She Walks in Beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
She Walks in Beauty
By Sarah Shankman
Copyright 2014 by Sarah Shankman
Cover Copyright 2014 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 1991
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Although there are references to the Miss America Pageant and to real people who have been involved with the pageant, this story is not based on any real events associated with the pageant or with real activities of pageant participants. This book is not authorized by or connected with the Miss America Pageant or its sponsors.
Also by Sarah Shankman and Untreed Reads Publishing
Impersonal Attractions
First Kill All the Lawyers
For William Jack Sibley,
my all-time favorite cowboy
With special thanks to:
The Miss America Pageant and staff in Atlantic City and the former Miss Americas and contestants who shared their experiences.
Gary Bradley, for the technical assistance and many other kindnesses. Sandra Scoppettone, for generously reading. Dr. Robert Albo, for the magic. Ellen Danna, Nathalie Dupree, and Barbara and Jeff Malm, for opening their homes. Cheryl Sullivan, for the Atlantic City tour. Chris Wiltz, for putting me on to the loup-garou.
Frank Deford’s
There She Is
was an invaluable source, as were John McPhee on the Pine Barrens and Ginie Polo Sayles’s
How to Win Pageants.
Thanks to Meg Parsont and all the others at Pocket Books who shepherd my work along, and to Johanna Tani for her eagle eye.
And as always, thank you, Jane. Love you, Harvey.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
—GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
Life is a beauty pageant.
—THIERRY MUGLER,
FASHION DESIGNER
God don’t like ugly.
—SOUTHERNISM
She Walks in Beauty
Sarah Shankman
Prologue
How to spend the Labor Day weekend? Sam could come up with a hundred ways. Covering the Miss America Pageant wasn’t one of them.
A tall, pretty woman with short, curly dark hair, Samantha Adams had just turned forty. And with that anniversary she had begun to believe that a wolf whistle now and then wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a thinking woman. But Miss America? Bubble-headed young flesh bouncing down a runway? Surely, Hoke had to be joking.
She stood in the office of the managing editor of the Atlanta
Constitution
with her hands on her hips. “I know you call the shots here, Hoke, but in case you’ve forgotten, lifestyle, entertainment, and froufrou aren’t my regular beat. Remember me? The reporter who specializes in blood, gore, bad guys shooting up the little girl behind the counter in the fried chicken joint because she ran out of dark and crispy, didn’t get their change back fast enough?”
Hoke wasn’t listening. “It’ll be a nice break for you. Get you to the beach, out of this heat, away from ringing phones. You can kick back for a week, do your race-walking on the Boardwalk.”
“A
week!
The thing’s one Saturday night! Besides, I’m taking a couple of extra days. Harry and I’ve rented a place on Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Sorry about that, Sammy. And, FYI, the pageant spans
two weeks,
actually, start to finish. The girls are taking a train, just like the old days, the
Miss America Special,
Philadelphia to Atlantic City. There’s a week of rehearsals before they begin interviews on Sunday before Labor Day—”
“My God,” Sam interrupted. “They let you judge that, what was it, Miss Liberty Bell down in Valdosta last spring, and now you’ve become a beauty pageant junkie. Oh, Hoke. What does Lois think about this?” Hoke’s wife already spent half her time shooing off the never-ending parade of pretty young secretaries the guys in the city room called Hoke’s Cuties.
Hoke shot her an indignant look, but the pose didn’t fly with the lollipop poking out of the corner of his mouth. His internist had said, Give up smoking or living, take your pick.
“How many contests
have
you judged?”
Hoke leaned back, scanned the ceiling. “Four,” he finally admitted. Then he lurched forward. “Now, this Miss Dogwood Festival, Rae Ann Bridges, is the loveliest girl you’ve ever seen—”
“Yes, Hoke. She won Miss Georgia.”
Hoke leaned across his desk. The overhead fluorescent light bounced off his skull beneath his crew cut, accentuating the hound-dog bags beneath his eyes. “She’s going to take the Big One. The title. Rae Ann’s a shoo-in for Miss America, no doubt about it. You’ll want to interview her before you go.”
“I’m ecstatic for you and Rae Ann, Hoke. And I think you ought to fly to Atlantic City and cover the story yourself. Shoot a little craps. Have a little fun. I’d leave Lois behind, though. Tell her you’ve checked into a mental institution for a couple of weeks to have a few shock treatments. Recover your equilibrium.”
“
Very
funny, Sammy. There’s nothing more I’d love to do than go up there, but—” He extended a hand, the responsibility for the whole shooting match, morning and evening papers both, lay heavy upon it. “I can’t tear away from here. And Burton”—Burton Edwards, the features editor, would be the logical choice, if there
were
any logic to the
Constitution
’s sending someone to Atlantic City—“Burton is the most cynical so-and-so south of New York City. He’d savage the pageant.”
“So will I! Count on it! You think I won’t, when you’re stealing my weekend? Sending me to watch bimbos twitching their butts down runways? Mink eyelashes and falsies—”
“They
don’t
wear falsies.”
“Oh, Hoke. Honey. What you don’t know—”
“Well, Rae Ann doesn’t.”
“You don’t want me to do this. Really. Sentence me to real estate, obit, anything—after I’m back from the Vineyard.”
“Once you get there, Sammy, and you see how smart these girls are, how sincere, how wonderful the pageant system is, teaching them poise, giving them all that scholarship money—”
“Hoke, no. Pretty please. I’m begging you.”
“Just sleep on it, Sammy. Besides”—he took his scarlet sucker out of his mouth and inspected it carefully—“you’re already scheduled to go.”
*
Sam slammed in a tape and belted out “Sweet Dreams” along with poor old dead Patsy Cline. Patsy always made her feel better. She was driving too fast down Peachtree toward her weekly lunch with Charlie, plainclothes, Atlanta PD. They always met at Mary Mac’s, an Atlanta institution, for chicken and dumplings, three vegetables, gossip, and iced tea. Miss America, indeed! Boy, Charlie was going to love that one. He’d never stop teasing her. And Hoke would run it on page one, no doubt, along with the football scores.
No wonder she was thinking of leaving the paper, though she’d been there (and back in Atlanta) only a couple of years after a 20-year sojourn in San Francisco. Despite a raft of good people still on staff, the
Constitution
wasn’t what it was when they’d enticed her away from the
Chronicle.
Its slant had suddenly shifted from a flirtation with serious journalism back to pop reporting with large pretty pictures done up in four color—rather like television.
The Big Two, work and love, were both problematic these days. Both brought her mixed joys. Were they mutually exclusive was the real question.
She’d met her sweetheart, the handsome (and much younger) Harry Zack, the previous spring in the Crescent City. Harry, a gray-eyed, broad-shouldered songwriting insurance investigator, had gotten in her way at first. Had gotten under her skin later. Had said a lot of things she’d prefer a man didn’t say.
He’d been talking a lot about love lately, had even used the M word.
Sam wasn’t sure she was ready for love again, much less marriage. All the men she’d ever truly loved seemed to have a way of disappearing, deserting, or dying.
Besides, she’d said to Harry last night on the phone, you’d better give some serious thought to hooking up with a woman ten years your elder, especially one who skipped the line where they were handing out the mommy genes.
He’d said it made him no nevermind. Harry, who’d grown up among the blue bloods of Uptown New Orleans, had a real Downtown way of talking.
Just you wait, she’d continued. You’ll be strolling by a playground one morning, little kiddies screeching
Daddy, Daddy,
you’ll change your mind. The old lady on your arm’ll already have gone through
her
change. I’m not gonna be studying babies, Harry.
You’re just saying that ’cause you think I want you to move over to New Orleans.
Don’t you?
Of course I do. Ain’t nothing to eat over there in Hotlanta except yuppie food and collard greens. No music to speak of. One of us has got to do it. The choice between Atlanta and New Orleans—no contest.
What’s wrong with the way we are? I hop on that plane almost every Friday evening at six o’clock, cross that time zone, and it’s still six when I get there. Even time to relax a little before we go out to dinner.
Talking trash, Sammy.
What are you talking, son? Relocation and
up
heaval.
Son’s
talking commitment.
Oh, Jesus.
On the other hand, maybe she ought to give it some thought.
Half
a commitment’s worth, anyway. She’d tell Hoke to take his silly assignment and shove it. Miss America, indeed! Hand him the job while she was at it. It wasn’t like she needed the money, thank you kindly, Jesus. Independence was what her inheritance was for. Maybe she could take a little house
near
New Orleans over on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, get away from urban rot altogether, in a place like Mandeville. No, Covington. She’d work on the true crime book she’d been wanting to do for a long time.