The unbearable lightness of flirting

Someone is flirting with you.

You've almost forgotten what this feels like, and what it feels like is, well, good. It feels like you are not invisible. Not out of bounds. It feels like your life extends beyond your office, beyond the confines of those four walls and of the demanding boss, demanding not only because of his own expectations but also - especially - because of what you expect of yourself in your service to him. Sometimes it feels as if those four walls are caving in; sometimes it feels as if you can't breathe. The pressure is too much. The demands are too much. He - he is too much. Takes up too much space in your brain, your heart, your life.

And so it feels good that someone is flirting with you. It feels good to drink the chilled white wine and have him flirt with  you, not knowing the background, not knowing the - the complications. Sure, you will have complications of your own, the two of you, if he - if you - move beyond the flirting. But they will be new complications. You imagine, somehow, that it will more fun, less tiresome, to unpick these complications - these new complications - than to endlessly go over and over the old ones.

You are thinking about all this as he flirts with you. You are thinking about all this, but you are also there, in the moment, enjoying him. You are laughing at his jokes, not in an over eager way or out of obligation but because they are funny. You are wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe Republicans aren't necessarily bad guys, maybe not all of them, maybe not this one. This one is funny. This one is cute. And he has kind eyes. Eyes that seem incapable of looking down on the needy. Eyes that seem incapable of anything but compassion.

And then there's the Jewish thing. Jewish guys are hot. You have to admit that. You don't know why you think that. Maybe it's because all the Jewish guys you know are smart. And funny. Maybe that it's. You like that option. You like to think it has nothing to do with one particular Jewish guy, the one you have been in love with for as long as you can remember. You shake your head to rid yourself of thoughts of him.

"Something bothering you?" asks the guy who is flirting with you. Attentive. His hand on your shoulder. "You cold?"

"No. I -"

"Nervous twitch, then?"

"Yeah. I get nervous when J - when hot guys flirt with me."

The two of you laugh and he orders more drinks. But you cringe inside. Cringe to have used the word "hot" like you did back in high school, back when you assumed you would have all this completely figured out by the time you were whatever age you were now. You cringe to have almost said the other thing. You hope he didn't notice, though you know it's a lost cause. It doesn't seem to have bothered him, though, or stopped him flirting. He is good at it. He is not heavy handed, but neither is he so subtle that you cannot quite tell whether he's into you. You are enjoying yourself. Really. You only wish it weren't so much effort to swat away thoughts of the other guy. The other guy who flirts with you but seems not to have any intention of following it through.

The other guy, who is not so subtle with the flirting, but who is so unsubtle that it must be a double bluff, unless it's a triple bluff, and here we go again with the complications, and wouldn't it be nice if the two of you could sit here, flirting, if you could force yourself to laugh at the terrible jokes which normally have you rolling your eyes and know it was all leading somewhere, wherever that somewhere might be, that the flirting was not just flirting.

They told me it would be like this.

They told me it would be like this.

They didn't have to tell me. I lived it. For nine years I lived it with him, this life of his. But for some reason, they felt they had to remind me.

You won't see him, they said. You'll come to miss being his assistant, when you were just feet away from him all day, every day. And there are times when I catch myself thinking they were right. It's easy for the hindsight to acquire a rose tint. Yes, there was the banter. The flirting. The thrill of unresolved sexual tension.

Except it is not thrilling.

Maybe on a TV show it's thrilling. It keeps you watching, keeps you wondering. But this wasn't TV; this wasn't one hour a week. This was unremitting, daily real life. My body aching for him every day; my soul, too.

And sure, there are days when I feel it again. There are weeks, there are months, when I'm reminded of that ache. I miss him. Even now that we are married I miss him. I fall asleep wishing he were beside me; I often wake alone. The children cry for him and he can't hear them.

They told me it would be like this, and I never doubted it. Do I wish it didn't have to be? Maybe. But it's the path we have chosen. This life is what made Josh Josh, and Josh is who my body aches for. There is no pretending anymore, and maybe the thrill, such as it was, has gone. But the thrill is over-rated. I'll take the security any day: knowing I belong to him and he to me, no longer having to work out whether what I see in  his eyes is what I hope it is or whether his anger is motivated by jealousy.

They told me it would be like this. I believed them. I was right to believe them. And still without hesitation I choose this life: occasional stolen moments with Josh rather than the constant presence of any lesser man.

I'll take you shoe shopping

It was meant only for her to hear. "When it's over I'll buy you shoes."

Only she was meant to hear it, and she wasn't meant to take it seriously. But CJ had heard it too, and on Monday when Donna had said, "he was kidding about the shoes", CJ was apparently not impressed.

"Josh," she said, standing in the doorway to his office with her hands on her hips. "You promised Donna shoes."

He took another sip from his lukewarm coffee while he considered what the appropriate response might be. 

"Huh?"

"You said that if she went to the thing on Saturday, you'd buy her shoes."

"Well, I didn't mean it."

CJ crossed her arms. "Well then, you shouldn't have said it."

It was impeccable logic. He couldn't fault it. He continued to drink his coffee.

"She and Carol had lunch planned. She canceled because you were taking her shoe shopping."

"Oh."

"I just thought I'd better warn you.  You know, in case."

"In case what?"

"In case she seems mad."

"She'd be mad about something so trivial?"

"Shoes," said CJ, "are not trivial."

"Got it." Though he really hadn't. Shouldn't he have women figured out by now?

But it was irking him later as he read through his notes in preparation for Senior Staff. He opened his mouth to shout, and then it occurred to him that now might be a good time to learn to use the intercom. He pressed the button. 

"Donna?"

No response.

"Donna?" Louder now. How did the damn thing work anyway? 

"Donna!" 

She pushed open his door. 

"Yes?"

She was wearing a skirt that was shorter than the ones to which he was accustomed, and he forgot for a moment why he'd called her in. 

"There's an intercom, you know," she said, presumably to fill the silence.  

"I know. But I -"

"Don't know how to use it?"

"No."

"Well I guess there are some things they don't teach you at Harvard Law School."

"Yale."

"Whatever."

The snark: so CJ was right. It seemed shoes mattered after all. 

"What are you doing at lunch?"

"I'm having lunch with Carol."

"Cancel it," he said, before he'd thought. Damn it, if he could just learn not to do that one of these days.

"You've got to be kidding me." She sounded a little like a moody teenager, but he chose, benevolently, to ignore that. 

"I'm taking you shoe shopping."

"That's a little joke right there, isn't it? It's funny."

"It's not a joke. I'm taking you shoe shopping. Really. I'm sorry about Saturday." 

She tried to hide her smile but he saw it. He was very observant like that.

"Okay," she said, and smiled some more. 

"I'm taking Donna shoe shopping," Josh said over her shoulder to Sam. 

"I'm not sure what the proper response is to that."

"That it's a kind and generous yet also a manly thing to do?" His voice had risen worryingly in pitch towards the end of the sentence. 

"Right," said Sam, furrowing his brow in what looked liked bewilderment. Or perhaps despair. "I just came by to say the thing's a lunchtime thing now." 

"But - "

It worried Josh a little that Donna was still smiling. 

"It's okay, Josh. You can take me shoe shopping another day." 

Later, much later, she would tell him that the thought was enough. It was enough that he had imagined himself to be free enough in the middle of a Monday to take her shopping. It was enough that he was willing to stand in line for an age, watch her walk up and down, tell her the black ones looked nice and the red ones didn't seem like they would be very practical. Of course, it was entirely possible that he hadn't thought about any of it, that he had not thought further than her smile. And that was okay with her too. 

In the dream

In her dream she was the first to arrive. She stood and watched helplessly, uselessly, as they ran, wheeling him in, as he mumbled something that sounded like her name, like an accusation. She stood, in her dream as she had in reality: speechless, her hand clamped over her mouth.

But in her dream, she was the first one there and as each person arrived she said the words herself. Josh was hit. It's critical. In the dream she said it deadpan, delivered as though it were an inconsequential inconvenience.

Hit. Critical. Critical. Critical...

In the dream, no one hugged her either. In the dream they nodded and went on their way, walking calmly to the room where they would wait, and wait, and wait. In the dream she spoke calmly and her knees did not buckle under her and she asked no ridiculous questions. In the dream a nurse eventually came over to her, when the last of them had walked calmly to the waiting room, and she offered her a glass of water, and inexplicably asked if she was his wife, and that was when Donna began to cry. And the nurse did what none of the others had done; she slipped one arm around Donna's shoulder and led her to a chair.

She didn't know why she wasn't following the others, except that even in her dream she was dimly aware of a sense of betrayal, a sense of injustice. The nurse offered no empty words of meaningless comfort, no he's going to be okay that no-one suspected to be true, but just for a minute or two someone had taken care of her and in the dream for those two minutes she was aware of her shoulders lightening. But she woke up to the sensation of falling, to the familiar nausea tightening her stomach, to her shoulders sighing again under the weight of responsibility, to the sobs convulsing her body, to a haunting loneliness that she knew would never leave her if he didn't live.

The meaning of nothing

The dress plunges low, low, down to the small of her back and when he puts his hand there to gently guide her toward the dining hall he is surprised to be touching skin.

"Josh, it's okay," she says, and he realizes he has instinctively pulled his hand away.

"I didn't - " he says, and then he stops, because how is he going to finish that sentence? I didn't expect to touch you? I didn't expect your skin to be so soft? Or, worse, I didn't want you to think - careless words that would mean exactly what they both knew them to mean, and before the minute was over they would be stuck in that cycle of theirs, she wanting him to say it, he desperately trying to avoid saying it.

"Didn't what?" She turns her innocent blue eyes toward him. So not saying anything is clearly not going to work either.

"I didn't expect your back to be there," he says, a note of pleading in his voice.

"You thought I was a disembodied dress?"

Sometimes, he thinks, that would make my life simpler. If there were no body.

"Yes, Donna," he says, impressing her, he hopes, with his newfound ability to laugh at himself. "That's exactly what I thought."

"You crack me up," she says, not cracking up, and then adds in a low voice, perhaps a little drunk already, "A little skin to skin contact is going to kills us?"

"It might."

Here we go, he thinks, and sure enough.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

She's stopped walking. He turns his head back to her and sees that the front of the dress has one of those ruched necklines. Ruched? Where did he learn that word?

"Why did you stop walking?"

"Because you always do that."

"Always do what?" Though of course he knows. But maybe the Bambi thing will work for him too.

"You always almost say it."

"Say what?"

He is aware of his quickening pulse. If she puts words to it, the game is over. And in the absence of anything beyond the game, he likes the game.

"Nothing," she says, playing too, refusing the risk too. But she looks into his eyes as she says it, as though she were confident that his nothing meant the same as hers, or perhaps as though she were gambling everything on that one word.

He holds out his arm and she takes it, and he seriously considers dancing with her later.

No exit

They didn't have to say they would never speak of it again. The closeness of the air, the thickness of the silence between them, the haste with which Donna left when they were given the all-clear said it, shouted it, screamed it.

CJ wasn't entirely sure why she had allowed herself and her words to be pulled in this dangerous direction. She was torn between the relief of having voiced the perennially unvoiced and the guilt at Donna shrinking like a wounded animal and the injustice of having been so ill-received when she had, after all, spoken out of concern, affection even, for these two people.

Although, perhaps, thinking about it, affection had not been her chief motivation. Frustration, maybe. Under different circumstances - over coffee on a lazy Sunday, or after a few drinks on a Friday night... But there were no lazy Sundays and when work was finished on Friday nights there was no energy left for anything except the drive home, the removal of clothes and make-up, the closing of eyes and the waiting for sleep, as you wait for an ancient computer to close each program one by one, so that darkness only came - to the screen, to her mind - when patience was almost exhausted.

And perhaps, whatever the circumstances, there were certain things that could never be spoken of, for fear that naming them would call forth their destructive power. And this unspokenness was the air vent that had kept Donna breathing in the hell she had constructed for herself, and with CJ's words the air vent had snapped shut and she was suffocating, and it was at last possible that she might seek escape.

But while she could still breathe Donna would not seek a way out, blind as she was to the desirability or even the possibility of escape. And so hell, to Donna, was other people, one other person, because she had allowed herself to be chained to him at the cost of her freedom.

Hell. No exit. Other people, or another person - always this other person.

Waiting for sleep

She could hear her heart thumping still, almost feel the caffeine coursing through her veins. What hospital coffee lacked in taste and quality it more than made up for with strength.

They'd sent her home; he'd nodded his agreement.

"Get some sleep," they'd said, all of them.

As if.

She wasn't sure if she was unable to sleep as much as she was plainly unwilling, vaguely superstitious that her staying awake was somehow keeping him alive.

She thought about reading but the words danced meaninglessly in front of her strained, puffy eyes. Sure, there were magazines, with photos and bright colors and no need to focus, but the glossy smell made her faintly nauseous and probably always would, carrying with them the recent memory of furiously flicking from page to page in a hospital waiting room, as though that would make time past faster somehow, bring him back to her sooner.

She flung her arms behind her head and waited for sleep, but waited with her eyes open. Come if you must, but don't expect to be welcomed.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, the way you might say "be careful out there", or "look after yourself". Meant, fully meant, and yet fully meaningless.

She buried her face in her pillow, and wondered if she might cry, but the pain, the anxiety, the loneliness, the fear came from a deeper place than tears do.

"Get some sleep," he'd said, and she thought about that. She thought about the tenderness in his eyes, his concern for her in the midst of her own emergency. The way he had lacked the strength to squeeze her hand. Their story did not feel finished. There had to be more. Had to be.

She thought about -

A button and a distraction

Her button was undone.

He wished he hadn't noticed, but there it was, he had, and he could not go back and un-notice it.

Just that one button. Just enough so that he could see the little pink bow on her bra, a chaste Midwestern bra, he liked to imagine, because when would she have time to be anything other than chaste? He'd seen to that.

Someone should probably tell her. But how to do it subtly, subtlety not being his strongest suit at the best of times? How to say the words Donna and button without finding himself saying bra and betraying his wandering, iniquitous thoughts?

Through the crack in his door he saw the solution: Carol. Probably coming to pore over the Lemon Lyman website with Donna. He supposed it was an activity best enjoyed with friends.

"Just the person," he said, breezing - hopefully breezing - past the bullpen.

"Hi," said Carol, uncertainly. "Me?"

"Hi." He still didn't know how he was going to word it. "Could you step into my office?"

"Sure." She followed him, then waited. "Was there -"

"Yes. Listen, I know this is going to sound -"

Sitting at his desk, he looked at Carol and then past her: it was a reflex of which he was no longer conscious, this constant glancing towards the bullpen. He noticed, with a little disappointment, that Donna had already, well, rectified the situation.

"Never mind."

"Okay," said Carol, slowly, as if talking to a dim-witted child.

He heard them laughing, her and Donna. He imagined them exchanging rolled eyes. And he felt a little wounded at his thwarted act of gallantry - of selflesness, even, because although the barely open shirt had been a distracting sight it had certainly not been an unpleasant one, just a glimpse of what could be their future, if only, if he only, if circumstances only, the familiar scenarios running through his mind and always the same conclusion, the same defeated conclusion that the little pink bow on the chaste Midwestern bra was a long way out of his reach, years perhaps, forever perhaps, because surely she would get tired of waiting, if she was in fact waiting, waiting for him, and why shouldn't she, he was, after, all the picture of gallantry.

But. Yeah, yeah. He knew the reality of it.

He put his head down on his desk and counted to ten slowly.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for the writing prompt in her Book of Days, "her button was undone".

All her smiles

He rolled onto his side, propped up his head with his elbow, and took in the sight of her. He had always loved her smile, all the versions of it: flirtatious or deeply contented or even snide. Perhaps his favorite was the one that told him she was humoring him, or perhaps it was the one from that night months ago: no. The no that signalled that do you want another drink was not the right question.

"So," he said now, when he'd watched her for almost longer than was polite. "Where do you want to go?"

"On honeymoon?"

He knew she loved that word, with its promise of sweetness. There's going to be a wedding, he'd said, kissing her neck, and whispering into her ear. And everybody is going to be looking at you and wondering how I ever got you to say yes. She hadn't faltered. They don't know you like I do, she'd replied, and he wondered why he'd allowed something so petty and insignificant as his job to delay this moment; he could have been kissing her like this for nine years.

She always sensed his pensiveness in those moments and pulled back, made him articulate his regrets so that she could reassure him again: We're here now, and that's all that matters. One day she would tell him about the letters she wrote him and then tore into a million pieces, about the enormous tubs of ice cream, about the soggy pillows, but not yet, not until he'd learned she wasn't going anywhere.

"There's a place somewhere called Paris," she said, leaning on her own elbow.

"In Wisconsin, I think."

"There are actually two in Wisconsin."

"Well, you pick one, and that's the one we'll go to."

She punched his arm, not much of a punch, really more of a tickle.

"Oh," he said. "Wait. There's another place called Paris, somewhere, no? Somewhere with a romantic language?"

"And amazing shopping," she said, a little too quickly, he thought.

"We are not going on honeymoon so that you can go shopping," he said.

"Even if I were buying lingerie?" She said it, lingerie, with an almost perfect French accent, as though he weren't enthralled already.

"I guess in that case that might be okay," he said, kissing her nose, her cheek, her hair. Thinking about taking her shopping, thinking about the dresses she would wear, thinking how amazing she would look, thinking about her smile when he would tell her so, realizing that was his favorite one of all.

Thanks to Judy Reeves for her prompt in A writer's book of days: "there's a place somewhere called Paris".

Requiem: post ep

He wanted Donna.

After a day like that one, he wanted to go home to Donna. He wanted to sit on the couch with her and reminisce. He wanted to have her hold him. He wanted to rest his head on her shoulder, or to cry into her chest. Nothing seemed so bad when she was with him; just being with her took the edge off his pain.

But he hadn’t been quick enough with his offer.

He remembered that day on the campaign trail, that day in New Hampshire when he’d said to her, you should be with me. But he hadn’t been quick enough, then, either, quick enough to call her after she left, or quick enough to see beforehand that she wanted a challenge, that she needed to get out, to get some fresh air.

He didn’t want for the two of them to keep missing out because he wasn’t quick enough.

He wanted her. For the passion, for the fun, that stuff, yes. But most of all, most of all, he wanted to go home to her.

He realised now that was what he had been feeling for eight years. That having her there was reassuring, the way home is, or a favourite pair of slippers, or the way your pillow moulds to your head. Home, horrible cliché that it was, might be where the heart is after all.

He didn’t know if he was ready for the grown up stuff. He didn’t know if he even wanted it. But this he did know: home didn’t feel like home without Donna anymore.