Wild Orchids Part 4

"That sentences need a subject and verb? True, they do. Except in prize-winning novels. In a regular novel-one that's not about to win a prize, that is-the author would write something like 'After she said goodbye, she turned and went up the stairs.' A prizewinner would write 'Said goodbye. Up the stairs. Wished she'd said au revoir.' See? It's different.

And adding the French helps, too."

"I like the first way better. It would be easier to read."

"But this isn't about 'easy to read.' 'Easy to read' isn't 'intellectual.' This is about reading a mystery, a horror book, and a love story while believing you're a superior being who doesn't read 'those kind' of novels. Oh. And it helps to be a woman whose first name is a variation of Ann. No one named Blanche L'Amour will ever win a literary prize."

When Autumn realized I'd finished, she leaned forward and kissed my cheek. "You're funny," she said. " You should marry Cord's brother."

I had to stand up to hide the shiver that ran down my spine. Only in my worst nightmare would I marry into that family. Only if- My thoughts suddenly stopped because standing in front of me, just behind Autumn's chair, was Ford Newcombe, one of the best-selling writers in the world. The people who'd been hovering over Autumn when she was crying had pulled back and were squashed together on each side of her chair. They were giving Mr. Newcombe lots of reverential air s.p.a.ce around him. As befitted his stature, of course.

He was smiling slightly, his blue eyes focused on mine, as though he'd enjoyed my silly story. He had an interesting face rather than a handsome one, but his body looked soft and unexercised. He'd been writing for as long as I could remember, so I figured he had to be ancient, in his fifties, at least.

Of course I'd known he'd been living in our town for the last two years, but no one knew why. After he fired a friend of a friend of mine, I suggested that he was here because every other town in America had run him out.

I'd heard from everyone in town who could talk, even Mr. Wallace who spoke with a machine at his throat, that Ford Newcombe was impossible to work for. He was always in a bad mood, always grumpy, and nothing anyone did ever pleased him. He'd fired at least three people twenty-four hours after he'd hired them. One of them, a woman my father's age, had told Heather's aunt, who told Heather's mother, who told Heather, who told all of us, that his problem was that he could no longer write. Her theory (taken off the Internet) was that his late wife had written all his books and since she'd died, there could be no more new Ford Newcombe books.

I tried to keep myself from questioning that theory aloud. If his wife wrote the books why weren't they published under her name? This wasn't the eighteenth century where a book needed a male pen name to make it sell, so why would anyone need to go through such a charade? But when my friends went on gossiping, I finally had to ask why. Jennifer looked at me hard and said, "Tax purposes," then gave me silent warning that I was not "being supportive."

So here I was, having made a fool of myself in an overlong, and ridiculous, story about Pulitzer prize-winning books, and he was staring at me. Oh, Lord, had any of his books won the Pulitzer?

Swallowing, I moved away through the people gathered around Autumn (people were always gathered around Autumn) and went to the bar to get a drink. It was one thing to make a fool of oneself in front of friends, but quite another to do it in front of a celebrity. Megarich. Megastar. I'd seen a photograph of this man with the president at the White House.

So why was he here in our nothing little town? And at Jennifer's parent's house on a Sat.u.r.day night? Didn't he have any presidents to visit?

Emperors?

"That was... entertaining," a voice to my left and above my head said.

I knew who it was so I took a deep breath before looking up at him.

"Thanks... I guess," I said, letting him know I'd caught the little hesitation in his praise. There were lines around his eyes, but I couldn't tell if they were from age or world weariness. His mouth might have been nice, but it was clamped together in a hard line. I'd heard that the first four women he'd fired had been sent packing because they'd made pa.s.ses at him. But what had he expected? He was a rich widower. Get real.

"Would you like to work for me?" he asked.

I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. Not a polite, refined laugh, but a real hee haw. "Only if I had two heads," I said before I could get control of myself.

He looked puzzled for a moment, but then he gave a little bit of a smile, so I knew he got it. Back in the sixteenth century, when the d.u.c.h.ess of Milan was asked if she'd marry Henry the Eighth, she'd replied, "Only if I had two heads."

"Okay, just thought I'd ask," he said, then walked away.

That sobered me. My father said, "That tongue of yours can make paper cuts seem painless." Now that I'd offended the one and only celebrity I'd ever met, I was sure my father was right.

I turned to the waiter behind the drinks table who'd seen and heard it all.

He wasn't local so he didn't know my reputation for putting my foot in my mouth. Instead, he was looking at me with astonishment.

"Rum and c.o.ke," I said.

"Sure you don't want a block and an ax?" he said, showing me that he, too, got my smart aleck remark.

I gave him my best drop dead look, but he just chuckled.

About ten minutes later, Kirk showed up and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Kirk was my fiance and a great guy. He was smart and a good businessman, stable (had lived in one place and one house all his life), and good to look at.

He wasn't Autumn's caliber, but he was nice looking. And, best of all, he didn't have a creative bone in his body. In other words, Kirk was everything I wasn't, everything my father hadn't been, and everything I craved.

When he saw me he smiled and held up a finger to let me know he'd be with me in one minute. Kirk was always buying or selling something. He'd buy some d.i.n.ky little business, like a cardshop from some little old lady, spend twenty grand or so, and make the store into a place that sold music and movies. Then he'd sell the shop for twice what he'd paid for it and buy something else.

Truthfully, I thought Kirk was fascinating. I liked to read and I had a pa.s.sion for taking photos with my precious Nikon camera that I'd had to take out a loan to buy, but business and numbers bored me as much as they intrigued Kirk. "That's what makes us good together," he said. "Opposites attract."

Since you can't pay the rent by wandering through the woods looking for things to photograph, I had a job that kept me around books all day. I did cataloging and research for a professor at the local university. The university had an unwritten requirement that its professors must publish something every few years, so old Professor Hartshorn had spent years pretending he was working on a book. What he really did was hire young girls to research some subject, then he'd criticize them until they quit. That way he could blame the secretary for the work not being done.

I knew this is what he did when he hired me (everybody in town knew he did this) but I came up with a plan to thwart him. I knew from the gossip among his former secretaries that he waited a month before starting to make their lives h.e.l.l, so during that month I put together a chapter of a book on President James Buchanan. My father had read everything written about the man and used to tell me about him, so I was somewhat of an expert myself. Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor and even during his lifetime it was hinted that he was gay. The truth was that my father was just pretending interest in this long-dead president. Actually, my father had been half in love with Buchanan's niece who was his White House hostess, the twenty-six-year-old, lush-bosomed Harriet Lane. n.o.body else's dad carried a photo in his wallet of a woman born in 1830.

I spent a couple of evenings copying t.i.tles, authors, and dates of some of the resource books that were still in my father's bedroom bookcase, made a couple of color copies of Miss Lane (she didn't marry until after her uncle was out of office), and wrote a whopping good chapter from what I remembered of what my father had told me.

Instead of showing the chapter to old Professor Hartshorn and getting it torn apart with criticism, I put his name on it as the author, and mailed it to the university president with a note saying he (Professor Hartshorn) wanted to show him (the prez) what he was working on.

I wasn't prepared for what followed. I'd heard that Hartshorn was a good history teacher and that's why he was allowed to stay at the university. But good as he was, the man hadn't published and it was rumored that at last he was going to be fired.

After the president received the chapter, he was wild with excitement. He came running to Professor Hartshorn's office, chapter in hand, shouting, "This is brilliant. Totally brilliant. You must read this at the next faculty meeting. And here people were saying you weren't actually writing anything."

I was working in the back room, but I have to say that Professor Hartshorn fell into step with it all. He said, "Miss Maxwell, I seem to have misplaced my copy of the chapter of my book that I wrote." If the university president heard anything odd in the word emphasis in that sentence, he didn't let on. I slapped a copy of the twenty-five page chapter on the professor's desk, didn't look at either man, and went back into the other room.

A few minutes later Professor Hartshorn called me back into his office.

"Tell me, Miss Maxwell, when did my publishing house say this book must be finished?"

"Three years," I said. I needed a job, and three years was as long as I'd ever stayed anywhere. This was, of course, before I met Kirk and decided to stay in one place for the rest of my life.

"Isn't that a long time?" the president asked, looking at Hartshorn and ignoring that I, a mere student, was standing there.

"Obscure subject," Hartshorn said, frowning at being bothered. "Difficult to research. Now go away, Henry, and let me get back to work."

Smiling, happy that he wasn't going to have to fire an inst.i.tution like Professor Hartshorn, the president left. I waited for the blast to come from the professor. But it didn't happen. Without looking at me, he picked up my chapter, handed it back to me, and said, "Chapter every three months. And write lots about Harriet Lane's bosom."

"Yes, sir," I said, and went back to work. For the next two years, every three months, I'd go through my father's books and write twenty-five pages about the golden hair, violet eyes, and voluptuous figure of Miss Harriet Lane.

At the end of the second year, as a joke, I got Jennifer's mother to help me make a period costume to Miss Lane's measurements (please don't ask me how my father got hold of her vital statistics, but fanatics have ways) in violet silk with pink piping. I'd bought a dressmaker's dummy at a yard sale and with the help of cotton batting-a lot of cotton-Jennifer's mom and I managed to re-create Miss Lane's famous bosom. Jennifer, Heather, and I carried the dressed mannequin into Professor Hartshorn's office at six A.M.

one Monday morning so it was there when the professor arrived.

But he said nothing about the headless person that took up the entire corner of his small office. A week went by, and he still said nothing. I was quite disappointed-until Sat.u.r.day morning, that is. I went through the drive-in at my bank to deposit my paycheck as usual when the teller-a friend of mine-said, "Congratulations."

"On what?" I asked.

"Your raise. And you've made a mistake on the deposit slip. I'll fix it for you but you'll have to initial it."

That's when I found out that the darling old coot had given me a twenty-five percent raise. All for Harriet Lane's magnificent bosom.

But, now, in just three weeks I was going to get married and quit work.

For a while, I planned to read, take photos, and have lunch with the girls. I'd had a paying job since I was fourteen years old and now, at twenty-six, I was looking forward to some time off.

But that was all before I went to the party at Jennifer's house and met Ford Newcombe.

Kirk took more than a minute. In fact he took more than thirty minutes.

He was deep in conference with the eldest Handley son, the one who handled all the family investments so the father could play golf. Of course everyone in town knew that Mrs. Handley was the one who actually controlled the money, but the sons put on a show.

I was standing by myself, sipping my rum and c.o.ke, and thinking about how I was looking forward to changing my life. I'd become bored by my job with Professor Hartshorn. It wasn't as creative as I'd hoped it would be, and there was no place to advance to. I hadn't yet told Kirk, but I was hoping to eventually open a little business of my own. My dream was to have a small home portrait studio where I could take natural light photos of people, something that I could someday put into a book. All I needed was some time off so I could use my savings and what my father had left me to set up my business. I wanted a home business so if I had kids...

"He's asking for you," Heather whispered into my ear.

I glanced at Kirk, but he was still head to head with the oldest Handley son.

"No, not him," Heather said. " Him."

She nodded toward Ford Newcombe who was standing by the window, drink in hand, and listening to Miss Donnelly. Instantly, I felt sorry for him.

Miss Donnelly wrote the bulletin for the local Methodist church so she told people she was a "published writer." No doubt she thought she was Ford Newcombe's equal.

"Go on," Heather said, pushing me in the small of my back.

But I didn't move. There isn't much of me, but what there is, is muscle.

"Heather," I said calmly, "you've lost your mind. That man is not 'asking' for me."

"Yes, he is. He asked Jennifer's mom about fifty questions about you, who you are, where you work, everything. I think he has the hots for you."

"Better not tell Kirk or there'll be a duel."

Heather didn't laugh. "Look on the bright side. Once he gets to know you, he'll throw you out."

Heather, too, had a sharp tongue.

"Go on," she said, pushing harder. "See what the man wants."

Truthfully, I felt I owed him an apology, and besides, who can pa.s.s up time with a celebrity? I could tell my grandkids, et cetera.

When Ford Newcombe saw me, he looked as though I were his life raft.

"There you are," he said loudly, over Miss Donnelly's head. "I have those papers you wanted to see, but we need to look at them outside."

That made no sense since it was pitch dark outside. "Sure," I said just as loud. "Let's go." I followed him outside-trailed by Jennifer, Autumn, Heather, and Ashley.

He got all the way to the little waist-high fence that surrounds the big deck behind Jennifer's parents' house before he turned around to look at me, and when he did, his eyes widened.

I knew what he was seeing even before I turned. I had been used. All of them were dying to meet him, and dying to ask him questions he'd probably answered a million times.

Stepping back, I let them have him. After all, for all I knew the man loved having four pretty young women bombard him with questions and shy smiles. I looked back through the gla.s.s doors to see if Kirk was finished yet, but he was still yakking away, so I stood to the side and played with the straw in my watery drink.

It wasn't until Ashley asked, "What are you working on now?" that I began to listen. The answer to "Do you write with a typewriter, a computer, or by hand?" held no interest for me.

"It's a true story," he said.

That made me look at him sharply. Okay, so I admit it. I've read every word Ford Newcombe has written and a lot of what's been written about him, so I knew that, more or less, everything he's written has been a "true story." When he said something that was a given, was he just trying not to give out any information?

"A true story about what?" Autumn asked, and I could see Newcombe's face soften. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to live behind Autumn's face and have people melt whenever they looked at me.

"It's a sort of ghost-witch story," he said, still not giving away anything.

"Ah, like the Blair Witch," Heather said.

"No, not exactly," Newcombe said, and I could tell he was offended by Heather's remark. She made him sound like he was jumping on a bandwagon-or, worse, planning to plagiarize.

"You should tell him your devil story," Autumn said to me, but before I could reply, Jennifer said, "Jackie used to terrify us all with her story about something that happened in North Carolina about a hundred years ago."

Newcombe smiled in what I thought was a patronizing way. "That's when all the good stories took place," he said, looking at me. "Go on, tell me."

I didn't like his smug att.i.tude. It was as though he was bestowing permission on me. "It's just a folktale I heard when I was a kid," I said, smiling over my gla.s.s.

But my friends wouldn't let up.

"Go ahead, Jackie, tell it," Ashley said.

Heather poked me in the ribs. "Tell it!"

Jennifer narrowed her eyes at me to let me know that I should do this. For my friends. To be "supportive."

"Please," Autumn said softly. "Please."

When I looked up at Newcombe, he was watching me with interest, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I couldn't tell if he was just being polite or if he really wanted to hear my story.

Whatever, I didn't want to make a fool of myself again so I said, "It's nothing really, just a story I heard a long time ago."

"It actually happened," Heather said.

"Maybe," I said quickly. "I think it did. Maybe."

"So what's the story?" Newcombe asked, staring at me.

I took a breath. "It's simple, really. A woman loved a man the townspeople said was the devil, so they killed her. They piled stones on her chest until she died." After I finished, I could see that my friends were disappointed.

Heather spoke first. "Jackie usually tells the story so well that she gives us goose b.u.mps."