Notes: The title belongs to Guster.
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I�m already trying to think up ways to keep this from becoming a story.
See, it�s going to. One way or another, somewhere down the line, this thing is going to pop out and bite us all on the ass�most notably me�so I�m trying to think up responses in advance. The problem is, I�m really not having much luck. Some press secretary I�m going to be.
I guess I just haven�t been in this business long enough. I�m having a hard time justifying the responses I�m going to have to give. There�s always the old standby: �The administration does not comment on the personal lives of its staff.� But that kind of implies that these people got themselves into this mess and we�re not going to do a thing to help them out of it.
Maybe it�s just me, but I don�t think two consenting single adults falling in love should be a potential scandal. Even if one of them is the other�s assistant. It�s not like she got the job because she slept with the guy.
But that�s what it�ll look like.
It really is funny, how oblivious the two of them are to the whole thing. Of course, from what I�ve seen and heard of Josh, it doesn�t surprise me all that much. He�s clearly the kind of guy who wouldn�t recognize a relationship if it was wearing a blatant neon sign and sitting in his lap.
Which, it turns out, Donna is practically doing.
Well, minus the sign.
And, ok, minus the lap sitting too�but the quarters are pretty cramped here on the bus, and the two of them are looking pretty cozy there across the aisle. They�ve pushed up the armrest between them, and their laps are blanketed in reports that have a rather annoying tendency to get caught by the wind and come flying onto my side of the bus. But right now the wind is cooperating, and they are deeply engrossed in one of those conversations they seem to have that doesn�t make sense to the rest of the world, their heads bowed closely together over a particular blue folder on Donna�s lap.
She�s really the one who surprises me in all this. I haven�t talked to her all that much, but she seems like a girl with a good head on her shoulders. I mean, anyone who would travel halfway across the country to join this campaign and then voluntarily spend most of her waking hours with Joshua Lyman has got to have a few screws loose, but other than that she seems to be remarkably normal. Which is why I don�t know why she hasn�t noticed this thing between them yet. Of course it�s a distinct possibility that she has noticed it and is avoiding doing anything about it, whether because she knows what it�ll look like, or because Josh is�well, Josh.
Either way, smart girl.
Another breeze blows through the open windows, rustling their papers, and Donna shivers, pulling her hands from under the folder to rub at her arms absently, all the while talking a mile a minute about something on the second page. She points to it, underlining her point, but Josh isn�t watching. He stands up to rummage around in one of the overhead compartments, and pulls down her jacket. He sits back down, tucks the coat around her shoulders, and then launches into an animated argument against whatever she was saying.
It�s hard not to smile at the picture they make. They don�t notice, of course, engrossed as they are in their debate, but Toby does. Scrunched up in the seat in front of them, he takes one look at my expression, peers through the crack in the seat at the two of them, and rolls his eyes expressively.
I grin at him. It�s only a matter of time.
And he�s got money in the pool, same as me.
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I feel a little juvenile saying it, but I don�t think I�ll ever outgrow the excitement of flying. There�s an age�I�m not sure what it is, but there is one�where planes are supposed to become blas� to you. At some point, it�s supposed to change from oh boy, I get to fly! to great, another week, another plane.
For some reason, I missed that age.
It�s times like these when I�m glad of that fact. It�s three in the morning, and I�m watching the sparkling lights of towns go by below us. The captain darkened the cabin to let people get some sleep, so the only light to see by is the dim strip of emergency lights across the floor. That�s ok, though, because nobody�s really in the mood to move around at all.
Toby locked himself in the conference room a few hours ago, threatening bodily harm to anyone who disturbed him while he was trying to write the speech for Friday. I offered to help, but got physically shoved out of the room. Aside from muffled cursing and the occasional object hitting the wall, he�s been pretty quiet in there. Through the door to the hallway, I can see CJ curled up in an impossible position on one of the chairs out there, fast asleep. Honestly, I don�t know how she does that with those legs. Past her, the curtain to the press seating is still open, and there�s the occasional flickering light that plays across the walls as someone changes windows on their computer screen, but I�m willing to bet most of them are sleeping too.
It�s peaceful, this quiet, and it�s rare.
I don�t think that any of us deluded ourselves during the campaign. We all knew the kind of work that was going to be demanded of us once we made it to the White House, and we were all willing to make any sacrifices necessary to get there. But I don�t think any of us could possibly have understood the exhaustion that comes with these jobs. It�s a type of fatigue that goes so far beyond physical tiredness. By the end of a month, a week, even a day in that building, you�re drained�in all possible ways. In ways you didn�t even know you could be drained.
Life never stops there, and it never ceases to amaze me. Every conversation you have is on the go, every break is just a brief pause before you�re on to the next job, the next emergency, the next thing that�s going to change the world.
It�s a little daunting.
So in a way, I guess I�m glad I never lost that childhood attachment to flying. It�s a break from everything down there in the ground, in real life. It�s a way to lose myself�in the humming of the engines and the sparkling of the lights below and the utterly simple elation at the thought that we�re thousands of feet above everything else. And then once in a while I�ll glance around and realize that I�m not only on a plane�I�m on Air Force One.
Honestly, you really can�t get much better than that.
I turn my gaze away from the window and glance across the aisle at the only other occupants of the cabin. Half an hour ago, they had been engaged in a heated discussion of the new environmental bill, but sometime while I was distracted by my own thoughts, their voices had slowed, their minds had wandered, and they had both drifted off to sleep. The folder holding the papers they had been arguing about had tumbled to the floor between them, utterly forgotten.
She�s curled up in the window seat, her legs tucked up against the wall. One hand is sprawled across her knees, and the other lies palm up on Josh�s leg. Her fingers twitch a little as she dreams. She must have fallen asleep first, because her head is resting on his shoulder, her hair drifting down into her eyes and across his chest.
His feet are propped up on the seat across from them, and he�s slumped down in his seat, his cheek resting against the top of Donna�s head. Sometime after she fell asleep, he slung his arm across her back, undoubtedly telling himself that it was just more comfortable that way. It�s the expression on his face that gets to me though. We�ve seen that look so seldom in the last few months, and I had nearly forgotten that he could look so�content.
I envy him now, in this moment. Not that he has Donna, specifically, but just that he has someone. I was with her, that night in May, as she stood in that tiny observation room, her eyes haunted by her fears as she watched him being put back together. I watched her watching him, and I was struck by an overwhelming panic. It could just as easily have been me on that table�and there would have been no one in that room to watch over me. No one would ever have that look on their face if I was the one who was shot.
But as much as I wish on some level that I could have what they do, I pity them as well. I don�t know what it is that keeps them apart. I can�t tell if it�s fear of rejection, or worry about the damage it could cause to the administration, or some other unnamable obstacle. There�s something there though, in the space between them, that they either can�t or won�t move past.
In an hour or two, we�ll land in Washington, and they�ll stir as the pilot announces that everyone needs to return to their seat and put their seat belts on. Her eyes will flutter open, and she�ll close them again, hiding from the harsh lights of the cabin, and from the reality that threatens to steal this moment from her. He�ll shift in his seat, lift his head, and discover that his arm somehow ended up draped over his sleeping assistant. It will take a few seconds for him to move it, but when he does she�ll sit up, pretending that she�s just waking, and they�ll smile at each other with identical tiredly sheepish grins, and their dance of denial will go on.
Three years is a long time to keep dancing.
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I am in hell.
It�s a particularly tortuous incarnation of hell, undoubtedly devised specifically with me in mind. Let me state for the record that I am a perfectly reasonable man, under normal circumstances. I have my share of patience.
These are not normal circumstances.
And my patience has been used up.
I blame Josh entirely. It�s his fault we missed the motorcade, it�s his fault I now have to introduce myself by saying �I work at the White House,� and it�s his fault that Indiana doesn�t understand the simple concept of time zones.
I haven�t quite figured out how that last one can be blamed on him yet, but trust me, I�m working on it.
I�ve taken to staring out the window, because I�m sick of listening to them. Maybe I can find something out there to distract me. Of course, if we were passing anything but farms and trees, I might be a little more successful. Unfortunately, farm, tree, tree, tree, cow, silo, tree, tree, cow, shrub gets boring in remarkably little time.
So I watch them.
At one point during the campaign, I ended up discussing Josh with one of our contributors. I can�t remember why, or even who it was, but I remember the man looking Josh over from across the room, and waving dismissively in his direction. �He just needs a woman to tame him,� he said.
He wasn�t entirely wrong. Of course, the woman in question turned out to be an assistant rather than a wife, but the effect was the same.
It�s amazing to see the way she handles him, completely effortlessly. I never would have guessed it when I first saw her wandering around the campaign offices, tagging doggedly after Josh. I�ll admit it. I was the one who started the pool to see how long she would last. Most of us didn�t give her a week. CJ won. She was the only one who said Donna would be around as long as Josh was.
She started the pool for when they would get together.
It�s funny, seeing them here on this train, if I was just some oblivious traveler, I would probably take them for a married couple. The way he leans across her to open the window a crack, the way she brushes back her hair self consciously and smiles briefly when she catches him looking at her, the way they sit, his legs stretched out in front of them, and hers crossed at the ankle, bouncing restlessly, tapping his calf every so often�these things speak to me of a couple comfortable in their relationship, easy in their love for one another.
Someday, I�m sure, they will be that couple.
It�s no shock that I wouldn�t consider myself a romantic by any stretch of the imagination. I couldn�t make my own marriage work, so granted, I�m no expert on these things. But I think that every so often there might just be one couple here and there that is truly�ok, I�m not going to say meant for each other, because I would probably smack Sam upside the head if he ever tried to use a phrase like that. But that�s the gist of it, and I think Josh and Donna have that kind of relationship.
I�m really not a romantic, though. I just have my money on the end of this term in the pool, and time�s running out fast.
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I�m trying not to feel weird being here.
It�s not quite working.
It�s not that these people aren�t being great about welcoming me to the campaign. They really are. I mean, especially considering that not too long ago, I was the enemy, I think they�re being exceptionally nice. I just�well, the fact is, I don�t belong here.
I chose the wrong guy, and that�s the bottom line. That should have been the end of it.
But Josh insisted. I wasn�t his first choice, he told me bluntly. That had been Toby, and he had turned him down in no uncertain terms. I was next on the list. The Santos campaign needed a Communications Director, and as far as Josh was concerned, I was the guy for the job. I reminded him that I had just lost a race that theoretically was impossible for me to lose, and he just gave me that cocky Lyman grin and said that he in fact remembered that.
What could I do? Fact is, I was out of a job.
So here I am, on the Santos campaign bus, and I�m trying to remember what I was thinking when I signed on to this thing. Or, more accurately, I�m trying to remember why I was working for Russell in the first place, instead of this guy. There was a time when I wouldn�t work for anything but The Real Thing. Hell, I ran a campaign for a dead guy once. And I won it. Next thing you know, I�m in the employ of Bingo Bob.
What the hell happened to me?
Donna came over from the Russell campaign too. I kinda figured that was a given, but in the end, she actually took more convincing than I did. It makes sense, I guess. I could tell the whole time that she would much rather have been working for Santos, but she needed to get out from under Josh�s shadow, become a political operative in her own right. Now that she�s done that, I guess it�s going to be hard for her to come back and work under him.
It makes me sad, seeing the tension between them these days. I remember that night in the cab, four years ago, when she sat on his lap the whole way to the ball, laughing and joking and pushing his buttons the way only she could, and then I see them now with the heavy silences between them, and the way her back stiffens and his mouth tightens when they�re in a room together, and I wonder where it all went wrong.
They�re sitting there now, a few rows ahead of me, plotting, and seeing them from here you could almost think that things were back to normal with them. But I went up to the front of the bus a few minutes ago to talk to Bram, and seeing them face on, I could tell the differences. They were intent on their work in a way they never used to be. They were always dedicated, of course, and focused. But when they used to work, there was always a constant awareness of the other, a palpable undercurrent of unspoken understanding between them. Now they were just two people working. She might as well have been Ronna, or me, or anyone else on this bus.
But there was one moment, just as I was coming back to my seat. It was just a fleeting second of�something�but I noticed it. He was holding the file they were discussing, and she was leaning over his shoulder to point something out at the top of the page. Her chin was resting on his shoulder, and her hair was spilling down his back, and they looked, just for a second, like the people they were back when I met them.
In that moment, the tension and walls that had built up between them over the past year had melted away, and they were Josh and Donna again.
I think there might be hope for them yet.
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Sometimes I still have trouble believing it.
Even now, sitting here in the conference room on Air Force One in the middle of the night, I just drifted off, staring at the lights below us, and I forgot for a few minutes. I forgot that I�m the President.
It took a while, in the beginning, to get used to people calling me �Mr. President.� People would say that and I�d start looking around for Josiah Bartlet. I�m sure it was stranger for them though. For weeks, Josh would trip all over himself trying not to slip and call me �Congressman� anymore. It�s been odd for all of us. I remember the look on Leo McGarry�s face the first time Josh called him �Mr. Vice President.� Priceless�I wish there had been a camera in the room.
I think it�s probably something that you never get used to.
There are a lot of things like that, that seem to be a part of the Presidency. I think the strangest thing for me was the Secret Service. I don�t think I�ll ever be completely comfortable having people following me through every step I take in life. It�s incredibly unnerving. Even now, here on this darkened plane full of only the people I trust most in the world, there is an agent posted at each door to the room, ready to take his place at my heels as I leave.
That�s why I�ve been stalling here for so long.
But I should find my wife. When I left her, she was having some deep involved conversation with Donna back in the cabin. It�s funny to think that Donna is the same woman I met (and sat on) that night in Bob Russell�s office�Russell�s Chicken Fighter. Josh and Will swear that she hasn�t changed all that much since becoming my wife�s Chief of Staff, but she seems so utterly different to me. I suppose I�ve just gotten to know her better.
With a sigh, I pull myself to my feet and make my way to the door. David, the head of my detail, meets me there, holding the door for me as I step into the dark hallway. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust in the dim light of the running lights along the floor, but then I see Helen at the end of the hallway, standing in the shadows and peering into the cabin. I start to say something, but she holds a finger up to her lips and motions for me to join her. I do, stepping up behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist. She turns her head back to kiss me, then shushes me again and nods towards the cabin.
I follow her gaze and break out into a grin.
Josh and Donna are huddled on a seat by the far window. His legs are sprawled out along the wall and hers are tucked up under her as she leans against his shoulder. Their hands are tangled up on his lap, and they are whispering intently. He untwines one of his hands and brushes a strand of hair back from her face, leaning in to whisper something in her ear. Even from here, we can see the tears glistening in her eyes. She gazes up at him for a minute, then tips her head up to meet his lips as he leans in to kiss her.
The kiss is short, and sweet, and when it�s over she pulls away and leans towards his ear to whisper back to him. He breaks out into a grin and wraps his arms back around her as she curls herself against his side and closes her eyes. He gently kisses the top of her head, then leans his cheek against her hair and closes his eyes too.
Helen manages to hold in the giggles until we get back to the conference room. She turns to me with that wicked twinkle in her eyes that I have learned to fear and love all at the same time.
�We�re going to have to tell Leo, you know,� she says, smiling.
I frown at her, confused. �Leo? Why?�
�Because,� she tells me, �he won the pool.�