On The Road with Danny Concannon '04-'05: Charleston, South Carolina

"Claudia Everyday"

"But what was I supposed to do. Turn down an opportunity to serve the President of the United States who I believe in and adore? You just want to share it all with someone, you know."

C.J. Cregg –Faith Based Intuitive.

CJ held on to the grocery bag with one hand and tried to open the back kitchen door with her key. Her hands and body bobbled as she tried to hold onto the grocery bag and her purse strap fell slowly off her shoulder. In classic CJ style, she just about made it inside the house before anything fell, but almost lost everything. With a large breath that sent the hair over her eyes up and over her face, she set the bag on the countertop in the middle of the kitchen. She set her keys next to the bag with a clank and found herself tangled in her own purse strap. Squinting her eyes and flailing her arms to get herself out of her klutz entangled tryst with her own pocketbook, CJ looked like a spider caught in her own web. Finally getting herself free, she threw the pocketbook to the floor.

"Ahh!" CJ yelled and took a breath.

CJ took a step for the door only to notice her bracelet was now, somehow, attached to not only the threads of her jacket, but the weaving on the outside of the canvas bag.

"Tough day?" A red-headed girl with the look of twelve but the maturity of thirty stood at the food of the stairwell.

"Yes."

The red-headed girl walked over to CJ. "Stuck again?"

"Yes." CJ felt deflated as the girl tried to help untangle her.

"No, no—I'll get it."

"I left the door open—I left some bags in the car."

"Okay."

"No, come here."

"What?"

CJ tried to hug the girl, but realized she couldn't, for her right arm was the one attached to her coat.

"Come around, come around." She motioned with her head.

"This can't wait?" The red-headed girl said as she circled CJ.

"No—it can't—" CJ spoke as she held the girl to her chest and pressed her head on the girl's head. "I missed you."

"Me too." The girl smiled.

"Okay—go-" She let her arm up. "Wait—you did your homework."

"Yesss."

"Okay—go—." The girl ran off toward the stairs.

"The bags, Beth!" CJ yelled at her.

"Sorry!" The girl turned back around toward the back door.

"Thank you!….Where's your father?" CJ yelled as the girl left the kitchen.

"He had an interview!" The girl yelled.

"Great." CJ spoke under her breath as she continued to try and free herself from her self-made prison.

Beth brought in the remaining bags and took an apple from the center of the countertop and began to walk away again.

"Hey." CJ said in a quite pathetic voice. Bethany smiled at her mother, at how crazy she was, and took a walk toward her.

"I don't know how you ever left the house before I was born." She joked.

"No comments—that's your father's job." She said dryly.

"There." She smiled and let go of her hands to show that CJ was now free.

"Can I go roller-blading with Nancy?"

"How 'bout you unpack all these bags—and then you go roller-blading."

"Moomm!"

"Bethhhhenyyy." CJ joked back. "You wanna eat---I got food—unpack it." She joked with her daughter and looked around for the bags with the non-perishables.

"If I wanted to eat—I'd ask Dad."

CJ found two shopping bags as she heard her daughter's comments.

"Okay--" She paused. "That would be true." She smiled. "Unpack—I'll be right back and I'll help you finish." CJ left her daughter behind and walked into the living room holding the larger bag in her hands and the smaller bag on her arm.

"Nice place you got here, CJ!"

"AHHHGGGHHGHHGHGHH!" CJ dropped the bag in her arms with a crash and the other bag went flying toward the front stairs.

"Although, I'm not the biggest fan of chintz." Toby took a bite of an apple as he sat in the darkness of CJ's living room.

"Toby, what are you doing here!"

"Mom what happened!?" Bethany ran into the living room.

"Nothing---nothing, I'm fine." CJ looked down at her disaster. "Ahh---I just bought these." She looked at Bethany. "Can you get me a broom and a dustpan, sweetie?" The girl looked at Toby who was now standing before them.

"I know you?"

"Yeah." Toby paused. "I know you too." Toby took a bite of his apple.

Bethany paused and gave Toby her mother's look, which she always gave him, "I'm glad we had this chat." And she disappeared into the kitchen.

"She's so big."

"That tends to happen when people age." CJ spoke from the floor. Toby took a bite of his apple.

"You don't just do that---you don't just walk into someone's home and sit in the dark like some character from the Godfather."

"I like the Godfather." He swallowed the food in his mouth.

"Well, I don't." CJ stood up. "You shouldn't do that, ya know?"

"Well, You shouldn't leave the door open."

"Mom!" Bethany yelled from the kitchen."

"It's in the closet!" CJ yelled back.

"I don't see it---oh okay!" Beth's voice trailed off.

"So what has graced us with your presence?"

"Here." Bethany was back from the kitchen and handed her mother the dustpan.

"Thanks—" She took the dustpan. "Honey—you remember Toby—Toby's your godfather."

"I thought uncle Josh was my godfather."

"Well—he's your other one." She said with her own brand of guilt on Toby.

"Toby Ziegler." He introduced himself and Beth gave him a quick look over.

"Yeah—yeah—I remember you---I think I was six---you were thinner."

"You were shorter."

"Aren't you the guy who only won one political race in your entire life?"

"Ahhh…" Toby looked to the side and then forward again not believing and yet believing he was being insulted by a kid, only CJ's kid. "Yeah." CJ tried to hold in her laughter.

"Beth, baby, why don't you go over to Nancy's house."

"Okay." Bethany broke off and was gone.

"She's…. big." Toby said once she left.

"You said that." CJ looked up from her now crouched position as she used the dustpan to clean up the extra shards of glass and dumped them back in the bag with the rest.

"She looks just like you."

"Really—I think she looks like Danny."

"Yeah—I could see that."

"I can't believe how old she'd gotten." CJ lifted the bag up as she spoke.

"I can't believe I'm the father of two sixteen year olds."

"Yes, that is hard for me to believe." CJ walked back toward the kitchen as she spoke, but was stopped in her words as the bottom of the bag fell from under her next to the stairs. "Yeah—okay." She looked down at yet another disaster. "I'm just gonna leave that there." And she walked away from it toward Toby.

"You must be great at house work." Toby took a bite of his apple.

"I have my own secret." She looked up at Toby as he walked toward him. "It's called a housekeeper."

"What was this?" He looked down at the mess on the ground.

"It was a booowl." CJ looked at it in despair. "Let's have a drink." She opened the cabinet next to her with a crack.

Danny entered his house like the proud papa he had been for the last twelve years or so with CJ. He set his laptop by the door and his keys on the table.

"Hello!" He yelled through the house.

"In here!" He heard his wife's voice. He made his way though the foyer and into the living room, past the stairs, and toward the center of the room, eyeing the broken glass by the stairwell and the half-empty wine glasses on the coffee table.

"Do I wanna know about the glass by the stairs?" He motioned with his head behind him as he stood in the border of the darkness of the room and the light from the living room.

"I've decided to try decoupage."

"I see." He laughed and walked closer to her on the couch.

"It's part of my new journey into my artistic side." She stretched out on the couch, letting her long legs fill the length of it. Danny just looked down at her, thinking how amazing she looked.

"What? What?" She looked at him.

"What do you mean what?" Danny crawled on top of CJ.

"Danny!" She laughed as he playfully nibbled on her neck.

"Ohh…gross me out!" Bethany yelled from the door and ran off.

CJ and Danny looked toward where Beth had exited and broke into hysterical laugher.

"Tell me more about the dreams?"Dr. Abbey Jacobs asked Danny as he held the phone to his ear, sitting in an airport phone both for privacy.

"I wouldn't call them dreams—not anymore—I just day dream about her and then I work to not think of about her--- and then I can't sleep 'cause I'm up so late working and so I think about her—I think about her---I just can't seem to stop."

It was later in the evening and Bethany has gone to bed. Danny was busy tapping away at his laptop in the study he had built for himself off from the living room. He liked having a room for himself downstairs, and not upstairs, so he could work with sounds of his family around him.

"So, did I mentioned Toby stopped by today." CJ leaned against the doorway with a new glass of wine swishing around as she held it.

"Toby?" Danny turned from his chair. "Was here?"

"Yeah?"

"Toby, haven't seen him in five years, Toby."

"Yeah."

"Where has he been?"

"Looking for the new hope for the Democratic party."

"I mean other than that."

"I really mean it, Danny."

"He found someone."

"Yeah." She smiled. "And he really thinks this is the guy."

"He wants you to help him?"

"Yeah."

"Do you wanna go?"

"Yeah." She smiled.

"Then you should go." He stood up and walked toward her.

"I should go?" She said not really believing it.

"Why do I feel you're not as sure?" He took hold of her waist.

"I just." She lowered her head

"CJ."

"I told him---I don't do that anymore—I'm not in politics—I mean I don't work in politics—I talk about it—or I write about it—but not like that anymore."

"So just go listen to this guy—I'll go with you—we'll all go."

"No—see—no—this is why I can't get us entangled in all this."

"What, us?"

"Yes, us—It's a conflict."

"That shouldn't stop you, CJ—you gotta get over that. I'm not the problem—if you want to do this, you should do this—I don't want to stop you from doing something—you wanna do---I love you, Claudia."

"So why did you call me, Danny?" The psychiatrist asked him. She was like a disembodied voice in the darkness.

"I want help?"

"What kind of help Danny? You want to forget C.J.?"

"Claudia—we said we'd call her Claudia—makes me feel out of it."

"Okay—Claudia—do you want these sessions to help you forget Claudia?"

"No, no, I don't want to forget her."

"Then, what Danny? The first step is telling me what you want—I'm not your friend---I'm not some guy you drop in on, on your way in and out of town—If I'm gonna be your psychiatrist, you gotta be straight with me."

"I wanna stop feeling foolish—I wanna stop feeling this way—this pain—I feel if I didn't think she felt the same way---it'd be so bad…..but I won't know the truth for another damn year…. and I've always been a patient guy, but for the first time in my life I can't wait another day---I feel desperate and tired. I'm just…..I just need a rest. I'm tired of traveling---"

"Yet—you continue to travel?"

'Yes, I continue to travel."

"What are you really tired of Danny?"

"I'm tired of carrying all this inside. I want to be able to live with it—I'll always love her I know that….."

"When you dream, Danny—when you have these day dreams do you see the future or the present?"

"What'dya mean?"

"Do you dream about being with her now---do you see her now--or in the future?"

"Now---always now. I just see her now."

"You said you felt foolish? Why do you feel foolish, Danny?"

"I know—I don't….I feel foolish how I'm acting, what it's doing for me—when I'm sure it's not---if only I knew she was thinking about me too—that she dreamed of me—that she even thought about our future for one day—which again makes me feel foolish because there's no we—or our." Danny couldn't help ramble off again. "There is no us. And sometimes---just sometimes I wonder if that confidence I have---I had…." He blew off his last comment. "That sureness that she felt the same—still feels the same….. is just my imagination. I guess I just need a sign." He laughed, thinking of the last time he was told about signs.

"So you don't see her anyplace but the present?" Abby had to be sure one last time.

"No, I can never see beyond that."

"Just everyday things?"

"You just want someone to share it all with, you know." He paused. "Yeah, I just see her everyday……….. everyday."

"Danny?" CJ asked her husband. "Come with me?"

"On the job with Toby?"

"Yeah, Josh will be there---Sam—everyone—we can all be together again---like old times. You, me, Bethany—a family together."

"I can't CJ."

"Why?" She looked at him strangely.

"Cause I'm not really here." CJ looked at him with odd eyes as he walked closer to her. He didn't speak until their faces where just about touching. "But, then again this is your dream……. you can do anything you want."

"Ah!" CJ shot up from her seat, sending the briefing notes from her chest to the floor of her bedroom. She took her hand to her head as she realized her surroundings. She had fallen asleep reading.

Earlier, back from her date with Tommy at the Oval, her face beaming with a smile, she couldn't sleep. She had sat herself down with a few briefing notes, with the thought and taste of his kiss on her lips, thinking of the words she spoke to Leo that afternoon in her old office, never expecting to wake up with another man in her thoughts and in the pit of her stomach.