Maximize Your Points (Patreon)

This is a weird little vignette, and I'm not sure I did justice to the two points of inspiration.

The first point was going to Ruby Tuesday a month ago, this particular restaurant being located in an area between the airport and the city proper that is filled with hotels and restaurants. An entire city zone as a liminal space; there are some office buildings, sure, but mostly it's places for people to stay at for a few days or weeks before going back home. Not a truly lived-in place.

So it occurred to me how freeing it would be for a glutton to wander in to one of the restaurants, stuff themselves to their heart's desire, and leave, unbothered by whatever the staff or other patrons might think. I've had a similar thought with highway rest areas with fast food chains and hotels and whatnot. You can be yourself when you're surrounded by strangers.

The second point: does anybody remember the movie Up in the Air? For no reason a particular line from that movie, where George Clooney mentions how much they're expensed for food each day and his habit of maximizing it so he gets more points on his credit card, came to me when I started writing this story. Originally it was going to focus solely on the liminal space aspect of the places I just talked about, but then I added the points thing as a justification for Amy's indulgence.

Maybe the story would have been better without it. Maybe I should have just gone with the idea that Amy's true self is a glutton and followed that through. Maybe I'm overthinking this and should just post the story.