The Maine Thing by Chai
Character(s): Josh Lyman
Pairing(s): Josh/Donna
Category(s): Romance/Drama
Rating: MATURE
Summary: An AU mystery/suspense/romance in which Matt Santos has lost the Democratic nomination, Josh has disappeared, and Donna takes a vacation in a village on the coast of Maine ....
Written: 2006-03-02
Author's Note: This is set two years after the end of Season 6, in a village on the coast of Maine. You can assume continuity with the show more or less up to the convention; I've moved a couple of things that actually happened at the convention forward a week or two, and then I've messed around big time with what happened during the convention week. This starts off a bit slowly, I'm afraid, but I couldn't figure out any other way to do it; things should pick up if you stick with it.



1--

It was a beautiful day. Donna couldn't remember the last time she'd spent such a beautiful day in such a beautiful place, and not had anything she had to do except enjoy it.

"This is heaven, Mar," she said, stretching her legs out in the deck chair so they could catch the full sun. One of them had a white streak of sunscreen down its side; she bent over and smoothed it in.

"Absolute heaven," Marie agreed, rubbing lotion in circles on her belly and scooping the excess out of her navel with a flick of her finger. The dock rocked gently under them, the little swell lapping quietly against its sides.

"Have you ever seen anything so blue?"

"It's gorgeous, with all those white sails."

"And those little islands beyond the harbor--they're all green and purpley."

"Mmm, yes. Blueberries, I bet. Karena said they're in season now. Maybe she'll have some for breakfast."

"I love blueberries."

"Me, too."

"Heaven."

"Absolute heaven."

The two women stretched out in their deck chairs and contemplated heaven in a contented silence that lasted about a minute before it was broken by a shriek. The dock suddenly lurched, and a voice said, "Damn it, I'm spilling! Quick, someone, grab something before I drop it all." Donna and Marie both jumped, and scrambled out of their chairs. Their hostess had appeared on the gangway and was trying to balance a large tray filled with glasses, several bowls and baskets covered with napkins, and a jug of something that was slurping dangerously close to the top, all without losing grip on the ice bucket she had hooked over one wrist or the bottles that were clamped under either arm. Donna got to her first, taking the tray out of her hands, while Marie rescued the bottles.

"Karena!" Marie scolded. "What on earth were you trying to do?"

"Bring breakfast down," her friend said, pouting a little. "I didn't want to have to do the stairs again; it's such a trek."

"We could have."

"Just as much of a trek for you. I was fine, only that champagne bottle started to slip, just as I was coming down the last steps. It's from Daddy's special supply; he'd kill me if I wasted it."

Donna looked at the bottles Marie had rescued, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hair. Even after Bob Russell's presidential campaign she wasn't used to the idea of sipping expensive champagne at 10:00 in the morning.

"He'll kill you anyway, if we use that," Marie said, setting the bottles down on the dock and pulling up a folding table for Donna to put the tray on.

"Oh, he'll never know," Karena answered placidly. "He doesn't keep track; he just orders more when Maeve says the supply is down." Maeve, Donna had already found out, was Karena's stepmother. "But if I'd dropped them I'd have been sure to tell, just to see the expression on his face. He'd look so funny." She giggled, and picked up the corkscrew. "There's muffins in that basket; I had Rosa go down to the village this morning." Rosa was the maid. "There's the best little bakery there. And orange juice in that pitcher, and blueberries in the big bowl, and coffee. Help yourselves."

After the pop of the champagne cork there was silence again, except for the clink of bottle neck on glass, and the water rolling against the dock and the rocky shore. This time the silence was broken by the buzz of a big motor boat crossing the harbor. A minute later the wake hit the dock, sending the golden liquid splashing over the rims of their glasses, to a chorus of "Oh!'s" and "Ack!'s" and "Damn!'s"

"I guess I got these a bit too full," Karena said ruefully. "Better drink it up quick, and I'll pour smaller glasses next time."

"If they're smaller, we can have more of them," Marie said.

"Exactly."

"This is heaven."

"Absolute heaven," Karena agreed. "Well, almost absolute heaven."

"Almost?"

"Sixth heaven. Maybe fifth."

"And I was thinking it was perfect," Marie said. "What's missing, Karen?"

"Men," her hostess said with a grin. "Really good-looking, hunky, hot men."

"Well, you've got a point there."

"We'll go out tonight and find some."

"We will?"

"We will. There are a couple of good spots in town, and there should be lots of guys up here this weekend. Locals, too--the workmen can be really hot." She raised her glass. "To men," she said. "To us finding some really hot men. In the village. Tonight."

"To men," Donna answered dutifully, clinking glasses with the other women and taking a small sip from hers. Neither Marie nor Karena noticed how forced her smile looked, or how quickly it faded, the corners of her mouth turning down as she looked away. The three women spent the morning stretched out in their chairs, chatting aimlessly, soaking in the sun and the glorious view, but Donna's voice never quite regained its lightness or her eyes their smile.

There was just one man she wanted to find, but she didn't know how. It had been eighteen months since she'd seen him. She hadn't thought anything could be worse than the first fourteen of those, but she'd been wrong. At least then she'd known where he was. Exactly where he was. That had been bad, but this was worse: for the first time since she'd met him, she didn't have any idea where he could be at all.

* * *

She'd gotten the invitation the week before. "Hey, Donna, come out to dinner with us," Marie had said, as they were leaving work. "I'm meeting some friends; it'll be fun."

Marie was one of the most social people Donna had ever known. She was always meeting friends after work, and passed invitations around like the box of candy she kept on her desk. She'd done her best to include Donna ever since Donna had started working for the group, a not-for-profit that lobbied Congress for children's causes. Donna liked her and ate lunch with her a couple of times a week, but she almost always turned down the invitations to socialize after hours, just as she turned down all the offers of dates with men she got, and there had been quite a few of those. Will, Cliff, Bill Brewer--sometimes it seemed as if every man she'd ever had a drink with was asking her out, and a lot of new ones, too. Cliff had been particularly persistent. Of course, there'd been more between them than just drinks once, but that had been a long time ago, and she'd made it clear, the one time she had gone out with him again during the campaign, that there wasn't going to be more between them again. That had been over two years ago, and yet he kept calling, checking in in a friendly sort of way, but obviously hoping she'd change her mind. It was flattering, really, but she didn't care. Having so many possibilities would have pleased her once; now she wished they would all go away. She could keep her attention on her work during the day, but it took an effort; at night she just wanted to be by herself. Needed to be by herself. If she didn't have that time alone to let herself go, she knew she wouldn't be able to hold it together when she had to. She didn't cry--she almost never cried--but she didn't have to pretend to be all right, either.

But being alone every night wasn't working so well anymore. It hadn't been working for quite a while, really. She knew she couldn't go on like that; it had been one thing when there'd been an endpoint to the misery, a finishing line that she'd thought she just had to get across and then things would start to get better. But that line had come and gone four months ago, and nothing had gotten better at all. She needed to change something, so last Friday when Marie had said, "Come out to dinner with us," she'd said, "Sure." And when Marie's friend Karena had said, "I'm going to the cottage next week; come stay," and Marie had said, "Come on, Donna, it'll be fun," she'd said, "Okay. Sure." Congress was out of session, there was nothing worth mentioning to do at work; she'd already planned to take a few days off. Spending them in the company of two friendly women at a seaside cottage on the coast of Maine sounded a whole lot better than spending them doing laundry alone in her apartment, especially when the airconditioner had broken and the landlord still hadn't come to fix it. So she'd packed a bag and got on a plane with Marie, and here she was, staying in a house that was several times larger than her apartment, with a huge verandah and five decks terraced down the side of a cliff and a private dock at the bottom, with her own tastefully decorated room and bath, a beautiful view of one of Maine's more beautiful harbors, and a hostess who served fresh blueberries and muffins and mimosas made with expensive champagne for breakfast. In heaven. Except that it wasn't heaven, because Josh Lyman wasn't there. And wherever he was, wherever he'd been for the last four months, she didn't really think he was all right.

2--

After a long morning soaking in the sun, the three women showered and changed and piled into Karena's Land Rover to drive into the village and "poke around," as Marie said when she suggested it. They ate lunch at a little place on a sidestreet that Karena knew about; Donna had a curried lentil salad served over the kind of mixed greens that, she thought, seemed to be obligatory in any restaurant with any pretensions to good food these days. They were always the same mix--dandelion, arugula, raddiccio. She sometimes wondered when someone would think of something different, so upscale salads would seem interesting again.

"This is delicious," she said, "but it's not what I was expecting to find in Maine."

"What were you expecting?" Karena asked.

"Something a little more basic, I guess. Less international, less urban--more local, like fish and chips or clams. This is like someplace I'd go to in Adams Morgan or Georgetown."

"Costs about the same too," Marie added. "I wouldn't have thought people up here could afford it. Isn't the fishing economy pretty depressed?"

"Oh, this is just for us," Karena said. "Summer people, they call us; visitors. This village started to get popular about ten years ago, when people like my dad realized how good the harbor is for boating, and what terrific seafront properties you could buy without spending a whole fortune; you have to be a Bush to get a good view in Kennebunkport these days, and Bar Harbor's crazy. The place was a lot simpler when we first started coming here. Stephanie--she was Dad's wife before Maeve--couldn't stand it; she wanted Dad to sell the place, and buy somewhere with more shopping instead. But he's got a thing about Maine, and said she'd have to put up with it." Karena giggled. "She didn't put up with it very long--I think she got a guy with a place in the Hamptons, and Dad got Maeve, who doesn't mind going along with what he wants as long as he keeps the champagne well-stocked. The village has really changed since then, though--it's gone a lot more upscale. But there's still a fishing industry, sort of, and some places where the locals go. There's one right down by the main wharf, the Salty Dog--we'll go there tonight, if you like, Donna. It's got the most amazing view of the harbor--and the docks where the boats unload." She giggled again; for a woman in her thirties she did a lot of that, Donna thought. "Some of the men who work down there are too dreamy. They all go to the Salty Dog afterwards, too, for drinks and dancing. The food's pretty basic, but it tastes good. You'll be able to get your fish and chips there, if you want them."

"Well, I don't know about fish and chips, but I'd like to try some seafood while I'm here," Donna said, smiling. "And it would be interesting to see where the locals eat. That would be fun."

"We'll pick up some hot guys there for sure," Karena said, with a grin. She raised her glass. "To men," she announced, the way she had on the dock that morning. "To men," Marie agreed, laughing and clinking glasses. "To men," Donna echoed, trying to keep the weariness out of her voice.

* * *

They spent the afternoon poking around the village the way they'd planned. There wasn't really a lot there, but Donna decided she liked what there was. Some of the shops were predictable enough: overpriced little gift and clothing boutiques not very different from the ones she sometimes visited in Georgetown, some antiques shops, and a sidewalk terrace filled with people in Ralph Lauren polo shirts and expensive-looking sunglasses sipping coffee and reading the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" under the familiar green sign with the mermaid on it. But the gift boutiques included cheaper ones offering a lot of seashells and starfish and other things that made Donna feel as if she really was on holiday away from Washington, and the main street had a diner where she could see overweight men and women drinking cheap plain coffee at fifties-vintage chrome-and-vinyl booths and tables; a bakery selling muffins and buttery scones bursting with blueberries, hot and fresh from the oven; and an ice-cream shop where the thick, rich, frozen stuff was made right at the back of the store with cream from a local dairy. There was a small but well-stocked bookstore with a lot of titles of local interest; Donna lingered over these, and finally bought herself one on Maine history, a book of maritime folktales, and a guide to shore life and seashells. She also lingered over the jewelry set out on a table under an awning outside one of the gift stores: it was beautiful and unusual, and the woman selling it told her all about the way she heated the glass and silver rods in her studio and twisted them into shell-like shapes, and how she embedded real shells in some of the pieces. Donna was very tempted to buy one of the necklaces, but there were several she liked, and they were expensive enough that she decided to wait a day or two before making a choice. After the jewelry stand, her favorite store was an actual chandlers' shop at the water end of Main Street. It sold two-inch rope and anchor chain and spar varnish and oilskins with sou'westers and thick rubber fishermen's boots in every conceivable size, from tiny ones for toddling two-year-olds up to enormous waders that looked like they were meant for heroic giants from another time. There wasn't anything she wanted to buy there; she just liked looking at all the practical nautical goods and thinking about the lives they suggested, the men who still went out every day on working boats and hauled trawling nets and lobster pots--tired men with sunburned faces and calloused hands, who would have no idea what the difference between a latte and a cappuccino was, and would probably laugh with scorn at the thought of anyone paying four dollars for a cup of coffee. It made her think of her father, who had never been on a boat in his life but knew what a hard day's work was like, and had tried--unsuccessfully, in his mind--to teach her the value of a dollar. And she liked to see some proof that all the differences between people and places hadn't been erased yet, that there were still things that made a Maine village feel like Maine, and not just a carbon copy of all the places she already knew. She had discovered on that first campaign with Bartlet for America that it was possible to drive from Wisconsin to New Hampshire and from New Hampshire to South Carolina and see virtually nothing except strip malls full of the same McDonalds and Burger Kings and Wal-Marts and Radio Shacks and Ruby Tuesdays and Starbucks. She adored Starbucks when she was in Washington, but she had no desire to go into the one she'd seen here. She was really looking forward to eating at the Salty Dog that evening.

Licking a blueberry ice cream cone and walking along the quaint, breezy street with its view of boats and gulls in the harbor, shopping and chatting with her friends, she would have been completely happy if it hadn't been for two things. One was the usual nagging, persistent worry about Josh that never quite left her, no matter how hard she tried to push it to the back of her mind and concentrate on other things.

And the other was the odd, unsettling feeling that someone was watching her. She'd had it on and off all day--when she was eating lunch on the terrace at the trendy restaurant, when she was looking at the jewelry, when she was walking down the street eating her ice-cream and talking to her friends. But whenever she looked over her shoulder, she didn't see anyone it could be.

* * *

"Mmmm, look at those guys," Karena said, not for the first time, leaning back in her chair and sipping her drink. They were on the patio of the Salty Dog, which did indeed have a great view of the harbor and the main town wharf. From where they were sitting they could see the handful of fishing boats that had pulled up against the wharf, and the men unloading them.

"Great bods," Marie agreed. "Look at that one in the red shirt. Get a load of those biceps."

"Get a load of that ass, you mean."

"Cute."

"Really cute."

"Cute face, too, I'll bet."

"It's kind of hard to tell from here, isn't it?"

"I can tell. He couldn't have a body like that and not have a great face to go with it."

Donna sat quietly. She was getting tired of the way Karena and Marie were talking about the guys; it had been going on ever since they'd sat down an hour ago. She liked looking at nice male bodies as much as any woman, but there was only so much you could say about them, and it had all been said several times over, some time ago. She wondered if that was really all these two cared about, and if either of them would actually go to bed with one of those guys, given the chance. She wondered what they'd find to say to the guys the next day, if they did. The men were probably nice enough, but they didn't really look as if they'd be good for long conversations about legislative strategy or the merits or demerits of giving financial aid to Mexico. And Josh thought my taste in men was bad, she thought, mournfully. If only he knew.

And yet she couldn't quite take her eyes off one of the men. He was the farthest away, and the hardest to get a good look at, because of the distance and the position of the boat he was unloading. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap, like most of the others, and like them was obviously in good physical shape, though he was less bulked-up than most of them, slim--almost too slim--and lean. Watching him made Donna feel melancholy, and yet she couldn't stop. He reminded her of Josh. Which was ridiculous; nothing could be less like Josh Lyman than a fisherman on a dock in Maine, who was helping an older man with salt-and-pepper hair take crates off a battered-looking old fishing boat. If anyone had ever managed to corral Josh into doing physical labor like that, he'd have been whining and complaining every step of the way, and would probably have succeeded in dropping at least one crate on each foot, just in the time Donna had been watching. And yet, in spite of the absurdity of the comparison, Donna couldn't help making it. It was something about the set of the man's shoulders, something about the way he moved. It wasn't surprising, really, she reminded herself; there are only so many body types, after all, and one is always seeing somebody who looks a lot like somebody else. And that's when you can see the face as well as the body: this man's face probably looked nothing like Josh's. From where she was sitting, it was just a shadow under the brim of his cap. But the thought didn't do anything to comfort her. For all the people she'd mistaken for each other over the years--and it was something she did fairly often, to her embarrassment--she'd never seen anybody she would have taken for Josh. She knew him too well, and he was too different from anybody else she'd ever known or even met. She'd have died before she let him know it, but she'd always thought of him as unique. It was disheartening to think she might have been wrong, that the world might actually be full of men who looked and moved like Josh Lyman. Though of course it had been a long time now since she'd seen him, and perhaps she was beginning to forget, just a little, what he was really like. Which was the most discouraging thought of all, and made Donna's eyes start to sting, forcing her to blink hard and turn her face away from the men on the dock at last.

* * *

When dinner was over and the sun had gone down, Karena moved their party inside to the bar, which was loud and smoky and full of men and women from both sides of the tracks in town, some of them dancing, most of them sitting around talking to their friends in a convivial way, a few making obvious efforts to pick someone up, or get picked up. The women ordered more drinks and watched the scene for a while, chatting to each other.

"Don't turn around, Donna," Marie said when they'd been doing this for about twenty minutes, "but there's a guy over there who hasn't taken his eyes off you since we walked in."

Donna stiffened, and had to force herself not to turn and look. The last thing she wanted was to make eye contact or do anything to encourage one of these men to walk over and start hitting on her. But she was still curious, of course.

"What's he like?" she asked.

"Cute," Marie answered, without hesitation.

"Nah," Karena said dismissively. "I've seen better. We should only be going for the best, girls. See those guys at the table over there? Not one of them under six-two, and look at those shoulders. I'll be they're all volunteer firemen." She stared at them, smiling seductively, until one pushed his chair back and started to saunter across the room. A couple of his buddies followed.

Donna wasn't in the mood for this. She bent over and picked her purse off the floor. "Where's the ladies' room?" she hissed at Marie. "Over there," Marie said. "Take a look at the table in the corner by the door as you go by. He is cute."

When Donna passed the table, she gave it a sidelong glance, but it was empty, a couple of bills under the ashtray suggesting that the occupant was gone for good. She spent as much time in the ladies' room as she could. When she got back to her table the fire department was still there, so she resigned herself to spending the rest of the evening being polite without getting anybody's hopes up. It had been a long time since she'd wanted to do that. Such a very long time.

* * *

The next day they went to a party at one of Karena's fashionable friends' houses. There was a catered barbecue, and a lot of attractive guys who looked like Tommy Hilfiger ads, or Ralph Lauren. Three or four of them made a beeline for Donna. By the end of the evening she had invitations to upcoming events in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, as well as several offers to go sailing the next day, or for long drives to see the scenery. One of them actually described his car in detail, apparently thinking that might tempt her to accept. It was a silver Porsche Boxster with a ragtop and red leather seats. Donna said "No, thank you," the way she did to everyone else.

"What's the matter with you, Donna?" Marie hissed at her, after overhearing her say no for the fourth or fifth time. Donna shrugged. "Not interested," she said. Marie eyed her warily, then laughed and said, "Well, the next time one of them offers to take you sailing, find out how big the boat is, and if it's anything over 25 feet say yes. You can take me along; I'm dying to go out." Donna laughed. The next man who cornered her started talking about his 60-foot muscle boat with three decks and a home movie theatre with Bang and Olufsen speakers and surround sound. She took him by the elbow, smiled, and said, "I'd like you to meet my friend ..."

It turned out that Karena snared them all an invitation to join a dot-com millionaire--he'd sold just in time, she explained--the next day on his yacht. Donna was tempted to plead a headache or PMS and stay home, but Marie so obviously wanted her to go along that in the end she did.

So a couple of days went by before they ended up back on the terrace at the Salty Dog, this time with a crowd of men Karena and Marie had arranged to meet there. The fishing boats had unloaded and the wharf cleared before they sat down. Karena and Marie didn't seem to notice; they were happily occupied with the men in front of them. Donna surprised herself by looking down the dock every five minutes, and being disappointed when nobody came off the boat moored at the far end.

* * *

"There he is again," Marie said, a little while later, leaning across the table and using a stage whisper to get Donna's attention.

"Who?" Donna asked, glad to give it; she'd been listening in a desultory way to the man next to her talk about all his latest stock market transactions, and was bored stiff. He just kept on talking, and didn't seem to notice that she was whispering to Marie about another man. She wasn't sure who he was talking to: Karena was on his other side but wasn't paying any attention to him either, since there were two cuter, hotter guys across from her to flirt with.

"That guy. From the bar the other night. He's at a table over there, reading. Reading-- he reads, Donna, he could be a good one."

That was interesting, there was no doubt about it. But still ...

"If he's reading, he isn't looking at us."

"No, I don't think he's seen you yet."

"Or maybe he's seen me and doesn't care," Donna suggested. "It was probably someone else he was looking at the other night."

"It wasn't."

"Maybe he was just staring into space, thinking."

"Just about you," Marie teased.

Donna was curious, she had to admit it. She scooted her chair around a bit, pretending she wanted better clearance so she could stretch her legs out without hitting the table. But she didn't glance over right away.

"Is he looking now?" she asked Marie.

"No, he's still got his head buried in a book."

Donna gave a casual glance over, and froze.

The man had his head bent and the book propped up in front of him, so all she could see was the top of his head and his hands, which were holding the book open. The hands were deeply tanned, scratched and battered-looking, the knuckles bruised and scraped, and a long gash, heavily scabbed over, ran up the back of one arm. The hair was reddish-brown, thick and curly, and receding a little on both sides in the front.

"Donna?" Marie said. "What's the matter?"

It wasn't possible. It really wasn't possible.

The man must have felt her staring. He lowered the book slowly, and looked up.

Their eyes met. Donna stopped breathing.

He looked at her steadily for a long moment. Then he gave her an odd, twisted little half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, which stayed serious and questioning. Donna just stared, her mouth open. Her brain seemed to have frozen, along with her ability to breathe, or move, or speak.

He dropped his eyes again, shut his book, and stood up. Reached in his pocket and dropped some money on the table. Stepped around the chairs next to his, walked across the patio, opened the door to the restaurant, and left, the book tucked under his arm. He was slim and fit, but there was an odd heaviness in his gait, and in some strange part of her mind that was still, without her conscious control of it, functioning, Donna thought that she would never have recognized Josh Lyman by the way he was moving tonight.

3--

"Josh! Josh, come back! Wait! Please! Damn it, Josh! Josh, please, come back, wait for me!" Donna was gasping for breath as she ran down the street. Damn these floppy sandals; why did she have to have them on? They weren't helping at all.

It was getting dark, and she didn't see the broken pavement until it was too late. Her sandal twisted, and she stumbled and fell. She couldn't help crying out as she went down. A moment later Josh was beside her.

"Donna? Are you all right?" he asked, his voice sounding urgent, concerned.

"I'm fine. It's just this stupid sandal went out from under me, and I--oh, ouch."

"Where does it hurt?"

"Oof. My ankle, I've just twisted it; what a stupid thing to do."

He was touching it, probing gently. "There?"

"Ow, yes, there."

"We have to get you to a doctor."

"Don't be ridiculous. It's fine, it's not broken or anything; I don't think it's even sprained. I've just twisted it a bit, I'll be fine. Josh--"

"Can you stand, if I help?"

Donna nodded, and he caught her under her arms and pulled her gently up. She was able to keep most of her weight on her uninjured foot, but wobbled a little when she was almost upright, and yelped. Josh tightened his grip. Donna felt a little faint, and didn't think it had anything to do with the pain in her foot.

"There's a bench over here; come and sit down, and put your foot up. I'll go tell your friends and get my car. There's a clinic, but it's only open a couple of days a week, and it's a bit of a drive to the nearest hospital."

"Josh, honestly, it's fine. I'll be fine. I don't want to go to the hospital. If you could just find me an ace bandage or something, that's all I need."

"You should have x-rays."

"Josh! If we go to the hospital it'll take hours, you know it will. It's after eight; they'll only have tired med students on; I'll be exhausted by the time we get back. And they'll laugh at us and say it's only a little bruised, and to put some ice on it and keep it elevated until the swelling goes down. Look, it's hardly swollen at all; it would be much worse than that if I'd broken anything."

Josh looked at her foot doubtfully. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"I'm not so sure."

"And when did you get your medical degree, Dr. Lyman?"

He grinned at her a little then. "About the same time you got yours, Dr. Moss. But of the two of us, I know who I'd trust more when it comes to this kind of stuff, so I'll make a deal with you. I'll let you off the hook tonight, and I'll find you a bandage and some ice and get you back to wherever you're staying, and you'll stay off that foot and keep it up and keep the ice on it till tomorrow morning. But if it's not better by then, I'm taking you to the hospital and you're not going to pout or give me any lip about it."

Donna tried to pout, but she really couldn't. Just hearing his voice again was making her too insanely happy, and to be sure of seeing him again tomorrow she'd concede almost anything. "What time tomorrow?"

"Six."

"Are you out of your mind? I won't be up."

"Donnatella Moss, still in bed at six a.m.? Your work ethic is obviously slipping. How does your boss put up with it?"

"I'm not at work; I'm on holiday. And I'm staying with friends, or, really, with the friend of a friend, whom I barely know. Nobody will be up at six a.m., and if you come knocking around the place at that hour, she'll probably throw me out and tell me never to come back, and I'll have to go back to D.C. a week before my vacation is over, and when I left the airconditioning in my apartment was broken, so I'll die of the heat. Ten."

"Seven."

"Ten."

"I've got somewhere I'm supposed to be at eleven; that wouldn't leave time to get you to the hospital and back, if your ankle's not all right. Eight."

"Eight-thirty, then, Josh, but really, not earlier--Karena likes to sleep late, and she's my hostess; it would be rude."

"Well, I'm never rude, so--don't snort like that, Donna. It's rude."

"Sorry, I couldn't help it."

"As I was saying, I was well brought-up and am NEVER rude, so I'll come by at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, and if that ankle hasn't fixed itself to my satisfaction, I'll take you in for x-rays. And now you will sit here while I go and tell your friends what's happened to you and find what we need to fix you up right now, and then I'll take you home."

"Josh--"

But he was already gone, heading towards the restaurant in a quick half-walk, half-jog-trot of a run.

* * *

At eight the next morning Donna was up and waiting for him, sitting in a deck chair on the front porch of Karena's cottage with her ankle propped up on a cushion in front of her. She still didn't think it was broken, but it was certainly more badly sprained than she'd been willing to admit last night, and Josh was obviously going to want to take her to the hospital. She was secretly pleased; he'd said it was a bit of a drive, which meant she'd finally get some time alone with him. That was worth any number of sprained or even broken ankles to her at this point.

She hoped he wouldn't have any trouble finding the place. He hadn't driven her home last night after all; Karena had been unexpectedly sympathetic, fussing around her and insisting on leaving the restaurant and the men and driving Donna back to the cottage herself. She'd assured Josh that they had an enormous first aid kit there, "absolutely stuffed" with ace bandages, ice packs, and aspirin, so all he'd been able to do was ask for the address and repeat his promise to come by to check on Donna the next day. Marie and Karena had put her through the third degree all the way home, wanting to know who he was and how she knew him. She'd kept it simple, hadn't mentioned the White House, and was surprised to find that his name didn't seem to set off any bells for either of them. They'd asked her why on earth he'd left the patio so abruptly, without coming over to their table to speak to her, but she'd pleaded exhaustion at that point and retreated to bed.

She heard the sound of an engine and looked up, expecting to see his sleek, silver Audi roaring up the driveway. When she saw an ancient Civic, she thought at first it must be someone else. But it was Josh who hopped out of the driver's seat and bounded up the steps to the porch.

"You're early," she pointed out.

"So are you." He smiled down at her. She couldn't help thinking how very good he looked, lean and tanned, in a t-shirt and jeans. "How's that ankle?"

She grimaced. "Still pretty swollen, I'm afraid."

"So Dr. Lyman was right after all?" He gave her a cocky grin, but his eyes looked concerned. "How does it feel?"

"It's a bit sore," Donna admitted. "I'm sure it's just a sprain, though, Josh; it'll be fine in a day or two."

"We'll see. You should have it x-rayed. Come on--I'll take you now."

"You really don't need to bother, Josh."

"Now. Up--" and he put his hands under her arms again and lifted her effortlessly to her feet. The placement of his hands sent heat rising to her face and shivers down her spine, but he didn't seem to notice. If it affected him, he was hiding it well. He shifted himself so he was on her weak side, and slid an arm down around her waist. "Steady? Now march. Or hop, I guess," and he grinned down at her. It was strange to be looking up at him, but the sandals she had on were a lot flatter than anything she used to wear to work.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you, Josh? Giving me orders again, I mean."

His eyes lit up and he grinned more widely, showing his dimples. "Absolutely. I'm savoring every minute of it. I'll be telling you to hop inside and make me some coffee next."

"It really sucks." She pulled a pout.

"What does?"

"Not being able to go where I want. Being ordered around."

His face changed suddenly, all the light going out of it. "Yeah, I know," he said.

Donna sucked in her breath and turned her face away, so he wouldn't have to watch her watching his reaction. They made the trip down the stairs to the car quietly, his arm around her, supporting her as she hobbled down the steps. If she'd had two good feet instead of only one, she'd have been kicking herself all the way.

"New car?" she asked when they got there, not sure whether it was the right thing to say or not.

Josh shrugged. "It goes," he said, not offering any explanation. He slid the seat back for her, so she'd have plenty of leg room, and helped her in. Then he paused, frowning. "Would your friend mind if I borrowed her cushions for a while?" he asked.

"No, I don't suppose so, but what on earth--?" She didn't get a chance to finish the question; he was taking the porch steps two at a time. He returned with an armful of throw cushions from the chairs there, and stacked several under Donna's injured foot, easing it up on top of them each time until it was high enough to satisfy him. Donna watched him, feeling slightly stunned. Who are you, and what have you done with Josh Lyman, she wanted to ask.

"Are you sure you haven't gone and gotten your med degree?" she said instead.

He glanced up at her, but didn't smile. "No, it wasn't one of the options," he said. She sank back against the seat and closed her eyes, flooded with confusion and self-recrimination again. She had no idea where the hospital was, but it was obviously going to be a very long drive.

Josh slid into the driver's seat and started the car. It coughed and spluttered, and he had to fiddle with it for a couple of minutes before he got it going. Then he reached over and turned on the radio. Someone was doing a monologue about somebody called Dave and somebody else called Morley. "You ever hear this guy? He's Canadian; he's good," he said. His window was down, and he put his left arm out and started tapping on the edge of the roof with his fingers. They drove all the way to the hospital like that, making small talk about the radio program, Josh tapping on the roof or whistling along with the music under his breath.

* * *

"I told you so," Donna said, as they came down the hospital steps a couple of hours later.

"Yeah, you did," Josh acknowledged, absently.

"That's it? You're just going to admit that I was right? That we just wasted two and a half hours to prove what I was telling you all along?"

"Well, it's better to know for sure, isn't it?" He sounded as if his mind was somewhere else. "Do you know the time?"

"It's 10:45. Oh, you said you had to be somewhere at 11:00, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry about this, but it's not far from here. Would you mind if I just drove us straight there? There isn't time--"

"No, of course not. I mean, of course I don't mind. I can wait in the car, can't I? How long will you be?" She was wondering where he had to be, and why.

"It should only take a few minutes--ten at the most. It's just down here. I'm sorry; I thought there'd be time to take you back first."

"It's fine. Josh, you weren't honestly planning to drive me all the way back to Karena's, and then turn around and drive back here again, were you?"

"Well, yeah, I was. I'm sorry." His voice sounded odd.

"Why on earth? I can wait ten minutes; I'm not dying or anything, I've just got a sprained ankle. It's not that hot out; you can leave the windows open."

"I just didn't want--oh, never mind." He sounded angry all of a sudden, and put his foot down on the gas. Donna was bewildered.

Then he turned into a parking lot, and she saw the sign.

* * *

He was back ten minutes later, the way he'd said, but his face looked lined and tired and, Donna thought with a terrible pang, old. He got into the car and sat fiddling with the keys, not looking at her. She reached out suddenly, and put her hand over his.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm so sorry."

"Josh," she said helplessly, not able to keep the hitch out of her own voice. "It's okay, Josh. You're here now. It's okay."

"No, it isn't," he said, huskily. He took his hand out from under hers and wiped it roughly across his eyes. Then he started the car, backed out of the space, and turned with a jerk of the wheel onto the road again without saying anything else. When they were on the highway he put a tape into the tape deck and hit the gas. Bruce Springsteen's voice pounded into the car: "Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A." Donna thought of all the times she'd laughed at him about Ivy-educated lawyers' sons from Connecticut liking that song. It didn't seem funny any more.

4--

The water was so blue, Donna thought, bluer than the sky. It looked so big and clean, so utterly pure--as if anything you dropped into it would come out scrubbed and bleached, made fresh and new again.

That wasn't true, of course. It just looked that way.

"Josh, talk to me."

"What do you want me to say?"

"So many things. I don't know where to start."

He didn't say anything to that, just sat with his hands on the steering wheel, gazing out at the water. He'd driven her wordlessly back to Karena's, but when he'd started to turn up the driveway she'd put her hand on his arm again and said, "Josh, please. I want to talk to you. I need to talk to you." He'd bitten his lip, his face lined with tension, but nodded and backed out of the drive again and brought them here, where the road ended in a tangle of weathered pines on either side, and a grassy slope brilliant with cornflowers ran down to the rocky beach below. It was a beautiful day; the sky was a windswept washed-denim blue, the water in the harbor ultramarine flecked with little whitecaps, and dotted with sails.

Donna looked at it wonderingly. You wouldn't think anything bad ever happened, when the world can look like that, she thought. She never knew how to put beauty and tragedy together; they shouldn't be able to occupy the same space. But they did, of course. Some people might have thought tragedy was too strong a word for the thing that was filling the little car around Josh, but she didn't.

"What happened to the Audi?" she asked, absently. Of all the stupid places to begin, she thought as soon as she said it, but it was the first thing that popped into her head, and probably wasn't any worse than anything else would have been.

"I sold it, in D.C."

"Why?"

"I had some pretty big bills to pay, Donna."

Of course he had. Why hadn't she thought of that?

"Was it enough?"

"No. I'm still paying them."

"What--what with?"

"I rented the townhouse; it comes out of that. I worked out a schedule with my lawyers."

"Why are you here?"

"We used to come here in the summers, when I was a kid. I always liked it, wanted to come back. This seemed like a good time to do it."

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm renting a place up the road to the north there, about twenty minutes from the village."

"Is it nice?"

"It's okay. It's not too far from the water, actually; I was lucky to be able to get it."

"What are you doing?"

"I read. I write a little. I go out on people's boats, and for walks on the beach. I've got enough to live on out of the rent; I don't have to work."

"I saw you down on the docks the other day, unloading a boat."

"I was just helping out. Sid's older than he looks, and his sons have all gone to Boston or New York or California, like all his friends' sons. There aren't a lot of men left around here, really, and he can't afford to pay the ones who are. His daughter's living with him, and his granddaughter, and she's just had a baby."

"The granddaughter?"

"Yeah. She's sixteen. You probably saw her mother; she waits tables at the Salty Dog. The kid did too, till she had the baby."

"The father's not around?"

"Of course not. Sid's paying the whole tab."

"It's nice of you to help him." Donna felt her eyes starting to fill up, and stared straight ahead, trying not to let go.

"No skin off my back."

"Just off your hands, and your arm?"

Josh looked at her and smiled a little then. "You know how clumsy I am."

"Do you do that a lot?"

"What? Scrape myself up? It happens, but I try not to make a habit of it."

"Help Sid out."

Josh shrugged. "When he needs me. There's not much else I can do around here."

Something in Donna ignited at that. "God, Josh, you have degrees from Harvard and Yale; you were a Fulbright Scholar; you've worked in the House of Representatives and the Senate and the White House; you've run three presidential campaigns. You're one of the most brilliant men I know. There must be a thousand other things you could do, instead of breaking your back hauling boxes on a fishing dock in Maine."

"Like what, Donna?" he asked quietly. "Give political advice to people running for the town council? 'Cause they really want me in Washington; I'm Leo's golden boy now, the Democrats' favorite son. Teach? Sure, any school will take me, with my record. Pro-bono work for legal aid? I can't even do that; I was disbarred, you know. Don't worry about my back; it's had a lot of practice over the last eighteen months. And hauling fish on a dock in Maine is better than spreading manure or scrubbing toilets at Danbury Minimum Security."

It would have been less terrible to listen to if he'd sounded angry, but he didn't. His voice was soft and weary, as if all the fight had been kicked out of him. It sent Donna over the edge.

"Oh Josh," she said, and burst into tears.

5--

"I'm sorry," he said again, the way he had at the probation office. "I'm so sorry, Donna. Don't cry. Please don't cry." He started to reach a hand towards her, then pulled it back and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

"I--I can't help it. I--I just--Why didn't you let me see you? Why didn't you want me to come?"

He looked at her wonderingly. "Why do you think? You saw what it did to me, having you see me back there, doing that. I couldn't have made it, if you'd been coming to see me there, in that place, like that. I couldn't, Donna; I just couldn't. It wasn't just you; I didn't want to see anyone. I told my mother not to come."

"I thought you were angry with me. I thought--"

"Angry? With you? Why would I have been angry with you?"

"Because of the story; because of what we did."

"That wasn't you, Donna; I know that wasn't you. You told Will not to, didn't you?"

"I begged him. I begged him not to use it. I told him it was lies; it couldn't be true. But he wouldn't listen to me."

"That's politics, Donna. I would probably have done the same thing he did, if I'd been in his place."

"Not if you knew it was lies, Josh. I don't believe that; I won't believe that."

"Will probably wasn't as sure as you were that it was lies, Donna." There was a pause, while Donna blew her nose and wiped her eyes. "After all," Josh said, in a strange voice, "how sure were you later? How sure are you now?"

Donna took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked at him. "Do I deserve that?" she asked, her voice trembling a little.

"No," he said, quickly. "No, I didn't mean--but I do."

"What--what do you mean?"

"I mean I didn't deserve your trust. I didn't deserve that you gave me as much of it as you did. I don't deserve it now."

"Wh-what are you saying?" She felt cold; she could feel the gooseflesh rising on her skin.

"Look what I did to you, Donna. Look what I did. You trusted me, and I sent you to that God-awful place. You almost died. You almost died." His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear him the second time; it was as if he was speaking to himself more than to her.

"Josh! That had nothing to do with this. And it wasn't your fault, Josh; you can't possibly think that was your fault."

"I sent you there. I didn't need to; there wasn't any need for you to be there at all. I should have taken you to Brussels, the way you wanted, but no, I had to blow you off about that and then toss something else at you, just to keep you from being mad at me. Gaza. I tossed Gaza at you. One of the most dangerous places in the world, and I got you your passport and your ticket, and you almost died."

"You sent me with the Codel, Josh. There was loads of security. You didn't know what was going to happen; you wouldn't have sent me if you'd known."

"I ought to have known."

"Josh," Donna said quietly. "That was three years ago. And it has nothing to do with what we were talking about."

"It's about deserving your trust, Donna."

"I didn't stop trusting you because of Gaza, Josh. I didn't stop trusting you."

"Maybe you should."

Donna bit her lip, and took a deep breath. Stay calm, she told herself. Don't panic. Stay calm.

"Josh," she said at last, as steadily as she could, "why did you quit?"

"To run Matt Santos' campaign, you know that, Donna. Leo wanted me to find the next guy, and I couldn't stomach Russell--I'm sorry--so I thought of Matt, and asked him, and he said yes but only if I ran it." Josh laughed, bitterly. "Ironic, isn't it? He'd give a lot to take that one back now."

"He'd be a fool then. He was a congressman with just a few years' experience; no one had ever heard of him; you put him on the national stage. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you. But that's not what I meant, and you know it."

"What did you mean?" Josh asked, suddenly sounding very tired. "I'm sorry; I'm not trying to be difficult; I just--"

"I meant, why did you quit defending yourself? Why did you accept the charges?"

"I didn't accept them."

"You pleaded nolo contendere; it's the same thing."

"Not technically. It means--"

"I know what it means, Josh!" In spite of herself, Donna could feel the tension tightening in her stomach, and hear the heat rising in her voice. "I'm asking you why you changed your plea from not guilty to no contest, and accepted their charges, and went--went to jail."

Josh took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. He leaned back in his seat and tipped his head back, rubbing his hands over his face and scrubbing them in his eyes, before running them through his hair.

"It seemed like the best thing to do at the time," he said, sounding utterly weary.

"Why?" Her voice was pleading; she couldn't help it.

"I wasn't going to win it, Donna. They had what they needed. They had Ben Jacoby's testimony. They had documents--notes in my handwriting, my initials. My signature, even. There was other evidence. It was cut-and-dried. If I'd gone on fighting it, I'd just have gotten a longer sentence."

She stared at him. He looked away. It was a minute before she found her voice.

"Other--other evidence?"

"Her pill bottle, with my fingerprints on it. It wasn't in the news reports."

"So you--you--"

"That's what it looks like, doesn't it?"

"I don't believe it. You didn't; you wouldn't. I simply don't believe it."

Josh's face twisted, and his knuckles went white on the wheel, but he didn't look at her.

"Maybe you should," he said again.

"NO, Josh! I can't. I won't. It doesn't make any sense. That's not you. Sending someone to scrounge around in people's garbage, bring you back their pill bottles--you wouldn't do that. Why would you do that?"

"You know why. To get a story I could use to bring the other guy down. Opposition research, taken too far."

"Why just Baker and his wife? Why not go after Bob Russell too? He was the bigger threat."

"Tried, and couldn't get anything. Used what I had."

"I don't believe it. Jacoby was lying; he was a disgruntled Santos staffer who thought you were arrogant and hadn't given him the responsibilities he wanted; he had it out for you."

"They had the evidence, Donna. My writing on the notes; I'd handled the bottle--my fingerprints were all over it. I couldn't deny that; it would have been perjury."

"It was perjury anyway."

He gave a bitter little laugh. "I know. Believe me, I know."

"Getting the story on Baker's wife--that wasn't illegal; they couldn't have done anything to you if it had just been that. It's not illegal to go through someone's trash when it's out at the curb. Just ..." Her voice trailed off.

"Just disgusting," he finished for her. "The legality is debatable, actually; it depends on the jurisdiction, and the question hasn't been resolved in most places."

"Oh, Josh. You made that statement, under oath, denying everything the papers were saying. Everything we were saying."

"Not you, Donna! What Bob Russell was saying; what Will was having him say. I never thought it was you."

"If you hadn't denied it... ."

"They couldn't have got me. I know. But that was before the notes surfaced, and the bottle. When the papers were calling on me to deny that our campaign was behind the story on Baker's wife; when I still thought I could save the nomination for Matt."

"Josh, you weren't lying, were you? You wouldn't do that. I can't believe you would do any of it. Going after a story like that on somebody's wife; making capital out of it when all she's done is get depressed. It's so--base. So mean. So stupid. You're not mean and you're not stupid. And then to lie about it, under oath; perjure yourself--open yourself up to being charged with perjury--that's not you. Why won't you say it? Why won't you tell me it wasn't you?"

He didn't answer for a long time, but sat gripping the wheel, breathing raggedly. Finally he said, "Who else could it have been, Donna?"

* * *

They sat in silence for a while, both of them looking out the window, and neither of them seeing the view. Eventually Josh started the car and drove back to Karena's in silence. He helped her out and up the steps, got her crutches, then went back for Karena's cushions. He was starting down the steps again when Donna called to him, softly.

"Josh."

He turned, looking surprised.

"When are you coming back?"

"I--you'll be fine with your friends now; you don't need me any more."

"Josh."

"Donna--" He ran his hand through his hair. "I shouldn't come back. Your friends won't want me around here. You can't want me around here."

"Josh, don't. Of course I do. Of course they will."

"Donna--"

"Josh, I hate to have to tell you this, but I don't think your name means anything to Karena and Marie at all. Even if it did, why would they care? Look at Martha Stewart. What happened to you happens to lots of people; they don't have to hide themselves away forever after because of it."

"I don't have all Martha Stewart's attractions," Josh said, the hint of a smile just beginning to lighten his eyes a little.

"Well, you're not blonde or female, of course."

"I can't cook."

"Or wield a glue gun?"

"Not that either. And I'm not a billionaire, unfortunately."

"Well, that is a problem. But seriously, Josh, don't disappear on me again. Tell me your phone number. And tell me when you can come back; I want to see you."

He smiled at her then, a little ruefully. "I don't actually have a cell right now; I haven't had much need for one. And I'm not home much. But I'll stop by tomorrow, if you like."

"That would be wonderful. What time?"

He hesitated. "I could come pretty much any time. Take you for a drive somewhere, if you want."

"I'd love that. I should probably spend some time with Karena and Marie in the morning. Maybe--noon?"

"Noon's good. We can get some lunch."

"Noon then." He smiled at her as he turned and went back down the steps to the car. If Donna hadn't known him so well she might not have noticed how tired his eyes looked behind the smile, or that he was walking in that strange, heavy way she had noticed before, his swagger nowhere to be seen.

She stood balancing on her crutches for a minute, looking after him. The tape had finished and rewound on their earlier drive; she could hear it beginning again as he started the car. Springsteen's voice came thumping back to her as Josh drove away: "You end up like a dog that's been kicked too much,/ Till you spend half your life just covering up... / Born in the U.S.A.,/ I was born in the U.S.A... ."

And she wondered what it was he was still covering up, and why.

6--

Donna sat on the front porch just before noon the next morning, waiting for Josh. A day's rest and a long soak in Karena's whirlpool with ice and the jets going had made a big difference to her ankle; she could walk on it now, and it didn't hurt much anymore, though she still had the bandage on, just to be on the safe side. She hadn't slept well, but that had had nothing to do with her foot. She'd spent most of the night replaying her last conversation with Josh over and over, along with the terrible things that had happened two years ago.

It had started just before the convention. They had come out of the last primaries with Russell and Santos almost neck and neck, and Hoynes a distant third, laboring under the recent revelations about his latest sexual indiscretion. Leo McGarry had told the candidates forcefully to sort themselves out so the party could present a strong, unified image to the country during the week of the convention. Russell, with a few delegates more than Santos, considered himself the obvious winner and had asked Santos to drop his own candidacy and run for Vice President on a Russell ticket instead. Donna was pretty sure that Leo had pressured Josh to pressure Santos to accept. She didn't know whether Josh had done that or not. It wouldn't have surprised her if he had; given the votes a Russell/Santos ticket was the obvious choice, and pleasing Leo had been so important to Josh for so long that the idea of his deliberately doing something that would anger the older man was almost inconceivable.

But Matt Santos had refused and had continued to campaign vigorously for himself. Baker, once considered the front-runner, had announced months ago that he would not run; now he suddenly reversed his position and declared himself a candidate. The new dynamic had affected the whole race; both Russell and Santos had seen their numbers start to drop as the papers polled the delegates and found Baker surging in popularity with them. Hoynes' votes in particular seemed likely to go his way.

And then the story had broken: Baker's wife had had a breakdown, and depended on medication to offset her depression and maintain a normal life. Some of the coverage had been pitiless, painting a grotesque picture of the possible First Lady as a deranged mental case, an embarrassment to her country, a security risk--how could she be trusted not to reveal state secrets?--and even, some of the nastier commentators suggested, a physical danger to her husband and herself. Donna had been nauseated, especially by her own candidate's willingness to exploit the story and Will's refusal to tell him not to. Baker had withdrawn from the race.

But there was a backlash. The general public turned out to have a greater sense of decency than Bob Russell or the press had given them credit for. Editorials and polls showed disgust at the invasion of Mrs. Baker's privacy, and there were calls for retribution against the people responsible for it. The journalist who had broken the story in the first place had been only too willing to break with the code of his profession and name his source: Matt Santos' campaign manager, Josh Lyman. When asked how Lyman would have known anything about Beth Baker's private medical history, he suggested that Lyman had had people secretly prying into the affairs of political opponents for years, taking opposition research to new and unsavory lengths and depths and making political hay out of the results. The Santos campaign responded by pointing out that Matt Santos himself hadn't used the story, but the talking heads decided that this was just another example of Lyman's devious political thinking: he had put the story into the press and let it do its damage to Baker while keeping his own candidate's hands clean. Bob Russell had been just as happy to use the story about Josh as he'd been to use the one on Baker, and Will to let him do it. Donna had insisted desperately that it couldn't be true, but they hadn't listened to her. She'd resigned over it in the end, but that hadn't made any difference at all.

Josh had denied the allegations vigorously, of course--first in interviews, and then, as the Democratic Convention began and the coverage intensified, in a sworn statement before the Elections Oversight Committee in Congress. It was ironic that the committee only existed because Josh, incensed at the way poor voters were being disenfranchised in some districts and worried about the possibility of computerized voting machines being hacked to manipulate elections, had suggested to President Bartlet that one should be created and had pushed the legislation through Congress--Donna remembered how happy he'd been, and how proud, the day it had passed. It was also ironic that the committee didn't ask Josh to make the statement, and he didn't have to do it; he'd made it voluntarily, when the press had started calling for him to take an oath that the Santos' campaign hadn't been involved in starting the story, and for Matt to withdraw from the race if he wouldn't. The next day the reporter published notes from Josh to one of his staffers, Ben Jacoby, telling him to "take any steps at all" to find something they could use to bring Baker down, and thanking Jacoby for "bringing in the trash." The coverage had dominated the convention and when the vote came Bob Russell won it effortlessly, leaving Matt Santos fuming in the dust.

Stories about Josh's own mental health issues had begun to circulate almost as soon as the original accusations did, and he was excoriated not only for what he had apparently done, but for his hypocrisy in doing it. Donna still shuddered when she thought of some of the things that had been said. The PTSD hadn't exactly been a secret in Washington, but it hadn't been widely known, either, and they'd managed to keep most of the details private until then. She'd been shocked at the accuracy of some of the reporting, and wondered which of his close friends or his doctors had chosen to betray him. She knew he'd found the whole thing completely humiliating, but the press exulted in it.

The Elections Oversight Committee had, understandably, felt used, and had launched an investigation that ended in Josh being charged with perjury for having lied under oath before Congress. Even after the charges were laid Josh continued to deny them; then, quite suddenly, before the case went to trial he'd changed his plea from "not guilty" to "nolo contendere" and accepted a sentence of thirty-two months in prison, with eligibility for parole after fourteen. He'd been right about one thing: Bob Russell had been too weak a candidate to put up a credible opposition against Arnold Vinick, and the Republicans had swept to victory in November. Matt Santos had been furious; Leo had been furious; the President, Donna was reasonably sure, had been furious, too. Josh had become a pariah in the party that had been his life, and gone to jail.

She'd seen him twice in the weeks before he changed his plea, and not at all after that. She'd called often, but after his acceptance of the charges he'd stopped returning her calls, and when she'd emailed him after his sentencing to tell him how terrible she felt about it and to ask him when she could come to visit, he'd sent a brief email back: "Please don't. I'm sorry about everything. Hope the new job goes well for you. Josh." She'd written to him while he was there, of course; in spite of the distance that had grown between them over the past year, it would have seemed wrong not to. He'd answered about every third or fourth letter and his answers had been brief and unsatisfying, but she hadn't been able to be angry with him about that--what, after all, was he supposed to write about? She'd worried that he was angry with her--about the things Russell had said; about the things she'd said, after she'd come back from Gaza and Germany and everything had been so strained and difficult between them; about the way she'd left, after all he'd done for her, after all those years. There'd been a lot to say on her side, too, back then, but she'd long since stopped wanting to say it, and she hadn't really been surprised to find that, when he was in trouble, all thoughts about anything else flew straight out the door.

She couldn't tell whether he liked getting her letters or not, but it seemed so wrong to leave him alone and not to let him know that someone still cared about him that she kept trying. She thought it might have been hard on him, hearing about her job and the things she was able to do that he wasn't; the letters had been surprisingly difficult to write since she was constantly second-guessing herself, wondering if she should tell him the good things--would she sound too happy? she really wasn't; or the bad ones--would she seem to be complaining, when, compared to what he was going through, she had nothing to complain about? It was easiest when she simply reported the facts of her week, without any emotional commentary on them at all. When he did write he always thanked her for her letters, though, and asked her a question or two about something she'd said, so she'd felt encouraged to go on, even though his response to her suggestions that she come and visit was always the same: "Please don't." In his last note he'd told her he was expecting to be released soon, and was hoping to do his parole somewhere away from Washington. "I don't know where yet. You probably won't hear from me for a while. Don't worry about me, Donna. I'll be fine now; you don't need to tie up your Sunday evenings writing to me anymore. You've done everything you could; more than I could ever have asked for; more than I deserve. Don't worry about me anymore. Love, Josh." It was the first time he'd ever used that conventional closing, and she wondered whether it meant anything, and if it did, what.

Sitting on Karena's porch waiting for him, she wondered other things, too, the things she had wondered about all along. She knew him too well not to notice how indirect his answers to her questions last night had been. "That's what it looks like, isn't it?" "Who else could it have been?" Every time she'd asked him a direct question about whether he was responsible for the Baker story or whether he'd told the truth when he'd denied it, he'd answered evasively. There was no reason for him to do that unless he was covering something for somebody. The question was, who?

She'd always known that Josh was quite capable of throwing himself on his sword, of taking a fall for someone else, if it was the right person, if he thought his job required him to. In his old job, the only people she could think of that he would have done that for were Leo or the President. Neither of them seemed possible here; there was no reason they would have been involved in this at all. Their concern had been with the image of the party; Leo in particular had been almost incandescent with rage about the whole thing, especially once the finger had been pointed at Josh. It did cross Donna's mind to wonder if it had all started as some scheme of Leo's to reduce the number of candidates fighting it out at the convention, but that seemed too absurd to be given any serious consideration.

That left the man Josh had gone to work for, Matt Santos. Donna desperately wanted to believe that it was somehow all his fault, although everything she knew about him otherwise seemed admirable. The only trouble was that if Santos had wanted someone to dig up a story on the Bakers, he would surely have gone through Josh. And if he hadn't--if he'd tried to go around Josh, to get it done without Josh's knowledge--then it was hard to believe that Josh would show him such extreme loyalty, especially when he was being so cruelly set up and betrayed. She didn't know what kind of relationship Matt and Josh had had, but she did know there was none of the history between them that had tied Josh to Leo. She could just barely imagine Josh destroying himself for Leo's sake even if Leo had deceived him and left him hanging out to dry; she couldn't imagine him doing it for anyone else.

And that left just one possibility, the one she least wanted to acknowledge or accept. If Josh wasn't covering up for Leo or the President or Matt Santos, the only person he could be covering for was himself. If covering was the right word for what he was doing, for not directly admitting that he had done it, and phrasing his answers in a way that left open the possibility that he hadn't, without actually denying that he had. She'd said she didn't believe he'd done it, and that was at least partly true. The Josh she'd known wasn't like that; he was a politician, but he'd been an honorable one, and, as she'd told him, he wasn't mean and he wasn't stupid. He was certainly capable of making mistakes--he'd made plenty of them in the years she'd known him--but they weren't this kind of mistake. They'd been political miscalculations that lost them votes with the right people, or questionable judgment calls when it came to things like funding studies of intercessory prayer, not things like digging through a man's trash and pocketing his wife's pill bottles, or exposing an innocent woman's depression for the world to deride. But a small part of her wondered if there might actually be another Josh, a Josh she hadn't known about--a Josh who, desperate to make things work for the man he'd convinced to run, left on his own without the people he'd been used to depending on to steer him and hold him in check, might actually be capable of things like that. A Josh who would lie to everyone about it afterwards. A Josh who wouldn't be able to admit it openly to her now--though he couldn't bring himself actually to deny it, either, and had implied several times that she shouldn't trust him. That had made her blood run cold.

She knew all too well how easy it was to tell a spontaneous lie, even when you were under oath and appearing before Congress, but to tell it over and over again, deliberately, for a long time, suggested a weakness of character that she hated to think of in connection with Josh. She cared too much for him to despise him for it, if it were true, but the thought that it might be true made her terribly sad. It worried her, too, because if he really had done that, he needed to be able to admit it openly if he were going to put it behind him and become a stronger man. And, more than anything, it made her feel guilty. She knew that was unreasonable--knew he was an adult who was responsible for his own decisions and their consequences--but she couldn't help thinking that, if she'd still been with him, she'd have been able to stop him from looking for the story in the first place and creating this whole terrible situation for himself. Will hadn't listened to her, but Josh would have; he always had. If only she'd been there, she thought, it wouldn't have happened. If only she'd been there.

And yet she still didn't really believe that it had happened. Her logical mind kept telling her that he had to have done it, but her heart wouldn't go there. Couldn't go there. He was Josh, and she loved him, and she just couldn't believe it of him, even when all the evidence was screaming that there wasn't any other choice.

7--

Josh arrived a little earlier than he'd said he would, the Civic spluttering up the driveway and hiccupping to a stop just in front of the porch steps. He got out and came around to help her down. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him, and she couldn't help thinking he looked ten times better than any of Karena's hunky pick-ups or partying, yacht-owning friends. Though there were a few similarities: he was as muscular and fit as she'd ever seen him, and he was looking a little like a summer style ad himself today, with his tanned skin and designer sunglasses, in a good pair of very light khakis and one of those expensive, brightly-striped polo shirts his mother was always sending him. Donna liked them, but Josh never had much; he said they were too preppy and usually went for jeans and t-shirts and sloppy open-front overshirts when he was casually dressed. He was definitely going for pressed and tidy today; he even looked like he'd combed his hair. She wondered for a minute what had gotten into him, then realized that his old casual clothes were probably his working ones now, when he was helping Sid out on the dock. She wondered with a pang what he'd done with all his suits and ties and formal evening wear, his black tie and his white tie with tails that the President had been so fond of saying was the proper dress of statesmen; the thought of them all packed away somewhere, or worse, given to Goodwill, made her heart twist a little. But it was hard to imagine what use they'd be to him here. The clothes he was wearing today were probably as well-dressed as anyone in the village ever got, barring weddings and funerals.

She started down the steps before he could bound up them. He looked surprised. "Ankle better?" he asked.

"A lot better, thanks. The crutches were making my arms sorer than my foot was, so I stopped using them last night. I can walk on it now, though I'd better not try any really big hikes."

Josh grinned. "Oh, that's a pity; I was counting on doing fifteen or twenty miles today. I brought a couple of packs for us and everything."

She grinned back. "You're such an outdoorsman."

"I am, you know."

"A true Boy Scout."

"Eagle Scout, nothing less. All the badges: Orienteering, Camp Craft, First Aid. A fifty-mile hike. Survival training."

"In your dreams."

He tipped his head at that and caught her eyes, the smile still hovering around his lips. "Nah," he said. Something about his expression made her breathing catch a little, and the heat rise in her face.

* * *

"What would you like for lunch?" he asked her, after he'd got the car started and they were bumping down the driveway. He didn't reach for the radio or the tape deck today, she noticed; he was definitely more relaxed. "There's a cafe in the village that does fancy asian-fusion salads and wraps and stuff, the sort of thing you like."

"Is it on a little sidestreet just off the main one, with a terrace?" Josh nodded. "I ate there a few days ago, with Karena and Marie. It was delicious, but--isn't there someplace more local we could go? More Maine? I can get that kind of thing in Washington any day."

He smiled at her. "Maine tends to mean seafood, usually deep-fried, with french fries and coleslaw. Or lobster salad, with lots of mayonnaise. Are you really up for that?"

"I think my cholesterol can handle it once in a while. I'm not so sure about yours, but I don't suppose one more meal of it will kill you any sooner. Do you know a good place?"

"I know a very good place. You don't just get to choose your lobster, you choose the lobster pot, and they pull him out of the ocean and make him into salad right in front of your eyes, just for you."

"You have to go out on a boat before you eat, huh? On an empty stomach? I'm not sure I'm up for that."

"No, they have this little spyglass thing and you look out from their upper deck and tell them which pot you want. They're all marked with flags and numbers--you say, 'I'll take number 5, with the blue flag,' and then they run up signal pennants on this big flagpole and a guy down on the beach jumps in a boat and races out there to get it for you."

"They don't wave their arms and legs around and do semaphore?"

"They'd probably do that too, if you tipped them enough."

"Ah, I knew there was a catch."

"A very fresh catch, what have I been telling you?"

* * *

The place he took her to was, indeed, classic Maine, simple and unpretentious and absolutely, mouthwateringly delicious. The weathered gray building perched among some pines by the side of a quiet road, its battered sign saying simply "Lunch." In spite of the worn appearance it was scrupulously clean inside, and the girl behind the counter was fresh-faced and friendly, beaming at them when they came in, and at Josh when he put a dollar in the mug beside the cash after he paid. The deck at the back had a spectacular view of the harbor and the islands beyond, while the food--Donna chose a lobster roll, Josh went for the fish and chips--was a revelation: she'd eaten elegant lobster salads at state dinners and inaugural balls, but had never had anything that tasted quite so seawater-fresh as the plump, juicy, red-and-white meat that filled an ordinary toasted hotdog roll to overflowing. "That was incredible," she said when she'd finished, looking sadly at her empty paper plate. Josh laughed at her but took the hint and went to get her another. While he was gone she stole some of his fries. He caught her at it, and yelped in protest.

"Hey, those are mine!"

"You don't need this many. My cholesterol is lower than yours, and I don't have to worry about my blood pressure." She took a big bite of her second lobster roll, then stole another fry.

"You've grown an appetite," he commented.

"It must be the salt air. I never eat like this at home."

"You look like you could use it," he said, sounding suddenly serious. "Have you been eating at all?"

Donna blushed. She hadn't been eating well, especially for the last four months, and she knew it showed. She would never have expected Josh to notice, though, or to comment on it if he did.

"I'm fine," she said. "It's been a little hot at home, and my a.c.'s been out."

"Again?"

"Again. I lost it a couple of weeks ago, but I don't suppose my landlord will appear when I'm not there and fix it."

"You should get a better apartment. I never did like that one," Josh growled. "Your landlord sucks; he's been ripping you off for years."

"I know. I suppose I could move, now I've got a bigger salary. My old boss would never give me a raise."

He rolled his eyes. "You needed to talk to Congress, not me, you know; they're the ones who set the GS levels. You maxed out the first year you were there."

"I know," she said softly. "I know."

They sat quietly for a minute, Josh fiddling with his paper napkin, folding the corners up and twisting one of them around until it fell off.

"Donna," he said then, not lifting his eyes from what he was doing. "I'm sorry about all that, too."

"About what, Josh?"

"About--" he hesitated, looking for the right words, working on the napkin. Another corner fell off. He moved on and started twisting the next one. "About keeping you as my assistant for so long."

"You didn't really keep me, Josh. I kept myself."

He flushed a little, but still didn't look up.

"You kept telling me you wanted to do more. I--I knew you should be doing more. I--wasn't a very good boss, I'm afraid."

"You had a few other things to think about."

"Yeah," he said ruefully, "but I should have thought about that one, too."

"It's all right, Josh."

"I should have thought more about you. I was just thinking about myself, what I needed, what I could get you to do for me."

"You had a crazy job, Josh. You weren't just thinking about yourself; you had sixty different things a day to worry about, any one of them affecting hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of other people. You needed help you could rely on. I was that help; that was my job. Of course you didn't have time to be my career counselor too."

"You wanted to talk to me, before you left, and I didn't take the time. I blew you off."

"You were busy, Josh. It was a bad time; I couldn't have chosen a worse time, really. I've wondered a thousand times since what I was thinking of, expecting you to take the time to worry about my personal fulfillment when the President was so sick and all those other things were happening and you were the one they'd left in charge."

"Those NASA guys were saying the world was coming to an end; I did wonder what I was supposed to be doing about it." He looked up at her for a moment. He was smiling a little, but his eyes looked tired. "It wasn't just that, though, Donna. I was busy, but I could have found the time. I was just--" He looked back down at the napkin again; it was in shreds. "Just scared," he finished quietly. He started to push the bits of napkin together into a heap.

"Scared of what, Josh?" Donna's voice was just as quiet. Her heart was pounding in her throat.

"That you'd leave." It was almost inaudible.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice choking a little. She'd known he'd been afraid of that, but she'd never expected him to say it. "I'm sorry, Josh."

"Nah," he said, in a firmer tone. "Don't be. You should have done it long before." He balled the bits of napkin up and tossed them towards the trash can in the corner. They flew apart in midair, scattering themselves all over the wooden floor of the deck. He got up and started picking them up and putting them in the can. "Come on, you've finished my fries now. I don't suppose you want some of your own?"

"I don't have that big a stomach, Josh." She smiled at him, her eyes a little watery. That had affected her more than she'd ever thought it would, back when she'd wanted so much to hear him say all those things and quite a few more, but had been too angry and too involved with her own concerns to think about what it would be like for him to do it.

"You don't have any stomach at all," he teased, pinching her waist. She squealed and slapped his hand, and they walked through the restaurant and back to the car, laughing and talking as if the last three years had never happened, his hand resting lightly on the small of her back.

8--

"Where to now?" Josh asked, as he tried to get the car going. It spluttered a lot, and it took him several tries before he was finally able to coax the engine into turning over.

"You must have been in a charitable mood when you bought this," Donna said, watching him. "It's on its last legs, isn't it?" She was thinking what a funny contrast he made to his car, in his Ray-Bans and Bill Blass khakis and Ralph Lauren shirt.

"This? It's a Civic; they go on forever. It just needs a tune-up--I haven't had time to take it in."

"It's getting a bit rusty, too, don't you think?"

"Not too bad, just that bit on the back. It's the salt air; it's death on the finish. That's one reason I went for this one--I couldn't see any point in paying for something better when it was only going to end up like this in another six months. I wanted something to kick around in that I didn't have to worry about keeping nice. I'll get it treated before the winter; it'll be fine. And you don't want to go bounding around a place like this in a fancy car; the locals don't like it much, though God knows they see plenty of it."

"You're a charitable man."

"First time you've ever thought so."

"First time I've ever said so, anyway," she said, smiling at him and touching his arm lightly, then taking her hand away. The engine roared into life. Josh grinned widely, showing a full set of dimples.

"What did I tell you? It knows its master. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in the land! And now that we have wheels that will actually move, where do you want them to take you? What do you want to do?"

Donna thought for a moment. "You decide," she said. "I don't know what there is around here."

"Not a lot, really. There's a drive along the ocean, with some pretty good views. A couple of other villages, though they're not as nice as this one. Some beaches, that kind of thing."

"That all sounds good. And I'd like to see where you live."

He glanced at her quickly, then looked back at the road. They were already heading south and west, following the shore. "Oh, it's in the other direction. What do you say we drive down this way for a while? There's a place along here I'd like you to see."

"Okay," Donna said, settling back in her seat. She didn't care much where they went. The only sight she really wanted to see was sitting right next to her in the car, one arm out the window, whistling a bit as he drove.

* * *

"This," Donna said, panting a little to catch her breath and looking around her with wonder, "is amazing."

"It's good, isn't it?" Josh said, coming up behind her. They were standing on the brow of a hill, knee deep in gorse and wild blueberries, looking out to sea. The hill was really a little point of land jutting out into the water, which curled around it on three sides. They had followed a very bumpy dirt road for at least a mile after leaving the shore one, then driven partway up the hill until it became so bad that they had to stop if they weren't going to break an axle; the road kept going, a rutted and abandoned track, but they got out and climbed the last hundred yards or so. Josh was worried about Donna's ankle, but she insisted it was fine, and it had been; she'd appreciated the way he'd given her his hand to help her over some of the rocks and rough places, though. From where they were standing the hill swept down in a wide, gentle slope to the sea. A lighthouse perched on the cliff at the end of the point, its sides cheerfully striped with broad bands of red and white, and the water beyond seemed to be a hundred different shades of blue and purple and green, dotted with little islands and white sails. Thousands of tiny insects moved in the plants at their feet or hovered on shimmering wings above them; they brushed against Donna's legs or leapt ahead of her as she walked, and the air was ringing with their whirring and buzzing. A cool breeze blew in off the water but the sun was hot, filling the air with the warm smells of ripe blueberries and other wild growing things. The effect was dizzying. Donna breathed in deeply.

"I could get drunk on this," she said.

"Me too," Josh said simply, and for once she didn't feel inclined to make any comments about his sensitive system.

"This is where you used to come, in the summer?"

"For years and years. We loved it. We used to camp right down there, just behind the lighthouse--they had platforms then where you could put your tents. There was an outhouse, with a little window cut in the door; it smelled a bit, but we liked being here so much nobody cared. The Jacksons kept the light and ran the place; they let us use their bathroom to wash in--there wasn't even a shower, just a big old-fashioned tub on feet, and a window over it that you could see the water from. Joanie and I used to run all over this hill, and build sandcastles down on the beach there, and pick the blueberries to have for breakfast. Mrs. Jackson would let us have milk and cream for the berries--it came in a bottle, and you poured the cream off the top. We'd hike back to the road every morning to pick it up for her, with the mail. And if the weather turned really bad, she'd bring us all in and let us sleep in their living room. I remember once there was a big storm, and we'd been out for a drive down to the village or something, and the road was so muddy we couldn't get the car in even as far as we did today, so we got totally soaked coming back. She'd been watching for us, and had hot chocolate waiting, and these amazing gingery molasses cookies, hot out of the oven. They threw us in the bath together to get warm, and we ate them wrapped up in blankets afterwards, sitting in front of the woodstove in her kitchen."

"I never pictured you doing anything like that."

"What, did you think we never went on vacations?"

"I guess I never thought about it. If I had, I'd have pictured something different--nice hotels, trips to Europe or something."

"We did some of that too, but that was later, after Dad became a partner, and after ..."

His voice trailed away. Donna glanced at him, her heart twisting a little. "Did you keep coming here?" she asked gently, giving him an out if he wanted it. Apparently he didn't.

"No. The last time we came was the summer before she died. At first it seemed too hard to do it without her, I think, and then we got doing other things--those trips to Europe, stuff like that. I've wanted to come back for a long time, though."

"I can see why," Donna said. He smiled at her.

"There's a great bit of beach down there; do you want to take a look?"

"I'd love to," she answered, so they headed down the hill together, stopping every now and again to pick a handful of blueberries and eat them.

"They taste like sunshine," Donna said, wiping her mouth.

"Blue sunshine?" Josh was laughing. "Or purple? Your mouth's all purple."

"Why not?"

He took her hand to help her over a rocky patch, and didn't let go till they were all the way down the hill.

* * *

"I love beaches," Donna said, an hour or so later. The beach at the foot of the cliff was wide and surprisingly sandy; most of the beaches she'd seen on the trip so far had been more rock than sand. They'd walked along it for a while, Donna bending over every other minute to pick up a shell, or an interesting pebble, or a bit of smooth, weathered seaglass, frosted and translucent. When she'd begun to feel her foot needed a rest, they'd sat down on the sand, Donna sitting up resting against a big log of silvered driftwood, and Josh stretched out beside her, propped on his elbow.

"Why?" Josh asked, with a smile.

"The water's so beautiful, and the sand feels so good under your feet. I love the way sea air smells. And there are so many things to look at and pick up. We only had lake beaches to go to in Wisconsin; all they have is stones. Here there are all these different kinds of shells, and they're all so pretty, with these sunsetty colors. It doesn't matter how many you see, there's always another that's a little different and makes you want it."

"Makes you want it," Josh said, laughing as he accepted another shell from Donna and put it in his pants pocket. Both of them were bulging with the things she'd been handing him as they walked along; the skirt she'd put on that morning didn't have any pockets, and she'd left her purse in the car. "Most people wouldn't want this stuff. Or like that smell." The tide had gone out, leaving piles of seaweed behind, and a particularly pungent whiff of it had just wafted towards them on the breeze. "I'm not sure if I do; it really kind of stinks right now."

"A good stink."

"Contradiction in terms."

"Well, why do you like it here, Josh? It's the last thing I would ever have expected, you wanting to spend time in a place like this. I can see why you loved it when you were a child, but why did you want to come back? To live, I mean?"

"I don't want to live here forever," Josh said, scuffing the sand a little with his hand, not meeting her eye.

"But you want to be here now. Why?"

"Well, it was someplace I knew. Or thought I knew," he added. "It's changed a lot."

"You know a lot of places."

"This one was--special. Partly because of all the fun we had here, as kids. But partly for its own sake, too."

"Why?"

He didn't answer right away, but reached out, picked up a shell, and lay there on his side, turning it over in his fingers. It was a whelk, not a very good one--Donna would never have noticed it. Its spiral had been broken by the sea, and the salt and the sun had bleached it for so long that all the color and texture were gone, leaving the sides smooth and white. He turned it over and over, running his fingers over it and weighing it in his hand, as if that would help him weigh the words he was obviously trying to find.

"It's--simple," he said at last. "Basic. You can come down here, and there's just the water, and the sand, and the sky. The wind, the waves, some shells on the beach, the gulls--that's it. You can come down here and that's all you see, all you have to think about. It's simple and easy. And clean--it makes you feel clean. I wanted that; you have no idea how much I wanted that, to feel clean."

Donna swallowed. She hadn't expected this.

"It's funny," he went on, still playing with the shell. "You spend half your time in prison cleaning things. They're incredibly clean places. At least the floors are, and the walls, and the showers, and the toilets, and God forbid there should be a wrinkle in the bedsheets, or a stain that shows. Make your bed up wrong and there's another hour scrubbing something. The mattresses are another story, and the pillows--they smell--but anything that can be washed is really, really clean. And yet nobody there feels clean. Not even the guards, I think. But out here it's different.

He looked out at the ocean. "It's a dump, really. The water, the sea. People have been dumping their trash into it for thousands of years. And it takes most of it and beats it and bleaches it and breaks it up, but it makes it clean. People used to wash things with sand, you know--their clothes and their greasy pots and pans and things. Sand that's made up of thousands and thousands of tiny bits of rock and shell and junk that's been kicking around in the ocean for years, that's been beaten and bleached and broken up year after year after year, till all the stinking bits of dead stuff on it are washed away and gone and forgotten, and the shape is washed away and you can't even see what it was anymore--but what's left is clean."

He fingered the shell for another minute, not saying anything else. Then he tossed it away, aiming for the water. It fell short by several feet. He picked up a handful of sand and started sifting it through his fingers, watching it filter down, not looking up.

Donna had no idea what to say. She sat still, watching him. After a while he sat up and started brushing the sand off his arm, where he'd been lying on it. "Sorry," he said quietly. She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it gently, still not knowing what to say.

"Does anybody live up there anymore?" she asked after a minute.

"At the lighthouse? No, it's empty. I suppose they've automated the light, and don't want to pay anyone to look after it anymore."

"What a shame. I'm surprised somebody hasn't bought it; it would make a great place to live. A vacation home, or a bed and breakfast, or an inn, or something. The government has sold off a lot of old lighthouses, all along the East Coast; I read about it in Smithsonian Magazine, I think."

"I used to think I'd buy it, if it ever went up for sale."

"Really?" The day was just full of surprises.

"Yeah. Just one of those crazy things you think about sometimes. I always figured I'd do some private consulting after the White House, make a bit of money ..." He laughed, but there was a bitter note to it that made Donna bite her lip.

"You still can," she pointed out, quietly. It was something she'd been wanting to say to him ever since their conversation in the car the day before. "There are lots of people in politics who still want what you can do, who won't care about--" She hesitated, not sure how to say it. "--what happened."

"Not anyone I'd want to help," Josh said. He picked up a stone and threw it towards the water. Like the shell it fell short, startling a couple of sandpipers and sending them scuttling away.

"Oh, Josh," Donna said helplessly. "That's not true; that won't always be true. You just have to give it some time. All of it--you just have to give all of it some time."

"Yeah," he said with a grimace, standing up. "That's what I'm doing. Just putting in time. Which," and he bent down and picked up another stone, "beats doing time, so I'm not complaining. Look, think I can hit that gull out there, the one sitting on that yellow buoy?"

"Not in a million years."

"Watch me."

"Okay."

Josh stretched, flexed his arm, then sighted the shot carefully, pulled back, and let fly. There was a squawk and a splash, and the bird flew off the buoy screeching indignantly, a couple of feathers fluttering down behind it.

"Oh, my."

"I'm a ball player; you shouldn't have doubted me."

"It's the first thing you've aimed at that you've hit today."

"First time I've really tried. Think the Mets would sign me?"

"You never know."

"I'd look good in the uniform."

"I like the Yankees' better."

"The Yankees?!? Heresy! All right, woman, you suffer for that."

"It's the pinstripes; they--ack! Stop that!"

"Take it back."

"No, I--ack! That tickles! Cut it out, Josh! Ack!"

"There's lots more sand where this came from. Take it back?"

"I take it back, I take it back! Pinstripes are for geeks; the Mets rule."

"That's more like it."

"Pig."

"You shouldn't have doubted me, you know."

9--

They drove back to the village, chatting companionably. Josh parked his car in the lot at the top of Main Street, and they walked down it together, stopping whenever Donna wanted to look in a store. He suggested ice cream, but she wasn't hungry yet, so they stood outside the shop looking at the glass jewelry she had admired instead. The artist gave her talk about how she made the pendants again for Josh's benefit; he actually looked interested.

"Where do you get the glass from?" he asked.

"Most people use rods they import from Italy, but I like to get mine locally. Most of it's recycled glass, from bottles and things people are throwing away, but I know someone who makes it new, out of sand from local beaches, so some of the pieces are made from that."

"You can do that? Just take sand from the beach, and make it into glass?"

"Well, silica is the main element in all glass, you know. Usually glassmakers use a special sand that's very fine and clean, so the glass will be clear. But some of the sand around here is close to that grade, and I like the effect the impurities it still has give--they look more natural, I think, and make each piece distinctive and individual. You have to handle that glass differently when you're working with it, but I've learned how."

"I love the designs you do," Donna said, bending over the table. "These twists and spirals, like shells, and the way the bubbles swirl around them, that looks like water."

"It's meant to--I call this my Ocean series. I like the idea that each piece suggests what it's made from."

"Water and shells made from glass that's made from sand ..."

"That's made from shells and water. And stone, of course; sand is mostly stone, ground down by the water. I'm thinking of doing some with pebbles set in the glass, but the shells are so pretty, and people like them."

Donna obviously liked them. So did Josh, who was fascinated, in spite of himself.

"Which do you like best?" he asked her. "Those blue ones?"

"I love the blue, but--I think it's these clear ones that are really the most interesting. Like this one--just the clear glass, and the white streaks and bubbles, swirling over that shell-shape in the middle. It's so simple and pure, somehow."

"That's one of the ones made with local sand," the artist said.

Donna was reaching in her purse for her wallet, but Josh put a hand on her arm, stopping her.

"I'll get it," he said to the woman, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and taking out a handful of bills.

"Josh," Donna protested, blushing, startled almost out of her mind. He never did things like that.

He smiled down at her; she was still wearing flat-heeled sandals, since they were all she could get on over her bandage. "You didn't get a birthday present from me last year. Or Christmas. And you've got one coming up in a couple of months, and then Christmas again."

"So really, you're economizing?"

"That's right. And saving the trouble of having to put the dates on my calendar and remember. My new assistant is really lousy that way."

"You'll have to train her better."

"I would, but it isn't a her, it's a him, and I have it on good authority that he's pretty much a hopeless case. So you'd better let me take care of this while I'm thinking of it."

She smiled back up at him then. "Thank you," she said, and he grinned back, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. The woman wrapped the necklace in tissue and slipped it into a little gauze bag. Donna promptly opened the bag and unwrapped the necklace again, reaching behind her neck to try to clasp it. She fiddled with it for a minute, and was just about to turn it around and try in front when Josh lifted her hair off her neck, draped it over her left shoulder, and took the ends of the chain out of her hands. He studied the clasp for a moment, then fastened it with surprising ease, tested it, and lifted her hair back off her shoulder again. Donna shivered as his fingers brushed her skin. The intimacy of it all was unexpected and almost unbearable.

"Do you do that often?" she asked him. Her voice sounded a little throaty, and she could feel the heat rising in her cheeks.

"Oh, all the time," he said, his own face flushed and his voice husky. "It's one of my specialties."

"You have others?"

"I--" he started, the flush deepening, when someone yelled loudly from the other side of the street,

"Josh! Hey Josh! Are you going out tomorrow?"

They both took a step back and turned around. A boy about twelve was calling to him from the other side of the street, waving his arms wildly and practically jumping up and down like a six year old. A woman was standing beside him with shopping bags and a big purse in her hands; she smiled and waved, a little tentatively. The boy darted across the quiet street, and she followed.

"Hey Joey," Josh said to the boy. "Hi Betty," he added, smiling easily at the woman. She was about his age, or a little older, a bit heavy and busty, with reddish skin, a lot of curly, artificially blonde hair, flaking mascara, and a smile whose warmth couldn't quite hide the fact that her front teeth were dentures. Donna wondered how she'd lost them, and thought probably a man. "Donna, this is Betty McCarthy, and her son Joe. Betty, Joe, Donnatella Moss. Betty is Sid's daughter," he explained to Donna. He didn't offer Betty any explanation of her, she noticed, but that didn't surprise her--she'd been just as reticent in telling Karena and Marie who he was and how she knew him. She wondered how much Betty and Sid and Joe actually knew about him. She had a feeling that he wouldn't have provided too many details.

"Hello, Donna," Betty said. "How do you know Josh?"

"Oh, we've known each other a while," she answered. He gave her a rueful smile, acknowledging her evasion. "I'm here visiting friends, and we ran into each other at the tavern down by the wharf, the Salty Dog."

"I thought I'd seen you somewhere," Betty said easily. "I work there, waiting tables. Are you staying long? I hope you're having a nice visit."

"Very nice, thank you. I'm here till the end of the week. This really is a beautiful place."

"Josh," Joey said impatiently, "are you going out with Gramps tomorrow?" He'd been dancing around the whole time, obviously exasperated by the adults' introductions.

"I don't know, kiddo," Josh said. "Does he need me?"

"He told Mom to ask you to come in the morning, if you could; he's pulling pots then. It's just whale-watchers in the afternoon, I can do that by myself if you don't want to." His voice made it obvious that he was hoping Josh would want to.

Donna looked questioningly at Josh, who didn't meet her eye. "Yeah, I can come in the morning," he said. His voice sounded odd, which matched the expression on his face. "I don't know about the afternoon." He looked at Donna then. "What--" He hesitated a second. "What do you have planned? I was hoping--"

"I haven't really made any plans yet," she said, softly. "What about you?"

"I didn't have anything in mind, but--say," he turned to Joey, "how many people does your grandfather have booked in the afternoon?"

"Five, I think he said."

"So there's room for a couple more?"

"Are you coming?" Joey asked eagerly.

"Have you ever been whale-watching, Donna?" Josh asked her. "You'd like it, I think. It's supposed to be a nice day tomorrow, too."

"I'd love to go whale-watching," she said. "I've always wanted to."

"Tell your Gramps he's got two more then," Josh told Joey, grinning. "And I'll be there in the morning to give a hand with the pots."

"Thank you, Josh," Betty said, beaming at him. "You're such a help."

He flushed. "Nah, it's a pleasure," he said. "And Donna will love the whales."

"You will," Betty assured her. "My dad always seems to be able to find them, even when the other boats can't. Say," she added, looking at the pendant around Donna's neck, which Donna had been fingering unconsciously, "that's real pretty. Did you get it here?"

"Right here," Donna said, laughing, and waving at the table behind her, where the artist was sitting sketching something in a notebook and paying no attention to them. "Josh just gave it to me." She wasn't sure why she said that, except that she wanted him to get credit with his friends for doing something so nice.

"Did he?" said Betty, beaming at her. "It's real lovely. You got it here?" She stepped over to look at the jewelry on the table. "I've never stopped to look at these. You're new here, aren't you?" she said to the artist, who looked up and smiled and nodded. "Oh, aren't they pretty. Oh," and her voice changed suddenly. "Oh, my. Oh yes, oh, they are nice, aren't they?" She backed away again, suddenly fussing nervously with the clasp of her purse. Donna realized that she must have caught sight of the price tags; the pieces were probably well out of her reach. She felt embarrassed, and wished she hadn't drawn attention to the gift; she hated making other people feel she had something that they couldn't. Betty was looking nervously between Donna and Josh. "Come on, Joey," she said, in a funny voice. "We got to get home; I got a dinner to make for you and Dad before I go to work." She shot look at Josh that seemed almost worried. She must think I'm a slut, Donna thought, who's taking advantage of him; she doesn't realize how long we've been friends.

As Betty and Joey disappeared up the street, Josh took Donna's arm. "Are you ready for some ice cream yet?" he asked, smiling. She shook her head. "Then how about some coffee? There's a Starbucks up the street. You can have your caramel- vanilla- gingerbread- chai- tea- chocolate- extra- creamy- non-fat- soy-silk- double-shot- latte-cappuccino, or whatever it is you always like."

"You forgot the extra foam," Donna said serenely, following him up the street. She might not approve of big-name corporations stamping out local color in small-town America, but the day was cooling off and she was starting to feel chilly; the thought of a really good latte was suddenly extraordinarily appealing. And besides, Starbucks with Josh was a tradition she hadn't experienced in a long time.

Josh noticed her shivering, and found them a table inside, by the window. She sat down at it, then wished they'd taken one at the back. It wasn't just the temperature that was making her feel cold. She'd realized as they were walking up the street that she was having that feeling again, as if someone was watching her. It was the way she'd felt that first day, shopping with Marie and Karena; after she'd met Josh, she'd thought it must have been him, but it wasn't him today--he was looking at her, all right, but she liked the way that felt. And she'd had the same sensation earlier today, too, when she was first looking at the necklaces with Josh; afterwards she'd thought that Joey or Betty must have noticed Josh and been watching him from across the street for a while before calling out to him. But Joey and Betty had gone home to dinner, and when she looked up and down the street now, she really couldn't tell who it might be. Don't be ridiculous, Donna, she said to herself, nobody is looking at you, and she tried not to shrink back against the wall, out of sight of the window.

10--

"Do you have to be anywhere?" Josh asked her, when they had finished their coffees and she'd come back from the bathroom.

"Nowhere at all. I told Karena I didn't know when I'd be back. They're going out on the town again, I think; they won't be sitting around waiting for me, anyway."

He grinned at her, flashing his dimples. "Do you think you might want to get some dinner sometime, then? If you left any room in there, after all those lobster rolls and fries."

"There were only two lobster rolls, and the rolls were small."

"There was lots of lobster, and you had my fries."

"I think," Donna said with dignity, "that I could find a little room for dinner, in a little while."

"How little a while? I made a reservation for 8:00; would that do?"

"You made a reservation?" She looked at him with wonder; she hardly recognized him today.

"Yeah." He was coloring up a lot like that this afternoon, too. Maybe he was just too warm; it was chilly outside, but the coffeeshop was stuffy, and his coffee had been black and hot. "I figured it was better to play it safe; restaurants fill up fast around here this time of year, and this one might be popular. I haven't tried it yet," he added. "I don't know if it's really any good or not."

"Well, let's find out. What kind of place is it?"

"Kind of a country inn sort of place; if it's anything like I've heard, you'll like it. The owner is French, married to a local girl; it's supposed to be a sort of cross between French country cooking and really good down-east food. And they say the atmosphere is nice."

"It sounds wonderful. Where is it? Would I be able to go back to Karena's and change first? Someone put sand down my back this afternoon; I'm still itchy. And I'd like a sweater."

"It's up the coast a bit, maybe half an hour's drive, but there's time. Come on, we'll go now."

* * *

It was only a few minutes to Karena's father's cottage. Donna figured she had time for a quick shower and a change; after a day spent eating blueberries and sitting on the sand in the sun, she needed one. She wondered what the dress code around here was for dining out at a place like the one Josh had described; it sounded nice, though probably not unduly elegant. She realized now why he'd worn such dressy casual clothes today, and took her cue from him, coming downstairs in her best pair of black slacks and a brilliantly colored tank top. She was still wearing her new necklace, of course, and strappy sandals with more of a heel than was probably wise; she'd taken the bandage off to get them on. Josh looked at her appreciatively, but didn't say anything except, "Did you bring a sweater?"

'It's right here." She was carrying it over her arm, with her purse.

"That's good. I'm afraid I'm kind of a mess." He was looking down at his light pants. He'd emptied her shell collection out of the pockets, but the material had wrinkled and seemed to have collected some saltwater stains, not to mention spots of what was probably blueberry.

"Well," Donna said, trying to look severe and not bringing it off very well, "I've seen you look worse, I suppose. Of course, I've seen you when you haven't changed your shirt in three days, or shaved."

"I always shaved!"

"No you didn't. I have photographic proof. It's just as well the camera couldn't capture the smell, too."

"Do I need to shower now?" he asked, sounding suddenly anxious. Donna nearly burst out laughing; his expression was so comical she couldn't keep her own straight, so she relented.

"No, you're fine. And I don't think anyone will notice the stains on your pants; they're mostly pretty light. Though we probably have time to stop by your house on the way if you wanted to change, don't we? You said you lived north of here; the restaurant's in the same direction, isn't it?"

"It's a bit out of the way," Josh said. "We'd better just go, if you don't mind. I'm sorry about the pants," he added, grinning ruefully. "I might have known I'd make a mess, wearing these all day."

"It was predictable, all right, but it was me who made you put the shells in your pockets, so I'll take responsibility for the worst of it. Unless we're going to dine under spotlights, I really don't think anyone will see."

"I think candles are more likely."

"Let's go, then."

"If I can get this car started, we'll make like a Mazda."

"Zoom, zoom, zoom?"

"Zoom, zoom, zoom."

"You know, I'll bet you were just like that boy when you were his age."

"Why?"

"The jacket, the tie, the smug expression."

"Please, we wore better-looking blazers than that at my school."

"Preppy."

"Yup. Could have been worse, though."

"How could it have been worse?"

"One of my best friends had to go to Eton."

"You're kidding."

"Not. Have you ever seen the outfits they wear there?"

"Very aristocratic. Top hats, tails ..."

"Very ridiculous, you mean. Oh, hang on, I think I've got it."

"It's going!"

"I tell you, she knows her master."

"That sounds a bit off."

"Kinky?"

"Yes, Josh. If you and your car have that kind of relationship, I don't want to know about it."

"Zoom, zoom, zoom."

* * *

He was definitely in a mood, Donna thought. His grin was bigger and his dimples deeper than she'd seen them in a long time--a very long time. Not just the past two days or the past two years; maybe the two years before that, even. There was a kind of reckless glitter in his eyes that she associated with Josh on the eve of an important vote, when he was pulling all the strings and turning all the screws and was about to try something really big that would either put it in the bag or bring the whole house of cards tumbling down on him. Or Josh when he'd had a couple of glasses of champagne and was working on a third; if she hadn't been with him all day, she'd have suspected him of being a bit drunk. If he'd been walking he'd have had his best cock-of-the-walk swing in his hips. Instead he was driving fast and whistling under his breath. It took her a while to recognize the tune: "Blueberry Hill."

Thirty minutes later as the sun was starting to set they pulled up in front of a long, low building nestled among pines; there were carriage lamps on either side of the front door that had already been lit. Josh got out of the car and whipped around the front to open her door while she was still getting her belt off, which amazed her--that kind of courtesy had never been his long suit. Gravel crunched under her feet as she stepped onto the driveway; she wobbled a little in her heels and Josh put an arm around her to steady her. She glanced up at the building. It had freshly-painted white clapboard siding and a grey shingled roof with dormer windows peeking out of it; something about the shape of the windows and the number of chimneys and the way the roof sagged just a little along its peak made her think it must be quite old--early nineteenth century probably, maybe older. There were boxes under the windows overflowing with a brilliant array of flowers, and more in big tubs by the door.

"This looks charming," she said.

"I thought you'd like it," Josh answered, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. She glanced sideways. Yes, he was definitely swaggering. He kept his arm around her waist as he led her towards the door.

When he opened it, Donna actually gasped. They were in an entryway but she could see through an arch into the dining room, and beyond that through what looked like a whole wall of French windows to a terrace and then to the sea beyond. She was getting used to beautiful views everywhere, but this was the most spectacular she'd seen yet, perhaps because they seemed to be very high above the water and the view was very wide, or perhaps because of the time of day. The sun was setting behind them, turning the water to beaten silver washed with pink; the horizon was piled with little pink clouds. The inevitable boats looked as if they were sailing across the sky.

"Lyman," Josh was saying. "I have a reservation for two for eight o'clock. I asked for a window table, by the fireplace."

"Oh yes, I have you right here. You called yesterday, didn't you? I was so glad I could get it for you; most of our seats have been booked for weeks, but the other people didn't say anything about the fireplace; I guess they don't realize what the nights are like here now." The hostess, a surprisingly young-looking girl, led them through the arch into the dining room, which was unexpectedly small and intimate. The ceiling was low and crossed by dark beams, the walls were hung with brass and copper cooking ware, and a huge old pine sideboard stood against one wall, its shelves filled with red-and-yellow antique china. At one end a fire was burning brightly in a big stone fireplace, its light dancing off all the polished wood and copper around the room. Donna looked at it gratefully; August nights in Maine get chilly, and she had been shivering even in her sweater.

"Where is everybody?" she asked. Except for the antiques, the room was empty.

"Oh, they should be coming shortly. It's a big party, they've booked most of our tables for the same time. They were actually supposed to be here an hour ago--we couldn't do an earlier seating because of them--but the man has been on the phone to my dad, and said they'd be here soon." She seemed very friendly; Donna liked her. She looked about eighteen.

She pulled out a chair for Donna at the table closest to the fireplace, by the window, and gave her a hand-written card with the menu on it. The prices were lower than they would have been in Washington, but they were far from cheap. "This looks wonderful," Donna said, studying the card. "I thought you'd like it," Josh said again. He was looking decidedly smug, and still had that reckless glitter in his eyes.

Donna decided to start with a bowl of the clam chowder; she hadn't warmed up yet, and the thought of hot soup was irresistible. She almost didn't order it when Josh said he didn't want a starter, but he teased her until she did. After that she chose the scallops; Josh said he thought he'd have the chicken.

"The chicken?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"It's a white meat."

"What's wrong with that? It's supposed to be good for me, isn't it? You're always saying I should eat more white meat."

"You never listen to me."

"I'm listening now."

"But I'm not saying it now. This is a special place; don't you want the steak? It sounds divine--braised with scallions and truffles in red wine, with rosemary and thyme."

"Nah, steak should be simple; I can get a good one at the Salty Dog any day. I'm in the mood for the chicken; look, it says it's cordon bleu."

"That means it's stuffed with ham and cheese."

"I know what it means, Donna."

"You don't like to eat ham."

"I eat ham!"

"You will, but you don't like to."

"I do too like ham."

"You like the way it tastes, but you don't like to eat it."

"The day after my bar mitzvah, I ate a ham sandwich."

"You were being rebellious. And you still feel guilty about it."

"I do not. I like ham. I want this ham. And look--they're using blue cheese; it sounds good."

"Not good for you. All that fat. And it says it's sauteed in herbed butter, and there's a hollandaise sauce."

"Better still, then. That settles it; I'm having the chicken. And we'll get a bottle of white wine."

"Do you really want white? You could probably do red with the chicken, when it's got the ham in it."

"White's what you like best, though."

"So it is."

"And it will go with both the chicken and the scallops, so we'll have white. The cellar's supposed to be good here. And did you see the dessert menu? It was at the bottom of the card."

"I did indeed."

"Make sure you save room for some."

"I'm counting on it."

* * *

The chowder was even more delicious than Donna had been expecting. It was thick with clams, and had a smoky flavor she'd never tasted in chowder before. "This is amazing, Josh," she said. "Here, you have to try it," and she reached a spoonful across the table to him. He didn't tell her what his bar mitzvah rabbi would have said about clam chowder but let her put it in his mouth for him, waggling his eyebrows at her while he was swallowing.

"That is good," he said, wiping his mouth and smiling at her.

"Maybe you should get a bowl."

"Nah, I'll just eat yours. You had my fries."

"Let's ask for another spoon, then."

"I'm just kidding, Donna; you can have it. I don't need it. I'd get my own if I did."

"I don't need all this either, Josh; it's a huge bowl. Let's ask for another spoon. I won't have room for my main course if I eat all this, let alone dessert."

"Well, that would be a shame," he said, with a grin. "Look, there are spoons on that table over there; I'll grab one. We'll call it payback for the fries." So they sat sharing the big bowl of thick, hot, smoky chowder in front of the fire, talking and laughing, while the light faded outside and a misty darkness crept in from the sea.

Donna was just thinking that this was her idea of perfect when she heard cars pulling up outside, doors slamming, and people's voices talking loudly. A minute later the door from the hall opened, and the voices burst in. "What the hell?" a man's voice shouted.

"What--what's the matter, sir?" the eighteen-year-old hostess asked nervously.

"What's this? Who the hell are they? What the fuck are they doing here?" He sounded as if he'd had quite a lot to drink.

"They're--they're just the other customers, sir."

"Well, why the fuck are there any other customers? I thought I booked the whole place."

"You asked for tables for forty, sir. That's ten tables. We have eleven."

"Oh, fuck it. I might have known that idiot assistant of mine would screw things up. Well look, they'll just have to leave. We've brought some extra guests anyway; we'll need their table too."

"I can't do that, sir. They have a reservation."

"Well, God damn it, I have a reservation too. I have a lot of reservations. I've had this fucking room reserved for three weeks now. This is a private party, damn it; I don't want these fucking people here."

The girl looked helplessly at Josh and Donna. Josh had pushed his chair back; now he got up and walked across the room. Donna recognized the expression he was wearing, and the walk; they were the ones he brought out to deal with the more unpleasant Republicans on the Hill. "You can can it with the language," he said to the man. "I don't want my date to have to hear that, or this girl, either."

"What the fuck do I care what you want?" the man said. His stomach bulged aggressively over his belt, and his face was scarlet. He looked Josh up and down contemptuously, obviously taking in the condition of his hands and his trousers, the scrape up his arm, and the fact that he wasn't wearing a coat and tie. "You've got no business in here; I've booked this place for a private party. I don't know how you got in, but you can just take your fucking girlfriend and get your fucking ass out again."

"I'm not going to," Josh was saying, when the door opened again and several more people burst in. One of them seemed to be the owner and, judging from his hat and apron, the chef. The fat man turned and started shouting at him; he listened, nodding and saying things that were obviously meant to be soothing. The man wasn't soothed.

"If you will just give us a minute," the owner/chef said. "Just a minute, please." He turned to Josh and looked at him pleadingly. "Sir, if I could just speak to you for a minute, please."

"Sure," Josh said. "I might not be able to hear you, though, over that."

"If you will just give us a minute," the man said to the angry customer again. He spluttered, but a woman who had come into the room took him by the elbow and pulled him aside. She was very tall and very blonde and very well dressed in an obvious way, wearing a lot of very large and very expensive-looking rings; she was the kind of blonde who made Donna wonder whether she didn't want to dye her hair brown. The owner moved towards the fireplace; Josh followed him.

"My apologies, sir, my apologies," the man began. "I'm afraid there has been a mistake."

"There certainly has," Josh said. "The first one was when that man's mother decided to keep him."

The owner looked startled, but pressed on. "I understand you made a reservation yesterday; my daughter tells me she took it." Josh nodded. "She is very young, as you can see, and inexperienced, and I am afraid she did not understand. These people booked their party several weeks ago; she should not have told you we had room tonight."

"She said they booked ten tables, and we're at the eleventh," Josh pointed out.

"I am very sorry, but this gentleman thought we had reserved the entire room for him. He is very angry, as you can see. If you would accept a--what is it you say? a check because of the rain--I would be happy to give you a table another night, and dinner on the house."

"You want us to leave?" Josh sounded astonished. Donna got up and walked over to stand next to him.

"I am very sorry," the man said again. "Please accept my apologies, and come back again, and I will cook you a beautiful dinner for nothing, but tonight, yes, I must ask you to leave."

"We've started eating," Josh said heatedly.

"That does not matter; do not worry about that; you will pay nothing, of course. That gentleman is a very good customer; he has been here before, bringing lots of people, and if he is happy he will come here and bring lots of people again. We lost our first seating tonight, because of this party; if he leaves, we will make nothing. You understand how it is; I have a business to run, and the costs here are high; we are just starting out; I cannot afford to offend him."

"It's all right, Josh," Donna said, putting her hand on his arm. "Let's go."

Josh looked absolutely furious. "But--"

"We can come back again another night," she pointed out.

"Yes, yes, come back again and your dinner will be on the house. Next week, perhaps? I am booked through the weekend, but next week there will be tables, and I will rearrange things and make sure you have this one, if this is what you want."

"You won't be here next week," Josh said, looking at Donna. His voice was bleak.

"It doesn't matter, Josh. Let's just go. We can't stay now; even if this man wanted us to, it would be horrible, being in the same room with that drunken idiot and his friends."

"Yeah," Josh said weakly. "Okay." He watched Donna gather her sweater and her purse. "I'm sorry."

"Josh, it's fine. Let's go."

"If you come to the kitchen, I can give you your dessert to take with you," the owner was saying, when the tall blonde woman came through the door and across the room towards them. She was wearing six-inch heels and a very close-fitting red dress that Donna thought was probably Prada. She walked up to Josh and held out her hand.

"I'm sorry you have to leave," she said--assuming, Donna noticed with annoyance, that they were in fact about to leave. "My husband planned this party for my birthday, you see, and he wants it to be perfect; he reacts a bit strongly sometimes, if he thinks I'm going to be disappointed." She had what might almost have been an upper-class English accent, but Donna didn't think it sounded quite right. "You can have this for your trouble," and she turned her hand over to show two hundred-dollar bills.

Josh flushed from the base of his neck right up to the roots of his hair. Donna didn't think she had ever seen him look that angry. For a few seconds he just stared at the woman, his mouth a little open. Then he found his voice.

"Oh, no thanks," he said thickly. "You'd better keep it. You could use it to buy mouthwash for your husband; he needs a lot of it."

Then he took Donna's elbow and led her out the door.

* * *

They walked out of the restaurant into a cold, wet fog. It was dripping off the boughs of the pine trees that lined the driveway, and hung down heavily over the road. Josh opened the door of the rusty little Civic, and handed Donna in. It took him eight tries to get the car started; the engine obviously didn't deal well with the damp. He pulled out around the Mercedes and Jaguars lining the driveway, and drove wordlessly down the drive and onto the road. His hands gripped the wheel tightly; Donna had a strong feeling that what he really wanted to do was to put his foot on the gas and tear down the road, screeching the tires on the corners, but because of the fog he had to drive more slowly and carefully than usual.

"That poor man," she said lightly, hoping to break his mood.

"Poor my ass," Josh said through his teeth. "The only thing that's poor about him is his vocabulary."

"I didn't mean him, you idiot," she said. "I meant the owner. Imagine having to deal with people like that, depending on them for your living. It would be ghastly."

"It's pretty common around here," Josh said, still in that tight voice. "You should see some of the morons Sid has to take out."

"As bad as that?"

"Pretty much. Sid won't put up with it, though. He told one jackass that if he didn't clean his mouth up, he'd throw him overboard and let the harbor do it for him. Joey was along," he added. "Sid doesn't want him picking it up."

"What happened?"

"The jackass shut up. I don't think the idea of ruining his Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and his Bill Blass pants appealed to him too much."

Josh was himself wearing Bill Blass pants. Donna didn't think it was a good idea to point that out, but it must have occurred to him, because he suddenly glanced down at them and then over at her, and started to laugh.

"Oh God, Donna, I'm sorry," he said. "I wanted you to have a nice evening, I really did."

"Well, the first part of it was wonderful," she said. "And it doesn't have to be over yet. I'm starving--can't we go somewhere else and get something to eat?"

"Yes, of course we can. I don't know where, though. I'd heard about that place from a customer on one of Sid's fishing trips; I don't have a list of other nice spots to go."

"It doesn't have to be a place like that. It doesn't even have to be a place; we could just go back to your house and heat something up, if you want."

"Do you really think I have any food there?" Josh said. "I don't even try to cook for myself; I eat out."

"Where do you eat?"

"The Salty Dog, usually."

"That would be fine with me; their food is good."

"The Salty Dog, then."

When they got to the Salty Dog, there was a line outside waiting to get in. Josh poked his head in the door and caught Betty's eye. She winked and nodded towards the back door, and he led Donna around that way. Betty was just seating them at a table for two in the corner when a woman's voice called out, "Hey, Donna!" over the crowd, and they looked over to see Karena waving wildly at them. She and Marie were at a table on the other side of the room, with another woman and some guys. "Come over here! Eat with us!" Donna glanced at Josh, who bit his lip but nodded, and they went over to join Donna's hostess and her friends. Out of the corner of her eye Donna saw Josh straighten his shoulders and swing into his master politician walk as they crossed the room. She and Karena made the introductions; Josh asked what everyone was drinking, and told Betty to bring another round of the same. When Betty brought their food, he told her to fill their glasses up again. By the time they were ready to leave, Karena and Marie had to pile into the back of the Civic; even Donna was a little tipsy. In spite of his sensitive system, Josh was still sober enough to drive--he'd nursed the same beer all evening. So he couldn't blame inebriation for the strange feeling he'd had most of the night that someone was watching them, though every time he turned around, he couldn't see anyone it could be.

11--

"Whale-watching," Donna sighed happily, "is the most fun thing I've ever done."

"Really?" Josh sounded amused. "That's a pity. I always said you weren't going out with the right guys."

Donna blushed furiously. "You know perfectly well I didn't mean that," she said.

"Well," he said, sounding reasonable. "You said 'the most fun thing I've ever done.' Logically that has to mean that every other thing you've ever done, including--OUCH!"

"Don't spoil it, Josh. It was a wonderful day."

"I'm glad," he said, glancing at her before looking back at the road. He was smiling.

It had been. She'd spent the morning reading her field guide to coastal life and worrying that the fog wouldn't lift in time for the trip, but by ten o'clock it had burned off, and when Josh picked her up at twelve-thirty the sky was clear and the sun was bright. He had warned her to dress warmly no matter what the weather was doing, so she'd put on jeans and layered a sweater and a windbreaker over one of the short-sleeved shirts that were all she had with her. Fortunately she'd brought her running shoes. He'd handed her a roll of something dark and soft when she got into the car; it turned out to be a pair of gloves. "You're kidding," she'd said. "Nope," he'd replied. "It gets cold out there. I got you these at Stevenson's this morning, so I wouldn't have to give you mine." Stevenson's was the chandlers' shop she'd fallen in love with; it hadn't occurred to her that they'd have anything as ordinary as women's knitted gloves, and in August, too.

Josh had helped her scramble up onto the boat and handed her an orange life-jacket, which she'd put on with his help, then shown her around while they waited for the other passengers. "It's a working fishing boat," he explained. "The hold's down there, in front of the cabin. It's big enough to carry several days' catch, but Sid doesn't do overnights any more, just day trips. The Grand Banks have been closed for a few years now, and Mary worries about him if he doesn't come home at night."

"Who's Mary? His wife?"

"Yeah--the boat's named after her, did you notice? The 'Mary B.' He worries about her, too; she hasn't been all that well this winter. He can do as well out of the tourists, or better, anyway, when they're running."

"Running?"

"Like fish," Josh said, grinning. She looked at him in wonder; this really was a Josh Lyman she would never have imagined.

"This is so bizarre," she said, shaking her head and smiling.

"Bizarre? What is? Why?"

"This. You. On a boat. In Maine. Telling me about the Grand Banks, and tourists, and talking like a fisherman, when I once spent twenty hours in the middle of Indiana trying to convince you and Toby that maybe you could actually learn something from ordinary working people, if you'd just stop talking like politicians and listen to them for a while."

Josh stopped smiling and looked away. "Yeah, I was pretty much a jerk, wasn't I?" he said, bending over to pick up some rope that was trailing across the deck and starting to coil it loosely around his arm.

"You had your moments."

"I know."

"You've changed," Donna said, looking at him thoughtfully.

"I should have. That's what it's supposed to do, isn't it?"

"What what's supposed to do?" Donna said, confused. She was still thinking about that day in Indiana, and trying to reconcile that man with the one standing in the bow of the boat coiling rope in front of her now.

He didn't say anything, but straightened up and started wrapping the end of the rope around a cleat on the bulkhead of the cabin. She bit her lip, and looked away. She'd actually forgotten. Not just for a few minutes, either; she really hadn't thought about it since sometime yesterday--since they had looked at the jewelry together, and gone to Starbucks, and had dinner--part of dinner--at the beautiful restaurant. She wondered if he ever forgot, or if he ever would.

"I never thought you knew anything about boats," she said, wanting to change the subject. "Not like Sam."

He snorted. "I don't, not like Sam. I couldn't sail anything. I couldn't even steer this thing back if I had to. I just do what Sid tells me, and try not to get in the way."

Sid had come over the roof of the cabin behind them. He looked down at that. "Eh, don't sell yourself short, son," he said to Josh. "You're a quick learner. I've had fellows come out with me that grew up around here who were harder to teach than you've been. You'll make a good sailor yet."

Josh looked up, smiling suddenly. "Yet's a long way away."

"You've got time."

"He still gets sick," Joey said, poking his head up from the other side of the cabin. Josh scowled at him. Joey laughed and ducked, pretending to cower.

"Not any more," Josh said.

"Yes you do! You were sick last week."

"It was rough!"

"Barely blowing."

"Choppy, very choppy, and I think your mother had given me a bad piece of fish the night before. I hadn't been sick for ages before that, and I haven't been sick since."

"He used to throw up every time," Joey said cheerfully to Donna, who looked at Josh, her eyebrows raised.

"I can believe that," she said, "but why would you keep coming back for more?"

He grinned at her. "You don't think I was going to let myself be outdone by a twelve-year-old squirt like Joe, do you? And it gets better after you lose it; you don't go on and on."

"Plenty of good sailors get seasick every time," Sid grunted. "Enough of this, Joe--have you got the life-jackets ready? Our party's coming down the dock now."

"Okay, Grampy. Oh, I was going to tell you, the radio's gone out again."

"I'll come take a look." Sid looked over at Donna, and gave her a rare smile. "The Mary B.'s an old gal, none of your fancy jet-powered stuff in her, not like the big tour boats. But I can find the whales better than any of them, with all their hi-tech sonar."

They were out for four hours. They saw porpoises, walruses, dolphins, and two kinds of whales that Donna recognized from her morning's reading as Humpback and Minke; also several ospreys, a group of puffins, and, on the trip home, one big, beautiful bird that Josh thought was a falcon and Donna was sure was really an eagle. The first time she saw a whale bump its back up above the waves and spout, she jumped up and down and squealed until she started to cough, and Josh had to pat her on the back and send Joey to get her a drink of water from the cabin. They followed the pod for hours, watching them feed and play. It really was wonderful. But afterwards Donna thought that the most amazing thing she'd seen that afternoon had been Josh moving quietly about the boat, giving a hand when it was needed, and smiling when Joey teased for his attention, or when Sid clapped him on the back and gave him a quiet word of thanks at the end of the day.

12--

"Want to get some dinner somewhere?" Josh asked, when the Mary B. had docked and the passengers left and everything had been cleaned and tidied and stowed away, ready for the next day's work.

"Sure," Donna said, "but can we go back to Karena's first? I'd like to change."

"No prob," Josh said, smiling, and they got in the Civic and drove--after he got it started--the six minutes it took to get to the cottage. Josh stopped at the bottom of the drive.

"I guess I'll wait down here," he said. "Looks like your friend has some company." The long, steep driveway was packed with cars, double parked, and lined up along the shoulder of the road below, too. Donna saw a TR-6, an Aston Martin and a beautifully restored cherry-red 1950's-vintage Corvette among the usual collection of BMWs, Lexuses, Mercedes, Porsches and Jags.

"She's having a barbecue; she was talking about it this morning, I'd forgotten. Come on; we're invited."

Josh hesitated. "You want to stay?"

"I should, really. She said she wanted Marie and me to meet some of her friends we haven't seen yet. I can't believe I forgot about it."

"I should go," Josh said, fiddling with the gearshift.

"No, Josh; she said to be sure to bring you too. Come on--the food will be great, and you can have something to drink. She owes you, after last night."

He didn't say anything right away, but kept looking at the gearshift and playing with it. Then he looked up at her and smiled, that funny, twisted half-smile that didn't quite go to his eyes. He grabbed his sunglasses from the dashboard, pulled the visor of his baseball cap down a bit, took a deep breath and climbed out of the car.

* * *

The front doors were standing open on the porch. Donna dropped her things in the hall and led Josh through the house to the back. The party was happening on the huge deck off the kitchen and family room--on the decks, really: Donna could see people crowded onto all five of them, all the way down to the dock. Karena didn't do anything by halves; she made Marie look like an introvert in need of social training from a personal life-skills coach.

"Hey, Donna!" she yelled from the corner of the deck, where she was talking to a woman in an apron who was standing in front of a huge gas barbecue--the caterer, Donna assumed, or one of the caterer's staff. The stereo was booming, but Karena's voice carried easily over it. She made her way through the crowd towards them, dragging several people in her wake.

"Donna, this is Patti Greenfield, and her husband Ron Streat. Muffy Kennedy-Smith and Rolly Windham. And Jorge DeLuca and Rob Peters." The two men, who were standing very close to each other, nodded and smiled, as did the others. "Guys, this is Donna Moss, and her friend--" She paused, and waved her drink in the air. She'd obviously forgotten Josh's name.

"Josh," he supplied, putting out his hand. They all shook hands and said hello and how nice it was to meet each other.

"Donna's from D.C.; she's a Congressional Liaison for Change for Children. And Josh-" She paused again; she hadn't noticed Josh on the dock the other night, and had no idea what he did.

"I work here in town," he answered briefly. The others smiled politely and nodded again. "What does a Congressional Liaison do?" Patti Greenfield asked Donna. She hesitated, glancing at Josh, but he just gave her that half-smile again and tipped his head, looking as if he wanted to hear what she said. "I lobby Congress to take more progressive action on children's issues," she began. "That means ..."

"Think the Red Sox have any chance this year?" Ron asked Josh.

"Not if the Mets keep going the way they are," Josh answered, grinning and taking the beer Ron handed him.

* * *

Donna left Josh drinking beer and talking baseball with Ron and a couple of other men who had joined the conversation. She needed the bathroom and wanted to freshen up for the party, though the dress was casual and she didn't really have to change. But when she got up to her room she couldn't resist the temptation to shower and put on something a little dressier. It was three-quarters of an hour before she had finished fixing her makeup and strolled back onto the deck, looking for Josh.

It took her a minute to locate his red t-shirt and blue baseball cap. He was sitting with his beer in the corner of the deck at a big round table full of people, all with drinks and plates of appetizers in front of them. He had pushed his chair back against the railings and pulled the visor of his cap right down over his eyes; he looked, Donna thought, as if he was trying to disappear. There was a hubbub of excited voices coming from the table:

"You think Vinick's unbeatable?"

"Vinick's not unbeatable; our guys just can't pull themselves together enough to beat him."

"The Democrats couldn't pull themselves together enough to beat a dog," said a third voice.

"Yeah, they can't even beat their own dogs," a fourth voice chimed in. "Look at that Lyman guy last time. Off the leash; out of control. Destroyed the party--it'll be years before they recover. I'd say the Republicans have it sewn up for another decade at least."

"Well, they reined him in. He went to jail, didn't he?"

"Three years; that's nothing."

"Sounds like a pretty long time to me."

"Ah, they give these guys parole after a year; it's nothing. Club Fed--he probably spent it polishing his golf game, on the public dime."

"But what had he really done? Got a story on another candidate, then lied about doing it; that's not the end of the world, is it? He didn't really hurt anybody."

"He killed the Democrats and put the Republicans in for another eight to twelve years, that's what he did."

"He was disgusting," a woman's voice came through clearly. She sounded earnest and upset. "Disgusting. That poor woman, Beth Baker--dragged through the mud, just because she'd had a breakdown and spent a few days in the hospital. I don't care who won the election, but I think Lyman deserved everything he got for that, and more."

"They put him through the wringer, too," someone else said.

"That just made it more disgusting. He knew what it was like to have a problem, and he didn't have any sympathy for her, any compassion. He must have known how she'd feel about people knowing about it, and he didn't care. They should have locked him up and thrown away the key."

"Oh come on, Janet, don't you think that's a little harsh?"

"No, I don't. They say she wanted to kill herself while it was going on. She might end up killing herself anyway; people are still talking about it, aren't they? How do you think that must make her feel?"

"Maybe he'll kill himself."

"He should have done it years ago." That was a male voice, beery and harsh. "They said he tried--put his hand through a window at the White House, or something. I can't believe Bartlet kept the fucking screw-up on."

"That's the trouble with the party leadership--they really are soft. You can see why the Republicans run all over us. They should have had him out of there the next day. If they'd just killed him off then, we'd have had a fighting chance in the last election."

"Killed him off? Whoa, Joe."

"I meant his career."

"Ah, go ahead and say it, Sarfield," said the beery voice. "They should just have given him a gun and let him do himself in when he wanted to; it would have been better for everyone. Or put him in St. Elizabeth's and let him listen to his fucking sirens, or music, or whatever it was. What the hell were they thinking of, keeping a nut case like that around the White House for the next six years? No wonder they call us bleeding hearts. The party's not the fucking Salvation Army; we shouldn't be in the business of trying to save lost causes."

"He wasn't in the White House when the Baker thing happened, was he?"

"That's not the point. The fucking screw-up shouldn't have been anywhere near any Democrat running anything, or for anything, is what I'm saying."

Donna stood frozen, staring at Josh, who was staring at his beer. She felt as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope; the world had closed in to a very narrow tunnel, so all she could see was him, and yet he looked very far away and she seemed to have to strain to make out his face. His eyes were completely covered by his sunglasses and the brim of his cap, but she could see the tightness in his mouth, and the little lines that had formed around it.

"Food's on!" Karena shouted over the crowd. "Come on, everybody; grab a plate and get in line while it's hot."

The people around the table started pushing their chairs back and getting to their feet. They flowed past Donna, still talking. One of them burst into laughter; the sound came rippling back to her, careless and musical.

Josh sat for another minute, looking at his beer. Then he set it down on the table in front of him, pushed back his chair and stood up. "Josh," she said, and heard the distress in her voice.

She couldn't tell whether he heard her, whether he even knew she was there. He walked past her without saying anything, and through the door.

* * *

"Josh!" She really wasn't sure he could hear her. "Josh, wait! Please wait! Oh Josh, don't; stop, wait for me, wait!" He was already hurrying down the front steps and onto the drive.

Damn these strappy high-heeled sandals; why had she put them on? She'd turn her ankle again for sure if she tried to chase down the driveway after him in these. She stopped for a minute, leaning on the doorframe, to take them off. One of the straps gave her trouble, and she had to wrestle with the buckle; her fingers didn't seem to want to work properly, she couldn't get it undone. In frustration she jerked the strap over her heel, yelping as it dug into the bruised and still slightly swollen place on the side of her foot. She kicked the shoes aside and ran barefoot onto the gravel drive, wincing and hobbling as the stones dug into her feet. "Josh, wait!" He'd disappeared around the bend in the driveway; she couldn't see him anymore.

She made it to the bend and heard a car door slam, an engine coughing and trying to start up. "Come on, Civic, do your thing," she thought desperately, but for once the difficult engine obeyed its owner right away, and she heard it roar into life. She kept running till she reached the bottom of the drive, but by the time she got there, Josh was gone. An oily smell of exhaust hung in the air.

13--

Donna picked her way back up the drive and brushed the gravel off her feet. Still barefoot, she padded back through the house and outside. She found Karena on the third deck down.

"Are you having fun, Donna? Where's Josh?" Karena had to shout to be heard, even though she was standing a foot away.

"Can I borrow your car?"

"What?"

"Can I borrow your car?"

"Sure. Why? Is something wrong with Josh's?"

"No, I--Look, I can't explain, but something's happened and he's left and I need to borrow a car. Fast. Please, it's important; I need it now."

Karena stared at her, her eyes wide.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, sure. The only trouble is, it's at the top of the drive."

"Can I get it out? I'm sorry, I can't explain, but it really is incredibly important; I've got to be able to go after him now."

"Okay. Yes. Sure." She put down her drink, and suddenly raised her voice. Donna had thought she'd been shouting before; she'd been wrong. It occurred to her later that Karena had probably spent her summers when she was younger as a counselor at some expensive camp; she knew how to sound like a bullhorn, without ever picking one up. "OKAY, EVERYBODY: LISTEN UP! WE'VE GOT AN EMERGENCY; WE'VE GOT TO CLEAR THE DRIVE." Everyone on the third deck stopped talking and turned to listen to her. Some of the men started to head for the stairs. Karena leaned over the railings, and yelled to the deck below: "EMERGENCY! WE HAVE TO CLEAR THE DRIVE!" Then she ran up the stairs to the next deck up, and shouted again. Everyone began to file up the stairs and through the house to the driveway in front. Car doors slammed, and engines started up. Some of the men strung themselves out along the drive, waving and shouting directions to the drivers as one by one they began to back out into the road. "This way, no, there's a hole, watch out for that tree, this way, back now, okay, a little farther, farther, farther, okay, you're good now, take her out and up the road a ways, okay?" They seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly. Donna hardly noticed; Karena had found her the keys to the Land Rover and she was already in the driver's seat, waiting impatiently to get out.

Finally the cars were clear, and Donna started the engine and bumped down the drive. She had never driven anything the size of the Land Rover before, but she was too worried about Josh to care about anything else. She turned right at the bottom of the drive, put her foot on the gas and headed towards town. Three minutes later, she was pulling up beside the Salty Dog. She only just remembered to pull the key out of the ignition before she went tearing up the wooden steps to the door. She'd been too upset to remember her sandals; her feet were still bare.

* * *

There was a line of people waiting to be seated inside. "Excuse me, please, excuse me, excuse me," Donna said, pushing her way past them and into the bar. She scanned the room, but couldn't see Betty anywhere. Oh God, she thought to herself; what if it's her night off? I don't know where she lives.

She made her way through the crowd, looking in every direction. There was no sign of Betty inside; what about the patio? No, she wasn't there either. Donna felt a bubble of hysteria rising in her throat. People were looking at her, but she didn't care. What was she going to do if she couldn't find Betty? She didn't have a clue where Josh lived--twenty minutes north could mean almost anything.

Then the kitchen door swung open, and Betty came through, a tray balanced on each hand. She saw Donna and her eyes went wide, taking in her distraught expression, her bare feet. "Hang on a minute, hon," she said, hurrying past. "I'll just get rid of these, and be right there."

It seemed a lot more than a minute to Donna before Betty had finished dispensing drinks and plates of food, and had said, "Yes, I'll get that right away," to a dozen different people as she made her way back to where Donna was still standing in an open space near the end of the bar and the kitchen.

"You look like a wreck, hon," she said, baldly. "What's wrong?"

"It's Josh," Donna said. Betty caught her breath. "I need to see Josh."

"You need to see him?" Betty let her breath out again. "He's all right, then?"

"I--I don't know. I can't explain. We--something happened, and I need to find him, but I don't know where he lives."

"Josh?" Betty sounded relieved. "He lives out at Green Point, hon."

"Where's that?"

"It's about fifteen, twenty minutes north of here, honey; it's not hard to find. Want me to write the directions down for you?"

"Oh, yes please," Donna said, trying not to sound pathetic. "I need to see him right away."

Betty stopped a girl who was coming out of the kitchen, and told her to get icewater for table 4 and a refill on the drinks at number 6, and to check Betty's other tables when she was done. Then she leaned on the corner of the bar and started to write on the back of a paper placemat. Her letters were big and careful. After a minute she stopped, and fiddled with her pencil. Donna wanted to scream, "Hurry up!" but tried to look patient. Betty wrote something else, and then stopped again, put her pencil down, and looked up.

"He's a good man," she said, quietly. "Real good."

"Yes, he is," Donna agreed. It's true, she thought to herself; no matter what he might have done, it's true.

"He came here in April. Started eating here three-four nights a week, pretty soon it was more. But he was real quiet, kept himself to himself, you know? Brought a book, read, didn't say much."

Donna nodded. She wouldn't have recognized that description a week ago, but she'd seen it for herself now, and understood. She was desperately anxious to get the directions and go, but found she was just as anxious to hear somebody say something good about Josh, and to find out anything she could about what he'd been doing for the past few months.

"My boy--he's twelve--he was having a bit of a hard time. His dad took off a year ago, you know? And his sister was going to have a baby. Joey was getting into trouble after school, and in school, too. All his marks went way down. We were getting notes saying he was going to fail his year if he didn't start to do more. My dad--we live with him--he was firm with Joey, said he couldn't come out on the boat till his marks got better. Joey's that wild to go out with his Gramps on the boat. He tried, but he was so far behind, he wasn't able to catch up real well. He'd come here and sit at one of the tables--it's slower, off-season, there's always an empty table then--and look at his books and try to do his papers, but he kept saying, 'Mom, I can't do this, I just don't get it.' I was never much at school myself, so I couldn't help him. I was at my wits' end, what to do.

"And then one day Josh, he got up from his table and went over and started asking Joey what he was working on, and talking to him about it. He talked a lot. Explained things, told a lot of stories, especially about history--they're doing American History this year. And Government. I listened in sometimes too, and it was real interesting, the way Josh would talk about it. He explained to Joey all about bills, and how they get passed, and what really happens in Congress and the White House. Funny things, things you'd never think of. I'd never heard anything like it. I asked him once how he knew all that stuff, and he said he'd had friends who worked in government, and it had always been an interest for him.

"So Joey started to do better, and he made his year all right. Josh would read over his papers--he wouldn't tell him what to say, but he'd ask him questions, get him to think about it more, and kind of hint where maybe he was going wrong when he was. Dad heard what was happening, and came in to thank Josh, and ask what we could pay him for tutoring Joey like that. He wouldn't take anything; said it was a pleasure. Dad's real old school though, just hates owing anybody anything, so he pressed Josh quite a bit, and finally Josh said he'd like to go out on Dad's boat sometime. Dad was that pleased. He takes tourists all the time, fishing, whale-watching; he told Josh he could come out anytime. And pretty soon Josh was going out with him almost every day, and not just as a tourist, either. Dad had some surgery last year; he's not as strong as he was. Josh would help with the heavy stuff, hauling in the nets when they'd been trawling, helping unload after a good catch. And he let Dad pay him a bit for that, which made Dad feel good about it. It's made my mom happier too; she used to worry something awful, Dad being out alone on the boat all day like that after his surgery, or just with Joey."

She paused for a minute, and wiped at her eyes. Her mascara streaked a little down her cheek and on her hand; she wiped it off on her apron.

Then she said, "So I just wanted to say, if you like that man, honey, don't let him buy the drinks for you and your friends like he did yesterday again."

"What?" Donna said, totally thrown.

"If you like him, hon, don't let him pick up the tab like that again."

"Why--why not?" Donna stammered.

Betty looked at her firmly, and said, "He needs to eat again this month, hon."

"What?" Donna heard her voice rise in a squeak. Her heart started to pound.

"I said, he needs to be able to eat, honey. Things are expensive up here in the summer, and my dad can't pay him all that much."

Donna thought about the Georgetown house and how much it must rent for, and breathed again.

"That's not his only income," she said. Then she remembered his legal bills, and wondered just how much of the monthly rent they took.

"I know that, hon, but I know he has to be careful, too. He eats here regular, and I know my regulars. He'll have a beer if he's having the fish and chips, 'cause they're cheap here. If he wants a burger, he skips the beer. He's never had the steak."

"I--I had no idea," Donna murmured. Now she was the one with tears welling up; she blinked hard, not wanting to cry in front of Betty, even though the woman seemed sympathetic.

"I know you didn't, hon. That's why I'm telling you. You know, there are a lot of women who come in here who've taken a fancy to him, tried to get him interested, but I've never seen him go for one until you walked in. I can see he wants to do everything right for you, and that's good; a man shouldn't be cheap when he likes a woman, nobody wants that. I'm just saying, take it easy. What he spent on drinks for your crowd last night is what he usually spends on dinners for a week. And I think most days, dinner's the only real meal he gets. Joey told me Josh never takes anything out on the boat, just bags of chips and cheap junk like that. I try to pack extra sandwiches for them, but things are a bit tight for us too, and Joey's a growing boy--he eats like a horse. I doubt Josh gets many of them."

Donna stared at the wall, stunned. She'd thought Josh looked thin, but he was so tanned and so fit she hadn't been worried about him that way at all; he actually looked healthier than he had any time in the past eight years, since Rosslyn. How could he possibly not have enough money, she wondered angrily, but the answers weren't hard to find. Legal bills, fines--there'd been a big one, as well as the sentence--and the cost of living in the summer in a resort community that had become fashionable since he'd known it as a child; he'd probably thought it would be cheap, and hadn't anticipated how much he'd really need when he'd worked out his payment schedule with his lawyers and arranged his parole. He'd taken a big salary cut when he'd left the White House to run Matt Santos' underfunded campaign; he could easily have drained his bank account, even before the legal nightmares began. His mother was well off, but Donna couldn't imagine Josh wanting to take her money, or letting her know that he needed to--he'd always been protective of her, and he had his pride.

Betty turned back to the paper tablemat, wrote on it for another minute, and handed it to Donna. "Here's the directions, hon. It's not that hard; just be sure not to miss the turnoff from the highway. I've marked it there."

Donna looked over the little map Betty had drawn to illustrate her written directions; it seemed clear enough.

"Thank you," she said. "I should be going now."

"Glad to help," Betty said. She wiped her hand on her apron again, and offered it to Donna, who took it, then reached out and pulled the older woman into a hug.

"Thank you," she whispered again. She meant, "Thank you for caring about him," but she couldn't say that without more explanations than she wanted to give, so she tried to say it with the hug. Betty hugged her back, and wiped her eyes again.

"You won't let him know I told you that, will you, hon? You won't let him know you know?" she said.

"Why?" Donna asked, though she really knew the answer.

"He's a man, honey," Betty said. "He has his pride. They all do, God knows, but that one has more than most, I think."

All Donna could do was nod in agreement, and duck her head as she hurried out the door. She really didn't want Betty to see her cry.

* * *

God damn you, Josh, Donna thought through her tears. She pushed the gas down and accelerated around another curve in the narrow road heading north. She was thinking about all the little things she hadn't picked up on, and some of the big ones, too: eating fried fish instead of lobster roll, skipping a starter, ordering chicken instead of steak. No cell phone. All his excuses for driving that damned rusty Civic that wouldn't start properly--he'd said he'd had to sell the Audi, but she'd believed him that the Civic was just a throwaway in need of a tune-up, something he'd picked up to knock around in that wouldn't matter much and wouldn't offend anybody, not the best he could afford. He'd been wearing good clothes yesterday, but he'd still have his things from before, of course. She remembered the reckless glint in his eyes when he'd been driving to the restaurant, and wondered how the hell he'd been planning to pay for their fancy dinner there: credit card, probably, but then what? Eating less while he paid it off? And how many meals would the necklace have set him back? The glass shell burned against her skin. She was furious. God damn you, God damn you, God damn you, Josh; why do you have to be such a stupid idiot?

She took the turns Betty had marked for her, faster than she ought to when she didn't know the roads. Then she saw the sign--"Green Point Kozy Kabins. Bathrooms. T.V."--and turned into a bumpy unpaved drive that wound its way through the trees, thin second-or-third growth woods, for what seemed like a ridiculously long time. Finally, though, she saw Josh's Civic in a spot where the drive widened before it went on around a bend. She parked the Land Rover next to it, got out, and walked up a rocky trail that led to a clearing where the cabins had been built, forty or fifty years ago. Her heart sank when she saw them--three or four old, shabby little square buildings, covered with battered siding and worn tarpaper roofing, their cinderblock foundations bare except for a skirting of weeds. There was a light on in the window of one of them, so she made her way towards it, and climbed the steps to the narrow little deck quietly in her bare feet. The inside door was open; the screen on the outside one had buckled and torn away from its frame in a couple of places. Donna stood outside it, looking in.

There seemed to be just one room, though a door standing ajar in the corner presumably led to the advertised bathroom. The main space was half-filled by a sagging double bed. The floor was covered with linoleum, scuffed and faded, the walls with cheap, dark pressed-wood paneling. The bed was unmade, the bedding in a tangle. The bottom sheet had pulled up, showing the ancient mattress and box spring underneath; they were both dirty and torn, the wooden edge of the box spring poking out from its threadbare covering. The only other furniture was a flimsy-looking table and chair stuck under the window, an ugly lamp, and a battered bureau with a t.v. on top, rabbit-ears pulled out and twisted to a rakish angle. The t.v. was on, tuned to some sports program; the picture was flickering hopelessly. Josh wasn't looking at it. He was sitting at the table, his head buried in his arms.

Donna hesitated for a long minute. Everything in her wanted to push the screen open and go in, wrap her arms around him, and try to comfort him. But she remembered what Betty had said, and knew it was true. She thought about the way his face had lit up the day before when he was paying for her meals and buying the necklace; the way he had moved, with his old confident swagger. The tears started to run down her face again, but she made herself turn and walk away.

14--

Donna didn't sleep that night. She tossed and turned, hot and restless, even though the window was open and cold air was blowing in from the sea. At least ten times she sat up and started to get dressed, planning to go downstairs, take the Land Rover--she'd left the keys on the hall table--and drive back to check on Josh. Each time she stopped, undressed and lay down again. She couldn't do that to him. He hadn't wanted her to see where he was living; she was pretty sure he'd find that more humiliating than anything else that had happened that night. He'd be all right, she told herself. That couldn't have been the first time he'd heard things like that; the television and the papers had said all that and worse, over and over again, two years ago. He'd probably heard it in person quite a few times too. He'd made it this far; he'd get through it again. Then she remembered that he hadn't got his dinner, and wondered if he was hungry. The thought destroyed her: she curled up into a ball and sobbed like a little girl.

Crying that hard helped. When she'd finally sobbed herself out, she lay for a while listening to the wind in the trees outside and the gentle patter of rain beginning to fall. It sounded cool and peaceful, and strangely comforting. Just before the sun rose, she finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When Donna woke up the next morning, her room was freezing. The curtains were blowing in, billowing away from the window and flapping like flags on a flagpole, or badly-trimmed sails. She got up to shut the window, and found a puddle of water underneath it; the rain was blowing in. Going to get a towel from the bathroom, she could hear it drumming on the shingles overhead. She wondered what Josh did on rainy days; she hoped he drove into town and had coffee somewhere, and went to the library or the bookstore when it opened. The thought of him spending all day watching the flickering t.v. in that awful room was unbearable.

She got into a hot shower and washed her hair, then put on the jeans she had worn on the boat yesterday and a couple of thick sweaters. The temperature amazed her; Washington was always stultifying in August, and Wisconsin summers were usually hot too, though the nights cooled down more than they ever did in D.C. This felt like a bad day in November.

When she went downstairs Karena and Marie were already up, curled under afghans and drinking coffee in front of the fire in the family room off the kitchen. They jumped up when Donna came in, giving her the feeling that they had been talking about her, and pulled up another big, overstuffed chair close to the fire. Karena went into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a fresh pot of coffee and some warm rolls. Donna could hear Rosa moving around behind them, singing quietly to herself in Spanish.

The girls were mercifully tactful, not asking anything about why Josh had left the party, or whether Donna had found him last night. They spent what was left of the morning watching videos. Karena wanted "Love, Actually," and Marie was in the mood for "Pride and Prejudice." Donna didn't care; she wasn't paying much attention. In the end they switched between them, fast forwarding to the best scenes and leaving out the rest--ten minutes of "L,A," then another ten of "P&P," back and forth. When they used up all the good bits in both movies, they started arguing about whether to do the same thing with "When Harry met Sally" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral," but decided that there were too many essential scenes in both movies for it to work, so they said they'd put "Harry" on and watch straight through. Donna couldn't stand it anymore, and asked Karena if she would mind driving her into town first. The coffeeshops would be open, the library and the bookstore; she was desperate to see if she could find Josh.

Karena dropped her off with an umbrella and a raincoat in front of Starbucks, and said to call her whenever she wanted a ride back; they both had their cells. Donna tramped miserably up and down Main Street, checking all the places she thought Josh might be. He wasn't in any of them. She was just going to give up and call Karena when it occurred to her to look in the parking lot at the top of the street, where he had parked the other day. Sure enough, the Civic was there. She made her way down the street to the harbor and walked along the wharf to the far end. The slip was empty. The Mary B. was out at sea.

Donna went back to the Salty Dog, and waited in line to get a table--it was late for lunch, but there always seemed to be a line there. She'd already checked the place twice to see if Josh was there, but she'd managed to avoid Betty; their conversation last night had left her feeling embarrassed and awkward, ashamed of herself for letting Josh spend so much money on her, and ashamed that Betty knew it and had had to set her straight. Another server took her to a table by the window, on the wharf side. She ordered soup and more coffee, and sat watching the waves crashing against the pilings, and the rain slashing down.

* * *

She was still sitting there five hours later. Her last cup of coffee had gone cold; she thought she'd be sick if she drank any more. She'd ordered dinner, but it had sat congealing on her plate, untouched; she knew she'd be sick if she tried to eat it. She'd watched the waves and the rain all afternoon. She'd watched the boats come in, one by one, and tired, cold-looking men in oilskins and sou'westers unload them and clean them and leave for home. All the boats except one; the Mary B. was still out at sea.

Betty came over and put something down in front of her. Donna tore her eyes away from the window and looked up, blinking. "Best drink that," Betty said. "Better for you than coffee." It was a cup of tea, the teabag in it already, and the water actually hot. Betty had put milk and sugar in, too. Donna picked it up and sipped it tentatively. It was surprisingly good.

"They'll be along," Betty said, though her eyes looked a little watery. "The Mary B.'s a good boat, and Dad's the best there is out there. He'd radio in if there was any problem. They'll just be running late, with the weather and all."

"They were fishing?" Donna asked, poking with her finger at the teabag she'd dropped on her saucer. "Really fishing, not just with tourists?"

"Ayah." It was the first time Donna had heard Betty use that old Maine word for "yes." "Trawling, not rods, in this."

"Does your father go out in this kind of weather often?"

"Ayah, sure. This is nothing much; it takes a hurricane to keep him back. There's fish to be had, and we need money to pay the bills and put food on the table."

Donna poked at the teabag viciously with her nail, and popped it. Wet tea-leaves gushed out, making a mess in her saucer. She picked up the cup and cradled it in both hands, hoping the warmth would seep into her. She felt so cold.

"You let Joey go?"

Betty's mouth twisted, and her eyes went wet. "What else can I do?" she said quietly. "He's almost a man, and that's what men do here. What else is there to do?"

"Does Josh go out in weather like this often?"

Betty smiled a bit then. "Every time, hon. Every time."

15--

The Mary B. pulled in an hour later. "That's her," Betty said, a minute before Donna could see the lights coming across the harbor. "I'll go tell the kitchen to start their dinners; they'll be cold and hungry."

Donna wrapped herself in her raincoat and ran outside. She was waiting on the wharf when Josh climbed stiffly off the boat. His eyes went wide when he saw her.

"Come on," she said, "your cheeseburger platter's waiting. Betty told them to burn it to a crisp."

She was glad it was still raining so he couldn't see the tears running down her face. She didn't know what was the matter with her; she never used to cry like this, and now it seemed like she was crying all the time.

* * *

"Just a touch of engine trouble," Sid said, digging into his enormous plate of fish and chips.

"Why didn't you radio in?" Betty demanded, slapping the ketchup down on the table. "Mom's been that worried. She's on her way over now." She seemed to feel entitled to be cross, now that she knew they were all safe.

"Out," Sid said, succinctly. "Got to get a new one; this one's shot."

"I helped Gramps fix the engine," Joey announced proudly. "Not just holding the flashlight; he let me take out some of the parts, and put them in again."

"What did Josh do?" Donna asked. She was watching him pile into an enormous triple-pattied cheeseburger and a mountain of fries, and was comforted to see that the platter also included healthy mounds of green peas and carrots. It seemed like more food than she'd noticed at any of their earlier meals here; she suspected that the cook had doubled the portions tonight. It was a small town; everyone knew each other, and Sid and Joe were popular, as was Betty.

"Threw up," Joe said, gleefully. "About a million times."

"Mind your manners, Joe," Sid told him, looking stern. "Josh did a fine job holding the helm while we worked on the engine. You can't just let her swing around," he explained to Donna. "You've got to keep steering. It isn't easy, when the boat's being tossed around and there's no power to keep her going forward."

Josh just grinned. He was too busy eating to say anything. He finished the cheeseburger, and started in on the peas and carrots. Donna sat back and beamed, feeling happier than she could remember ever being any time at all.

* * *

They finished the meal with huge portions of chocolate cake drowning in a thick hot chocolate sauce, that someone had named "Death by Chocolate" on the menu. Donna had a piece too, and more coffee; her stomach had definitely settled down. She sat tapping her foot in time to the music: "Everybody's got a hungry heart; everybody's got a hungry heart." Sid and Betty were talking with Mary, who had joined them. Joe was falling asleep in the corner of the booth. Josh was drinking his coffee quietly, but his eyes never left Donna's face.

The song finished, and the next one came on. The familiar, pounding rhythm filled the room: "I get up in the evening,/ And I ain't got nothing to say./ I get home in the morning,/ Go to bed feeling the same way./ I ain't nothing but tired ..." Her whole body was already starting to move in time to the music; it was impossible to sit still during that song. Josh's eyes caught hers. He stood up wordlessly and held out his hand; she took it, and he helped her up. They made their way through the tables to the clear space in the middle that served the Salty Dog for a dance floor, moving in perfect step with each other and with the music as they went.

When they got to the floor he pulled her round in front of him and took her other hand. "Baby I could use just a little help./ Can't start a fire, can't start a fire without a spark." His eyes had gone very dark, and never left hers. "This gun's for hire,/ Even if we're just dancing in the dark./ Can't start a fire ..." They were both moving fast, letting go. He pulled her a closer for a moment, then stepped away, lifted his hand and twisted till she spun around, letting go with the other and then finding her hand again and pulling her back. "Message keeps getting clearer, radio's on and I'm moving round the place." He seemed to know what Donna wanted, and she knew what he was going to do before he did it, twisting her in and out without a misstep. "Wanna change my clothes my hair my face ..." Donna tossed her hair wildly, letting it swing. He pulled her across him, passed her to his other hand, and pulled her back, letting her spin again. The music pounded on.

Suddenly Josh stepped in closer to her, lifting one of her hands to his shoulder and dropping his own to her waist. She slipped her other hand out of his and wrapped it around his neck, and he dropped his other hand to her waist too. His breathing was quick and shallow as he turned them both in time to the music: "I'll shake this world off my shoulders/ Come on, baby, this laugh's on me./ Can't start a fire,/ Can't start a fire without a spark ..." There wasn't much question about the spark, Donna thought, or the fire, either. He slid his hands down to her hips, pulling her even closer. She could feel him burning into her, and her whole body burning in response. "They say you got to stay hungry,/ Hey baby I'm just about starving tonight. /Can't start a fire ..."

They danced that way, body to body, through that song and the next one, which was slower. Then someone changed the CD, and some kind of techno rock started to blare through the room. Josh simply turned them and headed for the door, slipping his arm around Donna's waist as they went.

They walked quietly down the wooden steps and along the sidewalk towards the wharf. The rain had stopped while they were eating. Clouds were racing across the sky, but a moon had risen, flooding the water with shimmering light. The boats were moving restlessly on their moorings, the rigging on the ones that had it clanging and ringing against their masts. The wind was cold off the water; Donna shivered, and Josh tightened his arm around her. He led her right along the wharf to the far end, where Sid's boat was tied up. For a crazy moment Donna thought he was going to take them onto it, but he stopped and drew her round in front of him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close. She looped her arms around his waist and dropped her head against his neck; he rested his face against her hair. They stood that way for a long minute, their hips touching, swaying gently against each other while the waves splashed against the pilings, the wind rang in the rigging, and clouds danced across the moon, breaking up the light.

"Donna," Josh said at last, thickly, touching her cheek. She started to lift her face to his.

"Donna," another voice said from behind them. "Donna, Donna, Donna. You don't really want to do that, do you?"

They both jumped, and turned around. Cliff Calley was standing ten feet away from them, a smile on his face and a gun in his hand.

16--

"Step away from her, Lyman," Cliff said, waving the gun. "And take your shirt off."

Donna and Josh both stared at him.

"I said, MOVE, Lyman!" His voice rose suddenly. Josh took a step away from her. Cliff waved the gun again. "Farther, Lyman, farther!" Josh took another step, then another. "Now you, Donna," Cliff said, pointing the gun at her. "Step over. Right over--one, two. Okay, not too far, stop--I want you where I can keep an eye on you." Donna moved when he told her to, then stood still, several paces from Josh. She was surprised she had understood what Cliff wanted; his voice seemed to be coming from a long way away, and she felt as if she were hearing it through water. Gradually she became aware that she was shaking; she pressed her hands flat against her legs so he wouldn't see.

"I SAID, take your SHIRT OFF, Lyman!" Cliff swung the gun back towards Josh, who had frozen when it was pointed at Donna. "NOW!" Josh pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop to the ground. Cliff walked forward, closing the distance between them. His eyes shifted back and forth between Josh and Donna, but he kept the gun leveled at Josh. It trembled a little in his hand. When he was a close enough, he pushed the gun into Josh's chest, hard. Josh jerked, and took a step back. "Don't move, Lyman," Cliff said. "Whatever you do, don't move."

The bitter taste rose in Josh's mouth, and lights seemed to flash around the edges of his vision, but he forced himself to breathe evenly, and to stay focused on Cliff's face. It took all the self-control he possessed.

"Scared, aren't you?" Cliff said softly. "Not so great now, are you? Not the invincible Josh Lyman now. Look at you, you're sweating like a pig. Going to have a little panic attack, aren't you? Don't worry, Donna will look after you--after I put another bullet or two into you. DON'T MOVE!" he shouted, swinging the gun to his right. Donna, who had taken a step towards Josh without even knowing it, froze. The gun moved back towards Josh.

"It was there, wasn't it?" Cliff said, pointing with the gun at the left side of Josh's chest. "It went in there"--he waved the gun down and to the side--"and they cut you open here, and here"--and he pushed the muzzle of the gun into the surgical scar and dragged it down and across. Josh flinched as the sight on the end of the barrel caught his skin and tore a long gouge along the line of the scar. Donna gasped. "Just like I'm doing," Cliff said, smiling a little. "Just like I'm doing." Blood started to trickle down Josh's chest. The flashing lights were taking over more of his field of vision, and his ears were ringing with a high, shrill sound, like sirens.

"Everyone loved you then, didn't they?" Cliff went on, pulling the gun back a little. "You were such a fucking hero, and you didn't do a god-damned fucking thing. You were late, that's all. You left the meeting late, and you got shot, and everyone loved you because of it, because you almost died. The whole world loved you then. She loved you. It made her love you, damn your pretty face and your everlasting eyes." And he whipped the gun up and dragged the muzzle down the side of Josh's face, tearing it open with the sight. Josh jerked his head back and sucked in his breath at the stinging pain, then wondered if that had been his chance to grab Cliff's hand. It had happened too fast for him to react, and now the gun was trained at his chest again. He could hear Donna sob quietly just a few feet away from him. Donna, he thought; you have to keep him from hurting Donna. The flashing lights moved back a little from the center of his vision, and the sound in his ears dimmed.

Josh took a deep breath, and found his voice. "You don't have to do this, Calley," he said. "You've already won. You won when I went to jail. My career's over; I'll never work in Washington again; you brought me down. You can walk away from this and be proud of yourself." Josh tried hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice there, and almost succeeded.

Cliff smiled. "Yes, I did, didn't I? How did you like it, Lyman? What was jail like? Tell me about it. What was your favorite part? The strip searches? The food? The clothes? Scrubbing toilets? Yes, I know what you had to do; it wasn't hard to find out. I heard the beds were pretty bad, and you had to do a lot of dirty work outside. But I'll bet it was taking orders you really didn't like. Not from the President of the United States or his Chief of Staff; from guards with IQ's around 100, and SAT scores of zero because they never took them, they didn't even graduate from high school. That would really have killed you, wouldn't it, Mr. God-Almighty-King-of-the-world-Josh-Lyman.

"Calley," Josh said quietly, but Cliff went right on talking.

"That was good," he said. "That was very good. I really enjoyed those fourteen months. But I didn't do it right; it wasn't enough. I thought she'd hate you then. I thought she'd stop thinking about you and look at me.

"I went out with her again, did you know that? While you were off campaigning. Took her out, bought her drinks and dinner. Expensive ones, at a really nice place, cost me quite a bit. She wouldn't go to bed with me, though. You were working on that two-bit campaign and I was Deputy Chief of Staff, I had your office and everything, it should have been perfect, but she wouldn't sleep with me again. That was when I knew I had to do something, to make her forget about you and want to be with me. But it didn't work out the way I'd planned. I phoned her and I phoned her while you were in jail, but she wouldn't go out with me again. She was still thinking about you, of course. So I knew I had to do something more, something to stop her from ever wanting to be with you again."

"You've got it all wrong, Calley," Josh said through clenched teeth. "It was you she wanted, not me. I don't know what the hell you did to deserve it, but you got what I never did. You beat me there too."

Cliff laughed. "What a liar you are, Lyman. Lie-man, that's what they call you now, isn't it? I might have set you up, but I was only letting people see what you already were. So high and mighty, you Democrats, always looking down your noses at the rest of us, always acting so morally superior, when you can't even join a church or enlist in the forces, when you're getting your dick into your lovely little sexpot of a secretary all the time while you're supposed to be looking after the business of your country."

Josh literally saw red. "Watch your foul little mouth, Calley, or--"

"Or what, Lyman? You'll go for me?" He laughed, and poked the gun into Josh's chest again. "Think you could get to me before I blew your heart out? Or your brains," and he jerked the gun up and ground it between Josh's eyes. "Those so superior brains, that everyone thought were so unbeatable, so unmatchable. Nobody could be as good as you. Bartlet, McGarry, Cregg--they were willing to use me, take what I could do for them and make me look like shit to my own party, but they let me know every day in a thousand ways that I was never going to be to them what you were, I was never going to be as good as you. 'Ask Josh Lyman about that,' he imitated. 'What Josh Lyman would do is; oh, that was well done, almost like something Josh Lyman would do.' You don't know what it was like, sitting at that desk in that office every day, knowing no matter what I did I was never going to be good enough for them, just because I wasn't you. Just like I wasn't good enough for her, because I wasn't you."

Donna had choked back her tears minutes ago and had been trying desperately to think of something she could say or do to get his attention away from Josh. "Cliff," she said now, her voice a little too high. "No, Cliff. It wasn't like that. I didn't think that."

Cliff looked at her and gave what sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sob, but he let the gun drop away from Josh's face, though he didn't stop pointing it at him. Josh started to breathe again. His face was dripping with sweat and blood now, but he didn't dare lift a hand to wipe it away.

"I know what you thought, Donna," Cliff said, in a choked tone. "I know what you wanted. I know all about you. I read your diary, remember? I'm not a fool; I can read between the lines. And he was such an idiot he didn't know, did he? But he must have known after he read it, and then he'd have had you. He had you whenever he wanted you, didn't he? But I couldn't. I couldn't have you again at all, not even when I had his title and his office. I used to sit at that desk and wonder how many times you'd done it there, on that desk, in that chair, up against that door--"

"I didn't read it," Josh ground out, and "No, Cliff, no," Donna said at the same time, "We didn't do that. We never did that." But Cliff just kept talking.

"What was it, Donna? What did he have that I didn't? Just longer legs. Was that what mattered to you? You thought he was so special, so smart--the most brilliant man you'd ever met, you wrote that, I remember." Even through her terror, Donna could feel the heat rise in her cheeks. "But he's not as smart as you thought, Donna. He's not that smart at all. I outsmarted him all the way."

Donna took a deep, steadying breath. "How did you do that, Cliff?" she asked. She had more control of her voice now, and tried to make it sound warm and interested. "That's quite impressive. Tell me how you did that."

"It was easy. So easy. After we went out that time, after you said you didn't want to sleep with me again, I knew I had to do something to get him out of the way, and in the end it was so easy. I had to wait, of course; I didn't get an opportunity right away. I was even getting worried; Santos was running such a clean campaign, I didn't think I'd ever get my chance. But then I went digging for something in my desk drawer one day, and at the back I found just what I needed." He stopped and smiled at Donna, almost as if he was expecting her to congratulate him. She swallowed back the bile that was rising in her throat, and gave him the warmest smile she could manage. It wouldn't have fooled Josh, but it seemed to please Cliff.

"What was that, Cliff?"

"The bottle, of course. One of his pill bottles. He wasn't very tidy, was he? Or very careful when he cleaned out his desk--I'll bet you've kicked yourself for that a few times," he said to Josh. He'd been looking back and forth between the two of them while he'd been talking, keeping the gun leveled at Josh and his finger on the trigger. In spite of that, Josh actually laughed. "I'll say," he said.

"When I saw it, I knew what I could do. I suppose any bottle would have done, but I might not have thought of it if the one I found hadn't been half full of antidepressants. I suppose they gave them to you when you cracked up?" he said to Josh. Josh set his mouth and jerked his chin in what could pass for a nod. The medications had been the part of the PTSD diagnosis that he'd hated the most. He'd gone off them as soon as possible, when things had settled down. He thought they took the edge off his thinking and slowed him down. His doctors thought it was just stubborn pride. Whichever was true, he hadn't noticed the missing bottle of pills because he hadn't been taking them for quite a while.

"At first I thought I'd use it to show you up as a nutcase. But nobody would care about a campaign manager and his medications. If you'd made it back to the White House and Santos had made you Chief of Staff, that might have been another story, but I wasn't willing to wait that long, or let you get that far. And just embarrassing you wasn't enough. I wanted that too, of course, and later I made sure everyone knew everything I could put out there about you, that I remembered, that Donna had written, but I wanted to do more. Too many people knew about your PTSD already, and of course Donna knew, and I knew she knew. It had to be something she didn't know about, something that would make it so she wouldn't love you anymore.

"Then I remembered that Baker's wife was supposed to need the things too. That story had been circulating for quite a while, but the public didn't know it. I called a reporter I know, and suggested he might want to pick it up. He did. It was so easy," Cliff said, sounding almost surprised by how easy it had been.

"And what did you do then, Cliff?" Donna asked. It was taking everything she had not to scream, "You bastard!" at him, but the sight of the gun aimed at Josh's chest was all she needed to help her keep herself reined in.

"I got ready. It was a thing, of course; I knew the story about Baker's wife would be a thing." In an odd corner of her mind, Donna noticed that Cliff had picked up the Bartlet team's use of "thing." "Coming then, just before the convention, with Hoynes out and Russell and Santos and Baker all so close in a three-way split. The press couldn't resist it. And of course it took him out. Not that I cared whether Baker stayed or went. It was you I was after, Lyman; it was you I was after.

"I told my source I'd got the story from you, told him you'd been digging around, looking for dirt on anyone you could get it on, and had fed that to me, so it wouldn't seem to come from you. My guy's not the brightest, but he trusts me, so the story hit the papers the next day, just the way I wanted it to. It spread faster and got even bigger than I was expecting; it seemed a lot of people hadn't liked the idea of Democrats making capital out of a woman's breakdown, when all she'd done was have the bad luck to be depressed, and to have married a guy who wanted to be President of the United States. It was odd that Santos hadn't used the story, of course, if his campaign manager had dug it up, but Russell had; everyone started to say that that must have been Lyman's plan: keep the story away from his candidate but feed it to the one he knew would use it, get Bingo Bob to do the dirty work for him. Typical Lyman thinking, they said; a sure sign of his genius at work, his brilliant political mind." Cliff paused, his face twisting with envy. "God, even then you were winning praise."

"Hardly," Josh said, wryly. "They were calling me a bottom-feeder, political pond scum. It wasn't my idea, anyway; it was yours. The praise can be all yours."

"That's true," Cliff said, perking up. "That's true. But it was what I did next that was really good," he added, looking at Donna, as if hoping for her approbation.

"What was that, Cliff?" she said, trying to sound as if he had it.

"I got my reporter to write that column calling for the Elections Oversight Committee to investigate. Just think, Lyman, the committee you were so keen to have Congress set up, thinking you were going to use it to keep an eye on us Republicans and those voting-fraud issues you were always screaming about, and it turned and bit you instead."

Josh had thought about that pretty frequently, but it didn't seem like a good idea to say what the thoughts had been right now. He nodded instead. If making Calley feel he'd humbled him would pacify the man at all, Josh was all for it.

"And then--this was the really good part--I suggested he call on Lyman to make a sworn statement, denying the charges, and if he wouldn't, that Santos should drop out of the race. You took the bait, of course."

"Of course."

"And then I had you. I had the notes ready, the bottle with your prints--I'd paid Ben Jacoby go through the Bakers' trash and get one of hers. He was happy to do it; he couldn't stand you, you're such an arrogant prick. It was easy enough to steam the labels off and make the switch."

"The notes," Donna said. "The notes from Josh to Jacoby, telling him to what to do. How did you do them?" She'd seen what Cliff must have done with the bottle after he'd mentioned finding Josh's, but she'd never been able to understand how there could have been notes.

He smiled, looking very happy. "Oh, that's a special talent of mine. I've always been able to copy handwriting; I'm really very good at it. Not many people can do it well--Leo's Margaret isn't bad, but I'm better. A lot better. I had files and files full of stuff with Lyman's writing on it, right there in my office. I just had to practice a bit."

"But surely a handwriting analysis would have given you away. The police; there are specialists; they can tell anything."

Cliff frowned, and tightened his grip on the gun again. Donna caught her breath and wished she hadn't said that.

"Maybe," he said, relaxing a little. "I doubt it, but maybe. It didn't really matter. Lyman's lawyers would have had to ask them to, you see."

Donna turned and stared at Josh. "They didn't?" she said in disbelief. "Why on earth didn't you--?"

Josh's face twisted. He looked at the ground, suddenly very interested in the condition of his shoes. They were very worn gym shoes, and the toe on one of them was starting to come off; he'd have to try to get a new pair, if ... He scuffed it back and forth on the planking, as if he wanted to make it come off sooner.

"Why do you think, Donna?" Cliff said, laughing. It was the eeriest sound Donna had ever heard.

She stared at him, then at Josh, then at Cliff again.

"Those files are full of notes in your handwriting too, you know," Cliff said, conversationally, as if he was telling her what the weather was going to be like, or how much bathtowels were going for at Wal-Mart that week. "And there was a little matter of a diary a few years ago. I assume you got rid of it, but it wouldn't be too hard to find other people who knew about it; you had a roommate, didn't you? Those pages he took wouldn't have helped you; I'd have gotten a censure for not recusing myself when you were testifying, and I'd have had to leave the White House, but I didn't care about that any more. Reading nasty stories about yourself in the papers is no fun, but doing time for perjury is a lot worse. Just ask your boyfriend there. He's very protective of you, you know."

17--

Donna's head swirled. The world was breaking apart and coming to an end. The world had broken apart and come to an end eighteen months ago, and she had somehow pushed the button, and hadn't even known. She didn't know how to know it now; her mind didn't seem to want to absorb what she was hearing, even though she understood exactly what Cliff was saying, what Josh had done.

But Cliff didn't give her time to take it in. He went on talking, addressing his words to Josh.

"That was an interesting little talk we had that day, wasn't it, Lyman? I meant what I said--I didn't want to hurt Donna. All I wanted was to bring you down, so I wouldn't have to hear about how fucking marvellous you were all the time from your friends at the White House, and so she'd love me. I'd only have hurt her if you made me, if you were going to show me up. I knew you wouldn't let that happen. And I was right.

"I lost track of you for a while after you got out, but it wasn't hard to find you when I wanted to. A phone call to a friend in the FBI, a little chat with the parole board, and I'd got you pinned right down. I called Donna last week again, and when her assistant said she'd gone to Maine for a week, I knew what I had to do."

Her assistant was new. She'd have to train her better, Donna thought, then wondered at herself for thinking about that when Cliff Calley had gone crazy and was standing in front of Josh with a gun.

"So I came up. I've been here all week. I've been watching you, Donna, and I've been watching him, and tonight, when I saw you dancing in that place back there, I knew it was time. Of course I'd brought my friend here. You'd like to ban these, wouldn't you, Lyman? But fortunately my people run the show now. These won't be going anywhere for a while. But you will. You will."

He stepped back a pace, and studied Josh's chest for a minute, smiling. "It was here, wasn't it?" he said, for the second time, and put the opening of the muzzle directly over the small, puckered scar on the lower left side of Josh's chest. The sirens started to scream in Josh's ears again, and the flashing lights to close in. It was hard to breathe; the oxygen didn't seem to be getting to his brain. "Right here. What do you think, Lyman? Shall I pull the trigger now? You might survive it. You might survive it again. But help probably won't come so fast this time, and you'll bleed to death right here on this dock, on that pile of stinking fishnets behind you. It'll probably be slow; you were conscious for quite a long time after, the last time, weren't you? I hope it'll be slow. And while you're dying you can think of me with her, 'cause that's where I'll be. She won't say no to me this time, will you, Donna darling? She won't say no, not when you're really gone, and not when I've got this." And he jammed the gun a little harder into Josh's side, just to make sure they both knew what "this" was.

"Or should I do it here?" he said, moving the gun down and thrusting it into Josh's stomach. "Or here?" And he grinned and jabbed it another six inches down. Josh thought he was going to pass out.

Donna had never felt so cold or so frightened. She was shaking so hard she thought Cliff had to be able to see it, so hard that he wouldn't be able to understand anything she said. And yet part of her mind seemed to be very steady, clear and focused, and when she spoke, her voice sounded that way too.

"Cliff," she said. He didn't hear her at first.

"I don't want blood on my clothes, though," he was saying thoughtfully. "If I'm going out with Donna, I can't have blood all over my clothes, can I? I like this shirt." And he started backing up. For a wild moment Donna thought he was going to leave them, but he kept the gun trained on Josh.

"I can do it from here," he said, when he was five or six paces back. Donna was closer to Josh now than Cliff was to either of them, which made her feel just a little bit safer, even though with the gun in Cliff's hand she knew the distance didn't really matter. He was still close enough to have no trouble hitting his target, even if he wasn't a very good shot.

"I can do it from here," he said again. "That would be better; it won't kill you as quickly. I want it to be slow."

"Cliff," Donna said again, firmly. "It can be better than that."

Cliff turned his head and looked at her, startled.

"It wouldn't be any good that way," she said, trying to sound as if Cliff having a good time was all she really cared about. "It wouldn't be like the last time, not at all." She thought she'd choke on the words, but she forced herself to say them. "I can make it good for you, but not if it's like that."

"What are you saying, Donna?"

"I'll sleep with you again. I'll do it willingly. And I'll make it really good for you. You know I know how to make it really good for you." They were the most disgusting words she'd ever said, and she said them without any hesitation at all.

"But I can't do it with a gun in my side, and I can't do it if I'm thinking about Josh lying here bleeding to death. We're not lovers, Cliff; Josh and I have never been lovers; but we are good friends. I love him as a friend. That's all we've ever been; you read my diary wrong. But because he's my friend, I do care when he's hurt, and I wouldn't be able to make love to you if I have to do it knowing he's lying here hurt. Knowing you've hurt him. Don't do that, Cliff. Don't do that to" and she did hesitate now, but again the cool, calm part of her mind told her what to say, and she made herself say it, "us."

He was staring at her. The hand with the gun was still pointing at Josh, but his attention was on Donna. She kept talking.

"To us, Cliff. To you and me. We had such a good time together, those nights; we could have such a good time again. As many times as you like. I didn't mean I never wanted to sleep with you again, Cliff; I didn't mean that at all. I just couldn't right then. Things were happening in my job, I was busy, I was worried about things. I didn't go out with anybody, Cliff; I didn't want to sleep with anybody then. But if I had wanted to do it with anyone, it would have been you. And I want to now.

"Think about it; think about what we could do together. Remember what it was like when we kissed, Cliff. Remember what it was like when I touched you. When you touched me. Where would you like to do it, Cliff? I'll do it wherever you want. We could go to the beach, or to a nice hotel. We could do it right now, right here, if you want to. Just put the gun down and tell Josh to go away. I don't want an audience; I want to do it just for you."

Josh felt dizzy, and thought he was actually going to throw up. He knew what Donna had to be doing, but he'd never listened to anything that made him feel so sick, not even Cliff talking about him bleeding to death slowly on the dock, not even his own voice saying, "Nolo contendere." But he could see Cliff's attention wavering, and his grip on the gun loosening a little. He took a deep breath to clear his head, and tensed every muscle in his body, waiting.

Cliff stared at Donna, his eyes full of longing and lust and madness, and also something so like a hurt little boy being offered a hug when his mother had been angry that Donna's heart actually twisted a little in her chest. Then realization dawned, and his face crumpled.

"You beautiful bitch," he sobbed, and swung the gun round.

There was a noise and something hit her and she felt herself falling. And then everything exploded in pain.

18--

Her head hurt, and she couldn't breathe properly. Something heavy was pressing down on her chest, and she couldn't breathe. She wondered if she was in the hospital after having her lung punctured again; it felt a little like that, but different, too. There wasn't any pain in her chest, just in her head, and this heavy feeling of a weight on her chest. Or maybe she'd had a heart attack; she remembered hearing once that that was what it felt like, as if something big and heavy had fallen on your chest; but surely your chest would hurt then too. But Josh had told her once, when he'd had too much to drink, that that was what it had felt like right after he was shot--just a heavy feeling pressing down on his chest, keeping him from breathing; the pain had come later. She supposed it had come later when her lung had deflated, too; she just hadn't been conscious for the first part, and remembered it with the pain, though there had been a lot of drugs then too, numbing things quite a bit, though not enough. So maybe it had just happened and it hadn't started to hurt yet, or maybe it had happened quite a while ago and she was in the hospital and they were using even stronger drugs, or more of them. Or maybe ...

She opened her eyes, and saw darkness and a bright light, overhead. It didn't look like a hospital ceiling or a hospital light. The thing she was lying on didn't feel like a hospital bed. The air didn't feel like hospital air; it was cold and fresh, moving against her cheek like a breeze. It didn't smell like hospital air, either; it smelled salty and fishy and wet, and there was a warm, thick smell mixed with it that she knew she recognized, but couldn't quite identify right now. Something seemed to be splashing nearby, a wet, rhythmic sound that was oddly comforting, and made her think of babies being rocked and sung to sleep.

There was something wet on her chest, too, warm and wet, all over, as well as the weight. She hadn't noticed it before. She reached to touch it. Her hand met something that felt like skin, cool and smooth, and then the warm wet stuff, which was sticky, she realized. It was strange that she could feel her skin under her hand, but she couldn't feel her hand on her skin; and yet she could feel the warm wet stuff on her skin. Her sense of distance was all off, too--her hand seemed to be moving inches higher than her mind was telling her it should be--and her chest felt oddly hard and flat.

Someone groaned. It didn't sound like her, but it had to be. She must be hurt. How had she been hurt?

Suddenly her mind focused, and she remembered the wharf, and Josh, and Cliff, and the gun. The gun pointing at Josh, raking down his face, jammed into his chest right where the old bullet had gone in. Cliff saying he was going to shoot Josh again and leave him to die.

She struggled to sit up. The weight slid down her chest until it was resting across her lap. Someone groaned again.

"Omygodomygodomygodomygod. Nonononononono," Donna heard herself saying. It didn't sound like her voice, but she was pretty sure it was coming out of her mouth. She could see where she was now, sitting in a puddle of cold lamplight on the wharf. A man was lying face down over her lap, his back bare and dripping with that wet, sticky stuff that she realized must be blood. She reached down to touch the man's head, and her fingers met more sticky blood in his hair. "Josh," she gasped. "Joshjoshjoshjoshjoshjoshjosh."

He groaned again, and stirred a little on her lap.

"Oh my God no, Josh. No. No. No." She tried to turn him over. There was blood all over his face and more on his chest, smeared from where he had been lying across her, but still trickling down from--oh God, oh God, oh God. She pressed her hand against his chest, trying to feel his heart beat. At first she couldn't, and the panic rose in her throat, choking her. Then she felt it, very quick and light. Too quick, surely, and too light.

She couldn't leave him. She had to leave him. She had to get help. But how could she go and leave him there? What if--

Help came, even while she was asking the question. A thud of feet crossing the dock. Voices. Exclamations of surprise, shock, horror. Feet running; more voices, new voices. Hands on her shoulders, touching her head and her chest; hands on Josh, trying to lift him off her lap.

"No," she said, clinging to him. "No. No."

"It's all right," said a voice. "It's all right. We'll get that bleeding stopped, and he'll be all right. But I've got to shift him into a better position if I'm going to work on him, you know."

She looked up, and decided maybe she was in a hospital and on drugs after all, because she was obviously hallucinating now.

The silver-haired man who was bending over Josh, probing his shoulder with gentle, experienced-looking fingers and speaking to her in that reassuring voice was Arnold Vinick, the President of the United States.

19--

He wasn't, of course. Donna could see that, a few minutes later, as she knelt beside Josh on the wharf, wiping his face and pressing a thick wad of gauze against the wound below his shoulder the way the man had told her to, when she wouldn't get out of the way. He was rummaging in his black bag and speaking into his cell phone, lifting his mouth away from it every now and again to say something to one of the other people who seemed to be milling all around them. His voice was calm, but insistent; he was telling the person in the phone he didn't care what was happening with the Bruins and Canadiens, the man needed to get the ambulance down to the wharf now. He sounded as if he was used to taking charge. He was older than the President--in his eighties, she thought, though he moved and spoke like a much younger man. But the resemblance was uncanny; even the voice sounded the same.

Josh groaned again, and opened his eyes, blinking. It was a minute before he could focus. When he did, he saw Donna's face bending over him.

"Josh," she said. "Oh, Josh. Are you okay?"

He swallowed, trying to get enough moisture in his mouth to speak. His head was pounding, he felt dizzy, and his shoulder seemed to be burning and throbbing in a way he didn't like at all. Donna's face was going in and out of focus. Then he noticed something and lifted his head, struggling to sit up. The pain hit him and he gasped, but didn't stop trying to sit.

"Josh, what are you doing? Stop that. Lie down. You have to stay lying down." She pushed him back down, slipping a hand under his head so he wouldn't bang it on the dock. She seemed to be pressing her other hand hard against his shoulder, sending stabs of burning pain through it, but he didn't care about that right now.

"I--you--" It was hard to speak when he was so dizzy, but he forced the words out. "You're--hurt. Got to--get--help--" He stopped, his chest heaving, panting for air.

"No, Josh, no. I'm all right. I'm fine."

"Bleeding," he said, panting hard.

"Just my head a little; it's stopped now. I'm fine, really, Josh. It's you--"

"Your--chest--" he got out, and moved his right arm, trying to use it to push himself up again. The left one didn't seem to want to do what he was telling it to.

Donna glanced down at her shirt, and realized what the problem was.

"I'm okay," she said softly, pushing him down again. "Really. You were lying on me, and you were bleeding ..." Her voice wobbled, and she pressed down on his shoulder more firmly with the gauze. It was soaked already, the blood oozing out of it onto her hand; was this really doing any good? She glanced at the doctor, who was still getting things out of his bag and giving orders into his phone. He was watching, though, and handed her another pad that she slipped on top of the first one, pressing down.

"Really?" Josh asked, his voice weakening and his face twisting with the pain.

"Really, sweetheart," she said, not even hearing the endearment, she was trying so hard not to sound as if she was lying. How anyone could think she could be okay when Josh was hurt and bleeding she didn't know, but she had to try to convince him, so he would lie still.

"Tha's okay then," he murmured, his eyes fluttering and starting to close. "Tha's the main thing." His eyes shut and his mouth went a little slack as he slipped into unconsciousness again.

"Right," the doctor said, clicking his phone off. "I think I've convinced that idiot that if he doesn't get his ass over here this instant, it will be sudden death for him, not just his precious Bruins. The season hasn't even started yet; the moron must be watching reruns on satellite. Let me take another look at that; yes, the bleeding's slowing down. I'll tape it up now, and we'll get him to the hospital. The ambulance is on its way, and the police."

Donna was almost glad that Josh couldn't hear the sirens getting closer, or see the night filling up with whirling blue and white lights.

20--

"Arnie would be a pretty good guy," the doctor said. "if he wasn't a Republican."

He was standing by the window in the spare bedroom of his house, which had a beautiful view over the village and the harbor. Josh was propped up on a lot of pillows on the big bed, looking pale but surprisingly cheerful for someone who'd been shot in the back the day before. The cheerfulness might have had something to do with the fact that, while his left arm was in a sling, his right arm was wrapped around Donna, who was cuddling up beside him.

"It's a pretty amazing resemblance," Josh said, shaking his head and then wincing when it jostled his arm.

"Keep still," Donna scolded him. He made a face at her. The doctor laughed.

"He's my cousin," he said. "Much younger cousin. He did most of his growing up here, before his family moved out to California, so he doesn't have any excuse for abandoning his New England Democrat roots."

"There's never a good excuse for being a Republican," Josh said. The doctor chuckled in agreement.

They were in his home because the bare-bones health plan Josh had been paying into had refused to cover more than six hours of care in hospital for a gun-shot wound that wasn't considered critical. "No organ damage, no overnight," was how the bored-sounding HMO representative on the telephone had explained the policy to Donna, who had shown signs of going ballistic herself on hearing the news. The doctors at the hospital had sewn up the gouges on his chest and face--including the gash on his temple where he'd hit the dock and been knocked out--given him some antibiotics, some painkillers, and a unit or two of blood, and discharged him, with instructions that he should arrange for someone to wake him every two hours because he had a concussion. Donna was given similar instructions, because she also had a concussion, though a milder one--she'd gone down harder, with Josh on top of her, but she'd hit a more resilient place on the back of her head. Dr. Pierce had shouted at the instructing nurse, asking what the hell had happened to health care in this country, but she'd been unmoved. In the end he had simply packed them into his car and driven them back to the village, where he'd insisted on having both of them spend the night in his house, under his care. Josh might have been able to go home the next day, but he was still pretty weak, and the doctor said he was enjoying Josh's company too much to sign the release papers yet. Josh didn't put up as much fuss as Donna would have expected, which meant that he was either feeling worse than he was letting on, or was having too much fun. He and Dr. Pierce were two of a kind, really, she thought: both quick-witted, sarcastic, and passionately liberal, though she thought the doctor must have been a lot wilder in his day. He'd told them some stories about his service in Korea that made Josh blush--not that that was hard to do these days. He seemed to be coloring up every time he looked at her, and he was looking at her most of the time.

A doorbell rang somewhere in the house, and a minute later voices could be heard coming up the stairs. Mrs. Pierce looked in and called her husband out of the room. Joey, Betty and Sid walked in. Betty was smiling, but looked like she'd been crying earlier. Sid's face was unreadable. Joey was wide-eyed with awe.

"You're famous!" he said to Josh. "I saw you on t.v."

Josh's face went very still. "Yeah?" he said, dropping his eyes. He started to play with the edge of the sheet.

"They were playing it over and over, what happened, down on the dock right here. The lighting wasn't the best, and the picture was kind of grainy, but you could still see it was you, and her--" He seemed to have forgotten Donna's name. "And him, that guy, with the gun. They showed the whole thing. You could hear parts of it too, but the sound was kind of iffy. But you could see it pretty well. That was totally awesome, when you jumped in front of the gun and knocked her down."

Josh's eyes went as wide as Joe's, and his face turned red. "Wha--" he stammered.

"You saw all that? On t.v.?" Donna sounded as shocked as Josh looked. "How on earth--?"

"The webcam got it!" Joey was practically bouncing with excitement. "The one the town council put in this year, to show the wharf, and the tide, and the harbor and the boats and everything, so more people will want to come. You can see the Mary B. in the background."

"Someone picked it up off the internet while it was happening, and called the news channel," Betty said, sniffing a little. "Been nice if they'd called the police."

"The local news had it last night, but it's on all the channels today," Joey said proudly. "ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox. They're all saying you're a hero, 'cause you saved her life and everything. They keep playing it in slow motion, and someone's done it on the computer to show how the bullet would have hit her if you hadn't knocked her down. Say," he said suddenly, changing his tone, "what was it like to be shot? They said the bullet went right through you. Did it hurt?"

"A bit," Josh admitted, shifting a little in the bed and easing his left arm into a more comfortable position. "I've felt worse, though."

"Really? What was worse?"

"The last time," Josh said, without thinking.

Joey's eyes went huge. "The last time? You've been shot BEFORE?"

"That was on the t.v. too, Joe," Betty said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. "When you were on the phone, calling your friends to tell them. They said you worked at the White House," she said, looking at Josh. "And knew the President and everyone, and they showed all these pictures from when President Bartlet was shot, and you. I remember when it happened, of course, but I never thought--I never realized it was you."

"I guess they said some other stuff, too," Josh said quietly, fiddling with the bedsheet again.

"It's all right," Sid said calmly, speaking for the first time. "The sound from that webcam wasn't all that clear, but parts of it came through all right. Everyone knows what really happened. They've nothing but good to say about you now."

Josh looked up, his face flooding with emotion. Donna watched him work to get it under control. He managed, but it was a close thing. Sid was watching him too. He walked over to the bed, and put his hand on Josh's good shoulder.

"That was a hard thing you did, son," he said, "but a brave one. I'm that proud to know you. But," he added, "I was proud to before."

"You knew, didn't you?" Josh asked, in a very low voice. "I always thought you knew."

"Who you were? Where you'd been? Ayah, I knew. Didn't make any difference; I could tell what kind of man you were, from the things Joey said first, and then from what I could see for myself."

"I hate to interrupt," the doctor said, putting his head in the door, "but there's a President on the phone for Josh."

"President Vinick?" Josh sounded startled.

"Arnie? Nah--a good Democratic President. Your guy," and the doctor handed him the phone. Sid and Betty had to pull Joey forcibly out of the room. Donna started to get up, but Josh tightened his arm around her, so she settled back against him. She could hear most of what the President said; Josh didn't seem to mind.

"Josh?" President Bartlet's voice came through, crackling a little; there was static on the line. "It's Jed Bartlet. How are you, son?"

"I'm fine, sir. My shoulder's a little sore, that's all."

"In other words, it hurts like hell. I'm sorry, son--about everything. More sorry than I can say. But for God's sake, boy, why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what, sir?" Josh's voice sounded suddenly tired, Donna thought.

"What? That Calley was setting you up, of course. That he'd threatened to go after Donna. You don't think I would have let that happen, do you? That I would have stood behind him instead of you? and her?"

Josh rubbed a hand over his eyes. "You weren't exactly taking my calls, sir," he pointed out. "You hadn't been taking my calls for quite a while. Or C.J., either. Or Leo."

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, Jed's voice had changed. "Leo?" he said softly. "I thought you were in touch with Leo every day, during the campaign."

"I was, sir, until he wanted me to make Matt withdraw so Russell could take the nomination."

"Leo wanted you to do that?"

"Yes, sir. He pretty much said he was finished with me if I didn't. That the party would be finished with me."

"I didn't know." Jed's voice was very quiet. "I didn't know that. You didn't do it, did you?"

"No sir, I didn't. I couldn't have if I'd wanted to--Matt makes his own calls. But I didn't want to; I thought he was the right man."

"You were right," Jed said. "You were right about a lot of things, Josh. C.J. was a good C.O.S., but I often wished I'd given the job to you. I didn't tell you that when you left. I wish I had."

"I--thank you, sir." Josh's voice sounded suddenly a little choked.

"If there's anything I can do now, Josh, you just have to ask."

"Thank you, sir. There is something--"

"What, Josh?"

"This video, from the webcam. I haven't seen it yet; I don't know how much of what we said came through. But Donna--"

"There was something about a diary. Was that from my MS hearings?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll take care of it, Josh, as much as I can."

"Thank you, sir."

Josh was quiet after President Bartlet said goodbye. The implications of the webcam broadcast had really just begun to sink in. His first reaction to being told that people knew he hadn't done those things had been a relief so great it had threatened to overwhelm him; now he was flooded with fear that Donna had been put at risk for prosecution again. Donna herself wasn't really thinking about it, she was so relieved about Josh.

A minute later the phone rang again. A couple of minutes after that, the doctor put his head back into the room.

"And another President, wanting to speak to the patient! I'm going to start billing for phone calls, Josh, so tell this one he'd better make it short." He grinned, and handed the phone to Josh.

"Josh, this is Arnold Vinick. We met in my office a couple of years ago, when you wanted to recruit me to be an ambassador."

"Good afternoon, Mr. President. Yes sir, I remember, sir. You made me shine my shoes."

"And then a few times on the campaign trail."

"Yes, sir. I know who you are, sir."

"You're a good man, Josh. I'm sorry about the trouble you've had. I just wanted to let you know that you aren't going to have any more. I've asked the Attorney General to see to it that your case is reopened and the conviction overturned."

"I--thank you, sir. Thank you very much."

"Your record will be cleared, and you won't be doing any more time on parole."

"Thank you, sir. That's very good of you."

"Nonsense, Josh; it's the absolute minimum I should do. I'd like to see you get some sort of financial compensation, but I don't think that would go down too well with my party. You could sue Calley for restitution, of course, when they catch him."

"I don't really want to do that, sir."

"And here I've been thinking Democrats liked to sue everybody for everything. You might make a Republican yet, Josh; have you ever thought about changing parties?"

"No sir; I can't say I have, sir."

"Well, if you ever want to, we'd be glad to have you. As a matter of fact, there's something I'd like to talk to you about that way, but this probably isn't the best time; you need to get some rest. I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am about what one of our guys put you through. Oh, and that reminds me, about Ms. Moss--the Attorney General wants you to know that the statute of limitations has expired on anything that might have been said or not said during those Congressional hearings, and in any case, she has no intention of bringing any kind of charge whatever against the woman. And if anyone on our side of the aisle so much as hints at it, they'll be squashed. Though I doubt they would--the public would be all over us. You're both pretty wildly popular right now, you know."

"Thank you, sir. That's very good to hear, sir. I was worried--"

"I thought you might be. You know, she might have been charged once, but it's unlikely she would ever have been convicted, especially when it was Calley who'd chaired the proceedings--I gather there was a pretty clear conflict of interest for him."

"I know that, sir. I just--I couldn't take the chance, sir. I couldn't let her go through that, any of it, if I could stop it."

"I understand, Josh. I said you were a good man. Give me a call when you're up and about; I have a proposal I want to make to you. And now for God's sake get some rest; I can tell you're tired." The line went dead.

Donna buried her head against Josh's good side, trembling. "Hey," he said gently. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she sniffled. "I just--oh God, Josh, how could you have done that? For me, just to keep me out of trouble? Probably nothing would have happened to me except bad press--you heard what President Vinick said, and you told him you knew that. Why did you let Cliff do that to you?"

Josh pulled her in tight. "I couldn't chance it, Donna," he whispered hoarsely. "I couldn't take a chance on letting you get hurt again."

"Again?" she whispered back.

Josh put a finger on her chest, where her scoop-necked t-shirt had pulled down a little, and the top of the scar from her surgery three years ago in Germany could just be seen. She twisted to look up at him, and saw the tears start down his face before he buried it in her hair.

The phone on the bedclothes beside them rang, but they ignored it. A minute later the doctor opened the door and poked his head in again. "The head of the D.N.C.," he announced.

* * *

The police caught up with Cliff Calley later that day. Actually shooting someone had apparently frightened him a lot more than he'd expected; he'd dropped the gun when Josh and Donna went down, and run for his car. He was charged in Maine with various counts of stalking, assault and attempted murder, and also in a federal court in D.C. with conspiracy, interfering with an election, and blackmail--though it seemed possible that he'd do his time in a criminal psychiatric ward rather than jail.

"I feel sorry for him, really," Josh said, grinning a little, after they'd been told. "One taste of Donnatella Moss, and then he couldn't have any more. It would be enough to send any man over the edge."

Then he saw Donna's face, and lost the grin. "I'm sorry, Donna," he said, in an entirely different tone of voice. "What a stupid thing to say. It wasn't your fault; it wasn't remotely your fault, not any of it. I'm such a stupid idiot; I'm so sorry."

"Josh," Donna said through her tears, thinking of all the times she'd wanted to hear him say that, and how little any of those things mattered now, "don't you dare apologize to me. You don't ever have to apologize to me for anything again."

"You'll regret that," Josh said into her hair.

"Probably," she said back, wiping her face, and turning it up to his.

"I won't hold you to it."

"That's good."

"As long as I can hold you to me."

"You can do that as long as you like."

"That's the main thing."

"Yes, it is, sweetheart. Yes it is."

21--

"What did President Vinick say?"

They were sitting on a blanket on a grassy patch at the top of the blueberry hill, looking down at the lighthouse and the sea. They'd been eating sandwiches and drinking coffee from a thermos flask that Mrs. Pierce had packed in a big basket for them. Josh's arm was still in the sling, so Donna had driven the Civic. She'd pointed out to him several times that it had only taken her three tries to get it going, compared to the four he had been averaging.

"He wants to hire me."

"Really? Like ..." Donna didn't finish the sentence. She didn't really want to think about Cliff Calley, especially here.

"Not quite like that. He said he'd like to have me as a sort of advisor-at-large, to give him a Democrat's point of view, and help him figure out how to keep the radical right wing of his own party at bay."

"Do you want to do it?"

"I don't know yet."

"You've had a lot of other offers."

"Yeah. Matt Santos called, did I tell you? He'd like to run again next time; wants me in charge of it."

"Do you want to?"

"I don't know yet. Leo thinks I should."

"I didn't know he'd called."

"Yesterday, while you were with your friends."

"Was it okay?" Donna looked at him anxiously. Of all the people who had turned their backs on Josh when he was in trouble, she knew Leo had hurt him the most.

"Yeah, it was okay. I've realized--he's an old man, Donna, and a sick one, and he doesn't always get things right."

"No, he doesn't."

"He didn't always get things right before, either. Jenny--he really made a mess of that."

"She left him."

"She waited an awfully long time to do it. He just never put her first. Even before the White House, there was always something else."

"He had an important job."

"He did, but the President's was more important, and he managed to keep things going with Abbey. I mean, I know they had some rough patches while we were in office, but they didn't let those destroy them."

"Abbey's a different woman than Jenny."

"And President Bartlet's a different man than Leo. He doesn't get everything right either, but I think he's got a better sense of what really matters, what the main things are. It let him do his job and keep his family too."

"You're very contemplative today."

"I am, aren't I?" Josh smiled at her and reached over with a long blade of grass he'd plucked, to try to tickle her under her chin. She squealed and pulled away. "It's this place, I guess."

"Here? This hill?"

"All of it--this hill, the lighthouse, the beach, the village. Sid and Mary and Betty and Joe. The Mary B. Maine. There's something real about it, something basic, that I'm glad I know about. I'm not sure I did before."

"I think you did, really. You were just always so busy; you never took time for anything except your job."

"I know. I don't want to get like that again."

"You still want to work in Washington though, don't you?"

"Yes. God, yes--of course I do. I just don't want to be Leo any more."

"You want to be President Bartlet?"

"President Lyman, please." He was grinning.

"You could, you know."

"Ackh, I didn't mean that. I don't know what job I want next, but I don't have to figure it out today. What about you? You've had quite a few offers too."

"I want to stay where I am; I like my job. I work with good people, and we make a difference, no matter which party is in power. I like that."

"You do a lot of good for children. That's important."

"It is. They are."

They were both quiet for a minute, Donna watching the boats on the water, Josh playing with the blade of grass and looking down at the lighthouse below.

"Do you think--" his voice was suddenly husky. "Do you think you might want your own, someday? Children, I mean."

Donna looked over at him, startled. "Do you?" she asked, too surprised to answer the question.

"Yeah," he said, his voice huskier than ever. "Yeah, I would. I do. But only if--"

"If?" she prompted him.

"If you want them too. With me," he added, looking up at her then, his face suddenly wrinkled with doubt.

For about the hundredth time that week, tears started up in Donna's eyes and began to run down her face.

* * *

"We'll bring them here," she said happily, an hour or so later. "In the summers."

"If we can afford it," Josh said, laughing. "It's gotten awfully expensive; I don't know how local people like Sid and Betty hang on."

"We'll be able to afford something. You're going to do well, whatever job you choose, and I've got a pretty good salary now. And I didn't tell you about what C.J. said."

"A couple of days ago? I talked to her too."

"No, this morning, while you were talking to President Vinick. She called me on my cell. One of her old clients in L.A. called her, thinking she'd know how to get in touch with us; he wants to make a movie."

"A movie?"

"A movie. About you. Us. The whole thing--the White House, Rosslyn, Gaza, the convention, Cliff--all of it."

"You've got to be kidding."

"No, really."

"What an awful idea."

"I don't know--they want to pay us an awful lot of money for the story."

"What a truly horrible idea."

"It would make a pretty good movie. And it's not like we have any secrets left; after that webcam broadcast, and all the raking around they've done about us, everybody knows everything anyway."

"It would make a terrible movie. They'd make it terrible--all slushy and romantic."

"You think romance is terrible?"

"I think Hollywood romance is terrible. They'd get it all wrong; they wouldn't get the important parts at all. And it would be weird, watching some actor playing you--or me. Just totally weird."

"C.J. said they were thinking about Janel Moloney for me. You thought she was hot in that Amber Frey movie. And we do look a little bit alike."

"She's not even close to being as beautiful as you are. And who would they get for me?"

"C.J. didn't say."

"Russell Crowe. I wouldn't do it unless I could be Russell Crowe."

"You wouldn't be Russell Crowe; he'd be you. And he doesn't look anything like you. I think they should get Bradley Whitford; he's a marvellous actor, and there's really quite a resemblance."

"He has funny hair."

"So do you."

"You've always had a crush on him, haven't you?"

"I've always had a crush on you."

"Mmmmm... . No, don't think you're going to distract me like that. There is no way, absolutely no way, we are letting them make a movie about us. Over my dead body, when pigs fly, when hell freezes over ... . Oh God, don't stop, please ... ."

"I thought you didn't want me to distract you?"

"Distract me, distract me."

"You're fairly distracted already."

"It's my natural state, but distract me some more."

* * *

"You've ruined another pair of pants, Josh. And that shirt."

"It's grass stains. And blueberries--I thought something was awfully prickly underneath."

"You should have stayed on the blanket."

"I wasn't really thinking about that."

"I wasn't, either, but my clothes stayed clean."

"We got them off faster. And you were on top."

"Well, with your arm in a sling, it was the only place I could be."

"Was it all right?"

"Mmmmmm. Perfect."

"Just wait till you see what I can do when my arm isn't in a sling."

* * *

Josh carried the picnic basket, and Donna folded the blanket over her arm. They stood together at the top of the hill, looking back over the blueberry field and the lighthouse, the sparkling sand, and the sea. The sun was getting low in the sky, turning the light deep gold and making all the colors glow. The water was the brightest, most burning blue Donna had seen it yet, and the red and white stripes on the lighthouse almost pulsed against it and the sky. The yacht club must have organized a race; there were more boats than usual clustered together on the harbor, all with big spinnakers up in every different color she could think of. It was like a child's drawing, she thought, with all those bright Crayola colors, and she thought about Josh and his sister playing here, and what she and Josh had just done and what might come of it, and she smiled, feeling as if she were one of those boats racing along, flags flying at the masthead, sails billowing joyfully out over the bow.

Josh stood beside her, looking back too. He was thinking about all the happy times he'd had here with his family, about the Jacksons and the simple way they'd lived in the lighthouse, and about the day it had stormed and he and his sister had been thrown into the old-fashioned bathtub in the bare-bones bathroom to get clean and warm, and how they had dried out afterwards under blankets by the fire while the wind and the rain had hurled themselves unavailingly at the sturdy walls around them. And he remembered too all those long months in the prison, when everything had seemed finished for him, and there had been only Donna's letters to hold onto, and how he'd read them over and over and when he'd finished reading them he'd held them and touched them, just because she'd held them and touched them, and how he'd thought she deserved so much better and he'd never be able to be with her now. He thought about the way he'd felt when he first came here, filthy and stained through and through with everything people had said and believed about him, with what he'd believed about himself after Gaza, and with the shame of where he'd been. And then he thought about making love to Donna at the top of the hill in the wind and the sun, the way her skin had looked, so clean and smooth and white, and her hair shining, and the way the sunlight had caught in the glass shell that dangled from the chain around her neck and made it glow. It reminded him about what he'd said to her on the beach that first day they'd come here, and he thought now that things could be beaten down and broken up the way the water broke up the rocks and the shells and beat them into sand, but the sand could be made into something clear and beautiful again. He thought about what he and Donna had just done together, what they might have made, what they could still make, and his eyes filled up, and he had to rub them and pull his sunglasses down.

"Come on," he said. "Let's see how many tries it takes you to get the Civic started this time."

She put her free hand over his, on the handle of the picnic basket, and they turned around and headed for the car.

* * *

"What's he doing?"

"Putting up a sign."

"What does it say?"

"I don't know."

"Hurry up, I want to see."

"It looks like it says--"

"Do you think it says--"

"I think it says--"

"For Sale."

"I don't believe it."

"For Sale. Lighthouse, with attached buildings. 25 Acres. Waterfront. Beach. Docking rights. Historic structure; some building restrictions apply. See listing agent, Maine Coast Realty, Crabapple Cove."

"I don't believe it."

"Me either."

"It'll cost a fortune."

"Do you have your cell phone, Donna?"

"We can't afford it, Josh; there's no point in even asking."

"I'm not calling the agent yet."

"Who are you calling, then?"

"C.J."

* * *
* * *

The End

More notes, for those who were wondering:

My apologies to anyone who really likes Cliff Calley. I liked what he did for Leo too, but it didn't offset the creepiness for me when he didn't recuse himself from Donna's examination, and then went ahead and read her diary anyway. And when he asked her out again this season--after having read her diary--ugh! yuck! My resentment towards TPTB for putting him in Josh's office knew no bounds--hence this story.

"Nolo contendere" is a Latin phrase meaning "I will not contest [it]." It means that the defendant neither denies the charge nor admits it. It almost always results in the court sentencing the defendant as if he were guilty, but can't be considered an admission of guilt and used against him if another case (such as a civil suit) is brought against him.

TWoP scoffs at the idea of Mrs. Baker's depression being a serious reason for Baker to have withdrawn from the race, but my memory of the run-up to the (real-life) 2000 election is that Colin Powell was widely regarded as an attractive possibility for the Republican nomination until his wife's history of depression was made known and he declined to run, presumably in order to spare her a grueling exposure in the press.

The line Aaron Sorkin gives Lewis in "The American President" about its "always being the guy in my position who ends up doing 18 months in Danbury Minimum Security," together with N.Y. Smith's "A Season in Hell," and S.G.E.'s "Yizkor" were all sources of inspiration here, as were the Nantucket scenes in Jo and Ryo's "Between the Lines" (chapter 4 in their "A Winning Strategy") and several parts of Jen's recent "What Matters Most." I was also aware that I was playing with the restaurant scenes in Shan's "Best-Laid Plans" and Liza's recent "The Trouble with Hero Worship." I've probably echoed many other writers unconsciously--my apologies to you if you're one of them.

The lyrics quoted above are from Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," "Hungry Heart," and "Dancing in the Dark." Although I didn't quote it, the part of "Blueberry Hill" that Josh is whistling is the opening: "I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill,/ on Blueberry Hill, when I found you." The words are by Larry Stock, and the tune by Vincent Rose and Al Lewis.

And no, I didn't invent Josh or Donna, Cliff Calley, President Bartlet, Arnold Vinick, Gov. or Mrs. Baker, Will, Bob Russell, Leo, C.J., Hawkeye Pierce, or the name of Hawkeye's hometown in Maine, Crabapple Cove. I don't know who they belong to, but it isn't me. No infringement is intended here, of course.

Site Name: Crossroad Awards
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Online Since: 08/01/08
Season: Two
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March 28, 2009
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