Hartford Country Club: That Evening
"...So I say to him, 'Listen I'm with you on this one. Just leave some pork in the trough for the rest of us!" The small group burst out laughing at the joke from Congressman Andrews, Josh and Donna among them, their laughter considerably more forced. They'd arrived at the club a mere two hours ago and Josh already felt that if he heard another joke about politics or sports or the governor the state, his head would literally explode. And they hadn't even eaten dinner yet, so there was still a few more hours of this torture to endure.
"If you'll excuse us," Donna said diplomatically to the group, sensing her husband's boredom and pulling him away to a secluded corner in the massive dining hall. The room was filled with people, all heavily affiliated with the Democratic Party of Connecticut, and all clamoring for Josh's attention.
"This is insane," Josh complained as they stepped onto a vacant balcony. "I really thought Toby was just exaggerating about all this stuff. He was downplaying it, Donna."
"I know," she told him, running her hands across his chest in an attempt to calm him down. "But we'll leave soon. You'll make your grand speech to the masses and we'll be outta here."
"Yeah, if I don't kill myself before then," the words escaping his lips before he could take them back. Donna immediately cast her eyes downward and clung on to Josh's lapels a little tighter. "I'm sorry," he apologized, pulling his arms around her. "I didn't think."
Donna sniffled a little, wiping away at any tears in her eyes. "You never do so why start now?" she joked, trying to add some levity to the situation. "It's okay. Don't worry about it now. Focus on the speech."
"I'd rather focus on you," he leered, wrapping her body in his suit coat, and kissing her softly.
Donna let out a moan of pleasure as his tongue dueled with hers lightly and his hands explored the bare expanse of her back. Things would have escalated much further than that had voice not made its presence known.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Lyman," an unknown someone, probably a campaign intern of some sort, said from the doorway. "There's a group from the Literacy Association of Hartford that'd like a moment of your time."
"I'll be right there," Donna answered professionally. They both sighed as they parted and Donna straightened her dress out a little. "So it starts."
"Yeah, I guess so."
Donna gave him one more quick kiss. "You coming in?"
"In a minute," he replied. "I need to think for a bit."
"What you really need is to find yourself some inspiring thoughts, as my mother would have said," she quipped as she walked back into the feeding frenzy.
He stared out into the night sky after Donna left him, wondering how it had all happened so fast. A year ago, he'd been living in an apartment in D.C. with his fiancée and her daughter, working for the President of the United States, surrounded by his best friends. Tonight, he was standing on a balcony outside of a party that the Democratic Party of Connecticut was throwing for his senatorial campaign while his wife was inside mingling. He was in the process of adopting a six year-old girl and trying to figure out how to take care of a three month-old girl, both of whom were being watched in his newly purchased, rambling mansion by the former White House Communications Director. That man was the only left with him besides his wife from his days at the West Wing. His mentor had hit the lecture circuit, his leader was retired to his beloved farm though tragically, ironically without his beloved, his surrogate sister was re-charging her batteries in Europe somewhere, and his best friend wasn't even speaking to him anymore. Not to mention the fact that the new occupant of the White House was someone who wasn't going to take too kindly to Josh if he somehow did manage to win this thing. He could almost feel his head start to spin with the enormity of the changes he'd undergone in the past twelve months.
Josh began walking to the other end of the balcony to get another view of the grounds. When he got there, he discovered that he wasn't alone. A young man was sitting on bench, his back leaning against the wall with what appeared to be a book in his hand. His wire-rimmed glasses were sliding against his nose, his jet-black hair neatly combed and gelled, and his uniform indicated that he was on the wait staff at the party this evening. Curious as to what he was doing out here, Josh approached him.
"Hey," he said, startling the boy. "What are you doing out here?"
"I'm…I'm sorry, sir," the kid said hastily, trying to stumble to his feet and put on his discarded jacket at the same time. "I'll…I'll…I'm getting right back to work, sir. I apologize for disturbing you."
"From the looks of things, it seems I was the one disturbing you," Josh countered, going closer to him near the bench. He sat down on the spot the young man had vacated. "You don't have to leave if you don't have to. I'm not your boss or anything."
"But this is your party and I'm supposed to be serving food to everyone, sir," he replied, straightening the red suit coat and turning to go back into a doorway.
"Are you on a break?"
The boy turned around to look at Josh. "Yes sir, I am. Before we start serving the appetizers."
"Have you been a waiter for very long?"
"Actually, sir, this is my first week on the job."
"Then trust me when I tell you that you do not want to go back in there until you absolutely have," Josh advised. "You're not gonna get to even breathe for the next couple of hours so just relax while you can." He patted the empty spot on the stone bench. "Sit down for a minute."
The young man paused for a second, than took his seat again. "You worked as a waiter before, sir?"
"Yep," Josh nodded, a smile on his face as he recalled the memory. "It was actually how I got into politics in the first place."
"Really? How?"
"Well I was nineteen and I was attending Harvard University, earning a degree in political science. Now my family was pretty well off but it hadn't always been that way. So to make sure I always knew to appreciate my education, my father insisted that wherever I went to college, I was expected to pay for half of my tuition and board expenses. And this being Harvard University, you can see how waiting tables came into the equation. So anyways, I was waiting tables one night at the Harvard Alumni Club when who should walk in but Congressman Earl Brennan…"
"The same one who staged the filibuster that prevented the Republicans from repealing the Welfare Protection Act in 1979, right?" the kid interrupted, transfixed by the story.
"Yeah that was him," Josh answered, pleasantly surprised that this guy seemed to know his history. "Anyways, Congressman Brennan was there for the annual alumni dinner, which is when we'd feed about five hundred of the former alumnus. This is also when you, as an undergrad, start developing your connections for whatever comes next for you after college. So I ended up getting assigned to the Congressman Brennan's table and from going back and forth, I overheard that his table was talking about a new bill in the House that would essentially clear more land in Pennsylvania for landfills. And if you ever heard anything about Earl Brennan, you know the environment was one of his top priorities. So being the arrogant nineteen year-old I was, I decide I'm going to impress him with my abundance of knowledge about the environment and hopefully secure myself in his good graces."
"Did it work?" the kid asked with a grin.
Josh hung his head as he laughed. "I ended spilling a pot of tomato bisque onto his wife and then proceeded to accidentally light the chief-of-staff from Massachusetts General Hospital on fire when I knocked over some candles in my haste to clean Mrs. Brennan up."
The young man started laughing with him. "Man, you must have gotten into trouble because of that!"
"I got fired because of that," Josh corrected, still laughing. "But afterwards, when I was forced into cleaning up the entire dining room by myself as penance, Congressman Brennan came back in to get his glasses. We ended up talking and he offered me a summer internship on his staff in D.C. and I've been hooked ever since." He looked over the kid. "What's your name by the way?"
"Gus, sir," he replied. "Gus Whittaker."
"Nice to meet you, Gus, I'm Josh Lyman," he offered his hand to the young man, shaking it. "What are you doing working here?"
"Same thing you were, trying to get through college."
"You to go to UC at Hartford?"
"Yes sir, I'm business major."
"Your folks don't help you out?"
"Well…" Gus paused as if he didn't want to continue but Josh was looking at him with such interest, he did. "My mom died when I was a kid and my father has another family now and can't afford to help me, sir."
"How old are you?"
"I just turned eighteen a month ago, sir. On December 8 actually."
"Really? I'm surprised because that happens to be my older daughter's birthday," Josh observed.
"I know, I read about that in the paper. You skipped a rally to attend the birthday party didn't you?"
"Yep. If I can give you some more advice, a pony for a kid’s birthday party is a great idea except when an ice storm forces the party to be indoors."
Gus laughed and the two men lapsed into silence again. "How come you went, sir?" Gus suddenly asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"It was a rally held by the Knight's of Columbus," Gus tried to elaborate. "They're a very big local organization in Westchester with a lot of influence and you're from there so why didn't you go?"
"It was my daughter's birthday," Josh shrugged.
"But they'll be other birthdays for her."
"But not another sixth birthday," Josh pointed out. "Someone smarter than me told me once that you only get one chance to see your kids grow up and I'm not gonna waste the time I’ve got with them. The Knight's of Columbus can throw me a rally some other time, I wasn't missing that party."
"That seems like a very nonchalant attitude if you ask me," Gus answered. "You can't just blow off things like that."
"And why is that?" he asked Gus, curious to hear his answer.
"Because we need you here, Josh!" Gus argued passionately, all thoughts of decorum leaving his mind. "Senator Brooks is doing nothing for this state except cut our education funding, throw our African-American population in prison, increase federal spending on tax exemptions for Corporate America, and denying women the right to choose to do what they want with their bodies! You're…you're going to change all that. I know you are but you have to get elected first and you can't get elected if you keep pushing away the very people who are trying to support you."
"And just how am I doing that, since you seem to know more about Democratic politics than I do?" Josh asked, testing him.
"I don't think I know more than you do, sir," Gus replied, a bit calmer. "But I do know, you're sitting out here when in there," he pointed to the dining hall, "are people who want you in the Senate. They may not be the most interesting or compassionate bunch of individuals but they're supporting you with their time and money. You can't even thank them for it?"
Josh looked at him thoughtfully for a minute. Gus was right, of course, but there was something in his eyes that Josh thought he'd never see again. A passion that he'd had when he was that age, an idealism that can come only with youth and inexperience. He still saw it time to time in Donna's blue eyes but in these black eyes, Gus's eyes, Josh saw it with such unbridled abandon it surprised him. And he knew in that second that he needed to see that look everyday to help keep him going on this campaign.
"You're going to do something for me," Josh told him seriously. "It's gonna be scary and hard and not always that much fun but you're gonna do it because I'm asking you to and I need you to, Gus."
"Okay, what is it?" Gus asked with some trepidation blanketing his voice.
"You're gonna come work for me on my campaign, as my personal aide," Josh said, letting Gus take in the news for a minute before continuing. "I've interviewed more people than I'm proud to admit for this job and you're the first I've talked to that doesn't want this job for a title on his or her resume. You'd do this job because you want to serve something greater than yourself and out of your genuine belief that politics is a noble profession because you love it so much."
"What…what makes you think I love politics so much?" Gus asked, his voice wavering a little.
"Single greatest achievement of Carter's presidency?"
"The Camp David Peace Accords, more cosmetic than anything else but it was something at least. Especially in that time…" he trailed off as he caught Josh hiding a grin at him. "Okay, so I'm a political junkie," Gus admitted. "That still doesn't mean I should be working for you on an important campaign. I'd just get in the way of things; I wouldn't know what to do."
"Neither did I," Josh replied. "Neither did President Bartlet or Toby Ziegler or Leo McGarry or C.J. Cregg or anyone else who's important in politics today. We all ran around like idiots when we were young, trying to learn the game. Always remember, everyone who was ever truly great at something was also once bad at it when they first started." He saw Gus contemplating the offer that had just been presented to him and knew he needed a bit of time to let it sink in. "Do you know the address or the phone number for our Hartford office?"
"Yeah."
"Today's Friday. If I don't hear from you by Monday, good luck with the rest of your life." With that, Josh stood back up and headed back to the party. "I think they're about to start dinner Gus. Be careful with the soup pot," he called out as he left the boy behind on the bench.
When he got back in, he ran into Donna in the doorway. "Hey where are you headed?"
"To go find you," she replied, smoothing the wrinkles out of her ice blue evening gown. "They're about to serve the meal."
"Well why don’t we go see what hundred and fifty dollars a plate will buy people these days," he said, holding out his elbow for her to slip her arm through and giving her a bright smile.
"What's gotten into you?" she questioned, noting happily that the expression on his face was without the lines of frustration and exhaustion it had had when she left him a half hour ago.
Josh smiled at her as they entered the dining hall amid a throng of people. "I found myself some inspiring thoughts," he whispered to Donna before they were swallowed up by the mass of people.