All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Title/lyrics by Beautiful South. Please send feedback. Don't Marry Her, Fuck Me Violet
Your love life shines like cardboard
But your work shoes are glistening
She's a PhD in 'I told you so,'
You've a knighthood in 'I'm not listening...'
Ann doesn't know anything about bourbon. She should probably learn, but it's easier to sit back smiling and hold up two fingers when someone else orders. That doesn't work when she gets there first. She picks Crown Royal because she likes the shape of the bottle, on the rocks because she's always liked to say that. It smells like vanilla and slides down her throat like liquefied silk.
She's nearly finished, savoring the way the whiskey brightens as the ice melts, when Toby walks up to the chair facing hers. He shrugs his coat off. His tie is ugly, a sewer shade of brown, but the shirt looks like money. He speaks, as usual, without preamble. "It's idiocy."
"What's idiocy?"
"Your guys." He brings the knuckles of his right hand down on the pine tabletop. "Roadblocking the Americans with Disabilities Act. Just to be cute."
She scoffs, leaning back in her chair. "Yeah, Toby, that's what my guys do. I've got the entire Republican party lined up against a major policy initiative in an election year, just to be cute. You mean it isn't working?"
"Not so much." He looks her over, eyes dark as dark chocolate, and she knows her own expensive shirt isn't wasted. His fingers drum on the arm of his chair. "You seem to be doing well."
"Two weeks to go." She flashes a smile. "Walsh is up by thirty points in the 25th, we'll get the 19th, and the Senate race is a coin toss. We've pretty much got this state by the short hairs."
"But you won't--" Toby begins, but swallows whatever he wanted to say as the waiter walks up.
His name tag reads 'Fernando,' and he stared down Ann's blouse when he brought her first drink. She beams at him. "I'd like another."
"You have Booker's?" Fernando nods, and Toby nods back in a way that makes Ann wish she'd let him order for her. "Straight up."
"Make it a double," she says. "You have to keep up with me."
He looks at her, fingers teasing the corner of his napkin while he makes up his mind. "Sure." As Fernando walks away, Toby adds, "So what's your problem with Americans with Disabilities?"
She shrugs, face deadpan. "Most of them don't get out to the polls."
The sound he makes is either a groan or a strangled laugh. "You're sick."
"You knew that." Fernando drops off their drinks and she raises her fresh glass. "What are we drinking to?"
Toby picks his glass up and inhales over it. The faintest quirk of a smile appears under his beard. "Democracy?"
"Funny, I really prefer good old fascism." She's already tired, from sleep deprivation, from the effort of bantering. She decides to skip the ritual toast and drink to nothing.
He turns his glass slowly and precisely in his hands. "Yeah, I could tell that from--"
"I was joking, Toby. Get a sense of humor." She yawns, arching her neck deliberately, letting her hair swing over her shoulders. Then she looks him in the eyes. "So, how is she?"
"Andrea's fine." He pronounces her name carefully, like a magic word. "She's kicking Vito Fossella's ass, by the way. She's--" He checks his watch. "Going over direct mail now. But it's pretty much in the bag."
She drinks some more bourbon; it seems to be disappearing as fast as her patience. "I heard around that you were getting married."
"Yeah." He doesn't sound scared, or excited, only vaguely surprised. He stares into his drink, and she allows herself to frown a little when he's not looking.
"Congratulations," she says. "So why aren't you, I don't know, helping her go over direct mail?"
He takes his first drink then, a long, careful sip, and holds it in his mouth for a few seconds. Before he swallows, she eases her foot out of her Manolo Blahnik and grazes her toe against the inside of his knee. His cheekbones redden very slightly, as faintly as his smile. "I make her nervous," he says. "That's a good drink."
She tilts her head and does the toe trick again. "You make her nervous?"
His hand twitches slightly as if he wants to reach under the table. He grips his napkin instead. "Only when I'm awake."
"Well, all due respect, Toblerone"--she points the rim of her glass at him; he's not due much--"You don't sound particularly thrilled with her either."
"I'm thrilled." With a sour expression, he pushes back from the table. "I ought to call, in fact."
As he walks away, she reaches across the table for his drink. It's darker than hers, closer to copper than amber. She doesn't bother with the nose, just downs a mouthful. It tastes like tobacco smoke, like coffee. Ann's seen Andrea Wyatt around: spots on the local news, handshakes at Gracie Mansion. Pretty, she remembers; decent hair and a dainty face. Nice legs, no tits. The second swallow of the Booker's tastes like sex. It's much better and stronger than the Crown Royal.
Toby comes back, looking annoyed even before he notices his drink's half gone. He drops back into his seat. "What'd I miss?"
"Me," she declares, stroking the underside of her chin.
"Pity."
"He thinks so." She waves at Fernando, who's resumed staring at her from a safe distance. He hustles immediately to bring them refills, and she giggles.
Toby's eyes are steady on hers as he drinks, faster now, getting serious. "So, yeah. Your man's going to win the Senate seat."
"Which leaves you out of a job." She's getting lightheaded; she takes a deep breath to ground herself. "How're you going to pay for your high-flying lifestyle?"
He clears his throat. "Members of Congress make a hundred and forty grand a year."
"You'll spend that much on the wedding," she says.
"Fuck that." He laughs, with a sudden bitterness that both startles and reassures her. This is vintage Toby. "Justice of the Peace."
She nods slowly. "Romantic."
"Fuck that too."
"Okay." Her third drink is, oddly enough, almost finished. She looks past him, through the luminous room to the hallway where the pay phones are. "Trouble in paradise?"
"We haven't..." He struggles with his words, and she wonders at his confessional tone. He really must have nobody to talk to. "She's campaigning. We haven't had a lot of time."
She knows her cue when she hears it, and she places her foot back in his lap, rests it there, applying pressure. "Maybe that's why you make her nervous. You take some getting used to. You're an acquired taste."
He finishes his drink with a small sigh. "And you've acquired me?"
"Yeah." She nudges his hard-on lightly with her toes for emphasis. "I think I have."
With unexpected speed, his hand swoops below the table and catches her ankle. He pulls her foot forward, and the warmth of his touch tingles through her. He digs his fingertips in against her tendons, hard enough that it hurts. "I'm gonna need more bourbon," he says.
She has one too, wondering whether her four drinks beat his three doubles, suspecting by the brittle look in his eyes that they do not. They drink this round in silence, but she keeps her foot in subtle motion, careful not to jostle the tabletop with her knee.
"She's kind of living with me," he mutters when his glass is empty.
She raises her eyebrows over her last sip. "Kind of?"
"Her shit's all over the bathroom," he explains. "But she's not, we're not usually there at the same time."
It's a stupid, obvious question, but she has to ask it. "So why did you ask her to marry you?"
He touches his forehead with his free hand. "She's... interesting."
"Lots of people are interesting. I'm interesting." He grinds his thumb against her instep, and she wiggles involuntarily in her seat. "Liz Taylor's interesting."
"Liz Taylor wouldn't be any good at defending the First Amendment. And she wouldn't marry me."
"Why not? She's married everyone else." She licks a film of alcohol off her lower lip. "I gotta tell you, Toby, those are lousy criteria for a wife."
"Yeah," he says, with a trace of sadness. "Can we, can we stop talking about Andi now?"
The nickname throws her for a moment, and she looks down at the tabletop. "What do you want to talk about?"
He shrugs. "The First Amendment?"
"You can have it," she decides. "Just give me the Second."
The bitter laugh again, and he stands up, grasping the table's edge for support. He takes out his wallet. "Okay, the hell with this. Let's get out of here."
Ann wonders how she knew it would be all right, how she knew she wasn't wasting her money by booking a room upstairs. But there's a warning in his face, and in his hands, which stay too long and too heavy on her shoulders as he helps her into her coat. In the elevator, he tugs her skirt up, strokes her almost too forcefully for pleasure. She knows him well enough to hold her questions.
As the room's door clicks shut, she has his terrible tie in her teeth, and he's tearing thread and satin and nylon to get to her skin. He spills her purse all over the floor to find the silver square inside. She rips it apart and clothes him in one slick motion, the dry latex smell mingling with the moisture of sweat.
Beds belong to girlfriends, or fiancées; they end up on the floor. Toby has her bent halfway over the ottoman, runs his teeth along her shoulder blade while she talks dirty to him. The striped upholstery blurs before her half-closed eyes. She holds on to the edge. After a while the plush carpet turns to sandpaper under her knees. Her teeth chatter, loud as the rhythmless, painful pounding in her head. He's not gentle, no gentleman, and she's glad.
He's fucking the alcohol out of her, burning it off in the flow of sweat and saliva and blood. One of his hands twists between her legs, the other is flat on her back to keep her down. He drives further, faster. She lets go to reach back and clutch at his thigh, pulling him to her, and she comes like a cough, a seizure, an earthquake. As her head clears, he jerks inside her, pushing forward with all his weight. He crushes her shaking body with his own for a few seconds, and then he pulls away.
While he's in the bathroom cleaning up, she gathers her clothes, remembering jeans that ended up in tatters last October. Her blouse gapes over her bra, and her stockings are irredeemable, but it will do. She expects him to shuffle back into the room, downcast and guilt-stricken, facing the floor. He looks her in the eye instead, and it's much worse.
She yanks the hem of her skirt into place. "You gotta go?"
"Yeah. No." He scratches his chin, zips his fly, and lets his hands fall idle. "I'm thirsty."
"There's water."
He glances behind him, then turns back to her with a slow shake of his head. "Mm." So he holds out her coat and puts on his own, and they get their shoes and walk out to the hall as if the night is still young.
They stagger a few blocks to a package store to spend the last of his money, Booker's and Crown Royal metamorphosing into good old Brand X. He opens the bottle with her keychain on the way back, and they drink surreptitiously from the paper bag, like teenagers or outlaws, laughing. They could almost be a couple, almost hold hands and sway into each other. Ann watches herself in the mirrored doors and is reminded of all the questions she hasn't asked yet.
She flings herself backward on the hotel bed. He takes his coat off again and she kicks away her shoes, crossing her legs, knowing and not caring that she's showing him all she's got. "Have you set a date?"
His automatic glare dissolves with another swig from the bottle. "Sometime after." He waves a hand unevenly and sits on the edge of the bed. "And before the swearing-in."
"That's soon." She takes the bourbon from him. It tastes like bleach.
"Bachelor party," he says, spidering his hand over her bare knee. "You gonna move to Washington now?"
"Yeah," she says, contemplating the prospect as if she hadn't been there a million times. She pictures herself in the middle of a postcard, surrounded by marble columns and monuments to dead white men. A far cry from this. "You?"
He snorts. "If I wanted to be interviewed, I'd get drunk and fuck Larry King."
As he says it, he ducks his head like he's waiting for the axe to fall. It makes her restless, reckless, even more than alcohol can. She raises herself on her elbows. "You moving to Washington or not?"
He takes the bottle back. "Maybe part time."
"You haven't planned?"
"We've been busy."
She laughs and puts her hand over his, stabbing her fingernails into the soft spots between his fingers. "So why'd you ask her to marry you?"
"I told you." Smirking, he pulls his hand away to wipe his mouth. The crinkly look doesn't conceal the hollows under his eyes, or the uncertainty behind them. "We're in love, we're engaged," he hums.
She sits up the rest of the way, stretching her arms over her head. "You're not, are you."
When he looks at her, he always glances at her breasts first. She doesn't like to use them, and it's subtle; she has to give him credit for that. But he's still a man. His eyes are red, and the stutter in his voice undermines the words. "I don't, I don't owe you an explanation. Of all people. I don't owe you."
She won't snap at him; he'd thrive on it. She keeps her voice calm and her arms high. "Come on, Toby. You'd pay a stripper. You're not in love with Andi."
"Andrea," he enunciates, ambling over to the armchair and collapsing. They're both tired, and he's showing it badly. He really must need to talk. "Well, that's not the point. I can be, I, I will be."
Her turn to smirk, as she bends back to grab the bottle. "Have I told you yet tonight how full of shit you are?"
"No, and I was waiting for it." He pauses. "This is what it's always like."
She's confused. She drinks some bourbon, and when it's scoured her throat and she's still confused, she asks, "With you and me?"
"With me. And Andrea."
She doesn't need him to elaborate It's all too easy for her to see it, Toby and this redhead--he likes redheads; she's seen the women he looks at in bars, over her shoulder--arguing. Fucking, sometimes, probably not enough to feel good. Laughing at each other. She presses her eyes shut until all she sees is blue, opens them again and the ceiling is orange. "Okay, forget you, then," she says. "Why's she want to marry you?"
"I'm irresistible," he says, putting his hands on his knees. He pushes to his feet and paces by the window. "She does this too, you know. I don't want to talk about something, it's all we talk about."
"Maybe she knows you're full of shit, too." Ann swings her legs over the edge of the bed and tucks her hands under her chin. Her tongue feels slightly swollen. "Does she know you're sleeping with me?"
Toby pinches the drapes in his left hand. He stares at his own fingers, the way a newborn does. "I'm not anymore."
His voice is as bleak as any simple fact. She doesn't flinch. She feels lightheaded again, and is surprised to realize it's relief. This honor code, devotion to things and people, regardless of whether he cares about them; this is vintage Toby. She smiles. "Well. You're a romantic after all."
He scowls at her. "What the fuck," he says, too quietly, "do you care?"
So he hasn't fallen completely asleep. She hesitates, instantly hating herself for it. "Can't I just be a nice, caring person?"
"No, you work too hard at being a fascist."
"While Andi's in Harlem kissing crack babies? Frankly, I think it's funny." It's not a lie; she's always honest with him. She cocks her head toward the bottle on the nightstand. "I thought you had selective taste, or something. Turns out you're more like a girl from the fifties. Any port in a storm. Any--"
"Don't," he almost growls. "Don't talk like that."
"See? Chivalry isn't dead." Her voice sounds a little slurred in her own ears. "It's funny, coming from you. That's all I'm saying."
He walks toward her, shoving his hands into his pockets. "That's all?"
She stands up, too close to him. Heat rises into her face; she bites her lower lip hard, totaling up how much she's had to drink. "When I say it's all, then it's all."
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wants them back, wants to make them disappear like he's already washed her lipstick from his fingers. He looks at her curiously, like she's clear as glass, as water. She braces for him to press his advantage. "It's funny," he says, and it isn't anymore, but she smiles.
"And you're going to make it work," she says.
"Yeah." He rubs the place where his hairline used to be. "Well. I'm out of a job in two weeks."
"So you need the financial support?"
"So, what the hell else." His eyes travel to the butter-colored walls, the mints still on the pristine pillows, brochures about New York's attractions. He shakes his head. "It's what I'm doing."
She glances down at herself, fiddling with the uneven buttons on the front of her shirt. "Irregardless of--"
"Regardless," he says, sounding entirely too sober. "I gotta go."
"You know something, Toby?" His tie is sticking out of the front pocket of his shirt; she reaches out with two fingers and tucks it in. "One of these days, you're going to meet someone you can't just decide to take or leave."
His eyebrows lower and he looks at her darkly. He steps backward to put space between them. "It happens."
She folds her arms, too tired to talk about this for another second. She's done, but she won't slump. Her back is straight. "You're gonna get your ass handed to you in the Senate. And probably lose the House into the bargain."
He picks up his coat and slings it over his shoulder, a silly sweeping gesture that's all wrong for him. "And yet, I go back into battle, like Custer at his last stand, like Napoleon at Waterloo, like--"
"Yeah, yeah, you're Spartacus." She waves him off. "You really are a romantic."
"Takes one to know one," he mutters, so low that she isn't sure she hears it, and then he opens the door and walks through it.
There's a little bourbon left, and she lifts it to her mouth, but suddenly she can't stand to drink from the bottle, to place her lips where his were. It would be too much like a kiss goodbye. And she's right, and he's wrong, so she puts the bottle down and gets off the bed.
Ann doesn't want to stay here, in this room full of careful taste and body heat, glossed surfaces and the penetrating odors of sloshed liquor and spent sex. Her mouth is sticky-sweet like rotten fruit, and she knows she'll throw up in the morning. Not here. The money doesn't matter that much. She gets her shoes on, and her coat, pulled tight and crooked around her to hide the disarray. The bottle, and her stockings, go into the bathroom trash with the used condom.
Downstairs, the bar is closing up. A heavyset waiter who isn't her Fernando hustles the last stragglers out: yuppies, loud and hyper and swerving into each other as they make their way out. She blends in behind the group, letting their noise lead her into the lobby and down the melodramatic stairs. Her heels clack against the tiles, and she pauses for a second between the pale, massive columns that support the high ceiling. She knows Washington will be different.