Pygmalion's Plight
Yvette Delacroix walked into the en suite bathroom of her Manhattan penthouse, turned on the taps of her oversized soaking tub and tossed a lilac-scented bath bomb under the faucet. While the level of her bathwater slowly rose, she went into the bedroom and removed her jewelry. As usual, the bestselling romance novelist was covered in diamonds: dangling drops in her ears, an ostentatious pendant on her neck, a tennis bracelet on her wrist and four rings on her fingers. Once the bling was gone, she took off her clothes, hung the Versace gown on a satin hanger in her massive walk-in closet and put her Christian Louboutin stiletto pumps in the appropriate cubbyhole of her shoe rack. Finally, she returned to the bathroom to remove her makeup.
Despite the lighting on the vanity mirror being designed to show her at her best, Yvette could still see the graying roots of her platinum blond hair and crow's feet near her eyes.
Time for more Botox, she thought as she wiped her eye shadow and liner off with a moistened cotton pad.
The self-proclaimed "Queen of Romance" did not linger long in front the mirror. For the past decade, she did not like what she saw there. With each passing year, she avoided her reflection more and more. In her mind, at least, she was still a young, desirable woman, able to turn heads in a crowd. The mirror, however, did not lie: she was getting old, and not all the facelifts, Botox injections, makeup and hair coloring could stop the progress of time.
When Yvette lowered herself into the hot, soapy, floral-scented water, her thoughts shifted from her aging face to the plot of her latest novel. The author had written more than a hundred romances during her thirty-year career. While none of them had received favorable reviews from the critics, they all sold well and earned the writer a loyal fan base, not to mention millions of dollars.
The protagonists in the majority of her books were female. Her heroines were invariably young, pretty and innocent. They were frequently governesses, impoverished aristocrats, housemaids, shop girls, nurses and young women destined for arranged marriages. Five of her novels—ironically among her bestsellers—featured a male as the main character: Gideon Northrup. The manuscript she was currently writing was to be the sixth in the series.
Ah, Gideon! Yvette thought with a smile as she breathed in the perfumed fragrance of lilacs.
There were not enough words in the English language to describe him. The oft-used handsome and dashing failed to adequately express the magnitude of his masculine good looks or his devilish charm. With dark hair, hazel eyes and a tall, muscular frame, he was the writer's idea of the perfect man. This was hardly surprising since he was created using a combination of all four of Yvette's ex-husbands—their good qualities, that is.
Gideon Northrup first appears in Lost Love. Having sailed the seas with both Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, he decides to marry and settle down. Priscilla Woolery, the woman he loves, is descended from a family that had not only supported the Yorkist cause during the Wars of the Roses but also opposed the Tudor kings Henry VII and Henry VIII as well as the latter's children, Edward VI and Mary I. Gideon, therefore, chooses to begin his married life in the New World where there would be no danger of incurring Queen Elizabeth's anger. Unlike all her other books, Lost Love does not have a happy ending. When Gideon returns to the colony of Roanoke, Virginia, with Governor John White after journeying to England for much-needed supplies, he discovers the settlement deserted and Priscilla gone.
The Englishman's second appearance is in the book Comedy and Tragedy. Having lost the love of his life, Gideon returns to London and eventually is employed as an actor after becoming acquainted with historical figures Christopher Marlowe, James Burbage and William Shakespeare. While in the employ of Lord Strange's Men, he falls in love with Estelle, a voluptuous serving girl at the local public house. Although he still grieves over the loss of his beloved Priscilla, he is unwilling to pass up the opportunity for a second chance at happiness. Sadly, the Black Death not only forces the temporary closure of London's theaters, but it also takes Estelle's life.
Plots and Passions, the third book in the series, leaves behind the Elizabethan era and takes place during the reign of James I. Having decided acting is not for him, Gideon becomes a soldier in the king's army and again falls in love. This time the woman who would temporarily supplant Priscilla in his affections is Marguerite Westlock, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Like his first love, she is from a family who, being Catholic, is not held in the good graces of the reigning sovereign. Still, Gideon is not a man to let religion stand in the way of his devotion to the woman he loves. If necessary, he will convert to Catholicism in order to marry her, but fate steps in to derail his plans. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes is discovered with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, intent on blowing up both Parliament and the king in an attempt to replace the Protestant government with Catholic leadership. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, new laws are passed that restrict the rights of Catholic citizens. Gideon tries to convince Marguerite to abandon her religion and become his wife in accordance with the Church of England. Remaining true to her faith, however, she leaves the country and joins a convent in France.
Having lost at love three times, Gideon returns to the sea in Love in the Wild. While serving on a ship of English privateers, he is captured by the Spanish, taken to Barbados and forced to work as an indentured servant. While on the island, he falls in love with the daughter of a Spanish father and an Arawak mother. Where his former lovers were all fair with either blond or red hair, the exotic beauty from Barbados had ebony hair, deep brown eyes and a warm, dark complexion. Their love would have been forbidden in his homeland, but in Barbados there is yet to be a proper society to forbid it. For nearly two years, Gideon lives among the indigenous people as husband to Isabella. Although his heart has yet to forget Priscilla, he is happy, seeing himself as Adam and Isabella as Eve in their Caribbean Eden. However, in the second-to-last chapter in the book, immediately preceding the tear-jerking denouement, the hero's young wife dies in childbirth along with their son.
After having lost four women—two to death, one to the church and the other to who knew what—Gideon prepares to forego earthly happiness and dedicate his life to serving God in Love on Trial. While preparing for a life preaching the holy word in the laity, he journeys to Scotland where he quite unexpectedly is shot with Cupid's arrow for the fifth time. Readers who were certain the former swashbuckler would finally get a much-deserved happy ending were sadly disappointed. People in early seventeenth century Scotland still lived under the belief that witches were in league with the devil and sought to harm God-fearing Christians. Elspeth, the bonnie Scottish lass who had won Gideon's heart, is arrested, tried and burned at the stake.
Surprisingly, after five books, Yvette's readers had not yet tired of Gideon Northrup. On the contrary, they clamored for more of his adventures—hence, the sixth book that was now in its early stages. Being little more than an outline at the moment, the manuscript still had a long way to go before it resembled a novel.
The bathwater having gone cold and her fingertips looking like pale beige raisins, the writer got out of the tub and wrapped herself in a thick terrycloth robe.
After a good night's sleep, I'll wake bright and early and send Gideon back across the Atlantic to the New World, she decided. Only this time he'll travel to the Massachusetts Bay Colony rather than to Virginia.
* * *
Despite the surrealistic details of her surroundings, Yvette could clearly ascertain that she was somewhere on the New England shore. Having grown up in Falmouth, she could "sense" the nearness of Cape Cod. Yet despite Massachusetts being the third most densely populated state, there was no sign of civilization. In her dream, however, this did not seem particularly out of the ordinary.
The gray sky, russet foliage and cold winds coming off the Atlantic were indicative of mid-October.
It's cold, she thought, shivering. What am I doing here, alone on the beach, this late in the season?
"You're here because I wanted to speak to you."
Yvette turned to see a young woman dressed like a Pilgrim right off the Mayflower, from the leather shoes barely visible beneath her ankle-length skirt to the linen cap, or coif, on her head.
She must work at Plimoth Plantation, the writer surmised. Either that or she's on her way to a Thanksgiving celebration.
"Please don't tell me you're my number one fan. I don't need a crazy Annie Wilkes right out of Stephen King's Misery."
"Rest assured. I'm no fan of yours."
There was no mistaking the girl's hostility.
"Okay. Is it my work you don't like or me personally?"
"Both. You really don't know who I am, do you, Yvette?"
"There is something vaguely familiar about ...."
"The hair pulled up beneath the girl's cap was a soft ashen shade of blond, her eyes were cornflower blue with flecks of gold and her flawless pale complexion was tinted a rosy red from the late autumn cold," the girl recited.
"I wrote that!"
"You were describing me."
"Pure coincidence since I never .... Hey, wait a second. That came from the book I'm currently working on. It's never been published."
"I know. It was important we talk before your novel went any further."
"Why? Who are you? And how do you know what's in my manuscript?"
"I told you. I am the blond-haired girl with the blue eyes and perfect complexion you wrote about."
"Impossible! She's not real. She has no identity beyond a few descriptive sentences. Hell, I haven't even given her a name yet!"
"Yes, you did. Think back to the first book in the series, Lost Love."
"You mean Priscilla Woolery, Gideon Northrup's true love? I suppose, on paper, you two sound similar. She had blond hair and blue eyes, too. But she disappeared along with the other Roanoke colonists."
The fact that she was having a conversation with a fictional character, a woman she had created in her imagination, did not strike Yvette as disturbing since dreams rarely made sense.
"That's true. I lived among the natives for several years and eventually headed north where I briefly stayed with the Dutch in New Amsterdam before coming here to Massachusetts Bay."
"Nice try," the author said. "But your story doesn't fit the facts, particularly the chronology. Gideon and John White returned to Roanoke in the year 1590. The Pilgrims didn't land in Plymouth until 1620, and the Dutch settled New Amsterdam in 1624. That's more than thirty-four years after you claim to have left Roanoke. You're clearly not that old."
"You forget, I was but a girl of sixteen when I came to the New World," Priscilla explained.
"Still, that would make you fifty now."
"In your world, yes, but this is fiction. Time bends the rules here. Strictly speaking, Gideon would now be near sixty, yet in your latest book he's still described as a young man."
Having the continuity error in her work brought to her attention did not please the writer. She was Yvette Delacroix, the Queen of Romance. She did not appreciate receiving editorial comments from a figment of her imagination.
"All right, let's suppose you are Priscilla Woolery and not only did you survive whatever befell your fellow Roanoke colonists but you also miraculously resurfaced in Plymouth. What do you want with me?"
"I want what was promised me in Lost Love: I want to live happily ever after with Gideon."
The girl's outrageous request made Yvette laugh.
"You can't be serious! The Gideon Northrup novels are selling better than ever! There's no way I'll allow him to settle down in a boring existence when his books are in such high demand."
"So, you're going to have him fall in love with another woman despite the fact that he's really in love with me?" Priscilla demanded to know.
"Jealous, are you? Well, don't worry; it won't last."
"I know. You'll break his heart in the second-to-last chapter just like you did five times already."
"And unless sales drastically fall off, I'll do the same five more times or maybe ten."
"No, you won't!" Priscilla adamantly declared. "You're going to reunite us in this current book, and we'll live happily ever after as they say in the fairy tales."
"Oh, really? I don't think so."
"Yes. I refuse to be nothing more than a painful memory to Gideon, a lost love he grieves over as he repeatedly attempts to find love with someone else. And I won't be killed off or sent to a convent like the poor women in your other books."
"You won't? Well, I'm the writer. I decide what happens to my characters, not you. In fact, in this book I think I'll have Gideon forget about you altogether."
"Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be," Priscilla warned. "Just give us our happy ending, bring the series to a close and pick another hero or heroine to write about."
"Never. I won't be dictated to by a nonentity."
"No? Let's wait and see."
* * *
What a dream! Yvette thought when she woke and her eyes took in the familiar Manhattan skyline from her bedroom window. How much did I have to drink last night?
Hung over and half asleep, she stumbled to the kitchen and prepared herself a cup of instant coffee. An hour and three more coffees later, she returned to the bedroom. After showering and dressing, she crossed the hallway and entered her sanctum: the writing room.
"Time to get to work," she told herself as she booted up her computer.
A shortcut to the Word file for her current manuscript was prominent on the Dell's desktop. She double-clicked it. Her hands hovered over the keyboard's home row as she waited for the file to open. The words on the screen seemed to jump out at her:
The hair pulled up beneath the girl's cap was a soft ashen shade of blond, her eyes were cornflower blue with flecks of gold and her flawless pale complexion was tinted a rosy red from the late autumn cold.
The previous night's dream came back to her in vivid detail. After reading it again, she had to admit the description sounded exactly like Priscilla Woolery.
"That's easy enough to change. Let's see. How about I give you auburn hair and green eyes?"
Yvette selected the sentence and tried typing over it, but the overstrike feature would not work. She then pressed the BACKSPACE button. Nothing happened. The words highlighted with a blue background remained as they had been typed. Thankfully, there was more than one way to edit text in Word. She pressed the DELETE key, but the result was the same. Determined to take out the sentence, she tried both pressing a combination of the CTRL and X keys and selecting CUT from the HOME ribbon. Neither had any effect on the text.
Maybe it has something to do with the highlighting, she thought and removed it. Let's try this.
The author moved the cursor to the space immediately after the period and hit the BACKSPACE again. The cursor would move forward but not backward.
When all else fails, start over.
Yvette closed the file and opened a blank one. As her fingers danced on the keys, the words appeared on screen.
The hair pulled up beneath the girl's cap was a ...
Although her fingers typed "vibrant reddish brown," the screen read "soft ashen shade of blond."
"I don't believe it! What the hell is wrong?"
In desperation, she exited Word and opened first WordPad and then Notepad. Neither program allowed her to type the sentence as she wanted it revised.
"I guess it's finally time to upgrade to Windows 10 and the latest version of Word," she said with a sigh. "While I'm at it, I might as well buy a new computer."
Having decided upon a course of action, she turned off her old Dell, pulled the plug and went out to the nearest computer store. Within two hours, she returned to her apartment with a new laptop. Once Microsoft Office was installed, she sat down to work.
The hair pulled up beneath the girl's cap was a soft ashen shade of blond ...
A new computer, a new operating system, a new version of Word. Same result. Yvette still could not give her female character auburn hair and green eyes. This, she realized, was not the fault of either Microsoft or Dell.
It's her fault, the author concluded. It's Priscilla Woolery trying to force me to write the novel the way she wants it to read.
"I won't do it!" she yelled into the empty room. "If I have to write out the entire manuscript in longhand and send it to my publisher on lined notebook paper, you're not going to get your way. You're not going to be reunited with Gideon Northrup. Do you hear me? You can't have him!"
In a fit of anger, she slammed her balled fists on the top of her mahogany desk. In response to her action, a book fell off the shelf on the other side of the room.
"Today is not my day!" she cried, getting up from her desk to pick up the fallen volume.
It was the hardcover copy of A Regency Romance, her first published novel. In a moment of nostalgia, she thought back to the day when, an overworked, underpaid secretary, she received the acceptance letter from Abner Crowley at Burgess Press.
That was my first step on the road to becoming the Queen of Romance.
As she turned the book around to place it back on the shelf, she caught a glimpse of the photograph that accompanied her brief biography on the book jacket. It felt as though the blood in her veins was suddenly replaced with ice water. In the color photo, her hair was a soft ashen shade of blond, her eyes were cornflower blue with flecks of gold and her flawless pale complexion ....
Priscilla Woolery's words spoken in her dream echoed in the writer's brain: You really don't know who I am, do you?
Yvette raced from her writing room to the hall powder room. The light above the vanity, unlike the one in the master bathroom, did not soften her features but rather showed every imperfection in its harsh glare. Beneath the heavy makeup and the web of fine lines and wrinkles was the face of Priscilla Woolery.
"No!" she screamed at her own reflection. "You can't have him! He's mine!"
As the mirror shattered and the shards of glass tinkled into the sink, Yvette recognized the emotion that played havoc with her brain as being good old-fashioned jealousy.
"I've fallen into the same trap that Pygmalion did," she said in a moment of self-perception.
Just as the legendary Greek sculptor fell in love with his creation, the Queen of Romance was besotted with the character she created. And why not? He was, after all, an aggregate of the features she admired most in the four men she married. In her eyes, he was the epitome of the perfect man. What she had not understood until that moment was that Priscilla Woolery, his true love, was based on Yvette herself.
"That's why she disappeared and didn't die. I couldn't kill her off."
* * *
Abner Crowley dealt with few authors once he retired his red pen to become president of Burgess Communications. Yvette Delacroix was one of the exceptions. Although he delegated the grunt work of correcting grammar and usage mistakes to one of the editors, he read each and every one of her novels.
"I'm surprised you actually waste your time reading this drivel," his wife once told him when she found one of the romance author's manuscripts in his briefcase.
"I enjoy it," he confessed. "Yvette does for literature what Weird Al did with 'Amish Paradise' and Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder did with Young Frankenstein."
"She's the Queen of Romance. I didn't know she wrote comedy."
"Neither does she. Yvette believes she's a serious writer. That's what makes her books so amusing."
"You're terrible!" his wife laughed.
Now, in his plush corner office atop the Burgess Building in the heart of Boston, Abner opened up the manila envelope that contained Yvette's latest manuscript, the sixth in the series of Gideon Northrup adventures.
"Hold my calls," he told his assistant.
Then he took his large cup of coffee, made himself comfortable on the office sofa and thumbed past the title page to the beginning of the first chapter. Three hours later, after he finished reading the last paragraph, he took his cell phone out of his pocket and called the author's personal number.
"I don't believe it!" Abner exclaimed when Yvette answered. "After all this time, Priscilla Woolery is alive! Even more surprising, she's still alive on the last page. Are you waiting until your next book to kill her off?"
Before answering his question, the Queen of Romance thought about Gideon Northrup who had her first husband's dark hair; her second husband's hazel eyes; her third husband's tall, muscular frame; and her fourth husband's devilish charm.
"No. I think my next book will be about an auburn-haired Southern belle with green eyes who falls in love with a handsome doctor wounded at Bull Run."
"Good idea," Crowley said. "Make your fans wait for the next Gideon Northrup novel. Let the anticipation build."
Yvette did not tell Abner that her popular series of books would stop at six.
He wouldn't understand my reasons, she thought as she recalled the beautiful young girl who had confronted her in a dream.
Time would never turn the ashen blond hair to gray, nor would it dull the gold flecks in her cornflower blue eyes. Her flawless pale complexion would never be marred with a roadmap of age lines. She and Gideon would enjoy an eternity of youth and true love.
I owe her that, the Queen of Romance thought, wiping a tear from her eye. I owe it to Gideon and, most of all, I owe it to myself.
Salem once wrote a book and fell in love with the main character. Too bad he was writing an autobiography at the time!
