The Complete Where Dreams - Volume 2 of 2

Chapter 3-2

Jerimy had spread out Carlotta Gianelli’s watercolors along the Costume Shop table. They really had quite an amazing setup here. He’d given her the full tour.

“A really major production can have three hundred costumes, which is easily over a thousand pieces not counting shoes and accessories. And sometimes we have two casts for the leads, that means building some costumes twice, in two different sizes.”

There was a sewing area that had a dozen machines. Perrin’s studio had one four-by-eight foot cutting table. The opera had two matted tables, eight feet wide by twenty-four long. A dozen people could work at each table, though only a half dozen people were in the entire room at the moment.

They had a vented paint booth where red shoes were repainted as blue, fabrics were sprayed with texturing, and papier-mâché headdresses were magically transformed into golden crowns, bishop miters, and magician hats. There were boxes and boxes of shoes simply labeled: Men’s 9, Women’s 8, Child’s 6. Each was a treasure chest filled with shoes, boots, sandals, platforms, and more of almost every imaginable type.

What had surprised Perrin about the costumes themselves was the way they were constructed. Only rarely were they of the fine-finished construction she was used to.

“We only do that for the most special pieces,” Jerimy had informed her. “And we never manage anything as spectacular as the one you built.” The more typical costumes were well-built, but with massive six-inch seam allowances. They must be uncomfortable for the singers but allowed for the costume to be adjusted to different-sized singers without rebuilding them each time. Take out a couple seams, fit, and restitch.

“The typical costume will last through twenty or more productions, each of perhaps a dozen performances. They’re used for a dozen years or more at ten or twenty different opera houses. So, we try to make the costumes as adjustable as possible.”

Perrin looked down at Carlotta’s drawings. They were little more than blurs of colors. They were cohesive in their color palette. The lines were dramatic. But they didn’t relate. It was like a runway collection that really didn’t work. Each piece would be fine, but it wasn’t a whole story.

Perrin hadn’t really understood that until she started doing weddings. For years she’d made couples’ clothing, that told a story of two people. But a wedding told the story of the main couple, with their friends supplementing that, and family the next layer beyond that. All of them designed and built to focus back on the couple.

Bill Cullen wandered in, probably to check up on them. She ignored him, as well as she could. He was way too attractive to be allowed out in public. Not rugged like Russell or ever so handsome like his best friend Angelo. Bill Cullen’s face was striking because it was rich with character and his emotions brushed so close beneath the surface.

She did her best to ignore his presence and spoke to the head of the costume department.

“There’s only one story here, Jerimy.”

“What do you mean?” He and Bill came up to stand to either side of her. She’d definitely have to make sure that didn’t keep happening with Bill, it only made her body all too aware of things it couldn’t have.

She rearranged Carlotta’s drawings, at least getting the story’s hierarchy correct. Empress and Overlord side by side, Prince and his court below, separated for the good, the evil, and the overly-neutral drabness of the townspeople.

“Damn!” Jerimy cursed. “I didn’t even see that. So that’s how they’re supposed to go together?”

“I didn’t see it either,” Bill commented. “But you said it only told one story, what’s the other one?”

“Other two. Maybe three, but I have to think about that. This,” she waved a hand at them, “is the story of the opera. Or at least one part of it.” Then she pointed at the dress now hanging behind them.

“That is the story of the individual people, of what they are inside. Where they came from before the opera and where they’re going after.”

Bill did his arms-crossed thing. Maybe that was how he always stood when he was thinking.

Jerimy returned, as he had a dozen times, to inspect the costume closely as if the answer was somehow in the material itself rather than the design. Perrin recognized that blind spot, she had suffered from it for years, too fascinated by the construction to step back and see how it went together with the surrounding context.

“The other story is the audience?” Bill barely whispered.

Perrin twisted to look at him, she’d never expected Bill Cullen to understand. So few people saw that. From somewhere deep inside, a laugh of sheer delight bubbled forth.