The Red Shoes
Classification: Post-ep for "The Two Bartlets." Toby/CJ.
Summary: "Why do we do it? Because we can't stop."
***
Disaster.
Toby was twirling a pen through shaking fingers when Bonnie caught up with him
in the hall. She called to him, waving a blue folder, but he ducked and
increased the tempo of his footsteps. He needed to get himself far enough away
from the Oval Office to stop the incessant replaying of his conversation with
the President. Anything to get the taste of bile out of his mouth, to lift the
crushing weight from his chest.
Disaster.
What good did it do him to know thousands of words? What use was a vocabulary
larger than that of any four normal people combined? There was nothing but
"disaster" that could describe what he had just experienced - what he had just
instigated.
Disaster.
His body tensed and he felt every minute of his age. His back ached, his mouth
was parched, and he had trouble focusing his eyes on anything but the many
photographs of the President. Their eyes, frozen in Kodak-moment blue, accused
him.
Striding with his head down, he entered the anteroom to CJ's office.
"Where is she?" he asked Carol, who was shrugging into her coat.
"She left for the night."
"Ah." He shifted his weight from his right foot to the left, using his thumbnail
to scratch the spot just above his right eyebrow.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Carol asked with a desperate overtone
of "oh, please, don't make me stay here even five minutes longer" vibrating in
her voice.
"No. I'm good."
He knew he was probably out of a job, out of a career.
With that, he simply walked away from her, out past the guards at the gates,
wondering if they'd already been told not to let him in again without Leo's
permission.
No, Josiah Bartlet wouldn't do it that way.
He'd fire Toby Ziegler's ass in person. In front of Leo, in front of Josh, who'd
cringe and stare down at the floor. Not in front of Sam, who'd defend him and
probably walk out the door behind him, ruining his own career as some sort of
statement.
Some sort of statement.
He bumped into Josh, who was balancing a stack of folders against his hip as he
struggled to open the back door of his car. "Hey, Toby."
"Hey, Josh."
"CJ was looking for you, earlier." He yanked at the handle, opening the door at
the precise moment he spilled all the papers on the ground. "Well," Josh sighed,
staring glumly at the mess. "That was predictable."
"Yeah. Did she say what she wanted?" She probably hadn't, but asking about it
gave Toby something to do while he helped Josh pick up the scattered sheets.
"Actually, she said she was all wound up. She wanted to go dancing." Josh
stuffed everything into one file folder - Donna would make him pay dearly for
that - and threw the unstable pile into his back seat.
"With you?"
"I don't know that I was her first choice, but yes, with me."
"You're a crappy dancer, Josh."
"Yeah, but I'm almost as tall as she is when she's not wearing heels." Josh
slouched against the driver's side door. "I couldn't go. I'm having a late
dinner with Amy tonight."
"Ah."
"CJ's at the place where Sam's birthday party was, you know, the dark one."
"Yeah, Josh, because that'll separate one bar with dancing from another bar with
dancing," Toby groused, making a helpless gesture with one hand. "However, in
spite of your vagueness, I do know the one you mean."
Josh looked him up and down and up again for a moment, as if watching a vertical
tennis game. "You might want to go meet her there. I mean, I'm not trying to
tell you what to do--"
"Good, because I'd just ignore you."
"She just looked...I don't know. Sad. But way beyond sad." Josh cocked his head.
"Is there something going on?"
Toby engaged in an internal debate for a moment, then decided that Josh would do
less damage with information than without it. "Her dad's not doing too well. His
mind's...slipping. He thought today was the General Election."
Josh winced. "Oh, God. That's horrible - poor CJ."
"It's hard. It's a hard thing." Toby paused, looking down at his shoes for a
moment to avoid Josh's dark, worried eyes. "So, not that I'm taking your advice,
but I'm going out to see if I can find her." He turned around, walking toward
his car, not bothering to tell Josh to have a nice evening with Amy because he
really, really didn't want to hear details on that one the next day.
Or ever. He was beginning to wish he'd never mentioned women's issues to Josh,
largely because Josh now felt compelled to describe to Toby all the ways he was
putting that advice to good use. Shaking his head to clear it of the memory of
Josh's voice, he got in his car and headed toward Maxwell's Bar.
Maxwell's had weird music and even weirder drinks, something called a "Maxwell's
Silver Hammer" that had knocked Sam on his ass when they'd gone there a few days
after the State of the Union to celebrate the birthday they'd let slip past
them.
Thirty-seven years, Sam had been on the planet, and he'd gotten carded. Bastard.
Toby handed over his keys to the valet, grimacing as the kid sneered at the
spots of oxidizing paint. When he walked into the bar the smoke surrounded him,
and more fumes hit the atmosphere when Toby lit his cigar while waiting for his
eyes to adjust to the low light.
He could pick CJ out of the crowd, not so much by her height as by the fact that
she danced alone, some sort of pinkish-reddish drink sloshing over her wrist.
She set the glass down at a nearby table and raised her hand to lick the
moisture from it, but before her tongue could connect with her skin her eyes
widened. She'd spotted him.
He sidled up to her, put the hand without the cigar at her waist, and began to
dance with her. That earned him a smile and the touch of her lips to his cheek
just before she took the cigar out of his other hand and brought it to her lips.
"CJ," Toby warned. "Cigars make you throw up."
"I just want a taste." She puffed inexpertly on the cigar and choked a little,
handing it back to Toby as she fanned her face. "Yuck."
"Thanks."
"Shut up and dance, Toby."
The music changed, slowing, and Toby wanted both hands free. He maneuvered them
over to a potted plant and stubbed the cigar out in the butt-filled dirt. That
accomplished, he reached for CJ's hand and held it in front of his mouth. "I
just want a taste," he murmured, then licked away the remnants of her drink. It
was sweet, with a slight burn following the fruity, sugary initial flavor. It
was mixed with the salty tang of her skin.
"What's this about?" CJ asked, one eyebrow raised. Perspiration stood out on her
upper lip and on her forehead, but she continued to dance, rocking back and
forth in Toby's arms.
"It's...nothing." How could he tell her here, in the middle of a bar, that he'd
picked a fight with the leader of the free world, and that said leader of the
free world was probably on the phone to Leo at this moment, demanding the head
of Toby Ziegler on a platter of any variety available?
"You're checking up on me."
"I'm not, actually."
She seemed to have trouble processing that. "You're not checking up on me?"
"I'm not checking up on you, CJ."
"Why the hell not?" She pulled back a little, radiating indignation even through
the cloud of alcohol.
"Because I'm checking up on me."
CJ stopped dancing. She was watching him, reading whatever might be written on
his face. "What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it now. Keep dancing."
She complied with a grunt. He pulled her closer, wishing she could go right
through him and cleanse him. Instead he settled for letting her hands smooth
away the tension in his back as she clutched him to her so tightly that they
could hardly move.
The music changed again into something faster. Couples around them were
jitterbugging, and CJ, who could hold her own with the best of them, slithered
out of Toby's grasp and let him spin her, twirl her, dip her.
Even though she was all but flying through the air, she never smiled. Her face
bore the signs of the same grim determination that always got her through a bad
press briefing, through meetings gone sour, through a phone conversation she was
probably trying to drive out of her brain.
Toby's heart was pounding almost as fast as when he had walked out of the Oval
Office. He spun CJ twice more then backed away, his hand over his heart.
"You okay?" CJ's voice was loud enough to be heard over the music and chatter.
"Yeah. Winded."
Relief washed over her expression, softening the lines, brightening her eyes.
With a small smile she reached for him, her fingers slipping through his belt
loops to draw him close enough for a kiss.
It was predatory, marking him with cerise lipstick and the sting of alcohol on
his lower lip. His heart skipped a beat, and again, until he managed to put
enough space between them to take in a short rasp of oxygen.
"That's not helping me breathe," he said, surprised at how quickly his body had
reacted to the kiss, and how strongly.
"It's not supposed to."
The music changed again. People were dancing around them, undulating to the
unwelcome strains of disco, but CJ and Toby stood without moving, observing one
another.
"Let's get out of here," CJ murmured into his ear.
He tried to read her blood alcohol level by looking at her eyes, but the smoky
darkness rendered them indecipherable. "You okay to drive?"
She shook her head, the gesture crisp, as she said "No." Her hands left his
waist and she sauntered back to her table, leaving some bills next to the empty
glass. As Toby reached into his pocket for the valet ticket he watched her walk
in front of him with one foot set directly in front of the other, the models'
runway walk she used when she felt unsteady. Drunk enough to need a ride but not
drunk enough for her to pass out, which would have allowed him to escape the
inevitable confidences they were about to share.
CJ leaned against the window on the ride home. Her breath left a silvery cloud
on the glass and she traced serpentine shapes on it with her finger. "We were on
Air Force One today," she said.
"We're often on Air Force One," Toby replied, trying to figure out where the non
sequitur should be filed in his brain.
"I mean, I called my dad from a phone on Air Force One." CJ's voice was raspy
from the smoke in the bar. "You've gotta be at least a little impressed when
someone calls you from..." She stopped, sighing. "From there."
"Sam didn't seem too impressed when I talked to him."
"Yeah, but remember the first time? How many friends did we sneak calls to, and
just how pissed did Leo get when he found out Sam had called half the people he
went to high school with?"
"Pretty pissed." Toby tried not to imagine the conversation that the President
and Leo were surely having right now. A pissed Leo was not something he had the
stomach to contemplate.
He tapped the steering wheel lightly as he pulled into CJ's parking space. She
was half-dozing against the window, her eyelids twitching slightly as her body
adjusted to the high level of alcohol. "Hey. We're home."
"Mmm." Able to recover from a catnap faster than her co-workers, even when
sloshed, CJ managed to get out of the car and joined Toby on the short walk up
her stoop. She rummaged around in her pockets and her eyes widened. "Keys.
They're with the valet."
"We can pick them up in the morning. I've got mine."
They all had keys to everyone else's apartment - CJ watered Sam's plants, Sam
picked up changes of clothes for Toby, Toby dropped off briefing memos in Sam's
living room. Josh wasn't trusted to remember where keys were, so Donna kept
copies of everyone's, and everyone had Josh's key. Just in case.
Toby worked the three locks and held the door open for CJ, who wobbled in and
kicked her shoes under the coffee table. She stretched, an extravagant gesture
that showed a little skin just above her navel, then wandered to the sofa and
flopped down on it.
As always, she reached for the remote control and brought the television to
muted life. It wasn't C-SPAN or CNN this time but a movie channel. A channel for
old movies, Toby observed, judging from the saturated colors and the
old-fashioned hairstyles.
"Oh," CJ murmured, nestling into the pillows. "It's 'The Red Shoes.' I love this
movie."
Toby shrugged and sat down and peered at the screen. "What's she doing?" he
asked as a delicate, red-haired ballerina began to weep in front of a blond man
who looked both stern and sad.
"Her husband's a composer. He wrote a ballet based on 'The Red Shoes' and it
made her famous."
"The story where a girl dances herself almost to death and someone has to cut
her feet off to get her to stop?"
"Eww. Yeah, but she does dance herself to death in the ballet. Anyway, she has
to give up dancing when she marries the composer but she sneaks away to do 'The
Red Shoes' just once more."
"Let me guess." Toby put his hand over his eyes, because he hated to see women,
even fictional ones, shed tears. "He leaves her and she poisons herself."
"No, she's more Anna Karenina than Madame Bovary."
Sure enough, Toby looked up just in time to see the ballerina racing down a
corridor, down spiral stairs - could the metaphor be any heavier of hand? -
finally flinging herself off a balcony and under the wheels of a train. Toby
raised his eyebrows and looked over at CJ, whose face was white and sad as she
unmuted the television.
"Julian," she said in tandem with the dying ballerina, "take off the red shoes."
Toby made a soft huffing noise.
CJ grinned at him, blushing. "It's a guilty pleasure, sue me," she said as she
hit the remote once more and the screen went dark. "So. How was your night?" she
asked, slurring her words a little.
Toby hunched over his folded hands.
"Toby?"
"Yeah."
"Your night...not so good, then."
"Not so good."
CJ shifted and turned over so she was facing him. Her eyes were more alert.
Wary. "How not so good?"
"Listen, can we do your thing first? I'm not...ready. To discuss this." He
lowered his head and spoke into his beard. "Not ready."
"I don't have a thing."
He felt that surge of pride again, the one that had made him choke up in her
office when CJ put on her brave face and joked with Sam just moments after being
close to tears about her father. Toby's mouth turned up at the corners, just a
bit, and he looked at CJ. "You had a thing, earlier, and we didn't finish, and I
can't help thinking that you might like to."
CJ's expression melted, turning from mild curiosity to utter desolation. It was
the expression he'd seen just before Sam had interrupted their earlier
conversation, as if the last few hours hadn't happened.
Oh, if only the last few hours hadn't happened.
But he forced himself to focus on her. She was mid-paragraph before he was able
to redirect his brain. "...moments when he's not sure if he's talking to me or
my mom, and my mom's in the room with him."
"He's seeing a doctor, right?"
She regarded him with a combination of amusement and annoyance. "That was the
first thing I said, Toby."
"I'm sorry." He extended his hands, palms upward. Contrite. "How're you doing?"
"Crappy." She sighed again, this time resting her face in her hands for a
moment. She peered up through her interlaced fingers. "He's a mathematician,
Toby. It's all about his mind, always has been. Without that...well, without
that he's still my father. But if he's not sure what day it is, or who he's
talking to, isn't it just a matter of time before he doesn't know me anymore, at
all?"
"I believe it is," Toby said carefully, the way he always delivered bad news.
CJ snorted. "At least you're not telling me it's going be okay. Because it's
not, you know. He's going to lose himself someplace dark inside his own head,
and it's going to be awful, and lengthy, and demeaning. And every conversation
we have will be like today's, where I love him and I'm exasperated by him, and
it scares me."
"And it hurts," Toby added. He pulled the chair closer to the couch and put one
hand on CJ's knee. "And you'll probably be here, working through it all."
"At least you'll be here with me," CJ murmured. When silence fell too heavily,
she glanced at him and her eyes widened at whatever she was seeing on his face.
"Toby. What was your thing?"
"Not as bad as your thing."
"Damnit!" She jerked away from him and rose, hands on hips, staring at him from
above. "Don't screw around with me. What happened?"
"You may need to start working on something. For the press."
"I'm going to need to spin something, you're saying."
"Yes."
She didn't seem drunk anymore, only aggravated and more than a little afraid.
"Toby, if you don't tell me, and I mean this instant--"
"I'm probably going to be fired, CJ."
She reeled as if from a blow. Sinking back onto the sofa, she blinked rapidly
and moved her lips for a few moments before speaking again. "Fired...by whom?"
"Well, I imagine Leo will do the deed, but it'll be at the command of the
President."
CJ's expression softened. "He won't fire you, Toby. He loves you."
"Tonight I was distinctly...unlovable."
"So what else is new?" She clutched his wrists hard enough to hurt. "There's
nothing you could do to make him fire you. God, Toby, you were the first one of
us he told about the MS, and he's running for re-election, and...what the hell
did you do?"
"I think the technical term is gross insubordination. I went off on a tangent
about his father, about the President trying so hard to please a dead man that
he isn't living up to his full potential." He took a breath and turned his
wrists over so CJ would let go. "Oh, and I said his father had abused him."
"Ah."
"Yeah."
CJ got up and walked with the cautious gait of the nearly-sobered. With a
polished fingernail she jabbed the Caller I.D. button on her phone. There was a
beep, then another, and several more. "Hmm. Nothing from Leo's office. In fact,
nothing from the White House except two reporters. No one from the press
witnessed this contretemps, did they?"
"Nope."
"Well, we were due for some good luck along the way."
He slouched even further. "I don't know how you'd spin a shouting match in the
Oval Office as 'good luck.'"
CJ's body went rigid and she stared at him with horror etched on her face. "You
did it in the Oval? You dissed the President's father in the Oval?"
"Yeah."
"God, Toby, could you be any more stupid?"
She was breathing harshly. Toby watched her, watched her eyes lose their fire
and become dull, listless, and then fearful. He knew what she was thinking -
that she would lose him, just as she was losing her father, and it hurt to see
how much it terrified her.
"I don't believe I could be, no," he answered after a long pause. He was the one
to reach out this time, taking her hand between his and holding it, letting the
warmth of her palm seep into his chilled fingers. She squeezed back as she sat
down on the sofa and leaned toward him.
"You really think he's going to fire you?"
"I would be astonished if he didn't." And he would be, certain as he was that
there was no prayer of the President relenting. "I imagine Leo will be asking
for my resignation."
"Yeah." She stared at their joined hands, pursing her lips tightly together as
she nodded, then letting her mouth fall open as she breathed again. "I think
you're right."
"I know I'm right. Which is funny, considering how wrong I was a few hours ago."
"You know we'll lose Sam if you go."
He didn't know what to feel about hearing those words. Part of him was tired of
the idea that Sam loved him that much, and part of him was gratified at having
his suspicions confirmed. "I think he'd stay."
"You don't have any idea, do you? About Sam. How strongly he feels about you.
And if Sam goes, Josh goes--"
"Josh isn't going anywhere. He's worked his whole life to get to this place--"
"Which of us hasn't?" Her tone was strident. She shook her head and lowered her
voice. "Anyway. If Leo hasn't called me by now, then nothing's going to happen
tomorrow. Maybe they want to sleep on it."
"Maybe." Toby didn't hold out much hope but if it made CJ feel better to clutch
at that straw, then so be it.
"So you'll come in tomorrow as if nothing unusual were going on, right?"
"I did press releases the night the President and Josh got shot. I wrote jokes
for the Press Club dinner a couple of hours after I found out about the MS. I'll
go to work as if nothing unusual were going on, and this time I'll probably find
a solution to global warming or broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty that
both sides will like."
"And I'll help with polling models and set up some press events that don't look
like obvious campaign strategies." She stretched again and leaned back against
the sofa with her eyes at half mast. "We keep going in and trying to change the
world while our own worlds are falling down around us. Why the hell do we do
it?"
"Why do we do it? Because we can't stop." He smiled at her. "We can't stop
moving. We have to do this dance. It's like we're all wearing the red shoes."
"So we'll either get our feet cut off or dance until we drop dead. Glorious
image." CJ slid down, lying on her side with her head on the armrest of the
sofa. "Gonna sleep," she mumbled. "Don't pack up your office
unless...Leo...says..."
He chuckled as he spread the cream-colored afghan over her. CJ's insteps were
puffy and there was a run in her hose that snaked upward from the back of her
heel, along her calf, to just behind her knee. Her shoes, despite dust from the
dance floor, had a low lustre in the muted light from the window. Toby slipped
the left shoe off, pausing to trail his finger along the arch of CJ's foot, and
that was enough to rouse her.
"What're you doing?" she slurred, squinting as if she didn't recognize the dark
shape at her side.
"Go back to sleep, CJ." He picked up her other foot. "I'm just taking off the
red shoes."
***
END
***
Thanks to Caz, Jill K., Ria, and Ryo Sen for their patience and their vision.
Feedback would be welcome at marguerite@swbell.net .
Back to West Wing .
Classification: Post-ep for "The Two Bartlets." Toby/CJ.
Summary: "Why do we do it? Because we can't stop."
***
Disaster.
Toby was twirling a pen through shaking fingers when Bonnie caught up with him
in the hall. She called to him, waving a blue folder, but he ducked and
increased the tempo of his footsteps. He needed to get himself far enough away
from the Oval Office to stop the incessant replaying of his conversation with
the President. Anything to get the taste of bile out of his mouth, to lift the
crushing weight from his chest.
Disaster.
What good did it do him to know thousands of words? What use was a vocabulary
larger than that of any four normal people combined? There was nothing but
"disaster" that could describe what he had just experienced - what he had just
instigated.
Disaster.
His body tensed and he felt every minute of his age. His back ached, his mouth
was parched, and he had trouble focusing his eyes on anything but the many
photographs of the President. Their eyes, frozen in Kodak-moment blue, accused
him.
Striding with his head down, he entered the anteroom to CJ's office.
"Where is she?" he asked Carol, who was shrugging into her coat.
"She left for the night."
"Ah." He shifted his weight from his right foot to the left, using his thumbnail
to scratch the spot just above his right eyebrow.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Carol asked with a desperate overtone
of "oh, please, don't make me stay here even five minutes longer" vibrating in
her voice.
"No. I'm good."
He knew he was probably out of a job, out of a career.
With that, he simply walked away from her, out past the guards at the gates,
wondering if they'd already been told not to let him in again without Leo's
permission.
No, Josiah Bartlet wouldn't do it that way.
He'd fire Toby Ziegler's ass in person. In front of Leo, in front of Josh, who'd
cringe and stare down at the floor. Not in front of Sam, who'd defend him and
probably walk out the door behind him, ruining his own career as some sort of
statement.
Some sort of statement.
He bumped into Josh, who was balancing a stack of folders against his hip as he
struggled to open the back door of his car. "Hey, Toby."
"Hey, Josh."
"CJ was looking for you, earlier." He yanked at the handle, opening the door at
the precise moment he spilled all the papers on the ground. "Well," Josh sighed,
staring glumly at the mess. "That was predictable."
"Yeah. Did she say what she wanted?" She probably hadn't, but asking about it
gave Toby something to do while he helped Josh pick up the scattered sheets.
"Actually, she said she was all wound up. She wanted to go dancing." Josh
stuffed everything into one file folder - Donna would make him pay dearly for
that - and threw the unstable pile into his back seat.
"With you?"
"I don't know that I was her first choice, but yes, with me."
"You're a crappy dancer, Josh."
"Yeah, but I'm almost as tall as she is when she's not wearing heels." Josh
slouched against the driver's side door. "I couldn't go. I'm having a late
dinner with Amy tonight."
"Ah."
"CJ's at the place where Sam's birthday party was, you know, the dark one."
"Yeah, Josh, because that'll separate one bar with dancing from another bar with
dancing," Toby groused, making a helpless gesture with one hand. "However, in
spite of your vagueness, I do know the one you mean."
Josh looked him up and down and up again for a moment, as if watching a vertical
tennis game. "You might want to go meet her there. I mean, I'm not trying to
tell you what to do--"
"Good, because I'd just ignore you."
"She just looked...I don't know. Sad. But way beyond sad." Josh cocked his head.
"Is there something going on?"
Toby engaged in an internal debate for a moment, then decided that Josh would do
less damage with information than without it. "Her dad's not doing too well. His
mind's...slipping. He thought today was the General Election."
Josh winced. "Oh, God. That's horrible - poor CJ."
"It's hard. It's a hard thing." Toby paused, looking down at his shoes for a
moment to avoid Josh's dark, worried eyes. "So, not that I'm taking your advice,
but I'm going out to see if I can find her." He turned around, walking toward
his car, not bothering to tell Josh to have a nice evening with Amy because he
really, really didn't want to hear details on that one the next day.
Or ever. He was beginning to wish he'd never mentioned women's issues to Josh,
largely because Josh now felt compelled to describe to Toby all the ways he was
putting that advice to good use. Shaking his head to clear it of the memory of
Josh's voice, he got in his car and headed toward Maxwell's Bar.
Maxwell's had weird music and even weirder drinks, something called a "Maxwell's
Silver Hammer" that had knocked Sam on his ass when they'd gone there a few days
after the State of the Union to celebrate the birthday they'd let slip past
them.
Thirty-seven years, Sam had been on the planet, and he'd gotten carded. Bastard.
Toby handed over his keys to the valet, grimacing as the kid sneered at the
spots of oxidizing paint. When he walked into the bar the smoke surrounded him,
and more fumes hit the atmosphere when Toby lit his cigar while waiting for his
eyes to adjust to the low light.
He could pick CJ out of the crowd, not so much by her height as by the fact that
she danced alone, some sort of pinkish-reddish drink sloshing over her wrist.
She set the glass down at a nearby table and raised her hand to lick the
moisture from it, but before her tongue could connect with her skin her eyes
widened. She'd spotted him.
He sidled up to her, put the hand without the cigar at her waist, and began to
dance with her. That earned him a smile and the touch of her lips to his cheek
just before she took the cigar out of his other hand and brought it to her lips.
"CJ," Toby warned. "Cigars make you throw up."
"I just want a taste." She puffed inexpertly on the cigar and choked a little,
handing it back to Toby as she fanned her face. "Yuck."
"Thanks."
"Shut up and dance, Toby."
The music changed, slowing, and Toby wanted both hands free. He maneuvered them
over to a potted plant and stubbed the cigar out in the butt-filled dirt. That
accomplished, he reached for CJ's hand and held it in front of his mouth. "I
just want a taste," he murmured, then licked away the remnants of her drink. It
was sweet, with a slight burn following the fruity, sugary initial flavor. It
was mixed with the salty tang of her skin.
"What's this about?" CJ asked, one eyebrow raised. Perspiration stood out on her
upper lip and on her forehead, but she continued to dance, rocking back and
forth in Toby's arms.
"It's...nothing." How could he tell her here, in the middle of a bar, that he'd
picked a fight with the leader of the free world, and that said leader of the
free world was probably on the phone to Leo at this moment, demanding the head
of Toby Ziegler on a platter of any variety available?
"You're checking up on me."
"I'm not, actually."
She seemed to have trouble processing that. "You're not checking up on me?"
"I'm not checking up on you, CJ."
"Why the hell not?" She pulled back a little, radiating indignation even through
the cloud of alcohol.
"Because I'm checking up on me."
CJ stopped dancing. She was watching him, reading whatever might be written on
his face. "What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it now. Keep dancing."
She complied with a grunt. He pulled her closer, wishing she could go right
through him and cleanse him. Instead he settled for letting her hands smooth
away the tension in his back as she clutched him to her so tightly that they
could hardly move.
The music changed again into something faster. Couples around them were
jitterbugging, and CJ, who could hold her own with the best of them, slithered
out of Toby's grasp and let him spin her, twirl her, dip her.
Even though she was all but flying through the air, she never smiled. Her face
bore the signs of the same grim determination that always got her through a bad
press briefing, through meetings gone sour, through a phone conversation she was
probably trying to drive out of her brain.
Toby's heart was pounding almost as fast as when he had walked out of the Oval
Office. He spun CJ twice more then backed away, his hand over his heart.
"You okay?" CJ's voice was loud enough to be heard over the music and chatter.
"Yeah. Winded."
Relief washed over her expression, softening the lines, brightening her eyes.
With a small smile she reached for him, her fingers slipping through his belt
loops to draw him close enough for a kiss.
It was predatory, marking him with cerise lipstick and the sting of alcohol on
his lower lip. His heart skipped a beat, and again, until he managed to put
enough space between them to take in a short rasp of oxygen.
"That's not helping me breathe," he said, surprised at how quickly his body had
reacted to the kiss, and how strongly.
"It's not supposed to."
The music changed again. People were dancing around them, undulating to the
unwelcome strains of disco, but CJ and Toby stood without moving, observing one
another.
"Let's get out of here," CJ murmured into his ear.
He tried to read her blood alcohol level by looking at her eyes, but the smoky
darkness rendered them indecipherable. "You okay to drive?"
She shook her head, the gesture crisp, as she said "No." Her hands left his
waist and she sauntered back to her table, leaving some bills next to the empty
glass. As Toby reached into his pocket for the valet ticket he watched her walk
in front of him with one foot set directly in front of the other, the models'
runway walk she used when she felt unsteady. Drunk enough to need a ride but not
drunk enough for her to pass out, which would have allowed him to escape the
inevitable confidences they were about to share.
CJ leaned against the window on the ride home. Her breath left a silvery cloud
on the glass and she traced serpentine shapes on it with her finger. "We were on
Air Force One today," she said.
"We're often on Air Force One," Toby replied, trying to figure out where the non
sequitur should be filed in his brain.
"I mean, I called my dad from a phone on Air Force One." CJ's voice was raspy
from the smoke in the bar. "You've gotta be at least a little impressed when
someone calls you from..." She stopped, sighing. "From there."
"Sam didn't seem too impressed when I talked to him."
"Yeah, but remember the first time? How many friends did we sneak calls to, and
just how pissed did Leo get when he found out Sam had called half the people he
went to high school with?"
"Pretty pissed." Toby tried not to imagine the conversation that the President
and Leo were surely having right now. A pissed Leo was not something he had the
stomach to contemplate.
He tapped the steering wheel lightly as he pulled into CJ's parking space. She
was half-dozing against the window, her eyelids twitching slightly as her body
adjusted to the high level of alcohol. "Hey. We're home."
"Mmm." Able to recover from a catnap faster than her co-workers, even when
sloshed, CJ managed to get out of the car and joined Toby on the short walk up
her stoop. She rummaged around in her pockets and her eyes widened. "Keys.
They're with the valet."
"We can pick them up in the morning. I've got mine."
They all had keys to everyone else's apartment - CJ watered Sam's plants, Sam
picked up changes of clothes for Toby, Toby dropped off briefing memos in Sam's
living room. Josh wasn't trusted to remember where keys were, so Donna kept
copies of everyone's, and everyone had Josh's key. Just in case.
Toby worked the three locks and held the door open for CJ, who wobbled in and
kicked her shoes under the coffee table. She stretched, an extravagant gesture
that showed a little skin just above her navel, then wandered to the sofa and
flopped down on it.
As always, she reached for the remote control and brought the television to
muted life. It wasn't C-SPAN or CNN this time but a movie channel. A channel for
old movies, Toby observed, judging from the saturated colors and the
old-fashioned hairstyles.
"Oh," CJ murmured, nestling into the pillows. "It's 'The Red Shoes.' I love this
movie."
Toby shrugged and sat down and peered at the screen. "What's she doing?" he
asked as a delicate, red-haired ballerina began to weep in front of a blond man
who looked both stern and sad.
"Her husband's a composer. He wrote a ballet based on 'The Red Shoes' and it
made her famous."
"The story where a girl dances herself almost to death and someone has to cut
her feet off to get her to stop?"
"Eww. Yeah, but she does dance herself to death in the ballet. Anyway, she has
to give up dancing when she marries the composer but she sneaks away to do 'The
Red Shoes' just once more."
"Let me guess." Toby put his hand over his eyes, because he hated to see women,
even fictional ones, shed tears. "He leaves her and she poisons herself."
"No, she's more Anna Karenina than Madame Bovary."
Sure enough, Toby looked up just in time to see the ballerina racing down a
corridor, down spiral stairs - could the metaphor be any heavier of hand? -
finally flinging herself off a balcony and under the wheels of a train. Toby
raised his eyebrows and looked over at CJ, whose face was white and sad as she
unmuted the television.
"Julian," she said in tandem with the dying ballerina, "take off the red shoes."
Toby made a soft huffing noise.
CJ grinned at him, blushing. "It's a guilty pleasure, sue me," she said as she
hit the remote once more and the screen went dark. "So. How was your night?" she
asked, slurring her words a little.
Toby hunched over his folded hands.
"Toby?"
"Yeah."
"Your night...not so good, then."
"Not so good."
CJ shifted and turned over so she was facing him. Her eyes were more alert.
Wary. "How not so good?"
"Listen, can we do your thing first? I'm not...ready. To discuss this." He
lowered his head and spoke into his beard. "Not ready."
"I don't have a thing."
He felt that surge of pride again, the one that had made him choke up in her
office when CJ put on her brave face and joked with Sam just moments after being
close to tears about her father. Toby's mouth turned up at the corners, just a
bit, and he looked at CJ. "You had a thing, earlier, and we didn't finish, and I
can't help thinking that you might like to."
CJ's expression melted, turning from mild curiosity to utter desolation. It was
the expression he'd seen just before Sam had interrupted their earlier
conversation, as if the last few hours hadn't happened.
Oh, if only the last few hours hadn't happened.
But he forced himself to focus on her. She was mid-paragraph before he was able
to redirect his brain. "...moments when he's not sure if he's talking to me or
my mom, and my mom's in the room with him."
"He's seeing a doctor, right?"
She regarded him with a combination of amusement and annoyance. "That was the
first thing I said, Toby."
"I'm sorry." He extended his hands, palms upward. Contrite. "How're you doing?"
"Crappy." She sighed again, this time resting her face in her hands for a
moment. She peered up through her interlaced fingers. "He's a mathematician,
Toby. It's all about his mind, always has been. Without that...well, without
that he's still my father. But if he's not sure what day it is, or who he's
talking to, isn't it just a matter of time before he doesn't know me anymore, at
all?"
"I believe it is," Toby said carefully, the way he always delivered bad news.
CJ snorted. "At least you're not telling me it's going be okay. Because it's
not, you know. He's going to lose himself someplace dark inside his own head,
and it's going to be awful, and lengthy, and demeaning. And every conversation
we have will be like today's, where I love him and I'm exasperated by him, and
it scares me."
"And it hurts," Toby added. He pulled the chair closer to the couch and put one
hand on CJ's knee. "And you'll probably be here, working through it all."
"At least you'll be here with me," CJ murmured. When silence fell too heavily,
she glanced at him and her eyes widened at whatever she was seeing on his face.
"Toby. What was your thing?"
"Not as bad as your thing."
"Damnit!" She jerked away from him and rose, hands on hips, staring at him from
above. "Don't screw around with me. What happened?"
"You may need to start working on something. For the press."
"I'm going to need to spin something, you're saying."
"Yes."
She didn't seem drunk anymore, only aggravated and more than a little afraid.
"Toby, if you don't tell me, and I mean this instant--"
"I'm probably going to be fired, CJ."
She reeled as if from a blow. Sinking back onto the sofa, she blinked rapidly
and moved her lips for a few moments before speaking again. "Fired...by whom?"
"Well, I imagine Leo will do the deed, but it'll be at the command of the
President."
CJ's expression softened. "He won't fire you, Toby. He loves you."
"Tonight I was distinctly...unlovable."
"So what else is new?" She clutched his wrists hard enough to hurt. "There's
nothing you could do to make him fire you. God, Toby, you were the first one of
us he told about the MS, and he's running for re-election, and...what the hell
did you do?"
"I think the technical term is gross insubordination. I went off on a tangent
about his father, about the President trying so hard to please a dead man that
he isn't living up to his full potential." He took a breath and turned his
wrists over so CJ would let go. "Oh, and I said his father had abused him."
"Ah."
"Yeah."
CJ got up and walked with the cautious gait of the nearly-sobered. With a
polished fingernail she jabbed the Caller I.D. button on her phone. There was a
beep, then another, and several more. "Hmm. Nothing from Leo's office. In fact,
nothing from the White House except two reporters. No one from the press
witnessed this contretemps, did they?"
"Nope."
"Well, we were due for some good luck along the way."
He slouched even further. "I don't know how you'd spin a shouting match in the
Oval Office as 'good luck.'"
CJ's body went rigid and she stared at him with horror etched on her face. "You
did it in the Oval? You dissed the President's father in the Oval?"
"Yeah."
"God, Toby, could you be any more stupid?"
She was breathing harshly. Toby watched her, watched her eyes lose their fire
and become dull, listless, and then fearful. He knew what she was thinking -
that she would lose him, just as she was losing her father, and it hurt to see
how much it terrified her.
"I don't believe I could be, no," he answered after a long pause. He was the one
to reach out this time, taking her hand between his and holding it, letting the
warmth of her palm seep into his chilled fingers. She squeezed back as she sat
down on the sofa and leaned toward him.
"You really think he's going to fire you?"
"I would be astonished if he didn't." And he would be, certain as he was that
there was no prayer of the President relenting. "I imagine Leo will be asking
for my resignation."
"Yeah." She stared at their joined hands, pursing her lips tightly together as
she nodded, then letting her mouth fall open as she breathed again. "I think
you're right."
"I know I'm right. Which is funny, considering how wrong I was a few hours ago."
"You know we'll lose Sam if you go."
He didn't know what to feel about hearing those words. Part of him was tired of
the idea that Sam loved him that much, and part of him was gratified at having
his suspicions confirmed. "I think he'd stay."
"You don't have any idea, do you? About Sam. How strongly he feels about you.
And if Sam goes, Josh goes--"
"Josh isn't going anywhere. He's worked his whole life to get to this place--"
"Which of us hasn't?" Her tone was strident. She shook her head and lowered her
voice. "Anyway. If Leo hasn't called me by now, then nothing's going to happen
tomorrow. Maybe they want to sleep on it."
"Maybe." Toby didn't hold out much hope but if it made CJ feel better to clutch
at that straw, then so be it.
"So you'll come in tomorrow as if nothing unusual were going on, right?"
"I did press releases the night the President and Josh got shot. I wrote jokes
for the Press Club dinner a couple of hours after I found out about the MS. I'll
go to work as if nothing unusual were going on, and this time I'll probably find
a solution to global warming or broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty that
both sides will like."
"And I'll help with polling models and set up some press events that don't look
like obvious campaign strategies." She stretched again and leaned back against
the sofa with her eyes at half mast. "We keep going in and trying to change the
world while our own worlds are falling down around us. Why the hell do we do
it?"
"Why do we do it? Because we can't stop." He smiled at her. "We can't stop
moving. We have to do this dance. It's like we're all wearing the red shoes."
"So we'll either get our feet cut off or dance until we drop dead. Glorious
image." CJ slid down, lying on her side with her head on the armrest of the
sofa. "Gonna sleep," she mumbled. "Don't pack up your office
unless...Leo...says..."
He chuckled as he spread the cream-colored afghan over her. CJ's insteps were
puffy and there was a run in her hose that snaked upward from the back of her
heel, along her calf, to just behind her knee. Her shoes, despite dust from the
dance floor, had a low lustre in the muted light from the window. Toby slipped
the left shoe off, pausing to trail his finger along the arch of CJ's foot, and
that was enough to rouse her.
"What're you doing?" she slurred, squinting as if she didn't recognize the dark
shape at her side.
"Go back to sleep, CJ." He picked up her other foot. "I'm just taking off the
red shoes."
***
END
***
Thanks to Caz, Jill K., Ria, and Ryo Sen for their patience and their vision.
Feedback would be welcome at marguerite@swbell.net .
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