Chapter 230: Classic Movies
She asked about the week.
He told her. The seventeen shareholders, the board meeting, the three-two vote, Greg Sullivan and the truth about the risk.
She listened and after Sean was done telling her everything she said, "You told him the risk was real."
"Yes," said Sean.
"Most people would have minimized it," she said.
"Most people would have lost him," said Sean.
She looked at him for a moment. "The CFO. Clara. How is she."
"Focused," said Sean. "She’s been running on the thing all week."
"Like you," said Makima.
"Different," said Sean. "She’s been doing it for three years. This week is the fight for all of it."
Makima held her coffee cup. "Does she know you’re going to be a significant investor in whatever comes after."
"She knows I’m accumulating," said Sean. "The full scope of what I’m planning isn’t a conversation we’ve had yet."
"When are you having it," said Makima.
"After the vote," said Sean. "Once the immediate crisis is finished."
Makima nodded slowly. "She’s going to have questions."
"She always has questions," said Sean. "That’s one of the things that makes her good at what she does."
Makima looked at him with the expression she had when she was noting something without making it into a conversation.
"What," said Sean.
"Nothing," said Makima. "Go enjoy your Saturday."
He went back upstairs
—-----------------------
Olivia sent the address at five .
Not a restaurant. Not anything he recognized from a quick search. A neighborhood address in a part of the city he knew but not well.
He had James drive him there.
The address was a small cinema. The old kind, single screen, the specific understated exterior of somewhere that had been doing the same thing in the same building for forty years and had outlasted the larger chains around it through some combination of programming and stubbornness.
Olivia was outside when he arrived, in jeans and a jacket, her red hair down, wearing the kind of clothes that had nothing impressive about them and looked entirely right on her for exactly that reason.
She looked at him.
He had worn something comfortable as instructed. She evaluated this with mock seriousness.
"You actually did it," she said.
"I told you I could," said Sean.
"You said you could. I remained unconvinced until this moment." She took his hand. "Come on. We have seven minutes."
"To what," said Sean.
"The film starts at six," she said. "They don’t have trailers here. They start exactly on time."
He looked at the cinema. "What are we watching."
"A film from 1987 that I’ve seen three times and you’ve probably never heard of," said Olivia. "It’s about a jazz musician who is terrible at being a person but extraordinary at his instrument. It’s funny and then it isn’t and then it is again."
"Why this one," said Sean.
She looked at him. "Because it’s the film I watched with my grandmother when I was eleven the first time and it’s the film I’ve come back to every time something significant happened in my life and I wanted to feel something real." She paused. "And because tonight I wanted to share something that’s actually mine rather than something impressive."
Sean looked at her.
She looked back with the expression she had when she was being completely herself, no performance in any direction.
"Okay," he said.
They went inside.
======================
The cinema had forty seats and a proper screen and the smell of old carpet and popcorn that had been absorbed into the fabric of the building over decades.
Olivia bought the popcorn herself at the small counter, the specific bucket she’d clearly bought here before, and they found seats near the middle, not the back row, which he noted was a deliberate choice.
"We’re watching the film," she said, reading him reading the seating.
"I know," he said.
"Good," she said.
The lights went down exactly at six. No trailers.
The film was exactly what she’d described. A jazz musician who was terrible at being a person but extraordinary at his instrument. Funny and then not and then funny again, the specific rhythm of something that understood how those things lived alongside each other in real life rather than in sequence.
Olivia watched it the way she’d watched the thriller, with complete focus, except this time she wasn’t analyzing it, she was just in it, the comfortable inhabiting of something she knew well.
About halfway through she put her head on his shoulder without looking away from the screen.
He put his arm around her.
The film continued.
At one point something happened that was funny and sad at the same time and Olivia made a sound that was both a laugh and something else and he looked at her and she was smiling but her eyes were bright.
======
When it ended she sat with it for a moment in the returning house lights, the same way she’d sat after the thriller, except this was a different version of that sitting, something older and more specific.
"Your grandmother," said Sean.
"She fell asleep twenty minutes in," said Olivia. "The first time. She always fell asleep in films. She’d deny it afterward and I’d tell her what she’d missed and she’d say I know I know I was resting my eyes." She smiled at something private. "She had very specific opinions about the music in this film. She said the saxophone scene in the second act was the only honest thing in cinema."
"She was right," said Sean.
Olivia looked at him. "You’d agree with anything she said right now."
"No," he said. "I’d agree with true things regardless of who said them. The saxophone scene was the honest thing."
She held his gaze for a moment. Then she looked at the screen, blank now, the credits long finished.
"I’ve been showing people this film my whole life," she said. "Or trying to. Most people want to know why we’re watching something from 1987 instead of something current." She paused. "You didn’t ask."