by Jamie Shupak
“Aaaahhhh … you’re Guiliana. I should’ve recognized you.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “You’re famous around here.”
Before she has a chance to elaborate on her sass, I blurt out, “Abrams! Ben Abrams. I’m here to see Ben, please.”
She spins around in her white chair and looks across the room, to the crowd of guys around the Ping-Pong table. She motions me to come closer and points him out. His back is toward me and the first thing I notice is his hair, or lack thereof. He’s got a clean crew cut around the sides, but not much on top. Of course it’d be some dirty, old, balding man writing about a girl taking her top off.
No one notices as I walk across the room. Fake Courtney didn’t announce my presence, and they all seem overly engrossed in the monitor hanging above the Ping-Pong table. God, these guys are so competitive—it’s pathetic, watching their stories like that.
I slip into the group without anyone even acknowledging me. What are they looking at?
And then I hear it. The song. My voice. They’re looking at me.
Unce, unce, unce.
It’s amazing that after almost eight years in the news business filled with countless tape reviews, appearances, and mic checks, I still can’t stand the sound of my own voice. But there I am, accompanying T.I. with my now famous rap skills:
“One thing I ask of you/Let me be the one you back that ass to/Go, from Malibu, to Paris, boo …”
And there is my bra, in all its neon glory. It’s a good-looking bra, I think to myself. But only JR was supposed to be looking.
“I knew she had a nice rack,” one of the bloggers says.
“You should have said that in the blog post,” I interject. The music literally comes to a screeching halt and all heads turn my way. At least the shirtless Guiliana-fest is over. Silence. So they do have some shame.
“Guiliana, wow—hi.” Ben is the first one to turn around and say something. “You’re so much … shorter … than I imagined.”
And you’re so much younger than I imagined from that hairline, but I don’t say it out loud. The blue of his eyes is so striking that I almost forget that I hate him. I look down so he doesn’t see my reaction and notice that his brown shoelaces are double-knotted. So he’s not totally reckless. I look back up, unsure of how to greet this creep who is trying to sabotage my career, grateful when he extends his hand.
“… and not as drunk, right?” I can’t even believe I’m being funny right now.
He gives me what looks like a patronizing smile, and I hate him again.
I smile back anyway, because the longer I can perpetuate his horny-man thought process—the easier I can lead him to believe that he has me—the more likely I am to get him to take this post down. Eyes on the prize, Guiliana. You can’t lose your job and fiancé within forty-eight hours.
“So, what do I and the Banter team here owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“I wanted to see if you would please take the post down.”
Scoffing and laughter erupt behind him.
“No waaaaaay, dude,” says a guy in a red plaid button-down shirt. “That video made me want to chug YouTube straight.” A second guy in black skinny jeans nods along vigorously, his eyes never leaving my chest.
Ben looks at me with sad eyes and I can’t tell if he’s being a total dick or there’s some sort of feeling behind the eye contact. I haven’t had much of that with the opposite sex lately; JR must’ve been lying to me for some time now, because his eyes, his hands—his whole manner really—have avoided mine for the last few months. Especially with his smoking, we had become like ships passing in a mood-altered murk. He regarded me through the lens of pharmacology, and I through increasing skepticism. Bantering Ben, on the other hand, is looking at me square in the pupils.
“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Layne, but that’s not going to happen. And besides, I don’t have the authority to do that kind of thing anyway.”
“Your name is on it, and you can’t just take it down?”
Again the peanut gallery erupts with laughter. I look at Ben, then around the crowd of snarky bloggers, and know I have to come up with something. Images of the video, of Maryann, of JR, of going home to Connecticut in shame all flash through my brain in rapid succession and I know I have to come up with something else.
“What if we play Ping-Pong for it?”
The frat party behind him just won’t let up, so he has to shout over them. “Let’s hear her out,” Bantering Ben says, putting an end to the chaos.
He turns from crowd control to attentive listener so fast you’d think he’s a high school guidance counselor, instead of a blogger of smut. Something about the way he looks at me makes me think he wants me to prove them wrong, like he wants me to shut them up. He wants me to stand up for myself. I haven’t gotten that much encouragement from one look in a long time, and it throws me for a loop. I grab one of the Ping-Pong paddles that’s been abandoned on the table and reposition my sunglasses to push back even more of my hair. Everyone’s looking at me but I’ve got my eyes trained on Bantering Ben.
“One game to twenty-one. If you win, post stays up. When I win, post comes down.” I’m looking at him dead in the eye.
“You’re on, traffic girl.” Bantering Ben picks up a paddle from the other side of the table. “Just know that when I make you look worse than the George Washington Bridge at rush hour, I’m still gonna have to run this gamble by the big boss-man, Jake.”
I go over all the rules up front to make sure no loopholes crop up—I’m pretty sure all these guys play “Brooklyn rules” or some hipster shit like that. He agrees to my terms: We’ll volley for serve, then rotate every five points. Winner’s got to take the game by two. Despite my hangover, I’m confident. JR and I used to play all the time at UCLA, and though I haven’t played in years, I was killer back in the day. JR would always challenge couples at the bar to doubles for drinks. He’d try to game them, saying things like, “Oh, don’t worry, she’s not that good, just look at her.” He really was awfully good at making mean sound funny.
“You ready?” Ben’s confident smile melts into competitive glare.
Back and forth. I’m up.
Three to one.
Back and forth.
Seven to three.
The guys form a barricade around the table. I get up to a fast nine-to-four lead. But even faster are the one-liners these guys are throwing at me: “New York Lose Now,” “Expressway to Playboy,” “Put it in her Lincoln Tunnel.” I’m still up, eighteen-thirteen now, when I bend down for a ball that Ben somehow aced past me. A searing hot pain replaces my confidence and shoots from my lower back, right up my spine to the middle of my back. I cover my mouth so I don’t scream, but that does little to hide my agony. I grab the ball with one hand and move my other from my mouth to my back.
“You okay?” Ben looks concerned.
He should—I’m standing there like an old grandmother, crouched over like she needs a hip replacement. I’m too embarrassed to make eye contact—not like he hasn’t seen me in my bra already—but still, I can’t bear being the weak one anymore. I give him a plastered-on smile. The familiar inner dialogue that I used to recite when JR would do something to upset me but I didn’t want him to know, sputters up in my head: Don’t let him see you sweat.
“Are you sure, Guils?” I shoot Ben a withering look and he’s savvy enough to decode its meaning.
“Sorry, Guiliana. It’s just, well, I hear Eric call you that on air sometimes, and I think it’s …”
I cut him off midsentence. “I’m fine, it’s fine. I just hurt my back really bad the other night at the Boom Boom Room.”
“Yeah, I … “
“Of course, you know—that was the money shot, wasn’t it, me falling off that table?”
He gives me the slightest smile. “I’ve never seen anyone fall off a table so masterfully.”
“Well, get ready for my second feat of mastery.” I shoo him back to his side, acting like
nothing ever happened. “Three more points,” I announce to the Banter crowd, “and that post is history.”
Silence falls over the table. I can hear fake Courtney answer the phone in a bored voice over at the reception desk. You can tell there’s more than just a win riding on this game. Ben is fighting for the principle Banter is based on: bringing the media elite back down to earth. I’m not kidding myself that I’m part of that elite, but I did hand him a goldmine: a young, hot newscaster getting sloppy drunk and making horrible decisions at one of the most exclusive clubs in town. Bonus points for dancing, lyric-making, and of course, the strip show. If they have to take down my post, the backlash will be fast, widely reported, and full of schadenfreude. But I can’t worry about that right now. I’m fighting for my job, my dignity, my independence—I literally feel like my life is on the line. How fitting, I think to myself, that my future is about to be decided by a Ping-Pong game.
I hunker down. All my focus has to be on this game—winning this game. He’s hot on my trail now, twenty to eighteen, and the tension is at an all-time high. Game point. I feel like the kicker coming onto the field in the last seconds of the Super Bowl, the weight of the game and the whole season on his shoulders, as he’s about to kick the winning field goal.
“Ready?”
Ben nods and I let loose with my best Serena Williams impersonation. As we volley back and forth, you can hear every breath, every hit of the paddle, every bounce on the table. In my head, I hear Courtney’s text over and over: No matter what I love you. I lean left and knock a ball back to Ben’s side. I see JR holding me as we slow dance to “Stand by Me” and Zelda nips at our legs. I knock the ball back to his side with killer topspin. Zelda. I miss Zelda. What if I lose my job and I have to move home with my parents and I never see Zelda again? Just then, Ben lobs a ball high over the low-slung net and I swing down at it with all my might. I watch—victoriously—as it blows past his outstretched paddle.
“YESSSSSSSSSSSS! YES YES YES!”
Hootin’ and hollerin’, I throw my hands up in the air to further exclaim victory. The second I do, the searing white pain rushes back and shoots all the way up to my head. And then all the light from the bright room—shining through the windows and glaring off each laptop and TV monitor—goes dark. The last thing I see, before I hit the ground, are Ben’s double-knotted shoelaces.
CHAPTER NINE
I crack open my eyes that feel heavy and still covered in makeup, and look around. Five days a week I get up at 3:30 in the morning, so waking up in a haze is something I’m all too familiar with. What’s not familiar is this room I’m in.
I’m squinting through the mascara that’s dried up and hardened onto my eyelashes, thinking, Why are the lights so bright? Where am I? Where’s Zelda? My headache and nausea seem to have subsided, but my mouth is so dry. My lips feel chapped and I can’t even conjure up enough saliva to swallow. And wait, I can’t really feel my arms or legs. My back, however, feels good—maybe a little too good. I try to reach my hand around to my lower back but it’s tethered to something. A wire? A cord? What is this? Am I in some kind of case? And is someone calling my name?
“Guiliana …? Guiliana …?” It sounds like they’re screaming from the other end of a tunnel. I try to wiggle my fingers, then my body, but nothing seems to be moving. Now I hear two people talking to each other.
“Look, she’s awake. Guiliana? Can you hear us?”
I sort of shake my head in acknowledgment, half because I can’t seem to move any part of my body and half because the messages from my brain to my mouth seem to be moving even slower than the traffic to the Hamptons on a Friday afternoon in the summer. I haven’t felt this way since JR had me smoke some of this rare strand of pot back in junior year at UCLA, and my brain became that egg that local news reporters try to fry on the sidewalk during the dog days of summer—gooey, mushy, unusable.
“Okay, Guiliana, I know you can hear me. I’m Doctor Sharoni and I’ll be taking care of you. We gave you some painkillers and put you in a back brace to stabilize the damage from your fall.”
The fall, the video, the Banter post, my leap from grace—it wasn’t just the worst dream ever. Jesus—has this doctor seen the video? My mind is reeling, trying to figure out how I got to the hospital. I got yelled at by Maryann, I remember that. And then I jumped in a cab and went to the Banter offices and …
“I know I’m gorgeous and all,” says the other man’s voice, “but women don’t usually faint at my feet.”
The double-knotted laces! Ben’s smiling at me from the chair in the corner. I try to sit up, but the painkillers make my attempt futile.
“I … is that what happened?”
“Yep, that’s what happened.” He puts his phone in the back pocket of his Levi’s and walks over to me. “You kicked my ass in Ping-Pong, and then you passed out cold.”
I start to panic but I think my arms are only flailing in my head. I need to get up. I need to get out of here. I need to get as far away from this city as possible. If I could just … sit … up.
I feel Doctor Macaroni’s hands on my shoulders as he gently eases me back onto the bed and tells me to calm down, that everything’s going to be okay. Is he crazy? Everything is not going to be okay. I just passed out in the Banter offices and ended up in the hospital. I bet they caught the whole thing on a closed-circuit camera and it’s already gone viral on YouTube. “Guiliana Layne: Hot Mess, Part Two.” I throw a glare Ben’s way. I’m sure the only reason he’s here is to get a photo of me in this back brace for his afternoon post. That’s probably what he was doing with his phone when I woke up. That fucking creep.
“Are you … are your eyes okay? They look a little funny.”
“Yeah, I think it’s the mascara.” I hold up a finger to my face to pantomime, because my voice sounds slurry. Even though I hate him, I’m happy when he laughs, but only for a moment. I have to stay focused on getting out of this back brace, because I definitely can’t go on TV like this—no way. For some reason Ben seeing me in this thing is weighing heavier on my mind than the perilous string my career is hanging by. It doesn’t even matter if NYNN fires me. If Banter writes a post about me ending up in a back brace—after a Ping-Pong match, no less—I’ll die from embarrassment.
“Doctor Macaroni, thank you for taking such good care of me. Would it be okay if I please went home now?”
Ben snorts and I shoot him a what-could-possibly-be-so-funny look. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he leans in close and whispers something I can’t make out.
“Huh?”
This time the doc tries. “It’s SHA-roni, Guiliana, not Macaroni. But don’t worry, you can call me whatever you want, dear—we’re just happy you’re awake. I’ll make you a deal: I can let your husband take you home, but you have to promise me three things.” Ben’s smirking, but he makes no attempt to correct the doctor. I haven’t taken my ring off yet, so I guess he just assumes. As I thumb it, I wonder if JR’s seen the video. I wonder if he would even care that I’m laid up in the hospital, or that I might lose my job.
“You definitely have a tear in there. I watch you everyday so I know you stand still most of the time at work, so I’ll trust you in front of the green screen as long as you wear the back brace to sleep. That’s one.” Dr. Macaroni is crazy if he thinks I’m not going to put that thing out with the recycling as soon as I get home. But I nod anyways.
“Two: No exercising until you come back and see me in two weeks.” He looks at me sternly. “I’m serious—no weights, no spinning, no running, no nothing. Behave or you’re going to need surgery.”
Surgery? Back surgery? I feel like I jumped off a cliff the morning I saw Courtney’s text message and I still haven’t hit the bottom yet.
“Finally, I want you to promise me no going out in the next two weeks either. I saw that video of you, and I can’t have you dancing or drinking or risking any more injury to this back of yours. Whaddya say?”
I can barely look him in
the eye. So he did see the video. Doctor Maca-Sharoni saw the video. I nod meekly and he gives me a fatherly pat on the shoulder before he exits, leaving Ben and me alone in the room. Nurses come in to detach me from all the monitors and unravel the pile of spaghetti that is the IVs I’m hooked to, and I see Ben start to gather his things.
“I’ll get us an Uber and I’ll drop you off,” he says, looking down at his phone.
“You don’t have to …” He waves his hand in the air, silencing me. “Well you’re definitely not CitiBiking home!” I laugh, and for a second it feels good. “I can’t have you pass out or get hurt on my watch again—who would I write about?” he says, grimacing. “Sorry—too soon?”
“Too late is more like it,” I say as I flop back onto the pillow and wait to be freed.
As soon as Ben and I walk out of Soho Medical Center, I start scrolling through the countless emails, Twitter mentions and texts on my phone until … there it is. JR.
GUILS BABY, ARE YOU OKAY? I SAW THE VIDEO ON BANTER AND I’M WORRIED ABOUT YOU. I TRIED CALLING YOU, GEMMA, AND V-DUB BUT NONE OF YOU ARE ANSWERING. WHY DON’T YOU COME HOME?
“Give me a break,” I say to my phone, holding it at arm’s length, sneering. Ben doesn’t say anything, he just keeps my pace—slowing down as I rant, then accelerating again when I’m done with my tirade. After all this, I’m sure he’s ready to make a run for it. In the last twenty-four hours, he has seen me shirtless and drunk, cocky and hungover, and passed out in a back brace. A gorgeous trifecta. But when I look at him out of the corner of my eye, he doesn’t look like he’s itching to go anywhere. This guy’s really milking this follow-up.
“So are you just walking me home so you can find out where I live?” I don’t know why I’m being a bitch to him after he took me to the hospital—women in the midst of a personal scandal should definitely not be throwing stones.
“Yep. I want to get a good look at where you throw your trash, so I can come back later and find that back brace,” he says with a smile. “I think I can get some serious money for that on eBay.” It’s my turn to smile, which I do as we stroll east down Prince Street, back towards the West Village. We walk in the street because the sidewalk is still bustling with tourists going in and out of the stores and buying jewelry and T-shirts from the curbside stands. There’s also a lot of couples—girls in heels, guys in suits—I assume on their way out for dinner or drinks for Friday night date night. It feels like everywhere I look, people are coupled off. And it’s getting darker earlier these days, so it feels more like ten at night than … I check my phone. 7:24.