Donna looks at her watch and checks her makeup again. She wants to look especially well pulled-together, since she's having lunch at the Hay-Adams, one of the most elegant hotels in Washington, and she's having it with the Daughters of the American Revolution—well, two or three of them—who will undoubtedly be impeccably dressed and immaculately well-groomed.
There's something about the name, "Daughters of the American Revolution," that sounds impossibly antique and dignified and makes her nervous, even though they've been pleasant enough during phone conversations. The D.A.R. is hosting one of the Inaugural Balls, and Lou has put Donna in charge of that and quite a few of the other Inaugural events. Today's meeting is a chance to get some of the details finalized before the holidays; she's flying out this afternoon, and Jane Fairweather ("Jane FANEUIL Fairweather"), the Daughter she's been working with most directly, suggested taking care of the business over lunch at the Hay. It's an awkward time, really, so close to Christmas, and she wishes she had just told Jane it could wait till after the holiday, but she can hardly back out at such short notice now.
The whole Inaugural Planning thing has become something of an irritant for her. She would have relished a job like this once, but with everyone else sinking their teeth into the real issues the new administration is going to be dealing with, planning a string of glitzy parties seems ridiculously trivial, and feels disturbingly like a consolation prize tossed her way by a sympathetic Lou—poor Donna, that bastard Josh still hasn't offered her a proper job, so we'll give her some fun things to do to keep her mind off her impending unemployment on January 20, and make sure she gets a few really good meals in before she has to go on food stamps.
She knows that's ridiculous—she isn't in any danger of being unemployed for long, with Lou's recommendation behind her—but she can't help herself: every time she thinks about anything in her future beyond the next few hours she feels first hurt, then angry. The bastard, the bastard, the bastard—why can't he get over his egotistical pique with her and admit she's grown beyond her old job and can play in the same game he does now? She's good at this, damn it; she is, she is, she is. But under the surface of her anger she's still aware of that little voice telling her that something is wrong and she should be worried about it, and then the one, a little deeper still, that won't stop whispering that she wouldn't be happy even if he did give her a job, because that isn't what she really wants from him at all.
She slips on her coat and starts towards her door, flipping through a small stack of files and tucking them into her briefcase as she walks. She's so absorbed in her thoughts that she doesn't notice the man standing in her doorway until she walks right into him.
"Oof! What on earth? Oh, Josh—what are you doing, standing there blocking the way like that?"
"What are you doing, walking around without looking where you're going?" He's smirking, which irritates her further.
"I shouldn't have to look where I'm going in my own office; there shouldn't be anyone there I don't know about." Her voice sounds testy; she doesn't care.
"I wasn't actually in your office, you know." The smirk is getting bigger. "I was standing in the door."
"You could have knocked."
"It was open."
"Or said something."
"I was about to, but I wanted to see how long it would take you to notice me."
Donna scowls at him. She really isn't in the mood for this today. It especially annoys her that her pulse has quickened at the physical contact, and is still fluttering a little as they speak. She takes a step back, hating herself for the reluctance she feels to move out of the range of his warmth and the familiar smell of coffee and soap and the slight tang of menthol and pine that she knows is his deodorant.
"What do you want, Josh?" she says in the coldest tones she can summon up. "I have to get going; I have an appointment to get to."
"Lunch, at the Hay-Adams, with the D.A.R.?"
"Yes. How on earth—?" She's too startled to finish the question. For all his now-legendary micromanaging in every other department, he hasn't concerned himself yet with the planning of the Inaugural Balls—which, she realizes suddenly, is one reason she hasn't been able to think of her work on them as anything very important. He smirks at her again.
"It's cancelled."
"What?"
"Your meeting's cancelled. Well, rescheduled. For after Christmas—the 27th, same time, one o'clock."
"And nobody told me?"
"I'm telling you. Right now."
Donna can't believe her ears.
"Why do you know about this before I do?" She folds her arms across her chest, feeling indignant; it may not be very important in the big scheme of things, but it's her meeting, and she's the one Jane should have been talking to if she wanted to cancel it.
"I'm the Chief of Staff-elect, remember? I know about things."
"You don't manage that kind of detail, not about things like this. It's way under your radar. Or it should be."
"I do when I need to."
"And why do you need to?"
"Because you can't have lunch with a bunch of Washington socialites if you're having lunch with me."
Well, that was a surprise.
"I'm having lunch with you?"
"Yes."
"I see."
"Are you ready?"
"Why?"
"So we can go."
"Why am I having lunch with you?"
"Because I want you to. Come on, we should get going. It's a bit of a drive."
He turns and heads towards the elevators, and she follows him in silence. At his car he waits for her to get in and shuts the door for her, which surprises her. She settles back against the leather cushions, wondering what's coming. She hasn't had lunch alone with him in . . . . she can't think when the last time was, though she remembers very clearly the last time she asked to have it with him. She can't think why he'd be wanting to see her now. Is he going to fire her? What's going on?
"Where are we going?" she asks. He's turned onto K, then down 18th St. and right onto Pennsylvania Avenue, heading away from the White House.
"You'll see," he says.
He follows Pennsylvania Avenue to M Street, and drives into Georgetown, but instead of stopping at any one of the half-dozen or so restaurants he usually frequents there he keeps going, and heads up Canal Road, along the river. Donna sits stiffly beside him, confused and increasingly angry. She can feel her emotion congealing like icicles in the frosty air between them, words she can't say but can almost see freezing into static forms, unspoken and unheard. He glances at her and then back at the road, his knuckles tightening on the steering wheel, his breath quickening a little; he's obviously picked up on her mood. His smile has vanished. Why is she always like this with him now, Donna wonders—so angry and yet so unable to express herself, so passive and so indirect? There'd been that brief explosion in the hotel room when Lou had thrust them together and told them to "work it out," but they'd been cut off before they'd barely begun, and they've never attempted to discuss anything except the bare necessities of work since.
"What's the matter?"
She jerks around to look at him, astounded. "What?"
"I said, what's the matter? You seem upset."
What on earth? This isn't Josh speaking, she thinks; it can't be. She doesn't answer but stares at him, her mouth a little open. He glances over at her and back at the road again, his hands tight on the wheel, his mouth compressed. She can't tell if that means he's nervous or just angry, but there's no denying that, for some reason she has no idea of, he's suddenly doing what he's almost never done with her, acknowledging an emotion and confronting it head on without being forced to by some overpowering outside force like Lou. What you never do, either, a little voice at the back of her mind whispers at her. What you never do, either.
Well, if he can do it, she can too.
"I am upset."
"Why?"
Okay, he's asking for it, he can have it.
"Why do you think, Josh? Because you cancelled my meeting without consulting me. Because you just walked into my office and dragged me out with you like this, without so much as asking whether that suited me or not. That meeting had been on my schedule for weeks; I was ready for it; I was looking forward to it, even." Well, she'd been looking forward to getting it over with. And to the lunch: the Hay-Adams is supposed to have one of the best luncheon menus in town. "Now they'll think I'm rude and inconsiderate and they won't want to talk to me when I do get to meet with them. It will be horrible, and they probably won't want to do anything I suggest."
"No, it won't. Yes, they will."
"How do you know?"
"Because you represent the new President, Donna, and they're planning a big party for him. Of course they'll still listen to you."
"But they'll think I'm rude."
"Blame it on me."
"I do. I will. But that's not good enough, Josh. It's—this is so typical. You don't have any respect for me, for what I'm doing, what I've done; you think you can just waltz in and change everything I've got set up without even doing me the courtesy of asking me about it."
His mouth is more tightly set than before, and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
"I'm your boss, Donna," he says, leaving no doubt now what he's feeling. "In case you hadn't noticed."
"Oh, I'd noticed all right, Josh. Believe me, I'd noticed."
"If you have a problem with that, why did you take the job?"
"Because I wanted it! It was a good job, an interesting job, and I knew I could do it. And Lou wanted me for it; it was she who hired me, not you. She said I was her first choice."
"That was the campaign job; I okayed you for this one. But if you're going to do it, you're going to have to accept the fact that I'm in charge, Donna. I don't have to ask your permission to meet with you. I had a full schedule myself today that I had to rearrange to fit this in; I didn't have a chance to call and chat with you about it first. And your D.A.R. ladies weren't offended; Ronna said the woman she spoke to sounded positively relieved. She probably wanted to finish her Christmas shopping, or spend some time with her kids. Most schools got out yesterday, didn't they?"
Donna stares out the window, biting her lip, feeling cornered. She can see the river down to her left, the canal beside it, covered over with ice. She wonders idly how thick it is, whether anyone's skating on it anywhere yet. She feels as if she's under ice herself, as if a wall of it is standing between her and Josh, thick and cold and opaque, distorting everything between them. He's perfectly right; of course he doesn't have to ask her permission to arrange a meeting with her. Most bosses would just have called and told her to come to their office at twelve o'clock sharp, and wouldn't have gone to the trouble of having their assistant find out what was on her schedule and rebook it for her. The trouble is, Josh isn't most bosses, at least not for her. Why is it that she has to take everything he does so personally? She knows the answer to that, of course. What she doesn't know is why she can't seem to stop.
They leave Canal Road and climb a little hill to join MacArthur Boulevard, just below the old amusement park at Glen Echo. He glances over at her. "Leo never asked me what my schedule looked like if he needed to meet with me, you know, Donna. Or C.J., either."
"You wouldn't have known what your schedule looked like," Donna says, sharply. "Not if I hadn't been there to tell you."
He looks back at the road. "No," he says, quietly. "I wouldn't. I'd moved past keeping my own schedule quite a few years before."
Donna feels her cheeks flush, and stares out the window more intently than ever. A minute or two pass. When he speaks again, his voice is unexpectedly gentle.
"Donna, that's not a rebuke to you. I'm fourteen years older than you are. I've known what I wanted to do with my life since high school, and started working for it when you were probably still learning to read. I paid my dues long ago, but I paid them, just like you've done. I started out as an intern in Tom Blackburn's office, you know that. I wasn't shaping policy then; I was a glorified pageboy. I answered phones when the secretaries were busy. I filed things, even though nobody could ever find them again afterwards. I ran errands all over the Hill. I brought the Senator's staff their lunches and coffee. And in return, I got to listen in. Once in a while somebody asked me what I thought about something, and I got to say, and most of the time they ignored it, but one day the Senator's Chief of Staff said he thought something I'd said was a good point. I'll never forget the thrill; Sam and I went out for drinks that night on the strength of it and got thoroughly plastered."
"And you never looked back from there." Donna can't keep the corners of her mouth from twitching up a little. Josh, doing filing or bringing coffee? That's something she's certainly never pictured, but she likes the image quite a lot.
"Of course I did. The next day I had a god-almighty hangover, but I was still answering phones and filing things. And the day after that. And the day after that."
"For eight years?" The smile is gone. She can hear the wistfulness in her voice, and hates herself for it.
"No, not for eight years, but I wasn't doing it in the White House, either. Never underestimate what you did there, Donna. You had far more effect on things than I did at the same age, because you influenced me, and, at least some of the time, I influenced the President."
Donna flushes with pleasure, but something is still bothering her and she doesn't want to let it go.
"You had degrees from Harvard and Yale. You had a Fulbright."
"And that's pretty much where they get you. At first."
"Still, you had them."
"Yes, I did. I do."
Josh turns off the road into a parking lot and brings the car to a stop in a spot overlooking a wide part of the canal and, beyond that, the river. Donna sits for a minute, twisting the strap of her purse in her hands and looking at a group of figures skating on the canal without really seeing them. Suddenly she bursts out,
"Because your family could pay for them. Because your father was an attorney and he could afford a house in Westport, and a glossy prep school for you, and an Ivy-League education after that. We couldn't even have thought about those things; I had to work in restaurants and bars to put myself through college as far as I did, to put—" She gasps and breaks off, not wanting to remember who else she had put through university, not in this conversation, not with Josh. "Your junior high school probably had a better library and better teachers than my college did. You might have done a little office work for a while, but you had the schools and the degrees behind you that let them take you seriously; you were on the inside track from the start. You don't know how easy it's been for you. You don't know how lucky you've always been."
Josh drops his head against the back of the seat and lets his breath out in a hiss, closing his eyes. He sits that way for a minute, his breathing quick and shallow. Finally he jerks his keys out of the ignition and pushes his door open. "Come on," he says roughly, tossing the words over his shoulder as he climbs out. He slams the door and is halfway across the parking lot before Donna's gotten her belt off.
oooooo