Читать книгу Transit Girl - Jamie Shupak - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

The phone is just fifteen feet away, but somehow it feels like it’s on the other side of the world. Whatever adrenaline prompted me out of bed a half hour ago is gone as fast as it came, and now I feel tired and frail. Zelda is staring at me again, waiting for me to do something. But I don’t have the energy or the answers. So we sit slumped on the couch and watch the phone as it dances and vibrates all over the marble countertop. It’s probably one of the stars of the show he’s shooting, drunk-dialing.

I wanted JR and I to renovate the kitchen together, but instead he okayed swatches of different color marble via picture text. “I have to take this job,” he’d said when a temporary directing stint on The Hills was offered to him. So I sat there by myself as the carpenter installed the creamy white marble that I loved at the time. Most of our decisions were made like that: together but separate. It was always him there, always me here. Now, with the greenish light from his cell phone bouncing off the counter, I kind of hate the marble.

I start to doze off, but, just as my heartbeat is beginning to idle, I feel a vibration near my stomach that once again jolts awake the nerves inside of me. I watch the clock on the microwave flash from 3:29 to 3:30, and I realize, as the sound of the harp strums from its speakers, that it’s my alarm on my phone going off for work. I grab it from inside the belly pocket of JR’s hoodie and hit OK. Now I don’t have a choice; I have to get up. I have exactly twenty-two minutes until Marko is outside, waiting to pick me up, and I can’t keep him waiting. Not that I can be late anyway.

I pry myself off the couch and slide over to the counter on the ends of JR’s sweatpants. I’ve been wearing his clothes to bed for some time now—thinking, or maybe just hoping, that it would make me feel close to him again. Like we used to be back at UCLA when we’d lie, legs intertwined, on the lawn between classes, laughing about the shapes of the clouds in the sky. We were both high then, mostly off our love for each other. Now no clothes—or drugs—could get us back to that time. And my ninety-three-pound body looks ridiculous in his XL pajamas. I lay my phone on the counter and grab for his.

One new text message from Courtney. Goddamn, this girl has no boundaries.

Technically, Courtney is his assistant, but even I know the most ambitious, attentive ones don’t text their boss at three o’clock in the morning. Still, she’s been a huge help in our lives. Coordinating around JR’s complicated travel schedule is an extremely difficult tap dance where you have to hit every beat or the rhythm of the entire choreography is thrown off. And unfortunately, JR has two left feet, which is why he needed to hire her in the first place. She’s pretty good at her job, too. I can count on her to keep me in the loop about flight itineraries and production schedules so she can book around a cousin’s birthday or a friend’s engagement party. She knows I like organization and calendars, because she does too. We are very much alike in that way. We even look a little bit alike: five-foot-two with long brown hair. So much so that after he hired her, JR’s work friends started calling her “Mini G.” My best friend Gemma usually interjects at this point to note that, unlike me, Courtney’s got some ample junk in the trunk. It’s true, she does, but I would never say so in defending our differences. But Gemma isn’t one to mince words. She knows what she likes and even more so what she doesn’t, and will always let you know. She has to be straightforward, especially with the starlets she styles for a living. We Gchat every morning, and while we like to pretend it’s named for us, it’s just short for the chat conversations within our Google email. When she wakes up, it’s usually something like this:

Gemma: morning

Me: hey, how was din last night?

Gemma: luke brought over all this stuff from whole foods and cooked

Me: yum, like what?

Gemma: um, it’s not his house. why does he wanna cook here?

Me: cause he loves you?

Gemma: people in nyc don’t cook. we go out or order in

Me: i cook

Gemma: you also wake up at 3:30 in the morning

Then she watches my traffic report, and I know I’ve succeeded when she says she loves what I’m wearing. (It’s always when I’m in all black; she loves me in all black.) “Can’t go wrong, super chic, G,” she’ll type as I’m still on TV, so I see her instant feedback as soon as I come back to my computer. One time I wore this navy dress and replaced the belt it was sold with for a white belt that I thought accentuated my waist a bit more. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” she typed, “but the white belt just doesn’t work.”

That’s essentially how I feel about Courtney. Something just doesn’t work. Something’s off. I’ve felt it from the beginning. She takes a while to warm up to people—something I have a hard time understanding, especially since I’m more like Zelda. Give me a little attention, give me a little love, give me a little food, and I will be your best friend in seconds. But it’s more than her tough exterior. It’s something about the way she is around JR.

The phone buzzes again, reminding me that she’s there. One new text message from Courtney. I take a deep breath and click OK.

SO SORRY YOU’RE IN JAIL BABY. WE’LL GET THROUGH THIS, I PROMISE. NO MATTER WHAT I LOVE YOU.

What. The. Fuck. I simultaneously shake the phone and rub my eyes, thinking I must be seeing things. Barely realizing it, my left thumb slides between my middle and ring fingers as I scan the message ten, fifteen, maybe twenty more times. It’s become a habit over the last two years, subconsciously fidgeting with my engagement ring.

No matter what I love you. No matter what, I love you? I can’t get it out of my head. I knew they were close. They have been since she started working for him what, three years ago now? But so were she and I. I remember when JR promoted her from production coordinator to assistant producer. He was out of town (surprise, surprise) so I took her to Dos Caminos for celebratory margaritas. And that time I watched her cat when they were away for a shoot. Zelda hated that little furball, and so did I. We still have cat hair in the crevices of the couch, lest I forget about little precious Twinkerbell, or whatever her princess name is. But no matter how close we’d all become, you definitely don’t tell your boss you love him, right?

We’ll get through this. We’ll get through this. So sorry baby. So sorry baby.

I don’t know if it’s the we or the baby that gets me more, but I’m livid, and shaking. It was just this May when I legitimately questioned their relationship for the first time. Up until then, I had just stewed quietly, bitched to Gemma when necessary, and cooed “How cute” when they showed me the stupid matching Goth bracelets they got on a shoot. He called me from the car that early morning in May and told me that he was on his way home to see his parents in Crystal Lake. An hour outside of Chicago, Crystal Lake is just as quaint as the name suggests, where the grocery store is family owned and operated, and the same newscasters have been on the air for thirty years. I was telling him how he had to stop by our favorite deli and pick up my all-time favorite roasted veggie sandwich when I heard a girl giggling in the background.

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.