Diary of an Ugly Duckling (2 page)

“Yeah, banter. It’s how you win a woman with

your words—”

“You mean my rap?” He shook his head, grin-

ning. “Yo, I don’t need no help with
that
—”

“Take that, you bitch!” someone behind her

screamed.

Audra’s fantasy faded like the trappings of Cin-

derella’s trip to the ball, leaving neither a glass

slipper—or even an ankle bracelet—to keep alive

the memory. Audra leaped to her feet, one hand on

her baton, the other on the service revolver snapped

tight into the holster on her right hip as she whirled

toward the sound. She touched a button on the

walkie-talkie at her hip, activating a speaker and mi-

crophone on her shoulder, following procedures on

reflex.

8

Karyn Langhorne

“Control, this is 0847. Incident in the day room.

Backup requested, over,” she murmured quickly

into the device as the words, “Fight! Fight!” went up

like a grade-school chant, filling the room.

Art Bradshaw was already wading through the

sea of orange toward the brawlers and Audra dived

into the commotion. “Hey!” she hollered, dropping

her voice to its hardest, most authoritative edge as

she bumped through the knot of jumpsuited men

hyped on the sounds of fists flying. “Get back! Back,

I said!”

“You heard her! Get back!” Bradshaw rumbled,

echoing Audra in a commanding chorus. “Out of

the way!”

The cluster of orange onlookers fell away at the

power of the man’s voice. Of course, it wasn’t just

his voice that parted the men like Moses at the Red

Sea: Audra noticed, not for the first time, that the

new corrections officer was very tall—at least 6 feet

5 inches in his socks, with the kind of thick muscles

that usually meant a man sweated for a living. Au-

dra glanced quickly into his face: It was smooth and

rich, chiseled sharp at the cheekbones and chin. Im-

possibly handsome. Prince Charming handsome.

Once again, he gave Audra not the slightest look or

word, ignoring her as thoroughly as if she didn’t ex-

ist, even though the two of them needed to act as a

team to resolve the conflict unfolding before them.

Two men lay tangled in each other’s arms, each

trying to beat the living hell out of the other. The top

man’s number was stenciled across the side of his

jumpsuit like a tattoo: MI 761098. Audra transcribed

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

9

it in her mind to the face of a long, lean, don’t-give-

a-good-damn brother whose mama had named him

Princeton Haines, though he was neither princely in

manner nor smart enough for the college of the same

name. Even with only the back of his cornrowed

head visible as he wrestled with the man beneath

him, Audra knew his cocoa-colored face was con-

torted into the sneer it always wore. Unlike kids like

Carlton, there was no point talking to inmates like

Haines; odds were overwhelming that not only

would Haines likely return to Manhattan Men’s for

repeat visits when he’d finished this three-to-five,

but that he’d probably one day reside at Upstate, the

maximum security prison, for the rest of his life.

If the top man was Princeton Haines, the bottom

man had to be a new inmate he’d been exchanging

bad blood with for the past two weeks, a youngster

by the name of Garcia, who was working overtime

to create a bad-ass rep. An instant later, her suspi-

cions were confirmed as the two men shifted posi-

tions and the bottom man became the top.

“Break it up!” Bradshaw shouted, grabbing at

Garcia’s back and lifting him easily off the floor.

Audra slipped her baton back into its loop at her

belt and on the impulse of her training, grabbed

Haines firmly by the armpits and tugged him up-

ward with all her might, dragging him to his sur-

prised feet.

“Dag,” one of the orange-suited men muttered

from the cluster. “You see her lift him like he was

nothing—”

“That’s one strong-ass chick, man—”

10

Karyn Langhorne

“You sure it’s a chick? Looks like a dude to me.”

“Yeah man, one fat, black ugly dude, y’know—”

“Fat, black, ugly dude with tits,” another voice

chuckled.

Fat . . . black . . . ugly
. The words shook her insides

like they always had, and she was nine years old all

over again, listening where she shouldn’t have,

hearing things that cut her to heart’s core.

Fat . . . black . . . ugly . . .

She jerked toward the voice, half-expecting to see

the ghost of her father, when—

Rip.

It was the most awful sound imaginable: loud

and insistent, more shattering than gunfire. It

seemed to echo in the room, reverberating, register-

ing in every ear with deafening meaning. Automati-

cally, Audra threw Haines roughly aside and heard

him crash against something, hard and loud. She

reached behind her, feeling for the tear and getting a

nice handful of her large, white, granny panty

underwear—as a flush of mortification heated her

face.

Her tight blue uniform pants had given up their

valiant struggle and ripped waistband to crotch

down the center butt-seam . . . in front of a roomful

of men.

An instant later the sound of laughter filled the

room, echoing in her ears as Audra spread her

hands over the tear, humiliation settling thick and

hot in her chest. The last remnants of the elegant

fantasy of the forties slipped from her mind as tears

bubbled just beneath her eyelashes.

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

11

I won’t cry. I won’t cry . . . Corrections officers don’t

cry
, Audra told herself.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” she muttered

Elvis-style, taking a couple of quick nodding bows

around the room, blinking quickly as though it were

a part of her routine and not a desperate attempt to

keep her emotions at bay. “I’m here in Vegas ’til

Tuesday . . .”

More laughter reverberated around her and Au-

dra took another quick bow, her hands firmly af-

fixed to the seat of her pants, just as four more COs

joined them in the day room to help. She glanced at

Bradshaw, hoping for support, but he simply stared

into the space between her shoulder and the walls,

as usual.

The handsome creep.

“It’s okay, fellas,” Audra said, taking charge of the

confusion on the newcomers’ faces. Clearly they’d

been expecting an outbreak of prison violence . . .

and were surprised to find themselves in the audi-

ence of a comedy show. “It’s all over but the jokin’

and the sewin’—”

“Gonna take a big needle close
that
up!” Someone

quipped, but before Audra could isolate the identity

of the speaker Haines’ moaned.

“Shut up! Won’t somebody shut her up? Fat bitch

broke my ribs! She broke my damn ribs then

slammed me into that table there!” He clutched at

his abdomen, bent double, Audra supposed, with

pain. “Y’all saw it! It’s police brutality! I want my

lawyer! I’m filing a claim with the warden! I want

reparations—”

12

Karyn Langhorne

“Quiet, Haines.”

Audra turned in surprise.

Bradshaw.

His voice was smooth, rich and deep like some for-

bidden chocolate treat or an expensive coffee drink.

The voice of a screen legend from Hollywood’s hey-

day, mesmerizing in its depth. She glanced over at

him and found a somber expression on his face.

“You okay?” he asked at last.

Audra hesitated. He still wasn’t exactly looking at

her, but when no one else replied, she assumed the

question was intended for her. For some reason,

Bradshaw’s concern made tears tremble just below

the surface again, but Audra shook them aside.

“Marvelous, darling,” she muttered in her best diva

dame voice, but with the inmates still muttering

“fat” and “dude with tits” and with her fingers tight

over her rear end, it was hard to keep the image

alive. “Thanks for asking. I was beginning to won-

der what it took to get your attention.” She shrugged

toward her rear end. “Now I know.”

Bradshaw blinked, his light eyes shifting at last to

her face. Audra felt a shock like electricity course

through her body as his full lips curved into the

slightest smile. “Sorry. Had a lot on my mind lately,”

he said, then leaned toward Audra, dropping his

voice to a husky whisper. “And you confused
Dou-

ble Indemnity
with
Casablanca
,” he murmured in a

tone intended for her ears only. “Try to get it straight

next time, Marks.” Then he shifted his attention to

the inmates. “Recreation’s over, gentlemen,” he an-

nounced in a smooth baritone. “Line up! Now!”

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

13

Reluctantly, the men shuffled into a haphazard

line along the wall. Bradshaw led the way back to

the cell block, leaving Audra staring after him with

her hands covering her bloomers and her mouth

open in surprise.

Chapter 2

“If that’s all you’re getting from what I told you,”

Audra said, her voice rising to a near shout in

frustration, “You are missing the
point
, Ma—”

“I ain’t missing
nothing
, Audra,” Audra’s mother,

Edith Marks snapped, her words lilting with the to-

bacco fields of North Carolina, as though she hadn’t

lived in New York City since she was eighteen. “The

point
is, you ripped your pants and showed your

butt—literally—to this man—”

“Art Bradshaw—”

“This Art Bradshaw,” Audra’s mother repeated,

more loudly than before, hammering home her

point by volume alone. “What must he think of

you?”

What
did
Art Bradshaw think, Audra wondered,

replaying the way his eyes had locked on hers, liq-

uid and glowing with warmth. His words betrayed

that he’d been listening to her conversation with the

kid, Carter. Audra wondered how many other times

DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING

15

he’d watched her, as surreptitiously as she’d watched

him.

“I think . . .” Audra began slowly, determined to

say the words aloud in spite of the patter of her

heart. “I think he thinks what I think. That we’re

soul mates—”

“Soul mates! Soul mates, my eye,” Edith scoffed.

“You humiliate yourself in front of him and now,

you’re talking some mess ’bout him bein’ your soul

mate?” She rolled a pair of shrewd, bright eyes care-

fully lined with black pencil and batted her mas-

caraed lashes in Audra’s direction. “Honestly,

Audra. If you think that man’s interested in you be-

cause you can crack a joke after humiliatin’ yourself,

you musta bumped your head—”

“Will you forget about the pants for just a second,

Ma?” Audra folded her arms over her chest like a

defiant teenager and lifted her head in protest. “I

think he’s interested in me because we both know

the movies—”

“Movies!” The older woman tossed this week’s

hairdo, making the strands of a sleek black bob

dance. Audra knew for a fact most of the hair was

fake, purchased wholesale from the inventory of

her mother’s salon, Goldilocks, and sewn in on a

Monday or Tuesday morning when there weren’t

many paying customers. It looked good, too, on her

mother’s still pretty fifty-something head, but then

most styles did. It was yet another way they were dif-

ferent: opposite as night is from day. “So he likes

movies. Everybody likes movies. What’s that got to

do with the price of beans in China?” her mother

concluded, as if the question were completely logical.

16

Karyn Langhorne

Talking to her mother was always like this. So

many questions, so little listening. They were as

combative as the mother-daughter relationship in

Mildred Pierce
. Joan Crawford played the long-

suffering, giving mother to Ann Blyth’s selfish,

greedy, mean-spirited daughter. Only in their case,

Audra was certain, it was the daughter who was the

suffering one.

“It’s
tea
, Ma,” she corrected, infusing a touch of

the movie’s drama into the moment to make it more

bearable. “The price of
tea
in China. And I’m telling

you, that stuff with the pants, it won’t matter. He

knows the old movies—the
classic
movies—and he

knows I know them, too. Did you hear what he said

about confusing
Casablanca
and
Double Indemnity
?”

Her chest lifted in a sigh of longing. “It’s like we

were
meant
for each other—”

“Oh, Audra, please,” Edith Marks muttered dis-

missively. “Stop talkin’ foolishness and get
real
. I

can’t think of anything much more of a turnoff than