The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  “This is just our first sing-through,” Bill had informed her. “We need to start getting the cast comfortable with the new music. If this were a repertoire opera, they would arrive three weeks before the opening rather than six and we’d move right into staging.”

  Perrin sat between Wilson Jervis and Melanie in a row of folding chairs along one wall. The principal singers sat in a circle in the middle of the stage, along with the orchestra conductor, the director, Bill, and the Chorus Master who would sing all of the minor roles for now.

  Bill had greeted her briefly, barely offering a smile, back in his bustling Overlord role. Perrin could be okay with that. One kiss didn’t change the world. She wouldn’t even try to count how many men she’d been in and out of love with over the years. Not as many as Jo and Cassidy thought by a long shot, Perrin enjoyed giving them a good story and something to worry about, but more than she’d care to admit.

  Some part of her was irritated at Bill’s apparent lack of ongoing interest. That kiss had certainly rocked her charts. The Tragic Prince, all his hopes and desires and needs had been wrapped up in that kiss. That she was the woman who had drawn that out of Bill Cullen ranked as a startling concept.

  That she had lost herself in that kiss, losing track of where she was and who she was, and simply been present in that moment was an even greater surprise. The one thing Perrin never was? Out of control. Deep inside, she had a very rigid grip on who she was and what she would do.

  But for a kiss like Bill’s, perhaps losing a bit of her control wasn’t a bad thing.

  The more she watched Bill as he organized the rehearsal, the less put out she felt about his simple greeting.

  Everyone came to him with questions. He had two assistants who constantly brought him questions, some about Ascension, some about the Turandot closing this weekend. Singers took cajoling. The writer—the librettist she’d been corrected—and the composer were both there because it was a new opera. The former, a thin young man who practically shimmered with nerves and the latter a staunch woman who apparently thought lyrics were a waste of time and should be changed to fit her music or better yet, removed entirely so that they didn’t interfere with her creation. Clearly they were not on speaking terms and Bill had to handle all communication between them.

  All of this took Bill’s attention. As she watched him, she began to see quite how good he was at what he did. The conductor had heavily marked his score with questions, but Bill had found a way for the composer to work with him rather than slugging him as she seemed more prone to do. The singers actually cared what order they sat in around the circled chairs. One man was so big that a sturdier chair had to be found.

  When Renata Donatello made her entrance, the room had gone quiet as all attention shifted to her. Renata had taken one look at the Empress’ dress and insisted on wearing it to the rehearsal. Perrin and Jerimy had made some quick alterations this morning, thankfully ones that didn’t require rebuilding the whole costume, then added the red lining. The compliments that swirled about the room upon Renata’s grand entrance left Perrin feeling a little giddy.

  “That is the dress I want,” Melanie leaned in to whisper. “I want to be powerful like that. That’s how every woman wants to feel. You have such incredible skills, my friend.”

  Now Perrin was having trouble breathing. To have one of New York’s most successful models say such things… Perrin could only marvel at what it took to actually feel a stamp of approval, as if what she’d done for over a decade didn’t count until this moment.

  Two years ago, she’d still been struggling on her own. Now she had practically abandoned the front of the shop, adding a manager and an assistant, and was spending most of her time designing and building. Not that she was complaining, that’s what she loved best, it was just surprising.

  And to have a woman who was constantly clothed in the finest designer labels insist on having one of her dresses… It made Perrin feel oddly capable and suddenly twice as uncertain, as if she were faking being a designer as hard as she was faking being even close to normal.

  Melanie had a point though. While the Empress’ dress wouldn’t be quite right for her, something closely related would work. Melanie was too sensual a woman for the austere look of the Empress. The punch of power would look good on her, but she needed something other. Perrin flipped to a fresh page on her pad and began sketching a few ideas while Bill organized the singers.

  Perrin became focused on the design, building layer upon layer of detail for the dress she’d design for Melanie until she realized that a rush of sound was carrying her forward. She looked up startled to see the singers already well into the first act.

  Opera had never been part of her repertoire. She preferred a good band for dancing and didn’t really care what era. Blue Scholars, The Band Perry, and The Black Keys shared her playlists with Maroon 5, Madonna, and Styx. Nothing had prepared her for the powerful wall of sound that the opera singers produced with just their voices.

  It was in Italian, which didn’t help her much, but it didn’t matter. Renata was not ordering around Carlo; instead the Empress was crashing a mandate down upon the Prince’s head. When the barrel-chested deep bass of Geoffrey Palliser joined the fray, the room practically shook with the Overlord’s derision. The Prince’s soaring tenor fought for freedom, but found little space between the wall of the Empress’ power and the bulldozer of the Overlord’s driving rhythms.

  It was so completely different from anything she’d heard before it was hard to make sense of it. Even the symphonies that Jo and Cassidy had occasionally dragged her to were no comparison. These weren’t instruments, these were people. They weren’t hurling music at each other, but rather it was a battle of pure emotion expressed through singing.

  The sound swept her along. The mezzo-soprano Princess, her lower-voiced, contralto Maid-servant Confessor, and the high-coloratura True Love vied for the Prince’s attention. The audience’s hopes and fears would swing back and forth between them. Whichever one triumphed, it would reshape the future of the kingdom, perhaps alter the fabric of the very world.

  The final five-voiced chord of Act I crashed Perrin back into her seat and the dim world of reality. It took her a moment to reorient herself in the rehearsal studio space. Several of the singers were talking about the roles, but Carlo and Geoffrey, apparently old friends, were catching up on the latest Italy versus England soccer rivalries.

  “What do you think?” Bill was squatting before her chair and looking at her with the kind smile she’d been missing earlier.

  “I think I’m in love!” Perrin could still feel the sound of the music vibrating through her.

  “Not with Carlo, I hope. I might get jealous.”

  Perrin placed a finger on the center of his forehead and pushed until he fell back on his rear end.

  “Wow! This is so cool!” Tammy had taken up her brother’s adjective.

  Jaspar, on the other hand, had only one comment to make about Perrin’s shop, “Ugh! Girl clothes.” And then he’d immediately put on his best bored look, one that Bill knew all too well. Though his son did stop to admire his reflection from the dress made of little mirrors. Bill convinced himself that the mannequin’s chest was simply the largest expanse for Jaspar to observe himself in and that Bill shouldn’t read anything deeper into it. When Jaspar started making faces at himself, Bill felt better. A little.

  Tammy took her time. She’d spent enough afternoons down in the Costume Shop with Jerimy that she actually inspected how some of the clothes were made. She “just happened” to pass close to him at one point during her inspection to ask him a question.

  “Are these really good, Dad?”

  “Yeah,” he acknowledged just as Perrin came over from chatting volubly with a customer now departing in a brand-new blue silk jacket that was clearly a custom fit. “Really good.”

  Tammy nodded and wandered off while Bill inspected the vision headed his way.

  Perrin wore a blazer
of green and yellow that made her look like nothing so much as a leprechaun. She even sported a bright green hat, shaped like that of a racy secret agent, slanting forward and left, partly covering one eye. When she approached, he saw that she still wore the opera t-shirt beneath the blazer. It made for a deep pseudo-cleavage of black that reached to her sternum, without being the least bit indecent. No one should look good in such an outfit, but she certainly did.

  She greeted the kids and then leaned close enough that only he would hear. “I thought about not wearing the t-shirt just to make you crazy.” And then in the same breath but a louder voice, “Come on, kids. Let me show you something cool I just made for someone getting married in a couple weeks.”

  The kids followed her happily enough.

  Bill tried, but couldn’t. She’d riveted him right to the floor with the image of her in nothing but that deeply plunging blazer.

  “Pizza as promised!” Tammy followed Ms. Williams as she led them like a girl scout troop into the back room carrying the just-delivered boxes.

  Jasp had offered Ms. Williams an “okay I guess” on the new wedding clothes she’d showed them. Then he’d rolled his eyes at Tammy in long-suffering pain. Dad had taught them good manners, but he and Tammy both knew Jasp’s pretending to have any interest at all was complete baloney.

  “She’s pretty,” Jasp offered up just in case Ms. Williams had caught his eye roll.

  Tammy couldn’t look away from the female mannequin, all dressed up for her wedding. It was like the dress in the photo on Dad’s bedside table. Well, not really, but it was enough to remind her of what it had felt like to have a mother and how much she missed her every day.

  Her dad was acting all weird when he finally joined them in the back room. And Ms. Williams was looking awfully pleased with herself. Then she set the pizza boxes on the big table. They hadn’t even spoken together, never mind anything else. Tammy had made sure to stay close to Ms. Williams, just to be sure. But she must have missed something that was going on.

  “I ordered two pizzas. Half a pepperoni for Jaspar, because all boys like pepperoni. Half a combo with extra meat for your dad because he probably eats too much of what the kids want and not enough of what he wants.” The boys dug right in.

  She turned to Tamara, “I got us half veggie and half Hawaiian. How’d I do, Tamara?”

  “Everyone calls me Tammy.”

  Ms. Williams took a slice of the veggie and looked at her over it. “I don’t know. I think I’ll stick with your full name, it sort of fits you better. You’re no longer a little girl.”

  “Only Mom ever called me Tamara, Ms. Williams.”

  Ms. Williams didn’t look embarrassed, or apologize like other adults Tammy pushed back against.

  “Your call. But it sounds like your mom was a smart lady. I’m Perrin by the way. I have no idea who that Ms. Williams person is.” She actually shuddered which made it kind of funny.

  “Tamara is okay, I guess.” Then she looked away. She needed to think about Perrin being all human and normal. She didn’t talk down to her at all, which was weird for an adult. It could be a setup, but it didn’t feel like one.

  Jasp and Dad had each taken huge bites. They were grinning at each other like idiots as they both hooted out cooling breaths over too-hot pizza.

  “Well, you certainly nailed those two lame-os.”

  Tammy took a small bite of her pizza, Hawaiian was her absolute favorite, then figured out how to tell if the woman was being fake-nice to a child. She kept her voice low, so that the lame-os wouldn’t hear.

  “Have you kissed him yet?”

  Perrin looked at her carefully, but didn’t stop chewing on her pizza. If she was really shocked, she didn’t show it.

  She sat on one of the stools and waited for Tammy to climb up on one as well. They were closer to the same height that way.

  “Once. And I wonder just how pissed your dad will be that I told you that.”

  Tammy had only had conversations like this once or twice with her girlfriends, and half the time she lied and she bet her friends did too.

  She’d also bet that Perrin had just told her the truth.

  “You kissed any boys yet?”

  Tammy shot a quick look over at her dad, but he wasn’t paying attention. She could feel the heat rushing to her cheeks and did her best to hide it with another bite of pizza, but her stomach was suddenly all twisty.

  “A few,” she tried to shrug it off, and wondered why she’d just told this woman who’d kissed her dad the truth. “Still don’t know what the big deal is.”

  “When it’s the right boy, trust me it will be.”

  Tammy looked up into those blue eyes. Perrin was talking about kissing as if it was the most normal thing on the planet. As if it wasn’t a matter of social standing, or social media nightmare if you kissed the wrong boy. She tried to find a response, but she couldn’t. Perrin was just watching her.

  “And until it is a big deal… ” Perrin leaned in and whispered. “So not worth the rest of it.”

  Tammy hadn’t thought of it that way. She thought about the boys who wanted to grab, some of them were already asking if she was still a virgin, she knew three girls in her class who for sure weren’t. But they were kinda slutty.

  But what if she simply said she was waiting until it was a big deal? It just might work. It would sure avoid a lot of hassles.

  Maybe Perrin knew what she was talking about.

  Bill watched Perrin work. He worried about exposing the kids to her, but he shouldn’t be. He’d also “exposed” them to every woman at the opera, both the full-timers and the artists who came in on a freelance contract for just one opera then moved on. Several had made him offers and he’d been tempted more than once, at least for a couple nights of no-strings fling. But he’d never figured out how to actually date with the kids around. They knew his schedule as intimately as he did. Aunt Lucy’s on show nights and the occasional crisis at the opera, but nothing else. Evenings were their family-together time.

  So, why was he worried about Perrin?

  He’d watched her with his kids and she was great. Better than Nia or Jerimy or a half-dozen of the others at the opera? Maybe, maybe not. But they appeared comfortable around her.

  Jaspar thought it was all just a lark. He’d giggled when Perrin had measured him, though she’d let Bill do the in-seam measurement while the two girls tactfully were busy down at the other end of the room. He’d eaten so much pizza that Bill was afraid he’d be sick, but instead he finally settled at one end of the worktable with a book of Kipling’s Captains Courageous that he had to read for school.

  Tammy was a different matter. There was something between her and Perrin, something that he hadn’t seen happen. It was like two matadors dancing about a ring with no bull present. Testing each other cautiously yet on the same side. Tammy had followed Perrin around and watched everything she was doing, asking a lot of technical questions along the way. Bill had no idea she’d picked up so much from Jerimy and the others in costuming.

  Perrin slowed down enough to show her what she was doing, but wouldn’t let her sew. “No, not the machines. These aren’t like home sewing machines. Maybe I can teach you some other time if it’s okay with your dad.”

  When Tammy had complained, Perrin hadn’t turned for Bill’s support. She stepped right up to the plate, much like a good parent would.

  “You can try the Singer Featherweight some other day.”

  Tammy’s, “Oh man! That’s so lame!” groan only elicited a smile from Perrin.

  “That’s my first sewing machine. I bought it for myself with my own money and taught myself to sew on it. Good clothing isn’t about cool machines. It starts here,” she tapped Tammy’s chest over her heart. “Later it goes here,” she tapped Tammy’s head. “Figuring out how to build it, that’s the easy part.”

  Easy part. Bill remembered Jerimy’s comment about the construction of the Empress’ costume, that even seeing the finished g
own he wasn’t sure how it had been done.

  Perrin had pre-built both of the children’s costumes she’d shown him yesterday. Just yesterday? Didn’t the woman ever sleep?

  Now she trimmed, pinned, and seamed with an easy assuredness in her own skills. No sign of the sad waif. And with shedding the leprechaun blazer, she’d also shed most of the eccentric crazy-girl.

  In the wake of their departure they’d left a very pleasant woman with a crazy hair dye-job. And a very competent one.

  It took less than an hour for both costumes to come together. He was shooed to the far end of the studio and forced to sit with his back to them for the final fitting. He’d seen the clothes all evening on the worktable, he didn’t know what the big deal was. But by then she had both kids on her side, and Tammy gave him one of her, “Don’t be a dork!” looks. He finally complied.

  For lack of anything better to do, he began reading the Kipling. He’d forgotten the story. Two young boys, one arrogant and lost at sea, another raised on a Gloucester fishing vessel working the Grand Banks. And how the boys grew into men. He really wasn’t ready for Jaspar to be doing that, not anytime soon. No more than he was ready for Tammy to grow into a woman which was happening much faster. She—

  “Okay,” he jumped when Perrin spoke close beside him.

  He started to turn, but she stopped him with a quick hand on his cheek, exactly where she’d placed it yesterday as they kissed. They shared a look that proved he wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking far too much about that moment.

  “Close your eyes.” He did, though reluctantly. It was the first excuse he’d found to be this close to her all day. She took his hands and guided him to his feet and back down the workroom. He squeezed her hands in his, an unobtrusive enough gesture. She stumbled. Using their shared grip, he had to steady her as she continued to lead him. He liked having that effect on her.

  “Okay, are you ready?”

  He nodded.

  She let go then gave him permission to open his eyes.