didn’t matter. Stupid and awkward as she felt,
there was a part of her that would have happily
stayed rooted to this spot, staring at Bradshaw and
dreaming that Fred-and-Ginger ballroom dream
all over again.
As if reading her thoughts, Bradshaw opened his
mouth.
“Do you like parties?” he blurted out in a rush of
words.
Yes! Audra’s soul jumped to her throat, dancing,
and she had to struggle to keep her feet from joining
it. A prayer of gratitude sprang to her lips and she
imagined herself sauntering home just as fat, black
and ugly as she’d left it, and dropping this piece of
news on her mother’s dinner plate.
“You really came through, Bradshaw, you know
that?” she murmured, beaming at him. “I knew you
were different. I just knew it—”
Bradshaw blinked at her in surprise. “What?”
“Forget it,” Audra said quickly. Calling upon the
ghosts of dead divas, she cocked her head and met
his gaze with an expression she hoped said some-
thing sassy and seductive at the same time. “What
did you have in mind?”
He hesitated a little, a puzzled expression gleam-
ing out of those honey-colored eyes. “Having a little
get together. Saturday. For my daughter. Sweet six-
teen.”
Daughter?
“Oh . . .” Audra said, feeling a little like she’d
been doused in cold water. “I—I didn’t know you
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
43
had a daughter that old. I guess you and your
wife—”
“Not married . . . and I was a father young. Too
young.” They stared at each other again, each ap-
parently waiting for the other, until he said, “You’ll
come?” he asked sounding suddenly urgent. “I was
hoping you’d . . . talk to her.”
Talk to his daughter? Audra frowned. “You want
me to talk to your daughter ? About what?”
Art Bradshaw’s amber eyes gleamed down at her.
“Girl stuff. The stuff girls have to deal with,” he fin-
ished hurriedly, as if just naming the things girls
had to deal with were too much for him.
Audra shook her head. “This sounds like a job for
her mother—”
“No,” Bradshaw’s voice sharpened to dangerous.
“No help there.”
“Is it just the two of you?”
“Just the two.” He hesitated a moment, then
stepped closer to her, filling the space between them
with warmth and heat. “So you’ll come? Saturday.
Eight o’clock—”
Audra was almost swept away by the despera-
tion radiating in his handsome face, while movie
titles flickered through a mental catalogue in her
brain. There were dozens of mother-daughter
films—but father-daughter? The only one that came
to mind was Father of the Bride . . . and that hardly
suited the circumstance Bradshaw was describing.
Audra shook her head. This was sounding less like
a date and more like a babysitting gig with every
second . . .
“She wanted a party,” Bradshaw said suddenly,
44
Karyn Langhorne
sounding almost as though he were talking to him-
self. “A fancy one. To help make friends.”
“I seriously doubt your daughter wants me at her
party—”
“I want you there,” Bradshaw said and now those
lovely golden eyes fixed on her, igniting a fire inside
Audra that erased all of her questions and reserva-
tions. “I need you there, Marks,” he repeated and
Audra stared into those eyes, seeing herself re-
flected in their amber pools, not as fat, black and
ugly, but as a princess as lovely in the eye of the be-
holder as the swan in Kiana’s fairy tale.
“You . . . want me there?” she squeaked.
“You’ll come? Please?”
Audra nodded, transfixed by the image of herself
reflected in the man’s shining eyes.
“Sure,” she heard herself mumble. “Just name the
place—”
“Saturday night. Eight. Caverna—it’s a restaurant
in Brooklyn. She picked it. It’s sort of . . .” he gri-
maced like he tasted something sour, screwing his
gorgeous face into a wrinkled mush of lips and
nose. “Trendy,” he finished distastefully. “Hip.”
Audra smiled. Trendy, hip. Handsome, strong,
silent-type Art Bradshaw had just invited her to join
him at a trendy, hip club in Brooklyn, Audra
thought, skipping over the stuff about his daugh-
ter’s party or that there was something she was sup-
posed to talk to the girl about once there. The
unpleasantness with Haines was forgotten, as were
her own nagging feelings of doubt.
See, Ma, she telegraphed her mother in her mind,
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
45
as she lifted her chin toward Bradshaw, batting her
eyes like a Hall of Famer. Life can be like a movie . . .
“Hip, huh?” Audra put a hand on her upper thigh
and curled her lips into a Mae West smirk of a smile.
“I got plenty of hip, big boy. But what on Earth will I
wear?”
Chapter 4
“Something fancy and hip. Fancy and hip,” Au-
dra sang the words over and over like a
mantra, as she boarded the subway and squeezed
into the little space between a chunky, sour-faced sis-
ter who grimaced as though Audra had attacked her
and a white man who snapped his newspaper
around him like a shield. Audra ignored them both,
pushed Princeton Haines and the brutality charge to
the back corner of her mind, and whispered, “Some-
thing fancy, something hip,” softly to herself, hop-
ing for a vision.
Fancy.
Hip.
She had to keep saying the words to keep up her
courage to do what she had to do. It would take
courage to do this kind of shopping: the kind that
would require branching out of the safe world of
elastic-waist pants and loose sweatshirts in drab
solid colors. Because everyone knew “hip” meant
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
47
come-hither, form-fitting, and “fancy” meant color-
ful or sparkly or something more elaborate than the
everyday blacks, navy blues and grays. It meant—
for one evening—the chance to be a days-gone-by
diva, dressed to the nines, surrounded by gaiety and
laughter. It meant swishing about in too much costly
fabric, with glittering jewels in ears and on neck and
in hair while sipping highballs and making witty
repartee with Art Bradshaw, her captivated host. Au-
dra closed her eyes, letting the rocking train lull her
deeper into her dream until the hard subway bench
around her transformed into an elegant forties-style
divan, the clattering roll of the car’s wheels into the
tinkling of piano keys and clinking martini gl
asses,
and the aroma of sweaty bodies into the smell of cig-
arette smoke dense in the air. Audra imagined her-
self an Audrey Hepburn or a Grace Kelly, laughing a
throaty, worldly laugh as she tossed her head like a
princess and rearranged her gown like a woman
who had a closet full of party clothes at home and a
dozen places to wear them—
“Do you mind? You’re crushing me!” the sister
beside her hissed with some serious New York atti-
tude. “Can’t you”—she jabbed Audra in the side
with a pointy elbow—“move over”—another jab—
“a little?”
Audra opened her eyes to find herself in reality’s
living color once again. The woman beside her was
staring at her with an annoyed expression on her
face, and Audra saddled up her own ’tude, ready to
give back as good as she was getting. She took an-
other quick look at her adversary to make sure the
sister wasn’t packing something worse than a nasty
48
Karyn Langhorne
mouth and wicked set of elbows. But instead of see-
ing potential weapons, she found herself drawn to
what the woman had on her back.
The sister was a far cry from model skinny, but
she was beautifully dressed in a pair of chocolate
brown suede slacks and a pink cashmere sweater
that suited her body shape perfectly. Audra had to
stop herself from reaching out to caress the soft
fabrics.
She scooted a little closer to the newspaper-
reading man who scrunched a little deeper behind
his paper.
“Where do you shop?” Audra asked the sour-
faced sister.
“What?” The woman frowned up at her like she’d
asked her what color her underwear was.
“It’s just . . . you look very nice,” Audra told her,
smiling as if a smile proved she wasn’t a psycho
killer. “It looks like I’m going to a party tomorrow
night and I’ve got to find something trendy. Some-
thing hip,” she leaned toward the woman. “See, if it
were up to me, I’d go to some vintage store and try
to look like Ingrid Bergman in Indiscreet”—she
chuckled a little, like she and the stranger were shar-
ing an inside joke, but the woman just stared at her
blankly. “Well, anyway,” Audra continued, realizing
how ridiculous she sounded. “I thought I’d better
model myself after someone still alive”—the woman
blinked at her in alarm—“I mean, someone who’s
not in an old movie,” Audra corrected. “Someone
who looks good. And when you poked me just now, I
noticed your sweater, so I thought I would ask—”
“Marciella’s,” the woman replied, her face finally
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
49
relaxing out of its city-wise, don’t-mess-with-me
game face into a kindness that softened her features
and made her much prettier than Audra had origi-
nally thought. “It’s a little boutique on Madison, be-
tween Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth.”
“Marciella’s,” Audra repeated, wondering if she
should write it down. “Madison and Thirty-fifth.”
The woman nodded, a pleased smile spreading
over her face. She wasn’t really so sour-faced after
all, Audra decided. “Great stuff. Pricey,” she warned,
wagging a manicured finger at Audra. “Very pricey.
But it’s really classy stuff. You won’t meet yourself
coming and going.”
“Pricey, huh?” The word resonated in Audra’s
mind. Combined with the words Madison Avenue
and boutique, Audra couldn’t help but feel this
woman’s shopping budget went way beyond her
own. She wanted to follow up with “How pricey?”
but bit back the question. If I have to, I’ll spend it, she
told herself firmly. But I’ll try the cheaper stores first.
After all, Art Bradshaw had invited her to a
party . . . and all was right with the world.
“The next station stop is . . . Thirty-fourth Street,”
the automated conductor announced in its soul-less
voice. Audra thanked her new friend and rose to
leave the train, freeing up a considerable amount of
seating space in the process.
“Fancy and hip, fancy and hip,” Audra sang aloud,
moving through the pedestrian traffic on Sixth Av-
enue, pushing herself through the doors of Macy’s
and heading determinedly for the women’s section,
pushing aside her dread of the fitting room and
50
Karyn Langhorne
wishing for the thousandth time she’d stuck to her
New Year’s Resolution diet.
Only there was nothing that said “fancy and hip”
in the way Audra defined them. Sure, there were
hip, casual clothes galore in the larger sizes (boot-
cut jeans and bohemian tops, big, fringed poncho
shawls, rhinestone-studded denim jackets) and a se-
lection of fancy ones (dresses as wide as muumuus,
mostly in dark colors, of a cut and style guaranteed
to make any woman look like the mother of the
bride) but nothing that spoke of youthful fanciness.
Nothing in the entire store . . . and Audra traipsed
across it repeatedly, searching rack after rack with
uncharacteristic diligence.
She abandoned Macy’s for Bloomingdale’s and
then Lord & Taylor, and then gave up the depart-
with disappointment after disappointment. About
the only thing that came close was a partly sheer,
yellow chiffon shawl of a top that, with its fringe
and assymetrical cut, had a light, party feel . . . but it
showed a hefty chunk of chubby shoulder, too.
“Pork loin in a yellow blanket.” Audra grimaced
at herself, shrugging it off and vowing to search on.
As the sun sank into afternoon, Audra headed
across town to where the fancy boutiques were
clustered in row after row on Madison Avenue, still
hoping to find the outfit that would capture Art
Bradshaw’s imagination, the look that would kick
fat, black and ugly to the curb, if not forever, at least
for a night.
And sure enough, in the window of Marciella’s
Audra found it: the perfect top, draped over the
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
51
shoulders of a mannequin. It was a sleeveless, sil-
very, glittering thing with a deep V-neckline that
scooped just enough to show a little cleavage, but
not enough to scare anybody. Like the yellow shawl,
it graced the mannequin’s hips in a diagonal line.
Audra imagined it thrown almost casually over a
nice pair of black pants and coupled with a pair of
strappy sandals.
“Hello, hip and trendy,” she murmured, her nose
nearly pressed against the window. Only . . .
Audra could tell just by looking at it that it was
expensive—probably as much as she made in a
m
onth. She hesitated, intimidated by the top, the
store, and the idea of spending thousands of dol-
lars on a single garment—but then she thought of
the divas of old with their gorgeous costumes and
changed her mind. Hell, even fickle old Scarlett
O’Hara had known that sometimes a woman had to
have a new dress to send the right signal.
“Thank God for MasterCard,” she muttered, fold-
ing her lips determinedly and yanking the handle
on the boutique’s heavy glass door.
A series of chimes sounded as she stepped inside,
her feet landing soundlessly on a spotless white car-
pet. The air smelled of some gentle perfume, and
soft romantic music played at a volume just above
noticeable. And the place was completely empty.
“May I help you?”
A skinny white girl not much older than twenty
or twenty-one appeared at Audra’s side like a man-
nequin coming to life. She wore a tiny pair of black
pants and a little top with a pair of slim spaghetti
straps not quite appropriate for the cool of the
52
Karyn Langhorne
March day, balancing herself atop a pair of ridicu-
lously high heels. She looked cool and chic and com-
pletely sophisticated.
A deep feeling of inadequacy and an awareness of
her own imperfection swept over Audra as she
stared at the girl. The sudden irrational urge to run
out the door seized her heart and she had to remind
herself that any woman tough enough to stare down
a bunch of convicts day after day could probably
handle buying a top from a high-end Manhattan
boutique.
Probably.
“May I help you?” the girl repeated, since Audra
hadn’t said a word yet, just stood there staring at her
with her mouth open like some oki hick come to the
Big City. “Do you need directions—”
“I’m looking for something for a party,” Audra
said, donning a crisp, arch, cosmopolitan voice that
sounded suspiciously like Bette Davis in her ears.
“And that top”—she jerked her head toward the
display behind them—“looks perfect. Very trendy.
Very hip.”
“Yes . . . yes it is . . .” the girl murmured, eyeing
Audra from head to toe. “Uh . . .” She licked her lips a
couple of times, then stuttered, “We—we might be
able to help you, b—but . . .” she looked around ner-
vously and lowered her voice, even though they were
the only two people in the store. “Well, if you don’t