Where Dreams Unfold

by M. L. Buchman

  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 hell 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 sex. 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 gown 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.

  There Jaspar stood, not merely as he’d been drawn. He’d become the youthful promise unfulfilled by the Tragic Prince. He was still so pure, hope for the future brimming over with energy and life. The contrast on stage would be shocking when the boy entered in Act II Scene II. The Prince would be abruptly diminished in the audience’s eyes, because here, embodied in Bill’s ten-year-old child, was everything the Prince had been given as a birthright but been unable to attain.

  And then a young woman stepped from behind the screen. Her dark mane of red hair swept up off her shoulders. Her dark eyes watching him with a frankness and a knowledge that no child could possess. There was a tragedy about her, as if she understood her elder brother’s failure where the younger did not.

  The clothes revealed nothing beyond her sweet shoulders, nothing except the promise of everything she was to become. It would be she who survived the ultimate tragedy. She who carried on to become the next Empress. This was not some young girl, this was a young woman, a woman just born from the child she’d been and discovering her own power.

  “Tamara?” he managed only a whisper. He hadn’t called her by her given name since the day the woman who had given it to her died. But this was no young Tammy.

  Her smile bloomed.

  His children hooted, “Oh, we got you, Dad. We got you so bad.” And the two operatic figures dissolved back into his children as they threw themselves into his arms.

  All Bill could
manage was to hold them both tight and kiss them atop their heads.

  When at last he looked up to thank her, he saw that Perrin had left the room.

  Chapter 6

  “Why did you leave? Where did you go?” Bill had finally chased Perrin back to her lair in the store. It had taken three days, but he’d done it.

  She’d done more than leave for the few minutes after she’d transformed his children into operatic wonders, perhaps to do some busywork in the front of her shop. In the days since then she’d become invisible. Arriving at rehearsals mere minutes before they started, departing immediately after they ended.

  She’d delivered the children’s costumes to Jerimy. The photographer had been thrilled and photographed them with Renata the Empress for the publicity campaign. Perrin hadn’t shown up for the photo shoot.

  And the opera had gone crazy. Okay, no crazier than usual, but he’d been unable to get a single minute to track Perrin down in three days.

  Carlo’s girlfriend Melanie had gone to Paris for a fashion shoot. Carlo, while not dumb enough to begrudge her career, was now impossibly prickly about everything that wasn’t absolutely perfect.

  Lord spare Bill from opera-sized egos. Geoffrey Palliser threw a fit about not yet having a costume so he couldn’t be on the advertisement. Pointing out that his contract had forbidden the use of his image on precisely such promotions did little to mollify him.

  Voice lessons with Tammy had taken another chunk out of his afternoons, though under the Chorus Master’s guidance she was coming along wonderfully, showing some real aptitude for the small role. Jaspar wasn’t interested in the singing, but did listen carefully when the director provided stage directions.

  Twice Bill had come by Perrin’s shop only to find it closed and dark. She clearly wasn’t a morning person.

  It was now early evening on Friday. The last of the light was bleeding out of the Seattle sky. The scent of early flowers in small planters outside her shop hovered on the still air. Jaspar was at a friend’s and Tammy was at the library for some schoolwork. With his single stolen hour, he’d walked into Perrin’s Glorious Garb and barely nodded at the clerk before breezing into the kitchen space and through the accessories display in the old freezer and into the design studio.

  Perrin had flinched when he walked in. So, he’d sat down quietly across the cutting table and waited for her to settle before repeating his question.

  “Why did you leave?”

  She began fiddling with the drawings spread across the table. The only light in the room was the worklight directed at the table’s surface. She was little more than shape and form, though her hands were caught by the light. Just a glance revealed the drawings of the rest of the cast, but he forced his attention off them knowing if they went down that path, they might lose track of the present one. He’d promised to pick up Tammy in an hour. It was all the time he had to fix whatever this was.

  His eyes were adjusting enough to see that Perrin wore a form-fitting silken turtleneck as black as her hair, and wool slacks almost as blond as the stripe that still remained in her hair. Simple, chic, and a real pleasure to look at.

  “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “It looked like a great family moment. I didn’t want to… ” She wouldn’t face him.

  “Didn’t want to what?” Bill wanted to lump this in with his usual job of coaxing along crazy artists, but it didn’t feel that way. The dozen drawings spread across the cutting table proved that whatever she needed to create her art, it wasn’t coaxing. She’d done them impossibly fast. And if they were even half as good as the first ones, they’d be the finest costumes Emerald City had put on stage in years.

  She stood and began gathering them up. “Let’s just say that it wasn’t my place to intrude and leave it at that.”

  He stood up and circled the table. When he reached for her hands, she pulled them back.

  “Please don’t,” the sad-eyed girl was back, clutching her drawings as if they were all that anchored her.

  He let his hands fall to his sides. “Did I do something wrong? One of the kids?”

  “God no!” That snapped her attention to his face. “They’re wonderful! And you’re so good with them. I didn’t belong. It was your moment. So I left.”

  “A moment you created.”

  “I didn’t belong. That should be enough for you,” she insisted, then moved over to the next table and slipped the drawings into a portfolio. She held the closed case out as a barrier between them. “Since you’re here, you can take these to Jerimy.”

  “Don’t you need them to build from?”

  “No, they’re in my head once I draw them. But it doesn’t matter, I was only hired as a designer. There are just a couple designs missing. I’ll send those over as soon as I figure them out.”

  “But you built the first three, I thought you’d want to do the other major costumes. And you know that your contract has a clause paying you more if you do so. I also thought you’d want to maintain the quality of—”

  “Here!” She slammed the portfolio flat against his chest so that he had to grab. “You’ve have them. Now just go!”

  She turned her back on him and retreated into the darkness, making it only two or three steps before she ground to a halt.

  Idiot! Bill shouted at himself. There was something far bigger going on here than any lousy set of drawings. He’d been so slow to see it, that he’d probably just made bad matters worse. He set the portfolio on the table and moved up behind her.

  He placed his hands on her upper arms.

  She shrugged him off angrily.

  He did it again and held on this time. When she didn’t protest anymore, he turned her slowly clockwise so that the blond stripe climbed upward across her hair as she came to face him.

  “Why can’t you accept that you didn’t want me there?” she asked as soon as he had her fully turned.

  “But I did.”

  “You idiot!” She shoved him hard in the center of his chest, forcing him to stumble back a step. He regained his balance just before he ran into a clothing rack. He’d expected to find her weeping, instead he was facing the Empress brought to life.

  Perrin stormed several paces away from him until she was blocked by her sewing machines. Then she stalked back toward him, stopping close in front of him in the narrow aisle between the cutting table and a wall of fabric folded onto shelves.

  “Those kids!” she jabbed a finger in the direction of the changing corner where the kids had been. “They’re precious. You can’t have them imprinting on me. You can’t let them. Please, Bill, for their own safety, you can’t let them. That’s why I walked away. So that you don’t connect them to me.”

  “Are you so awful?” He said it as a joke. It was totally ludicrous for her to think so.

  # # #

  Normally Perrin didn’t give a damn what a guy thought, let him get screwed up by being around her. But she’d never been with a single dad. There’d never been so much at stake.

  She clamped down on her lips so hard they hurt and then nodded once. Fiercely. Yes, she was that awful.

  Bill laughed.

  The goddamn man laughed at her.

  She pounded the side of her fist against his chest, which did nothing but bounce off.

  “You are far and away the least hazardous woman I’ve ever run into. Whack-a-doodle! Oh yeah! Hazardous, not a chance.”

  “I’m fucking toxic!” she shouted in his face.

  Any man with the least common sense would turn tail and run, glad to be shut of her. She’d been through this enough times to know for a fact that even this little bit of the truth worked to drive men away. She also knew that she truly was toxic. Her past was a poison that ran through her whole life and eventually killed every relationship she’d ever attempted. She was just being preemptive this time, for the kids�
� sake. She couldn’t risk contaminating them with her past.

  “Get the hell out and leave me alone!” she yelled again, the pain raking at her throat as she tried once more to drive him off.

  “Perrin!” He got right in her face.

  “What!?”she shouted back, pissed that it hadn’t worked.

  He moved forward, forcing her backward into the deeper darkness. Shit! She’d pushed too hard. If she screamed would anyone hear her? Raquel had stuck her head in just five minutes ago, but Perrin had nodded it was okay to lock up and leave. She’d been so stupid. Now she was all alone and Bill was far stronger that she was.

  She stumbled back and fell into a chair. She prepared to fight. Her scissors were almost in reach if she just—

  Bill pulled over another chair, set it in front of her, then sat down in it.

  He didn’t attack.

  Just sat there.

  Perrin fought for a breath. Her heart beat faster than any rabbit’s possibly could. Was she safe? All of the old emotions were pounding her adrenaline right past redline, and she’d never been able to do anything about it. Ever.

  He reached out and took one of her hands gone suddenly nerveless.

  “Crap! You’re freezing. And your hands are shaking. What the hell? Are you okay?”

  She shook her head, it was all she could manage.

  “Wait.”

  Perrin could see a dawning comprehension in his eyes and knew she’d underestimated him and interpreted it all wrong.

  “Wait. You thought I’d… I’d never attack a woman!” His shock appeared genuine.

  “Heard that often enough.” Then she flung up her free arm, wrapping it over her mouth and clamping her hand on her opposite shoulder. She had to stop whatever she was going to say next.

  Now Bill looked truly shocked.

  She’d given him the unanswerable. No protestation of innocence could work against such a statement. She freed her other hand from his and pulled her knees up until she could wrap both arms around them and her heels were on the edge of the chair.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled through her knees. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I told you I was toxic.”