He opens the door.
The cinema lobby, seemingly ancient and made before movies even existed, is replete with the finely woven carpets and fabrics Our Hero has grown accustomed to. Wooden doors made to withhold armies with metal bars far too heavy for the fair to grasp, much less use. It is, as so many places he's seen recently, a monument dedicated to giving a good impression.
The Girl walks with him, not hand in hand as she has expressed she'd so dearly like, but is frowned upon. Instead she glides besides him, her loose dress and bouncing hair catching his eye. When he turns to look at her, she looks back and smiles, but it is low, almost cautious.
"Do you want anything? Do you—do you have anything when you see a film?"
"No, thank you." She shakes her head. "I do not see them often. I admit, I never understood what the fuss was about. Much less what it would be to spend limited time here going to see one." She laughs. "But I agreed." Then she shrugs and looks over the lobby like the world were new to her. "You say you love this one?"
Our Hero nods, finds out you can buy a chilled beer even here, and takes her into the theater.
They sit next to one another as music plays and lights dim slowly. He sips his beer and does his best not to ask her any questions as they have only been deflected. It is her nature, he's come to know. She is always surviving, walking a tightrope, and no matter what laugh or comfort or ease she shows it is not true. Not to the core of her. And he has learned that he must appreciate it. That it will not change. She will not wake up one night, confess her soul and make everything giving and honest between them.
She will simply be herself. The Girl. Capable, cunning, and giving. But scared, maybe even shy, and putting higher stakes on small things than he did on traveling continents. Maybe, he mused as he sipped his beer and listened to the faintly dreamlike music, that's why she liked him. Because he didn't have those fears. The demons in him never care much for making of show. Restless wasn't a part of his nature. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He washed the semi-sweet beer around in his mouth and swallowed.
The Girl shifts but keeps her eyes locked directly ahead. "Do you find your attraction for me wanes?"
"It increases."
"And yet, as you find me more attractive you make me come to a cinema? To see an old movie? Tell me, My Mister, should I not be suspicious of that?"
"Does it matter how I answer? You'll be suspicious of it. You're suspicious of the leaves falling out of trees."
She laughs faintly before the mask is secured again. "If you like me, if you want me more, then you understand that this is foreign to me. That I..."
