Transit Girl

By Jamie Shupak

Guiliana Layne seemingly has the perfect life. She lives in the city that never sleeps, has a fantastic job as the traffic reporter for New York City news station NYNN, and she’s engaged to be married to J.R., her college sweetheart. Then everything gets derailed when Guiliana intercepts a text message meant for her fiancée. Soon Guiliana finds herself single and nearly unemployed after a tequila-infused bender ends with an embarrassing viral video and a night in the slammer. Armed with only sassy texts and tweets, Guiliana navigates the tumultuous dating waters of Manhattan for the first time in a decade, and is soon offered a dating column by Level Magazine to chronicle her romantic exploits. As two men vie for her affectionBen, lead reporter for Banter, and Banter's caddish boss Jake SpearsGuiliana must put the hurt behind her, rely on her best friend Gemma, and realize that in order to fall in love again she must fall in love with herself. A witty, fresh and fun debut novel from Emmy-nominated Jamie Shupak, TRANSIT GIRL is relatable to anyone who's ever loved, lost, and ended up in prison after a little too much Patron.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Polis Books
• Release date: Nov 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781940610009

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Am I ever going to see Zelda again?

Her desperate whimpers for help from that cold, sterile cage are still ringing in my ears. My nine hours in the holding cell of the Sixth Precinct are up, but I wish they’d have let her go free instead. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t ask for this.

Right now I feel almost as innocent as Zelda. Then again, she’s a twenty-two-pound French bulldog and I’m the girl who tore off her shirt in the middle of a spontaneous Blurred Lines karaoke session at Tortilla Flats. Did I mention there was a video camera?

I feel like such a failure, and I’m still not even sure how all of this happened. I wish everything could go back to the way it was just a week ago. I had a ring on my finger from a man I’ve loved for a decade, a dog, and an apartment we all shared in the West Village. But the damage is irreversible, and all of that is now gone, stripped from me by a twenty-two-year-old who I thought was my friend. Nothing makes sense anymore.

I’m ashamed, and I don’t even recognize myself. I thought I was doing everything right. I thought I had it all figured out. I met the man of my dreams in college, then we moved to New York and got great jobs. I adopted Zelda for us for his twenty-fifth birthday, and with her, we became a family. Then he asked me to marry him, and we started planning our dream life together. And then I find out he was sleeping with his assistant.

Wouldn’t you fight for the dog too?

It felt like she was the only thing I had left. And now that she’s gone, and my fiancé is gone too, the only people waiting for me out here are my viewers.

I have to be on air in exactly fifty-seven minutes.

People always ask me, How on earth do you wake up at 3:30 every morning to do the traffic? I laugh, because to me, it’s simple: I roll out of bed. I throw on Spanx. I dry my hair. I apply my makeup. Then, I deliver the news to all of New York.

The question people should ask me would be much more revealing: When you wake up at 3:30 in the morning to do the traffic, what on earth is your fiancé doing?

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang.

The pounding at my door triggers the pounding in my heart. I was sound asleep and so was Zelda, who was snuggled up in my armpit, snoring away. Now I’m awake, and Zelda’s barking. She darts to the door, always the first to sense when something’s amiss. I look to my left to nudge JR awake—lord knows he wouldn’t hear an Aerosmith concert if Steven Tyler was belting out a tune in bed with us—but he’s not there anyway. He must have fallen asleep on the couch again, so I try to rev up my voice to carry into the other room. J-J-J-R? My raspy attempt is a waste; he isn’t home.

I wonder: Is that him on the other side of the door? Did he forget his keys again? It feels like he’s spending every night at the bar these days. I roll my eyes as I spring off the end of our California king–size bed and squint at the red lights on the cable box across the room. It’s 2:37 in the morning. I’m gonna kill him; I have to be up for work in less than an hour.

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang.

Police! Ma’am. Open up. Okay, definitely not JR. It’s the NYPD. We have something that belongs to you.

Me? What’s going on here? The diamond on my ring finger catches the light from my phone as I unplug it from the charger, and I think, They must have the wrong house. There’s no reason for the police to be at our door in the middle of the night. I throw on JR’s old UCLA hoodie that’s sitting on the end of the bed and head for the door.

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang.

I’m coming. I’m coming! I look at Zelda but all she’s doing is looking back at me, waiting for me to open the door—no help. Between her barking, their knocking, and the noise of garbage trucks and late-night bar-hoppers, it sounds like a fourth-grade band practice where all the kids just got their instruments yesterday.

I rub the bottom of his sweatshirt across the dry corners of my mouth, then the crust in my eyes, and finally the sweaty hair matted to my forehead. There, I look a little more alive now. But my just-awoken arms are still weak as I try to hold Zelda’s collar and unlock the deadbolt at the same time. Maybe it is JR, I think, shaking my head, playing a trick on me or something. But I have to be up for work soon. He better hope there are no pileups on the George Washington Bridge today.

Okay, okay, I’m here! I … oh.

I open the door and it’s exactly who he said: the NYPD. He’s tall, but looks a lot like my gym teacher from elementary school—a washed-up athlete who traded in PowerBars for donuts and is now stuffed into his uniform. I grip Zelda a little tighter, ordering her inside. What she knew from that first bang on the door I now know too: Something is amiss.

What seems to be the prob—? I stop as I see someone shuffle in the background. My sleepy eyes begin adjusting to the artificial light beaming in from the hall, and I realize that in his New York City cop hand is the shoulder of my fiancé.

JR! Wh … wh … what’s going on? I finally squeak out. Neither of them address me or even look me in the eye—they just walk right in.

Leave everything but your ID, the cop says to JR as I hold the door to the apartment open for them. JR looks at me blankly and follows the officer’s instructions.

Baby, I … what’s going on? I’m tripping over my words and—ouch—the stools next to the kitchen counter too.

JR seems annoyed, like either the police officer or I had done something to inconvenience him, and he knows he has to pacify us both. He walks over to the counter and sort of hops in place to get his shackled hands into his back pocket. He manages to pull out his cell phone and wallet and toss them on the counter.

G, can you get my ID for me—it’s in my wallet. Robotically, I walk back toward the counter, this time more aware of that stool, and open his wallet, extracting the ID from its plastic shield.

Eyes: Blue. Hair: Brown. Height: 6’3". Bullshit, I think as I hand it to the cop. He wishes he were six-three.

Okay, let’s get going, Mr. Wright.

The cop turns to me. Sorry to wake you up like this, Miss Layne. I know you have to be at work early. He smiled. My wife loves you. She calls me every morning at 6:05, right after your traffic report, and she’s like, ‘Yo’ll never believe what Guiliana said to Eric this morning, busting his chops again. And she was in the cutest purple shirt.’ He shakes his head, smiling.

I manage a weak smile, trying to mirror his. Typical, I think. No one ever watches for the traffic.

Aw, that’s so sweet of … My voice trails off. I’m trying to get JR to look at me, but he won’t. Our eyes had met for a very brief second in the kitchen, and I’d noticed that his were red. I didn’t ask him or the cop what had happened. I didn’t need to. It was exactly like that time in college, the night before graduation, when he went to drop his pledge brother off at the frat house and said he’d be right back. Hours later he called me from the police station. He’d been arrested for smoking pot on the porch—could I come and get him?

My mind flashed back to the present just in time to see JR and the cop file silently out the door and into the early morning darkness. Was I supposed to come get him this time? He hadn’t said and neither had the cop. Mind reeling, I crash down onto our old, olive-green velvet couch and slip into my own darkness. I glance over at the digital clock on the microwave: 2:44 AM.

As I try to figure out what the hell just happened, I look around the three rooms that we’ve called home these past five years, from the dusty, powered-off TV screen mounted above the table in front of us to the picture frames and tchotchkes dotting the wall to my left that, like pearls on a necklace, string together the ten years of our relationship. His extensive vintage camera collection is spread across the mantle, hiding his even more extensive collection of drug paraphernalia. A light blue and gold Graffix bong acts as a bookend for the stack of screenwriting textbooks he never opened while we were at UCLA but still swears he’ll get through one day.

It bothers me—all of his stuff, everywhere. It always has. The drugs bother me too, but I never say anything to him about it. It’s not like I’m shy—trust me, no one has ever used that word to describe me before. I just don’t see the point in arguing or telling him about half the things that bother me, because I love him, and when you love someone you take the good with the bad, right? Everyone has faults and flaws, so what’s the point in trying to change him?

I’d had this conversation in my head a million times during the last ten years and always wound up dead-ended at the same, incomprehensible scenario: What am I going to do—leave him? The only thing that’s waiting for me at the end of that road is another guy with different, but equally intolerable habits. So what’s the point?

It’s that thought, like a cancer that comes back no matter how aggressively you treat it, that oozes into every lobe of my brain, poisoning it once again. I slouch deeper into the corner of the couch with Zelda nuzzled into a ball between my legs, when, over on the kitchen counter, JR’s phone starts to vibrate.

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