VII
The wandering boss returneth.
"Hey, Josh."
"Rita Wells!"
"No, I'm Donnatella Moss." This rather pathetic attempt at humour did not go down well. Or, indeed, at all. Josh had his dazed, 'deep in thought' expression in place, distinguishable from his dazed, 'boy I'm drunk' expression only by the fact that he had not, yet, fallen over.
He focused on her. "What reason would I have to meet with Rita Wells?"
"You wouldn't." Congresswoman Wells was a timid, line-towing nobody. You didn't waste the Deputy Chief of Staff on meeting with people who could be just as easily pressured by Ed and Larry.
"But why would I? If I did," he said insistently. Donna rolled her eyes, but decided not to waste her time trying to track down the conversation logic that was buried in there somewhere. She thought for a minute.
"Childcare bill?"
He frowned. "The childcare bill's a dead cert. It's both neutral, and breathtakingly boring."
"That's why they gave it to Rita Wells."
He nodded, conceding the point. "Okay. Call her office, get me a meeting."
Donna gave him a searching look. "Why the subterfuge?"
"I'm flying under the radar." Josh sighed, and rubbed his face. "It might be nothing. Maybe it's nothing." He looked across at her. "But somehow... I don't think it is."
She couldn't for the life of her imagine what any of these supposed clues he was collecting added up to, but the Lyman political instinct had pulled off some bizarre intuitive leaps before now. She headed for her filing system, and started looking for Rita Wells.
"So." CJ broke off laughing long enough to try and swallow her mouthful of chicken without choking. "Why didn't you come back?" She'd missed him more than she realised. "I thought you only went on to England to do research, it took you a whole year?"
"Hey, I'm a slow learner!" Danny gestured with his fork, and then grew more sober. "I almost came back earlier," he admitted. "But all the things that almost made me come back were things you'd hate me if I came back for."
She thought of all the things that had happened since his departure, and gave him a wry smile. "You're a reporter, Danny," she reminded him, as if either of them could have forgotten.
He brightened up, and pulled out a thick envelope from under the table. "And now I'm a novelist."
CJ chuckled. "That's your book?" Trust Danny to take it to dinner with him.
"Yeah. A hundred and fifty thousand words - it's a real blockbuster."
"I'll bet. Can I read it?"
Danny smirked. "You know how I feel about the administration reading over my copy-"
"Danny!" She shoved his shoulder lightly and rolled her eyes at him. "It's a novel."
"Yeah, and I think I should make you wait until it's on the bookshelves. Free previews cut into my royalties, you know."
"I don't get one of the vanity copies?" She pretended to be hurt.
"I'm keeping those. I have a lot of vanity to spare."
"I'll say." She laughed again, feeling pleasantly relaxed even though she'd only had half a glass of wine. This was exactly the kind of evening she'd been needing; things had been seven different kinds of hellish at work for so long it was good to take some downtime. Even if it was only in the form of Chinese takeout and a bottle of red wine, it was exactly what she needed.
"So." Danny looked down at his meal for a moment, perhaps seeking a topic that they hadn't already talked to death. "How's Gail?" he came up with.
"She misses you," CJ said dryly. "Two years is a long time. You're an absentee parent."
"Goldfish have a memory span of seven seconds," he pointed out. She waved her glass of wine at him expressively.
"See, and I want to know exactly how they think they know that..."
The evening stretched on, a warm and pleasant space where they could both take a momentary break from remembering who they were. It ended with Danny handing her a copy of his book, and pressing a sweet and surprisingly chaste kiss to her cheek as they parted. "It's good to see you again, CJ," he said earnestly.
She watched him go with a fond but slightly troubled smile.
Andy was waiting for him when he got home.
Toby Ziegler was, in certain areas, not a complex man. He approached personal matters in a very straightforward - some might say bulldozer-like - manner. Andy had, for reasons not entirely understandable, been willing to accept him back. It seemed to him that things like moving back in together and resuming where they left off should proceed on from there, but apparently this was not the case.
His ex-wife had designated this some kind of probationary stage, the terms and duration of which were apparently for her to know and him to wonder about. So, rather than just live together, they arranged time to spend together as if they were in some intermediate stage of dating. It seemed fairly inefficient to him, but what did he know?
Today, however, she was breaking her own rules. She gave him a small, slightly awkward smile, but didn't say anything as he came in.
Toby smiled back at her, and gave no sign of being surprised or disconcerted by her presence. He fixed them both coffee; no alcohol, just in case.
Just in case. They both mulled over that possibility as they drank together in near silence. The chance that Andy could be... His mind slid away from using the actual word, a stupid superstition but one that lingered from all the times before. That chance should be a happy chance, even unexpected as it was, but... well. All the times before...
It was Andy who eventually broke the silence. "I made an appointment with Dr. Havers for tomorrow."
He nodded slowly, remembering Dr. Havers. He'd liked her, from what he recalled; a brisk, no-nonsense woman who somehow managed to avoid any awkwardness by not caring whether she caused it. "Okay."
Andy played with her coffee-cup. "I could... I suppose I could have done a test, but..." She faded out into a shrug, and he could fill in the rest for himself. Tension, and memories of false alarms, and not quite knowing what you did or didn't want to see... Best to get a professional opinion. He looked across at her.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
She smiled slightly. "Toby, I think you'd be missed if you skipped work." He shrugged, contriving to indicate he both knew and didn't care overmuch, but she shook her head. "No... no. I'd rather do this alone, if you don't mind."
He wasn't sure if he minded or not, to tell the truth, so he settled for another quiet "Okay."
Andy was silent for a moment, and then burst out "I just- I don't know what to hope for." She smiled bitterly. "Isn't that terrible? I- this is- if we could have another chance..." She looked pained, and rubbed her forehead. "But I just can't help thinking, if we have another chance, and we lose it again..." She sighed, on the edge of frustrated tears. "I'm not sure I could go through that again, Toby."
She broke off, at the same time as he leaned forward to put his coffee cup on the floor. He extended an arm to her, and she accepted the invitation to move closer and rest her head against him. He didn't know what to hope, any more than she did... but at least he knew all about being the shoulder to lean on.
Abbey sloped into the Residence, yawning, and had to smile at the sight before her. Her husband, apparently bound and determined not to admit that a little bit of a cold was having any draining effect on him, had clearly decided to spend his specially cleared evening getting in some reading instead of going to bed early.
By the looks of things, he hadn't got far.
"Honey?" She lightly nudged his shoulder, and Jed cracked his eyes open.
"I was resting my eyes," he said, looking at her askance.
"Of course you were," she humoured him. He pushed himself up a little unsteadily, resting more on her supporting arm than he would have admitted if he'd been asked. "Now, come on, let's get to bed."
He gave her a tired but still devilish smirk. "You're insatiable, woman."
"Hoo, boy, somebody's got delusions of his own capabilities," she teased mildly. He'd be sinking into his chair to go right back to sleep if she wasn't there to prod him along.
"I have stamina," he told her airily.
"Yeah, yeah. Move it, sneezy."
"I'm not-" He sneezed. "-Immune to the laws of dramatic irony," he finished dryly. "I'm also not nearly as ill as you think I am."
She ignored this, and turned to help him loosen his tie as they entered the Residence. "Arms," she ordered absently, as she would have done to one of the girls when they were small, still needing help to undress themselves. He let out his breath in a disgruntled huff, but raised them to shoulder-level obligingly.
"I'm just a piece of meat to you, aren't I?" he noted, as she made a swifter job of unbuttoning his shirt than he could have in his exhausted state.
"That's right, honey, you're a real prime cut," she agreed wryly. She crossed to the dresser, and pulled out his Notre Dame sweater to toss at him. "Put that on, babe, you need to keep your chest warm." He fumbled with it for a moment and tugged it into place, yawning.
Abbey finished her own night preparations, and they snuggled up together on the bed. "You're hot when you're bossy," he mumbled against her neck, already half asleep. It was impossible not to smile.
"Yeah, well, you're a goofball when you're sick," she noted. "Now, get some rest, and don't overdo it tomorrow, 'kay?"
The only answer from the other side of the bed was a soft, rumbling snore.
"Josh, you should go home."
"Yeah." He sighed, and stretched expansively, almost overbalancing his chair. He rubbed his face, and looked up at her. "Still no response from Rita Wells?"
Donna debated pointing out that she'd given up hours ago when the end of normal people's working days had been and gone, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. "No. I couldn't get a straight answer out of her secretary all the times I called."
"She doesn't want to talk to me," Josh opined, and for a change she was inclined to agree instead of putting it down to paranoid megalomania. For a relatively minor Congresswoman, Wells had managed to acquire a staffer who was impressively good at giving polite brush-offs - but Donnatella Moss was no slouch when it came to recognising the difference between plain old incompetence and being given the run-around.
There were, after all, plenty of people in the world who would rather not speak to Joshua Lyman. Most of them, however, were a lot higher up the political food-chain than Rita Wells.
Josh leaned still further back in his chair, to look at her upside-down. "Still think I'm crazy?" he wondered.
"Definitely, but you might actually be right about this," she conceded.
He bounced back upright in his seat, and she winced, but somehow it defied the laws of physics and failed to dump him on the floor. "There's something going on here," he murmured, and ran a tired hand through his hair. "I have no idea what, but... something."
"Josh?" she said, not unkindly. "Go home."
"Yeah." He sighed. "Yeah, okay. See you tomorrow."
He got up and began to shrug his coat on, obviously still mentally miles away, chasing elusive connections.
