Tailor Gwynne - Part 5 - The Dream Come True

It's been several months since I was hanging out with Tailor Gwynne Phan, so here's a quick biographical sketch of her life so far.

Tailor first made her appearance as a young adult in Appaloosa Plains. She grew up in a little roadside establishment where her parents ran a diner. They hoped that she would take over the diner when she came of age, but she was itching to escape her small hometown and see what the wide world had to offer. Her dream was to become a professional mixologist and own her own bar - a classy joint where people dressed up nice and live music was the norm.

She packed her bags and moved to Appaloosa Plains where, with the help of an inheritance from her grandparents, she purchased a modest home. It wasn't long until she had taken up with a rich old man named Feisal Phan and became pregnant with his child. Feisal had a reputation around town of being a flirt and ladies' man, but he did the right thing and married Tailor. Perhaps what he wanted all along was a family of his own.

They had a good marriage, and he did his best to make her dreams come true, building her a bar on the property and throwing parties where she got to serve as the mixologist and hostess while staying near to her baby girl Gloria.

All good things come to an end, however, and old Feisal suffered a heart attach while trying to fix a broken sink. It wasn't long until Tailor decided it was time to get a fresh start in Roaring Heights.

Tailor found a job working in the business career and made it to mid-level management while moonlighting at the various bars around town to perfect her mixology skills. Her daughter Gloria grew into a fine young woman and married Elliott Nest.

Gloria then moved out of Tailor's house and leaving her with just two roommates - a singer and a musician. This is where we pick up.

Tailor has recently been getting several calls from men asking her out on dates. Unfortunately, most of these men are either married or engaged to someone else.

Mark Davis-Wells was one such man. He asked her out to the park. I initiated a couple friendly interactions, then left them alone. They got romantic on their own. Mark has a wife named Kara. There's a glitch somewhere, because Tailor now has naughty reputation and can't ask Mark to leave his wife, but she does have an option to confess to cheating. She has NO love interest of any kind in her relationships panel.

While she was at the park, she ran into her ex-roommate Josephine. Josephine got married to a rich old man named Harbucks who had adopted a little girl with the last name Temple. Josephine is now in the family way.

Josephine let Tailor listen to her tummy, but got a little put out when Tailor tried to feel the baby. I guess they aren't as close as they once were.

The next day was Tailor's birthday. Time flies.

She had a quiet birthday at home with her roommates.

I don't usually resort to this in my gameplay, because I think the object is too overpowered and feels like cheating, but I made an exception for Tailor who is approaching level 10 of mixology but has nowhere near enough funds to buy the caliber of bar she dreams of.

Tailor's roommates pitched in and bought her this second-hand teapot looking thing.

"What WERE they THINKING?" she wondered.

The next morning, Tailor was trying to clean it up a bit, when what do you know!

This irritable little blue guy pops out of it and tells her she can have thee wishes! She wished for money twice and has one wish remaining.

With this money she bought a lot near her house and started building her dream bar. (Lot designation Fusion Lounge.)

It's called the Red Pagoda Lounge, a classy lounge and restaurant with a nod to Asian influences.

It's still a work in progress. I plan on putting in a parking lot on the side.

The bottom level - I added more lighting around the stage. The Showtime lights weren't much help.

The upper level with a view to the stage below. I fixed the railing around the stairs so it made sense and wasn't floating and put a beam across the area where lights over tables on the lower floor were floating. (They are still floating below the beam if you look close enough, but I tried.)

I need to get Gloria a different formal outfit so she doesn't wear her wedding dress, but at least she dressed up. I can't say the same about everyone.

The guy in the beard is MD Fields. Tailor remembers having a few drinks with him the other night at one of the beachside lounges. He was pretty flirty, . . .

But Tailor made it clear that she was interested in Mark.

They became good friends though, and Tailor learned that he was interested in music, so since she had two guitars in her inventory, she gave him one as a gift.

It wasn't long until MD's fiancé came looking for him. She thought MD and Tailor were crossing a line.

I think old MD will be spending the night in the dog house.

Mark Davis-Wells sure knows how to spoil a lady. He asked Tailor out again. This time to an old abandoned warehouse suspected of being a hangout for the criminal types and on a full moon.

He assured her that real criminals aren't nearly as bad as they are portrayed in the movies. Besides, the reason he asked her here was because it was away from most of the light pollution of the city and it was easier to watch the stars.

"It's really quite a romantic spot if you look at it from the right perspective," he said. "We'll watch the starts, then I'll take you to dinner."

Mark's idea of dinner out was a late-night picnic. I guess he didn't want anyone to see him out with a woman who wasn't his wife. Tailor told him about her retirement from the office and her plans to focus on making The Red Pagoda Lounge the hottest club in town.

Tailor was entertaining a fantasy that Mark would leave his wife, but had a rude awakening the day she ran into Kara Davis-Wells at the Beachside Cafe and learned she was pregnant.

He was too young for you anyway, Tailor. She met Hector Thebe, a military man who was closer to her own age, but he was married to a woman named Andromache.

One night at the Red Pagoda, Tailor encountered Andromache flirting with another man and gave her a piece of her mind. Maybe Hector will be free some time in the future.

"I don't want to hear any of your excuses! Hector is too nice of a man to be treated this way!"

Tailor's bar has three bartenders including two women named Tomika and Tameka, which isn't confusing at all! 😆 Tameka is the one who insists on wearing a helmet to work.

Tailor is showing them some of the new drinks she has concocted. These girls are getting kind of lazy and poor Tailor is so frustrated telling Tomika to do something and both she and Tameka do it or vice versa. She resorted to calling them "Conehead" and "Helmet Head" to distinguish them, so maybe that's why they aren't as enthusiastic about their jobs as they used to be.

On previous nights they were working hard, but the last night we were at the bar, they were abandoning their stations and standing around the stage listening to the piano, dancing with the guests, or having hardworking Omari Grubb make them drinks. (Grubb is a name from the Riverview save. Riley Grubb was a 2nd-rate magician. I'm wondering if Omari is a nephew or something.)

"Get back to your post, Helmet Head! Your break time is over!"

Conehead is the one with the backhanded complements.

"This IS an upscale place, Tomika!

I checked the bar and we have two different shifts. I'm wondering if Tomika and Tameka were done with their shifts and I needed to hire more people, so I hired two more. I also put in a food synthesizer, so I have a waitress working here as well.

Poor Tailor is trying to order some food, but the waitress isn't paying attention. Tailor will need to train the staff or hire more experienced servers.

"Yoo-hoo! Excuse me Tracy. Tracy Jackson! Can you take my order?"

Tailor fills in where needed and makes sure things run smoothly - especially while working to master the mixology skill.

Here she is showing Omari the new drink she created the night before. He seems a bit distracted though.

What a night! Time for a break.

Back at home the following morning, Tailor accomplished her lifetime wish by mastering mixology and owning her own bar! Congratulations Tailor!

Her next order of business seems to be taking care of things at home. I think she's growing tired of sharing her house with roommates. I switched from her briefly to solve a housing problem for a young couple in town, and got a notification that she had kicked out her roommate Katherine whom she was pretty good friends with.

To be fair, Katherine had recently joined a nudist community and Tailor was getting tired of it. It was fun and games when Katherine first announced her conversion to nudism, but it got old pretty fast.

So Tailor has one more roommate left - and she is constantly making drinks and leaving trays of them all over the house! I'm sure Tailor will dismiss her soon and have the place to herself. She's a woman of means now, after all.

As for the couple who needed help with housing, Charlie Shear married Carolyn. Carolyn came from a large family, and Charlie was living with his two moms. Charlie and Carolyn didn't have enough money to buy a house of their own, so I fixed up Charlie's childhood room with a double bed and made it more adult looking. The house also has a nursery, so I figured they would be set even if they had a baby.

Charlie invited Carolyn over, and I added her to the household. I missed the shot, but Carolyn was yelling at him, and the word bubble had a house with a No sign over it. I think she was mad that they didn't have their OWN home and had to live with his mothers.

He tried to explain to her that he looked all through the paper and couldn't find any affordable housing so they needed to stay here at least for a while.

Then she lunged at him and planted a big, sloppy kiss on him. I'm glad they worked things out.

Charlie is brave, a workaholic, socially awkward, a virtuoso, and family oriented. His lifetime wish is to be surrounded by family.

Carolyn is excitable, childish, easily impressed, a heavy sleeper, and mean-spirited.

I hope Charlie knows what he got himself into.

I'll end this episode with a few pictures that didn't work into the story. First, I found the second most brutally depressing interior of a public building in this town. (The library is the worst, but this one isn't much better.) It's the downtown gym. It was dark, depressing and deserted when Tailor went there one day to work out. She was the only one there, and we didn't stay long. It had two cold, dingy rooms with concrete walls and only 3 treadmills and 3 weight machines. It had an upstairs that was also dark and had what I assume was meant to be a basketball court, but there really wasn't anything to do upstairs.

I added lockers, fixed up the locker rooms a bit, got rid of the brutal concrete walls and put in a dance studio and martial arts room upstairs - and added windows to bring in some natural light. There's even a little meditation room off the martial arts room. After fixing it up, Tailor revisited it a few days later, and it was so much more lively. People were actually showing up.