Where Dreams Unfold

by M. L. Buchman

  The knit costumes, once completed, had totally wowed the cast members and the director. They quickly scheduled an extra photo shoot as soon as all of the primary cast were costumed. It hadn’t been hard to convince Wilson Jarvis to foot the additional advertising costs of a last minute poster-and-banner campaign. Even Geoffrey Palliser had decided to amend his contract so that the Overlord could stand beside the shining Empress.

  In a moment of inspiration, Bill had tried to contract Russell for the photo shoot. Except it turned out that one didn’t just contract Russell Morgan. Even trying to do so really pissed the man off. That’s when Bill had learned that not only was Russell rich, but he was also the heir to the Morganson shipping fortune. He only did projects he was interested in. Perrin, bless her, said that she hadn’t had to work very hard to talk him down, despite Bill’s bungled initial approach.

  Perrin and Jerimy’s makeup artist, a big Polish man named Mika Kalinski with a heavy accent, massive hands, and remarkably delicate control, had conferred at length on the final looks.

  It was too late to hit the national and international press, but the new Ascension poster now graced the back of several Seattle buses as well as a couple of I-5 and Aurora Avenue billboards. It was hard to tell if the spike in ticket sales was due to that, or the ever growing yarn-bombs.

  Bill had finally asked Perrin once about the yarn-bomb campaign, over a lunch they’d managed to share in his office. She had evaded the question of her involvement by turning the conversation sideways into how creative they were. After that, Bill adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding them.

  The campaign grew rapidly over the next few days. At first the knit advertising had appeared only on the occasional crosswalk sign and light pole. Now it seemed he couldn’t turn a corner without spotting one. The news services picked up the story, then they showed one that impossibly ran across the large bar holding stoplights out over the middle of a busy intersection. That looked dangerous to install and was probably illegal.

  That was too much. He pulled Patsy and Jerimy into his office for a meeting.

  “Not one of ours,” Patsy didn’t even take a moment of thought.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve only been doing verticals on the big stuff. Also, you said this happened last night. We were busy then doing thirty tree trunks around Green Lake. Every jogger on the three miles of shoreline track this morning saw them. For horizontals it’s been mostly bicycle racks. We don’t mess with any traffic signs. One of my friends actually went to jail for ten days because she yarn-bombed a Stop sign a couple years back.”

  “To jail?” That was not the kind of publicity he wanted for the Opera under any circumstances.

  “Yeah. She exactly recreated the whole sign in red and white knitting, and then built yellow petals all around the edges. The problem was, it wasn’t reflective. Turns out those signs are specially designed to reflect headlights back at the driver. It was really pretty, the arresting cop let her take a picture before cutting it down, but we know better than to mess with any of that.”

  Bill slumped back in his chair, “So how did it get up there at the corner of Broad and Western?”

  Patsy whistled. “Did you get a picture?”

  “I didn’t have to.” He did a quick search on his computer and turned the screen for them to see. It was already on the Seattle Times news site.

  “Wow. That would be a tough installation, and to not get caught there would be even tougher. They have to have traffic cameras in an intersection that big, but we’re clean. It’s definitely not one of ours. No tag.”

  Bill looked at the picture but he didn’t even know what he was looking for.

  Patsy had him scroll down to another picture in the article until she found a yarn bomb on the courthouse flagpole. She pointed to the bottom, below the last “N” in Ascension.

  He could just make out a tiny “S#1KG.”

  “We put that on every single thing we do. That’s our gang’s marker or tag, Seattle’s Number One Knitting Gang. Some people go anonymous, but we felt that was like making book reviews under false names on Amazon, kinda low brow not to take ownership of your own words, or knitting.”

  “Then how did this happen, Patsy?” Bill scrolled back up to the picture of the street maintenance crew going up in a bucket truck to cut down the yarn-bomb.

  Then she smiled. “We’re going viral, boss.”

  And she’d been absolutely right. Over the next week after the release of the posters, magnificently designed by Russell, yarn-bombs began appearing in the oddest places. Bus bumpers, store signs that had nothing to do with the opera. They often wouldn’t even say Ascension but Perrin’s color palette was unmistakable.

  The Fremont statue of Waiting for the Interurban, of a half dozen people and a dog waiting for a bus, was seriously bombed. People were always dressing up the statues: warm scarves in winter, ridiculous sunglasses when spring finally came to the rainy city. Someone had taken the poster to heart. They’d made costumes for each of the figures, following as many of the details as possible from Russell’s poster. Even the child cradled in the woman’s arms now wore a fair imitation of Jaspar’s costume.

  Russell had called and told him to get his and his cast’s asses down to the statue for a group photo. By the time Bill had them there, Russell had somehow corralled a half-dozen news services into showing up, including a pair of nationals. The resulting media blitz had been amazing, and cost nothing.

  Jaspar and Tammy loved the photo shoot. But they didn’t stand together like he would have expected. Even Russell’s attempt to coax them together had no effect. They stood on either side of the Empress and Overlord. It worried Bill, but he let it go as too far down his list of things to worry about. The kids always worked everything out.

  Reports were coming in from Tacoma, even Portland was getting bombed, but most of it was concentrated in Seattle.

  The day he saw one across the steel bumper of a fire truck stationed near his house, he decided that keeping his mouth shut was definitely the better part of discretion. That it was still there days later, smoke-stained, worn in a few places, but left in place by the crew, only spoke more to the popularity of the event.

  “It isn’t just sales for this opera that are increasing,” Wilson Jarvis happily told King 5 News. “The Seattle community’s support for this Emerald City Opera production of Ascension has also begun translating into a sharp increase in subscription sales for the next season. We’re just thankful for this opportunity to be attracting more interest and tourism to our great city. By the time Ascension opens two weeks from tonight, we expect to be fully sold out, despite adding two performances. So be sure to get your tickets to Ascension soon.”

  Leave it to Wilson to work the title of the opera into every other sentence.

  Bill had to miss the Tuesday dinner because of a rehearsal. It was too bad, he thought the kids would really enjoy it. At least having the kids in the opera saved him from palming them off on Lucy or a baby sitter. Though Tammy was getting so grown up, maybe he could trust her to be the responsible adult when they had to be home alone. He knew there were younger girls than Tammy who made money babysitting, but still it felt too soon for him, if not for her.

  He’d asked Perrin to send his apologies to Maria personally. She reminded him that this week was Manuel and Graziella’s wedding reception at the restaurant. Damn! He’d forgotten and felt awful, but he couldn’t get out of it.

  After a quick round of begging Marci, he’d managed to bag two of the last tickets to the only Monday night performance when the restaurant would be closed. He’d swiped one of fundraising’s best ECO-stationery note cards, thankfully Consuela stocked some without “Thank You” embossed on them in gold foil. Bill wrote a cute note, slipped in the tickets along with an invitation to come backstage after the show, and made Perrin promise to not for
get it in her purse.

  # # #

  When Jaspar tried to beg off from going sailing, Bill should have seen something bad was coming. He should have, but he didn’t.

  Chapter 15

  Perrin felt as if she were floating when she arrived at Cutters Crabhouse. It was Friday evening, a week since her dinner with Bill and the kids. The place was hopping with Seattle’s finest, well-dressed for after work mingling, ready to see and be seen.

  Perrin even saw two of her own designs, but didn’t know the women. That felt odd. Even though Raquel and Kristin were doing a great job of running the store, it still felt odd to be disconnected from the day-to-day contact with customers. Not that she’d have had time even if she had the desire to work the front of store again.

  Her life had become a complete blur. She was in a hundred places at once, and needed to be in a thousand. Her emotions were all over the map as well.

  Jerimy had insisted on her approval of his and Patsy’s teams’ renditions of her designs. Those had turned into wonderful discussions of what they’d each seen and liked.

  Jerimy had a Masters degree from NYU in Visual Culture: Costume Studies. Who even knew there was such a thing. His deep focus on Western Europe had contrasted nicely with Perrin’s lighter-depth self-education across dozens of global clothing design traditions. They discussed the rise of the pleat, the exposed midriff of the historic belly dancer, the urban Japanese woman, and the modern American teen.

  Patsy, the queen of modern clothing, often jumped in with surprising variations that she’d seen. Perrin departed each meeting with so many ideas for new designs clogging her brain that she could hardly think.

  Patsy tried to keep her up-to-date on the wild success of the yarn bombing. One evening she’d borrowed Tamara and the three of them had gone out with the S#1K Gang. They’d bombed three seats in every Capitol Hill hospital waiting room, covering them with premade slipcovers in the palettes of the Empress, the Prince, and the True Love. It only took a minute for them to crochet the side seams to hold the premade knitting in place.

  They’d all worn masks that Patsy had made, modeled on the opera’s characters. Security guards had been alerted, nurses had applauded, and people stuck in drab waiting rooms for hours on end had been cheered up.

  Afterward, they’d all sat around together and eaten tiny scoops of gelato in a brightly lit little shop. Tammy’s eyes had been so wide as she did her best to behave as if she did this every day. Clearly, sitting with six grown women from Patsy’s twenty-three to Cornelia’s sixty-seven, ranked as one of the coolest things she’d ever done.

  “I didn’t get that grown-ups could be so much fun!” she’d bubbled as Perrin had driven her home afterward. “I want to grow up to be just like them.”

  Perrin had laughed, “Which one?”

  “All of them at once, but especially you.”

  That had sobered Perrin instantly. Tamara had made it a simple statement of fact. Perrin could see how the others could be role models, but didn’t quite understand how it could apply to her.

  She’d talked about it in the kitchen with Bill over more blueberry tea while Tamara took a shower to get ready for bed. Jaspar had apparently sacked out early. They were careful to sit on opposite sides of the dining table in case one of the kids came in.

  “Guess he was tired,” Bill apologized on his son’s behalf, but she missed saying hi to him. She actually hadn’t seen much of Jaspar at all since the dinner she’d so enjoyed.

  Bill continued, “Don’t see how you could miss the role you’re already playing in Tammy’s life, makes perfect sense to me that she’d respect you.”

  At her blank look, he’d laughed.

  “The girl never stops talking about you. She’s actually doing better in school, which she was always good at anyway, because she’s staying up late to get ahead the night before. She wants as much time working with you as she can get. She’s begging me for a sewing machine for her birthday in a couple months. She’s even convinced us all to watch one of those clothing design shows on television. It’s a good thing that it’s only one night a week, or Jaspar would be having a meltdown. As it is, he does his best to moan and complain whenever they get to a part she really wants to hear. Took him a while to figure out that she’d just rewind to listen again until he shut up.”

  “He’s such a boy, isn’t he? So much like you.”

  “Huh,” had been Bill’s grunted reply. Even after she’d explained it to him. “Well, we’re moving into the Opera House this week, the kid always seems to enjoy that. Wilson even signed up for a special rider on our insurance now to let Jaspar hang out with the crews, as long as there is always a responsible person about. The team leaders have been more than willing to have him as a junior apprentice and gofer.”

  Perrin wished she could see more of Jaspar, but along with the Opera’s growing popularity, Perrin’s Glorious Garb was receiving more attention. She and Raquel were already interviewing seamstresses to build the copies of Perrin’s designs because she could no longer keep up with the orders. She’d never much liked making the same thing over and over anyway. Yet another small piece of the business to let go of.

  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 l
ittle 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 sex, Melanie is getting too much sex 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.