Dear Prince Charming

Chapter One At age thirty, Valerie Wagner had begun to fear that the fashion career she'd dreamed of since opening her first Vogue at age nine was actually a grand and cruel delusion, and that perhaps medical intervention might be required in getting her over it. Maybe her fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Spagney, had been right all along. She'd sent Vogue-enhanced Valerie home from school the following day with strict instructions to never scare the other students like that again. Privately, Valerie had thought Ms. Spagney could use some heavy kohl eyeliner and spiky bangs herself. It would have done much to hide the deep grooves that came from too many years of frowning down at young, independent thinkers like herself. However, she'd been objective enough to realize that maybe makeup and hairstyling weren't her strengths. So she'd stared down at her flat chest and thought . . . hmm. Valerie had been the only girl in her sixth-grade class secretly thrilled not to need a training bra. After all, she'd never walk the runways in Milan if she had boobies. Unfortunately, she'd forgotten about the height clause. By sixteen, even in wobbly heels, with hair gelled to within an inch of its life, she barely flirted with the five-eight mark. Much shorter than the five ten she knew from her by-then slavish devotion to W, was the minimum of industry standards. Cruelly, the now-welcome boobies had never appeared. Undeterred, she'd resolutely turned to design. If she wasn't made to model fashion, by damn, she'd create it. Which would have worked beautifully except stick figures sporting Magic Markercolored, triangle-shaped outfits weren't exactly going to win her any scholarships. And yet, she'd hung in there, convinced her calling was still within reach. She'd go for a degree in fashion merchandising and work for an upscale chain as a buyer. She envisioned trips to Paris, London, Milan. So what if she had as much chance of balancing her checkbook as she did of discovering the formula for cold fusion? It wasn't like she was going to be spending her own money, right? Then had come the Big Breakthrough. In her senior year of high school, the brokerage firm her father worked for had transferred him to Chicago. She'd gotten a summer job with Madame magazinefor full-figured gals, not call-girl employersthough as switchboard operator she'd heard every hooker joke and pimp pun on the planet. She hadn't minded. She'd found her people. Obviously she'd just misinterpreted the gospel according to Elle. It wasn't the people populating those glossy pages that called to her. It was the glossy pages themselves. Fashion magazines, the force that drove the industry, deciding what was hip and what was hopelessly last year . . . that was her true calling, her primary function, her niche. Ten years later she'd become a serial niche killer. There wasn't a job she hadn't held. Or gone on to abandon, feeling more unfulfilled and depressed with each failure. Fortunately, she'd stumbled upon her last hope before getting a prescription for Paxil. When she'd heard that the owners of Glass Slipper, Inc., the company renowned for performing life makeovers, were looking for a publicist for their new endeavor, the bimonthly glossy Glass Slipper magazine, she knew she'd found the career Holy Grail she'd been searching for. And it was do-or-die time. She'd winged her way through what she privately thought was the best job-pitch performance of her life. And by performance she meant audition, because it had been the acting job of the century. She had no specific qualificationsKauffman, Donna is the author of 'Dear Prince Charming', published 2004 under ISBN 9780553382358 and ISBN 0553382357.