The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  A knock on her door had her checking herself in the mirror: a simple light wool skirt appropriate for fall and a bright spring shirt topped with a summery sheer batik scarf. She was missing a season. Which one? Oh, winter. She really was tired, something to do with not having slept except for occasional catnaps in the last four or five days.

  “Wilson. Please tell me this is one of your crazy jokes.” Except the Director of the Emerald City Opera was not given to jokes, at least not practical ones. Bill Cullen glared at the display window of the fashion designer’s storefront that Wilson had led him to. The stuff in the window was cute, urban. He guessed it would draw a woman passing by into the shop, just as well as a dozen other places that he seemed to pass every day. They cropped up, more dreams than solid basis in either business acumen or common sense. Then they went away and someone else moved in the next day with their hopes and dreams clutched tight.

  He turned away and studied the neighborhood.

  Wilson Jervis had dragged him into the heart of the Belltown area to meet a designer. The old brick building did nothing to inspire his confidence. After Pioneer Square, this was one of the oldest portions of downtown Seattle, just north of the business core. Most of the area had been rebuilt, turned into condos and ad-agency-slick small business fronts. She was on a block that had somehow been bypassed by the neighborhood’s recent rejuvenation and gentrification.

  Its age showed in many ways, darkened brickwork, cracks in the sidewalk. An abandoned tattoo parlor across the street with a “Half-off for Two” sign that might have once lured customers, but was now superseded by the “Out of Business” sign across the glass. Next to it, a small bike shop looked to be doing okay. Belltown wasn’t dangerous the way Pioneer Square had been before its restoration, this part of it was just old.

  “My wife found her. Trust me,” was all the reassurance the rotund icon of the Seattle theater scene offered. He’d been leading the Opera with a confident and mostly unquestioned hand for decades. He’d taken a small company on the verge of insolvency and turned it into one of the five largest opera houses in the U.S., and one of the most respected in the world.

  All that still didn’t make Bill trust Wilson about this. They were mounting a new opera and it was up to Bill as stage manager to see that it happened perfectly, or at least on schedule and near budget. It was his job to make sure that every piece from set design to costumes to lighting came together by opening night, only six weeks away. What they were doing in Belltown, too early on a Monday morning, was beyond him. Well, not totally beyond him.

  Carlotta Gianelli had thrown one of her world-famous tantrums and stalked out yesterday to fly back to Milan and now they needed a costume designer who could perform a six-month miracle in only six weeks. Gianelli had burned up over four months and achieved nothing except some sketches that no one liked or could interpret.

  He glared back at the shop as Wilson knocked again.

  The glass door bore bold-colored lettering so close to graffiti that he could barely read it. Except he could. The “P” and “G” were actually oversized, ornate letters in the Victorian style. Perrin’s Glorious Garb, the second two words attached to the same “G” were actually artful slashes that he recognized as a variety of fashion styles ranging over the last fifty years, somehow done so that they made a unified whole. What he’d almost dismissed as tacky was actually a deeply nuanced understanding of design.

  He peered into the window. The shop was dark, but a light shone in back. He spotted a waif coming through the store toward them, silhouetted by the light behind and pulling on a hat despite the warm day.

  “We’re not open yet,” she called through the glass but was already unlocking the door.

  She was dressed like some teenager that had been thrown bodily into a closet and crawled forth wearing whatever she fell against. She wore a form-fitting silk turtleneck of new-grass green, an unlikely mauve skirt that evoked autumn swirled in pleats about her calves, and a filmy batik scarf the red-orange of a summer sunset that looked as if it had attempted to throttle her. All mismatched and crazy, the unlikely ensemble somehow looked good on her in a way he didn’t care enough about to attempt to fathom. She’d topped it off with a knitwear winter hat with earflaps and a ridiculous pom-pom pulled down over pale-blond hair that brushed her narrow shoulders.

  Wilson introduced them and talked his way into the shop as easily as he’d talked Bill away from the San Francisco Opera four years before.

  Adira’s death had made Bill a single dad at thirty-three years old. His need to escape “their” city and the needs of their two children had been the biggest factor by far. But Wilson had not played that card. Instead, he’d offered a new and interesting job in a different city, leaving it to be Bill’s own realization that such a change was exactly what he needed to do for both himself and his kids. Tricky s.o.b. To this day he still didn’t know quite how that had happened.

  Bill followed Wilson into the shop, letting the Director deal with the sloppily dressed clerk. The shop had been set up like a 1950s diner, all chromed metal and red leatherette. Mannequins sat in booths in a quirky mash-up of eras. A ‘20s flapper cozied up with a ‘50s greaser and a ‘40s housewife. Yet that wasn’t what they were. The housewife’s wide, white collar wasn’t on the housewife dress, it was on the flapper’s, and it distinctly accented the cleavage. The greaser actually sported the classic lines of a ‘20s linen suit, but sewn in denim and flannel.

  He could hear the girl bubbling away at Wilson about something. Sounded like a chickadee mixed up with one of those small singing birds. Disconnected flighty bits that, even if gathered together, wouldn’t really communicate much.

  The next booth included Victorian brocade set in a modern blazer, and a gown design that would be formal enough for an opera opening night yet remained racy enough for the hottest club. Even studying the piece didn’t reveal how the two distinct messages had been combined in a single garment.

  He glanced over at the shop girl, wondering when the owner was coming in.

  This girl was all arms and legs and nerves. Her slender build was only emphasized by her height. Fingers flashed out to emphasize points, her gestures were twice life size. She made a grand sweeping gesture which suggested she might be a dancer as well.

  She had rolled out a short rack which bore a set of dresses, wedding and two bridesmaids, and was showing them to Wilson as he slouched next to a particularly voluptuous mannequin in a Wall Street business suit. Cutting a suit to a full-figured woman was hard, and she’d made the outfit pop; that it was in hot ‘50s poodle-pink wool only made it more so. Then he focused on the wedding and bridesmaid dresses. Exceptionally fine work, yet wholly inappropriate for the stage, as it was a masterpiece of subtlety. He’d bet that the clerk would look good in the gold one.

  The Director had really lost it this time. All of these clothes were studies of craftsmanship and nuance. But they weren’t costumes, especially not ones that would play to the vast three-thousand seat expanse of the ECO Opera House at Seattle Center.

  “Where’s the designer?”

  “Why?” The woman pulled down her winter cap as if to shield herself.

  “We’re here to see her for reasons that wholly escape me.” Up close the girl wasn’t so much of a girl. She was a woman, long and sleek. Her hair a long, thick, pale blond that looked too substantial for so elegant a neck. She looked him nearly in the eye despite, he checked, bare feet.

  The hat of garish orange wool, with ridiculous ear flaps, had been pulled down almost far enough to hide her eyes, but they shone brilliant blue past pale lashes.

  “Why?” Her voice was soft.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do the reasons escape you?” There was a real “duh” tone to her voice as if he were the one being exceedingly dense and not the other way around.

  “Wilson wants to hire her and I want to tell the woman to her face that there’s no way on earth I’ll work with her.”

 
She regarded him with those bright blues for so long that he had to fight to not look away. There was a mind behind those eyes. And a force of personality all out of balance with the crazed attire and flighty first, second, and third impression.

  “Boy, it’s going to really suck being you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Director Wilson Jervis of the Emerald City Opera has just offered me the contract to design the costumes for Ascension, your next opera. And because it sounds like fun, I,” she turned briefly to Wilson, “thank you Mr. Jervis, yes” then she turned back to him, “have as of this moment decided to accept. Perrin Williams at your service.”

  She held out a hand and shook his numb fingers strongly when he held them out in shock like a trained puppy.

  She was right, it was going to really suck being him.

  “Wilson, you can’t do this! What are her credentials? What productions has she designed for?”

  Wilson lounged back in one of the booths next to the hot poodle-pink business suit. He propped his feet on the opposite seat next to a mannequin sheathed in a dress of tiny mirrors, like a human disco ball. As Wilson landed his feet there, it shimmered. Rather than the expected heaviness, it was a light fabric that moved easily, catching and changing light. Every breath the wearer took would be dramatic and impossible to look away from.

  “Ask her yourself, Bill. She’s standing right in front of you. This rude chap is Bill Cullen our Stage Manager. Getting the show up is his responsibility. Picking the right people is mine.”

  Bill turned to look down at her. Except, it still wasn’t down. It was across. And she was no longer on the verge of disappearing into her hat. Now she was very present, watching him. He couldn’t quite tell, but she almost looked amused.

  “Sorry if I was rude, but—”

  “No, Mr. Cullen. I’ve never designed an opera. I’ve never even been to one.”

  All he could do was gasp. He held out his hands to Wilson and the confounded man just did one of those seraphic smiles of his. The same smile he’d confronted Bill with four years before when he stole him from San Francisco for the Emerald City Opera.

  “Further, Mr. Cullen. I have designed for no movies, plays, dramas in the park, or poetry readings. Though I have attended all of those.”

  Bill reined himself in. He could hear the disdain in her voice, carefully tempered to slap him back with his own attitude. She’d have made a fine dramatic actress, no use to him on an opera stage, but still a precisely balanced performance.

  “Then…” he took a deep breath and felt not the least bit better, no matter how much his daughter insisted it would help him. She’d also told him to try using “please” once in a while. “Then, please, tell me why you think you can do this.”

  “Would you prefer a list of prior creative works, a sworn deposition, or a demonstration?” She was definitely mocking him.

  “A demonstration? What are you talking about?”

  “This way.” She turned and walked away as if he was just expected to follow along.

  He looked at Wilson who simply worked his way back to his feet and moseyed along behind her. Bill cursed under his breath and brought up the rear. She led them through the dimly lit shop and through what had once been the doors to the kitchen.

  The shadows were deep here. The only light source was the morning sun, reflected off the tattoo parlor across the street and shining in through the front window and the cook’s window.

  The mannequins in front of the stove looked so real that he thought they were alive for a moment. Dramatic designer coats indicated this was where the outerwear must be sold. One was an apparently typical black leather coat except for massive red buttons as big around as his palm. There was something odd about the cut, but he couldn’t tell in the dim light. The other wore the cape that clearly went with the mirrored gown. It would swirl and flutter and draw every eye until the moment it was removed to reveal the mirrored spectacle form-fit to a woman’s body.

  There was a theme here. Bill didn’t have it until he was following the other two into the walk-in freezer lined with shoes and accessories, and then through another swinging door into the design space beyond.

  The common theme was that this woman designed for people who wanted to be noticed. Every single piece of clothing was an absolute attention grabber. On the right woman, they’d be irresistible.

  Again, Bill imagined the golden bridesmaid dress on the woman who was now waiting by her cutting table. That would be a vision to behold.

  “Tell me about your opera.”

  Bill looked around the room. He’d been in near enough a hundred of costume design studios over the years. From this woman he’d expected chaos and disarray. Instead, it was one of the neatest and most organized spaces he’d ever seen.

  The cutting table was large and immaculate, topped with a green self-healing cutting mat marked in standard one-inch squares with thin yellow lines. Two top-of-the-line sewing machines, a long-arm embroidery machine, and a five-thread serger were lined up along the back window. He almost missed an old Singer Featherweight sitting to one side on a small oak desk with the black, curlicued, wrought-iron base. Not only did it appear well cared for, it was the only one that hadn’t been tidied up, as if it were the latest used.

  He turned and was confronted by a wall of fabric neatly stored in cubicle shelves that ranged floor to ceiling down the long wall. Whatever else this woman might be, she was serious about her work space.

  Bill kicked free a stool from under the edge of the cutting table and sat down next to Wilson, across the table from the designer.

  “Well, it is an entirely new opera, not just a new mount.”

  He saw her confused expression. Great. Time to get remedial. They didn’t have time for this. But when he looked at Wilson, the man merely cocked his head in her direction and he was left with no choice but to continue.

  “Operas are typically done one of two ways. A packaged opera is one that has been previously designed. We pull everything from storage: sets, costumes, props, and so on. Or we rent someone else’s. Sometimes we’ll mix it up; rent a set from Houston, but use San Francisco’s costumes. All we have to do then is adjust, fit, and perhaps replicate a couple pieces that are too worn or too drastically the wrong size. Then there’s a new mount. All new sets and costumes. That’s expensive and takes a lot of planning.”

  “But you said this one was more than that.” She had remained standing and he had to look up at her. He wasn’t complaining. Despite her incoherent taste in clothing, she was fine-featured and very nice to look at. When was the last time he’d really looked at a woman? There had to be someone in the four years since Adira’s death, but he couldn’t think of one at the moment.

  “Yes. A new opera is a new mount with many additional nightmares because no one has ever staged this opera before. We will be the first to present the work which has been in development for over two years. We will be making a statement that will enter the repertoire of dozens of opera companies—or that disappears quietly taking several million dollars of investment with it. Now you see why you aren’t acceptable. You make nice clothes, but that is a whole different matter from costuming a new and successful opera.”

  Perrin wasn’t really listening. Wasn’t even worrying about the gauntlet she had cast at his feet of a “demonstration” whatever she’d meant by that. She was too tired to make much sense of what Bill Cullen was actually saying.

  All she knew was that the page on the sketchpad she’d dropped before her on the cutting table was still blank. A square white hole in a sea of green cutting mat. She started looking around the table for a Yellow Submarine and then stopped herself. Not tired enough to hallucinate…yet.

  She didn’t care that he kept saying she wasn’t qualified, that kind of statement only ever made her that much more determined. Too many years of proving her parents wrong about her, that lesson was deeply ingrained. Up until now repeating himself appeared to make him happy so she
’d let him do it. But she needed more.

  “You still have told me nothing about your opera. An opera must have a setting, a place, a feel, a story, or it would just be noise. Clothes are the same. Without the story, they are just coverings.”

  “Yes, Bill. Do get on with it.”

  Perrin liked Wilson Jervis. He was a generation, or even two older than she was, but he had an easy-going manner that was totally belied by his well-known success. She’d never been inside the Opera House, except once to hear an Indigo Girls concert during the Bumbershoot music festival. But Perrin had been commissioned to make enough opening-night-of-the-opera gowns to know of him and what he’d achieved.

  And wasn’t part of Jo’s new job being on the opera board? Or maybe it was Cassidy. One of her two best friends… Or maybe both? Again, brain cells too tired to remember or care.

  Bill Cullen she hadn’t quite figured out yet. He studied her through narrowed eyes, wary and suspicious. He was like Jeffrey, a bulldog she once knew—all rough and grumpy. She wondered if he also had a mushy heart beneath that bristly exterior, or if he was irascible to the core.

  He was certainly far prettier than Jeffrey. Bill Cullen stood six feet tall. He wasn’t all shoulders like her friend Russell, not that there was any fat on him. He was simply built of a squarer stock. His dark brown hair and disdainful expression, combined with his strong features, lent itself to two different avenues of expression.

  She flipped open her pencil set and selected a simple gray to start with.

  He began describing a dark adventure. Part Jules Verne and part Hobbit, evil staff of power. He talked about it being quite different in character from Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” which meant nothing to her. Somewhere in his explanation he mentioned a tragic love story. It was his voice that caught her attention. It was a good voice, expressive, clearly practiced at storytelling. She let herself simply enjoy the tones and emotions he wove.