Miller Laqour

The six-oh-five

Projectionist Miller Laqour keeps a spacing in the cinema schedule that leaves almost enough time to get behind the curtain and recover a dropped piece of somebody's costume. Saltbridge's cinema is also the place that hosts school performances when the weather keeps them inside. Since Miller bought a share in it, the stage manager brings changes to him before telling the school. The audience gets a warm room, and an extra beginning in the performance usually comes out of the time he would have taken to eat. Miller's sister Zeni has an evening key and says it can be hard to get him to see where a second person would be convenient. He usually starts to explain why he can be in two places at once.

At first he took the Saturday practice notices beside his work schedule because both fitted one clipboard. He could trade a projection call for an evening shift and take the Cadillac 2016 ATS-V.R out before dusk if nobody needed him to come in earlier.

Three circles on paper

One week he agreed to meet a group for the first half of a practice, help a different crew adjust something at the return gate, and share a closed-course slot with two people he'd offered to bring to DGM. He drew three circles on a transfer pad to keep track of them. The work side of his schedule looked just as tight. He went from the first group to the second in the middle of a conversation and arrived at the third without his notes. The third asked what he made of the car, which he'd brought but hadn't driven. The watch he had checked to get around so quickly was still sitting the wrong way on his wrist.

When he looked later at the old pad, it was obvious that the first two circles took up part of the same place. He could return from one to tell the next group what little of the practice they'd missed while waiting for him. That was exactly what he'd done.

A single time to clear the lane

Miller and Luca Estrin once shared a short slot to get it done before their separate evening calls. They picked an end time and Miller kept the promise when his alarm went. There had been a better movement through the turn on his last go and he asked Luca afterward where he'd been looking when it happened. They had time to talk because Luca came off the course promptly and they took the same pedestrian gate. At the bench Miller saw how useful it was to people standing around the Jaguar when Priya Soke supplied a time for someone else to take the track. If Miller gives himself a whole session these days, there's room to sketch the Cadillac's first three changes of direction and say which one he wants to repeat.

The hour with Zeni

This week Zeni has offered to take the early call at the cinema so Miller can practice with a group that could use the Cadillac for a steady approach to a double bend. His own ambition is to finish the bend once without remembering when he used to promise to be somewhere else. He's turned the watch face in and left the transfer pad at the cinema. Zeni has put a kettle above the evening schedule, and a second one by the door where his hand will find it when he picks up his bag.