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no frills
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X. History
1997
His head's a jumble when he goes back to his room after the meeting
with McGarry to throw a few things (clothes and papers, more papers
than clothes, his wallet and laptop) into a bag. It's more jumbled
than is normal, even for him. He doubts his own intentions.
He never thinks of fewer than six things at once, but those are
parallel lines in his head. This is tumbling confusion, memories of
all the different periods falling together.
Her: getting into it with someone about a thousand times more
powerful than she is, not knowing she has ink on her lip from the pen
she's been chewing.
Him: brooding in silence because he's already learnt the lines
they'll recite if it comes down to a fight.
Her: laughing at a jokes made by some who isn't him, then raising an
eyebrow at his jokes, and the latter being better.
Him: waking up beside a warm body and, for once, not feeling too hot.
Her: in a skirt that sways with her hips and swirls patterns around
her calves as she walks to where he's standing.
He isn't even clear whether each individual memory belongs to a time
when they were friends or something different.
(Different, yes, is the word. Some of the intensity when they were
together as friends dizzied and frightened and warmed them both. But
there was a tension with it, which precluded comfort.)
He makes up his mind to call the whole thing off and changes it a
dozen times in the ten minutes it takes him to pack.
Andi hasn't answered his calls in four days. CJ's well-versed at
reading his shuffles and the lines on his face, and she remembers the
other women he used to shake her scent from his system. The moment
she sees him, she'll know he's bleeding.
And he's crazy if he thinks for a second that she'll go along with
the idle daydreams he went into the meeting with - the promise that
he came out of it with is irrelevant. He isn't crazy, and if he gets
that way sometimes, it's the world and the women who do it to him.
So perhaps that's not what he wants with her at all.
A random memory flits into focus: an afternoon with sunlight
streaming through the window and a slow day at the office, and being
more than happy to close the blinds and clear the desk and make
unauthorised use of government property.
Yes. He doubts his intentions are honourable.
He throws the bag down on the bed. He should call McGarry and say
he's been rethinking. Can he imagine going back to spending every
waking hour at her side? Really, and not merely in the context of a
soft-focus fantasy? And what are the odds on her wanting to walk
into that one?
The jumble's starting to make him feel ill, or perhaps it's nerves.
Fear of flying. He sits on the bed and tries to see one thing,
instead of every moment overlapping.
He remembers her the night of that first parting of their ways.
It's a memory that gives rise to a bitter taste on his tongue. Not
so messy as what came later, but he supposes it was the first time he
realised the power she held, especially when she wasn't trying.
Whatever the reason, it's clearer in his mind's eye than anything
that happened yesterday. The edges are sharp; the colours aren't
faded; the textures aren't eroded. The tears have lost none of their
glister.
He suspects her mind has a similar looking glass to the past, with
his face and sunken shoulders staring back at her and her own
churning guts.
He slams the ball of his hand against his forehead. Too much of a
jumble.
What's really playing at his mind came a short time later, when their
candidate fell and the offices were cleared and she tucked her carton
under one arm to free a hand for him to shake.
"I'm sure I'll see you again," she said, not the same way she said it
to everyone else. "I don't get off that easy."
He didn't believe her. He was wrong. She was right.
A horn outside the window. It's the cab waiting to take him to the
airport. What he should do is pass the driver a bill and tell him his
services aren't required.
He's seen her on TV a few times. He sneered to himself at her hair,
or the kind of work she was doing. He never speaks of her more than
casually, until this morning. He's still not sure why he did that.
He meant it. She's good at a lot of things, and he knows in his
heart that this thing could be one of them. They could get a man
elected President. A good man.
The horn blares twice more. It sounds like him in a temper.
Then there's the thought of the nervous excitement that so becomes
her. Her mouth and the way it flickers when she's got something to
be excited about. Perhaps the reason he woke up thinking of her face
for this is that he knows just how much she'll love it.
He hoists the bag over his shoulder.
"Where to?" asks the driver.
He says, "California," and doesn't stop chuckling all the way to the
airport.
*
He's come to get her.
He sits down while she clatters around in the bedroom, shedding wet
clothes.
She clearly feels flustered, harried. When she emerges, her skirt is
clinging to her legs so much that she's having trouble walking, all
because she didn't take the time to get dried off before she changed.
There are blurry floral prints dyed into her skin from the soaked
dress. She looks angrily lost.
He stands and leans against the couch while she towels her hair.
Once, in the time before, he pushed her into a fountain in a park and
jumped in after her. Everyone stared as they walked home, thin
summer dress drenched so that she would have almost have been as
decent in her underwear. Both of them rather enjoyed the attention.
He wonders if that's what she was thinking of when she told him to
avert his eyes.
"What's this about?" she asks abruptly.
He considers being coy; it's not worth it.
"For once in my life I'd like to win something," he says with a heavy
sigh. Realises he means it. He thought he'd stopped caring.
She pauses, one hand clutching the towel atop her head, standing
right where the light hits through the window. Sunlight fits the
landscape better out here, but the air is too empty - he is used to
filling his lungs with pollution before he faces the day.
"I've won stuff," she tells him. "It's overrated."
"Nevertheless, I'd like to try it. Leo McGarry thinks you can help."
She hesitates. Tendrils of hair creep out under the towel. He
squints. It doesn't seem to be red any more.
"Toby, I hate to ask but-"
"No."
"This isn't some elaborate-"
"No."
"It isn't like you'll get to feel magnanimous and forgetting things
fell out the way they did and I'll be-"
"No. It isn't like that."
She sighs. It seems to be catching. She lets the towel fall and her
hair curls up around her face. He can't positively identify the
colour, but it looks good in the sunlight.
He sinks deeper into the armchair. It's too soft for his taste - he
prefers a seat he can spring up from in a hurry. He kicks back and
watches her hover and remembers what she looks like naked.
Catching her looking at him looking at her, he realises the odds are
short that she knows exactly what he's thinking when he looks at her
like that. Maybe that's where her unease comes from. It wasn't
supposed to be uncomfortable when he started to let her face creep to
the front of his mind again.
But it never was what it was supposed to be, or it wouldn't be so
long since he saw her that he was relieved that she recognised his
voice through earfuls of water.
And he made a promise, not to mention vows.
"Do I have something on my face?" she asks tartly.
If he were a different man, he might have said something like, the
prettiest eyes.
"You used to wear better clothes."
"I used to wear more revealing clothes."
"That's what I mean."
She turns on the full beam of her glare and he starts to wonder if
the proposition he brought out here was too big after too long.
He closes his eyes - the insides of his eyelids glow red, dotted
black, from the sun streaming in the window. For long seconds he
listens to her gentle breathing and the buzzing of flies.
"You had no right to say the things you said to me," she says, and he
didn't think they were going to go there.
"I know."
He tries to meet her gaze but she's focused on the light refracting
through a glass vase on the mantel. Bright sparks of green are
reflected in her eyes.
"You had no right to think them."
"I wasn't thinking."
"No, you weren't. Came straight from the heart," her tone so neutral
he almost misses the meaning.
"From the gut," he corrects. "It was instinct, irrational. It was
all the other things that were going on. I wasn't capable... I never
thought like that."
He hesitates. He's never been one to excuse himself, but she needs
to understand, as far as she's capable. The sun has moved in the sky
and the beams are no longer hitting the vase, upon which her gaze is
still fixed. She has tilted her head, slightly and unconsciously,
slanting her cheek into the light.
"It was temper, CJ."
It's a second or two before she tells him, "I noticed," and he
wonders if she's reliving it. He begins to regret the early morning
impulse that sent him here.
"I was going through some stuff you can't get," he mutters, thinking
about the person he's supposed to be sharing that baggage with.
She's past listening anyway, drifting in history she's probably
wasted as much time as he has trying to forget.
"So was I," and her clenched jaw helps him understand some things and
makes him sorry that it's years too late.
An effort to pull her into the present, he murmurs her name - as if
that doesn't have a thousand conflicted memories attached. She can
tell the difference between shadows and reality, however, and meets
his look. Her surface is calm, in the manner that so confounded him
the last time he faced her, and he wonders at his own simplicity in
trusting it then.
"I tried, you know."
Her features hardens even in their impassiveness. He finds it as
hard to look as he does to continue speaking.
"I tried to say them. The things I- not the things I said, the
things I should have said."
Her face doesn't change but he doesn't like the things happening
under it.
"Maybe not so much that last time," he acknowledges. They both
flinch and pretend not to notice. "But overall. I tried to say the
things I should have said."
She shakes her head. She isn't interested.
But, outside, she seemed interested in Bartlet. He tries to think of
something to say about his latest boss, draws a blank and, not for
the first time, considers ditching this fool's errand and going back
to D.C. to try to win a different fight.
"You had no right to say the things you said, Toby."
His face sinks towards his lap.
"You were a bastard."
Her chin juts and he wonders how often she's woken in the night and
lifted the receiver with the idea of calling to say just that.
"Positively Republicanesque, you were."
There's enough dark humour in the line, if not the tone or the face,
to make him think it's worth glancing up.
"Jed Bartlet is a better guy than me."
He doesn't know if he believes it, but he's making a living at
painting a full gloss picture of the man. And when he glimpses a
rare chance to say the right thing to her, he must jump on it.
She laughs, quickly and too high for her, and he doesn't know if that
means she believes it or not.
"You know you wouldn't be asking me to do this if-" She doesn't
pause but there's no doubt there's a tightening of the jaw. "-things
had been different. You're aware of that, right?"
He shakes his head. There's nothing to say to that.
"He's not like other people we've worked for," he murmurs. "I think
I picked a winner, CJ."
He traces a line on the floorboard with his foot.
"We're not going to talk about the other thing any more, agreed?" she
demands, as she always does regarding the blackest things hanging
between them. He agrees, as he always does, because she'll run if he
pushes and because he's afraid of the dark.
They have a stilted question and answer session about Jed Bartlet.
It serves as a transition into a sort of ease, or a beginning of
ease, that reminds him of the simplicity of the act of falling in
love with her. Guilt niggles at his stomach.
She reaches into a cabinet behind her and begins to pour drinks. He
opens his mouth to say he's driving but changes his mind. It's a
nice house; there's bound to be a corner for him to spend the night.
Facing away, she says, "You'd be my boss," so softly that he almost
misses it.
He guessed that might be a deal-breaker.
"Technically. In practice, we'll all just be mucking in together.
McGarry leads, everyone else follows."
"Who's everyone else?"
"At present? That'd be me and a few enthusiastic college kids who're
really great at stuffing envelopes. But there are some people on
their way."
She nods absently, and knocks back both the drinks she's poured. His
mouth turns down at the corners.
"Still, at the end of the day, you'd have authority," she says.
"Over me."
He feels it would not be wise to speak at this juncture.
"I don't like that idea."
He stays quiet, hoping the humiliations of the morning are fresher in
her mind than the lowlights of the history McGarry so disapproves of.
"That's not why you came here?"
He finds her looking at him earnestly, nervously. Her skin's still
damp and her clothes are dreadful, but her eyes are bright and
looking for something from him.
"No."
He's not sure if she's pleased or disappointed, but it's the answer
she needed.
"I'd have to sell the house," she says. "I couldn't afford the
payments on six hundred dollars a week."
"Yeah, but you'll have less yuppie guilt to deal with."
"And I'd need to buy some new clothes."
He doesn't respond. Not that he usually takes great pains to avoid
offending her, but now would not be a good time.
"You'll be making the same as me. And I think you'll agree that
that's not enough for me to have wasted the price of this round trip.
Plus your ticket back with me."
She pulls a purple cardigan over her shoulders and looks down, her
hair falling forward as a veil as she fiddles awkwardly with the
buttons. He realises this is the first time he's ever seen her look
frumpy. It's probably just as well, given his promise to McGarry, to
say nothing (which is best) of the precarious situation with his
wife.
"You bought a ticket for me."
"I did."
"That's better than anything you ever bought me before."
"You should take advantage of my newfound optimistic mood."
"How new?"
"It's three days old."
"That's impressive for you."
"It is."
She looks away, chews her lip and looks back. Her eyes are doubtful
and there's something else - a trace of fear, perhaps - but there's
colour in her cheeks other than the mark of the sun. She is excited,
a little.
"Oh, Toby, I don't know."
"Just come out with me. See what you think of Jed Bartlet."
"You said he was a good man."
"And?"
"He sounds too good to be true. He's not a real contender, is he?
He was never supposed to be."
He places a finger over his lips. "Don't tell his wife, but things
have changed."
"What's changed?"
"He's got us."
"You mean you and your subordinate."
He sighs, touches a hand to his burning baldness. He should wear a
hat in the sun but there are times when he tires of looking
ridiculous.
"CJ."
"I don't like it, Toby."
"It worked before. It wasn't me being your boss that caused the...
trouble before."
That was a mistake, mentioning before.
She shakes her head, sitting down beside him armed with fresh drinks.
"If it helps," he offers, waggling his eyebrows. "I won't order you
to undress."
It looks for a minute like he's going to have to shield himself from
an outburst of feminist ire before she begins to laugh, a touch
hysterically, as if the day's been too much.
"Yeah," she confirms. "That helps."
The rest, they do not say, is history.
*
love/hate to: lunatic.lover.poet at ntlworld.com --- AIM: havingthemdreams