Title: It's a long way down Author: Penelopody (penelopody@hotmail.com) Categories: CJ/Toby, PG, Post-admin Disclaimer: Yep. A lotta Sorkin, a little Woodford Spoilers: Debate Camp. Thanks: Sab and Abby said some things aloud. august, another juxtaposition, and luna worked their magic and made it better than it would have been (though there was some sort of a "when betas dissent" tv special being filmed and what one loved another hated. august said "you have to decide which of us you love the most" but I'm walking a fine line between all of them because they are so pretty.) Summary: No one says goodbye any more. * I. Thought they'd seen the last of long ago The buzzer buzzes and she remembers where she is. * Her apartment way up on the twenty fifth floor. All living/dining pressed up against acid-washed skies. She looks out across a city day and night and fifteen million smiling actors' faces. Her life. "We'll get it in the Times. None of the others matter," into one phone as another rings though it's still Sunday by her estimation. "Believe me." No one says good-bye anymore, not here, maybe not since BJ gave up and wrote it in giant stones on the ground for Hawkeye to watch and leave behind. That was decades ago. "What was it like, Korea?" "I wasn't there 'til seventy-six." "And?" "I played a lot of poker." She's started watching M*A*S*H again, in between phone calls. When she watches she thinks of him amongst the shrapnel and he's skinnier and funnier and (always) braver. Her life is one giant leap backwards. * But she can't remember if they were ever friends. He'd never had much hair. He'd never said anything she wanted to hear. He stood in a meeting room to tell her that his sometime-wife was pregnant. She thought, a joke, funny ha-ha, funny like fish. Because she couldn't imagine him with a kick'n'play anything. Or one of those ponies on blue plastic wheels. Or with his wife, to be honest. It wasn't until he said, apologetically, "she's hell to share a bathroom with," that she believed him. When everything was over and done she finessed her way into the H-car contract and apartments in LA, Tokyo, The Hague because she could use words like accountable and protection as though she meant them. The world called the H-cars "Hydros", on her advice. "No one's afraid of a little water". She sleeps in a waterbed. * There's a man (not a stranger) on a treadmill and sometimes in her apartment. He's imaginative but tonight all sweat and longing and pant,pant,pant underneath his Rolex so she fakes it for him. He believes what he wishes to believe. Then, "I'll see you tomorrow?" he asks. Though he lives only three floors below. She wonders if she should let him down easy. She has a vibrator. * The buzzer bu- Hard to recall the lightning moment of waking. Can't find feet, head, the door. She blinks. It's dark. She's not hungover. Last time she truly drank she dialed his number from memory. He'd moved. She doesn't drink for fear she might find him in the alcohol fog but her sleep's the sleep of the innocent since the world doesn't lay so heavy on- The buzzer buzzes(again?). And she remembers where she is. * He looks exactly the same. He looks like he wants to say "I was in the neighborhood." He looks like he wants to apologize. He doesn't. "Andi kicked me out." "So you got on a plane?" "Yeah." "To California?" He shrugs, frowns. "Okay." Okay. "You want coffee? Or something stronger?" No tan, no Rolex. They stand above the waking city and, of course, he kisses her. She steadies herself against the kitchen counter. She thinks, t h i s. This is not my responsibility. *** II. Call it an imaginary friend She tries not to think about his family. Doesn't call him at home. (He went back. Or never really left.) Still, she imagines his wife's voice, imagines, "You've reached the deliriously happy couple and our exceptionally gifted sons." The boys are almost ten, called Jonathan and Daniel. Jonathan likes some sort of toy called a Nanomite. Daniel broke his arm in a rocket-launcher- on-the-roof accident. They're smart. And he thinks the world of them. She doesn't know whose last name they use. He calls from the plane and she finds that voice with the laugh in it. "You're calling now? Sometimes I have, you know, actual things to do. With actual people. I'm a busy woman, buster." She feels cheap (and possibly like someone from the 1940s) until he says, quietly, "I'm sorry." And she imagines the suited man in seat 24B glancing across as he says it. Though really, she feels sort of cheap any time he's not in the room. "When will you be here?" * Late. It's her apartment and dark on the twenty-fifth floor so no one can see in. Still, she catches him looking over her shoulder at the blank black windows and it's a reminder. He flinches when her phone rings. She turns it off, pretends the rest of the world doesn't exist. Paul Simon is singing about French people with French names and a dog. He pulls out a box. Oddly formal. "Please accept this, uh, token as a- um-" "Token?" she offers. She is wary. "Quite. As a token of my regard." He frowns. Hands it over, wishing he'd scripted himself. She opens the box and shining there's a heavy silver bracelet. "It's a tha" He's going to say thank you. It's heavy and lovely and it's an apology. It might be an insult. "It came out wrong. I didn't mean it this way," he says because he knows. It's the least he can do and he did it all wrong. Which says something. "What did you mean?" He looks at the floorboards. Sighs. "You're beautiful." He's frustrated because he sounds insincere and he isn't, because he maybe loves her and still, this is all there is. He bought her a pretty gift and so. She puts it on. She wears it always. Grows accustomed to its shine and weight. Reassured. But his mouth tightens a little to see it. * He's right. She is beautiful. There are mirrors and then her bones and everyman's eyes. Each time she opens her door to him she knows he's not enough to justify this. She's beautiful. Funny and brave and respected and so fucking tall it's a joke. And she's second or fourth or nineteenth in line for his time. But when he argues with the television he's almost always right. And in the dark he's inarticulate, amazed. Then she wakes to find him scrawling on ruled paper while the kettle shrills at him from the kitchen. She doesn't ask what he's writing but mutters, "Can you turn that thing off?" He smiles to hear her. Then notices the kettle. "You got tea?" he asks. She opens one eye and looks at him dubiously. "I'm supposed to cut down on caffeine, or something," he says. She has the sense not to ask who initiated this. "Look above the stove," she says. He comes back with strong black coffee in two mugs. She sits up in bed, watches the unchanging sky through the steam from her mug and listens to him muttering irritably. When he chuckles aloud she smiles widely. She loves him. And forgets all the ways he's not enough until the next time she opens the door to him and he's short-tempered and nearly bald and married. He pulls his tie off and tosses it over his bag. She's never seen that shirt before. And something sinks inside. *** III. Too far to walk home But. Three blank weeks of "Sorry I missed you," and no reply. When he turns up on her doorstep without having called she says, in a pre- emptive strike, "so, you're breaking up with me." He pauses, looks past her into the apartment. When he says, "no." she knows he's lying. She closes the door behind him. Whiskeys poured and ice. She's lost some weight and everything seems thin. She swallows, counts to maybe six and says, "It's okay." He looks at his hands, reaches for hers. "No." And quietly, "I love you." His bones hang heavy on hers. So she gets to keep him. * She calls him cab after cab, ensures he doesn't miss the flight home. In her apartment just his toothbrush. A pale blue shirt. Once a space pen from the Smithsonian. From the plane. "The boys got it for me." "I hear it writes upside down." "We should take a trip. Drive somewhere," he says. She smiles. "You hate this coast." "What's east of there?" "The desert." "I hate the desert," he says. "Alaska?" she suggests. A ping as the "Fasten Seatbelts" sign flicks on. And maybe he just felt it something he should offer. * Because it's already over. And there's nothing to lose save a day or a week. A month. They should say goodbye, they say everything else. And they see each other after dark so there's only the space between two bodies to fill. They talk about public policy and war. "Two Americans died in Korea in '76." "I know, I was there." "Did you know them?" "Slightly." But he speaks at length (with ferocity) about the conflict in Brazil, about soldiers and civilians. So she knows it's not the thought of death that stops his speech. As for hers? Time and again, she opens her mouth hoping to be the one to say it's over. She has the words prepared. She just doesn't want him to leave. * And in the end she doesn't expect it. So when he says. "CJ. It's- I can't keep on doing this," it feels swift and sour in her stomach. He says, "I love you. So much. And I can't-". There are tears in his eyes, black and wet, unexpected. He's crying here, her apartment, because he can't grieve for this anywhere else. She says, too, "I love you." The words ring false and she wants to take them back. Rinse and repeat. Though she does love him. She hands him a tissue, watches him as he wipes his eyes, awkwardly. She walks across the room and leans against the window. The city is behind her and below her and alwaysalways around her. Millions and millions of people, just outside. He was the only one she chose. "I was too late," she says eventually. And she doesn't feel like an actor. "I'm sorry." She says, "Please" and "go." She closes her eyes. And the door swings shut between them. She turns to rest her forehead against the glass and looks down and down. The entrance to her building is far below and people are shuffles and streaks of color on the sidewalk. She never sees him leave. * end.