Transit Girl - Jamie Shupak

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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.

      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.

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