Diary of an Ugly Duckling Read online

  tape of yours!”

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  Karyn Langhorne

  Shamiyah—for this was surely the woman; Audra

  recognized the voice and the emphatic use of certain

  words—grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled

  her close, planting two quick butterfly kisses on

  both her cheeks.

  “Let’s get a look at you!” she said, pushing Audra

  away as suddenly as she’d grabbed for her, her face

  crunching with the effort of inspection, as though

  they weren’t standing in the middle of a leafy side-

  walk, outside an utterly unremarkable-looking Bev-

  erly Hills office complex.

  Audra stared back her, conducting an inspection

  of her own. Shamiyah was older than she had

  sounded on the phone, probably as kissing close to

  thirty as Audra was herself. She was a petite, sepia-

  toned person with a heart-shaped face framed by a

  mass of unruly black springs of hair, held off her

  face by a pair of designer sunglasses. She was a little

  rounder in the behind than Audra expected—

  carrying a little of Africa in her hips and thighs—

  but her tight white tank T, her low-slung jeans and

  high-heeled mules suited her figure perfectly.

  “Girl,” she said in her Ivy-league ghetto voice,

  “you weren’t kidding. How much have you lost?”

  “Not sure,” Audra replied, her mind racing.

  These people were expecting some quick-thinking,

  comedienne version of herself and she had no inten-

  tion of disappointing, even if it cost her every line in

  her personal arsenal, plus a few from the old movies

  as well. “Fat girls don’t weigh themselves, you

  know. Axe-wielding mass murderers don’t scare fat

  girls.” Audra rolled her eyes. “Hell, I’d probably just

  ask to borrow his knife to carve my chicken dinner.

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  But the scale?” And she made her voice like a Vin-

  cent Price horror movie from back in the day.

  “Scaaaarrrryyy . . .”

  Shamiyah chuckled her appreciation for the per-

  formance. “Well, we’ll get some numbers today,” she

  said, taking Audra’s arm and guiding her toward

  the lobby of the building. “What did you think of

  the hotel?”

  Audra rolled her eyes. “When that car rolled up in

  front of it, I thought I was going to have to prostitute

  myself just to pay the bill. Can you see me, hanging

  out on the street corner in this neighborhood, flash-

  ing passing cars with a little leg?” And she struck a

  pose she knew looked utterly ridiculous—especially

  for a woman of her size and build.

  Shamiyah broke into another gale of laughter.

  “That would be hilarious.”

  “Probably wouldn’t make me enough money to

  pay for the newspaper they left on the threshold.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Shamiyah muttered, her

  voice losing a bit of its bubbly edge. “Strange place,

  L.A. People literally sell their very souls here and

  consider it worth the bargain.” She shook her head.

  “I’ve been here for almost eight years . . . and I some-

  times wonder if I’m one of them.” Before Audra

  could ask her any questions about herself or her

  adopted town, the woman frowned. “But you

  shouldn’t have needed any money. The room should

  have been totally comped—”

  “Yeah,” Audra said. “That’s what they told me

  when I went to check in. That everything was com-

  plimentary . . .” she grinned. “Except the tips.”

  “Well, there’s a few things a sister’s gotta handle

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  on her own. But for everything else”—she gave Au-

  dra a cynical eye roll—“there’s an expense account.

  Now.” She grasped Audra’s arm again. “Before you

  meet everybody, there’s some stuff they want you to

  do.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Audra asked, suddenly feel-

  ing on guard.

  “Medical kinds of stuff,” Shamiyah said, waving

  her fingers vaguely as if she weren’t certain of the

  details. “Basically they want to do the whole exam,

  like you were going to be on the show. It’s pretty

  comprehensive—takes hours and hours—so we’d

  better get started.”

  Shamiyah steered her toward the elevator and along

  the third-floor corridor to a glass-encased office. The

  words alan bremmar, m.d., and herbert koch,

  m.d., graced the door, each man’s moniker followed

  by a long line of letters like a perverse alphabet soup.

  Through the glass, Audra could see an elegant recep-

  tion desk and an even more elegant receptionist.

  “These guys are absolutely the best,” Shamiyah

  murmured as though it were a secret, guiding her

  through the glass doors with one surprisingly firm

  and determined hand. “They’ve done everybody.

  More stars than the Walk of Fame . . . Hi Maisy!”

  Shamiyah said with a gushing enthusiasm that Au-

  dra couldn’t decide was real or fake. “Here she is,

  Audra Marks! The Ugly Duckling candidate we’ve

  been talking about?”

  Maisy stretched her face into a smile, staring at

  Audra as though she were some interesting new

  species that required great analysis, while Audra

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  stared back at her with similar interest. Up close,

  Maisy had the look of someone who had seen a few

  cuts of the surgeon’s knife herself: her eyebrows

  were suspiciously high, her nose perfectly straight,

  her breasts impossibly perky. Add to that the warm

  glow of a paid-for tan, and the perfect lowlights of a

  custom dye job and Maisy looked fake right up to

  her enhanced eyelashes.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said in a voice far too

  high and girlish for her years, but pleasant enough.

  She stood up, showing them a lean figure clad in a

  tight black T-shirt and black pants in some clingy,

  sexy fabric that would have shown every bump of

  cellulite, if the girl had had any. “Carla—she’s one

  of our nurses—is waiting for you in Room One. But

  first . . .” She pulled a thick folder full of papers

  from the cubby beneath the elegant desk. “Papers to

  sign,” she said, handing them to Audra.

  “Good grief! More papers?” She shook her head,

  turning to Shamiyah in amazement. “My hand still

  hurts from the stack you sent over last night.

  Haven’t I released you people from all liability for

  just about every conceivable accident imaginable?”

  “I—I don’t know,” the girl said, looking gen-

  uinely confused. “But these are the medical forms

  so Dr. Bremmar and the others can do their prelimi-

  nary consultation. Did someone already send you

  these? Because—”

  “No, no,” Shamiyah patted the girl on the arm, re-

  assuringly. “The forms she got last night were from

>   the Ugly Duckling show. Consenting to her appear-

  ance on the program, for the use of her image in

  promotion, release from libel and slander—stuff like

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  Karyn Langhorne

  that. Not the same. She’s got to do these, too.” She

  cast a significant glance at Audra. “Just skip all the

  financial and insurance information. Write Ugly

  Duckling. They know where to send the bills.”

  “So basically, I’m giving these docs permission to

  kill me and your production company permission to

  film it.” Audra quirked an eyebrow at Shamiyah. “Is

  that about right?”

  For once, Shamiyah seemed to forget to smile.

  “Yes, that’s about it,” she said levelly, meeting Au-

  dra’s eyes. “You’re cool with that, though, right?”

  For the first time, a current of the seriousness of

  this undertaking charged the air between them like

  ions before a lightning storm. Audra grabbed the

  edge of the reception desk, steadying herself.

  The whole point was to remake herself . . . and

  she was actually here, in Los Angeles, to find out

  if—and how—it could be done. She imagined her-

  self transformed into a swan of unimaginable

  beauty, and inhaled.

  “Ice-cold chilly,” Audra told the woman, clench-

  ing and unclenching her fist, making ready for the

  work at hand. She grabbed the folder, crossed the

  room and threw herself into a nearby chair, feigning

  exhaustion. “I’m gonna need surgery for carpal tun-

  nel by the time you guys get done with me.”

  “Carpal tunnel?” The blonde’s confusion seemed

  to deepen even further. “I don’t think Dr. Bremmar

  does that. It’s somewhere in the foot, right?” She

  smiled and continued before either Shamiyah or

  Audra could respond. “Can I get you ladies some-

  thing? Espresso? Latte?”

  “Double skim latte sounds great to me,” Shamiyah

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  breathed. “You’re a life saver, Maisy. Just a life saver!

  Audra?”

  A Snickers bar would really hit the spot, Audra

  thought, but she decided against saying that out

  loud in this company. Instead, she shook her head,

  “No, thanks.”

  “We also have all kinds of fruit juices,” Maisy

  tempted, as though it were specifically in her job de-

  scription to make sure every guest had a cup of

  something. “Papaya? Kiwi? Guava?”

  Audra grimaced. “No, thanks,” she insisted and

  watched the girl’s face crumple in disappointment.

  “Are you sure?”

  “How about just a bottled water?” she said to

  keep the girl from feeling like a failure, and watched

  a smile twitch Maisy’s lean face again. “Okay, so

  that’s one double skim water”—she slapped herself

  on the forehead—“Double skim water! I mean,

  latte—and a water.” She nodded. “When you finish

  with those”—she nodded at the forms—“Room One

  is the first one on the left. Go on in, she’s expecting

  you. I’ll be back in a flash with your drinks.”

  “Thanks, Maize,” Shamiyah said, already pulling

  Audra down the hall. The second they were out of

  earshot, she murmured, “You can do those forms

  later. And don’t mind her. She’s nice enough . . . but

  she’s not here for her brains. She’s a walking adver-

  tisement for Bremmar and Koch’s work. Nose, eyes,

  chin, boobs, lipo—you name it.”

  Audra nodded. “I suspected as much.”

  They stopped outside a door upon which a silver

  1 had been affixed. Shamiyah lay her hand on the

  knob, then paused, staring hard into Audra’s face.

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  Karyn Langhorne

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” she said at last,

  “but I really want you to have this chance, Audra.

  The rest of the candidates won’t do this step until

  we bring them here in three weeks. We’re doing this

  now for you, because, of all the tapes we got from

  African-American women—and there weren’t that

  many, I’m sorry to say—yours was absolutely the

  best.” She lowered her voice. “But these docs,

  they’ve got real concerns about whether they can

  make your transformation work. The only way I

  could convince them to consider you was with this

  advance consultation to work out the . . . details. But

  you can never tell anybody about it and . . .”—she

  leaned closer, her eyes intent—“it will really help if

  you show them that you’re willing to do whatever it

  takes. Whatever it takes,” she repeated. “Okay?”

  Whatever it takes. The words echoed in Audra’s

  brain, sounding suddenly dark and dire, as if some

  kind of shadow had suddenly engulfed this sunny of-

  fice space. In the movies, this moment would have

  been accompanied by music so tense and ominous

  that Audra shivered a little, just imagining it. For a

  second, running back out into the California sun-

  shine and finding her away aboard the next flight

  back to New York seemed like the wisest course, even

  if she had to walk all the way to the airport. But then

  she imagined herself a finished swan of a woman, as

  pretty as Petra, able to silence her mother’s criticisms

  with a single bat of a perfectly mascaraed eyelash.

  She closed her eyes, carrying the fantasy further,

  imagining herself running into Art, Penny and Es-

  meralda Prince—his long-haired, long-legged, fat-

  free Esmeralda Prince—and heard herself saying:

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  “Art? Art Bradshaw, is that you? It’s me, Audra

  Marks!” and watching their mouths fall open in

  amazement as she tossed her hair, and struck a pose

  for their admiration. She could almost hear him

  stuttering out his “hello,” could almost see the ex-

  pressions of interest and desire competing on his

  face. In the fantasy, the two of them walked on to-

  gether, chatting about old times while poor little

  Essie stood on the sidewalk with her vapid little

  mouth hanging open in surprise and disappoint-

  ment.

  “Okay,” Audra said grimly. “Okay.”

  Shamiyah’s small bosom heaved in relief and she

  ran a café au lait hand through the wiry strands of

  her kinked-up hair. “Great. Sisters in Lala Land—or

  anywhere else for that matter—really need to stick

  together, Audra. Remember that.”

  Nurse Carla was another athletically thin woman,

  with red hair and a real-looking nose, but suspi-

  ciously plump lips. She greeted Audra warmly, then

  commanded her to strip to her underwear “for the

  examination and the photos.” Audra did as she was

  told, glad she’d brought her newest matching pair of

  skivvies. The examination part made sense—but

  photos?

  “What are these for?” she asked as the nurse used

&
nbsp; a digital camera to take front, side and rear views of

  her body, then close-up profiles of her face at several

  different angles.

  “The doctor uses them in a software program to

  get an image of what your body can look like after

  surgery.” Carla snapped the camera again and

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  Karyn Langhorne

  again until Audra felt like some kind of super-sized

  model doing an underwear shoot. “They’re also our

  before and after shots. We’ll send copies to Shamiyah

  and the other producers of Ugly Duckling. No doubt

  they’ll be a part of the package when your show

  airs,” Carla replied.

  “You sound like you know quite a bit about this

  TV stuff.”

  Carla laughed. “Drs. Bremmar and Koch consult

  on about half a dozen of these makeover shows. It’s

  a solid half of their business!”

  “And the other half?”

  Carla shrugged. “Celebrities and celebrity

  spouses.”

  Shamiya had said as much. Audra wondered if

  she would recognize the names of the stars if she

  heard them. “Like who?”

  Carla just shook her head. “We never tell,” she

  said lightly, then lowered her voice a little. “Out

  here, just about everyone has a ‘little work done’ . . .

  but no one admits to it. This office is the repository

  of some of the best-kept secrets in Hollywood, be-

  lieve me. Okay, Audra,” she said in her normal tone

  again. “Hop up on the scale, then we’ll do the blood

  and urine work. Then we’ve got to get downstairs to

  the pool—”

  “Pool? Why?”

  “To test your fat-to-muscle ratio, of course. How

  else are we going to figure out exactly how much

  weight you have to lose?” She grinned. “You don’t

  actually think we just use one of those silly height-

  weight charts, do you?”

  “Uh . . . no . . . of course not,” Audra mumbled,

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  107

  not wanting to admit that that was exactly what she

  had thought.

  “Then hurry up. You’re meeting with the other

  experts at noon—”

  “Other experts?”

  “Didn’t Shamiyah tell you?” Carla’s reddish hair

  bobbed from side to side again. “Between the show

  people like Shamiyah and Camilla, the fitness peo-

  ple and the doctors, you’ve got a whole baseball

  team!”

  “Camilla? Who’s that? Shamiyah’s assistant?”

  Carla barked out a short, bitter laugh. “The other