All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. Famous Last Words Luna
I stayed behind when everyone was leaving. Tens of thousands of them, packing up cameras and cardboard signs and an infinite variety of souvenirs, moving in singles, clusters, crowds. From my seat I watched the arena empty out like half an hourglass. I'm not sure how long it took before I registered that someone was standing at the end of my row, watching me.
Donna had a lot of dark confetti in her hair, and when she smiled, she didn't look much like herself. "You should be holding up a lighter," she said.
"There's nothing left for an encore. Even 'Free Bird' would fall short." I mustered up a return smile. "Hi."
She played with the chain around her neck. "Want to walk me out?"
"Actually I was thinking of staying here for the rest of my life." I patted the arm of my chair. "They can just rope me off and feed me through an IV tube. And I won't have to fight six hundred guys from the Free D.C. Coalition for a cab."
"If there's morphine in the IV I might join you." She edged into the row and dropped down next to me, sitting on the edge of a seat. Up close, she looked older than she had four years earlier, no less pretty, but there were faint parentheses around her smile, and smudges under her eyes like the shadows of erased words. She rested a hand next to mine. "This was the weirdest--you know, Sam, I've had a lot of weirdest days of my life in the last couple years, but today would definitely rank in the top five."
I wasn't sure if she meant 'weirdest' or 'worst,' but something in her expression made me sure I didn't want to ask. Instead I turned and gazed out across the rind of the stadium. A small army of technicians had begun to move across the stage, disentangling cables from one another and popping balloons. Without the crowds the stage looked a lot smaller, flimsier. It was almost hard to believe how much strife and money and time and concern had gone into figuring out who got to stand on that stage.
"Trust me, it's weirder when you win one of these than when you lose," I said, and as soon as it was out of my mouth I added, "I'm sorry, that was kind of patronizing."
Her stockings rasped as she crossed her legs. She didn't look at me--she was very pointedly not looking at me--but her face tensed along the cheekbones. "You know what nobody ever told you guys? When you say you're sorry, it doesn't make you *less* patronizing."
"'You guys'?"
She flicked her eyes toward me and didn't elaborate. She didn't have to. I shifted in my seat. Now that everyone was gone, the air conditioners were up far too high, and there was cold moisture on the back of my neck.
After a minute or so, I said, "Are you doing okay with it?"
"Please." She tipped her head back so that confetti sifted out of her hair. "You never liked Russell. He's exactly the type of Democrat that puts your nose in the air. He makes compromises and cuts corners and doesn't throw himself off a bridge every time they hack ten grand out of the NEA budget. He's not that guy, and you resent it, because you are."
I'd gotten to a point where it was hard to be insulted about something I couldn't--wouldn't--have changed. Still, I might have argued, but she yawned just then, scrunching her eyes shut, a pulse fluttering visibly in her throat. I saw how tired she must be and remembered how tired I was myself. "I didn't ask about Russell," I said. "I asked about you."
"Oh, I'm fine. What else is there to be?" Her eyebrows arched in an expression that wasn't native to her face. I knew where she'd picked it up, and I looked away. My fingers jumped as I loosened my tie.
"The world is never emptier than it is the day you lose an election," I said, in the direction of the diminished stage. "And it's never stranger than it is the day you win."
"That should have been in your speech," she murmured.
That may have made me flinch. No one yet had been brave enough to say it in my hearing, but I knew my convention speech had bombed. *I'd* bombed. No way around it. I'd changed too much of the text at the last minute, trying to keep up with the seismography of the delegate counts, and I'd kept editing long after I should have called it a finished draft. People have nightmares about public speaking that might be more dramatic, but it's nothing next to the brutal banality of actual failure.
"I sort of hoped no one was listening," I said.
"It wasn't as bad as you think," Donna began to say, but she trailed off as she looked at me. My face felt scalded. "Honestly, Sam? It just sounded like you'd rather be anywhere else in the world."
"Maybe I would."
"And yet we're putting down roots here."
She was right. I dragged myself to my feet. Below us, the technicians were clearing chairs from the floor, and they left tracks in the crush of garbage and confetti like footprints in snow. With the house lights up, everything was too sharply edged and too bright. Donna was implausibly blonde and pale. I thought of how hot it had to be outside, and winced as I helped her up.
Her hand was cool in mine. I think I held it for a little too long. We went up the stairs and through a short tunnel, and out to the deserted mezzanine. As we walked her heels echoed on the concrete, and I thought of a dozen things to say. Most of them were inane and the rest led off toward conversations I was too tired to have. The exit seemed to stay about fifty yards away even as we walked toward it.
Donna stopped without warning. I caught up to her, took one step past her, and turned around.
Whatever she'd been using to hold her composure together, she'd run out of it. Her eyes had gone wide, and wet, and then I had my arms around her, turning her face into my shoulder. Because I knew that look, I'd seen it on women--on Donna--before, and the only possible thing to do when you see that is to hold her, and hope it passes.
Also, it keeps you from having to see her face, when she's crying.
I was never as chivalrous as some people thought.
It only lasted a minute or so. She rubbed her face with a trembling hand and pulled away, putting space between us. I put my hands in my pockets because I couldn't think of anything else to do with them. Somewhere nearby, a loud fan chewed on the dead air.
"Oh, God," she said. "The White Knight rides again."
"I'm sorry?" I didn't mean it as a question, but it came out that way.
"I didn't mean you," she said, and took another swipe at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "He did the impossible, again. With a candidate who didn't even want to run in the first place. Lining the President up against his own Vice President." Her voice was fragile and sharp at the same time, every word a shard of china. "He always wins. He always, always wins."
I started to tell her it wasn't like that, but the words stopped in my throat and would not be said. Instead I said, "I'm happy for him." And I was. The happiness leaned against my ribs and made it harder to breathe.
"Single fucking handed," she said, as if she hadn't heard me. I risked a step toward her.
"Yeah. It's funny not to be a part of it. I still find myself reaching for the phone half a dozen times a day before I remember he isn't down the hall..." I spread my hands in the air and tried to swallow. Dry. I should have stopped talking. "And neither are any of you. I'm sure everyone does the same thing."
The lines around her eyes deepened, darkened, and I braced myself. "You won your seat on your own," she said.
"Not--not entirely." I'd just left, when everyone else was staying behind.
"Yes, you did." She crossed the space between us and touched my arm. "Tell me how you did it," she said, and I heard the sob threatening under her voice, but she fought it down. Her fingernails dug into my sleeve. "Tell me how to get out from underneath this. You did it. Tell me how you get out of Josh Lyman's life, and into your own, and it doesn't kill you."
My heart flipped over. The tracks of her tears still shone on her skin as she looked at me. Either she was heartbreakingly beautiful, or she was beautiful because her heart had broken along the same faults and fissures as mine.
I didn't want to say anything, but I couldn't have lied to her, not if I'd had a hundred years and a hundred pages to prepare an answer. I heard my voice say, "It does kill you. But there's nowhere else to go."
As I said it, I thought she might cry again, and I would have forgiven her if she hit me. She didn't hit me. She kissed me.
I kissed her back. Then I put my hands on her waist and did it again, thinking that I should have been surprised how much I wanted to, how good it was, how surprised I wasn't at all. We grappled with each other's tired clothes, her hand in my hair, her hand under my shirt, and kissed until we couldn't breathe, and kept kissing.
It was like we were drowning, but even more like we were trying to drown something out.
The fan was what stopped us. In fact, the fan stopped, and I heard the silence, and felt suddenly and terribly exposed. She pulled back, opening her eyes, and sighed. "It does kill you," she said.
A fleck of confetti clung to the corner of her mouth. I brushed it away with my thumb. "Yes."
She picked up my wrist, turning it over to read the time off my watch. "Maybe I can get a cab by now."
I, she said, not we, which made things clear in a friendly way. I took her hand and squeezed it gently. "In four years you'll be doing something different," I said, though I knew it wouldn't help her much to hear that from me. Along with everything else, I was the guy who'd never liked Bob Russell. "You'll be doing better."
"What are you, a palm reader?" She didn't smile, but the angle of her neck and shoulders relaxed. "In four years you'll be running for reelection."
I glanced over my shoulder, at the empty space that drained back to the stage, to the microphone that had become the center of the world. "Maybe not."
"After what went on in there tonight, nobody will remember that you were here. Or me."
She leaned forward and kissed me again, chastely this time; sometimes Donna could be very much like a sister. I mouthed the word goodbye. She nodded and turned to go. Ten or fifteen feet away she paused, looking back. "Don't tell Josh about--that we--" She waved a hand in the air. "About this."
That froze me. I must have stared at her for a good minute, tensed, right on the edge of anger. "Do you honestly think that of me? That I would do that?"
"Sam. You will." She covered her face with her hands like a little girl, and groaned underneath them. "You really, really will. Oh, God."
She spun around and dashed for the exit, as fast as she could go without running. Her footsteps ricocheted to me, past me, and coming back louder and sharper than thunder. I suppose I was still staring. Just as she got to the doors she turned back once more, and I couldn't read her face at that distance, but I was sure that I heard her laugh.
"It's okay," she called. "I forgive you."
And she was out the door. And it was unbelievably quiet.
I stood where I was, waiting for my heartbeat to settle back into its ordinary pace, and giving her time to be gone when I came out. Everyone else had left Mission Arena behind at the instant the gavel fell, had moved on to hotel bars, or dive bars, sorting out mementoes and plane tickets, cursing their luck, or, in a few special cases, thanking their gods. I stood there and thought about how Donna was wrong about me. I wasn't a perfect person, not as good a speaker as I'd hoped, certainly not the best friend in the world, but I told myself that at least I could keep things to myself. I didn't have an impulse toward confession.
You were flying away victorious. I was happy for you. I believed that I would never tell you any of this.
When she said she forgave me, she meant it. I believe that. But I'd be happier if I could still believe that she was right about you, and wrong about me.