany said hesitantly, the end of her voice lifting in a way that turned her statement into a question. She rotating the volume knob until the voices were inaudible. “They keep talking about a black car and Fort Benning.”
         “Probably some dumbass drunk soldier,” Matt replied without turning around.          She watched as the twenty-sided die stopped rolling and the Video Editor reached across the table to flip the timer. For the next three minutes, Matt recited words R words: “Rutabaga, Rhode Island, Roosevelt, rubbish…”
         Leaning back in her chair, Tiffany tossed her black hair over her shoulders. It felt just as limp and greasy as the rest of her. She looked up, counted the pencils hanging in the ceiling tiles and then rolled her head from side to side; one by the trash can, one on the filing cabinet and one on the keyboard of the opposite cubicle. Stephanie could throw a mean shit fit and that wasn’t something Tiffany wanted to hear above her hangover in the morning meeting. Her stomach rumbled as she leaned over the low partition and retrieved the pencil from the weekend anchor’s desk. “Is it all right if I take off? That school board meeting ran over and I didn’t eat lunch.”
         “Yeah,” Matt muttered and passed the die across the table. “Just make sure the eleven is stacked and ready.”
         “Do you want that story I found on tougher international adoption laws?” she asked.
         “Nah, that’ll put them to sleep. Plug in that piece about dark chocolate being good for you,” he said and flipped the timer.
         Tiffany turned to the computer and rolled her eyes. She had heard that hundreds of times and was pretty sure that the TV3 viewers had, too. She pulled up the show rundown and clicked through the stories. Reading through scripts that she had put in the system over an hour ago, Tiffany mixed them in with copies of stories from the 5p.m. and 6p.m. newscasts. Each element automatically cued up the reader’s initials and she noted that TCB were the only initials on the entire rundown. Tiffany sighed, clicked off the screen and grabbed her purse. “The eleven is done, Matt. See you tomorrow.”
         She looked at her watch as she walked out the backdoor. 5:15p.m. Phil didn’t usually leave for work for another half an hour but if he needed to grab dinner he might already be gone.

         Tiffany felt gross as she passed through the gate of her complex. Oil spots had bled through her makeup, turning the skin on her forehead, nose and apples shiny and pale. As much as she craved the fame of television, she loathed the idea of working with loser jerk-offs like Matt. She needed something to do that was better than the police scanner or she would go crazy from boredom. Tomorrow, she would ask to shadow a reporter to at least get out of the building for most of the day. Tiffany drove down the main road and then slowed where she needed to turn. She scanned the rows of cars in the distance, saw Phil’s SUV parked in front of their apartment and uttered a swear word. Her eyes moved up the walk and she saw Phil, closing the apartment door behind him.
         Thank God, she thought, but didn’t turn the car. Tiffany kept straight and followed the road to the back parking lot. He was wearing that stupid shirt again, the orange button-down with short sleeves. She stuck her tongue out and made a false gagging motion, thrusting a finger into her throat as she parked and started collecting her things. There was nothing about Phil that turned her on. He was way too thin and yet somehow managed to hold on to a small basketball around his stomach, like a bloated, starving Ethiopian child. She would have run the other way if he had been wearing that shirt when she had first met him, but Phillip had been a sheep in wolves clothing. He had fooled her in the last year of college, wearing a gorgeous, three piece dark blue Armani suit. It wouldn’t be until after she had convinced herself that she needed a “decent man” that she would learn he had borrowed it from a cousin for an interview. Her friends had all nodded their heads, saying, you’re so lucky to have such a safe guy like Phil, he’s so nice.
         He only went to the bar twice with them. Both times, he nursed a single beer and played Tetris on his phone. She stopped inviting him and he stopped going, which was fine by her since she had donned him as Buzzkill Phil anyway. He left her alone for most part, didn’t ask questions, or prod into her social life, and he even took her in when school ended. For the past six months, she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to dump him. Now she was stuck. Every media job in Nashville required experience, and how was she supposed to get it if no one would hire her? She wasn’t about to start working at some loser part-time gig just to get by. Until she got her break, it was either follow him out here or move back in with the parents.
         Tiffany smirked and leaned her head against the window. Perhaps it was a mistake to pledge off assholes; at least assholes nailed the shit out of you. Her eyes widened and her mouth transformed into a mischievous smile. Maybe tonight, she thought. She watched Phil’s SUV pull onto the main road, grabbed the keys out of the ignition and walked up the concrete path.
         Later that night, after a workout, dinner and a shower, Tiffany pulled down a suitcase that she kept on the top shelf of her closet. She was having one of those days where she needed to feel wanted. She pushed aside two layers of white tissue paper to reveal a plush pile of delicate lace, soft fabrics and a rainbow of colors. She pulled out a matching bra and panties, black lace, and then tossed it onto the other side of the bed. The red roses on it accented her lips, but she had just worn it last week. She pulled out piece after piece and laid them in a pile; some were too uncomfortable, like the hot pink corset, and some, like the light blue teddy, were not supportive enough. Most of the others, well, she had worn them recently and Tiffany was in the mood for something new.
         She reached her thin fingers underneath the pile and pulled out a cigar box that had belonged to one of her ex-boyfriends. As soon as she touched the cardboard, she had a flashback to being in a frat house bathroom with her skirt hiked up over her hips. She giggled as she remembered the cut she found on her tailbone the next morning; the metal rim on the sink had split her skin and she hadn’t even realized it. Tiffany opened the box and pulled out a red lace thong and bra. She slipped them on and admired her reflection in the full body mirror, kicking out her slender hip and flipping her black hair over her shoulder. She turned on her toes to glance at her butt, glad she had forced herself through that full hour on the elliptical earlier. She looked nail-the-shit-out-of-me hot. Buzzkill Phil had to go.