[email protected]
MY GUESTBOOK
Your voice shakes as you answer the phone. �Hello?�
�Damn it, Toby, would you get the damned Secret Service to let me into the building already!� your irate ex-wife yells without preamble.
�What are you doing here, Andrea?� you ask. Andi doesn�t respond and the answer comes to you. Your divorce wasn�t because you stopped loving each other, it was because you couldn�t live in the same place anymore, and you know that if Andi was in your place you would be in hers, and so you promise she�ll be let in and you hang up before you tell her you love her and you tell the nearest Secret Service agent to tell the guys downstairs to let Congresswoman Wyatt in and to send her up right away.
After you�re assured that Andi will be up momentarily, you look down at your hands, stained with the blood of a man so vibrant and vital that it seems impossible for it to all be real. You rush to the bathroom, scrubbing with weak soap and cool water, digging blood from under your blunt nails with the tip of a pen, but, like Lady Macbeth, the blood won�t disappear. Only her guilt was real and yours is imagined, though the blood on her hands was no longer there and yours is as real as it can get.
You�re just coming out of the washroom�hands visibly clean even if the stain of blood goes so deep you can feel it altering your molecular makeup�when a flash of red hair blinds you. �Damn it, Toby, what the hell happened?� Andi demands as she throws her arms around you. She buries her face in your neck and you hold her close, needing to feel her heart beating against your chest, needing to know that this isn�t a post-mortem hallucination.
Andi has always made the world real for you. When you were 0-for-6 in campaign wins and you were seriously considering taking the job teaching speechwriting at a small liberal arts college in Virginia, Andi mentioned that Leo McGarry was looking for a staff and that he was running a presidential campaign that hadn�t gotten much wind in its sails thus far but that your writing style would mesh perfectly with the candidate�s oratory�you remember her telling you this because you mocked her for almost half an hour for using the term �mesh� and not meaning a woven net of fabric. Andi has also always made you feel loved. She made you believe that the children she wanted to have were your children when you weren�t even sure that such a beautiful young woman would want to date a grumpy old man�because you were a grumpy old man even at thirty-one when you and Andi were married�with a disastrous family tree and more than a few ingrained insecurities about the people you let into your heart.
You explain the situation as much as you can, your voice low and rumbling, and your lips brushing against the shell of her ear. You feel her tears on your neck, soaking your collar, and you wish that you could cry, too, but you don�t, you haven�t, not since your mother�s funeral twenty two years earlier. Your voice catches as you tell Andi that Josh was shot and that it�s critical and the medical staff and Dr Bartlet all have grim expressions on their faces that they try to hide with platitudes about the procedure taking time and needing to wait and see. Andi�s arms tighten around you when you recount how you found Josh and how you were frozen for those few moments and if those moments were the ones that cost Josh his life you know you�ll never forgive yourself.