The truth was, I didn’t want her—or any other woman—to set eyes on my Jamie.
Even after months, I still refused to allow Daria to see any of the book, and she began to be concerned. Some writers lie about how much they’re writing, but I knew Daria didn’t think this of me, since I write because I love it—correction, I write because I must, because I am driven to it.
Daria grew more concerned when, a month after it happened, I told her that I had broken my engagement to Steve. “You didn’t tell me this?” she asked, aghast, for we were truly friends, not just business friends. She seemed a little worried when I said that the broken engagement didn’t matter, that I hadn’t been very upset by the breakup.
Months went by and I kept writing. When I write, I keep a file named Scenes, and whenever I have an idea about possible bits of dialogue that I might be able to use in the book, I stick it in this file. Being very frugal, I almost always use every word I put into this file.
But I had written so much about Jamie that the Scenes file was over six hundred thousand bytes, over four hundred pages, and I hadn’t yet really started the book. I kept telling myself that I needed to do a bit more research or needed to know just a tiny bit more about Jamie before I could actually start writing the book itself.
I had Jamie and my heroine, who was named Caitlin, in every possible situation. I told myself I was “exploring possibilities of their characters.” Twenty-five books I had written, and I’d never before felt this need, but then I’d never before felt this way about a character I’d made up. Oh, I often felt as though I were “in love” with a hero, but it was nothing compared to what I felt about Jamie.
Months went by and still I kept writing notes for my book. Jamie was no longer a Scotsman but an Englishman in the time of Queen Elizabeth I.
Daria was more than annoyed with me as I still wouldn’t allow her to see anything I’d written. She reminded me that I was past my due date; it had no effect on me. She sent me a copy of the cover and talked to me about all the people at my publishing house who were depending on me, something that I usually cared a great deal about. But I didn’t care about anyone or anything, just Jamie.
I think it was the wedding invitation I received from Steve that made me realize that I had a “problem.” I know it was probably a bitter, hurtful thing he did, sending me that pretty, engraved invitation, letting me know that I had truly lost him, but actually it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I realized that I had discarded a real, live, utterly wonderful man for a character I had created on paper. I realized that I had not talked to any of my friends in months and that the romance trade papers were running little gossip bits about, What ever happened to Hayden Lane?
But realization cannot stop something that’s bad. All smokers know they should quit, but that doesn’t make them able to stop the habit.
But when I was able to admit to myself that I did indeed have a problem, I decided to get help. I spent three months going to a therapist every day. That was useless. No one had even conceived of a case like mine. At first I tried to keep it from her that the man I was obsessed with was a figment of my imagination, but I have a big mouth and I’m not good at intrigue, so she soon found out. Her advice was to get out more, see people. I tried, but that didn’t work because I bored everyone to death with “Jamie says” and “Jamie likes” and “Jamie does.”
When therapy didn’t seem to be working, I started trying other methods of figuring out what was wrong with me. In New York, there’s a palm reader, a psychic, a tarot card reader, some esoteric something on every corner. I went to several of them. I guess I hoped that someone would tell me that within a week or two I’d be back to my old self. But not one of them told me anything helpful. They told me I was rich and famous and had a star in my palm that meant I was “special.” They told me the people at my work were beginning to think I was crazy and had decided to treat me as though I were nitroglycerine about to go off.
In other words, they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. At home, I cried a lot and yearned for Jamie all the time. I didn’t just want to write about him, I wanted to feel him, touch him, talk to him. I wanted to follow his long legs down country paths; I wanted to bear his children.
I don’t know what would have happened, or how long all of this would have gone on, if I hadn’t met Nora. Like a spider sitting in the midst of her web, she had an office across from my hairdresser’s with a huge red neon sign that said ASTROLOGY. As I sat there with foil in my hair (my hair is white blonde and I get downlights to make it look more “natural”—weir
d, huh?) I thought, I think I’ll go have my chart done.
I say that Nora is like a spider because I soon learned that she knows even less about astrology than I do. She put the sign up to attract people. Nora really is a clairvoyant, and as soon as I sat down and asked for my chart to be done, she said, “How about a psychic reading, instead?”
I said, “Sure,” and that one word was the beginning of everything.
2
You’re not supposed to be here,” the astrologer cum clairvoyant, Nora, said. “Where are you supposed to be?”
“At my computer?” I’m always making jokes, but then she was the clairvoyant, not I. Shouldn’t she be divining where I was supposed to be?
“You are in love with someone, deeply in love with him, but something is wrong. Something is blocking that love. What is it?”
I sat there in one of my rare moments of speechlessness and stared at her. She was a little too close to the truth, but even toothpicks under my nails wouldn’t have made me give her any help. In the last months I had had too many so-called psychics guessing what my problem was.
First of all, I don’t think this woman had read the fortune-teller’s handbook.
Nora didn’t look like a fortune-teller. Palm readers et al. are supposed to shave off their eyebrows, paint them at random elsewhere on their faces, wear earrings the size of hubcaps, and drape cheap, garish rayon scarves about their shoulders. Nora did none of these things. She had a sweet, round face, big brown eyes, dark hair worn in a short fashionable cut and Connecticut lady-on-the-weekend clothes. She just looked normal, pleasant. Not in the least bizarre.
I could understand that she didn’t know the dress code of witches but why wasn’t she saying what she was supposed to say? She should be telling me that I’d meet a tall, dark man, etc. etc.
Above all, she should not be asking me questions.
I took a deep breath. “I do not know what is blocking me because I am not in love with anyone.” I let my voice drip sarcasm. Lots of therapy in the last months had convinced me that I could not love a person who did not exist. And, basically, I hated Nora’s approach of telling me, not that I was going to meet someone who I would love, but that I already did love someone. I knew that was not true. There was no man in my life, not a flesh-and-blood one anyway. I decided that she was the worst psychic I had ever been to.
With some anger at having been duped—knowing I should be assertive and demand my money back—I gathered my things and started to leave. “Thank you so much,” I said rather nastily, “but—”
“You do not know you are in love with him because you have not met him yet.”