The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 2 of 2

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“Jerimy!” Perrin raced into the Costume Shop and spotted him by a rack of Turandot costumes. He was boxing them for storage, they must be freshly cleaned.

“Perrin!” He shouted back and met her halfway. He gave her a strong and totally unjudgmental hug. She needed that right now. All Sunday and Monday she’d been so worried, fretting at the problem like a sore tooth.

Bill hadn’t changed how he treated her despite her panic attack at the dog show, but she’d felt different around him. Having revealed that awful fear inside her, she didn’t know how to go back to showing him only the carefree and happy woman she’d worked so hard to stitch together over the years.

Jerimy didn’t know any of that and she could just be her old, familiar self with him. He squeezed her hard enough that she had to gasp and giggle. She kissed him on each cheek before they let each other go.

“Do you knit? I need a bunch of knitters. Wait until you see. Where’s my portfolio?”

“The one in your hand, beautiful?” he teased.

“Well, no, but it will have to do,” she teased back and tossed it down on the table. Then she opened it and pulled out the final four drawings. She set them in a row and stepped back. These had come from somewhere deep. They were actually some of the best drawings she’d ever made, the women on the page practically breathed.

Jerimy didn’t gasp, he didn’t marvel, he didn’t exclaim. He did something far more respectful, he went very still and silent.

When she couldn’t stand it any more, she moved in to point at the yarn samples she’d taped along the side.

“They’re all hard jewel tones, but all in soft knit. Even the cables in their cloaks have a softness.”

“They’re pure light,” Bill said from close beside her.

Perrin actually cried out a little to find he’d come up so silently that she hadn’t noticed.

They were, pure light. “That’s the point. They are not tragic themselves, but are nonetheless caught in the Prince’s tragedy. It makes them so much more sympathetic.”

“I know these three women in real life. Who’s the fourth one?” he pointed at the Queen Mother.

“What are you talking about?” She turned back to inspect the drawings more closely.

Bill leaned forward, extending an arm between her and Jerimy to tap each drawing in turn. So close she could feel him, smell him. Her head whirled at the wonder of him.

“You, Perrin, in two roles, Empress,” he pointed to the drawing Jerimy had tacked on a corkboard on the wall, “and the True Love. Jo Thompson is the Princess and Cassidy Knowles her Maid-servant Confidant. I’d have expected that to be the other way around, but what do I know.”

Perrin looked at the drawings in surprise, he was absolutely right. Without realizing, she’d used the three of them as models rather than the opera singers she’d met at the rehearsals. Of course, Jo would be the Princess, for she was honor and truth incarnate as well as being typically ever-so reserved. Cassidy’s passion was a little closer to the surface though still reserved. She was the deep, quiet bond that strung them together. Bill Cullen wouldn’t know that yet about either of her friends.

“Who’s the fourth one?”

Perrin looked at the Queen Mother, the quiet bedrock of the world.

“Mama Maria. You’ll meet her tonight.”

All he offered to that was a soft grunt. He knew her mother was a part of a past she wouldn’t talk about. He thought it was a choice, but it wasn’t. She couldn’t talk about it; not and retain her control, perhaps not even her sanity. But nor could Perrin explain Mama Maria in just a sentence or two.

“She looks nice enough.”

“She’s amazing.” Perrin had missed her so much. But, she and Hogan came back last night from their honeymoon. Tonight they’d be together again. She needed a subject change for her own sake, and fast. Oh right!

“Knitting!” she practically cried it out, loudly enough for the two men to jolt. “We need knitters, Jerimy. I’m okay, but I’m not good enough to do these, and not quickly. Please, please, please tell me you know some fabulous, gonzo, out-there knitters.”

“Pretty lady, do I ever! Patsy. You have a minute?”

A short, voluptuous redhead strolled over from where she’d been overseeing the packing of costumes. Unlike Jerimy, her freckles proved that her red hair was natural, though the lemon-yellow streak over the crown certainly wasn’t.

“Patsy is the gonzoest knitter in Seattle. And she’s a g**g leader, if you can imagine a knitting gang.”

Perrin looked down at her. She stood maybe five-three. She wore an opera t-shirt that fit her in a way very differently from Perrin’s. She’d redone the collar to have a deep vee that exposed a well-freckled cleavage and a tattoo of a pair of knitting needles, as if her generous breasts were still being knit into reality.

“What have you got?” Her voice was biker drawl as if she led a motorcycle g**g rather than a knitting one, whatever that meant. She leaned her elbows on the table and went silent for several minutes.

Perrin almost felt a need to shuffle her feet or something, but Jerimy’s smile reassured her, and she waited.

“The Princess’ cloak is gonna be the beast.”

That’s when Perrin understood what was happening, because it was something she did herself. Patsy was structuring the garments in her head, thinking how to execute them, potential problems, what worked and what didn’t.

“What if we felted it, to get that structure over the shoulders?”

Perrin nodded, that would work. “As long as you can keep it light enough to get the movement we need on the lower part when she rushes across the stage.”

“Maybe felt from the lower point of the shoulder blades and up, then knit onto the back of that structure for the rest of it. Shift these cables here and here as structural elements. Are the colors intarsia? Or do we alternate them like a Fair Isle? It will effect the flow of the cloak.”

They reviewed it piece by piece. Perrin was peripherally aware of when Bill drifted off. Jerimy hung close by, but added little. Clearly his assistant would be the master of these costumes.

When they were done, Patsy looked up at her. “Yeah, we got this. I’ll get the girls and we can get it done this week. Have to think about the gusseting so that they can be used on different singers.”

“That’s why I designed in this layer of buttons down the side as a common theme. I thought multiple sets of buttons might work.”

Patsy nodded. “I like it. Be better if we could lose them though, wouldn’t it?”

Perrin had to smile. It was fun to work with another designer who didn’t see any predefined box when they were doing their art. She didn’t even have to acknowledge that it would be better and that she’d trust Patsy to go ahead if she found it.

Jerimy hung the last four drawings with the others on the corkboard, completing the primary costumes for the opera. There was still an immense amount of work to be done to execute it, but the designs were all there.

Jerimy made fresh coffee, Perrin took tea, and the three of them pulled up stools in a circle to admire the display.

Perrin had always worked solo, until Cassidy had practically forced Raquel on her. She’d hated giving up the control at first, but over the last two years her tiny one-woman shop had grown past what she could handle. Russell’s amazing ads and Jo’s sharp marketing advice had expanded Perrin’s Glorious Garb past anything she’d ever envisioned. Other than the weekly meeting where they reviewed the books together and Perrin signed all the checks herself, she rarely had to think about the business itself anymore.

Raquel wasn’t a designer, but she was a very astute business woman. One who recognized how to take care of all the things Perrin didn’t give a single damn about. It had let Perrin handle all of the designs and construction, though she still outsourced some of the work to Georgie in Duvall. At Raquel’s insistence, all of the designs in the shop had long since been uniquely her own and it was working. They still occasionally sold items off the rack, but more and more they were moving into custom work. Raquel had shown the numbers to Jo, and Jo had concurred that the direction change was sensible, which was good enough for Perrin.

But she didn’t get to often sit with other designers and just talk shop. She could get to like this, just she, Jerimy, and Patsy sitting around together. It felt normal, real, as if she belonged and was accepted. Just the way Bill and the kids made her feel. As if it was normal.

“So, Patsy, what’s a knitting g**g?”

For once it didn’t matter that sitting here quietly was the least normal thing on the planet for any of the incarnations she’d ever invented for Perrin Williams.