Retrograde Emotion
Author: arcadia215
Rating: PG 13 for language
Spoilers: Transition

There are two kinds of talks between men and women who are involved.
The kind that men dread, the Let's-define-a-relationship talk. And the
kind that women dread, the
I've-just-defined-a-relationship-with-someone-who-isn't-you talk.

Little did I know when I walked into Morton's, at five minutes to five
on December 2, that Josh Lyman was about to have a chat of the second
variety with me. I assume he wants to lecture me about how I need to
"understand this building" we'll be moving into in a few weeks. So in
preparation for that talk, I'm already fortified with a dry martini
and a reserve of snarkiness when he walks in at one minute past five
and takes the stool beside me at the bar.

"Hi, thanks for coming," he says and orders a Scotch from the bartender.

"You're not going to offer to buy me a drink?" I drawl, as is my way,
as he takes off his coat and scarf. "Boss," I add pointedly.

He smiles sideways at me. You may have noticed that at the start of
this, I referred to "men and women who are involved." I use this verb
tense because involvement is like virginity- you can't take it back.
You're always in some state of involvement. Par example: when Josh
smiles sideways at me and it reminds me of when he did it from the
opposite pillow. Is that inappropriate, because he's essentially now
my boss? Maybe. But I can't help it, it's there and it can't ever be
erased.

"I'm not here as your boss," Josh corrects me as the barkeep slides a
drink to him. "This is a strictly social visit."

I raise my eyebrows. "Are you here to pick me up?" I query, amused.

He doesn't bite, but instead takes that mildly exasperated tone he
adopted at Leo's funeral, the last time we spoke until he called me to
meet him. "I'm here as a friend, Amy. Look, um...the President-elect
didn't consult with me before he made you the job offer."

"Josh," I warn, "this sounds dangerously close to you suggesting I not
take the job because you used to date me."

"Not at all," he surprises me. "I hope you take the job- I think
you'll be great at it. And with Sam, Lou, and you- I actually believe
we might have a chance of survival."

"Your sales pitch needs work," I smile, happy to hear his confidence
in me since I have, in fact, decided to serve President Santos as his
Legislative Liaison.

He does not smile back, but instead looks soberly at me. "There's
something you have to know. The President-elect doesn't know we were
involved and I plan to tell him. I need him to trust me and I can't do
that without full disclosure. Just the same," he says carefully, "if
we're going to work together, I need you to trust me."

Now I really want to know what he has to tell me. "Just spit it out, Josh."

"Donna and I are together."

I swear I almost spit gin onto the bartender's bow-tie. "Your assistant?"

"She's not my-"

"Your old assistant?"

"The Chief of Staff to the soon-to-be First Lady."

No way. Donna- Donna who doesn't even have an A.B.- has my old job? "Seriously?"

"She was a spokesperson for the campaign, Amy. It's not out of the blue."

"Okay..." I'll let this slide, because we need to talk about what else
Donna's been doing. Like Josh. He looks uncomfortable talking about
it. I am willing to bet Josh and Donna's involvement started in a
situation similar to this: alcohol, anxiety, you know the rest. Except
Morton's doesn't have a hotel above it. "Are you worried about working
so closely?"

He looks at me funny. "With Donna?"

"Yeah."

"No. Donna and I are living together-"

Say what?

"Amy, we're getting married."

WHAT?

"Married?" I sputter. "Since when? Three weeks ago, you were ready to
call some chick from Justice and now-" His face stops me and I'm sure
I heard my jaw hit the bar. "You were with Donna when I saw you at the
funeral."

"Yeah."

"You let me do that whole spiel about Sarah when you were already
together? And her too? What the hell?"

"What the hell, Amy?" he echoes. "Because we'll tell people when we
we're ready to, not when you decide to run your mouth off." I can
still push his buttons, albeit not in a desirable way. Evidently.

"Sorry," I mumble.

"Don't worry about it," he sighs. "The truth is, we lacked clarity- if
that's the word- and you actually helped push us towards it. Donna
made a remark about Sarah Petro and-"

"Protrero," I correct him dazedly. "Sarah Protrero from Justice." Only
three weeks since we discussed Sarah, and the whole universe has been
wrenched in a new direction.

"Right," he acquiesces. "Anyway, you should know about me and Donna. I
don't presume to know how you feel about working for me period, but
since we were involved and I consider you a friend, I wanted to tell
you."

"Does it bother you that I have a boyfriend?" I ask skeptically. I
really doubt it.

Josh responds with a pointed silence, as he nurses his drink and
thinks of a diplomatic way to answer, but I get to it before he's
forced to take me there. "Oh." Duh. I am slow, the realization hits
me. "It would bother you if it were Donna and Donna had a boyfriend."

His head cocks just a tad to the left as he takes another drink, a
kind of unconscious twitch to loosen his collar. I have to smile
ruefully at the fact that it bothers him just to think about it, and
in this moment, I know I've lost the Josh I knew. To love. Or rather,
maybe "my Josh" was never the real Josh and that was the root of our
problem all along.

"I get it, Josh," I assure him. "And I'm okay with it."

* _* December 22 * _ *

I was okay with it. Actually no, I was actually never okay with it but
up until tonight I was giving a damn fine performance. And then:

The President-elect walks to the center of the main parlor of the
Burke House, where we senior staff-to-be are all kicked back with a
whole lot of brandy and eggnog. He has his arm around Mrs. Santos, who
is carrying a bottle of champagne. She's beaming at Donna. I
experience a woozy coming-into-consciousness that I would equate to
the part of a horror movie when the heroine realizes she's in a car in
a dark wood alone with the killer and no cell phone .

"Now, now- hush," the President-elect starts. He points at Josh. "I
have to do this before you skip out on us."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir," Josh quips with an embarrassed groan, to
which the rest of the room titters.

"I'll keep it short and sweet," the President-elect promises. "Josh,
as you all know, is no less than a miracle worker. I owe my election
to him, because I wouldn't even have run if he hadn't come to Texas
and hog-tied me to a campaign bus. I have every confidence that he'll
be a superlative Chief of Staff for the country. But today, we
celebrate another miracle- and if you know Josh, you know just how
miraculous this is- "

I desperately scan the faces in the room for some warning of what's
coming. Sam looks elated. Mrs. Santos looks proud. Donna looks
bashful. Josh looks- Josh looks-

"Josh has asked this beautiful, talented woman to marry him and rumor
has it, she said yes." A collective gasp courses through half of the
room, while the other half- the faces I saw- break into grins. "You
did say yes, didn't you, Donna?"

"Yes, I said yes." She turns and looks adorably at Josh, who's looking
adorably at her, while I stand in the middle of this saturnalia,
silent and stricken.

"Good, because that would have been really embarrassing," the
President-elect booms heartily.

The First Lady-in-waiting swats his arm. "Matt, stop. Make yourself
useful and open this," she says, and he obliges when she hands him the
bottle. The cork pops, and the Santoses pass two crystal flutes to
their soon to be Chiefs of Staff, and keep two for themselves, while
stewards come around to serve pre-poured glasses to the rest of us.
"To Donna and Josh, the future Mr. and Mrs. Lyman, we love you and we
wish you a lifetime of happiness."

We do?

"Here, here!" the room cries and lifts their glasses to toast the
couple. Josh and Donna kiss before they drink, which affords a drunken
Sam the opportunity to shout, "Speech! Speech!" to which the
President-elect and a louder-than-you-would-expect Ronna join in.

Josh makes a show of leaning back against the sofa, and says to Donna,
"Go for it, kid, you're the spokesperson in the relationship. I'm more
of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy."

"Speeches are for razzing!" Sam heckles loudly. "We love Donna, we
don't want to razz her. We want to razz you. Since you are now our
boss and this is one of the rare socially-acceptable occasions when we
can do that to your face."

The President-elect practically bellows at that. I think Sam may have
already found his staunchest supporter for his imminent presidential
campaign.

"Alright, alright," Josh holds his hands up in surrender, as he rises
from the sofa. He throws a cocky look back at the room and says, "You
don't have to ask me twice to say a few words about this woman beside
me." He means that line as a joke, you know, because he's such a
consummate lover (and now, I suppose, fianc‚), he knows women, yada
yada. But there is no jocularity when he turns to look at Donna and he
bites his lower lip before he starts in... "A few words about this
remarkable woman, who was barely more than a kid when she first showed
up in my office and hired herself as my assistant."

Oh, for the love of God, not this story. Again.

"That was nine years and three elections ago." He looks over at the
President-elect. "You say you couldn't have done it without me, but I
couldn't have done it with you," he finishes to Donna. "You've saved
my career- more than once- put two justices on the Supreme Court, and
earned the opportunity to serve in this White House at the highest
level. And somewhere in between, you found the time to be my most
reliable partner, my most trusted confidante, and my best friend. And
in all the time I've known you, you've never once lost sight of who
you are. I don't think you quite realize what an extraordinary thing
that is, but I do and so does everyone in this room who loves and
admires you for it." Donna quickly wipes her eyes, embarrassed; as if
to provide a reprieve, Josh jokingly adds, with a stern look to this
touched audience, "Not as much as I do. I'm the good cop in this
scenario."

Sam pipes up, "You didn't give us much razzing material, and I'm kind
of pissed at you for that, but I can't knock a chance to compliment
Donna." Josh is now standing next to the arm of the sofa with Donna
pressed to his side. "Seriously, we can't think of two people who
deserve this more. And for those of us who've been subjected to their
tragically-transparent flirting and desperate, unspoken longing since
Manchester in '98- thank God you finally sealed the deal, Josh- you
dumbkoff!"

Am I in the room?

Sam doesn't seem to think so. Neither does Josh, from what I can tell-
no, Gee, that comment may seem insensitive to the person who was
acutally sleeping with me during my apparently career-long quest to
score with Donna. But maybe not. I'll never know because by the time I
can look at him without completely giving myself away, we've already
toasted twice more and now they're kissing for the crowd, to the
extent that it incites whoops and much fork clanking on flutes.

When I finally am able to look, I find that I can't stop- I can't get
over his face. I never dreamed the term "ga-ga" would be counted among
Josh Lyman's repertoire of expressions, but there it is. All lit by
Christmas lights and finery and his blonde intended's 15,000-kilowatt
smile. She looks gorgeous. Of course, she's not even as old as I was
when I dated Josh and she has a better metabolism than me. Both of
which make me hate her, as if I needed two more reasons.

I don't hate her. I'm indifferent to her; or at least I want to be,
there's nothing I would like better than to just brush her off like,
oh I don't know, every other neophyte who answers phones and keep
schedules for the DC power brokers. She's not an us, she's a them-
well, now she's an us, an inner circler, but only because she came in
courtesy of a car bombed SUV and Josh Lyman's coattails.

Okay, I take back the first part- it was a truly awful thing to think
and I'm sorry I thought it. I am very sorry she was in that explosion
and not at all sorry she lived. Really, I mean that. But the second
part I'll own. She did ride Josh into the White House; and yes, I mean
that with every implication. Look, I know some people will say, How
hypocritical for a women's advocate to trash perky, little deputy
do-gooder Donna! Shouldn't I commend her for being so enterprising and
industrious?

No. And here's why. Because Donna is everything that I am fighting
against. Josh didn't hire her because she was ballsy, he hired her
because she was cute, young, and ballsy. She has no credentials, which
to me translates as: screw education, if your boss thinks you're cute,
you too can become the First Lady's CoS and marry one of the powerful
men in the Democratic party!

Shit. Where did that last part come from?

Josh's walls are covered with paper from Yale and Harvard. Donna has a
certificate from some Bumblebutt, Wisconsin high school. Mismatched
much? How does that happen?

Duh, Amy. But here's a visual aid just to add some salt to that
bloodied heart of yours:

The party is breaking up, and the de facto Guests of Honor are huddled
up in that obnoxious, exclusive way that only newly-minted married, or
soon to be married, couples can be in a roomful of people at a party
at someone else's house.

Because I am staring, I am privy to the subtlest of looks passes
between them- the corners of Donna's mouth rise another millimeter,
Josh's next breath is just a little deeper, a little more desperate-
and I know it will be long time before they get to sleep tonight.

I surmise that they are probably in throes of the delirious
just-started-having-sex-regularly phase of love. No scratch that-
"regularly" is staying over two or three nights a week. They are
living together, which is a whole other racheted-up phase of hormonal
frenzy. They probably do it two or three times a day. I covertly slide
my eyes back over to the couch. She's propped on the arm, a little
above Josh, who has both her hands in his. His face is upturned and
adoring.

Scratch that. Most likely, they're doing it two or three times the two
or three times a day they're having sex. In other words, they can't
keep their hands and mouths and unmentionables away from each other.
And now, they're standing up to leave, to go home and give all their
body parts a chance to indulge in requisition much-missed, I'm sure,
over the past four hours.

Because I had one too many glasses of wine and I haven't slept much, I
decide to walk back to my apartment. And when I say walk, I mean the
route that will take me four blocks out of my way past Josh's place. I
can't believe she lives there. I can't believe he let her live there.
I wonder what she's done to the place. It wasn't that bad, as a guy's
apartment goes, because Josh is never there much. But he has a
treadmill (that he never uses) smack in the middle of the main room,
and a really hideous comforter on his bed. I bet the treadmill's still
there; the comforter probably spends the majority of its time thrown
hastily on the floor.

I round the corner of Josh's street, the fourth in a row of lovely
brownstones. I'm so enchanted with the red-bowed wreaths and white
light spectacle around me that I don't notice until I'm practically
next door-

Oh.God. He's outside. With her. On the stoop. They don't see me; I'm
behind them, and they're looking at the stars. I want to walk away,
but I can't. If I move, the tears brimming in my eyes will start to
spill down my cheeks.

"Four years," he tells her with a weary sigh. "Four years and I'm done."

"Famous last words," she chuckles.

He looks down at her. "No, seriously. I had a talk with the President about it."

"You spoke to the President?"

"Yeah. I wanted to know if..." he can't quite articulate what he wanted to know.

"You wanted to know if it was okay," she is able to say for him. "Okay
that you're not Leo." She looks up to see that her deduction is
correct and he places an affirmative kiss on her forehead. "What did
you say?"

"I said, it's a privilege and an honor to serve this office. But I
want to be more than a good citizen. I said- I said I want to marry
you and be the guy you count on, the one my family counts on."

"Did you really say that?"

"Yes."

"And what did President Bartlet say?"

"He said, 'About damn time you took your head out of your ass and
married that girl.'"

"No he didn't!"

"Swear to God," he assures her. "But he told me not to tell you
because he wants to save that anecdote for the wedding."

"Turncoat," she chides him. "Don't worry, I'll put on poker face when
he tells it."

"Don't bother," he retorts. "Your ability to lie is on par with my
ability to drink. Nonexistent. A shonda really."

"I'm from Wisconsin! What's your excuse? That you had no friends in school?"

"How can I make you stop talking?" he teases and makes a playful pass
for her mouth. Which turns steamy and serious as soon as they start to
kiss. They are also, apparently, in the phase where every kiss is a
communiqu‚, a chance to reaffirm loyalty, belovedness, and other such
intensities felt. Josh and I never made it to that phase.

She pulls back. "You really think you'll be able to leave the White House?"

"I don't want to wake up one day and realized I missed what should
have been the best part of my life." He's brushing her hair with his
hand. "I mean, I would never call it just a job, but at the same time,
when I'm on my last breath, I'm not going to be reaching for one last
look at that sugar subsidy briefing."

"I'll hold you to that," she kids him.

But he is wholly seriously when he continues, "I know I can leave the
White House because I have. When I went to Germany. I didn't even
realize I hadn't thought at all about what was happening in the Oval
until your IRA boyfriend pointed it out to me."

"Oh," is all she says, but after a moment of consideration, she lays
her cheek on his chest.

"Anyway... when you face that, you realize... I don't know. I realized
I won't be able to solve all the world's problems in my lifetime and
it's not worth cutting my ear off."

"You lost me with the ear bit."

"Like Van Gogh. I was in this Nietzsche seminar once and we were
talking about the time he was in a mental hospital. Someone asked the
professor if he would have written half of what he wrote if he hadn't
been crazy. The professor answered that an inordinate number of people
who did great things were driven to them by their personal torment.
They wrote and painted and composed because it was unbearable for them
to live in the world. I'll happily take inconsequence and obscurity
for this."

"This stoop?"

"This stoop is not inconsequential," he counters, his voice laden with
the gravity of what he is about to say. "It's a part of a trajectory
that links Birkenau and a burning house to the babies our babies will
have someday. The definition of civilization. The future we all claim
to be working for- it's being brokered right here on these stairs. We
won't solve sugar subsides or the host of problems the world faces,
but so long as there's kissing on stoops, there will be kissing
upstairs, and humankind will live to fight another day."

She uses his shoulder to pull herself up. "What do you say we go take
one for humanity?"

"It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it," he quips, as he
follows. He moves to open the door, but she calls him back-

"Josh-"

There they are, the two of them face to face in dusky silhouette with
this Christmas movie set backdrop, on their stoop. She whispers and I
can't hear what she says. I can't quite make out how his face shifts.
But in the next minute, her arms are wound around his neck, his face
is buried in her hair, and he slowly rocks her to the beat of the
turning earth.

Or so I imagine. Whatever the tempo, he moves with her, and she with
him, however much I like it or not.

So with nothing left to do, I turn and start to walk the four blocks
back to my apartment. After all, tomorrow is a work day.