IV
"CJ!" A forest of hands shot up. Normally she'd be dreading the first briefing after a dropped ball like the leaked deal, but today she was feeling inexplicably cheerful.
"Sandy."
"Any comment on the source of the leak?"
"We're still looking into that, Sandy." Not that we're particularly likely to tell you when we find out.
"Has Senator Bridges' counter-proposal put a spanner in the works with a view to passing the bill?"
"Obviously, there's going to need to be some time for more negotiation, but we're confident that we can get this legislation through. Josh Lyman has already been in meetings with ranking members of the committee this morning." Mostly browbeating them about whether they were the source of the leak, but still. She picked out another hand from the throng. "Bobby."
"CJ... the dinner party tomorrow night. No press attendance?"
CJ smiled. "It's a relatively intimate affair, folks, just the president, the First Lady, and eighty or ninety guests or so." It probably came to something when you could make a statement like that, and know it wasn't entirely a joke. "There'll be photographs at the start of the evening, and if any of you folks want to camp out in the parking lot to catch the Swedish Ambassador... be my guest." She shrugged theatrically.
Chris dived in with a quick question. "CJ, about the British Prime Minister's visit last week-?"
"As I've said, both sides have been very pleased with the outcome of the meetings. We'll have the report for you soon, folks; we're co-ordinating with Downing Street over some last-minute alterations to the language."
"No friction between the parties involved?" asked Chris, a little doubtfully.
"Not at all. The Prime Minister was very complimentary about our new foreign aid strategy, and the talks were concluded to the mutual satisfaction of all parties involved." If only they could all get off so smoothly.
She spotted the familiar form insinuating its way into the back of the press room, and met his eyes. "Any further questions, folks?" she asked, beginning to smile.
He playfully raised an arm, and she took great pleasure in extending a hand to point at him. "Danny."
The way the entire room suddenly craned around to stare was immensely satisfying.
He smirked in that typical Danny Concannon way, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Hey, kids. Guess who's home."
From the gleeful exclamations that greeted his appearance, she guessed the rest of the press corps had missed him as much as she had.
He didn't look up as Andy entered his office, but he knew it was her. After long enough together, you could recognise the shape of the silence. She waited while he finished typing out the threads of speech in his head before he lost them, and then looked up.
She gave him a fragile smile. "Toby."
He nodded, and looked at her expectantly. After a moment, she let her breath out in a slightly amused huff, and sat down on the corner of his desk. "Toby," she repeated pointedly.
"We've established that this is me," he noted dryly, and Andy rubbed her forehead.
"I- Listen, you know what?" She stood up. "I was gonna do this now, but I think maybe that's not such a good idea, so-"
He got up, and touched her sleeve to halt her. "Andy?"
She sighed heavily, and looked down at the floor for a long moment. "I- You should probably... I thought you ought to know. I, um, I made an appointment with my doctor for tomorrow morning."
"Something's wrong," he presumed, eyebrows lowering in concern.
Andy pulled a wry face, and shrugged, as if not quite sure how to answer that. She looked him in the eye. "Toby, I think there's a chance I might be..."
"Oh." Suddenly, this conversation seemed very familiar.
"Yeah."
There was a long silence, and he looked across at her. "Is that... possible?"
"Anything's possible, Toby."
It was his turn to smile humourlessly in acknowledgement.
"So..." he said eventually.
"So, anyway, I thought you ought to know, before I-"
"Okay."
Once upon a time, the possibilities hanging unspoken in the air would have bubbled with nervous excitement, but both were all too sharply aware of the double-edged sword it could represent.
If it was even anything. They'd had their share of dashed hopes.
All too many of them.
There was an awkward silence that stretched on too long, and then Andy smiled tightly, and kissed him on the corner of the mouth. "Anyway, I wanted to tell you." Toby nodded silently. "I'm going back to work now."
He watched her leave, and then sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He stayed that way for quite some time, until the still-ajar door was pushed all the way open, and Sam came in.
"Toby? I just wanted to go over a few things on the speech for tomorrow's dinner party, and-" He paused, and frowned. "Did something happen?"
Toby snapped out of it, and passed a hand over his face. "Tuesday's speech?" he prompted, not answering the question.
"Oh, right." If he noticed the evasion, he probably assumed it was just typical behaviour. Sam dug in his pocket for a folded sheet of paper. "So, anyway. I cut that stuff out of the D-section like you suggested? And, well, that left the rest of it unbalanced, so I moved some things around, altered a few pieces, and... Well, we kind of need a new speech."
Normally, he'd be irritated at his deputy's frustrating inability to alter one tiny segment of a speech without the urge to rewrite the whole thing. Right now, though, he was glad of the distraction. "All right. Show me what you've got."
He looked up, turning a page, as his deputy appeared in the doorway. "Josh."
"I spoke to all three of them; McGann and Goss in person, Wiley on the phone."
"Yeah?"
"It's McGann," Josh said with full confidence. Leo frowned, and pulled his glasses off.
"It's not McGann," he said, shaking his head.
"Leo, I went to see her," Josh insisted earnestly. "I got a vibe."
"Well, that's nice for you," he said sarcastically, "but I'm telling you, it's not McGann. Selena's good people. She worked with John Hoynes on the technology bill for months, she got us three votes on 802; this isn't her."
"There was a vibe," Josh repeated stubbornly. Leo shot him a look.
"Would you stop it with the vibing? I'm having bad flashbacks to the eighties."
Josh paused. "And now I'm having bad mental images. Leo-"
"Mallory went through some strange phases," Leo dismissed. "I picked things up."
"Yeah, I'm a little worried they're contagious. Leo, I'm telling you, McGann's up to her neck in it."
He narrowed his eyes. "Up to her neck in what?"
"I don't know," Josh admitted with a frown. "But whatever it is, she's involved in it."
Leo heaved a sigh. He couldn't possibly imagine what Selena McGann would stand to gain from sabotaging a deal they'd all worked hard to get on the table... but he had to admit that, whatever you called them, Josh's instincts in these things had a way of panning out.
"Okay. See what you can find out. But I'm telling you, this isn't Selena's style."
Josh nodded slowly, brain obviously churning beneath the blank face. He started to leave, stopped in the doorway, and turned back. "Leo... why would somebody like McGann be clearing her schedule to take a meeting with Rita Wells?"
Leo frowned, and then shrugged. Admittedly, Wells was a bit low down the ladder to be awarded priority attention from Selena McGann, but still... "I don't know, Josh. Why does anybody meet with anybody?"
"Yeah." But Josh still had his distant 'I'm putting things together' face in place. "It just seems... strange." He snapped himself out of it. "Okay. I'll go... do something."
"That would be good," Leo agreed dryly.
Josh wandered off, still looking like his brain was a million miles away. He wondered what the hell was going on in his deputy's head.
Hopefully, something that would eventually lead to some answers. The president was under the weather, and thoroughly miserable with it, for all that he wouldn't admit it. It would be nice to be able to bring him some good news for a change.
