CHAPTER 3 - GOODBYE BIG WAVE, HELLO PARAMOUNT
After a little over a month, Chapter Three is finally up as Kelly finally gets to see David's surprise, and we also learn why David doesn't think too highly of Reef's cocky personality.
Just before noon, Kelly and David were in the Surfer's Paradise lobby near the front entrance as they prepared to head into Sunset Beach for lunch. "If you didn't have to work today, this would be a great day for taking a walk on the waterfront in town," David said while taking a stretch, making a note of the sunny weather outside the doors.
"I really wish I could, but I've only got an hour for lunch," Kelly said. "But I'd love to see that surprise you want to show me before we go eat."
"That's just what I had in mind," David said with a grin, just before he noticed some noise coming from near the front entrance, where he had parked his Trans-Am a few minutes earlier. "Hey, sounds like someone's playing loud music from their car close by," he pointed out.
"Sounds like it to me too," Kelly agreed.
"Maybe I should try talking them into turning it down before guests start complaining about the noise," David said before he and Kelly walked through the entrance doors. As the couple got outside, David looked toward where he had his Trans-Am parked - then realized where the loud music was coming from when he spotted someone familiar inside his car. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me," he remarked as he started toward the car.
Inside the Trans-Am, Trevor was sitting in the driver's seat, fooling around as he listened to loud hard rock music on the car's stereo and sang along while drumming on the steering wheel with his hands, when he heard a knock on the driver's side window. Turning his head to look, Trevor saw David, who gestured at him to roll down the window.
"Turn down the stereo," David told his younger brother, having to yell to make himself heard above the loud music. After Trevor turned the volume down to a low level, David then asked, "Dude, what're you doing in there?"
"Enjoying the tuneage, bro, what else?" Trevor replied. "The stereo's got a great sound."
"Right," an unimpressed David quipped. "Remember the one time when you borrowed my car after you got your driver's licence?"
"Sure, dude," Trevor said. "I took it out for a spin to impress the girls. They really dig the wheels."
"And while you did," David then reminded Trevor, "you put a dent in the rear bumper when you backed into a street lamp, then you got a ticket for speeding shortly after. Thanks to your little escapade, my car insurance went up and I had to get that bumper fixed."
"Hey, I helped pay to fix your car, right?" Trevor pointed out. "Besides, I still came out ahead when three girls asked me for my number after they saw me behind the wheel. Can't blame me for wanting to look good with the girls, can you?"
While Kelly rolled her eyes when she heard what Trevor said, David simply looked flatly at his brother. "And that attitude's exactly why I don't let you borrow my car anymore," he said.
"What? What attitude?" Trevor said, seemingly not getting David's point.
"Not taking full responsibility for your actions and feeling a need to show off to impress girls, that's what," David continued as he then opened the driver's side door. "Now, out. Kelly and I have to go to town for lunch and we're already running late."
"Fine, whatever," Trevor said nonchalantly as he started to get out of the Trans-Am, but paused when David cleared his throat to get his younger sibling's attention. "Forgetting something, Trev?" David said.
"What now?" Trevor groaned.
"My satellite radio," David stated in his laid-back manner. "It goes back on the station I had it on before you changed it, remember?" After Trevor switched stations on the satellite receiver from the hard rock channel he had it on back to the chillout music channel (one of the channels David liked) and then got out of the car, David said to him as he and Kelly got in, "Thanks Trev, 'preciate it."
"Wow, it seems kinda hard to believe that Trevor's really your brother," Kelly remarked as she strapped on her seat belt after getting into the Trans-Am. "Was he adopted or something?"
"Nope, Trevor's the real deal," David said. "He's my brother, all right - or as I sometimes refer to him, 'the burr under my saddle'."
"To listen to him talk and act, he seems a lot like Reef in some ways," Kelly said.
"That's exactly why I don't think highly of Reef's bragging or his showing off," David explained while starting the car. "It reminds me a lot of Trevor."
"Ah, now it makes sense," Kelly said with a small laugh. "I think Fin'll be interested to hear that."
Just before arriving in Sunset Beach, David had Kelly put on a blindfold so that she would not see the surprise he had for her until he was ready to have her look. When David's car parked on Main Street in the downtown area upon arriving in town, Kelly asked, "Is it okay if I take the blindfold off yet, David?"
Seeing Kelly about to touch her blindfold to remove it, David stopped her by blocking her right hand. "Uh-uh, not yet," he said before he opened his door to get out of the car. "No peeking." David then walked around the front of the Trans-Am to the passenger side to open the door and let Kelly out, then he guided her a short way.
"C'mon David, now I'm really getting anxious to see," Kelly said. "Can I look now?"
"Just a couple more steps," David said before he stopped at a chosen spot, leading Kelly to do the same. "Okay, now you can take off your blindfold." When Kelly did so, she gasped with surprise at what she saw across the street - an Art Deco-style building with colorful neon lighting trim and the name "PARAMOUNT" in capitals, also in neon, above a marquee. Beside the movie theatre, as part of the same building, was a coffee house with the name "Cinema Brew" above the entrance. "So, what do you think?" David asked a moment later.
"Whoa, David, this looks...amazing," Kelly said when she checked out the building, which had been completed just a few days earlier.
"You should see it at night when the neon's all lit up," David said with a grin.
"Hola, compadres," the Kahuna called as he came through the front entrance beneath the theatre marquee. "Welcome to the new and improved Paramount Theatre. Come on in and I'll show you 'round the place."
"Wait a sec - 'improved'?" a puzzled Kelly wondered aloud. "How can this theatre be 'improved' when it looks like it's just been completed not long ago?"
"That's part of the surprise," David explained as he, Kelly and Kahuna went inside the theatre. "I bought the Big Wave Theatre last fall and had it renovated and expanded by building the Paramount around it. The original Big Wave's now Theatre Two in a five-screen complex."
"And 'Paramount' was also the name the Big Wave used to go by before I bought the place back in 2002," Kahuna added. "Changing it back was the bossman's idea."
"I went with it to pay tribute to its past while looking to the future," David said. "And thanks to the expansion, nobody'll have to go out of town to Courtenay or Campbell River anymore to see the newest movies when they can check them out here."
"Ohhh, that'll be great," Kelly said, sounding enthralled to be able to finally see the movies she wanted to see without leaving town. After checking out the Paramount's new, larger lobby with its twin box office and an expanded snack bar, Kelly went with David and Kahuna to look inside Theatre Two, the old Big Wave, and was amazed to see how different it looked from when she had last been in there to see a show last year, the night after Bummer's demotion from Surfer's Paradise day manager to assistant concierge.
"Is this really the old Big Wave?" Kelly asked as she looked around inside the auditorium.
"Believe it or not, it is," David said. "We had to remove the balcony and all the main floor seating when we gutted the inside to put stadium seating in during the renovations. You see where we're also standing right now, right between the screen and the first row? We're standing right where the original lobby and snack bar used to be when the main entrance was on Front Street."
"This all reminds me of the theatre I go to back home when I go out to the movies," Kelly pointed out, "right down to the neon ceiling lighting and the sidewall decorations they got in each auditorium, just like you have here. Are all the theatres here just like this?"
"Every one, even the smallest one, Theatre Five," David said while he, Kelly and Kahuna went back out into the lobby. "That one's also going to be the screen that shows the surfing movies Kahuna likes, right, Kahuna?"
"You bet, bossman," Kahuna confirmed. "Made that deal as part of the theatre sale. The surf movie diehards will be happy to see those movies come back when the Paramount opens on Friday."
"That reminds me," David then remembered. "Kelly, guess which movie I got to play here on Friday night to re-open the theatre?"
"What is it?" Kelly said, eager to know which movie it was based on the enthusiasm in David's voice.
"It's Big Steel 2: The Annihilator's Revenge," David said. "That's the new sci-fi action flick that's going to be the featured movie as part of the sci-fi convention this weekend. I got it booked for the biggest screen here, Theatre One, because I'm expecting there'll be a big crowd of convention guests coming to see it."
"Cool!" a pleased Kelly said when she heard the news. "I've been waiting for that movie since it was first announced three years ago after the first Big Steel went over big. I know Fin's gonna want to see it too 'cause she told me she loved the first movie when it came out."
Later on after finishing their tour of the newly-expanded, completed and renamed Paramount Theatre and then grabbing lunch to go, Kelly and David returned to Surfer's Paradise. In the hotel lobby, David was finishing up speaking on his iPhone with the Paramount's concession supplier about a scheduled delivery of popcorn, nacho chips and cheese sauce, candies and soft drink syrup mixes to the theatre for stocking its snack bar in time for the theatre's re-opening on Friday when Kelly came to see him. "Still tying up some loose ends?" Kelly asked as she joined David on the lobby couch he was sitting on after he hung up.
"Pretty much," David confirmed. "I had to do the same for the Cinema Brew a couple of minutes ago."
"The Cinema Brew sounds like it'll be a good place to get coffee once it opens," Kelly said. "I even like how you have it set up."
"That's the beauty of it," David said. "You can access the coffee house from within the Paramount, but it's also got its own outside entrance to get in during the hours when the theatre's not open. I set it up that way for anyone who wants to get coffee, meals and treats before or after a movie, especially on the weekends when Cinema Brew's open to midnight."
"Sounds perfect," Kelly said with a smile, just before she checked the time at the front desk. "Well, I better get back to work," she then added. "See you later for supper?"
"It's a date," David said. "I'm off to the beach anyway. I've got a surfing lesson booked there with Fin - she's going to teach me how to do some advanced tricks on the waves. It'll give me a chance at the same time to tell her about my landing Big Steel 2 for the sci-fi convention."
"She'll be thrilled to hear that for sure," Kelly said before she returned to work at the Pirate Ship while David went to meet Fin at the hotel beach for his surfing lesson.
In the meantime, Sabrina, a reluctant volunteer to help put up the last of the lobby decorations for the convention, had seen Kelly and David return to the hotel and overheard David's phone conversations with the coffee house and theatre snack bar suppliers, as well as telling Kelly he would tell Fin about booking the convention's Friday night feature movie, when she noticed what looked like a cell phone on the lobby couch close by. Walking over to the couch, she noticed it was the same iPhone David had talked on earlier.
Figuring David had forgotten his phone when he left for the beach, Sabrina picked it up and turned it on to check its information on its settings menu first, then went to its address book menu and, while scrolling through the stored phone numbers, found a number with the caption "Film Exchange" above it.
Hmm, interesting, Sabrina thought to herself while looking at the number for the film exchange, which she concluded was the local distributor for the movies David was getting. Since she hated science fiction and had a low opinion of its fans, Sabrina saw her discovery as an opportunity. Maybe I'll cook up a little something to give the geekfest guests fits and throw a monkey wrench into their little party, she thought to herself with a sly look and an evil smirk.
Whatever Sabrina has in mind next, you can guess it's not going to bode well for either the sci-fi convention or David's re-opening of the Big Wave/Paramount. See how she does it, as well as what happens when David runs into another hurdle with the theatre opening, up next.