"Sarah, can I have a minute?"
She stopped, turning to backtrack towards her editor's office. "I'm going to be late for the three o'clock briefing if I don't leave now. You want me to come and see you after I get back?" The editor was new, had just taken over the week before.
"I'm sending Jeff," he told her, beckoning her into his office. "I think we've got to talk."
Sarah sighed and stuck her pen behind her ear. "Of course, sir. What can I do for you?"
He closed the door behind her and motioned for her to take a seat. "I know you've got connections, good ones. I need to know how good those connections really are."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"People talk. They've been talking a lot, Sarah, with the coverage you gave the thing and especially now that that Goldstein book's come out. I don't know if Danny didn't know about them or didn't care about them, but I need to know."
"Danny knew," she told him. "And if you know about Mark's book, then you've obviously heard about the Bartlet Legacy."
"What's next?" Josh asked softly, turning his gaze from person to person to survey all of those who had gathered around the big table in Manchester for what was probably the final time.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what's next? Where do we go from here?" Josh clarified, sitting back in his chair and letting his eyes wander back to the bottle of beer that sat in front of him.
"I still don't understand what you mean," Sam said. "We go home. Where else do we have to go?"
"I don't think he meant it literally," Margaret supplied softly, shredding a napkin into a neat pile. "I think he meant: where are we going from here?"
"You are not going to take this and twist it to some political advantage," Toby accused severely, standing in his indignation. "Not even you could be so callous, so unfeeling, so hard-nosed."
"You just said three things that mean the same thing," CJ pointed out quietly.
Josh had jumped to his feet as well. "I wasn't trying to make this a political discussion at all. I was trying to make what had originally appeared to be a fairly neutral, innocent, safe conversation."
"You did it too," Sarah broke in softly. "You said three things that all mean the same thing."
"Everyone, let's take a deep breath, calm down, and relax a little," Donna suggested. "It's been a tough day for everyone."
"You know what," Josh said, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking abashed. "I'm pretty sure all of those things are the same too." He looked over at Toby briefly, as if to check whether they were going to let the whole misunderstanding drop quietly.
Toby sank back down into his chair. "I think that they were three instructions with the same goal in mind; that doesn't necessarily mean that they all denote the same thing."
Josh sat back down, a look of relief passing over his face. They had buried a president today, a president who had been more than a close friend. They didn't need to break up friendships today too. Donna reached out to place her hand over her husband's reassuringly; across the table, CJ did the same with Toby.
"So, um, what do we talk about now?" Jack asked awkwardly, trying to break the uneasy silence. None of them wanted to talk about the one thing that was really on their minds. They didn't want to talk about the man they had just said their final farewells to.
"How about the fourteen standard punctuation marks in the English language?" Alex suggested softly. "Can anyone name them?"
"You really should be playing poker when you ask those sorts of questions," Sam pointed out.
"Or holding your staff hostage in the Oval Office at two in the morning," Josh added. "Although national parks seem to be a better topic for that. There are now fifty-two of them, you know."
At the passing mention of the Oval Office, Alex's eyes dropped to the table. It was a motion that didn't escape the notice of the sharp gazes of several of the gathered company. "Alex doesn't like to talk about the Oval Office," Mark noted innocently. "She avoids the mention of that one place almost religiously, which is rather difficult, considering."
"Considering what?" Leo asked after a moment, an odd look on his face.
"Considering that we were friends and students of a former president," Mark answered. "Why else?" He shrugged, confused as to why Leo would even further pursue the subject.
"I don't know if it's my place to say," he answered as Alex flashed him a smile of the utmost gratitude.
"Well, honestly, why else would anyone mention the Oval Office?" Mark continued, oblivious to the looks that were being exchanged around the table. "I mean, it's not like it comes up in conversation every day. But I don't get the aversion. It's not like a tenured position or anything where she might think she's jinxing herself."
"Go outside, turn around three times, and spit," Sam said instantly. He got more than a few quizzical stares, even from those who had been there. "I said, go outside, turn around three times, and spit."
Josh clued in and laughed. "I think it's still a little premature for that one, buddy. Save it for another fifteen or so years. Well, a little less if you count everything."
"Well, if you're counting everything, there's got to be some lead-in, one sort of office or another. You can't start from nothing," Toby added. "Do it, do it all," he told Mark.
"You want me to do what?" Mark asked, dropping his jaw and looking at them as if they had all completely lost their minds.
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"Go outside, turn around three times, and spit."
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Charlie said the words softly, walking from the kitchen as he watched Mark fumble with the laces on his shoes.
"How'd you know about that?" Mark asked, kicking off his shoes. "What's it for?"
"It's a type of counter-curse, or something," Charlie explained. "I don't know who came up with it or who started it, or whatever those things need to get going, but it was Bartlet for America, I think, and re-election for sure. Any time someone said something that anyone considered bad luck, they'd have to…" He waved his hands vaguely in circles in the direction of the door.
"Go outside, turn around three times, and spit?" Mark asked.
Charlie nodded. "What'd you say?"
Mark shrugged, completely at sea. "I don't even know. We were talking about Alex's freakish aversion to any mention of the Oval Office."
"Go outside," Charlie started.
"You're not going to do this again," Mark groaned. "It's cold outside. I'm not doing it."
"You wanna jinx it?" Charlie asked, motioning Mark outside. "Do it all."
"I don't even know what I'm jinxing!" he exclaimed.
"Make that the two of us," Jack said, trekking down the hall towards them. "But whatever I said, I've got to do that warped little ritual too."
"You'd both better get out there," Charlie warned. "I'm not sure if there's a time limit on these things."
"For Pete's sake," Jack moaned, slipping his feet into his shoes.
"Can you at least tell us what we're unknowingly jinxing so that we don't do it again?" Mark asked, bending over to retrieve one of his shoes.
"I really don't think that it's my place to say," Charlie responded. "I'm going to go back now. Make sure that you both do it all."
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"We don't even know what we're jinxing!"
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"And it's really cold out there," Jack complained, sinking back into his chair. "We don't want to have to go out there again. If you would just tell us what we're doing, we promise we won't do it again."
"It's really not our place to say," most of the people in the room chorused as one.
"You rehearsed that, didn't you?" Mark accused. "This is just all some sort of twisted little game for you, isn't it?"
"Well, we're not playing anymore. I don't care if you tell me to go outside, turn around twenty-seven times, and dance a hornpipe, I'm not doing it," Jack declared firmly, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Especially if no one's going to tell us why we're freezing our butts off and making ourselves look like idiots."
"Then you'd better not open your mouths for a while, boys," Leo told them. He gestured to Sam, Josh, and Toby. "Those guys are pretty sticky about that kind of thing."
"And it's not anyone's place to tell us why," Mark whined, dropping into his seat
"I bet that guessing only gets us more orders to do that stupid rite," Jack groused to Mark, effectively ignoring everyone else in the room.
"Probably," Mark pouted. But, of course, he never would have admitted that he was pouting. Real men didn't pout.