Chapter 339: Olivia Text

He texted Olivia at noon on Saturday.

Still on for tonight.

She replied in under a minute.

I confirmed it three days ago.

I know, he said. I’m confirming it again.

You don’t need to confirm things that are already confirmed, she said. That’s what confirmed means.

What time, he said.

Seven, she said. Dress down. I said ordinary.

You said very ordinary, he said.

That’s more ordinary than ordinary, she said. Act accordingly.

He put his phone down.

He looked at his whiteboard.

Clara — 12 days.

Margaret Walsh.

Sophie — 6 questions. Dinner pending.

He’d added one more line this morning.

Olivia — debut, 34 days.

Thirty-four days.

He looked at that line.

He thought about a girl in a film screened in a small room who had looked at the camera with the specific quality of someone who understood that the camera was not the point.

He thought about a year eight review clause and a label contract and what it had taken to get from that room to thirty-four days out from the thing she’d been building toward.

He thought about tonight.

Very ordinary, she’d said.

He dressed accordingly.

–

James drove him at six forty.

The address Olivia had sent was not the address he’d expected.

Not her apartment building. A neighborhood twenty minutes east. The specific kind of neighborhood that existed in the middle of cities without anyone deciding it was interesting, which was precisely why it was interesting. Older buildings. A hardware store. A noodle place with handwritten hours on the door. A small grocery with its produce stacked outside.

James pulled up outside a building with six units and a buzzer panel that had three names missing.

"I’ll text you when I need you," said Sean.

"Yes sir," said James.

Sean buzzed.

Olivia’s voice came through the intercom immediately, which meant she’d been watching for the car.

"You’re early," she said.

"Six fifty-eight," he said.

"I said seven," she said.

"I’m two minutes early," he said.

"I know," she said, and buzzed him in.

—

Third floor.

The door was already open when he reached it.

Olivia was standing in the doorframe.

She was wearing an oversized sweater in faded yellow, the kind that had been washed enough times to lose any ambition about itself. Dark leggings. No makeup. Her hair was down, the dark length of it loose in the way it only was in private, none of the deliberate arrangement it had in professional contexts.

She looked exactly like herself.

She looked at him.

He was wearing a plain gray shirt and dark jeans and nothing that communicated anything except that he’d taken her instruction seriously.

"You actually dressed down," she said.

"You said very ordinary," he said.

"I know what I said," she said. "I didn’t know if you’d actually do it."

"Why wouldn’t I," he said.

"Because you always look like you’ve thought carefully about what you’re wearing," she said. "Even when it’s simple."

"I thought carefully about this," he said.

She pressed her lips together and stepped back to let him in.

—

The apartment was small.

Not temporary-small, the smallness of somewhere used as a staging area for the actual life happening somewhere else. Real small. The smallness of someone who had been given a budget and had spent it entirely on the things that mattered to them and had not had anything left over for the things that didn’t.

A bookshelf that was full. Actually full, the kind where books had started being stored horizontally on top of the vertical ones because there was no other option. A small kitchen with a board on the counter that had something in progress on it. A window seat with a cushion that had been sat on enough to have a permanent impression.

The walls had two things on them.

A large printed photograph of a city Sean didn’t immediately recognize, taken from a height at night, the lights below arranged in the specific irregular pattern of somewhere that had grown organically rather than being planned.

And a small framed piece of paper beside the door. Handwritten. He looked at it.

It was a list of seven things. In Korean and then English underneath each one.

He read them.

They were not profound things. A specific restaurant. A walk she wanted to take. A book she hadn’t finished. Small things written down in the specific way of someone who kept track of what they were looking forward to so it didn’t get lost in the noise of the current thing.

"That’s my list," said Olivia, from the kitchen. "I keep it by the door so I see it when I leave."

"The restaurant," he said.

"In Seoul," she said. "When we go back for the domestic promotions. I’ve been going since I was twelve. I want to go before I’m too famous to go without a group and a schedule."

"The walk," he said.

"Coastal," she said. "I don’t know where yet. Somewhere there’s actual wind." She was doing something at the counter. "Sit down Sean. You’re reading my private list like it’s a document."

"It’s on your wall," he said.

"Which means it’s decorative," she said. "Not analytical."

He sat down on the sofa.

The cushion had the specific give of something used regularly, not decorative-firm.

’She lives here,’ he thought. ’Actually lives here. This is what her actual life looks like.’

"What are you making," he said.

"We’re ordering in," she said. "I’m finishing something I started this morning. It’s a different thing."

"What did you start this morning," he said.

She paused. "A song."

He held that.

"For the debut," he said.

"For after," she said. "It’s not ready to be anything yet. I work on things in the morning before I’ve thought about them too much." She glanced at him from the kitchen. "I know you’re going to ask whether the label has to approve original material and yes they do and no I haven’t told them about this one yet."

"I wasn’t going to ask that," he said.