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MY GUESTBOOK
His whole body was jittering, like normal people did when they had too much caffeine�I was thinking that Josh hadn�t had enough caffeine and his system was revolting. �I�ve been on the road. I used the last of the stuff in my kit and I don�t have time to go to the store,� Josh said, holding up a rather dirty tube of toothpaste.
�Toss it. Buy some when you get there,� I advised, not so much because of the expiration question as much as the grime that covered the tube in his hand. I didn�t even want to think about what the rest of his bathroom looked like. Josh had a history of questionable habits for the state of his condo while he was on the road.
During the first Bartlet for America campaign Josh had left DC on a whim, coming to see me and then going to Nashua, and, without serving any notice with Hoynes, he started campaigning for Bartlet after the speech at the VFW hall that night. He had a friend pack some clothes and ship them to him in New Hampshire but he had neglected to ask that friend�or the friend hadn�t bothered�to clean out his fridge. When we were all in DC for an event after Bartlet had won the nomination CJ, Donna, Josh and I went to Josh�s place because we were all sick of hotels and he was the only one who had kept a residence in the District. The smell that greeted us was nauseating, and the things that were growing out of the things that we assumed had once been food looked like high school science fair offerings that had gone Grade-Z horror movie. Needless to say we ended up at the hotel with Leo, the Bartlet family, and Toby and Andie�who hadn�t been challenged at all in that election�and Josh hired a team of crime scene clean up people to deal with his apartment. The fridge was thrown out and he had needed to get a new coffee maker�he�d left coffee grounds in the filter area and the mould had spread through the entire machine�but what had really surprised everyone, even the clean up guys, was the fact that his bathroom looked like the floor in the kitchen area of a fast food restaurant. An eighth of an inch of grease, Josh had reported once it was all cleaned and the tile was white again, as if amassing that much grease in a traditionally non-greasy room was an accomplishment to brag about.
I�m positive the same thing would have happened again on Bartlet for America Two if Donna hadn�t taken over his life the moment he hired her�or she hired herself.
Josh and Donna�s estrangement prior to the Santos campaign was evident in the state of Josh�s apartment. It wasn�t quite as bad as that day on the first BFA campaign, but the improvement was, fortunately, olfactory.
I, like everyone else in the known universe, assumed that if Josh and Donna were to leave the White House they would do it together and, before long, she would move in with Josh or they would find a place of their own�one where Mandy and Amy hadn�t screwed Josh while screwing Josh. I figured that, were I to see the inside of Josh�s apartment after he left the White House, I would see the woman�s touch; things that were quintessentially Donna Moss.