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.
