Work Text:
Before Breakfast:
- Wake up
- Breakfast pâté for Lady Nelson
- Treadmill – thirty minutes
- Shower
- Manual release, after shower if time permits
Breakfast:
- A banana, chopped
- Yoghurt, Greek
- Assorted nuts, one handful
- Tea, mint
While in the shower, the cell rang. Kent turned off the water. Opened the door. Wrapped a towel around his waist. Dried his hands. Answered his cell.
‘Yes?’
POTUS: panicked. Kent’s presence: required. Kent put the cell on speaker. Dried off. Groomed. Dressed. Gathered his things. Turned off the speaker. Disconnected the call. Ate breakfast. Kissed Lady Nelson on the forehead. Left his apartment.
Schedule:
- POTUS - 08:00
- Pilates – 08:45
- Strategy meeting re I4 corridor – 10:00
- Intelligence subcommittee advisor – 12:00
- Note – return home at lunchtime.
- Senator Doyle – 14:00
- ACLU regional coordinator – 14:30
- Interviews with candidates for Dream Metrics. – 15:00
- National Security briefing – 16:30, unmovable.
Driving in; hostages, a political nightmare. Each radio station with a different agenda. Kent texted Maria to run the polls again. The situation was too fluid for stale data.
West Wing. Jonah Ryan waiting. Urgh.
‘What do you want?’
‘Good morning, sir. I have brought you a coffee and a Danish.’ Smiled. Held them out.
‘This coffee is caffeinated.’
Ryan, babbling. ‘Oh! Oh! I’m sorry. Do you prefer oh, decaffeinated?
‘Before eleven ante meridiem and between two and five post meridiem,’ Kent said.
Ryan’s lips moved as he worked it out. ‘I will go get you some.’
Kent shut the door. Took off his jacket. Hung it up. Checked his landline. Turned on the computer while the voicemails were playing. He looked at the Danish. Very fresh. It needed coffee. Ryan would be back shortly. If not Kent would get one. He’d been in the real world. He wasn’t in some bubble like the rest. He could get his own coffee.
Ryan erupted through the door with barely a knock. ‘Here you are, Sir,’ he said. ‘Decaffeinated cappuccino with soy milk, three brown sugars, and a sprinkling of dark chocolate on top.’
Kent nodded. Ryan put the coffee down on the desk.
‘Uh, the VEEP…’
Kent took a sip of his coffee. ‘What about the vice president?’
The boy squirmed. ‘She’s kinda getting her panties in a bunch about this thing with the students being held hostage.’
Kent stared. Ryan fidgeted.
‘The position of vice president demands respect regardless of how one feels about the present incumbent,’ Kent said.
‘It does? Really? Because that is not the impression that… um. I’ll shut up now.’
‘Do that,’ Kent said.
‘Right. Right. Okay.’ Ryan was still talking as he left.
Kent sat down. Placed his coffee carefully. Put his Danish just so.
His door was opened. Ben Cafferty walked in.
Kent sighed.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Ben asked.
‘Eating. Sleeping. The general business of living.’
Ben wandered into the room. ‘Alright for some.’ He picked up Kent’s Danish and ate it in three quick bites.
Kent blinked. ‘That was my Danish,’ he said.
‘I’m on my way to see POTUS,’ Ben said, hauling his trousers up by the waistband.
‘You ate my pastry,’ Kent said.
Ben looked down at the plate with its tell-tale flakes of pastry. ‘Oh.’ He coughed a little. ‘It’d only mess up your health regime.’ He waved a hand. ‘God forbid you put on a pound or two.’
‘I was anticipating that,’ Kent said. ‘Keenly anticipating.
Ben looked away. ‘Yeah. Well. Welcome to politics. Again. Welcome back to politics.’
Kent took a sip of his coffee. ‘What do you want, Ben?’
‘I’m going to see POTUS.’
‘You said that.’
Ben put his hands on his hips. ‘Don’t fucking interrupt, okay? No running in with your little polls and graphs to completely derail the god damn conversation.’
Kent picked up his pen and clicked it.
‘Well?’ Ben asked.
‘What do you want me to say? You haven’t asked me a question. You aren’t seeking information. All you have done is issue an ultimatum.’ Kent raised his eyebrows. ‘You will recall that I strongly dislike you attempting to dictate terms to me.’
Ben clenched his jaw. ‘Just… fucking stay out. Okay?’
‘I’m due in with him at eight.’
‘I just fucking told you not to interrupt!’
Kent shrugged. ‘It’s really very simple, Ben. If you don’t want to share your special time with daddy, then make sure that you’re out of there by eight.’
Ben planted a hand on the desk. ‘I will be done when I’m ready and not a minute earlier.’
‘That’s not my recollection.’
Ben reddened. ‘Oh, you think you’re fucking hilarious.’
‘Uh, sir? That is, sirs, I guess.’
Ben turned. Kent twisted to look. Ryan. Twitching in the doorway.
‘What?’ Kent asked.
‘Uh, there are reports coming through that Catherine has written an anti-Israel essay. A blogger is claiming to have posted it,’ Jonah Ryan said.
‘Who the living fuck is Catherine?’ Ben demanded.
‘Uh, Catherine Meyer. The VEEP’s daughter?’ Ryan said. ‘About yay tall. A six, maybe, in a good light.’
Kent frowned and shook his head. ‘Did you just rate a young woman’s attractiveness out of ten?’
‘You know the whole point of that movie was that the asshole was a fucking immature prick of an asshole who needed to grow the fuck up,’ Ben said.
Ryan blinked. ‘I’m sorry, sir, what movie is that?’
Kent shook his head and looked at Ben. ‘You see the clay with which I am supposed to build the bricks of the future.’
‘I’d like to bury him in the fucking foundations.’
‘Uh, should I go talk to the VEEP?’ Ryan suggested.
‘Go and get the daughter’s file,’ Kent said. ‘Now Mr Ryan.’
They watched him go. Ben shook his head and ambled towards the door.
‘People call us fucking sexist dinosaurs,’ he said.
‘You perhaps,’ Kent said.
Ben paused in the doorway. ‘Just fucking sort out whatever the problem is with the daughter. Christ knows that the VEEP’s army of flying monkeys couldn’t organise a pride parade in San Francisco.’
Kent waved a hand. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’
He sipped his coffee. Found the essay online: biased, emotional, badly structured. Kent remembered the daughter, vaguely. A wet blanket, to use a phrase of his mother’s. A spark of passion had been found or the essay would be a more sedate affair.
Spark. Passion. Affair.
Hmm.
Ryan returned with the daughter’s file. Kent looked at the security briefing. A new boyfriend. American born. Iranian family. One less mystery. Little help presently. But Kent disliked and distrusted mysteries, uncharacteristic behaviour, and passion. He prided himself on a tidy mind. Passion sabotaged precision, poisoned perspective, and corrupted logic. Nonetheless, it was useful data. Meyer would run again for the presidency. He was sure. Equally sure she would drive a tank over POTUS to achieve it. She had shed her husband quickly when his business practices became inconvenient. Kent got on with Andrew. Well enough for third party, long arm consultancy for a couple of Andrew’s firms. Didn’t like the man. Kent didn’t like many people. Particularly in politics.
‘What’s the word, Cap’n Crunch?’
Kent sighed inwardly. Roger Furlong had two settings: hostile and offensive, or friendly and offensive.
‘Yes?’
‘What the fuck kind of way is that to greet me?’
‘Concise,’ Kent said.
Furlong leant against the desk. ‘Concise. That’s fucking cute. Isn’t that cute, Will?’
Will nodded. ‘Adorable, sir.’
‘I hear that you’ve got your own toy boy, now,’ Furlong said.
Kent narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’
Furlong jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Big Bird. We passed him in the corridor.’
Kent looked at Will. ‘Is translation within your purview?’
‘I belief that we are referring to Jonah Ryan,’ Will said.
‘Giant fucking dildo wouldn’t even have a conversation with me.’ Furlong shook his head. ‘The goddamn toddlers coming into politics, they don’t get that politics is a people business.’
Kent wrinkled his nose. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘choosing to forgo all that abuse and homophobia.’
‘Homophobia?’ Furlong demanded. ‘Do I make a big fucking deal about you being a switch hitter, you greedy fuck?’
‘I invite you to review your last sentence,’ Kent said.
Furlong pulled back the guest chair. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me a coffee? I’m dying of thirst here.’
Kent sighed. Surrendered. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘No, I fucking hate the stuff.’ Furlong snorted. ‘Kidding. Black and a sugar.’
Kent texted Jonah Ryan with the order. With ill-grace put aside his mountain of work. ‘What do you want?’
‘I was hoping to see Eeyore, but he’s not in,’ Furlong said. ‘So I figured I’d come see Rabbit instead.’
‘Chief of Staff Cafferty,’ Will offered helpfully.
Kent looked at him. Looked at Furlong. ‘He’s in with POTUS. You could go wait for him.’
‘Fucking inhospitable, that’s your problem.’ Furlong wagged a finger. ‘I see where your twink gets it from.’
Kent frowned. Parsing the sentence. ‘The linguistic inaccuracies in that sentence are physically painful.’
‘Yeah, he’s pretty fucking awful to look at,’ Furlong agreed. ‘I hear Dan Egan over at the Eisenhower Building has been humping your leg. You wanna steer clear of that prick. He’s gonna end up before an ethics committee one of these fucking days.’
‘That we can agree on,’ Kent said.
***
Dan Egan:
- Thirty-something
- Arrogant
- Pushy
- Doesn’t listen
- Ethically and legally compromised
- Therefore incompetent
- Poor grasp of consequences
- Lacks perception
- Handsome
- Knows it
Kent looked across the younger man as he flailed with the Pilates equipment. To his mental list Kent added:
- Uncoordinated
- Reasonable body
If the aging twink look was your thing. Kent was largely indifferent to the young and pretty, of either gender. The young knew nothing. The pretty cared for nobody. Kent had learnt to lower his expectations and thicken his skin. To feel, where feeling was unwanted, was singularly painful. More so than simply having his affections unreturned. Nonetheless, it seemed as though every inch of human sexuality and responsiveness was being mapped out with the rigour and scrupulousness of a biologist defining a new species. Even asexuality, which had barely been an acknowledged concept when he was a boy, had a spectrum now. Or, more likely always had, and now was being described and acknowledged. Kent approved. People were complex. Demanding homogony was irrational. Emote as I do or be mocked as cold. Communicate as I do or be derided as weird. Desires, needs, were powerful. Emotions were erratic. Untrustworthy.
Egan: babbling. Still. Kent glanced around the room. Found a woman at the ladder barrel looking at him: elegant, good quality workout clothes, attractive, not too young.
Wedding ring. Abort. Abort.
Kent looked away.
Married people. The faithful were either smug or loudly miserable. The unfaithful flew false flags. Pretended they wanted more than a brief respite from their ennui. Pretended to be shocked when their lies were believed. Demanded desire but punished attachment. Ben was emotionally incontinent. Sneered at anyone with a modicum of mastery over themselves. But wouldn’t tell his wife. Kent shook himself. Shame wasn’t useful. He still felt soiled. That was self-indulgent in the extreme.
***
Kent was in the Eisenhower Building, dropping off a late schedule change, when he heard raised voices from the bullpen. He was not a gossip. Was not nosy. He sought data. That was all. Data was never wasted.
He stood in the corridor. Listened. Furlong: loud, demanding. Unknown woman: sharp, resistant. Furlong losing his temper. Unknown woman dominating the conversation. Kent glanced around and through the doorway. Ah. The celebrated Miss Wilson. He’d see her before in passing. Attractive in a severe sort of way. Angry and stern. Terribly, wonderfully stern.
The corridor was clear. Kent adjusted his sheaf papers in front of himself. Time to return to his apartment. With alacrity.
Kent had a weakness. He knew it quite well. His kryptonite or Achilles’ heel. There was something about the combination of an attractive face and a stern manner that hit him like a crowbar:
- Sister Mary Theresa, his fifth grade teacher
- Andiara, his younger sisters’ nanny
- Professor Williams, his statistical learning tutor
- Senator Castillo
- Imogen Fairchild, the political science consultant for the Post
It was purely physical of course. Andiara had been a vicious bully who took every opportunity to humiliate or verbally eviscerate him. Professor Williams had been a muddle-headed idiot. Imogen was as soft-hearted as her manner was hard. Too soft hearted, in fact. Too warm. Too kind. Too affectionate. The differences were enticing but also insurmountable. Compromise served neither. He felt glutted. She felt starved. Nonetheless, he had fond memories. It had been… bittersweet.
Ben simply left him feeling bitter.
Kent had attempted to determine why it had happened, how he had made such an error of judgment. Boredom. Isolation. Loneliness. A toxic cocktail of them all. Or something else. It hadn’t made sense then. It certainly didn’t make sense now.
***
Lady Nelson stared at him while he was effecting his release. Always a conundrum. Let her in the room and she stared. Leave her out and she would continually demand to get in. Small, furry, pervert. On the extremely rare occasion that he brought someone home, she would sneak in the room afterwards and sprawl across someone’s face. His, mostly. She loathed Ben. She would sit up on the bookcase and hiss and spit as soon as Ben walked into the living room. In retrospect, Kent should’ve taken that as a sign. She was a better judge of character than he was. Perhaps that was less of an achievement than it appeared.
Kent closed his eyes. Thinking of Ben. Not helpful. Not healthy. Ridiculous, in fact. An exercise in masochism. Not at all to his taste.
***
What had Meyer done to her hair? Kent was struggling not to stare. The woman was astonishing. First she gifted the nation with ‘this is big, but I bet I can fit it in my mouth,’ as a soundbite, and now she was teleconferencing while modelling a haircut straight out of medieval history. He was willing to admit that it had been somewhat unkind to send her to the pork event. Unkind and yet quite necessary. She had no cognizance of the precision that went into a rescue mission. No awareness of the delicate balancing of varying invested interests needed to ensure that support continued. But most of all it didn’t occur to her for a moment that all the hostages might die. That the marines might be slaughtered. Meyer was happily oblivious that so many lives were in the balance and Ben appeared not to care. Kent had neither the luxury of ignorance or indifference.
Nonetheless, whatever her shortcomings, Meyer was determined. Or pig-headed. Hmm. Amusing if inaccurate. Pigs were unfairly maligned. They didn’t sweat. Given the option they were clean. And they had no worse manners than any other animals. Better manners than the average politician. Or Ben. He blundered into the room during the security briefing. His shirt was escaping his waistband and there was a smear of something on his shirt. Mustard. Kent thought. Ben was frequently disgusting. Kent had heard women talking about men who needed looking after. He didn’t get it. Treating a partner as either a child or a parent seemed demeaning. He could only assume it was some sort of bizarre social conditioning. Kent frequently found himself wondering at the things that women of his acquaintance would put up with. Was being alone truly so miserable that mistreatment was preferable? He’d never thought so. But he was quite happy with his own company. He knew that many weren’t.
Ben and Elizabeth had ‘been going through a rough patch’ during the presidential campaign. That had been Ben’s excuse. Right. Infidelity was clearly the solution to marital disharmony. It had worked so well with Ben’s previous marriages.
Infidelity with another man. Kent wasn’t a social person. He wasn’t in the culture. He didn’t go to parades. He didn’t wear slogans or wave flags. He was not one for politicising his natural desires (he loathed the term ‘sexual preferences.’) But he found certain things… disheartening. Not being unacknowledged. Kent was uncomfortable with public displays of affection and shied away even from exuberant private declarations of emotion. Even if Ben had been single, Kent wouldn’t have expected any kind of warmth from him. He had learnt that he rarely engendered tenderness. Learnt hoping for it only invited disappointment. But Kent had never hidden his sexual identity. Each time he heard someone else do it he felt a little more alone.
Meyer had told him that she didn’t realise he was human enough to be attracted to one gender, let alone two. He hadn’t cared about the insult. The subsequent complete lack of interest had been peculiarly pleasant. Meyer was too selfish to have questions. Disliked him too much to fake interest with the same old excruciating questions and blundering assumptions.
‘So, you have a girl and a guy?’ Ben had asked. He’d been drunk. That was his base state of being while they were on campaign.
‘No.’ Kent had looked around the hotel bar, hoping for rescue. None was forthcoming.
‘But Furlong said you like to vote in both the houses,’ Ben had said.
A horrible image had assaulted Kent’s imagination. ‘That doesn’t make me non-monogamous,’ he had said.
‘Huh?’ Ben had slumped against the bar and waved at the bartender for another round.
Kent had sighed. ‘I’m no more promiscuous than anyone else. When I date I do so with fidelity.’
Ben had moved a little closer and lowered his voice. ‘So you’re gay then?’
‘No.’
Ben had sat back. ‘Oh.’ He waved thanks at the bartender. ‘So you’re straight.’
Kent had downed his Scotch and stood up. ‘No.’
‘Hey don’t run off. I’ve got more questions.’
‘I’m not here for your education,’ Kent had said.
***
Kent dug his knuckles into his back and massaged his muscles. He wasn’t unsympathetic to the hostages. In his own way he was extremely invested. But his own way did not involve dewy-eyed naiveté or gung-ho heroics. POTUS approached military operations like a small boy playing with action figures. Taking action had risks: injuries, deaths, public backlash. The public had to support action. Any losses had to be the country’s not the administration’s. Kent expected politicians to chase headlines in defiance of reality and common sense but Ben should know better. ‘Surgical strikes.’ Hah. Very few surgeries could result in the death of the patient, the surgical team, and half the other patients in the hospital. And nobody was thinking about that. They were all thinking about the idiot teens who had no business being there in the first place instead of the lives of the dozens of highly trained soldiers. Teenagers. Kent made himself an herbal tea. Ben’s son would be… what, nineteen? And Meyer’s daughter around the same age. But they would never admit that was the reason for their desperation to act. They’d claim a moral imperative or some such nonsense. Misinformation and deception were vitally important in politics but self-deception was a disaster in the making.
And then there was the little matter of the spy. The spy that Kent absolutely did not know about. Nobody could prove that he knew about it. Kent had never seen any benefit in pointing out that POTUS’s tendency to leave emails all over his desk was a boon to anyone with the patience and discretion to read upside down. Kent shook his head. Meyer clearly didn’t have either. He’d seen her claim that none of the hostages were a spy, and he knew she wasn’t that good of a liar.
He was taking a sip of his herbal tea when Mr Ryan put his head around the door.
‘Hello sir. I’m back. Just wanted to let you know in case you wanted me.’
‘Mr Ryan, I assure you that I have never wanted you in any respect.’
The boy nodded automatically. ‘Good one, sir.’
‘You smell appalling.’
Ryan straightened up. ‘It’s the pig fat, sir, from the spit roast.’
‘Ah.’ Kent scratched his forehead. ‘Well, I don’t need you. Go home.’
‘Oh, thank you. Thank you very much, sir!’ Ryan started to turn away. ‘Nearly forgot, the VEEP would like to see you.’ He licked his lips. ‘Uh, she said right away.’
Kent waved the boy away. Of course she did. What for anyone else was an unequalled parade of disasters was evidently for Meyer nothing more than business as usual.
***
The terrifying Miss Wilson raised an eyebrow when he walked into the bullpen. Kent straightened his tie. Glad he’d put his jacket on.
‘Sir, the vice president is expecting you,’ she said. ‘Please go through.’
‘Thank you.’
Left-handed. An interesting little quirk. Unexpected. Ben was colour blind, that was his little quirk. Deuteranopia. Red/green colour blindness.
Inside the office Meyer was brushing out her hair while that remora, Walsh, fussed around her.
‘Don’t think I don’t know it was your idea to send me all the way to pigfuck Carolina,’ she said. ‘I know you were trying to keep me out of that briefing.’
Kent rubbed his forehead. ‘Ma’am, it was a briefing, you could have read the information presented tomorrow morning and lost very little. Whereas the pork event in South Carolina granted us the opportunity to increase our popularity in an arena in which you traditionally excel.’
She frowned. He was mildly surprised that she was able.
‘An arena in which I traditionally excel,’ she said. ‘You mean eating terrible food with ten-toed yokels?’
Kent put his hands on his hips. ‘Don’t most people have ten toes?’
‘On each damn foot,’ Meyer snapped.
‘We are all aware that POTUS is uncomfortable and awkward with the public,’ Kent said. ‘Even more so than the average politician. You, Ma’am, are somewhat better at interacting with them.’
Meyer’s irritation unwound a notch. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘Merely a statement of fact.’
She tugged down her blouse. ‘Well. Don’t think I’m gonna forget that you told Jonah that I had to get Catherine to apologise.’
‘You’re her mother,’ Kent said. ‘Who else would do it?’
‘Exactly! I’m her mom and I decide how to deal with my daughter,’ she snarled.
‘Then we’re in agreement.’ Kent straightened his sleeves. ‘If that’s everything, Ma’am, I have a stack of work to do.’
He gave a nod to Miss Wilson as he passed her. Too young? Possibly. Too aggressive? Unlikely. After more than thirty years in politics, he had a tolerance. Even Ben’s abuse barely gave him pause. Not that way at least.
Kent shook his head. His sister Emilia had been trying to fix him up. Excruciating. She meant well. Lord knew he struggled left to his own devices. He hadn’t dated, properly dated, in nearly four years. He needed to cleanse his palate. Meet someone new.
The West Wing was quieter when he returned. Most staffers had gone for the evening. The building was cooling and gently relaxing like a cast-off suit of clothes. Kent checked his watch. He needed to be home soon to feed Lady Nelson. Empty her litter box. Imogen had once asked him if he didn’t have enough responsibility in his life without adding more. Except that missed the point. A responsibility, yes, but one fulfilled with a modicum of effort and almost no deep thought. Relaxing. In its own way. A small price for a little companionship. Companionship that he realistically didn’t see himself having any other way.
Kent opened the door to his office. Turned off the computer. Finally noticed the box on the desk. About a foot across. Thin white cardboard. The Patisserie Poupon logo on the top. Kent picked up the small gift card resting atop it. He took a breath. Picked up the letter opener from the desk. Slit the tape holding the box shut. Flipped up the lid. A selection of fresh pastries. He turned over the card. Ben’s loose and untidy scrawl.
Replaced your fucking pastry. Okay? So stop your fucking whining, you petulant shit.
Kent squeezed the bridge of his nose. From Ben that was practically poetry.
The End