TEASER:  Three men in a bar hear "Lady".  Lee Stetson is one of them, reflecting on 16 years of marriage to Amanda.

DISCLAIMERS:  The characters herein don't belong to me; I've borrowed them from Warner Brothers, Shoot the Moon Productions, Paramount, Bellisarius Productions, and Aaron Sorkin, et al.  I promise to return them relatively unscathed and to cherish them as though I made multi-millions on each episode.  I also hereby thank the actors who brought and bring these characters to life in their fictional worlds, because they are the ones who have provided the depth and motivations for these dramatis personae.  Lady belongs to Lionel Ritchie and whomever holds the actual copyright, which has been very hard to pin down.  It's one of my favorite love songs of all time; I hope I do it justice.

RATING:  PG-13

FEEDBACK:  Always welcome, but spare me the flames, please.  We're not THAT cold here in New England!  E-mail in my profile or through the review feature in the story pages.

SPOILERS:  Everything in Scarecrow and Mrs. King; not much specifically in The West Wing or JAG.  And yes, I do know that The West Wing and JAG don't exist in the same timeline, but that's what artistic license is all about.  This is set in my Operation Esther universe.

COMPANION PIECES:  Lady Donnatella, posted on The West Wing page, and Lady Sarah, posted on the JAG page.

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The most amazing indication of the changes wrought in the world in the past 10 years, I think with a smile as I step into the bar just off of Scott Circle, is that I'm waiting for my wife to leave a meeting of intelligence specialists that the Russians are hosting at their Embassy!  It isn't so much that the Russians are hosting the meeting as that my wife is attending it as the lead of American delegation.  Okay, I'll admit it; it's not even so much that my wife is the lead of the delegation as that I have a wife to begin with.  Even 16 years later, I'm still amazed at that change.

I take off my gray wool coat and hang it on a hook near the entrance.  The bar is nearly empty, so it's easy to get the bartender's attention to order a scotch and soda to nurse while I wait for my Amanda. 

When door opens behind me, I watch in the mirror as a balding man with curly hair bounds into the establishment, his backpack slung from his left shoulder.  The man looks oddly familiar, as though I ought to be able to place him; somehow, the context is entirely wrong, though.  The newcomer sits down a few stools away, looking at me briefly with the kind of smile I know all too well – the one of an overworked government bureaucrat – as he takes his overcoat off.  The man keeps bouncing, as if some infinite power source surges through him, even as he orders a beer and turns to face the door with his right elbow propped on the lip of the bar.

My scotch and soda arrives; I am impressed at the balance – not every bartender gets the right blend of alcohol and fizzy water.  The bartender catches my smile and returns it before he goes over to the stereo tuner and changes from an all-sports talk station to a mellow 60s'-70's-80's-90's station.  I shrug; the sports talk would have been fine with me for the duration, as I do have a high school athletics coach for a stepson, and it is, after all, the post-Superbowl analysis fest.  Number one offense versus number one defense.  Hmmm…that should have been a no-brainer for even the least informed prognosticators.  Why are they so surprised that Tampa trounced Oakland?  Defense is almost always the winning bet.

Four thirty on a weekday afternoon in Washington is still a little early for the happy hour crowd, so when the door opens again, the new patron still has a number of choices for seats at the bar.  He opts for a table close to the entrance, perhaps so he can keep control of the brown leather aviator's jacket that comes off to reveal the winter blue uniform of a commander in the United States Navy.  I squint a bit when the man turns my way and instantly know two things about the tall, blue-green eyed man:  he is an active pilot and a member of the Judge Advocate General corps.  Somehow it's appropriate that the song just ending on the new radio station is You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, although by the grimace and rolled eyes on the officer's face, he has had enough of that particular song to last a lifetime.  He, surprisingly, orders a ginger ale with a twist of lime rather than a harder beverage; perhaps he's meeting someone on business, or maybe he's going off to fly a training mission, as so many with military aviation training have been doing of late.

I ponder my drink as the announcer on the radio gives the headlines, weather forecast, and traffic, all of which are predictably bad for the times.  Amanda won't have to worry about traffic, but the wind chill factor might make her 5-minute walk from the Russian Embassy a bit more uncomfortable than I would wish for her.  Then again, if she's cold, there are so many wonderful things that I can do to warm her up, so perhaps I won't worry so much about that wind chill after all.

I've had to warm my Amanda up before.  The day she and Francine Desmond (now she's Marlowe) got trapped in a freezer at the Marvelous Marvin plant was one of the scarier days of my life; had Francine not been with us, I had a few other ideas that I wanted to try besides rubbing Amanda's arms.  Not, of course, that she would have let me; the most intelligent thing besides marrying her that I've ever done is to go with her on the plan to wait for the honeymoon to do all those things I'd wanted to enjoy for so long.  I still enjoy them.  We made sure that the kids' bedrooms are at the other end of the hall because we both enjoy them.

I can hear Jamie and Philip now:  "Gross!"  But neither of them is at home now.  Philip is engaged; he and his fiancée are saving up for a down payment on a house and thus sharing an apartment that her uncle owns, paying "rent" into the savings account.  Captain James King, USMC, is working on his doctorate in biochemistry down at Fort Monroe under the good Dr. Andy Forest while he waits for his own soul mate to grow up enough to marry her.  I wonder if JoJo and Andy know just how far Jamie will go to protect his Marlena?

Kim Xi and Quan Lee are not quite as conservative as their older brothers, mainly because there's almost a full generation's age difference between them.  The idea of Mom and Dad having sex isn't as awful for them, and sometimes I worry that they will have looser and more problematic morals than their brothers.  But Quan Lee idolizes their godfather, General Ian Marlowe, USMC, who agrees with me that in this day and age it's far better for a man to "save himself" for marriage than to be the playboys we were in our youth.  Their godmother, Francine, will do either them bodily harm if he or she does something stupid – and will happily leave enough left over for Amanda and me to have a piece left, too.

I've drifted well away from where that thought began; I realize with a start that I've missed the first part of a really great song on the radio.  As I listen where I've come in, I can't help but think about how amazing my life really is because of my Amanda:

Lady, for so many years I thought I'd never find you
You have come into my life and made me whole

How true that sentiment is in my own life.  Twenty years ago, I was a field agent, the renowned "Scarecrow" with The Agency.  I played the James Bond role to the hilt as a swinging bachelor with four black books full of women – mostly blondes – who would for the most part be available to me after one brief phone call for a night or a week, rarely more, of fun and nightlife.  Amanda was a pain in the ass civilian that my desk-bound boss kept throwing at me and whose nose for trouble aged me a year for every day I spent with her.

But somehow, over the next two years, Amanda became my friend, and then my best friend.  She had saved my life and me hers more times by then than either of us really liked to admit.  I began to dread assignments without her, and then suddenly I realized that my girlfriend Leslie was an Amanda clone – a poor one, at that.

In my eyes I see no one else but you
There's no other love like our love
And yes, oh yes, I'll always want you near me
I've waited for you for so long

So I took the chance and reached out to Amanda, intentionally set aside my fears of failure and asked her for more in our relationship, only to find that Amanda had been waiting for me to figure it out and come to her.  The day I said "I love you" for the first time stays in my memory not because I was on the run from my own agency after the Russ – oops, they were Soviets back then – set me up to look like a double agent but because she had spoken the same words to me.  She set my heart free to soar with her love and soon thereafter she accepted my proposal of marriage – twice, really.  Once under the influence of drugs and once very clearly not.

The secrecy necessitated at the beginning of our marriage has given way to a rich, fulfilling life with our adopted daughter and son rounding out the men I am proud to call sons, even though I had come into their lives when they were young teens.  In every sense of the word, Amanda completes me.

Lady, your love's the only love I need
And beside me is where I want you to be
'Cause, my love, there's something I want you to know
You're the love of my life, you're my lady

The particular cover of the song playing goes back to the beginning, but my attention is drawn to the man on my right, the one who looks like a bureaucrat.  The man stares up at the speaker above the mirror, his lips moving to the lyrics, and I know that some woman has firm possession of his heart because that look so resembles the one I wear every day.  After another moment, I realize that the man is pining; maybe the man hasn't made his case well or at all to the woman to whom he sings inaudibly.  Been there, done that.  Fixed it, have the life to prove it, I think, and wonder if I ought to say something to my not-quite companion. 

I opt not to, turning away from the government man to the military man, only to see a similar sight there.  The commander, however, is singing along out loud in a soft, pleasant baritone.

Lady, I'm your knight in shining armor and I love you
You have made me what I am and I am yours
My love, there's so many ways I want to say I love you
Let me hold you in my arms forever more

What is it about us males of the species? I ask myself, amused by the two men yet sympathetic to their apparent plight.  Those three words are so hard to say to the right woman, but so easily spilled to the ones who mean nothing.

The opening door drags my attention from the commander to three women who enter together, laughing in that way that women have of instant bonding at some common female experience.  Amanda and her companions stop just inside and survey the room; I make a bet with myself that the long-haired blonde goes with the commander and the short-haired brunette with the bureaucrat, but it becomes obvious a moment later that I have the women matched to the wrong men. 

Before I can even put my feet solidly on the floor, the bureaucrat has moved in front of me toward the entrance, calling out "Donna!" even as he stumbles, beer in hand, to meet her. 

The blonde turns with a smile that blinds at the call of her name, and she answers more quietly, "Josh, you're here early.  How many Senators do I have to apologize to tomorrow?" 

And then I realize that my companion on the right is Josh Lyman, the President's Deputy Chief of Staff, which makes the blonde his well-regarded assistant, Donna Moss.  Just watching them is painful; they are so much in love with each other, yet I would lay odds that neither knows the other's feelings.  That is way too familiar a feeling, even after 16 years, and so I raise my head so my reason for being can see me.

Amanda spots me and smiles just as the brunette turns back toward the door and sees the commander; I wave at my wife and motion to her that I'm people watching, just so she won't think I'm ignoring her.  She winks her permission and I settle back to watch my left-hand companion as Amanda makes her way toward me.

The commander and his – Marine Corps lieutenant colonel – brunette are far more comfortable with each other than Josh Lyman and Donna Moss, but even so, I sense that she isn't fully aware of the depth of the man's feelings for her.  The two don't touch when she arrives at the table, but the smiles are the kind one only sees between soul mates; I notice that the commander's hand guides the colonel into her seat and that they sit on the same side of the table with their shoulders touching. 

"Harm, I don't believe you actually beat me here," I hear her say as much because I can read her lips as because I can hear her sultry voice. 

The commander's reply comes through a little more clearly.  "You told me to be here at 1630.  I decided to be on time for once."

"You're awfully wrapped up in that couple," my Lady Amanda breathes into my ear, distracting me only for the briefest moment.

"It's like watching us," I reply, slipping my arm around her.  "They," I motion over her shoulder toward the couple I had identified as White House staff members, "are kind of like we were when we spent the night in the woods and almost kissed."

Her deep-throated laugh shivers its way through me.  "The 'not exactly' stage."

"That's the one.  The commander and his colonel are on stage, but it's not a neo-absurdist production."

"And I'll bet he doesn't even realize that there's no door for him to close and lock," my Amanda teases, and I know we're both thinking about the many, many near kisses we experienced before I finally shut us into our office in the Q Bureau and showed her exactly how I felt then – and still feel – about her.

I see the commander lean in to his Marine, hear the low tone of his baritone indistinctly as he sings against her ear, and can only nod.  "I'd give you that bet."

Amanda grins at me as the song winds down.  "That's good, because I can tell you all about the commander and his colonel.  And the deputy and his assistant, too."

"You can?" I ask, wondering just what transpired at the door when the three ladies walked into the bar.  Amanda is good at reading people, but not that good.

"I can," she affirms.  "But I won't, other than to say that Clayton Webb's mysterious Bosnian gypsy has been revealed."  From the look on her face, it's obvious that she spent the day with these two women; she probably had lunch with at least the colonel after our favorite CIA liaison spilled the beans.

I really do want to know what Webb told my wife; the CIA operative's network in Bosnia in the early days of the NATO peacekeeping mission was legendary, primarily because he had someone in theater who could pass for a player on either side.  That the "Undersecretary of State" had managed to keep the identity of his agent secret for so long speaks highly of the way that Clay does his job, but it still rankles me that my Agency couldn't find out what the CIA had been hiding. 

Before I can start to argue the point with my wife, she bends in to kiss me in a way that connects me to the final lines of the song as the singer croons them over the radio:

Lady, your love's the only love I need
And beside me is where I want you to be
'Cause, my love, there's something I want you to know
You're the love of my life, you're my lady

Now, what was I going to argue with my Lady Amanda about, anyway?

Fine