TITLE: Bills, Postcards, Marriage AUTHOR: Teanna (teanna@gatefiction.com) CATEGORY: CJ/T,T/Andi but not really either RATING: PG (I think) ARCHIVE: Wonderful, but ask first, thanks. DISCLAIMER: Not mine etc SUMMARY: They were married, once They were doing the bills, because, to her, that's important and you need a special time for that. Toby doesn't think so, but then again Toby has lost every election he's ever worked in and she's won all of hers, so her way is probably better. Andi knows, one day, he will use this in a fight, he will lash out at her and her three hours every fourth Sunday of the month, doing the bills. Planning the future. Andi twists her wedding ring; picks up the electricity bill. Toby's writing something on a pad, he's always writing something on a pad, he's always writing something, he used to write her but not anymore. "Then there is the -" she says, but is interrupted by the phone, ringing. She can't *not* see Toby's look of pure relief, he would rather just talk poll numbers than do this, with her. Theirs is such a wonderful marriage. He picks up the phone, "Hello?" and then, this smile, she sees her husband smile and it's been days since that happened and he's almost grinning. Whoever it is must be a great talker, because Toby, still smiling beautifully, is leaning back in his chair, crossing his ankles. He's nodding to the phone, which would look really ridiculous if it wasn't that she knows that, right now, he couldn't care less about what he looks like. Toby is grunting responses, Andi's thinking this person must really be a bore, she thinks this, but Toby's still looking really happy. She taps her pen against the table, impatiently. Toby, not looking at her, hears this, hears the pen tapping, and he turns away from her, as far as he can while still in his chair facing her, he's not even trying for subtlety. "CJ, I have to go. Yeah, yeah, *yeah*, I know. Yes. Ya." Ya? He never says "ya". But then again, this is *CJ*, the mysterious CJ, CJ who didn't show up at the wedding, just sent a picture of herself, somewhere in Mexico, arms around two men who looked like they were barely out of college, looking, all three of them, like some fashion magazine models. She had written, on the back, in big, girly round letters: "sorry toby but I had no real choice - this!!! or new york in winter!!! - call me". Toby just laughed at it, and it was one of the first things they disagreed on, CJ was there right from the start actually. Because Andi didn't think it was proper, and Toby just laughed. But that was a long time ago, and they used to be much better at disagreeing. Toby finishes his phone call, and she looks down at her hands, and picks up the electricity bill, writes down the numbers on her pad. She's not going to ask. They finish the bills, and he says, when he's standing up, he says in an offhand voice, as if this didn't matter, he says "CJ's coming to New York." And she just nods and tells him she'll have meetings all nights this week. --- When they met, and lived apart, he wrote her letters, and they were these long things, pages and pages of politics, declarations of love, quick sketches of his neighbours, his co - workers. And she spent hours and hours trying to match him, give him back word for word, get even. But he rarely said anything about her letters, he kept sending her his letters until she was choking from his words, they were filling her drawers and boxes and she would try all day to think of clever things to tell him when she wrote back. But he never said much about what she wrote him. Then, one weekend, they were at his place and he was writing, and he had envelopes and all, so it was definitively a letter. "Oh, is that how you do it?" she asked, and she was relieved. "Mm? Do what?" "You know... Writing." She gestured at the papers. "How you get the time... You write in advance." "What? Advance what?" She heard, in his voice, that she was mistaken, and she bit her lip. "Who... Who are you writing to?" "CJ." "Oh." Oh. CJ. So he kept this up with someone other than her. This was before she understood just how much it meant to him, to set his words to paper, how he needed to just write, and could be happy anywhere as long as he had a pen and a scrap of paper in his hands. CJ. CJ. CJ, who, she remembered then, wrote him postcards with one - liners, and mainly she wrote in some kind of code only she and Toby understood. The postcards were terribly tacky - Andi would comment on that, sometimes, about the pink sky over the Billings gas station, and Toby would just shrug - but sometimes the postcards were black and white and beautiful, stills of people or foreign places, and those made Toby all quiet for a while. She had, until that weekend, assumed Toby's replies to CJ were the same kind, that it was some old game of theirs, but she was wrong. Then, it didn't matter. Then, she could twine her arms around his neck and they would do things lovers do, then, he didn't care if she thought CJ's cards were tacky. Now, she didn't say anything about CJ, and neither did he. Until she called, that Saturday, and things, as things do, changed. --- He's out, and when he comes home finally the sun is rising and he's pleasantly drunk. Pleasantly drunk meaning horny and happy, and when he's inside her his breath against her mouth is stale and she can't breathe in more of it so she pushes him away, hard, and he rolls off her and falls asleep, at once, half - dressed, and she wonders what CJ, who looks so glamorous in all the pictures, what CJ sees in this little man. Then again Andi looks good in all the pictures, too, and she's thin and her hair is red and she's his wife after all. And yet, she's always a half - step behind Toby, behind this little drunk man with whiskey - breath and half - dressed and asleep where he fell. --- Once, David called, and Andi told him Toby was away, and David said "Is he with CJ?" and it sounded very odd, the way he said it, but then he said sorry, of course Toby wasn't with CJ, and could she please tell Toby to call when he was back. Toby was in Florida that week, not with CJ, not at all anywhere near CJ, she was still in California, but the way David said it, you'd think CJ was someone important. --- The next evening, as Andi again tells him she's busy and can't come with him to meet CJ, he looks at her and says: "It's important to me. That you meet her." But she says no, again, and he nods like a decision has been made, and she's suddenly afraid that she has agreed to something she had no intention of agreeing with. It seems CJ has a new job, and this year, she will be in New York from time to time, spending many nights in a hotel room, calling Toby if he isn't already there, hitting all the bars with him, always calling to get into long political debates when Andi needs the phone. Andi tells Toby she doesn't want him in her bed when he's drunk, and so he sleeps in the guestroom, mostly, even when CJ isn't there. Andi doesn't blame CJ for the fact that she and Toby aren't really speaking to each other anymore, because this started a long time ago, but she feels it doesn't help that CJ wants Toby with her as she drinks her nights away. --- One morning. "I think... Don't you think you and CJ are drinking too much?" He looks at her, and it's been a while. "We can handle it." "I think you should lay off it." "I see." Despite his unenthusiastic response, he stops drinking and CJ is in California and they try to repair their marriage. But then they fight, again, and when CJ comes to New York for a week they fall back into the old pattern; and then, one night, she waits up for him, and when he comes in, he's got her smell on him and Andi locks the door to her bedroom. She thinks, in her head she lines up all the men she could have sex with, all the men who would share her bed and be grateful Andi Wyatt would do this, with them. --- The last year of their marriage, CJ stays in California, and Andi sleeps with men she isn't married to. Toby stays in, doesn't drink, doesn't ask her if she's cheating on him. They are strangers, almost, sharing a flat and the bills, and both are waiting for the other one to make a move, to say "this is the end", but they don't. Then, one night in this the last year of a marriage, Andi comes home and CJ is in her kitchen, and she's tall and thin and glamorous, and Andi sees the insecurity in her eyes and suddenly CJ is just another woman, like Andi, not some unattainable statue Toby worships. And Toby's looking at her, at both of them, and Andi knows, just then, she knows, that she must be the one to say the words. "I want a divorce," she tells Toby, and CJ stands up and walks out of the kitchen, out of the flat, and Toby is playing with his glass. "You should have married her, not me," says Andi. "Maybe," says Toby then, and if she still loved him, that would have hurt, but now she just chalks it up as another thing on a long list, and moves on. And that's the end of a marriage. --- She wants to know, because they were married, once, and once, they talked about setting up college funds for their children, and so she can't help it, but it seems Toby and CJ aren't as close, after that night. She heals, but Toby still wears his wedding ring, and when they talk, he's careful. He calls her, once, and tells her he's going to be working with CJ again, so maybe they're fine. But this is much later, and she's not so interested. "That's nice," she tells him, "maybe you can work things out, between you. You could do worse, you know. Much worse." "I know," he says, and when she looks out the window, she sees Washington and not New York, and she's over him and over them and she knows that they never cared enough to really try, and so the end was fitting. *FINIS*