XIV
Jed flipped absently through pages of briefing notes, but his mind was elsewhere. He was hungry, as he usually was at this time of the morning, but not so hungry that he'd stoop so low as actually trying to eat fruit. Breakfast had lost much of its savour now that it had been made abundantly clear by his wife that anything involving syrup or even remotely sugary was not going to come within a million miles of his menu.
Alone in the room - Charlie, despite his protests, had been barred from coming to work any earlier than midday - he surreptitiously tugged at his waistband. If he was getting any thinner, it was taking a long time showing itself. Abbey insisted his diet had put him in better shape than he had been for years, but he suspected he was being humoured.
Still, there was nothing wrong with being humoured when Abigail Bartlet was the one doing the humouring. There was something in the way that she looked at him that even if she was giggling helplessly at the sight of him in a less than elegant pose, he still felt great.
Thinking of those kind of looks... Abbey was still in the building, it was the weekend, and hell, those reports weren't really that important...
There was a knock on the door.
Dammit.
So much for that idea. He got to his feet as the door tentatively opened. "Mr. President?"
"Come in, CJ," he said genially.
His press secretary entered the Oval Office and hovered uncertainly. Jed fixed on the sheaf of papers in her hand. "Something I should know about?"
"Yes, sir," she said, but she seemed reluctant to actually hand it to him. "It's the, um, the Rogers biography I told you about."
"Juvenile drug habit?" he cracked, but she didn't smile.
"No sir." She hesitated long enough that he suddenly didn't want to ask her to spit it out. They looked at each other for a moment, and then she slowly profferred the pages. "I think you should probably... read it yourself."
He continued to hold her gaze for a few seconds, and then pushed his glasses back up into a reading position and sat on the arm of his chair. Despite himself, Jed felt a sudden flare of nervousness in his belly. The words momentarily blurred, but though he wanted to tell himself it was the MS he knew it was really a symptom of his own reluctance.
He made himself read.
Malcolm Peters was family doctor to the Bartlets from the early 1950s right up until after both sons had left home. His son Jason recalls...
"I remember Pop sat me down one day after I came home from school. He asked me a lot of questions about Mr. Bartlet, the headmaster - if he used to cane the students, whether I ever saw him hit any of the boys... I never saw anything like that, and I didn't understand why he was asking.
"He asked me if Jed used to get along with his father, and I didn't really know anything about that either. He was in the year above me, and I didn't know him all that well, except for how he always seemed to be involved in everything around the school. But none of the boys ever said anything bad about the headmaster when he was around, and he never did himself. He always used to call his father 'Sir' when they were in the school, I remember that.
"I guess I must have said something like 'I don't understand, Pop, why are you asking me this?', because he told me that he was worried about Jed, he had a lot of bruises and he'd never say how he'd got them, and he thought his father had been beating him. And I was shocked, I really was, because... well, you'd've had to have known Jed. He was always so... so up in everybody's face, not in a bad way, but just like he couldn't leave something alone if he thought it wasn't right. And I guess you thought, I mean like you would, that if there was a guy and his daddy was beating up on him all the time - really beating up on him, not just like the kind of spanking my own Pop gave me once or twice - then he'd be a shy and shrinking little thing and not like that at all..."
He stopped reading. For a moment he tried to put a face to the name of Jason Peters, but it wouldn't come. Old Doc Peters himself swam on the edge of his memory for a moment, but when he tried to pin the image down it was his father's face that rose up to fill his mind.
Was that supposed to be funny?
Do you think you can impress me?
Don't get clever with me, boy.
For a second he felt dizzy, and he had to close his eyes. When he opened them again, he was back in the Oval Office, back in the real world.
Away.
Thirty years away, and President of the United States, and- I wasn't trying to be clever, really I wasn't, I can't help it, I just think that way-
CJ was watching him. He gave her a thin and tired smile.
"I think perhaps you should leave this for me to read," was all he said.
"Yes sir." She nodded, and practically fled the office.
"Well?" Sam looked up at him. "What do you think?"
Josh pulled his gaze away from the pages of the report. "Sam-"
"You've got to let me do it," he insisted.
He grimaced. "Sam-"
"You know I'm right."
"That's not the-"
"It is the point," Sam cut him off firmly.
Josh shook his head warningly. "You don't want to take this, Sam."
"I want to take this," he said determinedly.
He could see his friend's eyes were alight with righteous battle - and also the dangerous chasm he was about to go charging headlong into. "They'll make this personal," he warned.
"It is personal," Sam reminded him.
"Sam-"
"Would you tell Charlie not to take on the guys who attacked him because he's black?"
"We don't hold military hiring practises as a parallel to Neo-Nazism, Sam!"
"And it's about time we started asking ourselves why not."
"Yeah." He hesitated for a beat. "Take the meeting, Sam."
Sam quirked a slight grin at that. "I was telling you what I was doing, Josh, not asking permission," he informed him.
Josh pulled a face. "You know, technically, I'm your superior."
"Toby's my superior."
"And I'm up there with Toby, so I'm still the boss of you. In fact, I think, I'm not entirely sure, but I might be the boss of Toby, too."
There was a brief pause.
"Good luck with that," Sam said wryly.
"Yeah." He turned to go. "Sam," Josh called him back. He looked over his shoulder. "Just try not to hit anybody, 'kay?"
"Okay."
"Sam." He turned back again. "I don't actually care if you hit anybody," Josh admitted.
Sam smirked. "Can I classify that as 'orders from above'?"
"Why not?" he shrugged. "That defence always seems to work for their guys."
"See you later, Josh."
"Kick some ass in there," he smiled.
Sam grinned. "Oh, I will," he promised.
Toby glanced across at Andy, and they both straightened up as the British Ambassador walked in. "John, we've spent some time going over a few proposals, and I think we've come to a conclusion that-"
"Excellent," Marbury cut him off, beaming cheerfully. He shook Toby's hand. "Well, I'm sure that whatever solution you've come up with will be more than satisfactory. I think my business here is done."
They exchanged puzzled looks. Yesterday and the day before, it had seemed that the ambassador had no other goal than to keep them locked up in a room together, tied up in every tiny little nuance of the debate. Now suddenly whatever they decided was okay with him.
Toby mentally regrouped. "Uh, the figures we're proposing-"
"Will be more than enough to satisfy my compatriots across the pond," Marbury waved it away. "Naturally, we're all aware of the realities of these issues; the fact that you were willing to commit to making improvements is the important factor. The PM will be more than happy to clarify his comments and retract any accusation against your county. In fact, he already has; I spoke to him last night." He smiled and bowed. "And now, I shall leave you two alone. Good day!"
He left, and they both looked at each other for a few moments.
Toby rubbed his forehead slowly. "Remind me why we didn't finish the British off when we had the chance?"
Andy grinned and stood up, shuffling her papers back together. "Well, I guess... we're done here," she said a little awkwardly.
Toby nodded, feeling suddenly disoriented and awkward. So, here they were, suddenly alone together with nothing to argue about. He wasn't quite sure what to do with that.
There was a long silence, and then Andy blurted "You'll discuss the proposals with-?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
More silence. She gave him a tentative smile and moved towards the door. And something made him say "There's a dinner party here tonight."
"Oh, you've got to- you're working on that now?"
Which would have been the easy, graceful way to bow out. For some strange reason, he failed to take it.
"Come with me. Tonight."
She hesitated, plainly torn. "Toby-"
"Come with me."
Andy smiled cautiously. "Okay."
"Okay." He smiled back. And then she was gone.