Author: Fiona Doyle
Disclaimer: I don't own anything or anyone you've seen on The West Wing. That includes Josh and Donna and the West Wing itself. Susan Burgey and her family are bunking upstairs in my attic and aren't available for photos at the moment, but I'll keep you posted.
Summary: "Josh," Susan began. "You always call me on Erev Yom Kippur to apologize for never calling me."
Notes: Very mild nearly non-existant spoilers for "Ways and Means" and "On The Day Before". Also mention of a non-plot device from "In Excelcus Deo" for purposes of humour.
Josh couldn't help wondering, as he flipped a page with a sigh, when he'd decided to take a job that had him hopelessly buried in hundreds of pages of briefing memos at seven o'clock in the morning. There were some things his brain wasn't able to digest properly that early on a Friday morning, and the finer points in child asthma statistics was definetly one of those things.
"Hey Josh?"
"Yeah..." he muttered distractedly at the sound of Donna's voice from somewhere above.
"What's your middle name?"
He leaned back in his chair, pulling the briefing book into his lap, not looking up. "I don't have one," he replied absently.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
A pause. "You're sure?"
Josh glanced up with a raised eyebrow at his assistant. "That I know my own name?" he questioned. "Yeah, pretty sure."
Donna looked down at the package she was holding doubtfully. "Huh."
Josh knew that, at some point, he was going to have to stop biting when Donna left the bait, because it usually ended in some kind of assorted madness. But today would not be that day. "Why is this important?" he asked.
"Because Fed-Ex just dropped off a package addressed to a Joshua E. Lyman."
It took him a moment, and then he said: "It's from a Susan G. Burgey?"
"Yes," Donna confirmed with a look of mild surprise.
Josh grinned, and reached out a hand. "That'd be for me, then."
She didn't hand it over right away, eyeing him suspiciously. "What's the E stand for?"
"Nothing," he told her, making gimmie gestures with his outstreached hand.
"It's gotta stand for something."
"It doesn't," Josh insisted.
"It does," Donna shot back.
Josh sighed, his hand dropping to the desk. "Is there any way I can get my package without telling you why there's an E on it?"
Donna smirked. "Very likely not."
"Elizabeth."
Donna blinked. "Excuse me?"
"The E. It stands for Elizabeth."
A slow, sly smile spread across her face. "Elizabeth."
"Yes," Josh confirmed, reaching out again. "Can I have my package now."
She ignored his plea. "Your middle name is Elizabeth?" Donna asked, very clearly amused.
"It's not. I don't have a middle name."
"Then why --"
"Because what I do have," Josh interupted with an irriated glare. "Is a friend who delights in torturing me from two thousand miles away."
"By adding an E to your name?"
"Yes. Can I have my package now?"
Donna inspected the label again, showing no obvious intentions of handing it over. "So what's the G stand for?"
"Pardon?"
"Susan G. Burgey. What's the G for?"
"Geoffrey."
Donna paused. "So this is some kind of thing you do with people?" she asked curiously. "Avenge your lack of a middle name by giving other people cruel and unusual ones?"
"No," Josh grinned as he leaned forward and snatched the package from Donna's hands. "Her middle name really is Geoffrey."
Another moment of silence as Josh fished in his drawers for a pair of scissors to open the mailbag. "Am I missing something?" she questioned blankly.
"When we were in grade school I let it slip to our class that her middle name was Geoffrey, and she might have been teased a little about it."
Donna arched a brow, crossing her arms. "A little?"
"So she started telling people that my middle name was Elizabeth to get back at me," Josh went on, producing a pair of scissors from his bottom drawer. "And things just sort of got out of hand after that."
"So it's all just a horribly vicious rumor," Donna supplied as he cut the top off the bag and pulled a thick, leather bound book from it. "What's that?" she asked as he checked the Fed-Ex bag for anything else, then threw it into the garbage can behind him.
"The most boring book in the history of man kind."
Donna stepped up to his desk, craning her head to see the title. " 'The Adventures of James Capen Adams; Mountaineer and Grizzley Bear Hunter of California'," she read aloud. "Should I even ask why someone in Los Angeles is sending you this book?"
"We're improving it," Josh said with a satisfied smile as he opened the book, fanning through several dozen pages.
"Really."
"Yes," Josh said, leaning the book forward so that Donna could see the scibbles covering the margins, the spaces between the lines; literally every available white space on the pages. Several yellow post-it notes had been attached overtop of the actual text itself.
Donna read some of them to herself. "It sounds more like your making fun of James Capen Adams and his adventures to me."
Josh nodded. "Thus improving it greatly," he pointed out, and flipped to the first page where she could see his handwriting. "I sent it to her for Christmas the year before last, cleverly mocking the entire first page for our amusement, and she sent it back after doing the second page."
Donna looked up at him. "And you've been Fed-Exing it back and forth from D.C. to L.A. making inane notes in the margins one page at a time?"
"Yes!" Josh said, with probably more excitement than he should really have.
"How far have you gotten?"
He flipped ahead again to check. "Page sixty-two."
Another lengthy pause as Donna gave him a look of pure disbelief. "You're insane, you know that?"
"Hey," he told her, leaning back again in his chair. "Don't knock fine literature 'till you've read it, that's all I'm saying."
Donna shook her head. "Whatever," she said, heading for the door, then paused at the doorframe, a different sort of smile on her face. "You still keep in touch with someone you knew in grade school?"
"Susan Burgey and I went to grade school, middle school, high school, Harvard, and law school together. Her family lived next door to mine and we used to sit on the roof and drink beer in the middle of the night when our parents were asleep." He looked up at Donna. "It's entirely possible that Susan Burgey is the best friend I've ever had."
It had to be after midnight when Josh came up the drive of his house -- he hadn't passed a window all the way down Fairfield Avenue that didn't have their lights out -- but, somehow, he wasn't really surprised to look up and see Susan Burgey sitting on his roof, a bottle of beer in one hand.
Josh smirked in the darkness, stuffing the house key he'd pulled out only a moment ago back into his jeans pocket, then headed around to the gate and let himself into the backyard instead. Susan must have heard the latch lift on the gate, because when he rounded the corner of the garage, her attention had shifted downward in calm anticipation.
"How'd it go?" she called down softly, just loud enough for him to hear as a whisper, but not loud enough to wake anyone in the house.
Josh grinned up at her. "You do realize that's my house you're sitting on, right?" he asked, ignoring her question.
She grinned back at him. "You mean you live at sixteen Fairfield Avenue?" she said with mock surprise. "And to think I've lived next door all these years and never noticed..."
"Do my parents know you're up there?"
Susan's eyes darted in the direction of the darkened bedroom window on the other side of the house. "Uh... I really don't think so, no."
"Do your parents know you're up there?" he asked with a knowing smirk.
"Definetly not," she laughed lightly, then gestured vaugly upward with a bob of her head. "You comin' up?"
"Yeah," Josh replied with a nod.
Josh had been thirteen when he'd discovered that his bedroom window was positioned in such a way over the shed that, if you were careful, you could climb out onto the shed roof and lift yourself onto the roof of the house with a minimum of effort. He had, of course, immediately shared this information with Susan, and it had since become a frequent retreat of their's. Their parents hadn't approved of it -- Susan's mom had completely freaked -- but Josh and Susan had refused to stop going up there so stubbornly that, eventually, the protests had faded to mild complaints.
Noah Lyman had, however, taken it upon himself to mount two handles near the edge of the roof that made hoisting yourself up considerably simpler than trying to hang on to only the shingles. After, that was, he had extracted a promise from his son to clean out the rain gutters regularly, since Josh was up there all the time anyway.
Walking around by the fence, Josh saw the ladder Susan had used to get onto the top of the shed from the ground still leaning against the wall. It took him only a few seconds to climb to the top, and then only a few more to locate the handles on the roof in the dark and pull himself onto the top of the house.
He walked carefully up the angled incline to the peak of the roof toward where Susan sat, leaning back against the brick chimney; the most comfortable spot to sit for any length of time. Something flashed from her lap in the dim light from the street lamps, and as Josh came closer, he realized with a grin that it was a second bottle of beer. She had been expecting him.
He couldn't help but wonder for how long.
Josh haulted a few feet from her, still grinning. "Is that for me?" he asked, pointing to the unopened beer in her lap.
Susan fixed him with that oh-so-smug air of amusement, one he was well aquainted with, and he knew without wondering that he was about to be teased about something.
"I dunno," she told him with a laugh. "Think you can handle one beer without falling off the roof, 'cause it's Canadian, and I know how that extra one percent of alcohol goes straight to your head."
Josh scoffed. "Oh please. I get a little drunk at one party one time, and all of the sudden these rumors start flying through the hallways that I'm --"
"A little drunk?" Susan interupted, arching a brow.
"Yes," he replied indignately. "It may have even been only slightly drunk."
Susan did her best to hold in a giggle. "Sure, Josh. So 'slightly drunk' that you passed out before half the people even got there. Right into the pretzel bowl, if I remember correctly."
"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you're not," Josh said pointedly. He held out his hand, gesturing. "Gimmie the beer."
"So you won't fall off the roof?"
"Sue!" he whined.
"'Cause I'm pretty sure your parents wouldn't like me so much if I gave you the beer that broke your neck."
Josh rolled his eyes, then leaned forward and snatched the beer from her lap, shooting her a dirty look as he stood again,twisting off the cap.
"You know," Susan mused as she watched him take a large swallow. "If you're gonna get into politics, you should really learn how to hold your liquor."
"I hold my liquor just fine."
Susan snorted. "For about five minutes, okay sure. And then the only thing you'll be debating is the scoring of your nose dive, pretzel boy."
Josh shook his head in good humor. "And see, I was gonna let you keep sitting there, all comfy with your back against the bricks, but then you called me 'pretzel boy'." He made a motion with the neck of his beer bottle. "Move your ass, Susan Geoffrey Burgey."
Her eyes challenged him. "Make me, Joshua Elizabeth Lyman."
Josh glowered at her. "And that's another thing you're gonna have to stop doing when we get to Cambridge next week, 'cause no one ever believes me when I tell them you just made that up. It's not my fault your mother named you after her brother."
"Maybe it's not," she agreed. "But it is your fault that our entire second grade class found out and teased me about it for a whole year."
"That was ten years ago!" Josh protested. "Don't you think it's time to let go of this middle name you conjured up, in what I can only guess was a fit of vengeful second grade bitterness, souly for the purpose of embaressing me in front of... well, everybody, really."
Susan shrugged, grinning as she raised the beer to her lips. "Hell hath no fury, Josh."
"Sue."
"Yeah?"
"Move before I push you off the roof."
"Yeah."
Susan didn't so much move as lean forward, sliding a little away from the chimney, and Josh maneouvered around behind her to sit down, his back against the bricks. He could feel through his thin shirt where her back had pressed against the chimney, warmth from her body heat framed by cooler bricks against his broader shoulders. Susan rotated slightly, so that she sat perpendicular to him, and Josh bent his knee up, bracing a foot on a stuck-out shingle, inviting her wordlessly to lean back against his leg. She did.
"So you never answered my question," Susan said, streaching her legs in front of her down the roof toward the backyard.
"What question?"
"How'd it go?"
Josh took another swig of beer. "You mean with Marcy?"
"Yes."
He shrugged. "It's Marcy. How do you think it went?"
Susan glanced over at him. "She was pissed."
"She was."
Susan looked out over the backyard, shaking her head in disbelief. "You know, it's not like you woke up this morning and decided to go to Harvard. She asks you out three months ago knowing full well where you were going in September."
"She did."
"So how come you gotta take the heat for this break-up?"
Josh shrugged again, his mouth twisted in a helpless half-grin. "'Cause it's Marcy."
For a moment, Susan was silent. She lifted the bottle of beer to her lips and nearly drained the rest of it in one go, leaving a fingerwidth or two at the bottom of the bottle, and Josh knew that last swallow would be there an hour from now. Susan never drank the last of her beer -- she claimed that the stuff at the bottom tasted too awful to force down.
And then she offered him a small smile and said: "You should really stop that."
"Stop what?"
"Dating girls who hate you."
Josh's brow nearly disappeared into his hairline. "Marcy doesn't hate me."
Susan's words were punctuated by a short, derisive laugh. "Well, she sure doesn't like you very much."
Josh opened his mouth to retort, then abruptly closed it again, thinking. He chuckled to himself, a sigh in the back of his throat. "She really doesn't, does she..." he conceded.
"You know what your problem is," Susan started, half to him, half to herself.
Josh groaned. "Why are we talking about this?" he wondered outloud.
If Susan heard him, she ignored him. "Your problem is that you don't so much like girls as you like arguing with girls."
"Just... just tell me that we're, at the very least, almost finished talking about this?" he pleaded.
"So instead of looking for nice girls to date," Susan continued. "You spend all your time tracking down the one female in a five mile radius who's views on everything from peanut butter to politics are radically different than yours so you can spend your time fighting instead of doing the things you're supposed to do with your girlfriend."
"Hey!" Josh exclaimed in protest. "I know exactly what I'm supposed to do with my girlfriend, thank you very much! And I do it just fine!"
Susan grinned. "A little defensive, aren't you?"
"We're done talking about this now, right?" Josh insisted, the beer bottle at his lips again.
"Sure," Susan relented. "But I just wanted it to be said before you venture into the world of collage girls that you've never had a civil relationship with a female that has lasted longer than six months."
"Well, aren't you the pot calling the kettle," he pointed out superiorly. "I think it would be benificial for us to examine your dating history a little before you start dispensing advice there, Susan. 'Cause even my six month routine beats your solitary one month fling by quite a streatch, don't you think?"
Susan shrugged, staring into the deapth of her near-empty beer bottle with feigned nonchalance. "Doesn't bother me."
Josh barely held in the snort as he raised his bottle to take another sip. "Yeah, okay," he told her, the sarcasm quite clear.
"It doesn't!" she insisted, glaring at him. "Besides, all the guys at Hartford Public are juvinile, immature bastards anyway."
He grinned slyly. "And yet, for some reason, you still hang out with me all the time."
"Weird, huh?"
Josh ignored that, delighted that it was his turn. "You're the one that keeps guys at a distance so that you never really get to know them beyond their stereotype. Plenty of guys wanted to go around with you in school, but every time one of 'em started to have a chance, you like panic or something, and you push them away. And I'm pretty sure the only reason you went out with Richard Winstead was because you didn't want to show up at the prom without a date."
Susan opened her mouth to retort, then changed her mind, and grinned sheepishly. "It was," she admitted. Then, more defensively: "Richard and I dated for three weeks after, though. He was a nice guy."
"Lots of guys are nice," Josh informed her. "You'd find that out if you dated more of them."
"Yeah, well..." Susan replied wryly. "I'll be sure to take that under advisement."
"Me too," Josh replied. "About the thing you said." He lifted the beer bottle up, squinting in the dark to see how much he had left before taking a swig. "Where'd you get the beer from, anyway?" he asked curiously.
"The basement," Susan said. "Dad keeps a case of Molson behind the washer and thinks it's a big secret."
"Won't he realize it isn't next time he checks his stash?"
Susan waved that off with a grin. "Naa. He has, like, a beer a month. Mostly he just forgets he's got it down there until Uncle Mark comes down from Toronto and sniffs it out."
Josh grinned back wistfully. "Just think," he said. "Another couple of weeks, and we'll have made older college friends who can buy us booze instead of having to sneak it from behind the washer."
"Another three years, and we'll be able to buy it ourselves," Susan added.
That reminded Josh of something. "Speaking of," he muttered, checking the date on his watch, and he nudged her back with his knee lightly. "Happy eighteenth birthday and one hour, Sue."
She grinned. "Hope you bought me a nice present."
"Eh..." Josh wrinkled his nose. "I'm sure I will tomorrow," he offered weakly.
Susan laughed. "Don't worry about it, Josh."
"No, seriously," he said. "We should go do something tomorrow afternoon. And whatever it is, it'll be on me."
Susan sighed as she picked at the label of her bottle. "No can do, my friend."
"Why not?"
She sighed again, her fingers working to slowly peel the paper back. "The big eighteen," she told him. "So I'm goin' to the bank tomorrow afternoon."
Josh suddenly remembered. "Ahh... right." Silence fell over them -- not nessessarily uncomfortable, but heavy somehow -- and he cast his eyes upward. The sky was overcast, but the clouds were thin enough that the moon shon through them, eerily out of focus, like a blurred photograph.
"You done packing yet?" Susan said conversationally, her voice cutting lightly through the quiet.
"Not even started," Josh declaired with false pride, and they both laughed. "You?"
"There's a pile of stuff started in my closet," she granted. "But don't read too much into that. I haven't even hauled the trunk out of the storage room under the stairs yet."
"Yeah?" Josh said, somewhat surprised. He and Susan had always shared a tendancy to procrastinate longer than was nessessarily healthy, but where she preferred to be -- in her own words -- 'fashionably late', Susan's mother erred on the side of ridiculously early, and thus typically took over such projects like packing. Last year their school debate team had gone to a competition in New Haven for three days and, thanks to her mother, Susan had been packed nearly a week early.
Susan grimaced, picking up on his surprise, her fingers still absently picking at the beer label. "Mom's refused to help me pack," she told him. "'Cause she still thinks I should be going to UCONN instead of Harvard, and this is her way of making a protest."
"What's your mom got against Harvard?" Josh wanted to know.
"She thinks I can get the same education for less money right here in wonderful Hartford, Conneticut. Because, you know, the money's going to be such a huge problem for me and all..." Susan laughed bitterly.
Josh didn't know quite how to respond to the tone in her voice, so he kept quite, watching her rip off the sticker with renewed vengence.
"And you know," she went on after a moment. "That's not even what it's really about." Her tone was thick with resentment that made Josh wince. "It's not about the schools. And it's not even about me. It's about mom hating Grandpa because he was an over-educated insecure workaholic, and Grandpa hating her because she's a bullheaded, closeminded housewife with no ambition." Another mirthless laugh as her fingernails scraped the glass of the bottle loudly. "That's why he left me the money, you know. To get back at mom."
Josh blinked, confused at the mixed messages he was getting. "Are you saying you don't wanna go to Harvard?" he asked slowly. "I thought you wanted to be a lawyer."
"I do want to be a lawyer."
"Then who cares what your Grandfather's intentions were when he wrote his will," Josh countered, unable to stop some of the irritation from seeping into his voice.
"I care," she shot back. "He's been dead for thirteen years, and somehow I'm still stuck in the middle of this crap that should have died with him."
Josh shook his head in disbelief. "You're something, Sue, really something," he muttered. "You inherit six hundred thousand dollars from your grandfather, and all you can do is complain about it?"
"It's not six hundred thousand dollars, Josh."
Josh paused, frowning. "I thought it was six hundred grand?"
"It was." Susan conceded lifted her head, meeting his eyes. "Thirteen years ago. But it didn't just sit there gathering dust. Do you have any idea how much return you get on six hundred thousand dollars in thirteen years?"
Reality struck Josh so suddenly that he found himself blank out for a second, his brain scrambling to do the math but getting hopelessly lost in the numbers. Vacantly, he found himself mumbling the question: "How much..."
"As of last January?" Susan said, her voice dull and distant. "One million two hundred thousand dollars and change."
Josh spluttered. He didn't know what else to do, desperatly trying to wrap his head around this new information.
"One point two million?" he said finally, his voice pitching as he formed the words.
"One point two million," she echoed, staring up at the dark sky. "I make seventy-two thousand dollars a year. That's more than thirty-five dollars an hour for doing absolutely nothing."
"You're telling me you could forget school, not work a day in your life," Josh said increduously as he downed the last of his beer. "And still live more comfortably than the average family with two incomes?"
"Yeah."
Josh laughed -- he couldn't help it. It was just too ridiculous.
"So why even bother?" he put out between chuckles. "Eight more years of school for what? A glorified hobby?"
"Oh, he thought of that," Susan said, a grim smile on her face. "Grandpa Andrews knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote that damn will. I don't just sign the papers and they hand it over. There's all kinds of conditions and clauses attached to that money."
Josh sobered somewhat. "Like what?"
"Like I have to attend a minimum of four years post-secondary toward a degree in whatever," she replied, shaking her head. "And not just any post-secondary institution, either. At least, not if I want the money that's left after tuition fees."
"What d'you mean?"
"I could go to UCONN if I wanted, sure," Susan said. "And it'd be paid for. But that's it. Unless I have an Ivy-League education, I forfeit whatever's left of the money when I graduate."
Josh's mouth dropped. "You're kidding me."
"I'm not."
"So you're telling me you're only going to Harvard because if you don't then you lose a million dollars?" he asked with vauge amounts of distaste.
"No," Susan replied quietly, and Josh immediately wished he could take the words back, seeing how deeply they'd cut on her face. "I didn't temp at your dad's firm for kicks, Josh. I do want to be a lawyer, I really do. And I am excited to go to Harvard, and even if I didn't have this money, I'd probably have taken out a million student loans so I could go anyway. It's just..." She bit her lip, running her fingers through her hair restlessly as she stared at her feet. "Even though it's what I want, I still feel like it's not really my choice, you know?"
Josh was struck at how frustrated she appeared at that moment, and for the first time in the last five minutes, he stopped thinking about one point two million dollars and remembered that it was Susan sitting there, leaning against his knee, pleading for him not to hate her for something she couldn't help.
"I'm greatful for the money, I really am, I just..." Susan laughed blandly. "I just wish he'd left it for a different reason is all."
"Yeah..." Josh replied finally, nodding to himself as he tossed his empty beer bottle to the backyard lawn where it bounced, muffled by the grass, and finally rested somewhere in the darkness to be picked up later. He looked at her, then at the bottle in her hands, still containing one last swallow of alcohol. "So... you gonna drink that or what?"
Susan arched a brow at the bottle, shaking her head slightly. "Definetly not," she told him, and the relief he felt in the pit of his stomach when she smiled again was immediate. Without need for words to pass between them, they had made whatever they had lost grip of for that few minutes better again, and Josh couldn't think of a person in the world other than Susan who knew him well enough for that to be possible.
He gestured for the bottle. "Gimmie."
With a laugh -- a real, genuine laugh -- she handed it over and watched him tip it back, wrinkling her nose. "That's just gross, Josh. It's like slime at the bottom of the bottle."
"Yeah, well," Josh replied, throwing the now empty bottle in the same direction he'd tossed his own. "It's slime with five percent alcohol content."
"Fair enough," she conceded with a token grin.
They fell silent again, this one more companionable than the last. Josh found himself wondering just how many people he would meet through his life that he could just sit with like this, not saying anything, not needing to say anything. He couldn't help thinking it wouldn't be very many.
"Have you heard from David lately?" Susan asked suddenly, looking over her shoulder at him.
"David Langley?"
"Yeah."
Josh blinked. "No," he admitted after a moment. "Not since... uh, for a couple of weeks, actually. I think he got a job downtown, but..." he shrugged.
Susan nodded to herself, smiling sadly. "I was just wondering how he's doing. I haven't heard from him since graduation." She paused, then: "You know, I can't remember the last time Candice called me."
"I heard from Joey that she's been getting a lot of hours at the coffee place."
"I'll bet she loves that," she replied with heavy sarcasm. Then, her features softened in thought. "It's hard to keep track of all the people, when you don't see them in the hallways every day. You lose touch."
Josh shrugged, indifferent. "That always happens over summer break."
"Yeah, but this isn't just summer break. It's not like we're all going back to high school in September." She allowed that thought to settle for a minute before going on. "I'm kind of glad that we're both going to Cambridge, Josh," she told him. "'Cause I don't want that to happen with us."
"We've known each over for... since before we knew we knew each other," Josh replied with amusement. "That won't happen with us."
Uneasiness remained in her face. "You think?"
With absolute certainty, Josh nodded. "I know." He shot her a merciless grin. "How else are people gonna know what your real middle name is if I'm not around to tell 'em?"
Susan groaned. "I'm getting my name legally changed. Tomorrow."
"Might I suggest Susan Elizabeth Burgey, since you seem so enamoured of that particular middle name."
"No, I'm thinkin' you should keep that one."
Josh grimaced. "No, really. You have to stop calling me that."
"Sure thing, Lizzie," she said sweetly.
"Shut up, Geoffrey."
"I'm coming, I'm coming..." Susan muttered at the telephone as she fumbled for her keys to open the door to her condo, shifting her briefcase higher on her shoulder. She heard the answering maching click on as she fit the key into the slot and threw the door open. "Just a damned second," she pleaded, dropping her briefcase and running for the cordless as " --please leave a message after the tone --" played, mocking her in her own voice.
She snatched the receiver and shut off the machine. "Hello! Hello?"
"Susan?" came a curious, yet familiar voice on the other end, tentatively checking to make sure it was now an actual person he was talking to.
"Joshua," she greeted, grinning.
"Yeah," he responded, amused. "You sound like you just finished the last leg of the Olympic relay."
She chuckled, moving to close the door she'd left wide open. "The fifty metre dash, actually. From the door to my living room before you hung up. I'd give me a ten-out-of-ten for a brilliant nose-dive into my coffee table."
Josh laughed in her ear as she kicked off her heels. "I hope the table's all right."
Susan rolled her eyes. "It wasn't the one wearing two inch pumps, so I'm thinking it'll live." She tucked the telephone under her chin as she pulled off her suit jacket, setting it over the back of the chair as she sat down on the couch, flipping on the lightswitch.
"How's my favorite millionaire?" he needled in good humour. "It is still millions, right?"
"It is."
"How much are you worth now, anyway?"
Susan shrugged. "About seven and a half million dollars, give or take."
"And yet you somehow make that sound unimpressive," Josh wondered outloud.
"In this age of billion dollar deals, it is," she told him. "I'm a modest millionaire, Josh."
He snorted. "A modest millionaire that makes six hundred dollars an hour. And that's still seven million dollars more than I've ever seen."
"That's 'cause you're perpetually caught in the world of the government salary. How's the campaign going, anyway?"
"It's... it's certainly going," Josh replied, somewhat vacantly. "Just where it's going at this point is anybody's guess," he admitted. "How're you doing with Marshall?"
"You've been following the case?" she questioned, not really surprised.
"The guy donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to this administration every year," Josh countered. "And between being sued and your legal bills, he could be going broke just when we actually need him. So, yeah, I'm keeping up with the news. You are gonna win that one for me, right?"
"Oh, probably," Susan said. "So who's idea was it to veto the Estate Tax repeal?"
She could literally almost hear him roll his eyes. "And here we go with this..." he muttered.
"I'm just saying," she put in simply. "It's not easy being rich. I pay more in taxes annually than some people earn in a year."
"But you're not exactly hurting because of it, are you?" he pointed out. "Besides, what do you really care? You'll be dead at the time you have to pay this tax -- all your problems will be over."
Susan huffed. "I bet you'd be singing a different tune if I was leaving you the seven and a half million dollars, wouldn't you."
"You mean you're not leaving me seven and a half million dollars?" Josh teased in an injured voice.
"I think I may leave it to the Republican Party, just to spite you."
"You're -- you're an evil woman, Susan. Pure evil."
"Yeah," she grinned. "Happy Erev Yom Kippur, Josh."
Silence, then: "What?"
"Happy Erev Yom Kippur," she repeated with a knowing smile as she pulled the pins from her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders, and pulled off her glasses.
"Do you have, like, a Jewish calendar sitting around your house or something?" he questioned curiously.
"Josh," Susan began, streaching out on the couch. "You always call me on Erev Yom Kippur to apologize for never calling me."
More silence.
"Oh," he said, more to himself than to her. "Right." Then: "I do that?"
"You do."
"Every year?"
"Pretty much."
Josh considered that a moment. "But I call you other times during the year, too, right?"
"Aparently not enough by your standards," Susan teased. "And, as always, you're forgiven."
"Well, that's good then, isn't it," he replied with a laugh. "So I got the book this morning."
"And...?"
"I'm reading it now," Josh said with interest. "James has just entered the top-secret underground headquarters of the Californian Grizzley Bear's Republican Party and uncovered their plot to invade Washington." He paused. "This is getting to be quite the Bond-esque thriller, you know that?"
"Wait until you get to the part at the bottom of the page where he overhears the plot to assasinate the President on his trip to Redwood National Park."
A few moments of silence, then: "Ahh... I see. And then they're going to have one of their own impersonate him and send him back to the White House to infultrate the Democrat administration." He laughed. "You know, I don't think poor James can take out this organization of evil republicans all by himself."
"Maybe he finds some Democrat grizzlys hiding in those mountains to help him out," Susan suggested, curling her feet under her.
"Yeah," Josh went on. "Democrat bears who are tired of lousy cub day-care."
"You do realize it's possible that, someone, somewhere, actually bought and enjoyed that book in its original form, right?" Susan pointed out. "And would be completely insulted to find out we've successfully turned it into a running joke."
"I think it's also possible that even James Capen Adams himself would think our version is way better," Josh said matter-of-fact on the line. "Oh. By the way," he continued. "Thanks to you, the entire West Wing is calling me 'Lizzie' this week."
Susan grinned smugly. "Yeah?"
"Donna wanted to know what the E stood for."
She arched a brow. "And you just told her?"
"Donna can be very persistant in that she won't give me mail that rightfully belongs to me when she wants to know something."
"Ahh. My assistant doesn't do that so much."
"Your assistant also calls you 'Ms. Burgey' and brings you coffee," Josh countered. "You wouldn't happen to wanna trade, would you?"
"No."
"'Kay." They sat, over two thousand miles apart, in comfortable silence for a few moments. Had Susan taken the time to think about that, she may have marvelled at the fact that they could do that over the phone and not have it be weird.
A minute, and Josh continued. "You realize we've been friends for, like, thirty-five years, right?"
Susan offered him an exaggerated sigh. "It seems longer."
"And you were worried we'd lose track of each other."
"I wasn't worried so much as mildly concerned," she informed him pointedly.
Another pause. "I really call you every Erev Yom Kippur to apologize for not calling you?" Josh asked doubtfully.
"Yes, Josh," Susan answered with a laugh. "And I look forward to it every year."