Santa Monica Airport.
Compared with the various small business jets on the tarmac, the Boeing 767-200ER was a veritable giant.
Simon did not arrive until he had patiently finished reading the script for Home Alone.
The crew Janet had personally selected was waiting for him. There were eight people in total, divided into two rotations, each with two pilots and two flight attendants. Every one of them was Australian, and every one of them was a woman, exactly as Simon had instructed. He regarded this private jet as another of his homes and had no desire to have men in charge of it.
The four pilots were all around forty, formerly full time fliers for various Australian airlines, and before that veterans of the air force. Each of them had logged at least ten years of flying experience.
To poach these four, Simon had paid a hefty price. In addition to generous salaries, their families could all enjoy benefits provided by Westeros Corporation, and they would be able to retire early after ten years in this post.
The other four flight attendants were pure decoration.
After introductions all around, Simon walked up the stairs into the cabin, the four flight attendants following to show him the various features on board.
The refit had cost 15 million dollars, and every detail inside the cabin was close to perfect.
Decorated in a minimalist black and white palette like the keys of a piano, every piece of furniture gave off an aura of refinement and expense. There was a lounge, dining room, study, bar, bedroom, conference room and more, with a total passenger area of over three hundred square meters. At the front of the aircraft was a very private two level suite that made you feel as if you were standing in an actual apartment.
Even so, it was still a medium sized airliner, and overall it was not quite as spacious as Simon had imagined.
Though the crew had just completed a sixteen hour haul from Melbourne to Los Angeles, once Simon finished his tour he had the giddy impatience of a man with a new toy. He asked them to take off again and did a round trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Cersei Capital was still in the middle of its operations against the United States junk bond market, so Janet had not come to Los Angeles with the plane.
Simon also had plenty on his plate. The two of them agreed to meet again in mid November. By then, they would probably fly to Finland first to finalize the acquisition of Nokia's mobile communications equipment division.
The next day was Friday, November 3.
Simon, who rarely slept in, was jolted awake by the ringing phone. It was just after five in the morning.
James Rebould was on the line. Photos of the Boeing 767 that Simon had taken delivery of the previous day had already appeared in several East Coast newspapers. James faxed some of the pages over. To keep things low profile, there was nothing on the aircraft's exterior that linked it to Simon. It looked no different from a regular commercial jet.
Even so, the only 767 parked on the runway at Santa Monica was obviously Simon's ride, and the papers had not only photographed the plane but also secretly snapped Simon meeting the crew and boarding.
Most of the pieces covered the story in a gossipy tone, but there were still a few digs at Simon's extravagance.
Private jets were very common in the West, but using a Boeing 767, an aircraft that normally carried two to three hundred passengers, as a personal plane was almost unheard of. Air Force One was part of the machinery of state, and the rulers of Middle Eastern oil monarchies also flew at the expense of the state.
By the time the sun came up on the West Coast, the local papers were also full of stories about Simon's private jet.
Santa Monica Airport was small and hardly secure. As word spread, more and more reporters rushed over, hoping to get more photos of the Westeros flying palace. Simon immediately ordered the crew to take off and reposition the 767 to San Jose Airport in San Francisco.
It was obvious that Santa Monica was no longer a suitable place to store the plane.
After thinking it over, Simon had people contact Los Angeles International Airport. He planned to rent a hangar there to house his jet.
Unlike Santa Monica, LAX always had hundreds of aircraft of every size on the ground. Hiding in plain sight, one more 767 would not stand out at all.
Following his deeply ingrained instinct not to flaunt his wealth, Simon hid the 767 away, and that only made the media chatter livelier. Criticism of his wasteful luxury grew louder without his even noticing, until the PR teams at Westeros Corporation and Daenerys Entertainment both had to step in and start putting out fires.
Amid all this excitement, the second week of the North American Halloween season quietly came to an end.
From November 3 to November 9, the first full week of its release, Scream 2 earned 31.77 million dollars. Its second weekend box office dropped 33 percent to 21.29 million, giving it a two week total of 53.06 million.
Compared with the first film, the sequel's second weekend drop was steeper, but a two week take of more than fifty million dollars still exceeded many people's expectations.
By comparison, Monstrous Mutants and the other Halloween releases had not even earned as much in two weeks as Scream 2 did in one.
On November 10, with Scream 2 still going strong, another new film from Daenerys label Highgate Pictures, My Left Foot, slipped quietly into theaters.
At Cannes in the first half of the year, My Left Foot had only taken home the Best Actor award, but the film had still drawn plenty of attention. On Simon's instructions, Ira Deutchman had treated it as a priority all along, and the choice of a November 10 release was clearly made with the coming awards season in mind.
As an arthouse film destined to rely on word of mouth and a long theatrical run, My Left Foot could not possibly match Scream 2 in terms of opening scale. It debuted on only 112 screens, following Highgate's "spoke and hub" rollout strategy, with the first batch of screens concentrated in major core cities across North America.
Strictly speaking, My Left Foot was not even Daenerys Entertainment's main Oscar vehicle this year.
That honor belonged to Driving Miss Daisy, slated for release in early December. So with its November opening, My Left Foot would be counting primarily on award nominations to build its box office.
Simon had already watched the finished cut of Driving Miss Daisy. Its quality was on par with the original in every respect.
More importantly, its biggest selling point was that both leads were elderly, it told the story of two elderly people, and it grappled with themes of race that were as politically correct as they came. It was tailor made for the tastes of the Academy's aging voting bloc.
Outside of film, the Ninja Turtles video game published by Daenerys subsidiary Blizzard Studios was also beginning to draw the media's attention.