Where Dreams Unfold

by M. L. Buchman

  “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, god 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 tagged along. 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 were 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?

  Gods 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.

  The problem was that while Carlo could sing beautifully in several languages, he spoke only German and Italian fluently. Bill’s German was almost as bad as Carlo’s English and his other languages were nonexistent beyond what was needed to manage opera schedules and stage directions.

  Here he was in an urban watering hole, which was slowly filling with the young and beautiful of Seattle. And all he really wanted was to go fetch the kids and bribe their happiness with take-out pizza.

  One of these days he was going to have to kill Wilson Jervis. At least sitting kitty-corner from Perrin, he was able to watch her, for he couldn’t seem to look away.

  # # #

  Perrin could feel Bill Cullen’s attention without turning to look. Why did his attention so affect her that she couldn’t turn in his direction?

  She’d also overheard his stumbling attempts to talk with Carlo. She wanted to tease him about it. See if she could goad him into a blustering defense about how he hadn’t followed her here because he’d fallen in love with her while she slept on his office couch.

  She also wanted to find out more about him and his family. He was so sweet with the kids. Perrin couldn’t imagine what that was like. Cassidy’s dad had been a good guy even if he didn’t speak much, letting Perrin come and stay during college vacations so that she never had to go home. Jo’s dad had been a sullen fisherman who lived on his boat or in a bar. Not a drunk, just an every-night regular until the day he’d died. Her own dad… She wouldn’t think of him.

  Jaspar clearly worshipped his dad, and Tammy, once she’d loosened up about being too careful, had leaned against him happily while she’d reached up to stuff confetti down the back of his shirt.

  “So, Perrin. I will be needing a terribly sexy dress.” Melanie was laying it on a little thick, sliding her hands down her sleek form, perhaps for the benefit of the others.

  A quick
wink showed that Perrin was absolutely right.

  “I will be coming to the opening night of Carlo’s opera. I must be the most beautiful woman on opening night so that Carlo will not be able sing without thinking of me. I must have another of your dresses.”

  “Did you know I’m designing the costumes for the opera?”

  “No? C’est vrai? Très bon!”

  “Yes! And the best part?”

  “Oui?”

  “It’s making Bill absolutely nuts!”

  Melanie and Perrin both turned to look at him. He turned from one face to the other, then he blushed.

  “Oo,” Melanie rested a hand over Perrin’s and whispered after Josh had started a conversation with him. “This one, he likes you.”

  Perrin looked back at Bill’s profile a little more closely. “No… I don’t think so. Besides, he’s married. You should see his kids. They’re wonderful. So alive. So un… ” She’d almost said undamaged.

  Melanie squeezed her hand. They had recognized that in each other at their very first meeting, a common bond even Jo and Cassidy didn’t understand more than intellectually.

  “So uninhibited,” she corrected. Then she glanced once more down the table at Bill. If she was being objective, she’d say that Melanie was right.

  But that made no sense.

  # # #

  Bill tried to sort out his own feelings, but wasn’t having much luck. He’d expected to spend the afternoon trapped in a yawning chasm of boredom as wide as the world, instead he was intrigued despite his better judgment. Perrin, so overdramatic when talking to Josh or teasing Carlo in broken Italian, was a different woman when talking to the supermodel. With Melanie, Perrin was calm, close, intimate. Her smile warm rather than madcap. Her gestures fluid and graceful rather than flamboyant and occasionally hazardous to those seated nearby.

  When at last the party broke up in late afternoon, he figured his duties for the Opera and Wilson were well paid. Melanie had certainly enjoyed herself, which appeared to be enough to keep Carlo happy. They were within walking distance of their hotel and headed off with many hugs between the two women.

  Melanie and Perrin were a little daunting to watch actually. Melanie was several inches taller, but they almost could have been sisters. Rather than having that emaciated look that so many models did, they were both simply slender, healthy-looking women of truly exceptional beauty. They were certainly easy enough together to be related.

  Josh was headed to Kirkland to review some waterfront restaurant that had just been opened by a two-star Michelin chef. He’d given back his stars, closed his major New York restaurant, and moved west to open a small bistro in the upscale suburb.

  Bill watched as Perrin stepped out into the afternoon light and raised her arms as if she were a goddess greeting the setting sun and the glistening waterfront. She strolled toward the waterfront to walk through the city park that lay between Cutters and the Pike Place Market.

  It was a beautiful spring evening, the breeze cool, but the air warm. Other people gathered in the park, sitting on benches and staring out at the ferries and container ships working their way through Seattle’s harbor. Nothing brought out the people of this city quite like a sunny day.

  Bill didn’t stop moving long enough to enjoy the view very often any more. But the view here was stunning, in more ways than one. When Perrin saw that he’d accompanied her, she turned to him.

  “I’d like to borrow your kids.”

  “What? No!” The last thing Bill wanted was his kids under this woman’s influence. Or getting more attached to her. They’d already started asking him questions this afternoon once she’d left.

  Jaspar liked her, dubbing her as “cool.” His current “retro-word.” Bill had just introduced the kids to Travolta in Grease. There was more going on than “cool” though. The little twerp was always hunting for a new mother to marry his dad. For a while his choice had been Nia at the front desk, then his fifth-grade teacher, and now Perrin was on the verge of replacing Olivia Newton-John. Jaspar didn’t quite understand that Olivia Newton-John, while still a fine-looking woman, was in her sixties now and his dad wasn’t. Jaspar’s only measure? Being older than his big sister, which meant you were old… just like his dad. Great!

  Tammy had been just the opposite, though making the same assumptions. His pointing out that he’d met her on Monday and this was only Wednesday did nothing to appease his daughter’s suspicions. A teenager who was in and out of crushes almost weekly wouldn’t understand that actual, adult relationships didn’t happen overnight.

  “Why can’t I borrow them?” Perrin asked as she arrived at the thick brass railing that overlooked the waterfront. “I promise I’ll give them back.”

  “What do you want them for?” He moved up beside her, giving that anonymous nod that Seattleites always traded with strangers to the guy just a few feet farther along.

  Perrin flipped open the sketchbook and pointed to a drawing. Three thumbnails across the top and then the two larger drawings of children. His children!

  “Having them as models would really help.” Perrin had drawn Jaspar and Tammy in costumes.

  She’d captured Jaspar with his wide-eyed wonder at the world. His costume vibrated with that energy as if always reaching for the next thing. He looked caught on the verge of his favorite question: “Why?” He’d gone through the “Why” phase when he was four, just like every other child on the planet, but now he’d circled back around to it, and this time really wanted to know rather than just being assured that there was indeed order to the universe.

  Tammy was different. Perrin had caught her on the edge of becoming a woman, but less ready than she thought she was. In ways Bill couldn’t sort out, Perrin had captured both her surety and the slight fracturing that occurred from being overeager to grow up. He glanced around to see if anyone else was watching this shocking exposure of his children’s true characters, but everyone was interested in their own world, not his. The cool breeze sent a chill up his spine. Who was this woman? Had she been researching his kids somehow? No, she was just…what? A psychic? A…

  “There’s no boy character in the opera,” Bill retreated to the known. He had to, to cover just how perfectly this enigmatic woman had captured his children, as if she’d known them their whole lives.

  She waved the libretto at him, “Hello. Not stupid. So add one who doesn’t sing. Jaspar would love the role.”

  “Little twerp would,” Bill had to admit with a smile that he hadn’t intended. “But his sister would be some kind of pissed if he got to wear a cool costume on stage and she didn’t.”

  “Is the girl’s part cast yet?”

  Bill tried to think through the cast list. The major singers had all been cast a year ahead for scheduling reasons, and the standing Emerald City Opera Chorus would fill all of the villager and guard roles as well as most of the courtiers. Those with half-solo contracts could fill the Chief of Guard and Missionary roles. But a couple of the middle characters weren’t yet cast. That included the child. Children?

  “Tammy doesn’t sing, except with her guitar.”

  “So teach her! She only has seven lines and three of them are only one word long.”

  Bill looked up from the drawing to study Perrin. The sun was almost directly behind her, making her face hard to see. As if she were deeply inscrutable, mysterious, so powerful that she wore the sun as a halo.

  She couldn’t have had time to read the libretto more than once since she’d left the Costume Shop this afternoon, there simply wasn’t time. And the child’s lines were spread out. Odd thing to tally on a single reading, unless she’d somehow tallied everything. To avoid feeling totally humbled by the shining Empress, he’d let that one go unremarked.

  The light breeze that always ghosted along the Seattle waterfront on even the calmest days made her hair, now out of its ponytail, dance on
her shoulders. The brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen argued that the blond stripe, or something near to it was her proper hair color, though the dyed-black look was a nice contrast to her pale skin. It also accented her strong cheekbones.

  She’d added a fleece jacket. It was strange in a way that took him a moment to identify.

  “Black t-shirt, blue knit vest, REI jacket. You look almost… ” He bit his tongue to avoid saying it.

  “Almost human.” A wicked glint came into her eyes.

  “Uh, I was going to say normal.”

  “Normal compared to what?”

  Bill grinned at her, “I think this would be a good time for me to be in a different conversation.”

  She grinned and leaned against the rail but stayed facing him.

  He couldn’t help noticing that the guy a little further down the rail was admiring the view, and not the one of the waterfront. He turned away when Bill glared at him.

  “Okay, Mr. Cullen. What conversation would you like to be in? Shall I go get one of those first-date conversation deck of cards for you? I’m sure I saw some in one of the game stalls in the Market.” She waved a fine-fingered hand over her shoulder indicating Pike Place Market behind her.

  “You’re amazing!” He didn’t know where that came from, but she was. Intelligent, funny, wild… amazing.

  After a long pause, she slowly stood up straight, took her sketch pad back from him, and, closing it, slid it beside the libretto. Pulling her jacket closed against a sudden gust, he could feel a type of shield forming around her, like on the Starship Enterprise.

  “I think I should be going.”

  It was only then, like he’d been caught in a time warp while watching her change, that he realized that he didn’t want her to go. Not at all.

  “Why?”

  She began moving off.

  “No, wait.”

  She stopped.

  “Why?”

  For a long moment she stood still, rigid, then turned to face him. There was no sign of the wild blond, or the powerful Empress. Instead, in their place, stood the waif with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.