All recognizable characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Title from "Revelation" by Richard Chess. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. Revelation Violet
Books. On the corner of the mattress by his pillow, stacked toward his mahogany dresser. Almost pristine under the weak amber glow of the lamp, not dog-eared, no ink in the margins. Slips of notepaper stuck between the pages, his scrawl on them visceral in red and black and blue. He sleeps with books and treats them as they deserve to be treated.
Books of politics and law stay in his office, flexible resources for daylight. He sleeps with biography and memoir and fiction, poetry, obscurity, with music and dissonance; tiny slashes of blood on his fingertips in the middle of the night. One-night stands or weeks on end. He puts them aside then, and moves on.
Reading in the morning by the gray slants from the window, the lamp turned off so as not to bother her. She stretches into the wall, keeping his body between herself and morning. Point of her elbow centered on his back, ankle hooked around his, neither of them quite comfortable. He squints at the same text over and over: "Every nerve in me was still anointed and ringed with the feel of her body." Chilled, disgusted; he'll never fall in love again.
The alarm clock squalls though it's half-dark. Fast when she finally climbs over him, all legs and arms, all tousled, faded, warm and worn. She slept in familiar pink cotton underwear, white T-shirt gnawed into moth-lace at the hem, strips on her way to the bathroom, one long hand rubbing incessantly at heavy, uncooperative eyelids.
He marks his page with a stray business card, his name in copperplate closed with the lyrical language. Gets up, changes yesterday's shorts for today's, into the cold kitchen to start the coffee. Too many mornings like this since the summer, her contact solution by his sink, a necktie tucked in her wardrobe a few miles away. Words like habit, desperation, attrition. He listens to the coffee-maker purring, dripping in a rhythm like iambs, dithyrambs, the epic, the perfect speech he's never written.
She comes out dressed, red sweater, camel skirt skimming her knees. She leans into the fridge, always surprised that he doesn't live on beer and sour milk and Wonder Bread. White illumination on her face, clicking her tongue at a triangle of Brie, sliced apple on a plate, over her shoulder she meets his eyes: "Why do you have yogurt?"
A shrug, handles of coffee mugs clanking in his grasp; he honestly isn't sure. "You didn't leave that here?"
"No," firmly, as she takes the round carton from the shelf. "I wouldn't have gotten blueberry."
He fills her cup, noncommittal. "Throw it away if you don't want it."
"It's fine, it's good." No spoons in the drawer; she whirls to the dishrack, plucks out a clean one. "Just, I would hate to find out that you're eating yogurt now. My whole paradigm would be shaken."
"I try hard not to shake your paradigms." The coffee, unsweetened, battery acid flavor. "I don't like disagreeing with you when you're right."
Small pointed smile like the tip of an arrow, color at her cheekbones, one hand hovers near her chest. "You apologized to me last night, don't do it again. That would be out of character, too."
The subject drops like a sparrow stoned; his cup already half-empty, the refrigerator full, but no hunger. He watches her spoon dip into the yogurt. "What's your day look like?"
"Not bad," and she wrinkles her forehead at the words. "Well, bad, but not as bad. I'm sitting in on Josh's meeting with these lawyers from South Africa who think they can take our money and withhold health care from pregnant women."
"That's what they think?"
"People think a lot of stupid shit about women, Toby--" she tosses her head, daring him to disagree "--pregnant or otherwise. Third World countries or otherwise. I'm sitting in on Josh's meeting." Her eyes are soft, wounded, downcast. Though that may be just to look at his face; she looks for too long. "You know, reading in the dark, it isn't good for you."
He turns his mug in his palms, New York City skyline etched like runes in the porcelain. "At least it's Friday."
Naming the day makes it concrete; the time on the microwave reads 6:05. Swift, smooth movement of her lips, the yogurt melting down her throat. "And you'll be late. Go put yourself together."
Reluctant and relieved to let her leave his frame of vision, empty mug left in the sink without rinsing. He forgets when six a.m. became late. "I'll be quick," he says, and no reply.
Tiles and towels damp before he touches them; the shower dwindling from heat to ice, inadequate sliver of green soap. Passages of last week's bedside book still stalking him: "After all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments..." The Russian hit on something there. Dust and ashes, such a tired image but true of how things disintegrate when touched, how things die.
He dries off, trims his beard routinely, compulsive glances behind him. Nothing there. Clothes from his closet, sepia suit, gray shirt, burnt-orange tie, he hears the door slam, she's already gone. "...And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else." A timbre he wants there, in the prose; wants his own words to ring that way, hopes he marked that page. Socks, shoes, pounds of paper, car keys, cell phone, wallet, a pen in his pocket. He needs so much, and words, to start these days.
Bad timing, rush hour traffic, a carload of teenagers scrapes someone's father's Civic along the concrete divider. Sun glinting off the rear-view straight into his eyes, which burn, water, hard to focus on the road. The leather smell blends with cigar smoke, coffee, yesterday's Chinese food, gone now but still ghosting.
He knows how a relationship decays. Fighting in public, muttered cruelty between clinked glasses of wine, claws revealed whenever there was anything to scratch. The expensive game of apology, happiness fretted and strutted upon the stage. Fucking his wife at the open window of the old apartment, summer washing over them, ivy near the screen, glossy and green and thriving. Faking it.
His mind still shies from the knowledge they never had a realistic future. A failure of imagination; writer's block. Endless notes that year, the ones he sent and the ones he didn't send, transcribing their phone calls to see if they made sense with distance; he found that they never did. Failed to keep imagining the next chapter, the next decade with her, the next year, ever waking beside her without dread. The last few months of it, bedmates with despair, reading only the news; no concentration, little tolerance for lies. Lived on bourbon and Andi's equal misery. Lawyers, summons, judges, family court, glad there were no children.
Dust, floating in the sunlit space between the wheel and windshield; the damaged Honda hauled away ahead, room to move forward. His hands tighten on the wheel as he hits the gas, already a headache coming on. A parking spot slightly better than Siberia, he climbs out, locks up, juggles briefcase and keys. Startlingly warm, not like November at all. The air is inappropriately mild, the walk is short. He flashes his ID at the gate. He works for the President and that takes precedence.
Through the metal detector and into the lobby with Ginger waiting, instantly in step; taking his coat. "You're late," she rolls her eyes, backs out of his path to the beverage cart. Coffee, rapid-fire phone messages, last minute schedule changes, a meeting canceled, maybe two; what did he expect? Congress goes home on Fridays. Newspapers on his desk, the print impermanent, inaccurate, smudged to distortion under his thumb.
Mad Cow disease is lurid in bold type, a sillier, more terrifying headline than bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The markets shake; suicide bombing in Jerusalem--his oldest sister, Sidra, living there, every day a bomb threat--triple homicide in Maryland. The Post's front page, three inches below the fold: Launch delayed another day, NASA says. He should call David; he won't call David.
Sam bounds into the doorway, energy of a morning person in his step, crisp-edged, focused and in focus. "Hey, I looked for you before, but you weren't in yet."
He looks from the paper to his watch, 7:14 and what time does Sam get here anyway, does he ever leave? "I hit traffic."
"I figured you did, when you weren't here." Sam's arms folded, starched, bright, leaning just inside the office. "But I can see you're here now."
"Very good." He waves a hand: "Now, how many fingers?" The sarcasm automatic and sour on his burned tongue, unbidden.
Sam snorts, not stung; this early he's annoyingly unflappable. "There's the speech at Georgetown Monday evening, I think we should do that today."
"We can't do it Monday morning?"
"Imported Food Safety hits the House floor on Tuesday. I'll be on the Hill most of Monday." Sam gestures at the newspaper: photograph of a big supermarket freezer, sanguine meat vacuum-packed under raw light.
He remembers butcher shops from childhood. Leans back in his chair, studies Sam's face for bags under the eyes. "How exactly is that your job?"
A snort. "I'm helping out Legislative Affairs. Point being, I don't want to have this hanging over my head all weekend, and today seems like a good opportunity--"
"I've got Woods and Pirie at ten."
Sam shakes his head, no, you won't get away with that. "Woods is on a plane to Connecticut right now, Jane Pirie's in California, and Ginger works for me too, you know."
Procrastinating for no reason anyway, no reason to seek pressure in the midst of a constant firefight. "He's supposed to speak about responsible citizenship, right?"
"Yeah." A line in Sam's forehead, first faint crack in the polish, then it vanishes. "Not that anybody knows what that actually means. I think it has to do with obligations. Obligations we all have to each other. So." Sam glances at his watch. "Senior Staff in ten minutes. We'll get started after that?"
"Sure." He leans back in the chair, arms resting where the wear shows, it creaks, used to his weight. "Did Legislative Affairs ask you to give them a hand, or is that just your charitable nature?"
He expects Sam's quick smile, doesn't get it. "My grandmother used to say I had a finger in every pie."
"Yeah?"
"Didn't sound that dirty when my grandmother used to say it." Now the smile's there, slower than the old days. "We'll have a writing day. I'm pumped."
The caffeine kicking in, but he's still tired, blinking. "Don't use the word 'pumped' with me before eight."
"Get pumped!"
"Get out." And Sam gets out.
He's left sitting, blood sluggish, brain starting to work toward responsible citizenship. Somewhere on his shelf a book of inaugural addresses, something there, maybe Jefferson, though it's always Jefferson. But not all Presidents have a turn of phrase like that, like a prism always catching the right angles and rays for a rainbow. He'll look for the book later, picks up his coffee mug and takes it to the meeting with him, the door standing open behind him like it's lying in wait.
All day they kick the speech around, hard to get off the launching pad. The worst part of everything, he thinks, is the second paragraph. First lines come from inspiration, from the Muses if you believe in them, from sources or from stock. "Good afternoon," easy enough, but second paragraphs are structure and sweat. Getting nowhere with words like community, resolve, obligation; double meanings, no meanings at all.
Sam knows this too, but pushes. Half an hour for bland lunch, dry sandwiches and soggy fries, watching C.J.'s briefing with closed-captions. Arguing whether "a chorus of harmony" is a viable phrase. He shakes his head no, Sam pushes; a break for more coffee, water, phone calls and back to the yellow paper. Their handwriting in striking counterpoint; Sam's formal script dignified in black ballpoint around his own words, angular in bolder ink. At last, Sam stretches, rolls his shoulders; "I've got to stretch my legs."
He follows Sam out as far as the bullpen, and Sam heads for the stairs so he veers in the other direction. Across the hall, idly twirling a pen between his fingers; he stops in front of the doors to the Roosevelt Room. He hesitates with a hand on the door, then edges in. All eyes dart his way, then back to work. Larry and Ed with binders full of facts and numbers; Josh's hands fidgeting, elbows on the table; C.J. tucking caramel hair behind her ears, she looks up the longest. And the people he doesn't know. He says nothing.
A woman is speaking, thick braid down her back, skin with the satiny texture and tint of chocolate milk, voice piping and strange. Her words are familiar: "We don't have the money."
Josh leans forward, a half-swallowed scoff: "It's free. The company's giving it to you, and God knows that doesn't happen enough. No strings, Ms. Jolliffe. How many babies are born with HIV every day where you come from?"
Larry's answer fast, from habit: "Two hundred."
"We don't have the money for the follow-ups," the thin, dark man across from C.J. says. "This is a test drug. We'll be hearing from women who were given nevirapine, and if there are side-effects..."
"Ask them if they care about side effects." C.J., sharp, back straight in her seat. He watches her sense his gaze, motionless as her hands, flat and fragile on the gleaming tabletop. "Round up two hundred women like--Ed, how do you pronounce her name?"
Automatic. "Sarah Halele."
"Sarah Halele, who gave birth four months ago." The rustle of her skirt under her voice; he looks away as she leans forward. "She was signed up to receive nevirapine. Her hospital denied it to her. Mr. Moerane, the baby is already exhibiting symptoms. Thrush, diarrhea--ask Sarah Halele what she'd rather have: her knees tapped with a little hammer, or a fifty-percent chance of saving her son's life."
Alarming and effective vehemence in her voice; she doesn't look at him. Josh does, eyebrows raised, then back to the South Africans. Almost a grin around his mouth, suggestion of laughter. "You want the President to raise your economic aid and keep taking flak from Pfizer and Burroughs Wellcome, so you're not oppressed by American patent law. He'd like you to stop oppressing your own people."
"Really," Ms. Jolliffe says. She glances at Josh, at C.J. and then at him. Mutual suspicion; he studies her face. Eyes narrowed, skin taut over cheekbones, strong jaw and the lilting disguise of her accent. "And what do you know of oppression, as an American white male?"
"Guy shot me last year." Josh pauses the air in the room, casual, amused, eyebrows up, checking with him for approval.
Then Moerane, steady voice and a hand near his colleague's arm: "That's kind of oppressive."
It breaks the tension, a pebble thrown into a pond. C.J.'s chuckle like a splash, but he hears the exhausted note. "Withholding a lifesaving medicine fits the definition of--"
The other woman breaks in, shoulders set in defiance, defense. "You're cutting your donation to the U.N. Global AIDS Fund in a year when there are thirty million HIV cases in the Third World. Only ten percent of your population has even been tested for HIV. You expect our state to fix its woes overnight?"
"We're the ones with the checkbook; we expect you to try." Authority in her voice, he doesn't sense even a hint of hysteria. Her head cocked back, she looks at him head on. "Hey, Toby, there are plenty of chairs."
"Yeah, I should get back to my office." He nods acknowledgments, fades out of the room. Sam waits in his office, pacing, armed with Abraham Lincoln and an old Harvard commencement speech. Past Sam to the bookshelf, to Samuel Eliot Morison, history of an America "more explosive than the atom: a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world." He tries this out, tapping on the furniture; Sam hears the music too, performance art.
So he places the words somewhere among their scribbles, solid and sonorous. Progress is already slow enough; do not question their truth.
Dark early, and the rest of the day is night, hours and hours, research and rewrite until they've puzzled out two pages, maybe three of the eight they need. Sloppy, rough, dissatisfying, but it's better than nothing. He types it up, fingers stuttering over keys; speed from practice. On the screen the words stand static, pallid, lifeless. Sam says, "Print it," tangible is better, out loud is best. Light from the crooked desk lamp, the screen, from the bullpen through the slatted blinds, spreading shadow across the pages, blurring the important contrasts and spaces.
The late news muted in the background, mime show backed by footage of a car chase. In the dim shine they take turns reading aloud, sentence linked to sentence in a malformed chain. He offers universal dilemma, Sam counters with general solution. Nits picked, grammar challenged, easier to scrape rust off the edges than to melt it down and weld it back together. Need a blowtorch.
At the same time, both of them speak: "We wasted too much time today," and "Let's call it a night." Eyes locked across the desk.
"We wasted too much time," Sam sighs again, dark-inked fingers stalled in dark hair. Wilted now that it's late, enthusiasm ebbing, drooping white shirt and limp, loosened black tie. "Three pages, Toby? Is that earning our paychecks?"
"Some days," he says. Pushes back and up, walks around the desk, straightens books on the shelf so they don't lean too hard on each other. "We got started, it's something. It'll get done."
"I wanted it done today," Sam says, chin down, eyes laser-blue. Sam stands up too, not quite resigned but weary, tired of the speech, the arguing, hoarse voice adding, "So I'll be here tomorrow. Are you coming in?"
Quick, quiet grunt, yeah, he'll be there, and gets his coat, gathers his copy, Sam around the corner to close his own office. He raises a hand to Sam in farewell, conferences a last time with Bonnie on the way out. The night glacial around him, cool and clear, but streetlamps shout down the stars, no moon but the Monument is just as white, just as impassive.
Stilted drive across town, red lights and intermittent Friday night traffic, orange explosions of music behind headlights, howl and feedback. He catches no lyrics; after not too long, pulls onto C.J.'s street.
The doorman knows him; somehow that's irritating, he'd rather feel like a visitor. He's lived with women, shared furniture and walls and sinks as well as sheets. Polite at the intercom; she buzzes him up, awake but not cheerful. Avoiding a puddle of dog urine on the elevator's floor, subtle stench reminds him of his first place alone in the city, sixth floor walk-up, rats and roaches and piss and no heat; surrounded by textbooks in the single ugly room.
His footsteps muffled by the hall's red carpet, to her cracked-open door, her voice inside: "I'm changing." He hovers over the welcoming surfaces of her space, less barren than his; silenced television playing CNN, Chinese paper hung over her desk and the cat curled, languorous, in the center of the sofa. Nothing in her liquor cabinet but a bottle of vodka, transparent and ominous, mostly gone. He fills a tall glass with tap water, sipping, waiting.
She emerges, blue terry bathrobe over maybe nothing else. No makeup, and he fights flinching at the circles carved under her eyes by late nights, wry scratched voice like a damaged record, "What'd you bring me?"
His hands shoved into his pockets, digging for diamonds, should've stopped for wine, should've gone straight home. "I owe you."
"Like I don't know that." Desert-dry laugh; she takes his water glass. "I wish I had a chocolate orange. I like food you can hit."
He leans against the counter. "That's something you might want to warn them about at the Mess, or else you'll have the Secret Service all over you like--"
"What do you want?" she asks. Eyes questioning, ready to be disappointed by the answer.
"Withholding a lifesaving medicine," he hears himself say, "fits the definition?"
"Hell, yes," and she retreats toward the sofa, perches on its arm, passing the glass back, fingers lazy on the belly of the sleeping cat. "Of oppression, of--of manslaughter, even. They still believe over there that women must be whores if they're infected, never mind the folk remedy for HIV, you know what that is?"
He does. The answer distasteful on his tongue. "Virgins."
"Sex with virgins, and never mind consent, but never mind whose fault it is; these are babies. Babies that they could be saving at no cost." Her hair whispers forward, frames insistent eyes. "I'll probably never have children and even I know this is shameful. This, and the Middle East, and female infanticide in China; all of it."
"Yes, yes," he sets the glass down, cracks his knuckles in time with her words. "And you've known this how long? Since you were in college? It's always been shameful--"
"They're treating their daughters like one of Mengele's experiments."
"You know," he snaps, "You can't win an argument with me just by bringing up the Nazis or Cambodia."
Taken aback, off guard, she presses her lower lip into her teeth, conceding just a little ground, trapping her breath, releasing it. "We're the ones with the checkbooks and the big guns, Toby, and last year you cut domestic violence out of the State of the Union. I know we're not lobbyists and we don't have the luxury of fighting only one fight, but when do we get to stop turning a blind eye?"
"We're not turning a blind eye, we're doing what we're paid for." He tries not to know she's thinking, so are prostitutes. "Eleven months to the election."
"An expiration date," she says, almost giggles, more sadness than mirth. Straightens up, full remarkable height. "What's funny is, my stuff went well today. How about yours?"
He thinks of Sam, of running out of ink. "At least it was Friday."
"Right. I'm going to bed," and she turns her back to him, the bathrobe baring her shoulders, shoulder blades, and rippling to the floor. Nothing beneath it but her clean skin, hips swaying graceful from the steel core of her spine; her skin is paper and his eyes are ink.
Rising, he leaves behind shucked shoes and jacket and tie, half-naked by the time they're both in the dark bedroom. Against the door, her mouth open on his, lower lip chapped though it hasn't been windy, and his own hands closing, locked against her bones, his mouth on her neck, kissing and biting like teenagers, like enemies. "God, Toby," somewhere by his ear, and she presses forward against him, pushing him hard to the bed.
All four of their hands to yank off the rest of his clothes, her scent poured over him, the sinew and stretch of her legs as she climbs on top of him, bearing down. He knows she can take his weight, not so sure he can take hers. Her hips canted forward, wet glisten between her thighs as she pulls him inside, all the way inside her, thank God for the Pill and he must say that out loud because she growls at him like a feral cat. His palms over her small breasts, arrhythmia, furious torque of her hips, sweating, burning, breathless. She didn't shave her legs this morning, abrasive and her face tightened, determined, hungry like a fighter's fist.
Unbidden, the words in his head, scornful and unfiltered by alcohol, she's supposed to be better than you, isn't she? And she shouldn't settle, should she? Shut up, shut up, shut up, sick and incongruous, the kind of thing his mother would say, or maybe that's false memory; he hasn't spoken to her in years. C.J.'s hands, slippery on his shoulders. Shut up.
But already he's freezing, staring at a crushed-blackberry bruise above her right knee, his fault maybe, and he closes his eyes. Still hard, but cold, and she keeps working him, her demanding body finally seizing up, but it's already taken too long, too late. Another minute and she's sliding away; he won't look at her disappointment, defeat, won't admit everything that creeps into bed between them. Her legs bent up to her chest, craned neck and twisted smile, confused, her voice tiny: "You didn't come."
It's okay on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't like to lie to her, any more than he likes disagreeing when she's right. "I'm tired," he says, and she accepts it, cold wet mouth streaked fast against his before she turns away. She mimics the even breath of sleep, trying to make it happen by faking it.
Tired, yes, but he can't hold still, leaves her half asleep, half wrapped in her sheets. He dresses in silence, tracing back the trail, tie pocketed like a dirty secret. The cat flicks its tail at him, inscrutable, amused, mocking, but it's just a cat. He finds the water glass again, rinses, drinks, dry inside though his skin is sticky.
Two books splayed face-down and forlorn on her coffee table, binding broken, covers nicked; he shakes his head and reaches out to save them. One paperback painted bright, gilded lightning-bolt lettering, nonsense poem on the page with its corner folded down. One hardcover, Power Politics, stupid title but striking eyes in the author's photograph on the back. He marks C.J.'s page with a cardboard coaster, turns to the front of the book, reads: "I love the unanswered question, the unresolved story, the unclimbed mountain, the tender shard of an incomplete dream. Most of the time."
The density of the entire day, sudden and palpable on every nerve. He closes both books properly, leaves them neat together, spines aligned. Leaves her apartment, the door swings shut and locks him out; he waits for the clean elevator, scowls at the doorman, is gone into the empty early morning.
Sleep, descending and whirring away like a helicopter from the coast. He wakes on his own couch, remembers C.J. and Josh both queasy the first time they piled into Marine One, when he was fine the whole way to Florida. Out of the shower and into a dark suit. On the low table an anthology of poetry his sister sent, Miriam's a flake that way, but he opens it anyway over first coffee, reads: "Since the soul in me is dead/better save the skin."
Those words like old bells, ponderous fissured resonance; the coffee an oil slick on the way down. Driving, mild traffic, across town to Delaware, and his seat in the back of the synagogue; he likes to be close to the doors as if he might need to make a break for it. Hands stationary on top of his knees, he listens hard, so hard his head aches. Rabbi Glassman looks at him from time to time, serious and earnest and testing, always testing, like God they're always testing. Reading Genesis, Jacob on the road to reunite with Esau, wrestling with his angel. He should call David; he won't call David.
Three hours later, leaving a lousy parking spot. During the trek he repeats bits of the reading to himself, chaos-patterned like the ocean. He knows and distrusts the currents between himself and C.J., tides that wrench the shore apart, lashing at rough stones, that drain out and expose dead sands. He knows he is constructing the metaphor, believes it anyway or even more. Words like erosion, exhaustion, attrition, added to everything he has to carry.
Then the metal detector and into the office that is different on Saturdays, lighter; so many fewer phones ringing, fewer shoes in the hall, fewer lungs to take the oxygen. Getting rid of his tie and jacket, brown sweater pulled over his shirt and Sam strides in: "Good morning."
He checks his wristwatch, it's 12:52. "It's afternoon."
"It starts!" Sam throws up his hands, mock surrender, then takes possession of a chair, plants himself and sets three pencils on the desk, graphite sharp as needles. "Look, I don't want to be here tomorrow, and neither do you. Do you?"
"Why the hell not?" Half-hearted question; he drums on the top of his chair. "Why should tomorrow be different?"
Creased forehead, both appraising and uncertain. "On Sunday, you don't have plans or--" Sam senses himself wading into deep water "--well, it doesn't matter, because we can do this today. How's this: America is an idea. A sense of possibility, a piece of common ground."
He reaches for one of the pencils, points it at Sam. "Okay, I'll buy that toward the end, but we're not there yet. Something... not just possibility but opportunity. More opportunity."
"Thomas Jefferson?"
"We always use Jefferson," and they're into it from there, sensing a shape and structure to this thing, malleable but present, lurking beneath their mental fog. He wishes he had the poetry to set a meter for this, Sam's quoting E.B. White; America as "the home of all nations." More opportunity, but they can't nail it down, growing sullen as the clouded sky, twilight unbelievably early again. Four, five pages done but they don't live. He stubs the point off a pencil, sends it clattering across the desk, exasperated: "Why are we doing this now, anyway?"
Sam's frown as fast as his smile once was. "Because on Monday I'm on the Hill."
"I mean this speech." He whacks a notepad hard with the back of his hand. "This. Why are we doing this now? It reads like a commencement address."
"Lots of kids graduate in December."
Thinking of college, no nostalgia for the futile classes, endless paperwork, shitty housing, not even--shut up, he tells himself, not even for the girls. "A semester early?"
Sam, maybe mistier, maybe not, pushing at the sleeves of his black sweater: "A semester late."
"Slackers."
They both chuckle, more from stress than humor, and like an echo Josh swings into the doorway, plops onto the couch, his face a martyr's mask: "Here you are, safe in your little Communications den, leaving your friends to suffer."
"Suffer what?" Sam's eyes are alert, rapid response.
Josh, dropping the front: "The President is in professor mode. He caught me--literally, I mean he grabbed my arm--in the hallway and started with This Day In History. And somehow he got on the subject of FDR."
He groans, recognizing this bad luck; Bartlet can be insufferable on any three-initialed President. But Sam, looking up at him, "FDR, of course, we should look at that. I've got a book in my office--" and on his feet and hurrying out.
Josh stretches on the couch. "Did you know that FDR was the first to have official White House advisors apart from the cabinet?"
"It's him we have to thank?"
"Yeah. Is it too late for me to decide I'm against big government?" Josh rubs at his neck, yawning. "You guys got anything good?"
He frowns at the draft, flimsy, could have had the blanks filled in by trained monkeys. "Not much. A little bit, maybe."
"We're still leaning on South Africa. The usual deal; they'll get their money. And the President's waxing historic on FDR and the hopes of the Republic." Leaning forward suddenly, elbows on knees, "C.J. was smart to stay home today."
Her eyes, always in the back of his mind, like searchlights, like gun sights; he permits no outward reaction, lowers his eyes instead to the blotted desk calendar. Surprised to discover it's really December again; after the interminable meetings, press conferences, a funeral, another year behind him like someone turned a dial. Time seeping like blood between fingers. "You went home for Thanksgiving?"
"Yeah."
"How's your mother?"
"Okay," and a barely visible nod, Josh apprehensive and wide awake, standing up, two steps toward the door. "Hey. Make this speech a good one, 'kay?"
Strange pause; he looks up. "I usually strive for mediocrity."
"It's been a long week for all of us. Sam's driving everyone in Legislative Affairs crazy just for something productive to do." Josh's mouth a smirk, eyes steady, hands rubbing his arms. "And the President has quite a grip for an old guy. He likes a captive audience. We could all use this."
"Josh?"
"I'm saying, pull a rabbit out of the hat," Josh mimes it with a gesture, circles in the air before he turns and walks down the hall.
His fingers steepled, thoughtful, annoyed; he knows how to do his job. Nerves in his legs complaining, itching, no more sitting still, no more of this place today. Up, he grabs his coat, the draft ignored, ignoble, abandoned with the broken pencil; the office door slams shut like the end of a sentence. Sam in pursuit quoting FDR, "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts about reality," fine words but he doesn't care, doesn't listen.
Doesn't want to go home, his apartment full of dust and paper, probably a red light flashing on the answering machine. No one he wants to talk to, and Miriam's book of poems laid aside on his desk, scrap paper already mingled with the pages. He drives for a while, slow, circular drive, headlights limiting the world to the sphere holding him. He has marked: "All speech/Has melody and rhythm/Not hers alone."
A bar, then, sports bar, garish noisy place much too young for him; misplaced old man in a crowd of kids, frat boys, girls whose beauty is applied like lacquer. Overpriced cheese fries and bourbon in a place that moves gallons of beer every night, one TV blasting Wizards basketball, another, curiously, figure-skating. Unsynchronized strangers' voices; by the second drink it all slurs to a white susurrus, just like silence.
By the second drink, he's grabbed a pen, spattered yellow napkins pinned by the heel of his hand; he is making a list. C.J. doesn't sleep enough, her eyes turn red-rimmed, she dyes her hair, falls down, abuses books, misspeaks, missteps, compromises, is so good at compromise, so bad at lying. Uncontrolled currents between them, consuming the shore. He is making a list of her flaws.
Another drink, gulped sizzle in his throat, not warm but he feels the cold less; maybe he's numb. Fine, good. Cheers bellowed from the tables at his back; he guesses a basket in the game he's not watching, reaches for another napkin. C.J. interrupts his thoughts, his meetings, doesn't know how to play pool and cares so much, too much because it shakes her. He thinks of her meeting yesterday, hands on the table, staring down and talking down the South African lawyers, telling them their business, spearing them with eyes like flint. Taking it personally--money on the bar for a fourth drink, fifth, generous tip--like they were her sisters, her daughters. Like she was responsible.
Sam's Roosevelt in his head, "our doubts about reality" and the floodgates opening, the tide comes in. His writing spidery and bleeding on the insubstantial paper, tears through it like a scalpel through flesh, another drink, another napkin, and his eyes water. The staggering drunken children behind him, steroids and anorexia, drifting away; the room spins, it's later now and he's still going, the buzz in his brain and in his legs. He gathers the napkins up, not all of them but several, many, most, and on his feet and out the door.
His car left behind, it'll probably be stolen by the morning, at least a window bashed, radio gone; sick nervous feeling but then he keeps walking. The air washes around him, smears of light and color in the dark, so much chilled humidity and no wind. He is careful with the napkins, not watching the sidewalk, mud on his shoes and the river's smell in his nostrils. Winding trek with words dropping like his footsteps, landing firm.
Old brownstone building in an expensive neighborhood, brick like acne crumbling off its face, but no doorman here. He dashes up the stairs, too fast, arteries pound rebelliously, blood rushes to all the wrong places. Doesn't matter, and he's at the second floor, knuckles on the door: "Sam! Sam, come on."
The door opens to blue-eyed drowsy blinking. "What in the hell, Toby?"
Step forward, past Sam into the apartment, heat up way higher than it needs to be. His hands extended. "I have some notes for the thing."
Sam switches lights on, bewildered. "That's a bar napkin."
"Yeah, well, the bartender was all out of parchment."
"Toby."
"Listen." Dizzy, one hand on top of the sofa to hold still, offering the napkins to Sam. "I've got something here. Responsible citizenship. Read."
"Oh, no." Slow dramatic shake of the head, even as Sam trudges over to take the notes. "No, no. It's late. I'm not--"
"It's not that late," and he glances at Sam's VCR, green numbers proclaiming only 11:21, it's not that late, there's work to do. Remembering Josh's gesture: "Let's pull a rabbit out of a hat."
"I was going to sleep!" Sam squeaks, hands raised in protest and then lowered, taking a napkin, squinting and scanning. "I can't--I can't read this."
"You've got it upside down."
Turning it around, absorbs the words with none of his usual speed. Gradual widening of Sam's eyes. "Hey, that's not bad."
"It's more of a conversation than a formal speech," he says, circling the couch to sit, ordering the napkins on the table, squares of thought, corners overlapped. "Here, listen: 'We have not changed human nature, we have not'--" halting over a missing word "--'solved all the problems or unified all the world. You cannot collapse walls, collapse differences without facing up to the forces of destruction.' I don't like the last bit, but--"
Sam nods, hand over his mouth. "No, it's good, it's good. It'll be even better in the morning."
He ignores the pointed last word. "Everything happens next door. Therefore, responsible citizenship."
"Toby," another yawn, "God, were you raised by a pack of insomniac wolves?"
If so, Sam was raised by roosters, early to bed, up with the sun. "Do you have a pen around here somewhere, and, you know, actual paper?"
"No." Sam's back turned, retreating to the desk, the telephone, won't hand him a pen but he finds his own again in his pocket, while Sam's dialing. The buttons' tones setting a beat; he wants to use that, put his finger on that pulse, with the final punch of the receiver making the final point, hanging up.
"We've got it," he says.
Sam sighs, wrinkles his nose, hands in his hair. "Seriously, it's good, you're good, but I'm asleep. It's been a long week."
It has been. He stands up, another brief head rush. "Sam--"
"I swear I'll get up early and read whatever you--"
Interrupting, again: "Every day and in every way, you earn your paycheck."
Eyes locked across the room; the merest beginning of a smile. Sam folds his arms in front of the Duke logo on his sweatshirt. "Thank you."
"So maybe we can paraphrase the E.B. White after all."
Sam's arms flung up, weary, scoffing, "You just don't know when to quit."
"No rest for the wicked," he insists, and points out phrases on the napkins, draws arrows, Sam still withholding real paper and resting his head in his hands.
A rapping on the door, abrupt as thunder, Sam relieved as he goes to answer it, as he opens the door. And C.J., dark brown jeans and an ivory blouse and an urgent frown deepening as Sam begins: "C.J., don't get mad and don't hit me if you do."
She looks over Sam's shoulder, rolls her eyes: "He's your emergency?"
"He won't go away," Sam whimpers.
"You're abusing the pager codes!"
"You need to focus," he says, decided, ignores the waves of irritation from them both, not sure who he's addressing. Gestures at the napkins, "This speech is a big one. Pivotal. Bartlet goes electric."
"Great." Staring, C.J. massages her own shoulders, tendons rigid. "You really could've just called a cab."
Sam's face turned to the floor, hiding motives, rumbling a yawn, dissembling: "I just want some sleep."
"I'll get you for this," no threat in her tone, simple statement of fact; she jerks her head at the corridor behind her. "Move it, Ziegler. Now-ish."
His mouth open to fight, but nothing comes, no argument, she's right, so he snatches up a napkin, two, leaving the rest. "You read those." He wags a finger at Sam. "Tomorrow afternoon we'll connect the rest of the dots."
"Yeah, sure," Sam promises, "tomorrow. It's good. Good night." Ushers them out, impatient hustle into the hall and then closing the door.
Down the dim staircase, outside, the night shimmering with mist instead of stars, and C.J.'s glare bright and narrow as a bare light bulb. "I'm tired, too, you know."
He shrugs, stopped on the stoop as the wooden front door thuds closed. "I'm focused."
"You're drunk."
But only a little, already the influence waning like a moon, he's of sound mind. Stands on the step, taller than her for once, barely visible droplets of moisture swimming between them, like dust. "In the D section, we've got to apply the argument."
Her hands over her face; so often she's their shield. "You couldn't just get in the car, could you?"
"The argument," he presses, "More opportunity demands more responsibility. Our obligation--the obligation of America--is to keep the promise made by the founding fathers, hold ourselves accountable. Challenge ourselves."
She tries not to look interested. "This is an argument, or a rant?"
The napkin, like a flag in his hand, striped with his words and he reads them for her: "'We do not have to let countries be consumed by AIDS. We do not have to see fledgling democracies destroyed by it. We have the money, and we have the responsibility. We don't have to let it happen.'"
Tired and flawed and inevitably beautiful, always beautiful and it wears him down like undertow. It occurs to him that to have tides and currents, you have to have an ocean. He knows he is constructing the metaphor, but then her laughter, saturated with stress and something he thinks is hope, rattling together like stones in the water. Her laughter and her hand on his arm. "Let's go."
Her car purrs over the road, weekend traffic mysteriously out of the way, hits every light when it's green. "The holiday stuff is already starting," she says, currant-colored fingernails tapping out a code on the steering wheel. "This week we'll be putting up pine garlands, there'll be little children singing everywhere--don't you even think about hiring a band. I'll strangle you with Christmas lights."
Odd, the significance of someone else's holiday, and every year he likes it less. "I had to listen to the music last year too, you know. Bagpipes and all."
"Oh, pobrecito," jeering exact pronunciation, squealing around a corner, driving California fast and she laughs at his panicked look.
He studies her in profile, streetlight silhouetted, her skin bright as if it was powdered with crushed diamond. "Since when do you speak Spanish?"
Shrugging, she cruises his street looking for a parking place. "Once I got stopped for speeding--shut up--and I pretended I was Mexican to get out of the ticket."
"Did it work?"
"No," she laughs again, chin uptilted to the light. "The cop didn't buy my accent and he deadpanned and asked me, 'Have you ever seen a grown man naked?' You know, from Airplane, and I couldn't keep a straight face."
Shared chuckle as she parallels them to the curb. He assumes she's dropping him off, startled when she shuts the engine down and takes the lead. He follows her into the lobby, the elevator, and already he's starving to taste her, to throw her against the mirrored wall, security cameras be damned. Subtle shiver inside her thin shirt, almost leaning on his arm: are you cold? I'll make you warm.
Keys, slippery in his hands, loud in the lock and they practically stumble inside. She moves with more assurance in his space than he in hers, closing the door with a flicked wrist, a conscious swing in her step past him. "You have food here," she says, settling on the couch, "but no music."
"I have music." He lights the lamp, napkins left on his desk and sits beside her, a hand moving almost involuntarily toward her knee.
One hand at her open collar, teasing her necklace, cheeks faintly flushed, Cheshire Cat grin. "Thirty Velvet Underground albums and a Leonard Cohen bootleg do not a record collection make. Or something."
"You came here to make fun of my taste?"
The laugh that swallows what's left of his resistance, liquid glide of her eyes toward the kitchen. "No, I came here to be fed."
Backwards from how things happen in novels; she leans over to graze his mouth with hers, just shallow, just enough of a kiss and everything warm and wet beyond it. He has wanted her since they left Sam, wants to fuck her whenever she's in his frame of vision, but if he could kiss her like this all night he'd be satisfied.
Her palms flat on his chest as he pushes her down, not shoving but pushing, sucking on her glossed lower lip, familiar taste like nothing else in the world. Like no one else in the world; she nips at his tongue and he wants more, hooking a finger around the top button of her shirt, painful pressure until it tears all the way down, gone, and the soft crush of her breasts in his callused hands. Her fingers digging deep into his back as he tongues her throat; she's left marks before and he wants her to leave more, crescent glyphs of tooth and nail raised red and white on his skin, an exotic brutal alphabet.
Gentling his touch as he unzips her jeans, fingers into her panties and stroking her, flesh like dripped mercury and the yielding, cabled strength of her thighs; she's in better shape than him, younger, healthier, will live longer and he's glad. She tugs his sweater up, his pants open, quick hot twists of her hands that make him groan into her breathless laughter, her head thrown back on the arm of the couch. Awkward angle except for the grace of her legs sliding out of her jeans to wrap around him.
She's all limbs and friction; he pins her wrists to the cushion, her mouth and his free hand roving, drowned in sweat as he lunges into her, harder, wetness over muscle like molten metal, like fevered sea over burning stone, like nothing else and he wants nothing else. Harder; he thinks he hears her say it, obeying and he strains to kiss her, bending, a hand in her hair, her lips bruised and bruising his. She scrapes at his shoulders, sweet jagged pain and she lifts herself up against him, harder, her scream ripping into his mouth and he comes in the echo of that cry.
Holding her there, collapsing into her like a wall crumbling down, the two of them a gasping tangle, folded around each other. He gets his breath back, raises his body from hers with his arms, her tolerant smile turning into another shallow kiss. The air drenched and dominated by their smells together, a moment without words, memory, a rhythm. Warmed, worn out; he'll never fall in love again.
"We've ruined all your furniture," C.J. murmurs, shifting her head on the armrest.
He licks salt and sugar off her collarbone. "Hmm?"
"You can't let people sit here anymore. And you got that new computer chair last month, and then what happened but great passion and now you should be ashamed to let anyone sit there."
One of his rare full smiles. "Let 'em sit on the floor."
He nearly tumbles into the coffee table as she wiggles out from under him, "Can I go first?" He doesn't know what she's talking about, vague nod and then she disappears into the bathroom. He stretches, sore and lethargic, standing in his own living room like a stranger. She takes her time, comes out with his towel around her, not enough to cover much but she won't come back to the shower with him; he stands under cooling water alone.
This is too much and he knows it; three nights in a row together, trying, and too many mornings, sharing too much, pushing too far. When she is always better than he is, when work will always be first. Cold splash on his face, the last of the alcohol leaving his bloodstream. He knows one or both of them will run away from this soon, need some space, need some air. Surprised at his own calm, no fear tonight, letting it happen, letting it go; there will still be an ocean.
He brushes his teeth, spits and goes out to find her naked on the bed with the book of poems, open in her hands, lips parted, eyes moving over the page. Polite cough and she looks up, shy pointed smile and hair drying in waves around her face. "'The cosmos owns our luck'," she reads; "I like this poem. I never thought this stuff would be your speed."
"It was a gift," the truth if not all of it, and he walks to the bookshelf, runs a finger along the cloth cover of the Dostoevsky, last week's bookmarks still in place. He doesn't open it, only thinks of the words inside: "And if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments." But he says nothing aloud.
She lies back, stretching indolent and sinuous as he turns to the bed. "It's good, what you wrote. You think we can do it?"
"Hold ourselves accountable?"
"Win the election." The poetry book open on her chest, apologetic lines, quiescence on her half-shadowed face. "First we have to win, then we save the world. You think we can do it?"
"I think we do what we must," he says, final and exhausted, the weight of day and night touching every cell of him.
Slow nod, and she lifts one sculpted arm to take one of the business cards from the top of his dresser, slotting it in her place in the book. She closes it with caution and respect, and places it precisely on top of the other books as he shuts off the light. Into the bed, sheets drawn up and she twines herself around him, breasts and lean belly and heartbeat heavy and comfortable against his back. Last thoughts in his slipping mind: words like anointing, revelation, attrition. The darkness, rich and sepulchral and serene, total.
Just before sleep he turns to C.J., almost dreaming, still wanting her before his closed eyes. At rest; and always just behind him, the books.