The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 2 of 2

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Since the dinner, it had been a great week for Bill. The sets for Ascension were almost back on schedule, not quite, but that was normal with only a couple weeks to go until opening night.

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 g**g’s marker or tag, Seattle’s Number One Knitting g**g. Some people go anonymous, but we felt that was like making book reviews under false names on sss, 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 forget 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.