Saturday, December 21, 2021
Rexi stormed into the projection booth and when he saw me, spread his arms and dashed to the projector.

“Did you touch it?” he asked me.

“N-no. Of course not, I-I’d never,” I said. I was surprised to hear my voice shaking. Even after all these years of working together – “together” – Rexi still made me shake in my boots.

“Who’s the kid? Why’s he here? And why are you here, the first show isn’t until 6.30, right?” he demanded.

“Pete, he’s my … friend’s son. He’s going help us out a little. You know, during the Christmas movie marathon,” I replied and pretended to be looking for something on a shelf.

“The what?” Rexi asked me.

“We’ll do a special Christmas movie run. Neat idea, right? It was Sara’s idea,” I said, betting on Rexi being afraid to get mad at Sara. It had only happened once and to quote “Danny Vermin” in Johnny Dangerously: “Once.”

That did the trick. Rexi grunted and began to examine the projector. I noticed Pete standing on the threshold and I gestured for him to come in.

“Rexi, this is Pete, and Pete, here’s Rexi, our projectionist extraordinaire. Anything you want to know about movies, you ask Rexi,” I said, hoping that my flattery would get Rexi in a better mood.

“Hi, kid. Welcome onboard,” Rexi said. “Just don’t touch anything here.” He took a cloth put of his back pocket and wiped down the projector. “So, we’ll be showing Christmas movies, baby,” he whispered.

I left Pete in the projection booth with Rexi and walked down the stairs. Sofie was busy with making sandwiches with Sara. I decided I deserved a short break so I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk in the office.

I was humming Wham’s “Last Christmas” when I noticed Sara standing by the door, looking at me. She smiled and shook her head.

“I love seeing you this excited about a project. Even though I don’t normally like surprise projects, I do have a good feeling about this. One problem, though. Nobody knows about our Christmas movie project,” she said.

I slapped my forehead. Since I had concocted the plan the day before, nobody knew about our Xmas movie marathon, no matter how casually I talked about it as it were a thing. But we needed to market it, even though it wasn’t the whole purpose of it.

I picked up the phone and dialled a number I had known by heart since I was seven years old.

“Hey, Dad, can you make me a poster? About our Christmas movie marathon,” I said.

“You’re having a Christmas movie marathon? A wonderful idea,” he said. “Hey, would you need a large inflatable Santa outside Atlas?”

“A what?”

“An inflatable Santa?”

“You have one? Why?”

“Got a deal, I’ll bring it over when I bring the posters later tonight.”

I hung up and took another sip of my coffee. Everything was going so well.

And soon it was time for me to nudge things in the right direction.

➡️ More on Someday Jennifer (HarperCollins Canada 2019)