All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Title/summary from The Wallflowers. Please send feedback. Sleepwalker Violet
They have been in the motel for two nights now, a Comfort Inn with negligible air-conditioning, wafer walls and polyester blankets on the beds. Sam is the first to unpack. He is the only one who arrives at the morning meetings in a jacket that's not crushed, a tie that's crisper than a knotted noodle. He is the last to sweat through his shirt each afternoon, not counting C.J., who actually changes her clothes. He is the closest thing Bartlet For America's got to a southern staffer.
He wants to cry, about half the time.
South Carolina does not welcome him; the air is too thick and the sky is too low. There was a thunderstorm on the first morning. His umbrella is missing; his shoes are ruined. They are handling Bartlet badly. The corners of Sam's mouth hurt from beaming at old women while muttering their names into the candidate's ear. His back hurts from falling asleep at the unfriendly wooden desk in his room. In the morning he wakes with a useless erection and a ringing in his ears. He has constant headaches, constant caffeine jitters, and a constant smile.
In the back of the van, he checks his voice mail for the first time in a week. Lisa's message is a litany of grievances, angry words in a voice that seems strangely flat. "All I'm saying is," she concludes, "when you get back to New York, cowboy, you better fucking be ready to call my mother and tell her you're sorry." Sam shrugs as if they were having this conversation face to face. He misses her, but he isn't sorry. Only--he wishes it was easier to breathe.
His own mother's recorded voice sounds confused. He is not surprised. He snaps the phone shut, loosens his bow-tie, watches Josh fidget in the seat in front of him. "Hoynes is blowing into town next week," Josh mutters. "These guys aren't going to open their wallets unless we trot someone out in a garter belt, and since no one's volunteered yet--"
"Shut up." C.J. fusses her curls into a knot and frowns at her reflection in the window. "He was good today on the radio shows."
Toby scoffs from the driver's seat. "He called all four of the female DJs Jodie."
"In his defense," Sam says, "two of them were named Jodie."
Nobody laughs. The van rolls into the parking lot behind the Hilton. Sam watches Toby watching C.J.'s long legs as she steps down to the concrete. "He was good today," she repeats. "Maybe he'll be even better tonight."
Maybe. Sam looks at the palm trees set in concrete, barricading the lobby windows. His reflection grins, no visible coffee stains on his teeth. Primates smile to intimidate their enemies, he remembers, to hide their weaknesses while they're baring their fangs. He doesn't know where he read that. The cool air inside the Hilton splashes him like a blessing. But the back of his neck is sticky, and the phone's weight thuds against his chest at each step. He keeps smiling as he heads into the crowd.
He is good at this, one of the best. Josh is better with a threat, faster with a comeback, sharper with a deal. Leo McGarry is a living legend. And from what Sam's learned of Toby, there are plenty of politicians who wouldn't want to meet him in an alley, under darkness or daylight. But Sam is very good at this, handshakes and toasts and earnest explanations of issues. He is very good at projecting hope.
In passing, winding their way between tables, Josh says, "I swear you're even picking up the accent. You should've been a movie star."
He doesn't say Josh should've been a snake oil salesman or a hustler. Instead he nods. "Thanks."
"I might've been wrong."
Sam stops walking. "What?"
"Look at him." Josh points with his chin. Bartlet is holding court at a long table, with two Congressmen and a gaggle of reporters. He's got them laughing. He can't be talking about economics this time. "Making friends," Josh says. "This might be worth more than I thought."
"That's what C.J. said," Sam remembers.
"Yeah." A woman from the local news brushes past them; Josh pauses to greet her and to watch the swing in her walk. "Well, next thing you know someone'll bring up guns or school prayer and then it'll be the Civil War in here."
It's Sam's turn not to laugh. Josh waits, then walks away in the anchorwoman's direction. A few minutes later, looking over a thoroughbred breeder's shoulder, Sam can't find Josh in the room. He grinds his teeth a little and looks for C.J. instead, finding her by her silver dress.
He doesn't really know her. It shouldn't bother him during a campaign, when there are strangers every day, and they are working to turn all of them into friends. He wonders about C.J., though. She looks good tonight, but she's old for someone he's never heard of, and for a while he wasn't sure he wasn't supposed to be her boss. Instead they both answer to Toby, and sometimes everyone answers to Josh. Sam wonders if C.J. will last through Illinois, California, the middle of Texas. Press people burn out fast as a camera's flash. She looks at him across the room and smiles. Holds it. Sam is the first to turn back to his own conversation.
The night passes so slowly it should be measured in geological time. Sam spends most of an hour defending the party line on affirmative action to a wizened, wealthy spinster who probably has tobacco ties anyway. Josh reappears, alone, with his tie slung around his neck like an athlete's laurels. They introduce Bartlet to dozens of guests whose names Sam will remember so the candidate can forget them. Just after midnight, his phone starts buzzing, making his heart shudder. He takes it outside.
His skin is dampened immediately by the night air. "Sam Seaborn," he says.
"Asshole," Lisa says sweetly. "What are you doing?"
He scuffs the bottom of his shoe along the curb. "What am I doing? It's after one in the morning."
"So what? I'm supposed to be tucked in bed with visions of sugarplums?"
"So I'm surprised you're not out climbing a clock tower."
Instantly he wants the words back; this is not diplomacy. He wants to sit down, but he remembers the tuxedo. He braces himself against the hood of someone's car with one hand. Lisa laughs, a sound like ice hitting ice. "Right. I forgot. In your world, I'm the bad guy."
"My world?" For years he's been assuming they shared one. It strikes him now as stupidly naïve.
"Your little adventure world," she says. "The little world where politics is a Boys' Own story and partnerships come and go and your girlfriend's a bitch if she doesn't drop everything to chase you around the Bible Belt. Little Sam and Josh Lyman world."
"It's not like that." He lowers his head, looking at his hand on the car, fingertips touching their own blurred reflection in black paint. "Let me ask you this. Is there a world in which you're not going to yell at me right now?"
"I'm not going to yell." Lisa hesitates, quiet, planning. He shakes his head against the twist of tension in his neck and wonders what she expects him to be thinking. "I have yelled. It didn't change your mind. And if you come back here in a few months with your tail between your legs and all that--I hope you don't think it'll be like Patrick Duffy steps out of the shower and everything else was a dream."
"Patrick Duffy?"
Her voice drops to a warning. "I hope you don't think that."
"I don't think that."
"Okay, then--come up this weekend and pack up the rest of your stuff."
"I'm working," he reminds her.
"I can always chuck it all into the Hudson, Sam." Her voice is light, and that sets him on edge. "At least, that's what you think I'd do. Come up this weekend. I'm going to hang up now. I'm cutting my hair."
He disconnects the line and turns to watch the lobby doors. People are leaving the party now, in couples and clusters. Some of them linger in front of the palm trees to smoke, autopsying the night in conversation. Sam stops worrying about his clothes and sits down on the hood of the car. His hands look steady even though he feels like they must be trembling. He places them on his knees, stares at them, tries to ignore the wrenched feeling between his shoulders.
Tomorrow the voters will go to the polls in New Hampshire. They'll come into post offices, fire stations, junior high school libraries, stamp snow off their boots. Show their licenses, and then into the booth to pull the levers. Bartlet's already won. Sam finds it hard to remember that he shouldn't be up north right now, freezing his balls off outside a pancake joint, hands full of flyers and phone numbers. Lisa thinks it's a game, or at best, a crusade. It's a job. It's not like that.
"Think it's hot enough for heatstroke?"
He looks up, dizzy, eyes blurred. Leo stands in front of him, jacket over one shoulder, shirtsleeves rolled up. suspenders that could have come straight from a wartime newsreel: Roosevelt for President. "I'm fine," Sam replies.
"Well, you're young. You adapt, like...whatever the thing is that adapts. Cold-blooded?"
"Warm-blooded, I think."
"Yeah, well, do me a favor and don't ask the Governor." Leo chuckles. "I'm still catching up to winter in New England."
Sam raises a hand to push his hair back from his forehead, to wipe the moisture away with it. "They're voting there tomorrow."
"Some of them voted tonight." He looks past Sam, past the parking lot, at some horizon beyond the highway. Sam glances back. His neck hurts. He can't see anything. Leo says, "There's that town that does it at midnight. We won there."
Leo's smiling, so Sam does too. "Doesn't happen to be the town where the Governor was born, does it?"
"He thinks you're doing well here."
Sam squints, and light smears out from streetlamps and hotel windows, over the layers of shadow. "Did he say that?"
"You're doing well here." Leo takes a firm step toward him. "Go inside, cool off for a while before you head back to the hotel."
"I'm enjoying the air."
"Then enjoy it with your ass off my car, would you?"
"Sorry." Sam jumps up and steps onto the curb. Leo laughs and checks his pockets for his keys. He nods goodbye and Sam turns, walking into the lights, head down even though there's no wind.
The bar is between the lobby and the ballroom, surrounded by more palm trees and overgrown fern fronds, vines arranged carefully to look like chaos. The air conditioning is weaker here, and the smoke is heavy. Josh is attached to the pay phone, probably barking instructions to the skinny blonde girl who's nominated herself as his assistant. He points enthusiastically at Sam, but doesn't say a word. Sam keeps walking.
As he gets closer to the furthest table, he wrinkles his nose against the odor of Toby's cigar. Toby is muttering something almost inaudible about the temperature in Saigon. C.J. glares at him and then raises her eyes. "Hey! Sit down and have a beer."
"You're buying?" Toby asks, lifting one eyebrow out of his scowl.
"Not for you," C.J. says primly. "I'm buying a drink for Sam. Soon as that guy comes back. Take your tie off, Sam, I'm getting hot just looking at you."
Toby chokes and then laughs, sending up small curls of smoke like a dragon would. Sam sinks down onto one of the metal chairs, his face prickling pink. "Wow," he mumbles.
C.J. looks at them both and shrugs. "Whatever."
The waiter waddles over for their orders. Sam counts the empty glasses as they're cleared. There are several, and he's not sure whether that puts him at a disadvantage, considering the champagne they all downed with dinner. He tugs his tie loose, blushing, and folds it neatly before tucking it into his pocket, alongside the phone. "So you were right. He was good tonight."
"Small potatoes." Toby jabs his cigar at the air, scattering tiny flakes of ash across the tabletop. "Small potatoes, small stakes, small time."
"Toby likes to test the power of positive thinking after six or seven shots." C.J. laughs, digging her elbow into Toby's arm. He ignores her.
Sam studies the angles of their shoulders against the chairs, their hands crumpling napkins. Neither of them looks comfortable. He would like to slump, to fold his arms on the table and let his head droop, maybe fall asleep. Instead, he sits up straight. The waiter drops their drinks in front of them. Sam sips his beer, the foam dissolving to a stickiness in his throat. "We've got to be in Columbia at one for that barbecue, right?"
C.J. nods. "That's what the schedule says. Which means we'll probably get there around quarter past two. And I'm going to get a sunburn, if not food poisoning."
"And that's what we should be worrying about." Toby swirls the bourbon in his glass; it catches the light, but his eyes are shadowed. "Not the fact that we have nothing at all to say to people in Columbia except 'pass the Rolaids.'"
"Hey." Sam leans forward, wrinkling his forehead. "I gave you Columbia this afternoon. I gave you eleven pages on civic responsibility and poverty relief."
"You gave me a page and a half on civic responsibility."
"Toby--"
"No." This time, he stubs the cigar out in the ashtray, and immediately frowns at himself. "You gave me a page and a half on civic responsibility and nine and a half pages, Sam, of welfare rhetoric."
Sam laces his fingers, separates them, brings them back together. His palms are cold and damp. "There are 27,000 families on welfare in this state," he points out. "A significant number of them are in Columbia. Welfare voters are traditionally Democratic, and the barbecue's cosponsored by the Harvest Hope Food Bank. I think we'd be unwise not to bring it up."
C.J. takes a long drink of her beer and licks her lips slowly after she's finished. "You remembered that it was the Harvest Hope Food Bank? That's good. That's very good." She points her glass at him. "You can do the call-in thing on C-Span tomorrow. Save me some time making note cards."
"He can't do the call-in," Toby insists. "He's going to be busy the whole morning writing a new draft for the barbecue, because we're not gonna put Bartlet up at a lectern and have him read nine and a half pages of pro-welfare rhetoric."
"You keep saying that," C.J. says. "Would it bother you less if it were nine pages even?"
"Why does it bother you at all?" Sam gulps some of his beer; Dutch courage, they call it. "We've got a platform on this. We've got millions of Americans below the poverty line, who want to hear that the government will be there for them. We've got--"
"I read the nine and a half pages," Toby interrupts, glancing pointedly at C.J. He drinks most of his bourbon in two quick swallows. "I'm not suggesting we write a speech against welfare. I'm not suggesting we split from the party line on welfare, and I'm not suggesting you author reform legislation."
Sam blinks. "What then?"
"What, what then?" Josh asks, meandering over to the table. He pulls the fourth chair out and sits down. "No one got a drink for me?"
"We'll make it up to you." C.J. runs a finger around the rim of her glass. "You can get the next round."
"How is that making it up to me?" Josh relaxes against the back of his chair. He looks lightheaded and lighthearted, with his tie loose like a lounge singer. Sam looks away.
"Listen." Toby raps his knuckles on the table. "Yeah. We have a party platform. But we've also got a sitting president whose mediocre approval ratings bounced--hell, they spiked the minute he got Congress talking welfare reform. We've got a vast middle class that thinks that every single one of your welfare recipients is a leech sucking away at the ridiculous taxes that Democrats are known for levying. And we've got no good reason to put our heads on their chopping block."
Josh scratches his chin. "Okay, so that pretty much negates the need to ask what I missed."
Sam can't believe he's hearing this. He looks from Josh to C.J. and groans. "I can't believe I'm hearing this."
"Toby has a point," Josh says. His hand steals toward C.J.'s glass.
She pulls it protectively close to her chest. "Toby has no point."
Josh chuckles. "This isn't an ideological debate, and it's not a lecture hall. It's a barbecue, for crying out loud. He talks us up on unemployment and crime, kisses the cutest baby on the playground--which, by the way, it is not going to be my job to find--and we eat some chicken and grits and get back on the road. Why does it need to be controversial?"
"Well, first off," C.J. says, "you don't have grits at a barbecue. And secondly--"
"It's not about controversial!" Sam protests, sliding a hand through his limp hair. He picks his beer up and then sets it down. "It's about honest. It's about that we're not Hoynes. And we're not Wiley. We should be out there in Columbia telling them that this is what we want to do because it's right."
Toby lowers his chin and stares at Sam for a long moment. He smiles. His voice is oddly low. "That's cute. That's very cute."
"It's not cute!" Sam stands up fast and it makes his temples throb. He swallows spit to hold down a surge of nausea and chases it with a gulp of his beer, which is lukewarm and flat. "This is what we're in this for," he says, trying to keep his voice from rising. He fails. "We're supposed to be better than the other guys. We are. We've got a candidate with qualities that Hoynes couldn't buy with his fifty million dollars, and not showing that off is chickenshit."
Josh whistles. "Should he be using that kind of language, C.J.?"
"I'm not in the mood to quibble over semantics." She reaches over her shoulder to touch Sam's arm. "He's right."
"Okay!" Toby pushes his chair back and gets to his feet. He flattens his hands on the table and leans toward Sam, a little unsteady but somehow menacing. "Let's say you are right. Let's say that Bartlet is somehow fundamentally a better person, just a superior human being than Hoynes or Wiley. Even imagining that you could sell that insulting idea to the general public, Bartlet is still a candidate for national office. You know what candidates for national office need? National appeal. You know how you get that?"
"Of course I know--"
"I don't think you do!" He's louder now. "I don't think you do, Sam, because if you did you would've done the right thing twenty minutes ago."
He thrusts his jaw out. "The right thing?"
"Same thing you should do now," Toby growls. "Sit down, shut up, write a better speech."
Sam knows he works for Toby, in some way, despite the tangled chain of command. But he knows that Josh recommended him, that Leo McGarry hired him; he knows his credentials. His head pounds as he paces around the table, toward Toby. "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid."
"Guys," Josh murmurs. Sam entertains a fleeting fantasy of strangling him.
"He's got Bartlet as some fucking miracle of eugenics." Toby's hand moves to his forehead. "He hasn't even figured out how to tell the four of us apart yet."
"He knows me and Sam," C.J. says, tucking a fallen curl behind her ear. "I think it's because we're the good-looking ones. And you two talking like this is certainly going to make all our jobs easier, so you should definitely keep it up."
"Seriously," Josh says, "you're arguing over a picnic. This isn't a make-or-break moment. Unless he falls off the podium, it's not even gonna make the blooper reel."
Sam presses his teeth together, hard, hard enough that he can feel it in every bone of his face. The nausea hovers inside him. His lips are practically rigid from the effort to hold everything down, to keep his voice close to level. "This is a moment. We have to beat Wiley. This is the strategy we talked about. We have to beat him, but we also have to get his endorsements and his money. We're not going to do that by moving to Hoynes' right. We're not going to do a damn thing moving to Hoynes' right except confuse the voters who didn't think Republicans ran in Democratic primaries!"
"And you don't want me to talk to you like you're stupid?" Toby holds his arms out at his sides as if he's abandoned all hope. "Give me something to work with! Maybe you're having some trouble remembering, but I was in the room when we decided to leave New Hampshire. I know what we're doing. How many welfare recipients haul their asses down to City Hall and register to vote? This isn't the October revolution! We can't get anywhere by throwing ourselves headfirst into the class struggle." He steps toward Sam. "And you aren't gonna get anywhere comparing me to a Republican."
Sam takes a step forward to match him, then another, narrowing the distance between them to inches. "You're sure as hell sounding like one. I can't help thinking how much the President must be loving this. God forbid we talk about any real issues, because that's not what a candidate's supposed to do. God forbid we let Bartlet's intelligence and insight speak for itself. Let's keep it all straight down the center, aimed at the middle class. Screw the actual policies. Screw the poor."
They are hushed for a moment and it occurs to Sam that there are still other people in the room, outside the red, hazy periphery of his vision, beyond Josh making cut gestures and C.J. covering her face with her hands. He almost looks around, and then Toby laughs, mocking, mirthless, in his face. "Yeah, I look at you and I can see that you know a lot about poverty."
Sam slams his glass down on the table, spattering the dregs of the beer onto his cuff. He wants to pull the jacket off, slam it onto the floor. He snaps. "Yeah, Toby, and I can tell that you know a lot about victory."
Toby's smile freezes, his teeth visible and gleaming in the light from the bar. Sam has almost a second to try and assess the situation, and then Toby swings.
His fist catches Sam's cheekbone, just below his eye. Sam reels backwards from the impact, spinning, catching himself after a few staggering steps. Pain suddenly flares through the right side of his face. His hands clench, and he is starting to turn when two hands catch hold of his jacket and yank him hard into a chair.
"Jesus! The two of you are so stupid!" C.J. lets go of Sam and stands up, steps around him. Toby looks at her blankly and she shoves him, hard, toward his own seat. She looks exhausted, and Sam realizes she's stronger than she looks. "Okay. Nobody at this table is allowed to stand up or speak ever again without my permission."
"What about me?" Josh asks. His hand is still tight on Sam's back. Sam tries to shrug it off, but Josh won't let go. "I wasn't doing anything. I was just sitting here keeping the--"
"Shut up."
"Okay."
"I mean it." C.J. circles the table and stands behind her chair. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation with educated adults and not, you know, my brothers when they were fifteen. I can't believe I have to be your guidance counselor. You guys have written speeches. You've written law. You've worked for members of Congress. In the course of all that, how did no one notice that you're both idiots?"
Sam ignores the warning pressure of Josh's fingers and opens his mouth. "Hey, I wasn't the one--"
C.J. glares at him. "Don't even start. You both ran off your mouths enough already. Healthy disagreement's fine. This is no longer healthy or even entertaining. It stops now."
"This is bullshit," Toby begins. "You can't--"
Her voice is flat and inflexible and cold as marble. "It stops now."
"Excuse me?"
C.J. spins so fast it makes Sam's stomach lurch. "What?"
The waiter rocks on his heels, baffled but unmoving. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you all to leave."
She waves a hand vaguely. "They're settled down now."
"I'm authorized to call hotel security," he informs her.
C.J. looks as if she might slaughter him. She nods politely. "We'll be out of here in a minute." She rolls her eyes after him as he trudges away, and then turns around. "We're going to go back to our hotel now, and here's what's going to happen. We will all get wake-up calls shortly before six a.m., and we're going to meet with Leo and the Governor, and we're going to act optimistic and bright-eyed even if we have to do it from behind dark sunglasses. And then you two"--she points from Toby to Sam--"are going to get locked in a small room until you come out with a draft that displays some kind of intelligent compromise. And I'll go do the C-Span thing, since our coverboy is now damaged goods."
Sam's embarrassed; he feels himself starting to blush under the bruise. He turns his head and drags his eyes to meet Toby's. Toby looks back down at the table first, actually looking chastened. Sam's skin is sweaty and cold. He wants to cry. He looks down and hears Josh ask, "Permission to stand?"
She folds her arms and watches them for a little longer. Then she smiles. "Let's go."
They trail after her, through the lobby and outside. The humidity closes around them, thick as exhaustion. "We got thirty votes in New Hampshire tonight," Josh says, as the doors close behind him.
"That and a cup of coffee," C.J. replies, reaching up to massage her neck..
"Also, I never got to have any beer."
"Good. Then you can drive."
Josh grimaces and turns around, walking backward. "So what are you going to do if the press gets wind of this, C.J.?"
She looks over her shoulder at Sam and Toby. "I'll say they were fighting over me."
"Yeah." Josh grins. "'Cause how many chances are you going to get?"
C.J. hurries after him, heels clacking on the pavement. Sam follows them, stepping slowly down from the curb, crossing the empty spaces in the parking lot. His head is buzzing and his hands are shaking. He stuffs them into his pockets as Toby falls into step with him.
"Maybe," Toby says, "one and a half page on welfare and nine and a half pages on the other stuff."
Sam meets his eyes and this time neither of them looks away. "This isn't an adventure story," he says slowly. "This is--I understand that there have to be compromises. But there should also be the reality of what we're doing, which is running a better candidate. And with Wiley between us and Hoynes in the polls and the political spectrum--"
"Start thinking past Wiley," Toby says. He quickens his pace.
In the van on the way home they are quiet, though Sam suspects Josh is trying to come up with a clever comment about doing the local news. He closes his eyes and listens to the car's ventilation system humming, resists the urge to rub his face. The Comfort Inn looks like a tenement when Josh pulls them up in front. Sam takes his seatbelt off. "How do you think we'll do tomorrow?"
Toby climbs out of the van. "Better," he says simply.
"If we don't melt," C.J. declares, stepping down after him. "I am not a magnolia. I'm not built for this weather."
Josh tosses her the keys to the van. "If you can't take the heat--"
Sam cuts him off. "We'll be all right."
They retreat then to their separate rooms. Sam goes into the bathroom to undress, to splash water on his face and mouthwash onto his tongue. He studies himself in the mirror, under the unpleasant fluorescent light. His cheekbone is marked by a red splotch; his eye looks and feels like a charcoal briquette was ground into it. It will hurt more in the morning. It won't matter.
He hangs his suit up in the closet, takes his phone out of the jacket and leaves it on the desk. In the morning, he'll have a hangover, a speech to write, and he'll have to call Lisa to rescue his records and T-shirts. They will win the New Hampshire primary. He thinks past Wiley. Hoynes. And then what's next. He can hear himself yelling at Toby, and Toby yelling at him. It hasn't exactly changed anything. But maybe it has eased his mind..
The room is too hot. He lies down on top of the covers, piling both pillows under his head. The ache in his body is present, but not painful enough to distract him. The next room belongs to Josh, and Sam hears him bumping into furniture, falling onto the bed. He listens, without moving, until he drifts into sleep.