xp_logs | Doug and Angie and takeout

Taking Amanda's advice, Doug comes by Marie-Ange's apartment with takeout. Some fences are mended.

Doug wasn't entirely sure what he was doing standing at this particular door. It had just suddenly struck him in talking with Amanda about his breakup (or whatever you wanted to call it, as they hadn't really been dating all that long) with Marie that he missed his friendship with Marie-Ange just as much as he felt lucky to still have it with Marie. And so, when Amanda had mentioned that Angie was still renovating her apartment, most especially the kitchen, Doug had somehow found himself buying a large amount of Greek takeout, including several orders of the rice-filled grape leaves Marie-Ange loved, to bring to where he stood. "~Don't just stand there like an idiot,~" he muttered to himself in Greek, having dropped into the language to get the good food that wasn't on the menu at Portokalos'. He had a similar arrangement at practically every good ethnic takeout restaurant in the area by now, if not with necessarily the same level of melodramatic haggling as he engaged in with Mr. Portokalos. Shifting the bags to one hand, he knocked on the door.

The knock wasn't entirely unexpected to Marie-Ange. Amanda dropped by from time to time, and Wanda, and occasionally the others. And while she wasn't expecting anyone, she also wasn't -not- expecting anyone. But Marie-Ange was knelt down on the floor by her nearly finished kitchen island, tightening the bolts on the new cabinet doors. The old ones had just been ... too ugly to stand. "The door is unlocked!" she called. And while it wasn't quite unlocked when her visitor knocked, it was almost immediatly after, by another of the small blue dreadlocked imps that she'd been creating in masses all month. They were useful little imps.

Doug managed to shoulder the door open before shifting the bags evenly in his hands. He nearly tripped over the imp, which startled him. He was used to Angie's images, but the imps were something new and unexpected. "Um, hi," he said awkwardly, standing in the entryway with the food. "I, um, brought takeout."

The imp dissolved on contact with Doug's foot in a puff of blueish escoplasmic vapor, as Marie-Ange stood up, very startled. ".. You... brought me carry-out?" she asked, confused, and just a bit flustered.

Doug shook a bit of ectoplasm off his foot and shrugged, just as flustered himself. "Amanda said you were remodeling, and that included the kitchen. So...I figured I'd bring some food by. Be a good neighbor and stuff." He scuffed the foot he'd shaken, a little embarassed now that he was standing there.

"But..." Marie-Ange started to protest, and then recognized the menu sticking out of the top of the bag. "Ohhh.." She said quietly. "You got greek food.." She was not about to turn down good greek food. Not even if it meant some awkward time with her ex-boyfriend. "I.. I think I have paper plates.... somewhere.." She said awkwardly.

As Marie-Ange puttered around her kitchen area to try and find the paper plates in question, Doug finally allowed his eyes to lift from somewhere near the floor. He blinked confusedly as he watched her. Something felt...different...this time, and it wasn't something he could quite put his finger on. He shook his head and shrugged. "The imps are new," he noted, struggling to find some neutral small-talk topic.

The paper plates, Marie-Ange remembered, were in the same pile as her sole frying pan, and the one baking dish she owned. And hoped to never have to use herself. Cooking was hot and messy and not very fun at all. "They are helpful. And what I used to draw in classes when teachers were talking and I did not much want to listen." She waved a hand at the sketch stuck to her refrigerator with magnets. "And I think, very cute. But Wanda said they were disturbing."

Doug cocked his head to look at the drawing. "I dunno about disturbing," he said. "I dunno about cute, either, but I don't think they're disturbing." He looked back at the cupboard just in time to see it close on a single frying pan and baking dish. He wrinkled his nose. "Are you even -planning- on ever cooking in here?" he asked, feeling almost comfortable in joking with her.

She did actually consider the question for a few moments. "Does microwaving soup count as cooking?" Marie-Ange finally asked, almost seriously. "Because if it does, then yes." She had food. Some of it even required use of her stove. To heat water. "I do not really enjoy cooking, so probably not. But I like renovating my kitchen." She set the paper plates down on the unfinished island countertop, and then dug in a drawer for utensils. Which she actually -had-.

Doug snickered. "Three minutes on high does not count as cooking, Angie." These days, the nickname wasn't hard to get out of his mouth at all, where it had when they'd first broken up. "Neither does 'boil water, then add contents of package'." He shook his head. "I was about to ask why you even need a kitchen in this apartment, but I guess renovating and decorating it is something."

"If I had guests? And they wanted to cook?" Marie-Ange suggested, weakly. "And I need somewhere to keep my food, and to eat it. And I would much rather use my kitchen if I can see into it from my living area." And the wall had just offended her. She took one of the bags of food from Doug, taking out containers and opening them curiously. "You really went all out.." she said.

Doug set the rest of the bags on the counter and began opening containers and sticking utensils in them to put food on the paper plates. "Mr. Portokalos is...kinda like Mama Lupe," he explained. "He thinks I don't eat enough." He chuckled. "I got the grape leaf things you like," he said, a bit more quietly.

"Everyone thinks you do not eat enough. You forget to eat!" Marie-Ange scolded gently. "Tante Mattie thinks you do not eat enough too. And gives me such a scolding for not feeding you." She said, while looking through the containers to find the grape leaves specifically. "Those are so good..." she said quietly. "And... I can eat them while working or drawing..." she added, a little embarassed. "Because they do not need a fork to be eaten."

"There's nothing wrong with finger food, Angie," Doug replied. "And I could be as big as Fred, and I think Tante and Mama Lupe and Mr. Portokalos would still possibly think that I don't eat enough." He busied himself with serving up a little bit of everything. "I brought enough so that you'd have leftovers for a few days while you're renovating the kitchen," he explained the large number of containers away.

"It is not that there is anything wrong with finger food, it is just ... " Marie-Ange started to explain, and then stopped, shaking her head. "No, you are right. Sometimes, no one cares if I eat the grape leaves with my fingers." She turned, to hide the embarassed blush on her face and opened her refridgerator. "I have bottled water. And juice." she said. "And, ah, several bottles of wine." She added. "And hot tea, but I do not have much else to drink.."

"I'll take some juice, please," Doug replied, continuing to fill up the awkward spaces in their conversation with inanities. Besides, it wasn't as though you could really ask "So, how have you been since we had a screaming fight in the mansion lobby?" Or, well, you technically could, but whether it was a good idea was something else entirely.

He was -so- polite, Marie-Ange thought. Which was not ordinarily something she disapproved of, but it spoke about the loss of comfort that they once had with each other. "I have, let me see, apple, orange and cranberry-grape." She looked over the refridgerator door. "Or, I suppose, any combination of those."

"Cran-grape, please," Doug said as pleasantly as he could. He recognized the loss of comfort as well, and the awkwardness their conversation had degenerated into, but it wasn't like he had any ideas on how to fix it. There weren't any easy answers, and he was stumped even trying to find a hard one.

Marie-Ange silently poured two glasses of juice. One for Doug, and another of apple for herself, and lingered for a moment at the counter, looking at the glasses but not saying anything. What were they supposed to talk about? Or do? It wasn't as if she could just sit down on her sofa and watch a movie with him. Even if she'd had her DVD player hooked up, which she still hadn't done yet.

And there was another awkward silence, and Doug couldn't come up with any more polite nothings to say to fill up the space. He looked down at his glass, watching one of the beads of condensation trickle downward over his finger. He tore his gaze away, and made himself look back up at Marie-Ange, who was similarly standing there looking just as uncomfortable and awkward. "So," he said lamely.

Marie-Ange sighed. "This is where one of us is supposed to say something either very clever, or very funny to break awkward silence, isn't it?" Except she couldn't think of anything clever, or funny at all. "Why did you decide to visit and bring me food?" She asked quietly. "I do not understand.."

Doug shrugged. "If this were a movie, then yes, that's how it would work. Real life isn't a movie, though," he said with another shrug. "Things don't tidy up neatly by the time the credits roll." And maybe that had been his problem. He'd figured bringing takeout as a peace offering would just magically erase all the awkwardness and put them back to being friends. Maybe he needed to stop trying to think up the perfect thing to say and just say -something-. "Amanda suggested it, since you're still renovating your kitchen."

"If this were a movie, I would be in designer jeans, and a fashionable but practical shirt, and still have perfect hair despite having been under my kitchen counters with a toolkit and the spiders for the last half hour." Marie-Ange said, with a snort. "Instead of old jeans, and one of the shirts I wore to go to the gym in." Now that she thought about it, the jeans might not even be hers. They were suspiciously baggy in places that none of her regular pants were.

Doug blinked, attempting to school his features to hide his confusion. -That- was what was different. He hadn't been able to put his finger on the difference, but to see the normally well-dressed, well-groomed Marie-Ange (he remembered the screaming fight in the mansion lobby) in paint-spattered jeans and a ratty T-shirt, with her hair tied up in a handkerchief, and a smudge on her cheek that his hand kept twitching with the desire to wipe away... It was completely unexpected, and confused him even more than her reply to Medusalith Amaquelin had.

"What?" Marie-Ange asked, a little sharply. "I was not about to ruin my work clothes, or even my regular clothes, and these are comfortable, and I do not have to worry about getting paint or dirt on them." She would never leave the apartment in them, except perhaps to run to the store, but it wasn't as if they were horrible.

"I didn't say anything," Doug shot back a little defensively. "It makes perfect sense to me, wearing old clothes to paint and stuff in." It was just totally at odds with his mental image of Marie-Ange. His hand still twitched, and finally he raised his hand to brush his own cheek in demonstration. "You've got a bit of a paint smudge or something."

"You looked as if you were confused." Marie-Ange explained, and then reached up to feel her cheek. It was just slightly stiff, but not sticky. "Primer, possibly. I was touching up the wall where there.... uh, was a wall before but now there isn't." She wrinkled her nose, and smiled a little. "Wanda got to hit it with a sledgehammer, which she enjoyed way more than I think is healthy."

Doug blinked. "You took out an entire wall?" he asked, startled. "And yeah, Wanda enjoys breaking things quite a bit. She's not picky about what, either. Walls, Nazi henchmen, you name it." The confusion he glossed over, not ready to talk about the jumble his emotions and thoughts were.

Marie-Ange nodded, and walked around the counter island now seperating her kitchen and living room. "This was a wall. An awful terrible light-eating confining ugly wall." She had really really hated it. "It did not support anything, and I only needed to keep the one small part to keep the switchs for the fan and lights.." She pointed to the small column coming up from the counter that was still half un-painted. "Wanda did most of the destroying. I just pointed and drew on the walls with crayon."

Doug chuckled. "Sounds about right, yeah." It was definitely an amusing mental image. Marie-Ange drawing on the walls neatly in crayon, Wanda holding the sledgehammer and pouting impatiently while waiting to destroy the wall. "So you took out an entire wall." He was still slightly fixated on the part where almost an entire wall of the apartment was destroyed.

Marie-Ange laughed. "You are still stuck on the part where there used to be a wall here?" She stuck an arm out over the counter and wiggled her fingers. "It was not a very large wall, it was just offensively... wall like." She tapped the counter with her knuckles. "And now it is just a countertop, and I can see all the way into my living room from here."

Doug rubbed his hand on the back of his neck and looked a little sheepish. "Yeah, I guess I am sorta stuck," he admitted. "Did you have to get permission from the landlord to take out the wall? I mean, how do you get permission to demolish all..." he paused and grinned wryly. "Sorry, -half- of a wall?"

"I had to get permission, and get a copy of the blueprints for the building." Marie-Ange pointed to a long tube, leaning against one corner. "And then get my changes in layout approved by an actual architectural firm, so that we could be certain I was not going to take out a wall and bring the roof down on top of me." She shrugged, and then gestured towards the kitchen and living room. "A lot of paperwork, for just half a wall, but the apartment is much more open now, yes?"

Doug nodded. "It wasn't something I would have even thought of," he said wonderingly. "But I can definitely see how it makes things more open, now that it's done." He indicated the food on plates as they sat on the counter between the two of them. "We should probably eat. Food getting cold and all that."

Marie-Ange smiled, pleased at Doug's agreement of her opinion about the apartment's renovations. "I am not over fond of little cramped places to live. If they would have let me, I would take down the outer walls and put in bigger windows. But that is going much too far for a building I do not own." She picked up one of the stuffed grave leaves and bit it in half, catching a few loose pieces of rice with her hastily-grabbed paper-plate.

Doug giggled and grabbed his own plate as they both headed for the living room area. "Wanda would have a field day, though..."