The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  Tammy dropped the drawing carefully into the trash can and looked again for everyone’s reaction. She’d been around the opera enough to know the value of an artist’s work as well as their temperament about it. The time when Jasp was four and had drawn green flowers around someone’s set drawing had almost gotten him murdered.

  Dad opened his mouth. She could see he was about to tell her it was okay, when the lady poked her hard enough on the shoulder to make her turn away from him. The woman put her fists on her hips, glared down at Tammy, and blew out a huff of air that would have stirred her bangs if she’d had any. Instead she had that black hair with the blond stripe that was even prettier now that she was awake.

  Here it comes. Figures. Another crazy adult saying it was okay one minute and gearing up to chew you out the nex—

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” The lady didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she pointed at Jasp without even turning. “You! Boy! What’s your name?”

  “Jaspar,” he didn’t quite stammer in his surprise at suddenly being the center of attention.

  “Jaspar, show this girl how you throw out an ugly drawing.”

  With only a brief backward glance at Dad for reassurance, he took up a drawing, crumpled it a little. Then he glanced at Tammy. She grinned back at him, he was gonna show Ms. Williams but good.

  Jasp made a whole spectacle of crushing it into the smallest, wrinkliest ball he could, then ran back a couple paces and shot it into the trash like a basketball.

  Tammy could see her dad. Jasp might not get it, but she knew. Each of those paintings represented untold hours of painstaking coaxing and wheedling to get “Carlotta Nightmare,” as Jasp had dubbed her, to produce them. They were also the only designs they had, and there were less than six weeks to production.

  Last night Dad had been groaning, in between worrying about Ms. Williams, about how the publicity shots were supposed to be this week and there were no costumes yet and—

  “Better,” the lady told Jasp.

  He checked in with Tammy, but she could only twitch a shoulder in a shrug. She didn’t know how to read Ms. Williams yet.

  “Better, but still lame. Now, watch carefully.”

  Tammy had to figure out what was going on. Even without the fancy dress, she was very tall and very pretty.

  Tammy liked the black hair that matched the opera t-shirt. And she wouldn’t mind trying to have a blond swirl in her hair. It pointed like an arrow to the bright yellow ECO logo. The t-shirt clung to her frame. Tammy glanced at Dad through the fall of her own long hair so that he wouldn’t notice her attention. He was staring hard at the woman, which Tammy didn’t like much.

  The lady handed her and Jasp another drawing and took one herself. So slowly that it was almost painful, she tore it in half: the paper making a long, drawn-out cry of protest. The half-dozen costumers doing touch-up work on the clothes for the present opera rushed over to see what was happening. They stopped and stared, with their jaws down.

  She glanced to Dad for permission, but Ms. Williams called them back to attention like they were both still in third grade.

  “You have to just do it!”

  Jasp raised one eyebrow in question then waited to see what she’d do. Tammy set her jaw and tore it with the same agonizing slowness, Jasp joining her part way through.

  Then Ms. Williams overlapped her two pieces and tore them the other way, a little faster.

  Tammy and Jasp did the same. Then faster and faster they all tore their paintings and tore them and tore them until they were little more than large confetti.

  With a fistful of torn paper, she sent Jasp the tiniest head nod toward Dad. He was sharp and chucked his into the air right over Dad’s head. Dad ducked and cringed beneath the shower of bits of paper. At the last second, Tammy changed her target and launched her own fistful of paper over the woman’s head who burst out with a wild laugh and threw hers right back, saving a few to sprinkle over Jasp.

  Bill watched in amazement as three of Carlotta Nightmare’s drawings fluttered about them in tiny pieces. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t as Jaspar scraped up a fistful that had fallen on the table and launched them right at Bill’s face where they burst apart into a colorful flurry just inches away.

  Perrin dove for another watercolor and began tearing madly. The kids joined in. In the midst of the mayhem that ensued, Perrin very solemnly handed one painting to him.

  It was harder than he expected, making that first tear. It was the Overlord, at least he thought it was, it was hard to tell on Carlotta’s work and she’d certainly been above explaining her “Art” to anyone who couldn’t simply “intuit” it themselves. The second tear was easier, then the third.

  In moments, he too was showering bits of paper over his kids’ heads.

  After the last drawing was destroyed, and Jerimy had the honor of stuffing the last fistful down the back of Jaspar’s shirt, they all set in to clean up. Bill saw Perrin take Tammy a little to one side. He moved as unobtrusively as he could to collect some confetti that was closer to them, so that he could overhear.

  “That,” Perrin pointed at the floor. “So not me.” Then she turned Tammy to face the Empress’ dress.

  “That,” Perrin nodded as if reassuring herself. Though he could hear the doubt in her voice as if she didn’t believe in her own power.

  “That is me.”

  It was absolutely her. So powerful that she actually unnerved him a bit. And now she’d made friends with his children.

  That he was far less sure about.

  Chapter 4

  Perrin would have liked to have someone to call. But with Jo’s wedding over and the week-long closure of the restaurant, everyone was gone. Even Maria had taken the opportunity to go on a belated honeymoon with her Hogan. They were taking some extra time and had rented a sailboat for two weeks to cruise along the Amalfi coast of Italy.

  She wasn’t even sure why she wanted someone around at this moment. She was fine on her own for days at a time. Especially when a challenging design tackled her. It wasn’t that she wanted to talk to one of her friends about anything in particular. Perrin just wanted to be around them for a time.

  They were her sanity benchmark. She sometimes needed reminding, even now at thirty, that she was okay—a good person and not some product of her childhood. That people liked her who weren’t merely looking at how to use her.

  So, she sat by herself at Cutters Crabhouse, just her untouched iced tea, some focaccia, and her sketchbook. It was mid-afternoon. Through the towering windows the Seattle waterfront lay spread out below her. Pike Place Market, a close bustle of tourists and hundreds of cool little shops perched on the cliff edge. Out of sight on Post Alley, Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth Ristorante with its “Closed for Honeymoon” sign on the door. Below, the long piers of the waterfront reached out into Elliott Bay. The sun glittered off the water and the snowy Olympic Mountains loomed high in the west on the far side of Puget Sound.

  This was as close as she could be to her absent friends. This is where they usually gathered, in Cutter’s upscale bar. All dressed to the limit, shimmering together around a too small, wood-and-steel table, perched on high-leather stools, and teasing waiters far and wide. This time, instead of too much alcohol and too many appetizers and laughing until her sides ached, she sat by herself and ordered a cup of chowder and half of a hot pastrami on rye.

  It was still a bit early for the after-work crowd, so the bar was uncharacteristically quiet. It would be hopping in a couple hours, but for the moment there was mostly just her, a few stray tourists, and the wait staff.

  At the Opera, after they’d all finished the cleanup and the kids were tucked into handy cubicles outside his office, chipping away at their homework, Bill had told her the opera’s plot again. He also gave her a script.

  “No,” he corrected her. “It’s a libretto not a script, everything is sung.” Even in The Sound of Music Julie Andrews didn’t sing everything. Sin
ging meant the clothing needed to provide room to breathe even more than room to move.

  He’d shown her photos of the lead singers. The Empress was okay, the lead tenor singing the Tragic Prince was a big guy. The Dark Overlord, a rare true bass singer, even bigger. Now she understood some of Jerimy’s comments on construction. These were people who made their livings with their chest and gut muscles. Making the proportions balance out would take some doing.

  “There was a great tenor,” Jerimy had informed her. “Whose chest grew so massive and his legs so out of shape that it actually ended his career when he could no longer stand through a whole performance.” She’d stepped through a door into a whole other world.

  She’d read the libretto, doodled a little, but she still didn’t have any ideas flowing. Perrin wasn’t worried, yet. She was supposed to go see the final performance of the current production of Turandot this weekend. Bill had assured her it would have a happy ending. Cassidy would be back by then. She’d agreed by e-mail to go with Perrin and Russell had begged to not be forced to go, so that should be fun. A mini girls’ night out.

  Tomorrow, she’d see the sets and the first rehearsal of Ascension, opening in just over five weeks. That’s what she was counting on. The libretto gave her plot, but it still told her so little of the world and the people involved.

  She doodled quick images of the three designs she’d already done as thumbnails across the top of the page as a reference.

  The chowder and sandwich arrived. She ignored the waiter’s mild flirt and paid attention to the smells of the sandwich, rich pastrami and tangy sauerkraut. The first taste didn’t disappoint in the slightest. She tried to savor it as Cassidy would savor a wine—the interaction of the caraway-seed rye bread and stone ground mustard—but instead found herself just chewing it. Food kept her body running. So many of her friends were foodies that some appreciation had rubbed off on her, but eating alone didn’t make it fun enough to be worth the effort.

  There was a benefit to ignoring the waiter and paying some attention to food that she usually saw as merely sustenance. If she did those things with the front of her mind, she didn’t pay too much attention to her sketching, shutting out that inner editor. She’d continued to idly doodle more ideas to go with the first three as she ate.

  Powerful colors, but simpler.

  Less complex than Prince and Empress.

  More hopeful, brighter lights. But understated.

  Costumes to match the character rather than enhance them. To let the person show through without declaring the role outright, avoiding the dynamism of a chosen mantle that so overshadowed what nature had provided. That choice to cloak one’s self was so adult. Use the greens and golds of nature. The simplicity of youth.

  Youth.

  The children. There they were, smiling at her from her sketchpad, clothed like the parental Overlord and Empress. But they didn’t have their older brother Prince’s tragedy imprinted yet on either them or their costumes.

  She paged open the libretto and inspected the cast of characters. There was a younger daughter, a child soprano. But no little boy. Well, they could just go ahead and add a non-singing boy-child role who could follow after his older sister.

  That actually gave her drawings for one whole side of the cast, the Empress’ lineage. But what of the other side of the house, the marriage-sworn Princess and the Tragic Prince’s True Love? Before tomorrow’s rehearsal, she could start building the prototypes for the children’s costumes.

  Jerimy had assured her that they could build whatever she drew, or create patterns from anything she’d sewn. Though he had seemed less sure about the Empress’ outfit. But she always finished her design concept while doing the construction. That was her creative process. She’d have to build all of the major pieces at least once herself.

  Models. Jaspar and Tammy. Maybe Bill would let her borrow his kids as models. That would really help. She hadn’t done children’s clothing since her own first efforts, and those had been to hide, blend in, be invisible. Back when—

  “Perrin!”

  Perrin startled from her dark thoughts and almost dumped her cup of untouched chowder over her now-cold sandwich.

  “Josh! Come here, cutey. Give your Perrin a hug!” Josh Harper was so handsome. Totally safe, but fun and funny. Tall, with wavy, light brown hair and an easy smile.

  He gave her a big hug that she let herself be lost in for just a moment that washed away the last of her uncomfortable memories.

  “How are you, my love?” he teased her.

  “Still pining away. Waiting for you to throw over that woman you’re married to.”

  “Yes, I know. If only I didn’t love her so much. Alas, we’re never meant to be.” He gestured for permission then took the seat across from her.

  “I could take out a contract on her. I do know some really scary guys. Ones who would, like, do anything for me. Maybe, I dunno, Russell.”

  “Oh, now I’m really scared.” Josh wasn’t in town very often, but he, Russell, and Angelo had become good friends at first meeting. It didn’t hurt that Josh was a senior food-and-wine critic for Gourmet Week magazine and had consistently raved about Angelo’s restaurant both in print and on-line.

  “But what are you doing sitting alone, my love? Why is there no suitor begging at your feet? And where the heck is everybody? ‘Restaurant Closed for Honeymoon.’ It was my fifth anniversary, so I couldn’t make it to Jo and Angelo’s wedding. I went by to pay my respects and it’s closed. You have to tell me everything!”

  Perrin, glad for a friend, closed her pad and pulled her lunch in front of her while Josh ordered. Then she settled in and filled him in on all the details of Jo’s wedding, especially teasing him about the great food he’d missed.

  Bill couldn’t believe he was doing this. He had a thousand things to get done and here he was playing Seattle tour guide to a tenor and his supermodel girlfriend. They’d flown in together for tomorrow’s first rehearsal of Ascension.

  This was Wilson’s kind of job, but he was rubbing shoulders with some of the high-rolling donors at the Seattle Men’s Club.

  Jerimy had dropped the kids off with Bill’s sister for a couple hours, bless Lucy, and he’d been dragged out on the town. He and Lucy had issues that made it hard to be in the same room together, but none of them were about his kids.

  In her soft French accent, the towering blond model, several inches taller than Perrin, had suggested this Cutters Crabhouse place and he’d been thankful. He knew the whereabouts of every IHOP, Mitzel’s, and pizza house in all of Seattle. In-crowd bars and upscale waterfront restaurants, not so much.

  This place was near the Pike Place Market and oozed urban professional without actually flaunting it in your face like so many modern bars. It was all chrome and high tables with tall leather stools. Waiters in black pants and white shirts scooted about looking immensely sharp, unhurried, and efficient all at once. A wall of windows looked out toward the Seattle waterfront and the Market. Actually, if he ever again in his life found time to have a date, this would be a nice place to bring her.

  “Perrin!” The model cried out while they stood in the entry debating between the bar and the restaurant.

  There couldn’t be two women in Seattle named Perrin.

  Sure enough, he spotted the woman at the far side of the bar making grand and ridiculous gestures as if reenacting the Greek battle at Troy for an audience of hundreds instead of the one man who sat with her.

  Bill couldn’t believe Perrin was here. But her hair, hanked back into a ponytail, revealed the swirling blond stripe that proved her identity even at this distance. She still wore the black opera t-shirt, now partly covered by a knit vest of a rather electric blue.

  She was sitting by the window, practically huddled together with some far-too-handsome man. Bill and Carlo di Stefano dutifully followed in the model’s wake, who was so cliché that her waist-length blond hair actually floated along behind her. In moments, the two women we
re embracing like long lost sisters.

  “Melanie,” Perrin responded in full, bubbling flight. Again, the madcap waif revealed herself in full airhead-blond mode.

  Assuming she really was blond with dark-dyed hair, rather than dark-haired with a blond stripe or….

  “You’ve never met Josh, I don’t think. I’d introduce you, but he’s married and he’s mine if his wife ever leaves him because it is sure he’ll never leave her. He doesn’t even waver when I throw myself at him.”

  The model towered over the seated man, fists on hips. She glared down at Josh. “You would deny my friend Perrin? What sort of a cad are you, monsieur?”

  “A happily married one, I’m afraid.” He smiled easily up at the long blond.

  “Pity, or I might try to steal you from her. You are so very pretty,” the model sighed, then leaned down and kissed him cheerfully on both cheeks.

  “He is awfully pretty, isn’t he?” Perrin agreed.

  Bill wondered if all women were mad in this day and age. He was so out of touch with “the scene” now. Not that he’d ever really been in touch. He’d met Adira during senior year of college and that had been it for him. She’d been his quiet center, the diametric opposite of Ms. Perrin Williams in every way.

  Introductions were made and they moved to a larger table. He ended up sitting farthest from Perrin, clearly she was a favorite. What he found interesting was he felt a bit put out by how the seating wound up. He hadn’t been jealous of Josh Harper when he’d first spotted them so obviously enjoying each other’s company.

  Had he?

  Heavens above, maybe he was the one who was going mad.

  No, he was simply bothered by the fact that she was sitting there chatting with someone over lunch when she should be back in her shop working on the new designs. Though she had her libretto and sketchpad with her, closed, he noted with some chagrin. He did his best to not grind his teeth while finding something to chat about with Carlo while his model girlfriend ignored both of them.