VIII

WEDNESDAY:

Donna arrived at her desk and dropped her bag in its usual place. She shrugged off her coat, picked up the post - and paused. Her new position afforded her a view through the door of her boss's office. Josh was sitting at his desk, working.

She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and took another look. Josh was still sitting at his desk, working. Donna stepped up to the doorframe and rapped upon it sharply. "Paging the Twilight Zone."

Josh looked up and granted her a brief smile. "Hey, Donna. Can you get me the stats on the Hendricks thing?"

Professional instinct had her reaching for the right set of files even as her brain attempted to process the unexpected information. It was not unheard of for Josh to be found in his office this early in the morning; however, said discovery usually involved a rumpled suit, a scruffy-haired head slumped against the desk, and much poking, shaking and even a little subtle kicking. Josh not only present but conscious, alert and already working was definitely a novelty.

"You're here," she noted, in tones of quiet disbelief. She might have thought he'd worked all night, except that was a fresh suit. The odds of Josh spontaneously deciding he'd worn a suit for too long and had to change it...

Nah.

"Well observed." He opened the files she handed him and ran a finger quickly down a list of figures.

"You did, in fact, leave the office last night?" she confirmed.

"Yes."

"You didn't like, double back or anything?"

"No. I left, I went home, I came back." He shrugged, as if it was perfectly normal for him to get up at this time in the morning, and reached for his phone. Donna blinked.

"Who can you possibly be calling at this time in the morning?"

"Very pissed Congressmen?" he hazarded.

"Way to win the vote, Josh."

He gave her a wry smile. "I got ten."

The fact that he was here and doing this persuaded her that now was not the time for a victory dance. "And eleven?" she asked.

"Yeah." He sighed heavily, and the illusion of a bright and breezy, up-and-at-'em Josh momentarily wavered. He looked exhausted. Then he painted it over with a smirk. "Say, these Republican Wisconsin gomers your mother's trying to get you to marry. Are any of them-?"

"I'm not marrying anybody from Congress to get you your last vote, Josh."

"Yeah, okay. I think I would," he admitted, and Donna smiled.

"So tell me, Josh, who's on the list of possible future Mr. Lymans?"

He shot her a look, then snorted and shrugged. "Right now, we're trying absolutely everybody we can get." He considered. "Except Tavestock. The wounds are still too fresh. There's no way we're going to Tavestock."

Donna nodded, and made a mental note to look up the telephone number for Alan Tavestock.

Leo looked up as Josh, CJ and Toby filed into his office. He waited a few moments, but Sam didn't follow. He shot a look at CJ, who shrugged subtly.

With a frown, he started the meeting. "Josh. Tomorrow's bill."

Josh grinned, although Leo could tell from the signs of strain in his face that he wasn't as blasé as he pretended. "We're ten for eleven, Leo! It's going through."

"Not until we've got number eleven," Leo reminded him. "Who did you tap for the last three?"

"Meyers, Reeseman, and Zantowsky," Josh supplied, and Leo nodded slowly. The earlier votes Josh had bought with a little well-applied pressure and arm-twisting, but those three must have cost a number of weighty concessions. They couldn't really afford to give anything else away on this, and right now he could only think of one Congressman who wasn't in any position to demand favours. But Josh wasn't going to like it.

"Tavestock," Toby said for him.

"Oh, no way!" his deputy burst out.

"It's gotta be," Leo overruled him. "He's not in any position to duck the party line, not with this finance thing still hanging over him."

"Yeah, and he thinks I put it there!" Josh objected. It was the Deputy Chief of Staff who'd counselled, wisely enough, that the last thing the president needed to do was throw his weight behind the integrity of Alan Tavestock. The Congressman had been cleared of any wrongdoing - mostly through lack of evidence - but he was less than happy that the president hadn't been there for him, even after the fact. "It's gonna be a hell of a hard sell, Leo."

He didn't doubt that, but they needed this bill. "You said you could get us this bill; go out there and sell it."

Josh grimaced, but nodded in resignation.

The door suddenly opened, and Sam stepped in. Or rather, slouched in. Instead of being his bouncy self of old, the Communications Deputy looked bleary-eyed and tired. His clothes were as immaculate as ever, but nonetheless he exuded an aura of being considerably less neatly-pressed than usual. Leo wasn't sure if he would have needed his expert eye to diagnose a hangover.

If it had been Josh, he would have made some sarcastic remark and got on with it - but if it had been Josh, it wouldn't have been so worryingly out-of-character. It wasn't like Sam to get drunk enough to suffer from it the next morning, especially when Leo knew none of the others could have been out with him the previous night.

He wasn't the only one to notice, either; Toby's gaze lingered on his deputy, and CJ looked concerned. Josh's crinkled forehead was far from difficult to read, but if Sam noticed the attention he was getting, he chose not to acknowledge it. He slumped into his chair and barely succeeded in disguising his squint against the lights.

Something was clearly going on there - but it sure as hell wasn't Leo's place to take issue with it. "Sam," he said with a neutral nod, and quickly shifted gears. "Toby. Tomorrow's speech; it's done, right?"

"It's still being polished." Leo shot him a disbelieving frown. This was an after-dinner speech, for an audience who would be undemanding and probably already under the influence of alcohol. It was the sort of thing Toby and Sam could casually toss off in a matter of hours. What the hell was going on over in Communications these days?

Echoing his thoughts, CJ shot Toby a look. "Still? What the hell is there left to polish?"

"It could be better," he pronounced moodily. Leo couldn't tell if that was some kind of dig at Sam or not, since the younger man failed to look up from his examination of the carpeting, and Toby could play poker for a living.

He suspected that nothing more productive was coming out of this staff meeting. "Okay, whatever. Go, work. CJ, could you hang back a minute?"

The press secretary obligingly lingered. "You want to talk about Rick Maskey?" she guessed.

"No, actually." Leo drummed his fingers awkwardly. Damn, he hated this sort of thing. "I was wondering if you could maybe have a quick word with Sam."

CJ was quick to realise that he didn't mean about the latest policy initiative. "Any idea what's wrong?" she asked softly, and Leo recognised the big sister vibe that always seemed to come out when any of her 'boys' was in trouble. Provided said trouble didn't involve explanations to the press, anyway.

In answer to her question, he could only shrug. "No. But he's been leaving early and coming in hung-over, and now it's been two days in a row."

CJ nodded, then shrugged expansively. "Could be Toby," she suggested. "He's been in a hell of mood lately, over I know not what..." She shook her head.

"Yeah, question is, is Sam out of sorts because he's moody, or is Toby moody because Sam's out of sorts?" A pretty knotty question, when dealing with two individuals who were equally repressed in very different ways. Leo sighed. "Have a quiet word with him, okay?"

"Why me?" CJ frowned.

He gave her his sharpest look. "You think I should pull one of my staff aside and ask him if he's drinking too much?"

As he expected, CJ was unable to hold his gaze for very long. "I'll talk to him," she promised.

"Thank you."

"Hey, Donna." Josh stuck his head around the door. "I need-"

"Everyone but Tavestock, I know."

"Yeah. Incidentally..."

"What?"

"I need you to set me up a meeting with Tavestock."

Donna didn't blink. "Ten-thirty suit you?" she asked.

"I... uh, yeah," he shrugged, caught off balance. She picked up the phone and pressed a button.

"Becky, still there? Yeah, he'll take the ten-thirty slot. Thanks."

She replaced the receiver, and gave Josh a smug look.