Chapter One
Sam's exit from Toby's office was followed swiftly by a rubber ball that bounced against the window.
"I emailed it to you this morning," Sam called to his disgruntled boss. He started to scroll down the list of sent emails. "If you got Ginger to check your inbox you wouldn't keep missing things."
Sam was going to enjoy this. Toby had called him into his office demanding to know why he hadn't sent him a copy of the position paper he was drafting. Sam knew for a fact that he had emailed it to him last night so that Toby could read it before he came in. He took his time browsing the list of emails, knowing that he was about to experience immense pleasure from proving that Toby had deleted it in error, probably grumbling about spam emails while doing so.
"I mean, you're a pretty important person. You should be more careful. It's not like you'd throw a letter away just because you didn't recognise the postmark that would just be-" Sam suddenly stopped talking. He clicked on the address that had caught his eye. He paled slightly as the first page of the position paper appeared on the screen. He took a very deep, steadying breath before returning to Toby's office.
Toby looked up as Sam entered and waited for his apology. He knew it was coming and had decided that he would just let Sam say it and then keep his comments in reserve for when Sam was really annoying him. Sam didn't say anything though. He stood in front of Toby's desk and walked back to the door and closed it. He went to the desk and started to tidy the pencils in a pot.
"Sam!" Toby addressed him in a way that made it clear that whatever Sam wanted to say he should say it very quickly.
"I've sent…it appears I might have…" Toby sighed but it was nothing in comparison to the shaky breath that Sam exhaled before he finally admitted, "I emailed your copy of my position paper to my dentist."
During Sam's stilted speech, Toby had been squeezing one of his rubber missiles. Sam's disclosure was followed by a thud as the ball dropped from his grasp.
"I'm sorry, for a moment there I thought you said you'd emailed the position paper to your dentist," Toby stared at him a ray of hope flickering in his eyes that Sam had been fooling around.
"Well yes…that's…that's the situation in a nutshell," Sam agreed.
"In a nutshell?" Toby's voice was dangerously low. "In a nutshell?" he repeated but this time he shouted and the force of it made Sam jump. "You sent a highly litigious position paper, that hasn't even been read by the President yet, to your dentist 'in a nutshell'!"
"Well actually I sent it by email but-" Sam changed tack when he saw Toby's expression. "Look, I sent it last night at nine, I'm sure nobody was there. It's seven a.m so I doubt it's even been read yet. I'll tell you what, I'll phone them and as soon as someone answers I'll-" Sam stopped talking. Toby was staring at him with a look of utter disbelief.
"Sit down, Sam." Sam walked obediently over to the sofa and listened as Toby picked up the phone and arranged for an agent to come to his office. They sat in silence. Occasionally Toby muttered 'in a nutshell'.
When the agent appeared he listened to Toby's explanation of the problem and Sam's explanation of how easy it is to mistake tbzeeg with tbzglr and then he asked Sam to write down the address of his dentist. He waited for a colleague to join him who asked Sam detailed questions about the document's name and then the two left Toby's office. Sam ignored the sound of the agents' laughter as they walked through the Bullpen. Toby didn't speak and in the end Sam broke the uncomfortable silence. "Did you want to say something or should I just sit here?"
"I was going to say something but then I changed my mind. There's no point shouting at you."
"That's very tolerant of you Toby and I appreciate the fact that-"
"Yet," Toby interrupted, "there's no point shouting at you yet, when depending on what the agents find I can take you to Leo's office and shout at you there."
"Well that's a little less tolerant." Sam stood and returned to his office. Toby glared at him as he passed his desk. Only when Sam was inside his own office did Toby allow a smile to cross his face.
It was another hour before one of the agents finally phoned and Toby came into Sam's office and told him that he was one lucky speech writer. The email had not been opened and as Sam had predicted the office wasn't even open when they arrived, the receptionist had turned up for work to find two secret service agents waiting outside.
Sam endured a week of Toby's wise-cracks. He couldn't hand him a file without being asked if he had sent a copy to his dentist. It was when he finished dictating a letter to Ginger and she asked him if she wanted her to copy it to his hairdresser that Sam finally snapped. He stood up abruptly and stormed into Toby's office. "Okay, I made a mistake. I can stand here and say that with no qualms. It could have been disastrous but it wasn't. We've had some laughs over it, some nights I can barely get to sleep thinking about your quips but now I'd just like to move on, chalk it up to experience and basically pretend it never happened."
"Did Ginger make a funny?" Toby asked innocently.
"Yes, Ginger made a funny!" an exasperated Sam answered.
Toby put down his pen, placed his hands behind his head and leant back in his chair. "Okay."
"Okay?" Sam queried.
"Okay, I won't mention it again," Toby clarified. "Next time you do something like this I'll just shout at you and get it out of my system."
"Would you, because I'd really prefer that?" Sam returned to his office deciding not to think about the fact that Toby believed that there would be a next time.
Sam stood up, entered the Bullpen and tried to walk off the pins and needles in his legs. He had finally finished the paper that he had been working on and he had finished it well ahead of schedule. He walked over to the coffee machine but decided he deserved something a little more substantial than coffee. As he started down the stairs towards the Mess he caught sight of Josh, and called out to him. When he reached the bottom of the stairs Josh had already walked on ahead and was standing in the queue.
"Are you on a mercy doughnut mission or something?" Sam asked as he joined Josh at the counter.
"Sorry?" Josh answered. He seemed more focused on the selection of pastries.
"I called to you on the stairs," Sam explained.
"Oh right, no, I'm just distracted. I've only come down here to get Donna a pastry because she's refusing to carry on with…" Josh stopped talking and picked up a plate.
"With what?"
"Nothing really, just the same old fun and games, you know how it is."
"I do," Sam agreed thinking of Ginger's fun at his expense earlier in the week. Sam chose a pastry for himself and tried to remember the last time Josh had come to his office to talk about Donna's latest antics.
"Do you want to go out to grab something to eat?" Sam suggested. "I finished that paper so I've got some time."
"You've finished?" Josh ignored Sam's lunch idea. "You know they're meeting today to decide where the funding is going?"
"Yeah, Leo said."
When the President had first asked Sam to look into the notion of allocating extra funding to teachers who specialised in math and science, he had been skeptical. After a few days he had begun to realise that if increasing teachers' wages was out of the question then perhaps this was the next best thing. He had spoken to teaching unions and hadn't been surprised to find that they were opposed to it but then a chance conversation with Ginger had made Sam determined that he should tell the President that the initiative was a good idea.
Sam had been reading a passage of the paper to Ginger. He was hoping that Ginger was going to tell him if she thought he had used the words subject specialist too many times but instead she had said, "You know, I was going to be a teacher."
"I did not know that." Sam took off his glasses and gave her his full attention. "Why didn't you?"
"I spent a weekend looking after my nieces," Ginger replied as if no further explanation was necessary.
"So would you have chosen math or science?"
"Hell no! You'd have to pay me to study science at that level!"
"You see, that's kind of what we're proposing to do," Sam pointed out.
"Oh, well then in that case I think science would have been my thing." Ginger stood up and walked towards the door, she turned back to Sam before she left, "You said subject specialist four times in that paragraph."
Sam had nodded absently. Ginger's reply had made perfect sense to him and three hours later he was still sat at his desk rewriting his first draft.
Sam had realised Josh wasn't going to take him up on his offer to join him for lunch so he reached past him and grabbed a sandwich.
"This is all about timing. The Funding States by Need First caucus are going to publish their findings on Monday, the position paper will be released on Tuesday and the President is giving his speech to the District Councils on Wednesday." Josh held the door for Sam and started up the stairs. "I don't think anyone's going to be talking about school vouchers on Thursday." Josh had reached the top of the stairs and started to open the double doors before he noticed Sam was no longer with him. "Sam?"
"You said the caucus was going to publish its findings on Monday?" Sam didn't move from his spot and so Josh was forced to walk back towards him.
"Yeah Monday, it's the only way we're going to take the attention away from the Republicans, yet again, trying to force the issue with school vouchers."
"But we weren't, I'm sorry, I thought we agreed that funding for specific subjects would come first and then we would follow up with general funding for the states that needed it most?"
"Yeah I…" Josh shrugged, he didn't understand what Sam was trying to say and he had already spent more time away from his office than he had intended.
"Why would we release the findings of the caucus when we don't intend acting on them until after we have introduced the first round of funding?" Josh didn't reply but the look on his face made Sam roll his eyes. "We're not going to act on their findings are we? We're just going to use it to take attention away from school vouchers and then abandon it."
"Why do you always do this? Why does it always seem to shock you when we do something that doesn't live up to your, quite frankly, naive ideals?"
"Where the hell did that come from? What makes you think that I…why would you say…where the hell do you get off second guessing what my reaction will be?" Sam's voice had risen steadily and people were beginning to look.
"Do you want to go and tell the members of the caucus that they are being 'quite frankly naïve'?" Sam shouted.
Aware of the looks they were drawing, Josh tried to calm Sam down, "I shouldn't have said that. It's just been a difficult morning and I'm way behind on-"
"Save it, Josh. I don't care. And don't patronize me. Don't say something like that and then try to blame it on work." Sam swung away from Josh as if he was going to return to the Mess but then he turned back towards him, "And if you want to know about difficult mornings you should come to my office and listen to Ben Draper the chair of the naïve funding caucus, telling me what I should be recommending to the President. Why don't you give us ten minutes and then you can come and explain to him why he's being naïve!"
"No Sam, if I want to explain about being naïve, why don't I tell him about a certain lunch date with Kevin Kahn!"
And there it was, the subject that the two men had never discussed, out in the open at last. They stared at each other. Josh thought Sam was going to reply but he didn't. He was nudged slightly by Sam as he pushed past him and through the doors. Josh remained where he stood. He closed his eyes and sighed loudly. He was still standing in the same spot when Sam reached his office and slammed the door with such force that it made Toby jump and spill his coffee.
Toby stood by the door to Leo's office staring intently at the two men sitting inside. CJ smiled at Margaret and then went and stood beside him for a while before whispering, "What are we doing?"
"We're idiot watching," Toby replied cryptically.
"Should I sketch their distinguishing marks?" she asked but Toby ignored her and continued to watch Josh and Sam.
"Five minutes, they've been sitting there for five minutes in total silence," Toby mused.
"Are they being sponsored?"
Toby sighed and scratched his forehead, "No! They're ignoring each other is what they're doing. And they've been doing it for five minutes."
"Well let's put them out of their misery," she walked past Toby and into Leo's office.
Toby followed her and stood behind Sam's chair.
"Tell me that you've spoken to all of them, Josh, and they're all going to vote yes," Leo said as he walked towards his desk.
"I've spoken to all of them and they're all going to vote yes," Josh replied. "Did you just want me to say that or did you want me to tell you the truth?"
"You've spoken to…"
"Three of them and two are going to say yes," Josh clarified.
"And the other two…?"
"Will say yes after Thursday."
"Why Thursday?" CJ asked.
"Well I have to at least pretend that I'm going to give them a chance to say no," Josh reasoned. CJ laughed and Leo shook his head. Toby noticed that Sam just continued to stare at the papers on his lap, his expression far from amused.
"Has the President seen your position paper Sam?" Leo asked.
"Yesterday," Sam answered.
"And…" Leo prompted impatiently.
"He's happy with it. I met with Ben Draper and the caucus is about ready to conclude their findings."
"Ben Draper," CJ said. "Why do I know that name?" she tapped her pencil on her pad as Leo and Josh began going over the timing of the releases that would enable them to best railroad the Republicans school voucher campaign. As they finished speaking CJ clicked her fingers three times and pointed at Sam. "I met Ben Draper last month. Ben Draper went to law school with you and he told me, God, how did I forget to mention this, he told me that you once spent a whole evening-"
"You didn't say that you were friends with Draper," Josh interrupted.
Sam ignored Josh and aimed his reply at Leo. "Is that a problem?"
Leo held his hands in the air. "I don't know, what did you spend an evening doing?"
"No I meant…" Sam paused and swiped his hand over his forehead, "I meant is it a problem that Ben is a friend of mine?"
Leo looked at Toby and the two men exchanged puzzled glances. "I don't know, Sam, but I'll talk to your mom and see if you can play out tonight. Right has anybody got anything to say that I will actually understand?" Nobody spoke. "Okay then, that's it."
Sam stood quickly and walked towards the door. CJ caught up with him, "So do you see Ben often? He had a lot of interesting anecdotes about you. I can't believe I forgot to tease you about that evening he told me about."
"I saw him last weekend actually."
"We met up with a group of, well you heard the 'all evening' story, that group."
"Well then I'm just glad I'm not hearing about the reunion from the press."
Josh caught them up. "Where did you go this weekend, Sam?"
"We went to a secret cavern Josh and I revealed to Ben your evil plan to scupper all of his hard work." They had reached the Bullpen and Sam wheeled away from the group and into his office.
CJ started to speak but Josh held up his hand. "Wait, there's gonna be a door-slam." right on cue Sam slammed his door shut. "You weren't about to ask me what's going on with me and Sam were you? Because you know how I hate to have to keep things from you."
"I was asking as a friend, Josh."
"I know, and I was answering as a friend who is trying to avoid answering." The two parted company and Josh went into his office where he tried not to think about Sam, education reform or Ben Draper.