The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman

“I’d really like you to be my partner,” Ashley said to Richard.

Richard spilled cocoa on himself. “Uh,” he said. He looked at me for help.

“I think Mother was expecting Rich to take Fleur,” I said.

“Fleur is flying home
before
New Year’s Eve,” Ashley announced grandly.

I looked at Fleur. “I decided to go to the wedding after all.”

“Good,” Richard and I said together.

“I thought you asked Kirk,” I said to Ashley.

“He can’t go,” Ashley said quickly. “Will you go with me?” she asked Richard again, keeping her voice light.

I don’t know why, but Richard looked at me again. “Are you going?” he asked.

“She’s going with Helmut Weiss, so they can discuss transformational grammar.” Satisfaction on her smug face.

I sighed. “Helmut is good company, Ashley.” Which was more than I could say for her.

“You will go, won’t you?” Ashley fluttered the eyelashes. Gag, gag, and throw up.

“Well.” Richard recovered himself. “Sure,” he said to Ashley. “That’ll be fun.”

“Oh good,” she said. “Have some more cocoa.” She poured some from the thermos into his cup. “Do you want more, Kate?”

Pushing my glasses back on my nose, I shook my head. I’d had enough poison for one day.

A
School Library Journal
Best Book of the Year

This is one of those romance novels. You know, that disgusting kind with kisses that last three paragraphs and make you want to put your finger down your throat to induce projectile vomiting. It is one of those books where the hero has a masculine-sounding name that ends in an unvoiced velar plosive, like CHUCK (although that is not my hero’s name), and he has sinewy muscles and makes guttural groanings whenever his beloved is near. In romance novels, the heroine has a feminine-sounding name made up of liquid consonants, like FLEUR, and has full, sensuous lips—yearning lips. I think the word “yearning” will appear at least a thousand times in this book. The heroine also has long, silky legs and is a virgin.

The reason I know about romance novels at all is because my best friend, Ashley, was addicted to them last year, our junior year, and insisted I read them too. The trouble with romance novels, I soon discovered, is
that they make you feel bad about your life, especially if there is no CHUCK in it, and especially if you don’t have long, silky legs and your name ends in an unvoiced dental plosive as mine does (Kate) and very especially if you think you’re going to be a virgin for the rest of your life. Mostly, though, romance novels are sappy in the extreme. They read like junior-high-school daydreams. I’ve never read one that I could really believe. None of them sounds like real life. And I want real life. Even in novels, I want real life.

So what do you do if you have lived a real romance, and it happened at Christmas, and the guy has a masculine-sounding name, Richard, and it ends up that he loves you as much as you love him? I know what I want to do. I want to write a romance novel about it. I want it to end with “they lived happily ever after.” And we really have.

Sort of. This all happened last December and it is now the middle of February, so we have lived happily ever after for six weeks. But how many people do you know who are exhilaratingly happy for six weeks? I know it’s a record for me.

I want to gloat and bask in this lovely feeling of being in love. And if I do not have long, silky legs and long, blond locks, I do have sensuous, full lips, and if I have not written three-paragraph kisses, I have kissed them.

I’m giving this my best shot. I’ve got The
Romance Writer’s Phrase Book
right next to the word processor in case I’m at a loss for words, as they say. If you are jaded
about romance or have PMS or are on the downside of manic depression and can’t stand to read about other people’s happiness, then get real. This book is not for you.

Chapter
One
of a romance novel is the chapter where the heroine is described and where she first meets the hero. This is no different. It happened a few days before Christmas. My mother asked me to walk down to Sims Market after dinner and get some cinnamon sticks. She has this hot drink she makes around Christmas called Russian tea—it’s filled with cinnamon and cloves and sugar and orange and lemon and stuff—and we guzzle it all through the holidays. It’s part of our family tradition, this drink. Anyway, she was almost out of cinnamon sticks. Would I go to Sims?

It was a dark and stormy night. This is the honest-to-god truth. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was snowing hard—large flakes the size of cotton balls—and it was thundering and flashing lightning off in the distance. If you don’t believe it can thunder and snow at the same time, then obviously you haven’t lived in Minnesota, the Weather State.

I had covered my six-foot frame in thermal underwear, ski pants, a turtleneck sweater, a down parka with
the hood up, mittens with reindeer heads knitted into the tops, and million-dollar snow boots, which my father calls the “fruit boots.” I’m not going to apologize for being too tall. I know heroines should be petite, but I’m not. I am six feet tall in my stocking feet. I do have very long legs and nice kneecaps, but I don’t know if my legs are particularly silky. In fact, sometimes in winter, when I’m totally covered in clothes all the time, I just skip shaving my legs and see how long the hairs can get. If I want silky legs, I can get them by rubbing Chanel body lotion all over them.

Anyway, the minute I began walking down Folwell Street, I felt glad to be alive. Even before the hero entered, I was pretty happy with my life. I’m not the sulking type. My father, the linguistics professor, had been playing one of the Brandenburg Concertos when I left, and I felt as if the flute music were trapped inside me and that if I opened my mouth, it would trill out into the night air. I caught snowflakes on my tongue the way I used to do when I was ten. The night felt magical. There must have been some foreshadowing in the air.

It’s only about six blocks to Sims Market, and pretty soon I was standing in front of the spices, but I couldn’t find the cinnamon sticks. I knew the spices were arranged in alphabetical order, but my eyes (which
The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book
would describe as “amethyst”) skipped from basil to fennel to thyme and back again. There were distractions: the canned music, for one thing. I stood directly under a speaker blaring an orchestral rendition of “Sleigh Ride” and found myself trying to fill in the words, “Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring
ting tingling too …” Then something—weather—something, something—together—basil, fennel, thyme.

The other distraction was Ashley, my best friend, who taught me all there was to know about the romance novel last year, and her boyfriend, Kirk, at the checkout counter making much ado about the dry mistletoe forlornly hung over each checkout aisle. They held the blue plastic shopping basket between them, but Kirk leaned over it, threatening to kiss Ashley in front of clerks and customers alike. Finally he bit her ear, and Ashley’s laughter pealed above the canned “Sleigh Ride.” When heads turned, Ashley muffled her mouth as if she had committed a grand faux pas. After they set the filled shopping basket on the counter, Kirk took her hand and put it in the pocket of his parka with his own.

The truth is that Ashley is always trying to live her life as if she were the heroine of a romance novel. It never works, though. She rarely lives happily ever after, even for six weeks. But at Christmastime, she and Kirk were hot for each other.

I tried to concentrate on the spices. Allspice, sweet basil, ground cinnamon—