I was in the middle of cooking when Ellie came in, dressed for the day. “Good morning, Brandon. Looks like you’re putting out quite a spread. I usually don’t get that elaborate for breakfast. But I appreciate you doing that.”
Breakfast turned out well, even the pancakes were done just right. We didn’t talk a lot over breakfast, but the mood seemed much lighter than last night.
After breakfast, we sat there for a while drinking coffee, and then Ellie said, “I was looking online, and there’s some shopping I need to do in town. You showed me where the bus stop is so I can just take the bus. I should be back around 3 or 4 o’clock.”
She didn’t suggest that I come along with her. I wasn’t sure whether I should read anything into that or not. I mean, if it hadn’t been for last night, I could have seen us enjoying going around shopping together. She didn’t seem to be upset, but she didn’t want me along either.
I decided to go for a quick run in the park instead. I figured some exercise would keep me from just sitting around and overthinking, and probably worrying as well.
* * *
Sure enough, Ellie came back around 3:45. She was carrying a couple of bags with her, but I couldn’t see what stores they were from. She took the bags back to her room, and then came back out. “I was thinking maybe we could stay in and watch a movie tonight. If there’s a good pizza place nearby, maybe we could go get a pizza and also pick up another bottle of wine.”
* * *
It was a beautiful warm afternoon, and there was no need to rush about anything. We walked around a bit just looking at some different shops, and stopped in at a liquor store and bought a bottle of red wine. Then we headed to a place in the neighborhood that made some of the best pizza around. I ordered a large pizza, and then we sat at one of the outdoor tables to wait until it was ready.
Normally, I would have just ordered pizza in, but it felt good being able to walk around with Ellie and do this stuff together, so I let her carry the wine and I tried to carry the large pizza box without tipping it. Fortunately, it was a pretty short walk to my place.
When we got home, I opened the bottle of wine and got some glasses and plates for us. I had a pretty big coffee table in front of my sofa so I put everything on the coffee table and even managed to fit the pizza box there so we wouldn’t be running back and forth during the movie.
I was just going to channel surf, looking for something, but Ellie had something specific in mind; she went to the Amazon video site and found Dr. Zhivago. “I think I want to buy this, rather than just rent it,” she said. “I’ll pay for it when your bill comes in.”
Normally I’m the kind of guy who just watches a movie once and that’s plenty, since there are so many more movies out there that I haven’t seen. But if that’s what she wanted, that was fine.
“Brandon, have you ever seen ‘Dr. Zhivago’?”
“Never seen it,” I said. “I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it kind of old?”
“Yes, the original version is pretty old, but it doesn’t really seem that way. It’s a classic. And I think they released a higher-resolution version a number of years ago, so the quality should be pretty good.”
I looked at the movie information on Amazon.
“Did you know that this movie is over three hours long?” I asked.
“I didn’t remember exactly how long, but yes, it is long. It’s an epic. It’s about the Russian Revolution and there’s all sorts of stuff going on. Don’t worry about it, it’ll be worth it.”
I wasn’t quite sure about this, but after last night, I was ready to go along with anything. No way I wanted to upset her again.
* * *
It was a long movie. We were done with the pizza long before the movie began to hit its high points, and we had finished the bottle of wine well before the end of the movie, but I didn’t want to get up and go looking for another bottle.
The story was amazing with all sorts of stuff about the Russian Revolution and all of the fighting between factions and stuff like that and what happened to the peasants and all. But the main thing was the love story between Dr. Zhivago (Yuri) and Lara. And at the end there is that final scene where Dr. Zhivago, who has gotten really old, sees Lara passing by in a streetcar and can’t catch up and can’t get her attention. She doesn’t see him and he tries to run after the trolley and has a heart attack or something and falls into the snow. That really crushed me. I sat there with tears welling up in my eyes, although I tried not to show it. But Ellie saw it.
