Author's Note: This is part of The Wing Swing
challenge (http://gatefiction.com/wingswing/)so please
give the pairing a chance, and blame them for the
outcome.
Summary: From what I've tasted of desire / I hold with
those who favor fire. (Robert Frost: Fire and Ice.
1920)
*
Bathroom mirrors in bars bleed their backgrounds
through. Dark blotches growing like lichen across the
glassy surface. Amy is grateful for the imperfection
tonight as she peers at her gaunt reflection. Her skin
complains about a week of late nights, a year of
interrupted sleep, and a life spent too often in
airports and air-conditioning but never in fresh air.
Her lower back aches.
She dries her hands on a scratchy paper towel and tugs
at her shirt. It was sexy and cute when she left her
apartment, but now it looks rumpled and tired. Much
like herself, she thinks.
She examines her fingernails and considers abandoning
this reckless idea, going back to her apartment to
sulk comfortably with Henry and a glass of good
merlot. Chain-smoking the packet of Marlboros tucked
in her back pocket that she bought on impulse at the
7-11 while waiting for a taxi.
Listening to anything but Van Morrison.
The bathroom door swings open, banging against the
wall, and she's assaulted with the noise from the bar.
Amy's joined in the reflection by someone who makes
her want to turn tail and run even more, but she
manages to sound civil.
"Andi."
Congresswoman Wyatt's surprise passes quickly over her
face and is replaced by a small, tight smile.
"Amy," she replies, her voice quiet. "Not a good
weekend."
Amy shrugs away the understatement and looks back down
at her fingernails.
Andi sounds sympathetic as she says, "I'll join you in
a minute," but Amy can't really be sure.
Her crumpled paper towel misses the trashcan.
*
"Where's Josh?" Andi asks as she slides into the booth
opposite Amy.
There's a television on the wall above the bar. The
sound is off, and on the small screen CJ is pressing
her hand against her eyes in a gesture Amy hasn't seen
since Rosslyn.
"The office. He's not working, but he wants to...I
don't know. I don't know what he thinks he can do.
Being there won't bring Simon Donovan back."
"They circle the wagons at times like this," Andi
replies. "They think no-one else can understand what
its like to be them."
Amy wonders what silent outsides she has suffered in
over the years. Andi's staring at CJ as well, and
there is something unrecognizable in that look.
Amy closes her eyes briefly. She knows at this moment
that Josh will be standing just outside the Press
Room, telegraphing CJ his devotion through Venetian
blinds. That as she clatters off camera, out of
sight, all long legs and muscled arms and tear-stained
MaxMara, it will be Josh who will know whether she
needs his arms around her or a single malt in her
hand.
Amy imagines wagons.
When she opens her eyes again Andi is clinking the ice
around in her glass and studying her a little too
closely. Her red hair is pulled up on top of her
head, long strands escaping, and Amy finds herself
wondering why she's here.
Andi, it seems, can read minds.
"I had a date. It was awful. I pleaded an emergency
and excused myself, but I wasn't ready to go home."
Andi prides herself on economy with words. Clink,
swirl, clink. The sound is hypnotic and Amy can't
think of any thing to say. She hates dating. She
thought that was over for a while. She made stew.
There were baby peas. Now, of course, she's not even
sure she has a boyfriend.
"Did she fire you?"
"I'm resigning Monday."
"Marriage incentives," Andi sighs with disdain.
"Welfare should be focused on proven paths out of
poverty and not knights in shining armor or storybook
endings."
Amy smiles, "You read my memo."
She traces a path with her finger through the
condensation her drink has left on the table. She has
an urge to press the cold, wet finger to her lips, but
she suspects it would be desperately unhygienic.
"What will you do now?"
Amy draws figures of eight, infinity symbols, Möbius
strips, and she doesn't know the answer to that
question.
"Move to Idaho," she says. "Start a commune."
Andi looks back up at the television set. It's
showing file footage of Shareef now. CJ is somewhere
else, and Amy wonders whether Andi is thinking about
Toby.
"You could come and work for me."
Amy laughs humorlessly. Andi has always made her feel
inadequate in ways she can't pinpoint. This
self-possessed woman who walked away from her husband
and decided to run the country. Andi wins elections,
Amy thinks. Thousands of voters tick the box beside
her name. She wonders what that must feel like.
The telepathic streak continues.
"Or you could run yourself."
Amy has a vision of that future. Josh calling her
'Congresswoman' and trying to bully her into a vote.
Or worse, one of Ritchie's apes.
She shakes her head to clear the image.
Andi gets up to buy them another round.
*
The cocktail seemed like a good idea when she stabbed
at it on the menu. Now it has an artificial taste and
reminds her of Starbucks' after-coffee mints and
plastic fruit. She and Andi are sitting together on
the same side of the booth and they're composing
lists.
"People you should have slept with when you had the
chance," Andi announces, flipping her quarter neatly
into the glass opposite them on the table. She has
perfectly manicured nails, and Amy can't imagine ever
being able to maintain them. She broke one last week
just by typing too quickly. Lost one rewiring her
stereo. Surrendered a third trying to give Henry a
bath. She tries to imagine Andi chasing a wet, badly
behaved canine around her apartment and can't.
Her quarter misses.
"Michael Hennessey," she answers. "A beautiful,
dark-eyed boy who was my best friend's boyfriend. One
night he told me he'd always wanted me, and I slapped
him and told my friend to dump his ass."
Andi's next quarter hits the side of the glass but
goes in. Amy wonders where she ever practiced this
inane, sophomoric skill.
"Toby's brother."
Amy chokes on her drink, but Andi just smiles. "He's
an *astronaut*," she whispers, as if that explains
everything, and her breath is warm on Amy's neck and
smells like oranges from the Cointreau she's been
drinking.
"Josh."
Andi raises her eyebrows and stares at her in
disbelief.
"I mean, in college," she clarifies. "I should have
slept with Josh in college. He had a crush on me. If
I'd slept with him then, maybe I wouldn't be in this
mess now..." Amy slumps against the back of the booth,
spinning a quarter between her fingers.
Andi seems to be turning this over in her mind, or
maybe she's just trying to think of the next person
for the list. Her shirt is gaping a little, and Amy
finds that, when she looks, she can see the dark green
lace of Andi's bra.
"Annabelle Wilson," Andi says, and suddenly all the
air is sucked out of the room.
*
Amy doesn't have a drunken experimentation story, or
an illicit college romance.
In her late twenties she and her friend Rachel were
discussing a passage in a Coupland novel where the
world ends in a nuclear blast, and your best friend
kisses you in the instant before the ceiling lifts and
drips upwards. They were lying side by side on towels
in the sun, so Rachel leaned over and kissed her.
Amy's insides liquefied as if nuclear fire did
surround them, but Rachel flopped onto her back and
said "See? Nothing. We really are straight."
Amy's breathing didn't return to normal for days.
*
She gestures at Andi for an explanation, doesn't look
at her for fear of either catching her eye or getting
transfixed by that glimpse of lace again. Too
dangerous, she thinks, and concentrates on her next
quarter, which veers predictably off course and
tumbles to the floor.
"She was my French tutor," Andi continues. "I used to
go crazy when she'd murmur 'le coeur a ses raisons que
la raison ne connaît point'. I knew she had a thing
for me...but I was terrified and did nothing about
it."
On the table, Andi's hand lies palm up, and Amy has an
inexplicable urge to touch the pale skin by the band
of her watch. Trace the dark blue veins lying so
close underneath.
Impossible.
If Andi notices her rapid descent into lunacy she
doesn't mention it.
"Will you and Josh work this out?"
"No," she lies, because she has no heart for
explaining her weakness when it comes to Josh. Because
Andi once drew a line on the ground between herself
and Toby and stayed on the other side of it, and Amy's
not capable of the same thing. Their fights are like
flash floods and the recovery is fast and exquisite.
She suspects that Toby and Andi fought like famines
and have never fully recovered.
If Andi has condolences or commiserations she doesn't
offer them, and Amy is absurdly grateful.
Amy buys the next round.
*
Andi is smoking the Marlboros and Amy can't bear the
way the smoke drifts from between her slightly parted
lips. Her mind is clouded with the alcohol, and she
knows if she stood she would be light-headed. Though
that would be preferable to the off-balance feeling
she's experiencing right now.
None of this makes sense.
Not an agent coming home in a casket, not a plane
missing somewhere near Bermuda, not a woman being
rewarded for marrying a man more likely to beat her
than provide for her. Least of all her drinking
herself horizontal with a member of the United
States Congress who may or may not have her fingers
resting lightly on Amy's thigh.
When her eyes slide closed she can see only rumpled
cotton sheets, the unending sweep of hip through
waist, and the perfect curve of a pale breast. She can
feel molten, slick heat on her fingers and her tongue,
and maybe it is her hand on Andi's thigh after all,
and not the other way around.
"I should go home," she manages.
And so Andi eases out of the booth, helping her to her
feet with a cool palm on Amy's overheated skin. In
that instant, as they stand just a little too close
together, Amy finds herself drifting forward. Trapped
by a small expanse just below Andi's jaw line that she
has convinced herself will taste like sunsets.
"One moment of rash indiscretion and careers founder,"
Andi whispers and her voice is low and thick with
possibility.
Amy nods slowly, and they hug awkwardly, as if they
were something more than professional acquaintances
and something less than lovers. And for one agonizing
moment she feels Andi's hand slip beneath her wrinkled
shirt, stroke lightly along her skin, and disappear.
*
When she lets herself into her apartment she finds
Josh sitting on her couch.
She drops her keys on the table, but they miss and
fall noisily to the floor.
He doesn't ask her where she's been, and she doesn't
ask him how CJ is, but when he backs her up against
the wall the glint of jealousy makes them rough with
each other.
As she nears the edge his voice fades away from her,
and she can taste oranges and sunsets, feel perfectly
manicured nails raking down her back, hear whispering
in French. Rachel's saying "kind of sexy, kind of
scary, tainted with regret..." and it's the top of the
hour and CJ's hand is over her eyes all over again.
Red hair. The clink of quarters. The clink of ice.
No knights in shining armor, she thinks as a kiss
presses to her shoulder. No storybook endings.
And she's gone, nuclear fire behind her eyelids,
Josh's name on her lips.
***