Wild Orchids Read online

  He chuckled. “It’s about Harriet Lane, with a great many passages about her violet eyes and her magnificent bosom.”

  I’d never heard of the woman, so he went on to tell me that she was President James Buchanan’s niece. “I don’t know where Hartshorn’s assistant got her information, but I’d be willing to bet it’s accurate. Miss Lane was an equal political partner to her uncle—who, by the way, was nicknamed ‘Old Gurley.’ If you know what I mean,” he added, waggling his eyebrows.

  Interesting, I thought. I needed an assistant who could think. “Is she writing the book with the professor?”

  The president grimaced. “Hell, no. One time when I confronted him, he said there was already too damn much written about everybody, so he wasn’t going to add to the pollution. But the trustees were on my case to fire him because he wasn’t published, so Hartshorn started using his students to pretend he was writing.” The president waved his hand, meaning he didn’t want to explain that particular story. “Anyway, a couple of years ago, I received this hilarious chapter of a book about an obscure president’s niece, and it had Professor Hartshorn’s name on it as the author. Right away, I knew he hadn’t written it so I gave it to my secretary—who knows everything that goes on in this town—and asked her who was capable of writing such a paper. She started telling me about a man who had a crush on a Victorian woman named Harriet Lane. Had pictures of her all over his office and always wore something violet because Miss Lane had violet eyes.”

  I was confused. “Hartshorn’s assistant is a man?”

  The president frowned at me. I knew that look. For a writer, you’re not very smart, it said. I’d found out long ago that when you’re a writer people expect you to understand everything about everything.

  “No,” he said, speaking slowly as though to an idiot, “that man was Hartshorn’s assistant’s father. He’s dead. Her father is dead, not Hartshorn. Anyway, Hartshorn’s young, female assistant sends me an extremely entertaining chapter every three months. They’re too naughty to be published, but the Trustees and I love them. The Misadventures of Miss Harriet Lane, we call them.”

  While he was smiling in memory of Miss Lane’s bosom, I was thinking. “If she’s so dedicated to Professor Hartshorn she won’t want another job.”

  “Hartshorn is an”—he lowered his voice—“what is colloquially known as an a-hole. I doubt if he’s ever even told her thanks for saving his job. Although I did hear that he gave her a raise for decorating his office with a life-size mannequin of Miss Lane.”

  This was beginning to sound good. She was creative. And smart. Took the initiative. I needed those things. I didn’t find out until after Pat died that I was a person who co-wrote. I need lots of feedback. I’ve never understood how other authors survived with the two or three words they got from their editors. You could spend a year writing a book and at the end all you’d get was, “It’s good.”

  If I were honest with myself—and I tried not to be—I wanted a partner, someone I could bounce ideas off. I didn’t want a fellow writer who was going to be competition, but I wanted…Pat. I wanted Pat.

  But I had to take what I could get. “So how do I meet her?” I asked. “Through Hartshorn?”

  The president snorted. “He’d lie. If he knew you wanted her, he’d drug her before he let you meet her.”

  “Then how—?”

  “Let me think about it and see what I can come up with. A social setting might be best. I’m sure I know someone who knows her. For the next two weeks, accept all invitations.” He looked at his watch.

  “Uh oh. I have a plane to catch.”

  He stood, I stood, we shook hands, then he left. It was only after he was gone that I remembered I hadn’t asked what the assistant’s name was. Later, I called Hartshorn’s office and asked what his assistant’s name was. “Which one?” the young woman on the phone asked. “He has five of them.” I couldn’t very well say, “The one who’s writing the book for him,” so I thanked her and hung up. I called the president’s office but he’d left town.

  “Two weeks,” the president had said. I was to accept every invitation for the next two weeks. No one can imagine the number of invitations a celebrity in a small town receives in two weeks. I did a reading of Bob the Builder for a local nursery school—and was vociferously told that I had mispronounced Pilchard’s name.

  I had to give a speech at a ladies’ luncheon, (chicken salad, always chicken salad) and had to listen to one shirtwaist-clad little old lady after another tell me that I used too many “dirty words” in my books.

  I had to give a speech at a local tractor dealership, and ended up talking about the internal combustion engine—something I had to do to keep the attention of my audience.

  I also accepted an invitation to a party at someone’s house and that’s when I finally met Professor Hartshorn’s assistant.

  At the party, I watched the people and tried to guess which one might be Hartshorn’s assistant.

  I noticed a group of girls who seemed to be friends. One of them was so beautiful she made me dizzy. Face, hair, body. Wherever she went in the room, eyes followed her—mine included. But after a while of watching, I began to detect a blankness in her eyes. The proverbial dumb blonde—or Titian red in this case. And her name was Autumn—which made me feel old. Her parents were no doubt former hippies—and my age.

  There was a Jennifer who seemed to be angry about something and seemed to have set herself up as the boss of everyone. I knew it was her parents’ house, but I’d be willing to bet that she bossed people wherever she was.

  Heather and Ashley seemed normal enough, but Heather wasn’t very pretty so, to compensate, she wore too much makeup.

  The fifth girl was Jackie Maxwell and, instantly, I knew she was “the one.” She was short, with a softly curling mass of short dark hair, and she looked like a poster advertising “physically fit.” Just looking at her made me stand up straighter and suck in my stomach.

  She had a cute face and dark green eyes that seemed to see everything that was going on around her. A couple of times I had to look away so she wouldn’t know I was watching her.

  After a while, an odd thing happened. In the midst of the party, lovely little Autumn sat down on a chair smack in the middle of the room and began to cry. And cry right prettily, I might add. If Pat had been there she would have made a snide comment about how the girl managed to weep without squinching up her facial muscles.

  But the girl going from laughing to tears in a second—and doing it in the middle of the room—wasn’t what was odd. What was strange was that when this raving beauty began to cry, all eyes turned toward Jackie.

  Even the woman who was blathering on at me about how she was writing a book “not like yours but deep, you know what I mean?” turned and looked at Jackie.

  Did I miss something? I wondered. I watched with interest as Jackie went to this girl Autumn, squatted in front of her like some African native, and began to talk to her in the tone of a mother. Jackie had a voice that made me want to curl up with a blankie and have her soothe me. Turning to a man next to me, I started to say something, but he said, “Ssssh, Jackie’s gonna tell a story.”

  Everyone in town—and eventually even the bartenders—tiptoed over to surround the big chair and listen to this girl tell a story.

  Okay, I was jealous. No one had ever spontaneously listened to me like that. Only if there was a lot of advance publicity and I arrived in a limo did people listen to me with rapt attention.

  So what story was she going to tell? I wondered. As all of us waited, she proceeded to cheer up this brainless little beauty queen with a story on how to write a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

  Since my sales kept me out of the prize-winning circles, (“Money or prizes,” my editor told me. “Not both.”) I listened. And as she talked, I found myself wanting her to be even more critical than she was. What about the overuse of metaphors and similes? What about emotion? My editor called them “Connect