Tabloid Love
by Bridget Harrison
Summary
What if Bridget Jones were alive and well and living in Manhattan? Meet Bridget Harrison, a soon-to-be-thirty Brit, newly-on-the-scene reporter for America’s most famous tabloid, the New York Post. While her friends back in London are tossing their bridal bouquets, Bridget is chasing down the next big story-and her dream of becoming a topnotch journalist. Wonderfully funny, poignant, smart, and gossipy, in the best sense, about the New York/Hamptons set, this tale is every woman’s story of the quest to have it all: a great job, a true love-and a livable apartment. Which, after all, doesn’t seem so bloody much to ask, does it?
Excerpt
The taxi turned a corner, and suddenly we were on Pike Street. The Manhattan Bridge was right in front of us, bathed in orange sunset, arching across the East River to Brooklyn.
“No, no, this isn’t right! What the hell are we doing here!” I shouted shoving my head through the gap in the cabbie’s bulletproof glass partition. “I want 91 Clinton Street, it’s back by Delancey. You’ve come way too far down.”
I threw myself back on the seat, cursing for not having paid attention. Instead I had been rummaging in my bag for a phone number—a date I wanted to cancel—which I still hadn’t found.
The cabbie did a U-ie. I looked at my mobile. Shit. It was 4:30 p.m., already7 forty minutes since I’d left the office and less than hour before deadline.
“There, that way, go that way.” I stuck my head through the partition again as we crossed East Broadway. “it’s definitely north from here. In fact, give me a map. Have you even got a map?”
Infuriatingly unperturbed, the taxi driver handed me a battered Street Planner. Under my terse instruction we clanked back up Allen Street, over Delancey, turned down Stanton, and crossed five blocks, finally hitting Clinton. I saw immediately the numbers were too low, but we couldn’t turn right.
“Bugger, stop. Stop!”
I handed back the map with a wad of dollars and slammed the taxi door. Then I slung my bag on my shoulder, and for the fourth time in a week found myself sprinting down a New York street in high-heeled boots. Fate, for some reason, made me late for everything.
I could tell immediately which block I needed by the crowd of people amassed on the pavement ahead—shopkeepers, residents, passers-by, all lingering with the sheep-like curiosity that follows an accident, staring at the building across the street as if some new calamity were about to burst out of its windows.
“NY1 News” and “Channel 7 Eyewitness News” had set up camera tripods by the curb, their cameramen looking across the road and smoking cigarettes. I felt tempted to go beg for a smoke, but there was no time.
Three cops were keeping the crows to cone side of the street and number 91 was opposite—an open black door, sandwiched between a Dominican barber’s shop and a Chinese toy store, that led up to a five-story walk-up apartment block that had a rusting black fire escape zigzagging down its front. A woman wearing a navy-=blue windbreaker with “Medical Examiner’s Office” emblazoned in yellow on the back guarded the doorway. That meant the bodies were still inside.
Reprinted with the permission of DaCapo Press. http://www.dacapo.com
Reviews
“With her savvy single-girl insight, Bridget Harrison might just be the new Carrie Bradshaw”--Cosmopolitan
“[I]t’s all true—which is what makes this dating diary the season’s must-have beach accessory”—Marie Claire
“A juicy journalistic tale of love and headlines.a provocative and charming book”—Kirkus Summer Reads Special Issue
Author's Biography
Bridget Harrison worked at the New York Post for five years as a columnist, news reporter, “Hamptons Diary” correspondent, and editor. She has written for the London Observer and for the Times and Sunday Times of London, among other publications. She lives in New York and London.