The Third Day
by the stylus

Warning: glorification of cancer sticks.

She started smoking on a Sunday, out behind the sprawling brick mass of a Methodist church in another lifetime. So maybe she should quit on a Sunday. It might be poetic justice. If there is a God and if He has any sense of irony at all, he might appreciate it. But that doesn't seem likely, considering. And, anyway, it isn't going to be this Sunday.

Because this is what Indian summer means to her: smoking barefoot on the tiny balcony off her bedroom in the middle of October, one long leg canted through the iron railing. The air is warm and close with the humidity that Washington won't lose until winter comes to stay, camping in its grey robe on the Mall. This half-hearted stab at autumn, all flashy hues of crimson and umber, hasn't done a thing to make breathing easier. Toby didn't tell her when he came to fetch her from the infinite white skies of California how hard it is to breathe in the East, how heavy the air is here.

She doesn't smoke often, so when she does the first hit of nicotine is a visceral thing: it rings in her lungs and in her ears the way the force of a train does when you stand much too close to the tracks. She has always been good at games like chicken which depend on stubborn resolve and split-second timing. She is good at her job and good in bed. In point of fact, she doesn't even like the taste of cigarettes, which is why she smokes menthols. She told Toby this once and he laughed at her and poured her another glass of scotch before kissing her. Afterwards, she couldn't taste anything but him on her lips.

Their thing is, of course, never going to work. There is work to think about. And his ex-wife and her ex-, well, her many ex-somethings scattered from New York to New Delhi. The weight of all that history: they'd be crazy to even try. So they haven't, not really. She fell into him one night with her eyes closed and her breath held; and after the Thing it had been nice not to have to wake up alone, even if they went to bed hours apart. Besides, the sex is pretty damn good. At this age, with this job, that is nothing to sneeze at. But they have never consciously tried. So it startled her to wake up one morning and get ready for work and realize, halfway out the door with her hair unbrushed and her lipstick not yet on, that something was missing from her morning. And later, in her office, going over the night's wire, it shocked her to realize that she missed the fine confetti of whiskers in her sink and the lingering smell of his shaving cream in her bathroom. She panicked, avoided him for the rest of that day and the whole of the next day and now it is Sunday. The third day.

Maybe she should get a cat. A Siamese. It will shed all the time on every available surface, and then she won't notice a small bit more or less of hair strewn around the place. And it will lie on her chest, just under her chin while she sleeps-- in the same place that his arm always finds. A cat probably won't snore.

The other reason she isn't answering the phone or listening to her messages or opening the blinds has nothing to do with Friday. It was Thursday. Thursday night, to be exact. When Toby had almost cried on her couch. On her almost-shabby, beige Ikea couch with its clean lines, an historic event had very nearly taken place. And C.J. was at a complete loss as to how to handle it, because in all the time she had known him, she had never seen Toby cry. She had seen him put his fist through a wall and try to put his fist through another man's jaw on two separate occasions (once in formal wear) but she had never, ever seen him cry. She is the crier in the relationship. He is the puncher. These things have a balance, an internal, homeostatic equilibrium that is crucial for the maintenance of a stability. Toby crying would have shifted the world off its axis, as if gravity suddenly decided to push instead of pull.

She knew how he felt, of course. And, in a way, she could have appreciated the physical expression of the miasma of uncertainty in which they found themselves if gravity had, indeed, decided to no longer function in the manner of Newton and his apple. Fifty states and three years later, their President has issued a by-the-way of his degenerative illness. Hell, she wanted to say to him, at least you didn't hear it from Leo. At least you didn't have to see that look of sympathetic pity in the your friend's eyes. After their conversation in her office, she still doesn't know whether she wants to kill Abbey or throw herself in front of the First Lady to stop the silver bullet headed her way.

The Greeks were smart. They set their gods up to fail from the beginning. They gave them human flaws-- shortsightedness, anger, covetousness-- and nobody was surprised when they raped and pillaged and murdered. No one got angry about the fact of wars and the death of children, because it was never supposed to go right in the first place. Men failed and it wasn't a surprise, because even the gods were never perfect. Men failed and there were consequences, clear ones, but no one was shaken by the knowledge that men were human. They didn't have to be reminded of that.

She is as mad at herself as she is at her President. This is the second impossible thing that she came to believe not so long ago after a breakfast of yogurt and ibuprofen. Yes, she is a little bit mad at Toby, too; but mostly at herself and the President. Because she believed him to be not-human. And he let her. It wasn't that she thought he was superhuman. There was the bike wreck and the pitcher; so before she knew about the M.S. she at least thought he was incredibly clumsy. But she made the fatal mistake of mixing up the man and the office. It was a mistake which helped her do her job: jumping to his defense, working her ass off to spin and re-spin and shield. Now it makes her feel incredibly empty, scooped out and hollowed like a pumpkin for carving. Her fault. His fault, too, for being a good enough man to almost pull off her expectations. If he wasn't such a good man, this wouldn't be so hard. They all knew it. And Toby wouldn't have almost cried on her couch.

She looks for Orion, smeared indistinctly in the hot night sky, while she lights her second cigarette. They argued here one night for two hours about how to find the North Star, triangulating from various points on the Dipper and getting languidly, gloriously drunk. She smokes quickly, drawing the flame relentlessly towards her mouth as if afraid it will burn out without her. She really doesn't like the taste. What she likes is the physical act of it: inhale, hold, exhale. The curve of her mouth as she pushes the smoke out. The stain of grey against the dark matte underbelly of low clouds. The hundred little rituals that can develop around a slow death. The length of her fingers against the thin white shape.

She doesn't need to smoke. It's not an addiction yet, just an occasional craving like chocolate or bad movies. And she doesn't need Toby. But she could. Especially now, with summer still in the air and a Special Prosecutor on the horizon and her birthday coming up. She could need him. The thought makes her restless, makes her skin feel too small, stirs something at the base of her neck and in her belly. She could need him.

She half-expects to find him standing in her living room when she goes back in. For a man of his size, he can hide in almost any room simply by standing still, as though the rest of them had predator eyes only sensitive to motion. He is not there, of course. The room is just as she left it, the TV on low, tuned to CNN because she lost the remote and doesn't need any other channel, anyway. She gets C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 on four TVs at the office and the dialogue on the network dramas makes her long for a good argument with Sam and Josh. The hum of news has become so constant in her life that she no longer hears it. Several times she and Toby have made love on the couch with the TV on behind them because neither one heard it, not as something to be done away with. They have made love with the anchors staring through them, blandly reciting the same headlines every thirty minutes, each segment taped live but seeming simply to be the same thirty minutes played over and over again down to the last twitch of the eyelid.

When he knocks, she is still standing there, dazed. She opens the door without looking, having already been expecting him. His eyes are clear and he is comfortably rumpled; part of her mind is pleased that he didn't change clothes to come see her. She steps aside to let him in and he moves slowly through the door, over toward the couch and coffee table. He stops to make sure that she's following before proceeding to sit down.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You weren't answering your phone."

She shakes her head. No.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean, I know you need some time to yourself, but I wanted to make sure that you were..."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"I'm fine, Toby. Really, I am. I just need to-- sort through some things."

"Oh. All right, then."

When she doesn't say anything further, he moves as if to leave.

"Toby, wait."

He shifts back into his seat.

"I needed to be alone. To sort things out. But you don't have to leave."

"Have you? Sorted things out?"

She shrugs. "Maybe. I don't think I really expected to come up with any answers." She runs her hand through her hair distractedly. "God, Toby. I just didn't expect to find out that he was...human. You know? I didn't want him to be."

"Yeah, I know," he says. There is something deep, empathetic in his voice that she does not hear often enough. They sigh in unison and then look at each other, startled, the mood breaking, lightening.

"I know," he says. And he does. He knows and leans over, cupping his hand behind her head, and he kisses her forehead lightly. She does not feel patronized, but comforted by the benediction of the gesture. She puts her hand on the side of his face, feeling the smoothness of his skin and the rasp of his beard.

"You're tired." She had not noticed the circles smudged under his eyes before. This close, they make his face look farther away, as though it is retreating into the uneasy absent spaces of the night.

Until he smiles. "I am tired. It's been a long few weeks."

"Yes, it has." She stands up and, taking his hand, pulls him up with her. Gently, she leads him towards her bedroom. Their thing, of course, is probably never going to work. History and the future are against them. But she wants to try, to go in expecting to be disappointed because they are human and often tired and too old to start over. She wants to be surprised.

Fin

All characters are the property of their creators. The author makes no profit from this work.