XV
"Sam! What did you- oh dear God, no, she got to you already."
"Hi, dad," Mallory said wryly. He gave her a look.
"Mallory, what did I tell you about enlisting my staff to conspire against me?"
She paused. "I don't think you did mention that one, actually."
"Fine. I'll write you up a list. Sam-"
"I'd like to make it perfectly clear that she bullied me into this," Sam put in hastily, raising his hands. Leo transferred the glare.
"What's interesting is that you think this somehow gets you out of taking responsibility for this."
"Your daughter ambushed me, lured me out of the White House on false pretences, and subjected me to reasoned and rational arguments," he attempted to excuse himself.
"It was a drastic step, but I felt forced," Mallory said.
"The answer is still no," Leo said, shuffling his paperwork in an attempt to cut off further argument. It was a tactic that worked very well on most employees, but, tragically, not so much on daughters.
"Dad, you're being unreasonable."
"It's one of my more useful qualities, Mallory."
"Leo, I had lunch with Brandon Foxton." Sam launched into the argument he'd known would be coming. "He's a good guy."
"Well, that's nice for him, but being a good guy doesn't buy you a ticket to the State of the Union. And I'm not happy about you having lunch with this guy when I'm specifically trying to keep him off the White House credibility radar," he added warningly.
"That would be the part where the luring under false pretences came in," Sam explained.
"Good, 'cause I was worried about that," he said sardonically.
"Dad, he's not going to cause trouble!"
"Quite true, largely owing to the fact that's he's not going to be there at all."
"Leo, you really ought to at least talk-"
"I will not sit down and talk with a radio host who just attacked our VP about attending the State of the Union!" he snapped.
"Fine," said Mallory.
"Good!" he said.
"In that case? Dad, I'd really like you to come with me and meet my new boyfriend."
Leo lowered his head into his hands. "I'm not going to get a moment's rest until I agree to this, am I?"
"No."
"No."
He glowered at Sam. "Did I invite you to-?"
"I'll just... go and do some work," he said hastily.
"Smart man."
Sam fled the office. Leo sighed, and stood up. "Okay, Mal. Tell me where you've got this guy hidden, and I will talk to him. Just- talk to him."
Mallory smiled sweetly. "Daddy, that's all I ask."
"Did I train you to be this evil?" he wondered, as she linked her arm through his.
"I learned by following your example."
"Ah." He allowed her to lead him out.
"CJ!"
She looked up, and then stood with a smile. "Ma'am! Good to see you. We weren't expecting you back until tomorrow."
The First Lady smiled back, and closed the door behind her as she entered. "I decided to fly back incognito. How's my husband been?"
Coming from the First Lady, she knew the question wasn't just a formality. It had been a rough few weeks - months, even - and she paused to consider the point honestly. "Better," she was relieved to be able to say. "I don't think it's just being over the cold. He hasn't seemed so depressed lately."
Abbey gave a self-satisfied nod. "You know what it's down to, of course."
"You heard he named the cat Buster?"
"There are reasons we always let the kids pick names back on the farm," she noted.
"The finest journalistic minds in Washington are currently dissecting it for political relevance."
"Slow news day?" the First Lady wondered dryly. CJ sighed.
"We should be so lucky."
"The Hoynes thing?" Abbey guessed shrewdly.
"That and others," she admitted.
"My husband needs someone he trusts at his back. He likes a lot of people, but he doesn't trust easily. You can replace John Hoynes with the finest, least troublesome, most politically advantageous candidate you can find, but if Jed doesn't think that the Vice President's got his back..."
CJ nodded. John Hoynes might be nobody's ideal Vice President on paper right now, but he was the one that they had, and he'd proven he could step into the breach in a crisis. It might be politically easiest to show him the door... but sometimes, you had to step outside the politics, and remember what, come the bottom line, you needed a Vice President for.
"It's gonna be a tough sell," she admitted.
Abbey smiled. "You put a man who once fell in the same ornamental Koi pond twice in one day in the Oval Office. I have faith in your ability to make tough sales."
CJ straightened up, and grinned in return. "Yes, ma'am," she said.
It sometimes seemed to Josh that the more there was going on in the White House, the less he actually had to do. He was there to hound, prod, harass, cajole, persuade and occasionally bribe people into doing what they were supposed to. When something big like the State of the Union was imminent, everybody inside the administration was busy working on it, and everybody outside put off troublemaking until afterwards so they wouldn't have to compete for media attention.
Which left him at rather a loose end.
After Donna finally lost patience with him bugging her, he wandered down to communications, skirting CJ's office on the theory that annoying the press secretary could wait until he'd made sure there were no easier targets in the area.
As it happened, one presented itself.
"Hey, Sam."
The Deputy Communications Director was frowning over something on his laptop; Josh could tell from the expression that it was a piece of his own writing he was cynically contemplating. It took him a moment to slip out of the trance and look up with an inquisitive smile. "Hi. What's going on?"
"Curiously little. I was going to go and annoy Leo, but it turns out Mallory already has that covered."
"So you thought you'd come and annoy me?" He sat back from his work.
"Yeah. What are you writing?"
"The State of the Union."
Josh blinked. "Okay, that's not something that should have been finished, say, sometime before we gave it to the president to learn?"
"It's finished," Sam confirmed with a short nod. His gaze dropped back to the laptop screen, and the pensive frown returned. "This is a redraft."
"It's the State of the Union, Sam. We don't usually release a director's cut."
"Toby wants us to get more aggressive with it."
"Toby wants many things, Sam. If we gave him everything he wanted, he'd be miserable." Toby was never quite so lost as when he had nothing to rant and rave about.
Sam's forehead creased unhappily as he contemplated his words. "Yeah, but... he's right."
"He usually is. Sam-"
"I know, I know." He sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just a draft. What we could have said."
Josh pulled a face. "Okay, but you're going to write it, and then you're going to get itchy that we're not using it, even though you knew when you starting writing it we weren't gonna use it. And then you're going to sulk." Sam was one of the few adult human beings to whom that word could be seriously applied.
"It won't make any difference," he refuted, with a tired shrug. He looked up at Josh, and smiled softly. "I don't have to have the right words written down to know when we're saying the wrong ones."
Josh didn't have an answer to that, so he just moved towards the doorway, and lingered until Sam started typing again.