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MY GUESTBOOK
�There is that,� Helen agreed before shooting me a smile that told me she knew who I was thinking about. Not that it mattered, really, because there was no reason that people couldn�t know about Josh and me, except that Josh and I hadn�t talked about who we were to each other now that we�d given in to the feelings we had been fighting for so many years. Helen smiled softly. �I have to admit, when all the rumours were flying around after Roslyn, I thought that you and Josh were� more than boss and assistant,� she admitted shyly.
�Everybody did,� I smirked.
�It doesn�t offend you?�
I shook my head. �It offended me when the Times ran pictures of me doing Josh�s laundry along with my own when we had just passed a bill that spent over two billion of the taxpayer�s dollars on healthcare and the picture got more column inches than the bill,� I said. �Rumours never offended me. Nothing they said was true, and everyone whose opinion really mattered knew that. People talk and Washington is a company town, but very little of it means anything.�
�So you didn�t care when you became the butt of every horrible blonde assistant joke ever made?�
�I never said I didn�t care, I just didn�t let it affect my life. I didn�t get my job by lying down on a desk and, while a lot of the time I was technically not exactly qualified to do the work I was doing, Josh and Leo always made sure that I knew that on the job training mattered a lot more than a formal education.�
Helen smiled. �I couldn�t believe it when I found out that you hadn�t had years of training in PR,� she admitted.
�In a way I did. Working with Sam, Toby, Josh, CJ, the President, and Leo for so long� I ended up getting educations from everywhere from Princeton and Duke to the Community College of New York to Harvard and Yale to UC Berkley to Notre Dame to Michigan State,� I said. I made a mental note to make sure I didn�t mention Toby�s name at dinner with the President. According to Charlie the �T� word was verboten lest you wished to bring the wrath of Josiah Bartlet down upon you.
Oblivious to my musings on how our �family� had changed so much over the years, Helen spoke again. �And come January you�re going to be the Deputy Communications Director to the President of the United States,� Helen said
This shocked me. I had been so focused on getting through the election that I had never considered what would happen after, once Matt Santos got to the White House. I knew it was pretty much a given that Josh would be Chief of Staff, and Lou could probably get Communications Director if she wanted it. But I had never thought about what I would do. I never thought about whether Matt would even want me. I thought that maybe I�d go back to school, get my degree, but Josh had pointed out that I would be incredibly bored sitting in a classroom after working on four Presidential campaigns, spending seven years in the White House, and acting as spokesperson for both Vice President Russell and the new President-Elect Matt Santos. I never even dreamed of being named Deputy Communications Director and yet Helen had just said that I was going to be, like it was a done deal.