Transit Girl. Jamie Shupak

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-VILLE 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.”

      Today Erica and Angel are an obstacle course of people and conversations I’d like to avoid. I look around the vast room of desks and cases of awards and plan the route I’ll take to my office. I decide to hug the perimeter, cutting a path outside the spacious offices occupied by some of the station’s higher-ups: news director, assistant news director, and managing editor.

      The newsroom ceilings are high but they’re covered in low-slung fluorescent lights, which are all off at this hour because no one who works in this part of the newsroom comes in until at least 7 AM There’s nothing glamorous about this room, or any part of the station, in fact. It’s just like our on-air product: no flash, all function. The walls look like they were originally painted a sunny yellow—one of the station’s logo colors—but the last time they’ve seen a paintbrush must’ve been at least a decade ago. They’ve since faded to a dull ecru, giving the place an even older, retro feel. Depressingly off-white might be a more accurate description, which is exactly the shade I am as I catch a glimpse of myself in a makeup mirror on another reporter’s desk I walk by.

      I head slowly down the hallway to the other part of the newsroom, where the morning team is feverishly typing scripts and cutting video for the morning newscast. I can hear the click-click-click of the keyboards and the back-and-forth between Erica and Angel about which stories should lead, which will have a live reporter assigned to them, and which should be killed. I brush past their quad of desks, sort of nod my head, and quickly turn the corner. Angel tries to catch my eye, but I avoid his gaze. He will lose it when he hears this, but I just can’t drop this bomb on him—not here, not yet. I’ll just keep to myself today—I can do this.

      I’m in the middle of my third internal pep talk when I finally get to my office, which doubles as my studio. I can breathe now, at least for a moment. I flick on the lights and grab for the remote to turn on all six of my TVs: my main NYNN TV, a smaller one for our sister channel on Long Island that I do traffic reports for, and four mounted on the wall that I keep on competing stations to see what they’re covering. To the uninitiated, it is an overwhelming setup reminiscent of the TV showcase in a Best Buy—so many screens, so much noise. But I know my way around this organized chaos, and nothing can throw me off my game here. My finger lingers on the mute button this morning, savoring the din.

      Beep. Beep. Beep. My phone cuts through the noise like a truck horn, and for a second, my heart stops.

      One new text message from Mom.

       SOUNDS GOOD, SWEETIE PIE. CAN’T WAIT TO CHAT!

      Mom again. God, if only she knew. Her text message prompts me to start replaying the other one—yea, that one—over and over again in my head. I’m so sorry you’re in jail baby. We’ll get through this, I promise. No matter what I love you.

      I feel a tickle in my nose, a lump in my throat, and I start to cry.

      As I walk back downstairs to the makeup room, I think about a time when JR said those words to me, back when we were sophomores at UCLA. I’m straddling him in his top bunk in his room in the frat house that he shared with two other guys. The ceiling hangs so low that when I extend my arms above my head to touch it, they bend at the elbow—a perfect way to stabilize myself during sex. I move myself back and forth on him, moaning louder with each thrust. He helps to control my motion with one hand on my lower abs, the other at the bottom of my back. We pause to laugh about how we didn’t even make it to the football game because we shotgunned too many Natty Lights at the tailgate. But when else can you have sex when you live in a triple? I take this intimate opportunity to pry into his psyche, as unsure college girls do, and say, “It’s just … one day we won’t be skipping football games to screw all day. I’ll be saggy … and …” I pause when I catch his hazy eyes, taking me in—all of me, from my tousled hair to the perfectly waxed hair below. We’re still moving lightly against each other, maintaining our rhythm like joggers at a red light, when I ask him if he’ll still love me when I’m old and saggy.

      “No matter what I love you.”

      There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold. I wipe my wet, tearful eyes and check the time. 4:10.

      Once again there’s a light out here in the makeup room—a room that, much like the newsroom, looks like it hasn’t been painted or touched for ten, twenty years. Not an ideal setting to transform sad-looking eyes into TV-ready glamour, but I have no choice. So I start into my daily routine: primer, concealer, eyeliner, then eyeshadow. Next is foundation, then powder to set, followed by filling in my eyebrows and dabbing extra concealer under my eyes. Today I’m shellacking this stuff on. Then bronzer, then blush. The final step, though, is what I am most fearful of today. I’m not sure how I’m going to put mascara on and make it last, without looking like a crazed raccoon who forgot to take her antianxiety meds. But I know that just as I showered, got dressed, and made it in here, so too shall I get through mascara-gate.

      Eric