Disclaimer: 'The West Wing' and all related materials are the sole property of Aaron Sorkin, NBC, and various other capitalist strongholds. If you want to pay for this, pay them, you fool.
Author's Note: It began with a question--"Who's this Lisa chick?" That's my brother. And it was a good question. Thus we have the great pre-occupation now presented to you as "Fade to White." Heavily influenced by repeated reading of the scripts for "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen I," "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen II," and "Noel." Enjoy.
Fade to White
By BJ Garrett
A fine fuzz of snow drifted down onto her shoulders as she gripped the bars of the fence around the North Lawn. Eyes closed, she pressed her face against the sub-zero metal and tried to work up the courage to go inside. He was waiting for her. They had a lunch date.
With a low whistle, the wind came up and tossed her dark hair around her face, snow clinging to her polar fleece jacket and beret. Slowly, the green lawn was covered with the first snow of the year, filling her vision as she faded to white.
*
He was grilling peppers on the cooktop while she shucked snowpeas across the counter. They shared a silence--companionable on the surface, tense underneath--and neither were looking forward to breaking it with conversation. But normal people conversed, and they had decided to try to be normal. That was the whole point of the peppers and the snowpeas and the shabby-chic apartment.
"Josh came by the office again today?" Lisa asked suddenly, dropping a pod into the wastebasket.
"Yeah--yeah, he did," Sam replied, surprised.
She wasn't sure how he could be surprised she'd found out. They had mutual friends at the firm. Some were more mutual to her than him.
Lisa herself was not partial to Josh, and the three of them accepted that. She didn't hate him, he just wasn't her favourite person in the world. "He burst into a meeting, hey?"
"He didn't burst in," Sam said, turning to check the rice in its varnished bamboo steamer. "I burst out."
Popping open another pod, Lisa looked down at the neat row of green spheres and nodded. "Nice turn of phrase there. Practising?"
"It's not Hoynes, Lisa."
"Thank God for that," she said under her breath, running her shiny thumbnail under the peas, disengaging them from their dead womb. They rolled merrily down the half-pipe of the open pod into the bowl. "Then what white knight has he signed you up for this time? Save the whales? Save the rainforest? Save the rhinos?"
She broke the empty pod in two before dropping it between her legs into the wastebasket, refusing to meet his stunned, angry gaze.
"Rhinos actually are endangered, you know," he said, flipping the peppers.
Shaking her head, she picked up the bowl and went to the sink, turning on the water hard enough to drown out whatever he said next. When she twisted the knob back, he was finishing his confession.
"He used to be Governor of New Hampshire."
"We've been together how long, Sam?" She looked over her shoulder at him.
He wiped his hands on a washcloth before answering. "Four years."
"Four years. We bought an apartment together. We're going...we're going to get married." She shook her head. "It bothers me that you're willing to give up everything for this." When it took all her strength to get up in the morning and begin another day.
"I'm giving up my job, Lisa. Not you. Not the apartment, not us. My *job*. I am not my job. I do exist outside a conference room."
"I know that. I just...what if this guy you want to be the candidate becomes the candidate? You'll be travelling all over the country--I won't see you for months at a time--"
"Relationships built on worse foundations have survived longer with less contact."
"Yes. Okay. But what if he wins? What then?" What would happen to her? He could forget to call, to come back...he got wrapped up in work sometimes, doing work he hated. If he loved it--maybe he might love it more than her. The thought didn't distress her as much as it should have.
"I'll commute. There are shuttles."
"To Washington and back every day? It's not a nine-to-five job, Sam. You were a congressional aide. You know that."
"Okay. Maybe I'll get a place. A one-bedroom bachelor--" Neither of them liked the connotations of that word and expressed it with a mutual shudder. "A place. And come up on the weekends."
"I'm pretty sure it's not a Monday-to-Friday job, either." Suddenly, she realised she wasn't trying to convince him to not join the campaign, she was trying to convince him to leave her for good.
"You could come down. You don't work weekends." She couldn't. It was too much stress. She walked that fine line between too little stress and too much. There had to be work, to keep her busy, but not enough to make her need to artificially relax.
"No, I don't."
The apartment was still for a moment. Then the peppers started to burn, and Sam tossed them onto a plate quickly, cursing.
*
She submitted stoically to the gentle frisking and metal detection wand and nodded as she was pronounced safe and given back her watch. The security man waved her down the hall past a gang of tourists listening raptly as a young man spoke with great animation about the seal of the President hanging over their heads.
Craning her neck, she looked around at the moldings and chandeliers and columns. The brightness was warm and dazzling compared to the muted white city outside. A dark-haired woman brushed past her and disappeared into one of the many doorways which pierced the cocoon of the lobby.
Remembering the directions he'd given her over the phone, she followed.
*
It had been four days. He had handed over his letter of resignation and cleaned out his desk. The associates held a knock-down drag-out party for him, but he didn't go. He brought egg rolls and shrimp chow mein home in red-stamped boxes.
"I don't understand how you can be so optimistic!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "Not everyone is a paragon of virtue, you know!"
"What? You don't trust me? I'm so naïve, I'm so optimistic, but you don't trust me not to cheat on you?"
He didn't understand. He never really had. "It's not you I don't trust, Sam," she said quickly, staring into his eyes. "It's me."
His chopsticks were hesitantly silent as he carefully set them on the table. Addiction was alien to him. It had never existed in his world until he met her. At a wild party thrown by one of the junior partners--he had been overdressed in a blue polo shirt and chinos, and she had been just short of underdressed.
Half-naked, passed out in the bathroom, white dust around her nose and mouth. He'd thought she was drunk. She'd thought he was hilarious.
"Here, let me help you wash up--"
"No, no, I'm fine, silly, don't you--"
"You don't smell like you've been drinking."
"I haven't, hon. I'm Lisa Belafonte...who are you? No, don't, I'm okay--"
"My name's Sam. I--"
"Do you work at the firm?"
"I'm new. I'll just get you--baby powder or something--all over...."
"Fresh off the farm," she'd giggled, kissing his cheek as he brushed the cocaine off her face.
He had known soon enough. That it was the recreational drug of choice among the young lawyers at Dewey/Ballantine. That she enjoyed a line or two a couple of times a weekend. She'd never do it at work, she assured him. And she never had, though there were some close calls.
The thought of working with people who routinely used debilitating drugs repulsed him, and he'd gone to Gage Whitney as soon as they asked. He convinced her it wasn't healthy, and it was dangerous. She could be disbarred for using. If she wouldn't leave the firm, she at least had to stop. So she stopped.
On this day, March 21, 1998, she hadn't used in almost a year, but sometimes it blew up in her eyes like a sudden snowstorm and if he wasn't around...who could say? It was close, always, just a phone call away. Or a quick stroll down the hall to their artist neighbour or a friend's office, depending on the time of day.
"You're not a drug addict," he stated firmly.
On a weary laugh, she agreed. "No. I'm not. I'm a stress-induced-slash-reduced recreational user. That's the PC term-of-choice, right?"
"I don't think there is a PC term-of-choice for it. There shouldn't be, anyway. You're not a drug addict. You don't need to worry about it."
How could he understand? Perfect man grown from perfect boy born from the perfect stock of two perfect parents in perfect Southern California. Clean, new, beautiful. His brain was wired differently than hers and gilded by the sun.
Her skin was perpetually grey, face hardened by smog, eyes blocked any emotion from showing through. She was a New Yoke City girl. It was meant to be.
No, she didn't need it all the time. No, she'd never pawned stuff to pay for it. No, she hadn't had it in almost, so close to a year. But it was there. She knew it, in the biblical sense. It had been inside her. Once more, for old times' sake.
He wouldn't understand. But she could pretend, so that he didn't have to try any harder. "You're right," she said, smiling ruefully and walking around the table to stand beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other tilting his face up so their eyes could meet. "You're right. I'm sorry."
Curving his arms around her waist, he nodded seriously. "It's okay. You must be really afraid of breaking down."
She feared the snowstorm more than anything. It never let her be, always blowing mournfully just out of her line of sight, then sweeping across suddenly, blinding her. She feared it more than she feared losing him. "I'm more afraid that you'll never come home if you go away--the political life is overwhelming, I know."
"How? Did you sneak off and run a campaign while I wasn't looking?" he teased, turning his head to kiss her wrist.
They laughed warmly, then finished eating. A thick white fog pressed against the tinted windows.
*
"Can I help you?" a concerned but friendly voice asked as she hovered outside what she assumed was his office. It was empty.
Turning, she nodded and gestured distractedly. "I'm supposed to meet Sam...Sam Seaborn. We're having lunch?"
The girl looked puzzled for a second, then her eyes widened. "Oh, yeah--Lisa. You were late, and--"
He'd gone off to a meeting or something. He hadn't waited for her. She'd been left behind. Or rather, spared the inevitable stilted greetings and awkwardness.
"--and he left to find you. He figured you'd probably gotten lost. You are Lisa, right?"
Blinking the white tears back, she smiled brightly. "Yes, I'm Lisa Belafonte. And you?"
Caught off guard by her sudden friendliness, the girl stuttered, "My name's Nancy Logan...."
Lisa took Nancy's hand and shook it. "Nice to meet you. Which way did he go?"
*
She got out of the shower when the phone rang and didn't hurry to pick it up. She dried her arms and legs, wrapped the large towel around her torso and went to the mirror as the machine clicked on.
Their voices in unison, trying not to laugh as they recorded the message. "Hi, you've reached Sam and Lisa. We can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we'll get back to you ASAP." Outright laughter. She said, "Right, Sam?" He said, "Sure, yeah. ASAP." More laughter until the beep.
He was impatient, she could hear it in the music that blared beyond him, in the deep breath he took before shouting, "Lisa! I'm sorry. Lisa! Pick up--I know you're home. Lisa, Lisa, we won Illinois, we won. Oh my God, Lisa, Josh's dad, he-he passed away.... Are you there? Lisa? We won! Pick up! Come on. Dammit, we won! I'm sorry! Lisa! The machine's going to cut me off now, isn't it? I love--"
Beep. Gone. The mirror was frosted over and she shivered in the steamy bright bathroom, looking at her blurry reflection with bloodshot eyes.
Her nose hurt. Her fingers hurt. That place, right up under her left hip joint, hurt.
Familiar aches she hadn't felt in so long.
He loves what? Winning? Bartlet? The job? Being with dynamic, intelligent people?
It finally came to her. "You," she said to her blurry reflection, pointing at her chest with a ragged nail, eyes wide with surprise.
The phone rang again, four times. They laughed again. She remembered recording the message. Two days after they'd finalised the apartment, laying on the couch together, holding the machine on his stomach, her reading the directions out loud as he fiddled with the buttons.
Beep.
"Lisa. You're not home. Okay. I just wanted to let you know that we won and I'm coming through next Monday with Josh after he gets back from Connecticut...we've got a meeting with some people. My flight's in the afternoon, I'll call you with specifics later. When you're home. Okay? Yeah. We won. Bye."
*
She could tell by Nancy's expression that she was projecting properly. She was calm, efficient, friendly, pleasantly apologetic for being late. Nancy was probably wondering why they hadn't married in September of 1998 like they were supposed to.
He was in New Hampshire, that's why. They had agreed to postpone the wedding at least until after the election. He didn't want to overshadow the importance of their marriage by having a quick ceremony between primaries. She was still hoping he would call it off.
*
He looked like he'd just won a gold medal after overcoming some horrible injury. Very tired, very stressed, very much in pain, but very proud of himself. She stood and smiled widely, falsely, waving a hand to get his attention.
He froze, dropping his overcoat. Then he ran to her, grabbing her up, turning around a few times before letting her get an arm's length away.
"Sam."
"Hi," he said breathlessly, grinning. "Hi. This is so amazing. Why did you come? Josh has a car--"
She put a hand over his mouth. His eyes dulled, shoulders sagged. Reality knocks once. "We need to talk."
"Hey! Sam!" Trenchcoat flapping, Josh ran towards them.
He raised his eyebrows, questioning. She shook her head.
"Josh can't come."
*
Nancy left Lisa with the guard while she canvassed the West Wing. "We're not allowed to give tours until after ten, when the President's gone upstairs," she explained. "So just hang tight and one of us will come back to you."
So she chatted with the guard, whose name was Mike. They spoke of trivial things: the congressional committee, the impeachment hearings, her job in New York. How she was enjoying DC so far.
"It's very white," she replied, laughing. "I didn't expect snow."
Mike commiserated with a smile, then nodded at someone behind her. She turned, heart in her throat, fingers clutching suddenly at her purse.
Everything fell back into place. It was only Josh. "Hi. What are you doing here?" he asked, studiously un-hostile.
"Sam and I are supposed to be having lunch," she said, wide-eyed. She had not intended to see him. "How are you?"
A hand flashed over his right shoulder and she bobbed up on her tip-toes to see what was going on. His bright smile, rumpled shirt. Josh turned and nodded at Sam as he approached.
His expression told her he'd forgotten all about the bad things, or convinced himself he had. It reminded her of why she'd agreed to eat with him at all.
*
"What's going on, Lisa?" he asked as she closed the door behind him. The apartment was cold, the windows scummed over by smog residue and condensation.
She hung her jacket up and turned on the thermostat. As she walked into the kitchen and turned on the coffee, the sound of her heels echoing in the large space, he turned silently, watching her.
They both knew what she was going to say, but she knew he would think she was saying it for the wrong reasons.
The coffee pot made perking noises and she leaned on the counter over the cold cooktop. The wastebasket was heaped with take-out cartons. The guts of the fridge behind her were a fuzzy monstrosity of tofu and wheat durum evolution gone horribly wrong. But he couldn't know that. He hadn't been home in nearly four months.
"Lisa?" he said quietly.
He wasn't going to pretend it wasn't happening. For once. He just wanted her to do it. She sighed and smiled at the cracked burners.
"It's over, Sam," she replied without looking up. "I messed up, and it's got to be over now."
The heel of his shoe screeched on the hardwood as he turned away, going into the dark bedroom without a word. She heard his duffel bag hit the bed, followed by a loud yell as his shin collided with the antique steamer trunk at its foot.
Coming around the counter into the living room, she called, "Are you bleeding?"
After a second, he replied, "Not on the outside." A long pause. "Well, that was certainly melodramatic. Come slap me, please."
"For old times' sake?" she asked, trying to joke, approaching the open door.
He stood, shadowed, inside the bedroom, just rising from checking his pants leg for blood, and held out a hand to her. "Please."
Her own hand shook as she pushed her hair away from her face. "No, Sam. No. I messed up."
Dropping his arm, he looked past her into the living room, trying to find some evidence of the mess she'd claimed to make, she supposed. "How?"
The bedroom curtains hung like folded white wings on the wall behind him. "I was working later and later," she began. "With this one associate, Mark. It was a big case. Very important. Could make me a partner and all that. But I didn't really care. I was just trying to pretend I wouldn't have to come home to an empty apartment. One night he asked me out for a drink, and I went, and it led to a party on the weekend, and some of the old kids from Dewey/Ballantine were there."
The solemnity of his gaze and his utter stillness unnerved her. She twisted her hands together and turned away before continuing. "It just drove and drove at me, Sam. I did it. Two lines. And I slept with him. Just once." Once was enough. Rough enough, tough enough, wrong enough to make her hip ache in a way Sam hadn't made it ache for years.
Raising her head, she looked at the darkening room, at the half-empty side tables and the two vacant spaces on the wall where her degrees had hung beside his.
"You've already packed," he realised quietly. The grate of empty drawers as he pulled them out and pushed them back in, the embarrassed squeak of the closet door as he pushed it open. "You've already packed!" he shouted, slamming it shut again.
The scent of coffee filled the air, pushing the whiteness away from her forehead, and she went back to the kitchen, taking two mugs down from the teak shelf. Looking at the small overnight bag beside the sink. Thinking about how horrible it was that her whole life could be forced into a gym bag. The zipper didn't even bulge.
*
His arm was heavy across her shoulders as they walked out of the White House towards the parking lot. She had taken the bus from her hotel, so he was driving to the restaurant.
"Josh thinks you should be working," she teased, poking him as they slid down the sidewalk. The snow had been unexpected, no salt was readily available. Soon the white crystals would dust the street and sidewalks, though. White eating white.
Tilting his head back, he caught a flake on his tongue. "Yeah. I think I should be working, which is probably the surest sign that I shouldn't."
He held the car door open and they laughed for old times' sake.
*
"This isn't fair, Lisa," he kept saying as she calmly drank her coffee at the counter. "This isn't fair. You already packed. Like--"
"Like it's a done deal," she finished for him. "It is."
He took a few deep breaths. "I'm in the middle of a Presidential election, and he's going to *win*, and you've already packed. This is, I don't know, this is very selfish of you, I've got to say. Just...really selfish."
Taking a second to swallow so she didn't spit coffee all over the spotless brushed-steel kitchen, she put her mug down. "I'm just going, Sam. I'm not asking for your help, I'm not asking for your *time*. I'm just going. Can you give me that, at least?"
He turned back from the window and shrugged at her.
"We can do this," he said. "We can work this out. You just need to get out of the city. Come with me tomorrow, okay? Get on the plane with me."
He was old-fashioned, she remembered suddenly. He was the nuclear family boy. He was the type who would stay together for the kids. All they had was a mouldy fridge and a half-lifeless apartment. There was no reason to ruin their lives, so she wasn't going to make the effort.
"No, Sam," she replied, picking up her bag and going to the door. He made some movement, said something in a panicky voice. She didn't remember. "I'm not leaving the city. I'm leaving you."
*
"I think I was just afraid of failure," he admitted, pushing a shred of grilled chicken around his plate. "And I put it on you. I'm sorry."
He'd changed his hair, she realised with surprise. He'd had that haircut for as long as she'd known him, and now it was different. "We both made mistakes, Sam."
"Sometimes I wonder if I could have convinced you to stay--how things would have been different." He was staring at her, asking her silently to meet his eyes.
Putting down her fork, she complied. He had a few crow's feet, she saw, but they were still blue. "That's kind of silly. Things would have been bad. I needed to...I don't know. Let's not talk about it, okay?" It was all done.
Shifting in his seat, he nodded. "Yeah. You're right."
They gave the conversation a moment to die, then started eating again.
*
She had tried to call the apartment when she found a hotel, but there was no answer. Hopefully he phoned Josh and they rescued each other from a useless lonely night in New York. In the morning, she tried again, sitting on the end of the too-soft bed, staring at herself in the mirror above the too-low desk.
"Hi, you've reached--"
She hung up quickly, disgusted by her temptation to listen to their laughter.
There were enough real estate agents willing to sell the apartment, and she was glad to see that he'd taken everything he wanted when she returned to oversee a showing.
His certification, books, some photos, the few clothes remaining in the bedroom, an antique dish from Soho. His mahogany chopsticks.
She noticed the glass closet door was gone, too.
*
"Are you seeing anyone?" she asked tentatively.
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "No..."
Smiling a little, she added, "I heard about that picture. I'm sorry."
He shook his head and took another bite of salad. "I didn't do anything wrong."
"At least you've still got your office."
"At least. What about you?"
"I've got an office, yeah." That wasn't what he meant, of course.
"Are you seeing anyone?"
Her shrink. "Not really," she replied, running a finger around the edge of her water glass. No ephemeral music quivered in the air.
"Still at Routier & McGraw?"
With a grimace, she nodded. "Yeah."
"Still not a partner?" he asked mischieviously.
"Of course not. They don't even let women go to depositions, for God's sake." It was just short of an exaggeration.
"So...?" He waved his fork in the air.
No one else would take her. She looked at him and his mouth dropped open.
"I don't believe it."
"I disappeared for a month and a half, Sam. That's worse than insinuating the environment is more important than saving money or avoiding litigation."
While he laughed, she reached into her purse and took out the envelope containing his half of the apartment's sale value. No matter how bad things had gotten after they parted, she hadn't dipped into it. Whatever he wanted to say about her, he couldn't say she wasn't trustworthy.
He stopped laughing when she slid the envelope under the edge of his plate. "What's that?"
"Return on your investment," she replied, gesturing for him to open it.
The bills looked worn against his fingers as he pulled a few out, judging how much was in the envelope. "There must be a hundred thousand dollars in here."
"I sold the apartment."
"I figured you had."
"I couldn't find you, Sam, so I kept your money for you." He glared at her and clenched his jaw. He was about to refuse to take the money. "Take it. We went halfsies buying it, we're going halfsies selling it."
"Three years later?"
Setting her own jaw, she nodded. "Three years later."
As he stuffed the money back into the envelope, a smile bled across his face. "Where's my interest?"
*
Quitting over the phone was easier than doing it face to face, so she called Mr. Dewey and gave him the news. She needed to find herself, she said, and the roll of his eyes was almost audible.
It took a month, but she did find herself. And when she returned to the world, America had a new president-elect, and she didn't have the guts to look Sam up. So he would know she wasn't dead, at least.
But a scummy firm hired her, and she stayed, and they decided she would be good eye candy at the international contract conference in DC.
And watching the blue-white clouds scud by as she sat in the plane gave her the guts.
*
At the curb outside her hotel, he took his hand off the gearshift, let it hang in the air for a moment, long enough for her to note the slight scarring over his knuckles, then put it back. "I'm glad you called me."
Snow blew across the windshield, slipped giddily under her skirt as she opened the door. "So am I."
They smiled at each other with long experience brimming in their eyes. "Have a good convention," he added. "See you around."
"Thanks. Yeah."
Lisa got out of the car and pushed the door shut, watched him zoom cautiously away, the red of his tail lights fading into white.
End.
Author's Note: It began with a question--"Who's this Lisa chick?" That's my brother. And it was a good question. Thus we have the great pre-occupation now presented to you as "Fade to White." Heavily influenced by repeated reading of the scripts for "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen I," "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen II," and "Noel." Enjoy.
Fade to White
By BJ Garrett
A fine fuzz of snow drifted down onto her shoulders as she gripped the bars of the fence around the North Lawn. Eyes closed, she pressed her face against the sub-zero metal and tried to work up the courage to go inside. He was waiting for her. They had a lunch date.
With a low whistle, the wind came up and tossed her dark hair around her face, snow clinging to her polar fleece jacket and beret. Slowly, the green lawn was covered with the first snow of the year, filling her vision as she faded to white.
*
He was grilling peppers on the cooktop while she shucked snowpeas across the counter. They shared a silence--companionable on the surface, tense underneath--and neither were looking forward to breaking it with conversation. But normal people conversed, and they had decided to try to be normal. That was the whole point of the peppers and the snowpeas and the shabby-chic apartment.
"Josh came by the office again today?" Lisa asked suddenly, dropping a pod into the wastebasket.
"Yeah--yeah, he did," Sam replied, surprised.
She wasn't sure how he could be surprised she'd found out. They had mutual friends at the firm. Some were more mutual to her than him.
Lisa herself was not partial to Josh, and the three of them accepted that. She didn't hate him, he just wasn't her favourite person in the world. "He burst into a meeting, hey?"
"He didn't burst in," Sam said, turning to check the rice in its varnished bamboo steamer. "I burst out."
Popping open another pod, Lisa looked down at the neat row of green spheres and nodded. "Nice turn of phrase there. Practising?"
"It's not Hoynes, Lisa."
"Thank God for that," she said under her breath, running her shiny thumbnail under the peas, disengaging them from their dead womb. They rolled merrily down the half-pipe of the open pod into the bowl. "Then what white knight has he signed you up for this time? Save the whales? Save the rainforest? Save the rhinos?"
She broke the empty pod in two before dropping it between her legs into the wastebasket, refusing to meet his stunned, angry gaze.
"Rhinos actually are endangered, you know," he said, flipping the peppers.
Shaking her head, she picked up the bowl and went to the sink, turning on the water hard enough to drown out whatever he said next. When she twisted the knob back, he was finishing his confession.
"He used to be Governor of New Hampshire."
"We've been together how long, Sam?" She looked over her shoulder at him.
He wiped his hands on a washcloth before answering. "Four years."
"Four years. We bought an apartment together. We're going...we're going to get married." She shook her head. "It bothers me that you're willing to give up everything for this." When it took all her strength to get up in the morning and begin another day.
"I'm giving up my job, Lisa. Not you. Not the apartment, not us. My *job*. I am not my job. I do exist outside a conference room."
"I know that. I just...what if this guy you want to be the candidate becomes the candidate? You'll be travelling all over the country--I won't see you for months at a time--"
"Relationships built on worse foundations have survived longer with less contact."
"Yes. Okay. But what if he wins? What then?" What would happen to her? He could forget to call, to come back...he got wrapped up in work sometimes, doing work he hated. If he loved it--maybe he might love it more than her. The thought didn't distress her as much as it should have.
"I'll commute. There are shuttles."
"To Washington and back every day? It's not a nine-to-five job, Sam. You were a congressional aide. You know that."
"Okay. Maybe I'll get a place. A one-bedroom bachelor--" Neither of them liked the connotations of that word and expressed it with a mutual shudder. "A place. And come up on the weekends."
"I'm pretty sure it's not a Monday-to-Friday job, either." Suddenly, she realised she wasn't trying to convince him to not join the campaign, she was trying to convince him to leave her for good.
"You could come down. You don't work weekends." She couldn't. It was too much stress. She walked that fine line between too little stress and too much. There had to be work, to keep her busy, but not enough to make her need to artificially relax.
"No, I don't."
The apartment was still for a moment. Then the peppers started to burn, and Sam tossed them onto a plate quickly, cursing.
*
She submitted stoically to the gentle frisking and metal detection wand and nodded as she was pronounced safe and given back her watch. The security man waved her down the hall past a gang of tourists listening raptly as a young man spoke with great animation about the seal of the President hanging over their heads.
Craning her neck, she looked around at the moldings and chandeliers and columns. The brightness was warm and dazzling compared to the muted white city outside. A dark-haired woman brushed past her and disappeared into one of the many doorways which pierced the cocoon of the lobby.
Remembering the directions he'd given her over the phone, she followed.
*
It had been four days. He had handed over his letter of resignation and cleaned out his desk. The associates held a knock-down drag-out party for him, but he didn't go. He brought egg rolls and shrimp chow mein home in red-stamped boxes.
"I don't understand how you can be so optimistic!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "Not everyone is a paragon of virtue, you know!"
"What? You don't trust me? I'm so naïve, I'm so optimistic, but you don't trust me not to cheat on you?"
He didn't understand. He never really had. "It's not you I don't trust, Sam," she said quickly, staring into his eyes. "It's me."
His chopsticks were hesitantly silent as he carefully set them on the table. Addiction was alien to him. It had never existed in his world until he met her. At a wild party thrown by one of the junior partners--he had been overdressed in a blue polo shirt and chinos, and she had been just short of underdressed.
Half-naked, passed out in the bathroom, white dust around her nose and mouth. He'd thought she was drunk. She'd thought he was hilarious.
"Here, let me help you wash up--"
"No, no, I'm fine, silly, don't you--"
"You don't smell like you've been drinking."
"I haven't, hon. I'm Lisa Belafonte...who are you? No, don't, I'm okay--"
"My name's Sam. I--"
"Do you work at the firm?"
"I'm new. I'll just get you--baby powder or something--all over...."
"Fresh off the farm," she'd giggled, kissing his cheek as he brushed the cocaine off her face.
He had known soon enough. That it was the recreational drug of choice among the young lawyers at Dewey/Ballantine. That she enjoyed a line or two a couple of times a weekend. She'd never do it at work, she assured him. And she never had, though there were some close calls.
The thought of working with people who routinely used debilitating drugs repulsed him, and he'd gone to Gage Whitney as soon as they asked. He convinced her it wasn't healthy, and it was dangerous. She could be disbarred for using. If she wouldn't leave the firm, she at least had to stop. So she stopped.
On this day, March 21, 1998, she hadn't used in almost a year, but sometimes it blew up in her eyes like a sudden snowstorm and if he wasn't around...who could say? It was close, always, just a phone call away. Or a quick stroll down the hall to their artist neighbour or a friend's office, depending on the time of day.
"You're not a drug addict," he stated firmly.
On a weary laugh, she agreed. "No. I'm not. I'm a stress-induced-slash-reduced recreational user. That's the PC term-of-choice, right?"
"I don't think there is a PC term-of-choice for it. There shouldn't be, anyway. You're not a drug addict. You don't need to worry about it."
How could he understand? Perfect man grown from perfect boy born from the perfect stock of two perfect parents in perfect Southern California. Clean, new, beautiful. His brain was wired differently than hers and gilded by the sun.
Her skin was perpetually grey, face hardened by smog, eyes blocked any emotion from showing through. She was a New Yoke City girl. It was meant to be.
No, she didn't need it all the time. No, she'd never pawned stuff to pay for it. No, she hadn't had it in almost, so close to a year. But it was there. She knew it, in the biblical sense. It had been inside her. Once more, for old times' sake.
He wouldn't understand. But she could pretend, so that he didn't have to try any harder. "You're right," she said, smiling ruefully and walking around the table to stand beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other tilting his face up so their eyes could meet. "You're right. I'm sorry."
Curving his arms around her waist, he nodded seriously. "It's okay. You must be really afraid of breaking down."
She feared the snowstorm more than anything. It never let her be, always blowing mournfully just out of her line of sight, then sweeping across suddenly, blinding her. She feared it more than she feared losing him. "I'm more afraid that you'll never come home if you go away--the political life is overwhelming, I know."
"How? Did you sneak off and run a campaign while I wasn't looking?" he teased, turning his head to kiss her wrist.
They laughed warmly, then finished eating. A thick white fog pressed against the tinted windows.
*
"Can I help you?" a concerned but friendly voice asked as she hovered outside what she assumed was his office. It was empty.
Turning, she nodded and gestured distractedly. "I'm supposed to meet Sam...Sam Seaborn. We're having lunch?"
The girl looked puzzled for a second, then her eyes widened. "Oh, yeah--Lisa. You were late, and--"
He'd gone off to a meeting or something. He hadn't waited for her. She'd been left behind. Or rather, spared the inevitable stilted greetings and awkwardness.
"--and he left to find you. He figured you'd probably gotten lost. You are Lisa, right?"
Blinking the white tears back, she smiled brightly. "Yes, I'm Lisa Belafonte. And you?"
Caught off guard by her sudden friendliness, the girl stuttered, "My name's Nancy Logan...."
Lisa took Nancy's hand and shook it. "Nice to meet you. Which way did he go?"
*
She got out of the shower when the phone rang and didn't hurry to pick it up. She dried her arms and legs, wrapped the large towel around her torso and went to the mirror as the machine clicked on.
Their voices in unison, trying not to laugh as they recorded the message. "Hi, you've reached Sam and Lisa. We can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we'll get back to you ASAP." Outright laughter. She said, "Right, Sam?" He said, "Sure, yeah. ASAP." More laughter until the beep.
He was impatient, she could hear it in the music that blared beyond him, in the deep breath he took before shouting, "Lisa! I'm sorry. Lisa! Pick up--I know you're home. Lisa, Lisa, we won Illinois, we won. Oh my God, Lisa, Josh's dad, he-he passed away.... Are you there? Lisa? We won! Pick up! Come on. Dammit, we won! I'm sorry! Lisa! The machine's going to cut me off now, isn't it? I love--"
Beep. Gone. The mirror was frosted over and she shivered in the steamy bright bathroom, looking at her blurry reflection with bloodshot eyes.
Her nose hurt. Her fingers hurt. That place, right up under her left hip joint, hurt.
Familiar aches she hadn't felt in so long.
He loves what? Winning? Bartlet? The job? Being with dynamic, intelligent people?
It finally came to her. "You," she said to her blurry reflection, pointing at her chest with a ragged nail, eyes wide with surprise.
The phone rang again, four times. They laughed again. She remembered recording the message. Two days after they'd finalised the apartment, laying on the couch together, holding the machine on his stomach, her reading the directions out loud as he fiddled with the buttons.
Beep.
"Lisa. You're not home. Okay. I just wanted to let you know that we won and I'm coming through next Monday with Josh after he gets back from Connecticut...we've got a meeting with some people. My flight's in the afternoon, I'll call you with specifics later. When you're home. Okay? Yeah. We won. Bye."
*
She could tell by Nancy's expression that she was projecting properly. She was calm, efficient, friendly, pleasantly apologetic for being late. Nancy was probably wondering why they hadn't married in September of 1998 like they were supposed to.
He was in New Hampshire, that's why. They had agreed to postpone the wedding at least until after the election. He didn't want to overshadow the importance of their marriage by having a quick ceremony between primaries. She was still hoping he would call it off.
*
He looked like he'd just won a gold medal after overcoming some horrible injury. Very tired, very stressed, very much in pain, but very proud of himself. She stood and smiled widely, falsely, waving a hand to get his attention.
He froze, dropping his overcoat. Then he ran to her, grabbing her up, turning around a few times before letting her get an arm's length away.
"Sam."
"Hi," he said breathlessly, grinning. "Hi. This is so amazing. Why did you come? Josh has a car--"
She put a hand over his mouth. His eyes dulled, shoulders sagged. Reality knocks once. "We need to talk."
"Hey! Sam!" Trenchcoat flapping, Josh ran towards them.
He raised his eyebrows, questioning. She shook her head.
"Josh can't come."
*
Nancy left Lisa with the guard while she canvassed the West Wing. "We're not allowed to give tours until after ten, when the President's gone upstairs," she explained. "So just hang tight and one of us will come back to you."
So she chatted with the guard, whose name was Mike. They spoke of trivial things: the congressional committee, the impeachment hearings, her job in New York. How she was enjoying DC so far.
"It's very white," she replied, laughing. "I didn't expect snow."
Mike commiserated with a smile, then nodded at someone behind her. She turned, heart in her throat, fingers clutching suddenly at her purse.
Everything fell back into place. It was only Josh. "Hi. What are you doing here?" he asked, studiously un-hostile.
"Sam and I are supposed to be having lunch," she said, wide-eyed. She had not intended to see him. "How are you?"
A hand flashed over his right shoulder and she bobbed up on her tip-toes to see what was going on. His bright smile, rumpled shirt. Josh turned and nodded at Sam as he approached.
His expression told her he'd forgotten all about the bad things, or convinced himself he had. It reminded her of why she'd agreed to eat with him at all.
*
"What's going on, Lisa?" he asked as she closed the door behind him. The apartment was cold, the windows scummed over by smog residue and condensation.
She hung her jacket up and turned on the thermostat. As she walked into the kitchen and turned on the coffee, the sound of her heels echoing in the large space, he turned silently, watching her.
They both knew what she was going to say, but she knew he would think she was saying it for the wrong reasons.
The coffee pot made perking noises and she leaned on the counter over the cold cooktop. The wastebasket was heaped with take-out cartons. The guts of the fridge behind her were a fuzzy monstrosity of tofu and wheat durum evolution gone horribly wrong. But he couldn't know that. He hadn't been home in nearly four months.
"Lisa?" he said quietly.
He wasn't going to pretend it wasn't happening. For once. He just wanted her to do it. She sighed and smiled at the cracked burners.
"It's over, Sam," she replied without looking up. "I messed up, and it's got to be over now."
The heel of his shoe screeched on the hardwood as he turned away, going into the dark bedroom without a word. She heard his duffel bag hit the bed, followed by a loud yell as his shin collided with the antique steamer trunk at its foot.
Coming around the counter into the living room, she called, "Are you bleeding?"
After a second, he replied, "Not on the outside." A long pause. "Well, that was certainly melodramatic. Come slap me, please."
"For old times' sake?" she asked, trying to joke, approaching the open door.
He stood, shadowed, inside the bedroom, just rising from checking his pants leg for blood, and held out a hand to her. "Please."
Her own hand shook as she pushed her hair away from her face. "No, Sam. No. I messed up."
Dropping his arm, he looked past her into the living room, trying to find some evidence of the mess she'd claimed to make, she supposed. "How?"
The bedroom curtains hung like folded white wings on the wall behind him. "I was working later and later," she began. "With this one associate, Mark. It was a big case. Very important. Could make me a partner and all that. But I didn't really care. I was just trying to pretend I wouldn't have to come home to an empty apartment. One night he asked me out for a drink, and I went, and it led to a party on the weekend, and some of the old kids from Dewey/Ballantine were there."
The solemnity of his gaze and his utter stillness unnerved her. She twisted her hands together and turned away before continuing. "It just drove and drove at me, Sam. I did it. Two lines. And I slept with him. Just once." Once was enough. Rough enough, tough enough, wrong enough to make her hip ache in a way Sam hadn't made it ache for years.
Raising her head, she looked at the darkening room, at the half-empty side tables and the two vacant spaces on the wall where her degrees had hung beside his.
"You've already packed," he realised quietly. The grate of empty drawers as he pulled them out and pushed them back in, the embarrassed squeak of the closet door as he pushed it open. "You've already packed!" he shouted, slamming it shut again.
The scent of coffee filled the air, pushing the whiteness away from her forehead, and she went back to the kitchen, taking two mugs down from the teak shelf. Looking at the small overnight bag beside the sink. Thinking about how horrible it was that her whole life could be forced into a gym bag. The zipper didn't even bulge.
*
His arm was heavy across her shoulders as they walked out of the White House towards the parking lot. She had taken the bus from her hotel, so he was driving to the restaurant.
"Josh thinks you should be working," she teased, poking him as they slid down the sidewalk. The snow had been unexpected, no salt was readily available. Soon the white crystals would dust the street and sidewalks, though. White eating white.
Tilting his head back, he caught a flake on his tongue. "Yeah. I think I should be working, which is probably the surest sign that I shouldn't."
He held the car door open and they laughed for old times' sake.
*
"This isn't fair, Lisa," he kept saying as she calmly drank her coffee at the counter. "This isn't fair. You already packed. Like--"
"Like it's a done deal," she finished for him. "It is."
He took a few deep breaths. "I'm in the middle of a Presidential election, and he's going to *win*, and you've already packed. This is, I don't know, this is very selfish of you, I've got to say. Just...really selfish."
Taking a second to swallow so she didn't spit coffee all over the spotless brushed-steel kitchen, she put her mug down. "I'm just going, Sam. I'm not asking for your help, I'm not asking for your *time*. I'm just going. Can you give me that, at least?"
He turned back from the window and shrugged at her.
"We can do this," he said. "We can work this out. You just need to get out of the city. Come with me tomorrow, okay? Get on the plane with me."
He was old-fashioned, she remembered suddenly. He was the nuclear family boy. He was the type who would stay together for the kids. All they had was a mouldy fridge and a half-lifeless apartment. There was no reason to ruin their lives, so she wasn't going to make the effort.
"No, Sam," she replied, picking up her bag and going to the door. He made some movement, said something in a panicky voice. She didn't remember. "I'm not leaving the city. I'm leaving you."
*
"I think I was just afraid of failure," he admitted, pushing a shred of grilled chicken around his plate. "And I put it on you. I'm sorry."
He'd changed his hair, she realised with surprise. He'd had that haircut for as long as she'd known him, and now it was different. "We both made mistakes, Sam."
"Sometimes I wonder if I could have convinced you to stay--how things would have been different." He was staring at her, asking her silently to meet his eyes.
Putting down her fork, she complied. He had a few crow's feet, she saw, but they were still blue. "That's kind of silly. Things would have been bad. I needed to...I don't know. Let's not talk about it, okay?" It was all done.
Shifting in his seat, he nodded. "Yeah. You're right."
They gave the conversation a moment to die, then started eating again.
*
She had tried to call the apartment when she found a hotel, but there was no answer. Hopefully he phoned Josh and they rescued each other from a useless lonely night in New York. In the morning, she tried again, sitting on the end of the too-soft bed, staring at herself in the mirror above the too-low desk.
"Hi, you've reached--"
She hung up quickly, disgusted by her temptation to listen to their laughter.
There were enough real estate agents willing to sell the apartment, and she was glad to see that he'd taken everything he wanted when she returned to oversee a showing.
His certification, books, some photos, the few clothes remaining in the bedroom, an antique dish from Soho. His mahogany chopsticks.
She noticed the glass closet door was gone, too.
*
"Are you seeing anyone?" she asked tentatively.
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "No..."
Smiling a little, she added, "I heard about that picture. I'm sorry."
He shook his head and took another bite of salad. "I didn't do anything wrong."
"At least you've still got your office."
"At least. What about you?"
"I've got an office, yeah." That wasn't what he meant, of course.
"Are you seeing anyone?"
Her shrink. "Not really," she replied, running a finger around the edge of her water glass. No ephemeral music quivered in the air.
"Still at Routier & McGraw?"
With a grimace, she nodded. "Yeah."
"Still not a partner?" he asked mischieviously.
"Of course not. They don't even let women go to depositions, for God's sake." It was just short of an exaggeration.
"So...?" He waved his fork in the air.
No one else would take her. She looked at him and his mouth dropped open.
"I don't believe it."
"I disappeared for a month and a half, Sam. That's worse than insinuating the environment is more important than saving money or avoiding litigation."
While he laughed, she reached into her purse and took out the envelope containing his half of the apartment's sale value. No matter how bad things had gotten after they parted, she hadn't dipped into it. Whatever he wanted to say about her, he couldn't say she wasn't trustworthy.
He stopped laughing when she slid the envelope under the edge of his plate. "What's that?"
"Return on your investment," she replied, gesturing for him to open it.
The bills looked worn against his fingers as he pulled a few out, judging how much was in the envelope. "There must be a hundred thousand dollars in here."
"I sold the apartment."
"I figured you had."
"I couldn't find you, Sam, so I kept your money for you." He glared at her and clenched his jaw. He was about to refuse to take the money. "Take it. We went halfsies buying it, we're going halfsies selling it."
"Three years later?"
Setting her own jaw, she nodded. "Three years later."
As he stuffed the money back into the envelope, a smile bled across his face. "Where's my interest?"
*
Quitting over the phone was easier than doing it face to face, so she called Mr. Dewey and gave him the news. She needed to find herself, she said, and the roll of his eyes was almost audible.
It took a month, but she did find herself. And when she returned to the world, America had a new president-elect, and she didn't have the guts to look Sam up. So he would know she wasn't dead, at least.
But a scummy firm hired her, and she stayed, and they decided she would be good eye candy at the international contract conference in DC.
And watching the blue-white clouds scud by as she sat in the plane gave her the guts.
*
At the curb outside her hotel, he took his hand off the gearshift, let it hang in the air for a moment, long enough for her to note the slight scarring over his knuckles, then put it back. "I'm glad you called me."
Snow blew across the windshield, slipped giddily under her skirt as she opened the door. "So am I."
They smiled at each other with long experience brimming in their eyes. "Have a good convention," he added. "See you around."
"Thanks. Yeah."
Lisa got out of the car and pushed the door shut, watched him zoom cautiously away, the red of his tail lights fading into white.
End.