IV
"Leo?" Margaret handed him the note, and he unfolded his glasses to read it. A shooting. Damn.
"Okay. Thanks, Margaret."
His assistant withdrew, and a few moments later CJ took her place in the doorway. He looked up at her.
"What can you tell me about Lubbock County?"
She frowned solemnly. "The shooter was a thirteen-year-old girl. She was home alone; the parents were out at a restaurant across town. She heard intruders in the back yard and got her father's shotgun."
Leo winced. "What's the condition of the second boy?"
CJ sighed. "Still uncertain. He hasn't regained consciousness since he was brought in, and they're not sure he's going to. The media already has the names of both boys, but they're keeping the girl's identity under wraps."
"Were they repeat offenders?"
She shook her head. "That's just it. Both local boys, no records on them; they literally lived down the street. The girl would have known them both in daylight."
His headache was increasing by orders of magnitude. "Could this have been a case of mistaken identity? A practical joke gone wrong?"
CJ shrugged unhappily. "The girl was adamant it was an attempted break-in..." She trailed off, not needing to enumerate all the possible interpretations of that.
Leo massaged his forehead tiredly. "This is going to get even uglier than it is already," he pronounced grimly.
Paint it as a besieged youth heroically defending herself from attackers or an horrific accident born of a trigger-happy culture, both sides of the gun-control argument were going to sink their teeth into this one and start tearing. What was already a human tragedy was about to turn into a bloody political battle of the kind they really didn't want to get into right now.
At least, most of them didn't want to get into. Leo could have sworn Toby's mood preceded him through the building like the ground-shaking footfalls of a dinosaur on the prowl.
"Leo, we need to tackle this in the State of the Union," he announced curtly as he stormed in. Leo lowered his eyebrows warningly.
"Okay, unless we're talking about social security here-"
"This is gonna be all over the national news in a matter of hours, we can't just ignore it."
Sam squeezed through the door behind his boss, giving a sketchy little shrug as if to say there was nothing he could do about it. Leo focused his attention back on Toby. "The speech is in two days' time, Toby, nobody's expecting us to-"
"This is a prime example of exactly what we're talking about!" he argued emphatically. "We need to get aggressive on gun control, Leo, we need to get aggressive and we need to-"
"Do it after the State of the Union," he completed brusquely. "Toby, half the country's tuning in to see if we cut Hoynes loose, and the other half wants to see if the president can still walk and talk unaided." His old friend's fears over his MS early the previous year had not been widely known, but the lines of his suddenly strict diet and health routine were not hard to read between, and the big media blowup about the details of his relationship with his father had raised all sorts of ridiculous questions about his mental state. "It's gonna be an uphill battle to get the media to swallow any positive news we can feed them, you want to open up a can of worms and tip that into the mix?"
Toby took the point, but not gracefully, and was probably about to launch into further ranting when Sam hastily cleared his throat. "Josh is interviewing this guy to work for Charlie?"
Leo nodded, welcoming the distracting tactic. "If there's no problem, we'll let the president take a look at him tomorrow." If Charlie was going to reduce his hours, they definitely needed somebody around the place to pick up the slack, but there was no telling how the president would take to new people.
"That should be fun for him," CJ noted sardonically.
"The First Lady tells me that this kitten is supposed to making him mellow, so miracles may happen."
"It might be helping his blood pressure, but it's doing no favours for mine," she grimaced. "Leo, can't you make him name it? The press corps won't get off my case about it."
"I'll bump that to the top of my priority list," he said sarcastically. "Okay. Any more news?"
"Toolan and Cairns are pushing for us to ditch Hoynes," Sam supplied.
"That's not news, that's probability theory." He shut the folder in front of him with a snap. "Okay, everybody, go do a thing. The runthrough's on at two o'clock now, we'll discuss the foreign policy language then. Thank you."
The staff mumbled their acknowledgements and dispersed.
"Hey, Margaret." Donna smiled at her fellow assistant as they met by the copy machine.
"Hi, Donna. Was that Ashley Bowers I saw with Josh earlier?"
"With the spiky hair? Yeah." The news of a prospective addition to their numbers had quickly rippled through the ranks at assistant-level. No doubt to Josh the idea of getting Charlie an assistant was a casual afterthought, but his presence would be felt lower down the chain of command. Poor Charlie must be having mixed thoughts to the extreme; they might all bitch about the hours and unreasonable duties they worked, but the idea of letting somebody else muscle in on your responsibilities... Not that Charlie stood the slightest chance of being thrown over for the new guy by his father-in-law, but still, it had to grate to suddenly start sharing his previously exclusive access to the president.
"He looks young," Margaret said pensively.
"Charlie was younger, when he started," Donna reminded her.
Margaret blinked in realisation. "Wow, have I been in this job too long."
"Boy howdy."
They traded places with the efficiency of many years' experience at the copy machine dance. "Mallory has a new boyfriend," Margaret told her.
"Really? I'll bet Leo's cranky."
"I'll say. She's dating Brandon Foxton."
Donna raised her eyebrows. "Brandon Foxton the radio guy?"
"Yeah."
"Well, good on-" She paused. "Wait a moment." There was a reason why the name of a fairly minor league radio presenter had been floating close enough to the surface of her thoughts to be identified. "Didn't he just do a thing about-?"
Margaret bobbed her head in a quick nod. "Yeah."
"Oh, boy."
"Mallory wants to bring him to the State of the Union. Leo is not pleased."
"I'll bet he's not." Donna had to admire the understatement.
"Want to trade jobs?" Margaret said hopefully.
"Thanks, but I think I'll keep Josh." Her boss was frequently irritable - and irritating - but rarely actually intimidating. Leo on a rampage was not fun for anybody. "Although, if it's any consolation, he's still hung up on this Hoynes thing, so-"
"Remind me again why we work here?"
"For the prestige, the pay scale, and the excellent benefits package," she said with a perfectly straight face.
Margaret smirked at that. "Thanks, Donna. I needed that."
"My pleasure."
They split up and headed back to their respective pain-in-the-ass bosses.
Josh shuffled papers, looking momentarily lost, and Ash surreptitiously stretched his legs to relieve the cramp of sitting too long whilst very tense. So far, it was not the worst interview he'd ever sat through, although Josh constantly disappearing to deal with other things was disconcerting, and there were rather more questions about his history and behaviour than he'd ever faced before.
The Deputy Chief of Staff coughed awkwardly to re-draw his attention, looking almost... embarrassed? "Now, I have to, um... I'm required to ask you some questions about your, uh, social life..."
Ash stared at him blankly for a moment, then got it and blinked. "You want to know if I'm gay?"
"I'm required to ask." He stretched and pulled a face. "I don't think I'm required to give a crap about the answer, which is just as-"
"Because I'm working for the president?"
"No. Because you're gonna be the guy who wanders in and out of the Residence when he's asleep, or not dressed, or... whatever." He didn't look particularly happy with his own argument.
Ash sat back in his chair. "Wouldn't 'Are you typically attracted to people four decades your senior?' be a better question?" he wondered mildly.
"I'll add that to the next draft," Josh said wryly.
"Seriously," he frowned. "Are they worried about me molesting him, or him molesting me?"
Josh gave a chagrined 'what can you do?' shrug. "I think it's just to make sure you're not going to be bowled over by his manly presidential magnetism."
He suppressed a smirk at the turn of phrase. "The president's a handsome guy, but he's a little short for me," he said dryly.
Josh shrugged. "Good enough for me." He made a lazy check-mark on his form.
Ash hesitated for a beat. "Manly presidential magnetism?"
Josh looked at him from under his eyebrows. "The job offer is conditional on you not mentioning I said that to anybody, ever."
"Ah." He nodded wisely.
The interview continued.