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MY GUESTBOOK
Ainsley, who worshipped, not so much the White House itself, but more the idea of the White House, since she was two and whose heart was shattered when on her first day she suffered more disappointments than she had in the twenty-odd years previous to entering the hallowed Democrat-filled halls, but whose laughter tinkled like bells when four Senior Staffers broke into her sweltering office and boisterously sang along to a Gilbert and Sullivan CD to apologize for treating her like a leper and to welcome her to the family, dysfunctional as it was.
CJ, who found love with her perfect match but was too dedicated to the job to allow herself happiness, who rails against the atrocities in the world, who still breaks down and cries over the senseless hatred half a world away, and who gave up life and love with her perfect match because she couldn�t possibly do anything to stop the horrible things that happen in the world if she allowed herself the conflict-infested happiness she so richly deserves.
There are others, of course. Will and Margaret and Bonnie and Ginger, Charlie and Carol and Ed and Larry. They know the searing pain and blinding pleasure of serving at the pleasure of the President.
Someone once told me that no one understood what it was like to be a Beatle except the other Beatles. Those words stayed with me, haunting me like the words �Bartlet for America� had haunted Leo almost ten years ago. My book, the one that I only work on about once a month, starts with those words.
�You don�t have to stay,� Sara said, blindingly na�ve, �just help get Josh over the hump. He was supposed to be doing all this with Leo, remember? He�s probably more than a little lost right now.�
Though she�s wrong in a lot of ways, Sara�s right about one thing. Josh is wandering through the labyrinth without a light to guide him and that if he isn�t careful the Minotaur will devour him whole. Donna is Ariadne to Josh�s Thesus, and she will arm him with the tools he will need to come out the other side, of that I am sure. I ignore the end of the fable where Thesus abandons Ariadne because Minerva comes to him in a dream and tells him to do so. Josh may be slow on the uptake but after eight years of longing for her there is no way that he will leave Donna.
I know that Josh is floundering, and I�ve abandoned him too many times before to sit by and do nothing when it is quite possible that he has never needed me more. As always he dove into the situation headfirst, taking chances and asking questions later, because he knew Leo would be there to back him up. Sure Josh will have President Bartlet and CJ and a host of other experts on speed-dial, but it won�t be the same and everyone knows it.