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Diary of an Ugly Duckling
By Karyn Langhorne HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Karyn Langhorne
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060847557
Chapter One
Thursday, March 29 Dear Petra,
Greetings from your fatter, uglier sister! (I know, I know -- but I figure starting this letter like that will get your mind off the chaos there in Iraq.)
Glad to hear that the latest violence has not affected you or Michael. Me, the same as always: work, home to help Ma look after Kiana (who, other than missing her mom and dad, is doing fine), watch a good classic movie (Double Indemnity was on last night!), sleep and back to work.
Speaking of work . . . there's a new guy. Girl . . . smooth milk chocolate skin, eyes light as caramel . . . delicious! Even a married woman like you would lick her lips! Works the same shift I do, but he's never said a single word to me. Actually, he doesn't talk much at all. The strong, silent type, I guess. No one seems to know much about him, so he could be married with kids. Or he could be a snobbish jerk who thinks he's tougher than the rest of us because he worked at Upstate Maximum.
Or maybe he just doesn't like fat chicks . . . J I wonder what it would take for him to acknowledge my existence?
Oh well, that's all from the home front. Let's be careful out there,
Audra
"There's a speed limit in this state,mister."
Anyone else would have told the kid to walk, to stop speeding through the day room like he needed Ritalin, but Audra Marks was too bored to do what everyone else would have done. Instead, when the kid passed her at run, hurrying over to a gaggle of young men hovering over a video game rivalry, Double Indemnity -- that great movie classic of greed and betrayal -- rose to her lips. In a blink, she was no longer Audra Marks, a big-boned black woman in a size-too-small uniform, but Barbara Stanwyck -- a film noir princess hitching the hem of her slinky dress to flummox Fred MacMurray's careful cool with a shapely, ankle-braceleted leg.
Too bad her captive audience didn't get it.
"Huh?" he offered with the eloquence typical of young men of a certain age. "Speed limit. Forty-five miles an hour. And you're over it, sure as ten dimes will buy you a dollar."
Puzzlement creased her listener's face. He was literally her captive -- an inmate named Carlton Carter at the tail end of eighteen months for petty theft. He stopped short, watching her intently, his dark eyes skittering in his face, trying to decide if she was hassling him for a specific reason or just for general purposes.
Audra sighed. For the half instant before he opened his mouth, she played out a scene from her own secret fantasies -- that she'd be answered with a line from one of the old classics, from The Petrified Forest and Mildred Pierce, Desk Set and All About Eve. It wouldn't matter if he was nineteen or ninety, if he was a convict or a conqueror, once he offered the words like a magic kiss, Audra would lift eyes of adoration to his face, violins would begin to play . . . and they would live together happily ever after, The End.
Clearly this kid wasn't her guy . . . Audra shifted her feet as though expecting to hear the telltale shimmy of anklet beads colliding with each other instead of the faint scuff of her orthopedic, regulation black lace-ups. She put her hand on her ample hip and leaned her sizeable frame close to the kid, tossing her head as though it were covered with Stanwyck's flaxen curls.
"Look, kid," she continued, mimicking the rapid-fire delivery of a black-and-white film as the boy's brow crinkled in deeper confusion. "There are a lot of losers in this mixed up, crazy world. Desperate people, people willing to toss over their own mothers just for a shot at the brass ring. One day soon, they'll spring you from this hole. But if you're stupid enough to commit another crime and end up back here, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day soon, and for the rest of your life -- "
Audra stopped short. Crap, wrong movie. She cut her eyes nervously at the young inmate, but the kid obviously didn't know the difference or much care. She glanced around, wondering if anyone else had heard the mistake.
Not likely.
Around them, the day room of the prison buzzed with the chatter of men: young ones clustered around video games, older ones gathered around card tables or the pieces for chess or checkers. Indeed, the only person close enough to have overheard any of Audra's little bit of drama was that new corrections officer -- that very tall, very handsome, very built brother named Art Bradshaw -- but Officer Bradshaw was staring determinedly at a table of inmates in the opposite corner. There was such a blank expression on his GQ cover-boy handsome face, she was pretty sure of one thing: Even working the same shift, in the same room, he didn't even know Corrections Officer Audra Marks existed.
When she turned back to him, Carlton was inspecting her in minute detail. Audra saw herself in the kid's eyes: He must have preferred the long, flowing, hair-weave look, because he seemed to grimace at her short 'fro. And Audra already knew her face was too full and her nose too flat -- it seemed like she'd heard those criticisms every day since she was a kid -- curses of a heredity she could only guess at. But the bulk of her arms, the shelf of her breasts straining against the crisp white cotton of her uniform and the thick roll of excess skin and fat beneath them, her thighs straining the fabric of her pants uncomfortably -- those were her own doing. And no, Carlton Carter wasn't seeing Barbara Stanwyck . . . or any other starlet before 1944 or since, Audra realized, with an unpleasant jolt back to reality. . . .
Continues...
Excerpted from Diary of an Ugly Duckling by Karyn Langhorne Copyright © 2006 by Karyn Langhorne. Excerpted by permission.
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