Transit Girl Read online

  I’m not inherently a jealous person, and I knew it was probably Courtney giggling in the passenger seat. But for some reason I went all who the fuck is that on him. I couldn’t help myself. We had a huge fight, which I’m sure Courtney smirked her way through, and in the end I apologized for being irrational. Not because I thought I was wrong, but because I couldn’t express to him how or why it hurt me so much that he was sharing one of our things with her.

  Since he brought her to Crystal Lake in May, I’ve felt like I was driving with no headlights in this relationship, trying to navigate the sharp turns and swerving to avoid his increasingly common mood swings. But this text just flipped on my brights, and now that I could see, I was angry. I was pissed. I wanted answers. He may be in jail, but I wasn’t going to work without answers.

  I navigate to his recent calls log and there she is, straight down the page. Courtney, Courtney, Courtney. I pause for a second, then stab her name with my finger, and, before I can reevaluate, I’m holding the phone to my ear with a shaky hand.

  “Hiiiiii, babyyyyyy!”

  I hate this girl. “It’s not ‘baby’—it’s Guiliana.”

  Silence.

  “So, funny story. I was just getting ready to go to work and JR’s phone started beeping, and I thought I’d check it, since he’s out for the night.”

  Silence.

  I feel surprisingly calm. “So tell me. You love him?”

  “I don’t know what he’s told you …”

  “Well, I saw your text message and you said you loved him, so never mind that silly question. Does he love you?”

  “I don’t know what he’s told you. It’s not my place to say.” She’s stone-cold.

  “Does he say he loves you?”

  “I don’t know what he’s told you. It’s not my place to say.”

  “Cut the shit, Courtney. Really? You feel comfortable enough to text my fiancé at three o’clock in the morning, to tell him you love him, so it is absolutely your place to say.”

  “I don’t know what he’s tol—”

  I cut her off midrefrain. “Here’s what I’m telling you. Are you listening? He is my family. Do you realize what you’re doing here?”

  Silence. Maybe I’m getting through to her.

  “Is he okay?” she finally asks in a small voice. “He looked really scared when the cops got there. They just came …”

  The blood in my veins feels like it is trying to choke me. “Wait, you were there? What were you …”

  I stop myself. She was with him. She was with him? She was with him, and I was home alone, sleeping in our bed, with our dog, ring on my finger, and he was out with her. I feel tired again—tired and weak—too tired to even stand up.

  “You still there?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Do me a favor and let me talk to him about all of this. Until we figure out what’s going on, please just leave my family alone.”

  “Okay Guils. I can respect that.”

  “Great. And don’t call me Guils. We’re not friends.” I hang up the phone, shaking. I’m almost laughing because I don’t even know what to say or do. In my head, I hear the voice of my old news director, Stanley Smith: “Stop smiling, G,” he always used to say. “This is hard news. You can’t be smiling in front of a burning building.”

  Smiling in front of a burning building is actually why Stanley Smith fired me from that job in Miami. I spent three years at the NBC affiliate station there, running myself ragged, doing the split shift: early mornings from 4 to 10 AM, then back again in the evening from 3 to 7 PM. It was a schedule tailor-made to ensure I never got enough sleep. I said yes to every extra feature story they wanted me to cover because I thought every story was my big chance to build up my demo reel and get a job back in New York, back with JR and Zelda, where I belonged. Some days that meant doing the traffic on Good Morning Miami; running to interview Bradley Cooper on South Beach, where he was shooting his next film; then scarfing down a chopped salad with grilled salmon and touching up my eyeliner and mascara in the car on the way back to the station, just in time to jump back on air for Miami’s number-one evening newscast, The Sunset News, at 5 and 6 PM.

  I saved up my vacation days to fly to exotic locales like Cincinnati or Baltimore—wherever JR was working that month. And even though he could technically make his home base anywhere, he chose New York, not Florida, which meant most of my paltry salary was spent flying back and forth on the weekends. It’s not so bad, I’d think while stuck in traffic in the back of a cab on the way to JFK trying to catch the last flight to Miami before my Monday morning traffic shift. The irony was not lost on me, but I thought of it as a means to an end.

  I thought my luck had changed when Stanley Smith finally caved and let me work a hard news shift, which I’d been bugging him about since I started. He sent me to a house that had just burned down in a nearby suburb. I had my window open as we pulled up to the scene, and I still remember how strongly the air smelled of smoke. I remember wanting to gag but fighting the urge. The three-bedroom home was now a pile of burnt toast and there were four, maybe five fire trucks on the scene, plus all the police and emergency crews. I had always dreamed of covering breaking news, and this was my chance. The adrenaline was pumping through my body as I grabbed my microphone and introduced myself to the family members, all of whom had made it out safely.

  After I got all the video and sound bites I needed, I got back in the car to head back to the studio. I could barely wait to call JR. No one knew how badly I wanted this as much as him. I used to nudge him all the time in bed in college when Christiane Amanpour was on TV reporting overseas, and remind him that was going to be me someday. But more than anything, I just wanted to hear his voice. Seeing all that family had lost made me want to check in on my own.

  Ring, ring, ring.

  “This is JR, you know what to do.”

  I hung up before the beep. Guess I’ll tell him about it later.

  The next day I watched the tape of that report in Stanley Smith’s office. I thought I’d done pretty well—that’s what I’d told JR later that night, anyway—until Stanley pressed play: Hi, Miami! I’m Guiliana Layne at the scene of a just devastating fire in Coconut Grove! Luckily the residents of 4269 Palm Avenue were able to make their way to safety, but, as you can see, they’ve lost everything! It was as though I’d asked for a My Little Pony for Christmas and gotten a real live pony instead. I literally could not contain my excitement about these poor people’s misfortune. Stanley pressed stop.

  “Listen, I’m sorry Guiliana,” he said. “I can’t have you on our air standing in front of a burning house, and you’re smiling!” He shook his head. “If you ever want to do this for a career, you have to stop smiling, G.”

  I nodded and gave him—what else?—a smile, as he assigned me back to my regular duty, the next day’s 4 AM traffic shift with a nervy follow-up email, saying, “The traffic is sort of perfect for you anyway. I mean … your last name? Come on.” As if that wasn’t all bad enough, he then gave that coveted general assignment spot to Sloane Riley. That bitch.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Breathe.

  It’s like I can’t remember how to do it. Inhale, exhale. I look up to the ceiling as I draw my next breath. Inhale, exhale. I look back down and notice I’m still in his sweats. They’re the same ones I put on the first night we ever slept together, freshman year at UCLA. Weeks of anticipation turned into a long steamy night in his dorm room. After we snuck back from a quick shower together, he wrapped me up in his best head-to-toe fleece, then wrapped himself around me in his bed. Now his brain and call log were wrapped around her, not me. And as soon as the thought sinks in—that she was with him when the cops showed up, with him at two o’clock in the morning while I was sleeping—my once favorite sweats of his start to make me itch. I feel like I’m infested with bugs, so I strip them off in a fit of disgust. I turn on the shower, and crane my neck through the open bathroom door, like an onlooker to a
horrible accident, to check the microwave. 3:45.

  Okay, seven minutes. As the scalding hot water runs down my body, I feel the tough exterior I’ve built up over the past ten years begin to crumble. “Be more independent,” JR always said to me. “Be a strong woman—you don’t need me.” I always smiled and said, But I have you. Now what? I want to sink down and join the water escaping through the drain, but I know if I sit down, I’ll never get up.

  Courtney’s text message is replaying over and over in my head as I furiously wash my thick, long brown hair and run through my options. I can’t call out—I just started my job at NY News Now six months ago, and I’m still trying to make a good impression. NYNN is the cult cable favorite of the five boroughs, a low-key cousin of the flashy, graphics-riddled network stations. The city as a whole seems to be in love with our little nuts-and-bolts operation, especially the morning anchor, Eric Stone. I’ve been determined to have them love me too, so showing up in tears is out of the question. When I’d interviewed there after Stanley Smith laid me off from the Miami job, my new news director, Maryann Gibson, had stressed just how many people had applied for my job.

  “Who knew there’d be so many people who’d want to wake up at the crack of dawn to give New Yorkers the traffic report?” she’d chuckled, shaking her head.

  I’d translated that as “You’re lucky I hired you—make sure I don’t regret it.” So for the last three months I had tried hard to prove myself. I showed up every morning with a smile on my face and some witty banter prepared for Eric. Turns out in New York, my smile was my biggest asset. Maryann always forwarded me viewer email, the most recent of which was from a little old lady in Queens who wrote in to say how much that pretty new girl on the traffic report helped jump-start her mornings. I sometimes wondered why JR didn’t notice.

  So calling out and crying are off the table, as is crawling down the drain. I still have about three minutes before Marko arrives to pick me up, just enough time to jump out of the shower and grab my favorite red Diane von Furstenberg dress. It’s going to take some miracle of God to help me look TV-ready today, and I’m thinking the way its soft jersey hangs to my petite curves is the best chance I have going for me right now. I kneel down next to Zelda, who has calmed down after the hubbub of the morning. She’s curled into a perfect ball, sleeping contently at the foot of the bed. I kiss her on her cold nose.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, baby girl.” She looks up at me with her eyes shining, the events of the last hour a distant pothole in her tiny brain. If only I could be so lucky. I give her another kiss and try to eke a hug out of her tiny frame—I need one—but my attempt at comfort is cut short by three concise honks outside the window.

  “Marko’s here,” I say to the empty apartment, as I grab my bright pink YSL tote and head out the door.

  I see the last-minute stragglers coming out of WXOU Radio Bar next door as I step out onto Hudson Street. They’re the only other people out at this hour, so I can’t help but stare; all the other storefronts are dark, with their gates down. There’s a chill in the mid-September air and the glow of last call is written all over their whiskey-filled faces. They have their coats slung over their arms as they hug each other, say their goodbyes, and stumble towards home. I see these people a few nights a week, and I always think that I’m happy to be going to work, happy I have this job, happy I’ve chosen this life. Today, for the first time, I wish I were them. I wish I were anyone but me. But I’ve got to keep going.

  I slink into the back of Marko’s black Lincoln Town Car waiting for me at the curb. What I love the most about Marko is that I can be as silent or chatty as I want, and he’ll simply follow my lead—an important quality in someone you interact with before four in the morning. Most days I chat him up big-time—especially if there was any serious weather the night before, or if the Yankee game ended with a crazy play at the plate.

  Today, however, I’m silent, just like the empty, lonely street ahead of us. The West Village is peaceful at this time of day. A magical feeling always comes over me each day as I look up and down the quiet, tree-lined streets at this predawn hour. It’s as if I’m in on some kind of secret. I’m up before the birds, before the bankers. I always feel like in some small way, I am setting the tone for the day, like how I feel or act or whatever vibe I give off on air will somehow permeate through the television and into the mindset of New York City’s residents.

  “Guess everyone’s gonna have a shitty day,” I mutter under my breath.

  “What was that, Guiliana?”

  “Oh, nothing, Marko, sorry—just talking to myself.” Typically I spend the four-minute ride to work glancing through the emails and text messages I received overnight and scrolling through my Twitter feed. I email myself any important stories I want to read or interesting talkers I think Eric and I can banter about on air. But today my brain can’t process anything I see on the too-bright-for-my-bleary-eyes screen. Instead, I stare out the window as we pass the diner where JR and I always share omelets and the morning paper on weekends, the bar where we first drunkenly talked about moving in together, and the small park across from the vet’s office where we sat just a few months earlier nervously waiting for Zelda’s X-rays to come back. Every storefront and every stoop on Eighth Avenue is another notch on our relationship belt.

  I feel an urge to explain my lack of chattiness to Marko, but every time I open my mouth, I just can’t do it. He’s so good to me. He always listens to my stories and wants to know every detail of the show JR’s working on, when he’s coming home, and what fabulous trip we’re taking next. I feel like I’d be disappointing him if I told him what had gone on this morning. I feel like he’d think I had been lying to him for months about my happy relationship. I’m just barely dealing with my own heartbreak; there’s no way I could break a forty-six-year-old Ukrainian man’s heart before the sun comes up. I just can’t. Plus, Marko is old-school in his beliefs on love and family. He believes that everything you do is for them. Family comes first—I don’t know how many times he’s said that to me. Family always comes first. That’s why he drives me and a dozen others everyday, sometimes working fourteen-, sixteen-hour days, just to make ends meet for his wife and kids, who all share a two-bedroom apartment in East Harlem. I know if I tell him what just happened to my family, my tears will follow. And his tears will ride the bumper of mine, like rush hour on the Long Island Expressway.

  Nope, not today.

  I’m not crying today—I’m going to work. I’m going to work because I’m not about to lose my fiancé and my job in the same day. So I just keep looking out the window. I occupy the silence by thinking about how I’m going to get up the energy in exactly an hour from now to start reporting on subway suspensions and overturned vehicles on the Verrazano Bridge. Then, suddenly, a question pops into my head.

  “Hey, Marko. When someone’s arrested, how do you find out what jail they’re taken to? And when they’ll get out?”

  Alarm sweeps across the quarter of his face I can see in the rearview mirror. “Guiliana! What happened? Who … are you … what happened?”

  “Marko, I’ll explain later, can you just …”

  “Oh dear. I don’t even want to know … call your precinct, I guess.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I give him my best smile, but I can tell he’s not buying it. “Have a good day, Marko. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I slam the door harder than I mean to and proceed, eyes straight ahead, for the door. Any more looks of concern, and I am going to lose it. Call my precinct, huh? Okay, so now at least I have a plan. Armed with that bit of information, I look up at the entrance to NY News Now.

  I have no idea how I’m going to get through today, but it doesn’t really matter, because I don’t have a choice. So I do the only thing I can do—I take a deep breath and mentally shift my body into drive.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One new text message from Mom.

  GOOD MORNING SWEETIE PIE! HOW R U? ANYTHING NEW AND EXCITING IN G-VI
LLE TODAY?

  Mom—same message, same time, every day. She’s the only other person I know who’s up at this hour. Every day, she springs out of bed at 4:30 AM to get to the gym by 5. She doesn’t work, so it’s not like she’s got an office to be at by a certain time. No, she just naturally wakes up at this time, sans alarm clock. The natural caffeine in her bloodstream is as strong as a Venti triple shot from Starbucks. Her sunny disposition is akin to the weather in Hawaii—warm and welcoming, and never changing. Everyone says I have her high energy, morning-person genes; today, I feel like I was adopted. She’ll think something’s wrong if I don’t write her back. But I can’t tell her what’s really going on in G-ville, so I text a simple, “I’m good. Call you later” to pacify her as I enter the darkened newsroom. I hope that’ll keep her in check until I figure out what’s going on with JR.

  Usually, I bounce into work, saying hello to each person I see. First, a quick “How are you?” and something about the weather to the security guard when I get off the elevator. I spend a tad longer with Erica, my executive producer, even though she’s busy juggling any news that broke overnight. She has three kids and two dogs at home, so multitasking is her forte. I can’t even seem to keep track of my one fiancé and one dog; I don’t know how she does it.

  Then there’s Angel, my gay work husband and also our head writer. On my first day here, I wore this skintight black dress and massive Mr. T-style gold chain—bold move, I know—but the chain is my grandmother’s, and it brings me good luck. Anyway when he asked me to borrow it—the necklace, not the dress—to wear to infamous gay club Splash that weekend, I knew we were going to be besties for life. As soon as he sees me turn the corner each day, he opens the New York Toast to the gossip page and we run down who’s hot and who’s not. He especially loves to point out when one Sloane Riley—“Smiley Riley” as he so affectionately refers to her, because of her perfect set of porcelain veneers—is gracing the pages. She got very lucky one day on my general assignment shift in Miami when New York socialite Jackie Milton collapsed in a club on South Beach. Every New York station ran her story, and boom—in about as long as it takes her to jump in bed on a first date (read: not very long at all), she is the newest East Coast correspondent for E! News. Stanley Smith loved her, the tabloids love her, but I just never liked the way she referred to me as “the traffic girl.”