Disclaimer: 'The West Wing' isn't mine. "White Ladder" is from David Gray's
sublime album of the same title and it isn't mine either. I get nothing out
of this but my own sick pleasure.
Author's Note: This isn't as humourous or as long as "Versatile & Tempestuous," but it's still a sequel.
She Calls Him Anyway
By BJ Garrett
"to the night another body, to the night another name." -david gray, 'white ladder'
The press room door closes with a succulent slam, cutting off the calling horde. They know her name. They know it well, as well they should.
Josh whistles, shakes his hand as if burned. "Yow, CJ."
His eyes are wide in appreciation. She smiles graciously, acknowledges the praise with a two-fingered salute. They pass in the hall.
It's forgotten. The grope of his open mouth at her neck as she strained back, as if trying to get away, never saying no, rigid hands clutching at his back, pulling him closer. Trying to get there. The back of her thighs asleep against the edge of his desk.
Forgotten.
Sam gives her a wide wave from the other side of his bullpen, a thumbs up as she raises her own hand. Toby flicks his eyes her way, then puts his back to her, to Sam, slouches away with subdued anger. Sam turns to him and starts as he realises Toby is gone. He sets off, following the scent of Fahrenheit.
The television sets are already back to anchors at particle-board desks, stuttering a little, the force of her comeback is strong. They know her name.
Leo gives her a proud, admiring little smile. She closes his office door, confidence lighting her face.
"CJ."
"That's m'name, don't wear it out."
It isn't Josh she pushes off as she rolls out of bed. It isn't anyone, it isn't the memory of anyone. It is all forgotten.
Fahrenheit fills her senses. Warm in her nose, acrid in her throat, stinging her eyes, slick like alcohol on her skin.
She never touched him like that. There is no mirror there for him.
Listlessly drawing the bath sponge over her arms, chest, down to her stomach, she is not washing Josh away. She is washing no one away. It is all forgotten, the others have retreated into a loss of memory, as if they never happened.
As if she has not spent the last twenty years pretending they are not him.
Solid, certain knowledge of her worthiness as she goes to apologise and make it done.
"Toby?"
"Yes, CJ?"
She is immune to his admonishing tone. She is strong, she is hearty and hale and the truth of the matter is: she isn't sorry it finally happened. She isn't sorry he finally had to face up to the fact that they were never him and they never will be. It isn't better this way, but she's not sorry.
"I'm sorry, Toby."
As if he didn't know, he looks up. "Whatever for?"
In the afternoon the trees are like petrified scarecrows dancing at the edge of Lafayette Park. Thin, parchment-red leaves flicker sadly on the branches.
She wraps her scarf higher around her face, feels the blood blooming in her cheeks. Takes a deep breath, smells Fahrenheit.
With a silent curse, she recalls that this is the scarf she stole from him last December, sneaking into his office after he left, chuckling at his bad luck and her good fortune. He forgot his scarf, hanging over the back of his chair, looking lonely in a shaft of pink sunset light on a Sunday afternoon.
Thinking of those days and hours before it started, she pulls the scarf off, snaps it in the air as if preparing to throw it over the fence into the park. The tightly woven wool is rough against her face as she presses her nose into it.
"He's not going to come back on board," Josh declares.
She was pretending they were not him. They were him. She tried him for twenty years and it didn't work. Why would it work because he is angry? She is not a virgin sacrifice to appease the rumbling volcano god.
"You could, CJ. You could just, you know, dance with the guy."
His eyes across the table in the Roosevelt Room are smoldering, black like the crust of lava as it flows inevitably down some tropical mountain.
She takes herself off the table. "I don't bargain with my body," she says cunningly, eyes flicking to the dry mouths of the men in the room, Josh laughing silently. "I bargain with my mind."
They pity this fact, she knows it.
He narrows his eyes, catapults his pen at Sam, who is not paying attention.
"Up and at 'em, Seaborn."
It doesn't work like that. Acknowledging the trauma will not stop it. Saying it happened but now it's over doesn't mean she won't remember.
"We shouldn't-"
She releases his shoulder with a disgusted look. "I don't want to fuck you, Josh. I want you to stop acting like you never fucked me."
"It. It wasn't.good, though."
"It never is."
They were him. It happened, twenty years. It didn't work. It was never good.
"Okay."
He's not the only one confused. "So just.let's. Let's learn from this whole thing, all right? Instead of acting like it didn't happen. Okay?"
"Okay."
He opens her office door. "You want to know what I've learned, CJ?"
"What."
She doesn't have time for this. She sits behind her desk and looks up at him with a drooping frown.
"Never mind."
So she takes her own advice and locks her office door from the inside at nine-thirty. She sits on the chair that she was sitting on the first time. Crosses her legs like they were crossed the first time.
He put a hand on her shoulder. "CJ."
Her hand around his neck, pulling him closer, it was close to being a kiss, but at the last moment she changed her mind. She was never fond of kissing men with facial hair, though she knew Josh had shaved that day; she could smell Calvin Klein on him.
There was a fluidity to his lips pressing to the underside of her chin she can't imagine every happening with Toby.
Pulling him up by his collar, pulling him against her as she leaned on her desk. It is best standing up, when he's the same height. It's closest that way.
Her phone rings and it is ten o'clock and Leo is on the line.
"It's the German ambassador. He had a mild heart attack an hour ago. The embassy's faxing you the stuff."
They were not him. They were him.
Twenty years of names and echoes and she can remember every single one's voice in the void of her memory.
"CJ."
They would say it like they were her lovers, even though it was not ever them, it was him.
He was taken, some blonde from Oregon who never got him drunk enough to marry her. It was in his eyes, he really wanted her. But she was used to that, she was twenty-two and tall and perfect in mind and body.
The way she said his name while he read Kerouac on Cavanaugh Hill made him love her.
It is only ever her voice saying his name in the cluttered realms of history.
"Toby. I want. Toby." He's listening. She doesn't need to say his name. She calls him anyway. "Toby. Toby. I want to give you this."
Her hands on her breastbone, on her stomach. This; her body.
He closes his eyes, a hand splayed at his nose. Movement to the right, out of focus.
She. She should have. It was a mistake. "Toby."
He doesn't mean the despairing expression on his face. He doesn't mean it. He can't. "You're. For twenty years, Toby. Here! Have me!"
Clutches her hands in the material, as if she were going to rip it off.
He opens his eyes, clean and knowing, watches her with that familiar distant amusement from between his middle and ring fingers.
Flings her arms out, crucified, "Take me, Tobus!"
Her voice, face, fierce, unamused. She calls to the him that only knows her, untouched by anyone else, virgin, wondering. This is compensation for Josh. For all the others who weren't him. The others. She didn't pretend they weren't him.
"No."
Tortured, pained, gruff. His voice, in the void of his office. Her body is all she has to give, and he.
No.
She drops her arms. It chirps out, an echo, "No." More of a question in her head, but she says it like it's fact. No.
He can't deny her like this. She is undeniable.
What kind of.who would say no to her? To CJ Cregg in a half-unbuttoned silk shirt with a white tank top underneath.
More movement, hands on slim hips through the glass. Toby looks, smiles with so much self-hatred she wants to cry. What she has done to him.
He points with the hand on his face.
Sam smiles and waves. They usually pull the blinds when they fight.
"Toby," she says to Sam.
He can't hear her, cups a hand around his ear, gestures, "Do you want me to come over?"
She shakes her head. No. It is not a question.
It is a fact.
"CJ."
His voice in the void of his office.
He knows her name.
He will come back to her, and she will say no, for spite, for vengeance, to get back at him because he rejected her. There will be no testing, no gentle laughter as she unhooks her bra for him, as he reaches up to part her hair with his fingers. The dull gleam of gold in the orange darkness of her apartment.
She turns on all the lamps and the overhead swag to prove it.
Walking into the Oval Office at nine the next morning, she knows there was half an hour last night when he changed his mind. The way he looks up at her entrance with a half-smile, eyes crinkled at the corners in that way she loves, and something changes in his face. He was wrong to turn her down, no, wait, he was not. He has made his decision.
"Wie geht es dem Botschafter?" the President asks.
Her mouth is open to reply before she realises that the President is speaking in tongues. "Pardon me, Mr. President?"
"Ich habe sie gefragt, wie es dem Botschafter?"
Leo leans close and says, quietly, but loud enough for the President to hear, "He's in a bit of a Weimark mood this morning. He and the First Lady watched The Blue Angel last night."
Dietrich in a tuxedo. She was, at heart, a gentleman.
CJ smiles and nods. "That's great, Mr. President. I'm glad you enjoyed the film, but I really haven't got a clue what you're saying, sir."
"Meine bezaubernde Frau und ich haben den film genno§en. Leo, ich finde da§ wir nicht genug mit Deutschland handeln. Wenn es dem Botschafter wieder be§er geht, solten wir über eine Handelsmi§ion redden."
And the day is already as normal as she can hope for.
Nine and half hours of avoidance. She doesn't speak to him, he doesn't speak to her, their eyes meet only across crowded tables and then hers are cold, his are blank.
This isn't the way it was supposed to turn out. She was supposed to let him in on her twenty years of research, let him know it wouldn't work, and that she had already tried.
He was supposed to nod sadly and turn away. And everything would be right again.
She supposes she should know by now that things like them cannot be fixed with a simple fuck.
She recalls her own research. Twenty years, and they were all him. Names and echoes in the orange darkness of her apartment, and the bell rings.
He is inside her apartment. She turns on all the lamps and the swag overhead to prove it.
He is waffling at the closed door, swinging his arms around, scarf bunched in a gloved fist. She smells vegetarian pizza and Fahrenheit as she approaches him.
Spite and vengeance.
No.
"Toby."
"CJ?"
They are unnamed, they are bodies. It is only an echo in the night.
End.
Author's Note: This isn't as humourous or as long as "Versatile & Tempestuous," but it's still a sequel.
She Calls Him Anyway
By BJ Garrett
"to the night another body, to the night another name." -david gray, 'white ladder'
The press room door closes with a succulent slam, cutting off the calling horde. They know her name. They know it well, as well they should.
Josh whistles, shakes his hand as if burned. "Yow, CJ."
His eyes are wide in appreciation. She smiles graciously, acknowledges the praise with a two-fingered salute. They pass in the hall.
It's forgotten. The grope of his open mouth at her neck as she strained back, as if trying to get away, never saying no, rigid hands clutching at his back, pulling him closer. Trying to get there. The back of her thighs asleep against the edge of his desk.
Forgotten.
Sam gives her a wide wave from the other side of his bullpen, a thumbs up as she raises her own hand. Toby flicks his eyes her way, then puts his back to her, to Sam, slouches away with subdued anger. Sam turns to him and starts as he realises Toby is gone. He sets off, following the scent of Fahrenheit.
The television sets are already back to anchors at particle-board desks, stuttering a little, the force of her comeback is strong. They know her name.
Leo gives her a proud, admiring little smile. She closes his office door, confidence lighting her face.
"CJ."
"That's m'name, don't wear it out."
It isn't Josh she pushes off as she rolls out of bed. It isn't anyone, it isn't the memory of anyone. It is all forgotten.
Fahrenheit fills her senses. Warm in her nose, acrid in her throat, stinging her eyes, slick like alcohol on her skin.
She never touched him like that. There is no mirror there for him.
Listlessly drawing the bath sponge over her arms, chest, down to her stomach, she is not washing Josh away. She is washing no one away. It is all forgotten, the others have retreated into a loss of memory, as if they never happened.
As if she has not spent the last twenty years pretending they are not him.
Solid, certain knowledge of her worthiness as she goes to apologise and make it done.
"Toby?"
"Yes, CJ?"
She is immune to his admonishing tone. She is strong, she is hearty and hale and the truth of the matter is: she isn't sorry it finally happened. She isn't sorry he finally had to face up to the fact that they were never him and they never will be. It isn't better this way, but she's not sorry.
"I'm sorry, Toby."
As if he didn't know, he looks up. "Whatever for?"
In the afternoon the trees are like petrified scarecrows dancing at the edge of Lafayette Park. Thin, parchment-red leaves flicker sadly on the branches.
She wraps her scarf higher around her face, feels the blood blooming in her cheeks. Takes a deep breath, smells Fahrenheit.
With a silent curse, she recalls that this is the scarf she stole from him last December, sneaking into his office after he left, chuckling at his bad luck and her good fortune. He forgot his scarf, hanging over the back of his chair, looking lonely in a shaft of pink sunset light on a Sunday afternoon.
Thinking of those days and hours before it started, she pulls the scarf off, snaps it in the air as if preparing to throw it over the fence into the park. The tightly woven wool is rough against her face as she presses her nose into it.
"He's not going to come back on board," Josh declares.
She was pretending they were not him. They were him. She tried him for twenty years and it didn't work. Why would it work because he is angry? She is not a virgin sacrifice to appease the rumbling volcano god.
"You could, CJ. You could just, you know, dance with the guy."
His eyes across the table in the Roosevelt Room are smoldering, black like the crust of lava as it flows inevitably down some tropical mountain.
She takes herself off the table. "I don't bargain with my body," she says cunningly, eyes flicking to the dry mouths of the men in the room, Josh laughing silently. "I bargain with my mind."
They pity this fact, she knows it.
He narrows his eyes, catapults his pen at Sam, who is not paying attention.
"Up and at 'em, Seaborn."
It doesn't work like that. Acknowledging the trauma will not stop it. Saying it happened but now it's over doesn't mean she won't remember.
"We shouldn't-"
She releases his shoulder with a disgusted look. "I don't want to fuck you, Josh. I want you to stop acting like you never fucked me."
"It. It wasn't.good, though."
"It never is."
They were him. It happened, twenty years. It didn't work. It was never good.
"Okay."
He's not the only one confused. "So just.let's. Let's learn from this whole thing, all right? Instead of acting like it didn't happen. Okay?"
"Okay."
He opens her office door. "You want to know what I've learned, CJ?"
"What."
She doesn't have time for this. She sits behind her desk and looks up at him with a drooping frown.
"Never mind."
So she takes her own advice and locks her office door from the inside at nine-thirty. She sits on the chair that she was sitting on the first time. Crosses her legs like they were crossed the first time.
He put a hand on her shoulder. "CJ."
Her hand around his neck, pulling him closer, it was close to being a kiss, but at the last moment she changed her mind. She was never fond of kissing men with facial hair, though she knew Josh had shaved that day; she could smell Calvin Klein on him.
There was a fluidity to his lips pressing to the underside of her chin she can't imagine every happening with Toby.
Pulling him up by his collar, pulling him against her as she leaned on her desk. It is best standing up, when he's the same height. It's closest that way.
Her phone rings and it is ten o'clock and Leo is on the line.
"It's the German ambassador. He had a mild heart attack an hour ago. The embassy's faxing you the stuff."
They were not him. They were him.
Twenty years of names and echoes and she can remember every single one's voice in the void of her memory.
"CJ."
They would say it like they were her lovers, even though it was not ever them, it was him.
He was taken, some blonde from Oregon who never got him drunk enough to marry her. It was in his eyes, he really wanted her. But she was used to that, she was twenty-two and tall and perfect in mind and body.
The way she said his name while he read Kerouac on Cavanaugh Hill made him love her.
It is only ever her voice saying his name in the cluttered realms of history.
"Toby. I want. Toby." He's listening. She doesn't need to say his name. She calls him anyway. "Toby. Toby. I want to give you this."
Her hands on her breastbone, on her stomach. This; her body.
He closes his eyes, a hand splayed at his nose. Movement to the right, out of focus.
She. She should have. It was a mistake. "Toby."
He doesn't mean the despairing expression on his face. He doesn't mean it. He can't. "You're. For twenty years, Toby. Here! Have me!"
Clutches her hands in the material, as if she were going to rip it off.
He opens his eyes, clean and knowing, watches her with that familiar distant amusement from between his middle and ring fingers.
Flings her arms out, crucified, "Take me, Tobus!"
Her voice, face, fierce, unamused. She calls to the him that only knows her, untouched by anyone else, virgin, wondering. This is compensation for Josh. For all the others who weren't him. The others. She didn't pretend they weren't him.
"No."
Tortured, pained, gruff. His voice, in the void of his office. Her body is all she has to give, and he.
No.
She drops her arms. It chirps out, an echo, "No." More of a question in her head, but she says it like it's fact. No.
He can't deny her like this. She is undeniable.
What kind of.who would say no to her? To CJ Cregg in a half-unbuttoned silk shirt with a white tank top underneath.
More movement, hands on slim hips through the glass. Toby looks, smiles with so much self-hatred she wants to cry. What she has done to him.
He points with the hand on his face.
Sam smiles and waves. They usually pull the blinds when they fight.
"Toby," she says to Sam.
He can't hear her, cups a hand around his ear, gestures, "Do you want me to come over?"
She shakes her head. No. It is not a question.
It is a fact.
"CJ."
His voice in the void of his office.
He knows her name.
He will come back to her, and she will say no, for spite, for vengeance, to get back at him because he rejected her. There will be no testing, no gentle laughter as she unhooks her bra for him, as he reaches up to part her hair with his fingers. The dull gleam of gold in the orange darkness of her apartment.
She turns on all the lamps and the overhead swag to prove it.
Walking into the Oval Office at nine the next morning, she knows there was half an hour last night when he changed his mind. The way he looks up at her entrance with a half-smile, eyes crinkled at the corners in that way she loves, and something changes in his face. He was wrong to turn her down, no, wait, he was not. He has made his decision.
"Wie geht es dem Botschafter?" the President asks.
Her mouth is open to reply before she realises that the President is speaking in tongues. "Pardon me, Mr. President?"
"Ich habe sie gefragt, wie es dem Botschafter?"
Leo leans close and says, quietly, but loud enough for the President to hear, "He's in a bit of a Weimark mood this morning. He and the First Lady watched The Blue Angel last night."
Dietrich in a tuxedo. She was, at heart, a gentleman.
CJ smiles and nods. "That's great, Mr. President. I'm glad you enjoyed the film, but I really haven't got a clue what you're saying, sir."
"Meine bezaubernde Frau und ich haben den film genno§en. Leo, ich finde da§ wir nicht genug mit Deutschland handeln. Wenn es dem Botschafter wieder be§er geht, solten wir über eine Handelsmi§ion redden."
And the day is already as normal as she can hope for.
Nine and half hours of avoidance. She doesn't speak to him, he doesn't speak to her, their eyes meet only across crowded tables and then hers are cold, his are blank.
This isn't the way it was supposed to turn out. She was supposed to let him in on her twenty years of research, let him know it wouldn't work, and that she had already tried.
He was supposed to nod sadly and turn away. And everything would be right again.
She supposes she should know by now that things like them cannot be fixed with a simple fuck.
She recalls her own research. Twenty years, and they were all him. Names and echoes in the orange darkness of her apartment, and the bell rings.
He is inside her apartment. She turns on all the lamps and the swag overhead to prove it.
He is waffling at the closed door, swinging his arms around, scarf bunched in a gloved fist. She smells vegetarian pizza and Fahrenheit as she approaches him.
Spite and vengeance.
No.
"Toby."
"CJ?"
They are unnamed, they are bodies. It is only an echo in the night.
End.