"Of course it is! Lord love you, Babs, don't tell me that an educated city woman like you doesn't know what it takes to attract a unicorn?"

City woman? Twenty-five years ago, maybe. Which translates into Bowman's Ridge-ese as yesterday.

And I did know what it takes to attract a unicorn.

"Oh, come on, Muriel!" I protested. "Don't you stand there and try to tell me that Greta Marie is the one and only virgin in this whole town!"

Muriel's eyes twinkled. "All right, I won't. Wouldn't be true, anyhow. But how long does your average virgin last, these days? Sixteen, seventeen years at most, and that's like an eyeblink of time to a unicorn. They're immortal, you know," she confided. "I may belong to a different generation, but I'm not blind or stupid. We all know what goes on with our young people, especially since the government's been making them go to that regional high school at Miller's Falls." p.r.o.nounced Sodom again, and no matter that the government redistricting edict was handed down in 1953, when even Vegas was wholesome.

"You see," Muriel went on, "it's not just that Greta Marie's a virgin, it's that she's so d.a.m.n good at it. Pardon my French."

"So everyone knows and no one objects?" I asked.

"Why should they? She's a respectable member of this town and if she wants to raise mythical beasts on her own property that's her own business .... as long as she keeps them under proper control at all times and they don't pose any threat to the community."

"That's comforting to know," I said with a merry chuckle that didn't become me at all. (The glazed donut had gone straight to my brain and the sugar rush convinced me I could try my hand at wit.) "You see, I found this darling little dragon's egg on my lawn last Easter and I was worried that if I hatched it, people would talk."

Muriel stared at me blankly for the count of three, then said, "You writers," and took off as if the kitchen had caught fire.

I was left alone at the counter, Dorothy Parker manque, with nothing to hide my blushes save my coffee cup and my copy of With Pen and Pa.s.sion. The cup being empty, I chose to go to ground behind the cover of the very magazine between whose pages I had dropped the original sliver of unicorn horn.

This might be the best place to mention that With Pen and Pa.s.sion is one of the many fine periodicals to which I subscribe as part of my career as a romance writer. WiPP, as we in the trade call it, is a slick monthly whose chief allure is the book review column. That is to say, whose chief allure had been the book review column.

As long as we're opening narrative parentheses, let the worst now be revealed: His name was Wellcome Fisher and he was my own d.a.m.ned fault.

I'd met him at a romance writers' convention in New York City about ten years ago. He was an aspiring author, scion of a proud old New England family, almost attractive in a tweedier-than-thou kind of way, well-bred, well-read, pumped full of the Wisdom of the Ancients at the ivy-covered t.i.t of Mother Princeton, raring to put pen to word processor and make his genius known to the fortunate ma.s.ses. There was just one little thing standing in the way of his brilliant career: He couldn't write for toffee.

Of course I didn't know this from the start. He seemed like such a nice man.

Many successful romance writers are male, you know. They all write under female pseudonyms unless they're Fabio or churning out mainstream lunchblowers like The Bridges of Madison County.) He introduced himself, said how much he admired my work, and asked if he could buy me a drink.

He bought me several. It was all strictly professional. We had a lovely, long chat about the importance of research in writing historical romance. He told me that he was always extremely punctilious about his research, and he didn't understand why the one book he had managed to sell was doing so poorly.

"I don't merely say 'Gwendolyn stood before her mirror wearing a velvet gown,'"

he told me. "I put in details." And he gave me an autographed copy of Lady Gwendolyn's Gallant so that I could see for myself.

I did, once I got it home. Wellcome had done his research, all right. His book gave me a painfully thorough education about the provenance of food, clothing, furniture, music, and transportation in Regency England. It told me who ate what and how much of it, who slept where and for how long, and who used which finger to excavate whose nostril. In fact, it told me everything except an entertaining story.

We had exchanged telephone numbers, so when the inevitable happened and he called to ask my opinion of his work, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. I don't like to lie, I just do it for a living. However, neither do I like to tell someone that his book, his effort, his hardbound baby, stinks like a gopher's armpit. For one thing, it's cruel. For another, it's dangerous. Alas for the world, we now no longer know which eager young writer will take constructive criticism as an invitation to a.s.sa.s.sination.

So I hedged. I evaded all direct questions about the book itself. I chattered and gobbled and blithered about a plethora of other subjects in an attempt to divert Wellcome Fisher from the original aim of his call.

Unfortunately, one of the subjects on which I blithered was the fact that WiPP was looking for a few good book reviewers. Wellcome heard, applied, and the rest was history, much like the Hindenberg, the t.i.tanic, and the Reagan Years. From the moment he got the job, he announced that he would now devote his fair young life to the aesthetic improvement of the Romance genre. It was a n.o.ble aim, in theory.

In practice he appeared to have slapped on a pair of six-shooters and gone out gunning for authors whose work had committed the unpardonable sin of having a better track record than his. [Which is to say, everybody and Cain's dog.) He implemented this game plan by reducing any book he reviewed to a pitiful clutch of execrables, derivatives, pathetics, and don't bothers.

Any book, including mine. Though we remained on social terms, Wellcome was quick to inform me that he would not let our acquaintances.h.i.+p sway his critical judgment, and he proved this by a scathing review of Raleigh, Truly [Sixth in my ever-popular Elizabethan series). Furthermore, said he, I ought to be grateful.

He was only being honest.

I, in turn, informed him that I thought his critical judgment consisted entirely of b.l.o.o.d.yminded revenge on writers who, unlike himself, had managed to create something people wanted to read. What was more, he might call it honesty, but anyone with half a gla.s.s eye could see that he had more axes to grind than Paul Bunyan. The rest of our interview is clouded in my mind, but I believe that a condescending remark on his part, a bowl of extra-chunky salsa on mine, and a dry-cleaning bill for a man's suit figure in it somewhere.

If only the chunks had been larger! Wellcome sustained no permanent injuries from the episode. He wrote on, his pen unblunted and his bile unmitigated, an Alexander Woollcott wannabe in full flower (Deadly nightshade, since you asked).

As a matter of fact, the very issue of WiPP into which I had slipped the odd finding from my apple pie likewise contained Wellcome's review of my latest novel, Beloved Babylonian. I'd been waiting to read it until I was sure we were all out of razors.

Why did I let his reviews do this to me? Even though I knew he trashed everyone's books equally, even though I knew he wrote solely out of envy and spleen, his words still had the power to wound, or at least to give me the stray twinge in the coccyx. When he wrote romances, he bludgeoned whole chapters to death with a stack of research books as high as it was dry, but when he wrote reviews, he was the undefeated master of a myriad barbed b.i.t.c.heries. We writers claim to be indifferent to any voice save that of our Muse, but we writers lie.

Living among the stoic folk of Bowman's Ridge for twenty-five years had not helped to harden my skin or toughen my ego. However, it had taught me the simple, rock-ribbed lesson most hardscrabble folk learn early: Get the worst out of the way first. I decided to read Wellcome's review, swallow his abuse, question his masculinity and curse his name, all so that I'd be able to enjoy the rest of the magazine in peace afterward.

Fans of Barbara Barclay's stunning Elizabethan series will rejoice to learn that the justly praised First Lady of the Torrid Quill is now also the Queen of Sizzling Cuneiform. Beloved Babylonian takes you on a breathless, breakneck, no-holds-barred roller coaster ride of ecstacy through the reign of that hottest of historic hunks, Hammurabi himself. No wonder they called it the Fertile Crescent! If you want to read the best and the brightest that this field has to offer, then I urge you to run, don't walk, to your local prosemonger and buy your copy now! If these books don't fly off the shelves, they'll set them on fire.

"Babs? Babs, honey?" Muriel shook me gently by the shoulder. "You've just been sitting here for the past ten minutes staring off at nothing. You all right?"

"Uhhhh, sure," I said, and clutching my copy of WiPP to my heaving bosom, I fled. I didn't stop fleeing until I was safe at home, up in my office, with the door shut and the cat banished. I didn't like doing the latter. Like many another writer's cat, my gray tabby Gorbaduc has aided my career immeasurably by critiquing all my ma.n.u.scripts with her a.s.shole. It was the only thing that she and Wellcome Fisher ever had in common.

Until now. I read the other reviews. Each was as glowing and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with bouquets as the love-feast he'd laid out for Beloved Babylonian. I put down the magazine, unable to move, unable to speak, and more than a little inclined to scream. I'm a flexible sort, but to accept the fact that Wellcome Fisher would ever write an all-rave review column required my mind to acquire the elasticity of a boneless belly-dancer. Wellcome's abandonment of acrimony was the apocalyptic harbinger that St. John missed, the Unlisted Number of the Beast. I don't like it when my whole world pitches itself tush over t.i.tties without a word of warning. It frightens me.

"What's happened to that man?" I mused aloud. "Is he sick? Is he insane? He couldn't have gone nice on us spontaneously. What could put him in a charitable mood? Oh G.o.d. Oh no. Oh please don't let it be that he's actually gone and sold another of his books! Even vanity presses couldn't be that unprincipled. No, it: can't be that. It's too horrible to contemplate. He must be up to something else, and it's something big and nasty or he wouldn't be trying to put us off guard with a few kind words."

I re-read his review column and my hands went damp and cold. "Jesus, to counterbalance something like this it's going to have to be something really big, and really, really nasty." I shuddered to think what that something might be. Wellcome Fisher had little talent, but like the Spanish inquisition's primo torturer he was a man of bottomless invention, mostly vindictive. This was not going to be pretty.

Existential fear is one thing, dinner's another. Every writer is allowed only so much time to wallow in the great trough of emotional resonance, with all-day privileges extended solely to those of us foresighted enough to be born male and to have obtained that handy labor-saving device, a wife. This was not the case for me, and while my husband is a dear who "helps with the housework"

(Translation: "Where do we keep the b.u.t.ter? Where's the frying pan? Are you sure we have a potato peeler?'") he was out of town on yet another of his ever-recurring business trips, (Alas, the darling of my heart is in Sales, and I am left forlorn. Not all single parents are divorced or unmarried, you know.) A glance at my desk clock told me that time and frozen fish-sticks wait for no man and so, using that wonderful human survival skill called If I stop thinking about it, it will go away, I purposely put Wellcome Fisher's aberrant reviews from my mind and hied myself downstairs to the kitchen.

The plates were on the table, Grace was said, and Rachel had just informed me that squash was Politically Incorrect (and gross), when the telephone rang. I scowled -- first at the phone, then at Rachel -- and announced, "If that's one of your friends, they know very well that it's the dinner hour and I'm going to tell them they can just call back later." This said, I picked up the receiver.

"What is the meaning of this flagrant violation of my Const.i.tutionally guaranteed freedom of expression, you pandering troll?" a voice boomed in my ear.

"Oh. h.e.l.lo, Wellcome," I replied.

"You can tell your friend to call back later, too, Mom!" Rachel called out joyously. (When did any daughter of mine develop such a provoking smirk, I'd like to know?)

"It's all right, dear, it's no friend of mine; it's a critic," I replied, not bothering to cover the mouthpiece.

"Eeeuuuwww." Rachel made a face even more contorted by revulsion than when I'd served her squash. Truly I had raised her well.

I returned my attention to my caller: "All right, Fisher, what are you yapping about?"

"You know d.a.m.ned well that to which I refer, Barbara Barclay, you sorry hack. I call your attention to the December issue of With Pen and Pa.s.sion, my review column in particular."

"I've seen it," I told him. "Really, Wellcome, you were much too kind. Much."

I could almost see the apoplectic color rising in his face when he spluttered out, "You're d.a.m.ned well right I was much too kind! If I weren't so fornicating kind you'd be getting this call from my lawyer!"

"Of course I would," I replied serenely. At last I had my answer: He was insane.

Multiple personality disorder at the very least. He must've written those reviews under the brief influence of the Good Wellcome Fisher, and now that Evil Wellcome had rea.s.serted sovereignty, he wanted to s.h.i.+ft the blame.

"Don't condescend to me, jade. And don't try to convince me that this is none of your doing. I know exactly what I wrote about that hideous mound of toxic verbiage you call Beloved Babylonian, and this review is not it! Nor are any of the others printed therewith the work of my pen. Oh, you'll pay for this effrontery, Barbara. J'accuse!"

It had been ages since Rachel was a bratty two-year-old, but it was remarkable how quickly I recovered the patient, measured tone of voice necessary for dealing with tantrums. "Wellcome, dear, before I put in a long-distance call to the wacko-wagon down in your neck of the woods, would you mind telling me how you think I managed to change your precious spew -- I mean, reviews?"

"Ha! As if you didn't know. Thanks to a barbarous mob of so-called readers whose vulgar tastes are directly responsible for the imminent fall of Western Civilization, you are an author who is w who is not without--" Something was sticking in his craw, but he made the effort and horked up: "-- who is not without some influence in the publis.h.i.+ng world."

Ah, so he'd built his palace of paranoia on that little patch of quicksand, I was a Name in the field of Romance, therefore I could prevail upon the publishers of WiPP to delete Wellcome's real reviews and insert some of my own creation. Sure, I could. Now that I saw whither his twisted thoughts tended, I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or pity the naivete that believed genre authors could influence anything except their editors' drinking problems.