Disclaimer: not mine
Notes: thanks to CGB and Teanna for one hell of a
challenge. Jae for the poking, Meg for the prodding,
beta-ing, and for fielding random questions at random
times.
and LE for letting me daydream in her vineyards and
for being under every inch of my skin.
**
Amy should be home, returning messages and finding a
job. Or she should clean her apartment or sleep all
day long. She's that embarrassed. But she hits the
streets of Washington early, scantily clad and
running.
She runs as though so she can flush failure out of her
blood, stowed away in each exhale. She takes the
subway, wanting time to think, runs through the mall,
just one in a sea of anonymous faces.
Washington is full of fleeting refuge. Alcoholics,
addicts, crowds of oblivious tourists who shield her
until someone both smug and sympathetic holds her
gaze, playing with his power tie before walking away.
She slows to a walk, veering off of the mall and
without thinking, toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
She can't stop thinking about Josh. Josh, who thinks
that physics makes good conversation. He's usually
obtuse, obscure, over Amy's head, and she usually
stops listening. Some nights, though, he comes home
talking about history, philosophy, and basic, basic
physics. He goes on about Newton and Kepler with
romance in his voice, as if simple observations can
explain why bills don't pass or why assassins attack.
As though if he can understand how bullets break skin,
the rest won't matter.
She always wonders what it is he won't say, what these
symbols he draws for her really mean. She never asks,
lets them be what they are, and enjoys the way his
eyes dart and shine in excitement. That night, though,
Simon's night, as Amy smoothed Josh's hair and
pretended not to see the scars on his skin and hiding
behind his eyes, Amy listened and followed the
fingerprint drawings Josh made on the table.
Josh has his own absolutes, his own construction of
the world. Amy does not know where she fits in his
model, but she wonders if she's been shaken loose. Her
convictions were bought and sold, pulled from her and
handed to the next woman to fill her office.
Josh passed the weekend sulking at her apartment, but
they've barely talked, or touched, or even looked at
each other in days. Without the truths that lie in the
light touch of Josh's fingers on her skin, Amy is
lost.
Amy can't imagine how Josh's mind has wrapped itself
around Simon's death. She has nothing to say to him,
nothing to ask, because that is not who they are. They
are hunger, slow and gnawing, or rough and painful.
She doesn't ask questions, but in every slight
acceleration, in every collision between her foot and
the pavement, she feels Josh.
She feels a little guilty, hit by a little bit more
failure. She begins to run again.
They are so alike, she and Josh. They are passionate,
to a fault, and single-minded. Incapable of
self-restraint. At the very least, they have this in
common, and it is almost enough for her to forgive
him, this second. She tried to do the same, but she is
less experienced, less focused, less practical than
Josh. They could be good together, good at all these
things they both want, if they can ever learn to see
beyond their own agendas. If they could stop trying to
possess each other, which she isn't sure they can.
So she loves him when she can't love herself, and lets
him love her when she can.
He's away, loving CJ, and she finds herself in love
with him anyway, without pretense or purpose. This has
suddenly become real, this thing she has with Josh,
more real than they ever meant for it to be. When it
became real with Tandy, she ended up on Josh's
doorstep. This time, she's running toward the White
House, toward him, for no reason at all. It is all
futile, she thinks. Even if she can survive the heat,
the racing heart, and find enough resolve to finish
the journey, she can't get back to him this way,
jogging in through the portico.
He has his own guards, armed and lethal.
'This can't be what love is about,' she thinks.
'Exhaustion and need and irrationality'
Dull aches climb from her ankles, spreading through
her thighs, lower back, and becoming a sharp pain in
her ribs. She slows, stops, leans against a tree to
ease her labored breathing.
A few yards away, Amy recognizes a woman struggling to
balance a stack of salad cartons. She is holding a
glass door open with her back, sliding out with the
stack pressed against her chest. But for the slight
bit of her lip she clenches between her teeth, her
faces registers nothing of the struggle.
Her hair is dark, her skin fair, and she seems in the
stark light a construction of absolutes. Amy stares.
Her skin burns inside and out, and she is dizzy. It is
almost funny, she thinks, that just days ago she was
among the most powerful women in Washington, and today
she finds herself unemployed, alone, shaking and
sweating in the midday sun. Her fingers scrape down
the tree trunk, catching on points, the delicate
balance of forces holding her up.
She is tempted to walk away, back to the subway, home.
She thinks the woman is CJ Cregg's assistant, though,
and Amy knows CJ well enough to worry, if not well
enough to call herself.
Amy squints into the sun, trying to remember a name.
She should know, she thinks. It was her job to know
these things. She watches the tower of food wobble,
shrugs, and takes a few quick steps toward the
familiar face.
"Hi," she says casually. The name hits her in time.
"Carol." Then, realizing that they have never been
formally introduced, she says, "Amy Gardner," almost
extends a hand. Deadpans, "Your food is falling."
"Thanks," Carol says as Amy grabs the tumbling
cartons. "And I know who you are." Amy would smile,
normally, but this isn't a good week to be known. She
casts her eyes to the ground, then up again.
Carol smiles, the sun glinting on her perfect white
teeth, and Amy is again dizzy. Carol's smile is even,
and Amy is uncomfortable with her lopsided response.
They stand in silence, then Carol says, "You know, the
salad run seemed doable before the entire
communications bullpen placed orders."
Amy laughs, by force. "It must have been hard for
you," she quips. She doesn't pause long enough before
asking, "How's CJ doing?''
Carol sighs. She sets her food down on a bench, and
Amy,anticipating a conversation, follows. "She acts
normal, but with CJ, I don't know what that means."
Amy nods. She expected Carol's voice to waver, or to
be quiet, or carry some bit of the weakness Amy
associates with secretaries. But Amy's interest is
piqued by Carol's precise and solid voice, so far from
her own timbre of vague disinterest. Amy looks at her
hands, gently wringing, and pulls them apart. One
moves to her chest, where it fingers her collar bone.
"Did you know him well?"
"He spent a lot of time standing outside her door, so
yes. He was good. Good for her. She was almost giddy-"
Carol stops, and she won't betray CJ's confidence.
"Anyway, he was good."
Amy can figure nothing about this woman, except that
she is calm and cool and doesn't flinch when asked
about Simon. Amy likes that. Amy likes enigmas.
Amy looks at Carol, suddenly wishing she were
showered, dressed, without flakes of tree bark trapped
beneath her fingernails. Anything to suggest that Amy,
too, is together and strong, just not always and not
right now.
Amy feels weak under Carol's gaze. The slight wariness
in Carol's eyes raises questions in Amy. What has CJ
said? That Amy is Josh, with all his dangerous swings?
Josh gone feminist and out of control? Amy wants to
say, "You could form your own opinions. Think for
yourself," but that would just be self-defense, and CJ
isn't far off.
Amy likes Carol's indulgent loyalty to CJ. She likes
that she can lookand sound in control and be
absolutely submissive, all at once. She's attractive,
this woman so willing to be led by the hand. Like Amy
could finish a bottle of red wine trying to figure
Carol out, then take her home and show her the tiny
tattoo at the base of Amy's
spine, and own her forever.
The thought takes her by surprise.
She looks at Carol's eyes, with all their vague
suspicion and realizes just how dangerous she has
become. Her life is in pieces, her mind overrun with
destruction. She wants to absorb Carol's cool through
well-placed fingertips, or let them wander until this
unbreakable woman shakes, absolutely out of control
herself.
Carol runs her thumb across the tips of her nails, her
unresting hands hypnotic to Amy. Seconds pass, but Amy
isn't counting or thinking clearly.
Amy's breaths sound like growls in ther ears. She
craves equality, but if she can't have that, she wants
dominance. She likes the idea that she wouldn'tbe
forced to stand in front of her mistakes or facethem
or make love to them. That this could never be real
and so, never have to end.
Amy has this one day when she's angry, embarrassed,
and unbounded. Today, she's indulgent, in her anger
and
her shame and, judging from the empty Ben and Jerry's
carton in her trash can, in her desires. And now, she
just wants the screams that ring like applause.
Amy swallows, hard, and says, "Tell CJ I'm thinking of
her."
Carol nods, answers, "Josh is helping, I think. In his
own Josh way. She appreciates your loaning him to her,
I'm sure."
Everything comes back to Josh, it seems. Amy's
thoughts are not so easily contained, though. She is
crazy from the heat and the crescent of white sunlight
reflecting off of Carol's hair. She's wondering
whether Josh knows her perfume well enough to notice a
difference.
She and Josh have always been in and out of freefall,
and it seems inevitable that they will hit the ground.
She considers giving in to the fall, diving after the
shards the have chipped away and tumbled into
nothingness. Better, she thinks dryly, to fall into
liquid eyes and find silky hair running beneath her
fingers when she wakes.
She occupies her hands by pressing her palms into her
thighs, wiping them on her shorts. The sun recedes
behind a cloud. The shade is cool and sudden and it
allows Amy to think.
She breathes.
There is stability enough in the fact that she
will love Josh for his irrationality and he for hers.
Stability in her power and in her looks and in all of
these factors that don't matter. Amy needs to lose
control more than she needs to gain it. When she's
back in control, she will still need Josh to argue
until he has her backed into the wall, holding him off
just long enough to get the last word.
Amy guesses, by the awkward look on Carol's face, that
she has been silent a while. Amy feels foolish,
mistaking this five minute conversation for a life
changing moment.
Carol glances at the bench, winces at the limp leaves
showing through the plastic. She looks at her watch.
"I should be getting back. I'll check my list, but
don't think anyone ordered a rottingsalad." She pulls
a few of her cartons back to her chest.
There are things Amy wants to say, but she can't think
of the words quickly enough. She's overwhelmed by the
heat, the light, the fact that she needs Josh, in all
these ways she has been running from. It is a little
life changing, she thinks, reaching this point where
she can need and even love without panic.
She grabs the remaining food and walks with Carol to
the corner. As the light changes to green, she sets
her stack atop Carol's and says, "Really, do tell CJ
that I'm sorry."
"I will." Carol adjusts the cartons in her hands until
she is confident that they are stable. "Good to see
you, Amy." She turns, and walks away with only a quick
glance backward. Amy gropes for a tree or a pole, or
anything at all to hold her up. There is nothing.
Nothing but thoughts of jobs and Josh and the
precarious beginnings of stability.
She turns toward the subway, toward her apartment
filled with all of Josh's things. She pushes her
tremors out with a sharp exhale, and slowly, she
begins to run.
end.