The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  One day she’d been going so crazy that she’d actually shown Tamara how to scale a pattern to different measurements for one of her simpler designs. Perrin hadn’t been able to find a single fault with her work.

  “I’d like to offer Tamara a part-time job,” she’d told Bill during one of their nightly phone chats.

  When he was done spluttering in surprise she’d explained.

  “Minimum wage, maximum ten hours per week. Any time she spends on her own clothes are on her own, but when she’d helping me, I have to pay her. It’s only fair.”

  “What about your time? Twenty seconds ago you were telling me how frantically busy you were.”

  And she was. “I wouldn’t mind. I’ll just… ”

  “You’ll just charge my twerp daughter three dollars an hour for any time you spend helping her on her own projects. Any time you spend training her for your projects is your own cost, and no fudging on her behalf, Williams. She keeps a timecard, you make sure it’s correct every week. If she learns something about business while she’s doing this, it will make it more digestible for me. And she pays for her own materials—”

  “No.”

  “Yes. At cost. Retail.”

  “Wholesale,” she’d countered, caving that far because she knew Bill was the better businessperson of the two of them. All she really cared about was the design, which is why Cassidy and Jo had made her hire Raquel to run the store.

  And they’d worked it out. Raquel had drawn up a contract. Tamara and Bill had reviewed it together until Perrin was sure Tamara understood every clause and then she’d executed it, with her dad signing beneath.

  And now, at the end of the wildest and best week of her life in Seattle, she couldn’t wait to sit with her friends. Just as she entered the front door to Cutters she spotted Carlo and Melanie leaving the restaurant. She rushed up to them.

  “You’re back!” she hugged Melanie in greeting. “Hi Carlo, you’re looking very mellow.” She offered him a broad wink and the three of them shared a laugh.

  “Yes, she last night arrivata. Little…” he turned to Melanie and said something quickly in Italian.

  Melanie translated in her soft French accent, “We did not much last night sleep. Oh sorry, translating is tricky. We haven’t slept much since I arrived.” They shared a smile that explained exactly why. “But now he must or Monsieur Director will be very angry with him tomorrow morning when he can’t sing a note.”

  “Perfect!” Perrin kissed Carlo on each cheek then grabbed Melanie’s hand. “C’mon, you’re my date tonight. Go away, Carlo. Go sleep.”

  Melanie wished him a good night, kissed him sweetly enough, but Melanie appeared a little too happy for an excuse to join her.

  Carlo, bemused, headed off.

  “What was that about, Melanie?”

  “What was what…” she trailed off and made an eloquent and graceful shrug. “We—”

  “No, wait. Don’t tell me. You’ll just have to repeat it for the others.”

  “What others?”

  Perrin didn’t bother to explain but dragged her into the bar. Cassidy, Jo, and Maria were already at a four-top table. They all welcomed Melanie, and Perrin could detect no hesitation between Cassidy and Melanie, even though the one had married the man that the other woman had loved. They soon scared up an extra stool and all crammed around the small table.

  “Well, tell us.” Perrin jumped in and watched Melanie considering. She liked the supermodel. In addition to loving Russell despite all his rough edges, she’d always been so kind to Perrin about her designs. And there was a shared pain the others would never, thankfully, understand, but had been obvious to both of them soon after meeting each other. While Melanie had faced far less physical abuse, she too had risen from a trailer-trash background and a beyond domineering mother. A past she covered with an unbreakable calm and a soft French accent.

  Perrin watched Melanie’s shields of caution continue to rise. True, she’d only sat with Jo and Cassidy a couple times and had barely met Mama Maria.

  “Okay,” Perrin jumped in for her to set her at ease. Funny how a little embarrassment could actually do that sometimes. “Unlike me who is so falling in love but not getting nearly enough time with my man, Melanie is getting too much time and not enough romance. How much longer does Carlo have with our Melanie? Will he make it to opening night? Your fans want to know and we want to know now. We promise we won’t tell. Right everyone?” Perrin made a criss-cross between her breasts and glared at each of the others until they did as well.

  “You’re safe now,” she told Melanie. “You can trust them.” She knew from her own experience with Bill that “safe” and “trust” were very powerful words that perhaps Melanie needed to hear. Mama Maria looked at her with the tiniest widening of her eyes that told Perrin she’d done it exactly right, enough so to surprise even Maria.

  Melanie grimaced, then threw up her hands and laughed, a bright musical sound that turned a dozen heads at the nearer tables who were trying not to stare at the supermodel suddenly in their midst.

  “Yes. Maybe. Carlo is very nice, but he has…limitations.”

  “Perhaps he is good for fun, but not worth keeping long term.” Cassidy made it a statement of perfect understanding.

  Perrin leaned over and kissed her on the shoulder in thanks for making Melanie welcome.

  “Yes. I should like to attend opening night, Carlo tells me such wonderful things about the music and the staging and the costumes,” she rested one of her elegant hands over Perrin’s.

  Perrin envied her those hands. Melanie’s first jobs had been as a hand model, and they were still one of the best features on the beautiful woman.

  “And I am not mercenary, he is charming and fun. But maybe when the curtain comes down on the opera, perhaps so it does on Carlo and Melanie.”

  They stopped to order drinks and appetizers. Perrin ordered one of her usual Cosmos. Melanie tasted the white wine Cassidy had ordered for the table and, after a soft “oh my” of appreciation, she asked for an empty glass and cheerfully accepted Perrin’s judgment of “wimp.” Crab cakes, shrimp cocktail, and a big bowl of steamers would get them started. The waitress left behind a plate of Cutter’s focaccia bread gloriously drowned in rosemary, garlic, and olive oil.

  “So…” Melanie turned to Perrin, clearly not wholly comfortable with being the center of attention, “In love and not enough time with… Was I right about Bill Cullen? He does like you?”

  “He told me…” Perrin looked around the table. Well, if Melanie didn’t want to be at the center of attention having just joined them for the first time, Perrin knew exactly how to shift the conversation for a good long while. “Bill told me that he loves me.”

  There were understanding nods around the table. Some softening of looks, but it was something most men said too easily and they all knew that.

  “And I believe him.”

  That knocked back everyone around the table.

  Mama Maria reached a hand right across Melanie’s lap to grab Perrin’s hand.

  Perrin took a deep breath to steady herself then met Maria’s gaze. They didn’t need words. For five long heartbeats they held hands and looked at each other. For five poundings of blood in Perrin’s ears, emotions flowed across Maria’s face as they must have across her own. Fear and hope, relief and amazement, truth and acceptance, and finally approval. That was all it took. Then Maria’s face lit with a smile that could brighten the whole world. With a quick squeeze, she sat back and apologized to Melanie.

  Maria placed her hand briefly to her throat, where the gold chain that Perrin had given for her wedding rested every day, often Maria’s only jewelry aside from Hogan’s wedding band. It had been a gift from the heart and a bond between them. Perrin had to fight hard to keep the tears inside where they belonged at Maria’s ultimate sign of hope for a marriage and a future.

  The others were still gearing up to question her all about being in love and why she believ
ed him. Perrin wasn’t sure if she was up for that, so she went for a much safer topic. She leaned in close and all the others leaned in as well, including Melanie. She glanced around to meet each of their gazes before whispering her subject change.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get time for a decent tumble from a single dad? You wouldn’t believe how creative we’ve had to be.”

  Mama Maria laughed. Of course she’d know what Perrin was doing, but the others all fell for the trap and wanted to know just how creative.

  The problem, Perrin had to admit that night as she crawled into bed alone and watched the ceiling spin slowly, was that even being creative had achieved so little.

  She and Bill had found that their best opportunity to see each other at all was having lunch together. On days when he was too busy to even leave the office, she’d at least arrive with sandwiches to share at his desk among the prop layout plans. She’d never thought about the problems of a scepter being carried off one side of the stage, then needed at the head of a staircase on the opposite side two scenes later.

  When she could coax him out of the office, they lunched in her apartment. Okay, they had a fantastic time—more than once they hadn’t made it past leaning against the closed front door—followed by him bolting down a sandwich on the ten-block drive back to the office.

  They had tried finding a moment at the Opera offices, but with the pending production the staff was increasing and there wasn’t even a quiet corner. The Opera normally employed a hundred people full-time. But for a new build of a major new opera, there were over four hundred people underfoot everywhere they went.

  Then the ballet that had been in residence at the Seattle Opera House after the production of Turandot had closed and cleared out. Emerald City Opera descended on the Opera House like a hammer blow. In twenty-four hours the main electrical, pressurized air, and propane systems had been in place. There were parts of the set that would appear to burn during the dramatic second act, giving the Tragic Prince physical scars to match the psychological ones.

  Forty-eight more hours and the set was in place. Impossibly, hundreds of pieces of scenery were delivered and assembled. Two trucks constantly worked the loading dock, disgorging great loads from the scene construction shop, that were then rapidly assembled. Another truck was actually parked on an elevator a story below that then delivered it directly to the stage right wing.

  The crews who had been setting up in the Emerald City Opera’s offices were also preparing for the move across town. The lowest floor of the offices was normally props storage. One end had been taken over by an eight-person props team. They’d even backed up a semi-truck trailer to a loading door which contained a full machine shop where they made anything they didn’t already have: swords, lanterns, armor, fake foodstuffs for the grand banquet, including the tables and tablecloths. It was amazing to watch.

  The other end of the ground floor was taken by fifteen electricians servicing and calibrating the lighting instruments. Massive coils of cable were stacked on pallets or dumped into bright yellow rolling hampers. Light poles and triangular steel trusses made up of those funny zig-zag metal pipes were loaded onto semi-trailers for the fast approaching move-in day.

  This world was a mystery to Perrin. It was also the only place she ran into Jaspar during the whole week. But he looked to be very busy learning how to wire a connector properly, so she didn’t disturb him.

  On the second floor, the costume department was really humming. The chorus had started coming through for fittings. A dozen seamstresses were fitting pre-made pieces to measurements cards. And altering the many costumes that didn’t work out quite right. A man they planned to use as a village cartman had recently joined a gym and his shoulders no longer matched his card nor fit his intended uniform. A woman was four months pregnant, still able to sing, but her form-fitting gown had to be switched with someone else’s less revealing attire.

  In the middle of the floor, a temporary makeup department had been set up. There, Mika worked with five other specialists to turn the photographs of the designs he and Perrin had developed into face cards for every single character: base powder Ben Nye BV71, Sandy Rose CR3 cheek rouge, auburn eye pencil blended with… The list went on to define the lip outline which emphasized them at a distance, degree of blending or highlights, aging lines on backs of hands and neck, wigs, prosthetics like latex scars, stage blood to be coordinated with costuming as they’d be laundering it out of the costume after every performance.

  A couple of the major roles, the Prince, Princess, and the True Love had several face cards. For Carlo as the Prince sometimes he had a makeup call between two scenes as his look evolved: hope to scars to loss of hope to premature age to destitution and ultimate failure as he dies in the arms of the Princess who loves him. His final aria ending with a demented cry for his murdered True Love.

  “So Bill,” Perrin asked after they’d stolen a kiss in the office’s central freight elevator, “Is it always going to be this difficult for us to get some time to…”

  “Make love?” He’d brushed a hand down her body that electrified every single nerve ending.

  “Oh man. You have to cut that out.”

  “Cut out this?” he kissed her fiercely for two seconds while grasping her wildly. “Or stop telling you that I love you?”

  Perrin made sure that her clothes were straight by the time the elevator stopped even if her pulse was thoroughly chaotic.

  “Okay,” she struggled for a breath then nodded for him to open the heavy steel gates that split horizontally across the middle to raise and lower.

  He shoved the door down so that it clanged open

  “Don’t stop doing either one,” she walked out onto the main office floor, wishing she was far steadier than she felt.

  Chapter 16

  “Today’s a dark day,” Tammy informed Perrin as she slipped into the back seat of Bill’s car. Jasp was being a total pill. Sure it was his turn up front, but he hadn’t even offered to move back for Perrin. Perrin had shrugged it off before Dad could dig in.

  “What’s a ‘dark’ day?” Perrin had on a nice blouse of pale blue, so plain it was almost a shock. But Tammy was learning. She could see just how well made it was and how perfectly it fit, not clinging, but not loose and sloppy like some generic store thing. It didn’t have to be wild like their red dresses to be amazing. That’s what she wanted to do, make clothes that made her look that nice. Even Perrin’s jeans fit way better than Tammy’s despite how long she’d spent poking around the mall’s racks to find a pair that fit just right.

  “Dark day means the stage is unlit. Everybody gets a day off. So today’s pretty much the last time we’re gonna see Dad even close to sane for the two weeks until opening night.”

  “At least you get to see me at rehearsals,” he called back as he pulled into traffic.

  “Yeah, that’s righteous,” Tammy replied. It was Jasp’s latest word, though it tended to make Dad snort with laughter when they used it. She wondered if Jasp had figured it wrong. “If you think he’s been busy these last couple weeks, just wait. It’s cra—”

  “That’s what I wanna do,” Jaspar cut her off. It wasn’t his normal kind of cut-off.

  Something was wrong and she didn’t know what it was. And it wasn’t just today. With Jasp she always knew, but not this time.

  “I’m gonna do what Dad does. I’m gonna know all about electricity and machine tools and none of that costume stuff.”

  Dad glanced up into the mirror in apology to Perrin, and Tammy could see the look. When had she grown tall enough to see his eyes in the rearview? Very righteous.

  But Jasp missed it. He usually caught onto adult stuff faster than she did. Tammy had found she had to figure out things that Jaspar saw right away and blurted out. He was a just a stupid boy in a lot of ways, but he was “people smart.”

  She hated when he descended into one of his troll moods. It reminded her too much of when Mom died. That had been ba
d for all of them, Jasp had refused to believe her for weeks that Mom was never coming home again. And Dad had been mostly out of it. She’d learned to anticipate and defuse the troll, but she always knew why Jasp was doing it. Tammy couldn’t see this one yet. She’d have to get him aside later.

  “I have to worry about the ‘costume stuff’ too,” Dad tromped down on him. “Though between Perrin and Jerimy I have to worry less than usual.” He looked at Perrin again in the rearview mirror.

  Wow! Did Dad have any idea how much he was showing how he felt about Perrin? They were way past fourth kiss. She was losing track of everything. When had that happened?

  Jasp just hunched down in the front seat and glared out the window.

  Perrin noted that Russell actually looked pleased rather than amused when Jaspar declared his boat, the Lady Amalthea, as “righteous.”

  “I named her for a unicorn who turned briefly into a princess but decided she was better off as a unicorn.”

  “Smart lady!” Jaspar declared.

  While the guys were bonding over the boat, Perrin climbed aboard and gave Tammy a hand to steady her. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and there were a lot of boats headed out from the Shilshole Marina. There was a fresh wind, which meant good sailing, but the weather was warm enough she’d probably only need a light windbreaker once they were under way.

  Perrin had always liked the boat, she was like her owner in so many ways. She was just as pretty as Russell was handsome, but she was rough around the edges too. The two of them matched. Russell had spent a year refinishing the 1940s sloop, Russell had taught her that meant one mast not all the way at the very front. But for all her fine finish, she was narrow inside.

  “It’s called a Pullman style cabin,” Russell told the kids on the guided tour before they left dock. They’d all climbed together down the narrow ladder until they were standing well below the waterline. “Like those railroad cars in the old movies where you sleep down one side and walk down the other.”