"You both would have loved reading this," Margaret said sadly, reaching out a finger to trace the name carved deeply into the headstone. "Mark, he did well with it. And what's more than that, I think that he did good. He reminded people the way that things should be. And hopefully he helped them trust politicians again."
Her fingers played over the sun-warmed stone. "Leo McGarry," she chided softly, "why couldn't you have waited another five years? You would have appreciated the irony. But this is the book that you were waiting for, despite the timing. I know you thought that Toby would do it, but he was too close. We all were."
"There's a call for you on line three, Mr. McCosham," the aide said, knocking politely on his door. She wasn't his usual one; his usual was out sick with the flu. This was some loaner from one of the Delaware Congressmen that wasn't quite used to how a bigger office was run.
Jack sighed and lowered the memo he had been reading. Patiently he asked her, "Can you take a message and tell them I'll get back to them?" She tucked her hair nervously behind her ears, nodding. Jack was going to let her hurry out, but then he had a thought. "Did they say who was calling?"
"She said her name was Alexandra Cunningham."
"I'll take the call now," Jack told her, putting down his briefing memos and hitting the flashing button eagerly. "You've got Jack McCosham."
"Hey," she said quietly over the crackling of the static; the connection was bad so he knew she was calling from her cell phone.
"Hey yourself," he answered, leaning back in his chair. "What's up?"
"Not all that much. I just… I just wanted to call and…" She stopped. "I just wanted to call."
"Okay," he responded simply, by now used to her eccentricities. "It's an awfully expensive call for just wanting to call. Your long distance plan sucks." If she was calling from her cell phone he knew that she must be out on the campaign trail again.
"I know."
"Real talkative today, aren't we?"
He heard her sigh over the line and wished that he could fix whatever it was that was going wrong. "You must be busy; I'm sorry for disturbing you," she told him.
It was a familiar avoidance tactic and he knew exactly what she was trying to do, even if he wasn't always sure quite why. "Alex, it's noon. I'm eating my lunch." So what if the last part wasn't exactly true. "Calm down and tell me what's up." He took his last promise to Jed very seriously; he looked out for Alex now.
"It's not what's up that worries me, Jack."
"Then tell me what's down." But he had a pretty good guess what was down; it was probably the polling numbers that they all followed religiously and tried not to let get to them. "Or rather, tell me how far down they've gone," he added after a moment when she still hadn't answered.
"My numbers are good; I tend to think they're a little soft, but at sixty-one I've got room for them to be a little soft."
He whistled softly, knowing full well that she hated it when he did that over the phone. "Sixty-one," he said, dragging out the words. "Considering Rhode Island doesn't have the greatest record for electing women, especially to the House, that's damn good."
He half-expected some wisecrack, but instead she asked, "Did you get a phone call today?"
It was an odd question and it was even stranger that she didn't bother to chastise him for the whistle. "I'm the deputy chief of staff for the House Minority Leader and we're trying to make it Majority Leader," he answered lightly. "My phone has been dead silent all day."
"Margaret called." There was something about the way she said that simple statement that instantly stopped the flow of his words.
"Oh, God," Jack breathed, "Leo." And suddenly he understood why she had called him.
"Don't panic," she told him. "She just said that he was down with a bad chest cold."
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "Don't scare me like that Alli." He had taken to calling her that in the past few months and Alex found that she didn't mind at all. Usually she hated the childish nickname.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's the same chest cold that he's had since Christmas."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You mean it's the same one he had when he gave Joan his coat at Sam's thing at the Governor's mansion so she wouldn't get her dress wet? He swore up and down that it was nothing."
"That's what he told me too," Margaret answered. Donna could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "But the cough lingered and he kept making excuses for it: just clearing his throat or swallowing the wrong way. He had a regular check-up yesterday and his doctor wants to run more tests. He didn't want to say anything until he had more information."
"Did you talk to Abbey?" She was their usual first source of information when their doctors didn't tell them as much as they wanted to know.
"She didn't say much of anything. She mumbled something about walking pneumonia and old men who didn't know when to listen to their bodies. She said that she'd be up some time tomorrow."
"She's flying into LaGuardia?" Donna was reminded of the hurried flight back to the White House that Abbey had made when Jed collapsed before the State of the Union.
"Yeah, she was planning to come up some time next week for a few days, but thought that she'd come up now and bully Leo into listening to his doctors," Margaret explained calmly. "I'm almost glad. It took me almost ten years to get him to finally start eating healthy. And I know that's only when I'm around."
Donna laughed. "I still haven't managed to break Josh. I know that he keeps cookies hidden on the top shelf of his closet. I'm biding my time until I confiscate them and replace them with something else."
It was Margaret's turn to laugh. "Try rice cakes," she suggested.
"You're good, Margaret."
"I try," she answered. "It was nice to talk to you, but I've got to run. I'll keep you posted on what the doctor says."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Thanks."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"'Thanks' is all that I get?" Mark teased. "I call you up special and drop a story on your lap despite the fact that you and your editor have serious Democratic tendencies that you can't manage to hide even though you Democrats don't really control anything at the moment, and 'thanks' is all I get?"
"You know as well as I do that you wouldn't want a conservative paper writing this sort of thing when it's an outreach to the conservative wing of the Democratic party and the liberal wing of the Republicans," Sarah retorted.
"Well, that's beside the point," Mark said, a little deflated. "There are other liberal-leaning papers. And most of them are more outspokenly liberal than the Post. I still called you up to deliver it to your lap."
"Those papers are hardly on good terms with the current White House and they'd go too far and alienate the people you're trying to court while giving ammunition to the people you're trying to oppose. And at the same time cutting the legs out from under you with the people who do support you," Sarah pointed out.
"You've been listening to Jack and Alex," Mark accused. "And you've done a good job of it by the way things sound. When you first started covering the White House you wouldn't have picked up half of that stuff."
"Probably not," Sarah admitted. "But I'm a reporter, not a keen political mind. Plus, Jack prepped me before you called. He saw the agenda it seems like every Republican candidate up for re-election is running on and put two and two together."
"At least this time he didn't get five," Mark snorted. "This is a step up from the last time with the education bill."
"Now, Mark," Sarah said patiently, "we were just a bunch of friends talking that night. You know that I'm off the record with you guys whenever I'm either not at work or haven't specifically stated it. Jack doesn't take whatever you say and start planning strategy. And you don't go and get on the phone with leading members of Congress to swing key votes."
Mark sighed. "I know. You do realize that you're in the best of both positions right now. You've got friends on both sides of the aisle in positions that are none too shabby."
"Oh, but to not have a code of ethics that prevents me from shamelessly exploiting the situation for all that it's worth," she sighed with mock resignation. "What I wouldn't give to be a wanton aspirant."
"You know, you're really bad at that," Mark laughed. "Don't try Hollywood, ever."
"There go my dreams," she sighed melodramatically. "I'll just go find some closet to pine away and die in."
"Try to find some place more regal than a closet if you're going to do that." Mark paused for a second, then asked, "We're still on for this weekend's Celtics' game, right?"
"Yeah. Although why you want to drive all the way to Boston just for a basketball game is beyond me," Sarah sighed, for real this time.
"Because they're playing the Bulls. You've got the two best teams in the NBA playing one another within travelling distance, and I've got courtside tickets. Why wouldn't I go?"
"Sometimes I think that I've almost got it and then…"
"Well, if you don't want to go, Leo said that he'd come with me." Mark played his trump card easily. He knew that come Friday afternoon, Sarah would be sitting in the front seat of his car and they'd be on the road to Boston.
"Yeah, but then you'd have to follow Margaret's advice and lay off the nachos and cheese," Sarah countered. She knew that Saturday evening she'd be sitting in a courtside seat watching the Celtics and the Bulls battle it out.
"What time are they expecting us for supper on Friday?"
"I said that we'd find a place to eat on the way. Leo's got some blood tests and stuff at the hospital in the afternoon and this way Margaret doesn't have to worry about preparing a huge meal, like you know that she would."
"Sounds good. What time are you done?"
"As soon as the Press Secretary puts the lid on after the three o'clock briefing."