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*
Monday
Josh caught up with her on the way to Leo’s office.
“You hear about the guy?”
“Which guy?” CJ asked.
“The would-be Basquiat. D.C. metro area’s very own protest artist.”
She reached for the details. Something from a blog…“This is the guy who did a whole Cherokee version of American Gothic on the side of the Department of the Interior under cover of darkness?” CJ asked.
Josh nodded. “Last week. That was the fourth one. Another went up last night.”
“You know, I tried painting my bathroom, like, a year ago?”
“And?”
“I currently have two blue walls and one yellow.”
“Go Bears?”
“Just saying, you gotta respect the process of someone who can refinish a three-story building in the same amount of time as a cut and color.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“What’s this one?”
Josh glanced at a Post-it someone (Donna) had stuck onto a file. “Caravaggio’s Narcissus, except, you know–”
“Instead of a handsome youth captivated by his own beauty, it’s…?”
“Uncle Sam gazing into the Reflecting Pool.”
CJ took a sip of her coffee. “So much for nuance in political commentary.”
They stepped into Leo’s office.
Josh grabbed a danish and sat beside Toby, who was reading the Times. “Heard you were up late last night,” Josh said to Leo.
“Oh good God,” Leo huffed.
“Think they’ll pull it off?” Josh asked around a mouthful of sugar.
“We’ll see…” Leo intoned without interest.
Josh looked to his right. “Toby?”
Toby turned the pages of what was definitely not the sports section. “I don’t understand the question, and I refuse to answer.”
Leo looked at the two of them with what CJ thought of as his Tired Dad expression. “Do me a favor and don’t bring up either the Red Sox or the World Series in the Oval today. For that matter, don’t mention Boston, San Francisco, or baseball. In fact, make no mention of sports altogether.”
“Not a problem,” Toby sniffed.
“You get him going about the Royal Rooters and Fenway Park and non-existent curses, we’re gonna derail about twenty actual things we need to get done today, all so the President can rhapsodize about the agony and the ecstasy of being a Red Sox fan.”
“Hasn’t it been like a hundred and twenty-three years or something since they won?” CJ asked.
“Eighty-five,” Toby corrected.
“Last pennant was 1918,” Josh added.
“Not much going in the ecstasy column lately,” she said.
“No,” Toby agreed.
“Well,” CJ sighed. “The Red Sox and I have that in common.”
Leo moved them on to actual business. “You’re meeting with Dunne and Wozniak on C.A.R.E. today?” he asked Josh.
Josh shoved the last of his breakfast in his mouth, like a middle schooler inhaling his lunch. “Yeah.”
Leo’s pointed at him. “Figure this out. $70 billion in housing and infrastructure on the line here.”
“I’m on it.”
Toby closed the paper. “I’ll go with him.”
“Toby–”
“I’m going.”
“Caleb Dunne’s a self-important jackass, but if you think I’m gonna let a ten-gallon hat from Tucson screw us out of getting this passed, you’re nuts.”
Leo nodded at Toby. “Go with him, wouldja?”
“We’ll get it done.” Toby said, tossing the paper in the recycling bin. He stood and started pacing the room, hands in his pockets. “Big public investment,” Toby said. “When the textbooks get written about this administration, about this moment in history, that’s what they’re gonna say. That’s the message of this legislative session. Last term was about education, this year the message is investing in the next generation of highways, bridges, transit, the electrical grid, public housing…”
Wouldn’t that be nice, CJ thought.
“We’ll get it done.” Toby leaned against the door. “CJ, the soundbite is building for the future. This is more than spending the taxpayer’s money, we’re building the future.”
She looked up. “Are we?”
She felt Leo and Josh turn their heads. Toby paused.
CJ didn’t bat an eye. “Public investment didn’t do much for that girl in Chicago.”
“Not today, CJ,” Leo warned.
She knew that tone well enough by now. If she wanted to make a point, it wasn’t gonna happen here. She glanced over at Toby. For a second he looked like he was about to say something. He looked at his hands.
“Start off with C.A.R.E. at the top of the briefing.”
“I’ll fit it in, but we promised NASA the news cycle for their mission. Artemis.”
“Aww, c’mon. That’s this week?” Josh asked.
CJ shrugged. “They plan the mission schedules years in advance, Josh. They gotta get the thing to Venus. There’s a calendar. You’ve seen it. Plus, if we’re selling the whole big return on investment thing, we might wanna–”
“CJ’s right,” Toby agreed.
“About?” Josh asked.
“We want public opinion on our side,” Leo said.
“So?”
“So,” Leo explained, “NASA has the highest approval ratings of any federal agency or department.”
“Really?” Josh balked.
“Yeah,” Toby said.
“Really?” Josh asked.
“Yeah,” Toby said.
“That’s weird.”
“Them’s the facts,” Leo offered.
“But they don’t actually do anything.”
Some days neither do we, she thought.
Leo looked to CJ. “Anything else? We’re good for the thing tonight?”
CJ glanced at her run-down of the schedule. “There’s the first episode viewing at four with the Girl and Boy Scout troops, after which we’ll do Q&A in the Blue Room with press, followed by–”
“–ritual suicide for all who attend?” Josh offered.
“And possibly some who don't,” CJ nodded.
Leo waved them off. “Go do something good.”
CJ left and headed to her office. Josh followed her.
“What was the thing?”
“What thing?”
“The girl. In Chicago.”
They ducked into her office. CJ pulled out the morning’s copy of the Tribune, holding her face in as neutral a position as possible.
“On Saturday, a ten-year-old girl was attacked in a stairwell while on the way to her grandmother’s apartment. She was beaten, sexually assaulted, and left for dead.” She looked at him hard. “Ten years old.”
He scanned the article page. “And this was where?”
“Excellent question. I’m so glad you asked.”
He opened his mouth, realizing. “It was a–”
CJ nodded. “Public housing project on the North Side. Cabrini-Green.”
Josh handed the paper back. He looked out the window, blinking. She could see the mental calculus happening in his head.
“Any traction?” he asked.
CJ tossed the paper on her desk with the rest of her reading pile. “So far it’s local news only, but this week? With this bill? We just announced a huge investment in HUD and infrastructure projects, this is going to kneecap us out of the gate, to say nothing…” she trailed off, really wishing she hadn’t just said kneecap. “My point is, this is gonna be a thing.”
“Yeah, that’s…” Josh’s jaw shifted. “Yeah. The girl? How is she?”
“Chicago P.D. has a press conference at 3:30, so I should know more later.”
“Find me before the Q&A, yeah?”
CJ sat back in her chair. Press…
She checked her email. Nothing.
She leaned forward on her arms, peering into the depths of her fishbowl. Some entrepreneurial staffer in the Communications office had decorated it with plastic trees and a ceramic campfire.
“Good thing we’re celebrating all the safe and beautiful places our country has to offer today, aren’t we, Gail?”
*
CJ ran down the week’s agenda with her staff. She briefed at eleven, which went, somehow, unsettlingly well. She teed off with the Artemis mission, but deferred to Kaylee Bhatia and the rest of the E Street mathletes for the technical details. She hit on all the beats of C.A.R.E., as instructed, before going through the afternoon reception run-down, then opened it up for questions.
Zach Collier from Fox was out, so there was none of his usual what about the rights of gun owners bit that he never failed to bring up whenever the White House touched on anything related to public lands. She expected something out of left field and mildly annoying from Danny, this week especially. But he just sat there with everyone else, attentive, but looking oddly checked out. He hadn’t even taken notes.
There was nothing about Chicago.
CJ managed about fifteen minutes to eat lunch while Laura Park from National Geographic pelted her with questions about the reception over the phone.
Yes, the White House was thrilled to be hosting the documentarian Ken Burns for a viewing of the first episode of his new PBS series, The National Parks.
No, the President had not been to all of them (Thank God, CJ thought), though Katmai Fjords and Dry Tortugas were high on his list.
Yes, yes, no, yes, she answered robotically, and when she hung up, she checked the Chicago Tribune website again.
She and Bonnie and Carol and the AV guys did a quick run of show in the event rooms. Lightning check, sound check, ushers for each of the Boy and Girl Scout troops, check check check. She conscripted Donna to escort (e.g. rescue… ) the guest of honor from the Oval and guide him to the Blue Room shortly before the event was due to begin. She waited in the outer office by the desk she’d never stop thinking of as Dolores Landingham’s, checking last minute details.
“You’re quiet.”
CJ looked up. “Hmm?”
“You’re not usually this quiet,” Debbie Fiderer said.
CJ blinked rapidly. “I’m ranking national parks. In my head. I’m ranking them.”
“Ah.” Debbie made a face like Whatever you say, sweetheart.
“Pretty sure I’m gonna get quizzed on the way to this thing.”
The President’s voice rang out. “Did someone say quiz? ”
Debbie snorted.
CJ sighed. “Self-fulfilling prophecy says what…?”
*
“That was terrific. That was delightful,” Jed Bartlet clapped his hands. “I live for this. Gates of the Arctic. Mesa Verde. Acadia, Charlie, Acadia!”
CJ rolled her eyes.
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said, following along.
“I’m not getting an appropriate amount of awe and respect for our natural wonders, Chedwick. Ken Burns had awe. Ken Burns had respect. ”
“The man just made a six-part documentary for PBS. I think he’s packing enough awe for the both of us.”
Jed waved him off. “What time is it?” he asked.
CJ glanced at her watch. “Six.”
“And what time is the first pitch?”
“8:25, sir,” Charlie answered. “Eastern.”
As they left the Blue Room, CJ spotted a familiar figure lingering by the Communications bullpen. She wondered if he’d even bothered sticking around, or just got the quotes he needed and ducked out like the whole thing was pass-fail.
“Danny!” the President exclaimed. “You’re still here?”
Danny fell into step beside them. CJ felt like grabbing him by the suspenders and shoving him out the 15th Street door. “For another few days, sir.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll find something to keep you busy. Hey! Game five tonight! They gonna pull it off?”
“Be nice, but I dunno that I’d put money on it,” Danny said, cautious with optimism. “But either way, I’ll be reading the Globe tomorrow.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Rest of the American League might have the better players most of the time, but art being cultivated in tragedy, the Red Sox have the better writers.”
Jed laughed. “Yeah, they’ve had some time to hone that particular craft.”
“Mr. President,” CJ interrupted. “Could we-?”
He gave her the side-eye and jerked his thumb in her direction. “I think this one’s pulling for San Francisco, over here.”
Danny glanced over. “You don’t say?”
CJ glared between the pair of them. “I’ll remind you that I’m from Ohio.”
“Whatever, Berkeley,” the President said.
“You know, it’s the A’s who are in the East Bay, so technically– Wait, hold on, I don’t care.”
Jed stopped and turned on her. “Oh really? You don’t care about the myth and magic of America’s pastime?”
CJ’s shoulders slumped. “Tell me you don’t have a hat…”
“Charlie?”
Charlie produced a Red Sox cap from his inside blazer pocket and presented it to CJ.
“Eighty-five years, CJ. We take the Curse of the Great Bambino himself seriously in my neck of the woods.”
CJ accepted the wretched thing with chagrin. “This how you amuse yourself these days?”
“Actually I was saving it for Toby, but since you’re here and need a little reminding about rooting for the underdog…”
“Looks nice. Red’s a good color on you,” Danny offered, innocent as a cabbage.
Charlie grinned at the floor. Even the President gave Danny a look at that one.
She glared at Danny. “Off the record.”
“Okay,” Danny smirked.
“Go away.”
He nodded in parting. “Good to see you, sir.”
“Good luck, Danny!”
“Thank you. See ya, Charlie.” He sauntered off merrily, probably to find sunscreen or a new flak jacket or whatever. CJ scowled, watching him go as she settled the cap on her head. Jackass.
She turned to the President. “I don’t understand. Do you just carry these around, ready to dole out random sartorial punishment?”
“Charlie does.”
“I live to serve,” Charlie beamed.
CJ tugged it down. Maybe she could hide her face. “I bet you do.”
The President twinkled with mirth. “There’s like thirty-nine people in the Residence who keep asking me for things to do. Sometimes I answer them in a wry and ironic fashion.”
“And they don’t know by now when you’re joking?” CJ asked. She made a face at Ed and Larry as they passed them in the Roosevelt Room, not even trying to hide their glee.
“Sometimes I’m not sure I am.” The President patted her shoulder. “Looking good, C-Jean!” He whisked off to the Oval.
CJ ground her teeth. “Why do I do this job?”
She walked back to her office, lightly fuming. Red looks good on you. Give me a break, CJ thought, deeply annoyed. So much for actually speaking to her.
She flung the damn hat at her couch and was about to ring Josh to ask about the meeting with Dunne and Wozniak when Carol rapped on the door.
“Kay Bhatia from NASA on one. Sounds urgent.”
CJ picked up the phone.
That’s when her day got really bad.
*
Tuesday
“Oh, for crying out–!” Leo flung his arms wide. “We lost an orbiter? Another one?”
“It went offline about eighteen hours ago,” Josh explained. “They're trying to re-establish connection, but they think some kind of interference between us and Venus might be part of it.”
“I have had it with NASA,” Leo seethed. “Now I’m with you.”
CJ stabbed at the bottom of her yogurt. “$250 million dollars to build, test, and launch the thing. You’d think we’d at least get some pictures out of it.”
“Updates, when you have them, if you please?” Leo groaned. “Swear to God, the next time NASA asks for so much as a calculator, they’re gonna walk the Via Dolorosa first. I want atonement. These people are supposed to be our best and brightest.”
“So are we,” CJ pointed out.
“A sobering thought,” Will Bailey said, joining them. Toby followed him inside.
Leo looked at her. “CJ, you’re–?”
She nodded. “General updates. I'm pointing them to NASA for details.”
“Vet the next steps, would you? I don’t want any surprises. What are they?”
“The next steps?” Josh asked, glancing at CJ.
“Yeah.”
“There’s a holding pattern while they try a couple different ways to reestablish connection. They’re going through them now, but mostly it’s just hurry up and wait.”
“‘Artemis, phone home,’” CJ quipped.
“Moving on…” Leo sighed. “How’d it go with Dunne and Wozniak.”
Toby clutched his pink racquetball thing like a lifeline. “Thick as thieves, but Leo...It’s not Cal Dunne picking this fight.”
“Who is it?”
“Edward Carson Aldo,” Josh enunciated in irritation.
Leo’s forehead screwed up. “Ed Aldo? No.”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Leo said.
“Yeah,” Toby said.
“What’s he…” Leo’s head tipped back. He thought about it. “Water.”
“Yeah,” Josh said.
“Dammit.” Leo nodded. “Alright. Get into it with him, would you? Dunne and Wozniak are one thing, but I don’t want us losing a lynchpin of the Western Democratic voting bloc over an environmental issue of all things. We’ve got it hard enough in the Southwest.”
“On it,” Josh said.
“CJ, do me a favor and pass comments on to HUD if you get anything about Chicago.”
CJ looked up. She looked to Josh, and then to Toby. “Really?”
Leo nodded. “I don’t want to get into it this week. We comment, it’s gonna add fuel to the fire.”
CJ suppressed the urge to shout. “Fire’s already going kinda strong here, Leo.”
Leo made a What do you want from me? face. “And we want the focus on the C.A.R.E. Act which, in this case, includes earmarks for federal funds for housing. Not this week. ”
“They choked her with her own t-shirt. My Little Pony. They blinded her with rat poison so she couldn’t identify her attackers.”
“Yeah.”
She could see she wasn’t getting anywhere. “Fine.”
Leo looked at CJ. “Why am I hearing things about pizza?”
“Pizza?” Will asked.
“There's some tiff between Governors Tillson and Swift,” Josh said. “Apparently Red Sox fans are pranking the California State House. Sending them endless boxes of pizza. A radio station has been egging them on.”
“And this is relevant because?”
CJ could not believe this was her job. “Because two days ago the President yelled from the motorcade, ‘Go Sox!’ ” she said.
“For the love of God,” Leo groaned. “Why I do this job…”
“A question I ask more and more frequently,” she said.
“‘President Bartlet, having sustained long term brain damage from life in an inhospitable northern climate…’” Leo pantomimed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” CJ said. “I’ll do the thing.”
“What thing?” Will asked.
“Deflect it. Make a joke. I’ll figure it out.” CJ looked at Leo. “Are we–?”
He nodded. “We’re done.”
They stood and ducked down the hallway.
“You know anything about baseball?” Josh chided as they left Leo’s office.
CJ held a hand out. “I know that’s it’s played with gloves and bats and balls and we put like seventeen hours of it on television for four hundred nights a year, despite the fact that nothing happens most of the time.”
“CJ Cregg rails against America's beloved pastime,” Toby drawled from behind them. “That should do it.”
“Pastime, indeed. This run batter batter nonsense is meant for radio.”
“Hey!” Josh objected.
“Nine innings!” she said. “Who has time for that in their lives?”
“It’s a metaphor for life, CJ!”
She paused at the coffee pot in the hall near Donna's desk to resupply. “I’m sure.”
Josh stood in the hall, arms wide. “The monotony, the strategy, the thrall of a crowd waiting for the rip-roaring action that comes out of nowhere to change everything!”
“Whatever.”
“Ed Aldo,” Toby huffed, still stuck on the thing from before. “At least you expect Colorado’s most prime-time idiots putting up a fight.” He moved like he couldn’t decide which way his rage was pulling him. “You know what bugs me?”
“Most things?” Will ventured, making a cup of coffee himself.
“Conservatism always has a home court advantage. ‘S’like, having another guy on the field. You just gotta make the argument that nothing should change! It requires no effort. It demands no work or imagination or solutioning. It asks nothing of its supporters beyond clinging to the rose-colored not-reallys of yesteryear.” He sighed with every fiber of his being. “Ed Aldo is a different ballgame.”
CJ blew on her coffee. “Really leaning into the sports metaphor there, Toby.”
Toby gestured one hand in the air as he walked backward to his office, “Tis the season.”
“Going to game six tomorrow, baybay!” Josh whooped. “‘Do you believe in miracles?!’”
“That one was hockey,” Donna pointed out, considerably less enthralled.
“It was a come-from-behind victory, that’s what it was. It was the pure, distilled essence of sport, Donnatella. It was ferocity and athleticism and that deep, almost unconscious-level of human perfection. It was a thing of beauty, and if you can’t appreciate that, well…”
Donna looked up. “Yes?”
Josh shrugged. “Then you can’t.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “You’re a real Vin Scully, you know that?”
“It's the most wonderful tiiiiiiime,” Josh sang to himself, wandering to his door.
CJ perched on the edge of Donna’s desk, scanning the wire reports from the fax machine.
“I thought the singing, at least, would stop when the Yankees lost the playoffs,” Donna said, tapping at her keyboard. “But somehow Toby’s rage just seems to be making him stronger.”
CJ scrawled a few notes to herself in the margins of a Reuters piece. “He keeps this up, I don’t care who he has to negotiate with, I’m gonna duct tape his mouth shut.”
“Oh, to live the dream,” Donna breathed in rapture.
Josh poked his head out of his office again. “Hey, CJ! I just thought of something. We should bet!”
“Why?”
“You're San Francisco, I'm New England. It's fun.”
She made a face at him, briefly. “No.”
“Why not? I win, you do something nice for me.”
“Like?”
He opened his mouth, a dumbass smirk on his face that CJ supposed some sweet, lovely, equally-dumbass-in-one-hyperspecific-way, blonde, Wisconsinite people found amusing and attractive.
CJ blinked. She reached for Donna’s stapler and pinched its jaws a few times in threat. “When you answer that, bear in mind I’m stronger than you and not afraid to file a sexual harassment claim.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’d beat your ass though. No bets.”
“You win, I strong arm the press for you.”
She laughed in his face. “Strong arm? You?”
“It’d be fun!”
She put the stapler down and stood. “I do not care about baseball, Josh. There is actual, important work to do here. What we do matters. God! Everyone’s walking around this week acting like the carnival’s in town. There’s work to be done,” she said again, and threw her hands in the air. “It’s not all fun and games!”
Josh’s brow wrinkled. “We know that.”
“Do you?” She balled up the paper she was done with and threw it in the recycling. All basket, no rim.
Josh’s gaze panned from the recycle bin back to CJ. “I’ll put you down for March Madness instead.”
“I have to brief.”
She stormed away.
*
CJ glanced at the clock. “One more. Dave?”
“Any update on what’s going on with Artemis?”
“They’re still trying to establish a connection.”
“I heard there was something about a solar wind, maybe?” Mark asked.
“Guys, I know that with my all around genius it’s easy to mistake me for a rocket scientist, but the good folks at NASA are the best people to take your technical questions. Sorry, time’s up.”
Danny found her before she even made it to the Communications bullpen.
Her nose crinkled as she caught sight of him. “How do you do that?”
“Charm, wit, handsomeness?” Danny offered.
CJ flung her hands up. “Is there a door I don’t know about?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“You. Here. New land speed record.”
“Little tip: I try to go for clarity, you know, when I’m asking questions.”
“Oh, is that what you do?” She threw her notes on her desk. Danny had about ten seconds to come to whatever question he had before she kicked him out.
“Hey, I was surprised to find out that after all this time, you’re not a rocket scientist.”
“I graduated summa cum laude, Daniel, but not in fancy math.”
“No kidding.”
She spun on him. “Hey!”
“Just sayin’, pretty sure I once heard you call a couple scientists at CalTech psychics instead of physicists,” he pointed out.
CJ deliberated. “Well…Yeah, that sounds like something I’d do.”
“You have other more admirable qualities.”
She slunk behind her desk. “What do you want?”
“Wondering how things are going with the Community Advancement, Revitalization, and Empowerment Act?”
“The White House is confident that Congress will pass it through the House, investing in much needed civic improvements to rural and urban communities across the country,” she parroted. “We’re building the future.”
“Wanna know what I think?” Danny flirted.
CJ batted her eyes with determined insincerity. “Rarely if ever.”
“I think someone really wanted to call it the C.A.R.E. Act.”
“Danny…”
“Heard something about Ed Aldo, interestingly enough. He’s holding up votes.”
CJ held her ground, unmoved to dish out anything to Danny goddamn Concannon.
“No free leads from me today. You want your story, you gotta work for it.”
“I always work for it,” he pouted.
“Among other things.”
“Off the record?”
“One Arizona congressman, impeding American progress,” she huffed. She felt tired and worn down to the treads, and not entirely sure why. It was a good bill. It’d mean real change, and money for much-needed projects and programs, and it was unfair that she couldn’t seem to muster a reason to, well, like the acronym said…
“What a time to be alive. If one person is all it takes…” She didn’t finish her thought. “Anyway.”
“And you don’t have anything more on Artemis?”
“As I said.”
“Ah-kay.” He closed his notebook. “$250 million dollars to lose another spacecraft. Great seeing my tax dollars at work.”
“You wanna lodge your complaints, get in line,” she said. “That’s–”
“-off the record. I know. You see me taking notes?”
“Not lately.” She met his eye, wondering if he’d bring it up. He didn’t the last time.
Danny shrugged. “Hope they get the orbiter back online.”
CJ sat back in her chair, tapping the pads of her fingers together. “You think I have admirable qualities?” she asked.
“I do.” Danny’s mouth twitched. He tapped his head. “Got a list.”
“Do you?”
“Some of them, despite being non-fancy, and non-mathematical in nature…are out of this world.”
CJ swiveled in her chair, unimpressed. “How long you been waiting to use that one?”
“‘Bout five minutes into the briefing.”
“Leave.”
She sat up, ready to hurl herself back into it.
“CJ?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
I don’t really know.
“Fine.”
Danny hung at the door. “One person can do a lot, you know. To whatever end.”
She scoffed at her laptop. “Sure.”
“Do me a favor: Ask Toby about the most powerful official ever to serve in New York state politics.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, will ya?”
“Whatever.”
*
That evening, she glanced through the transcript and requests that had come through the press office. They’d only gotten one question about Chicago, from Arlene Simmons at the Detroit Free Press. One question.
Maybe, CJ thought, feeling like there was sandpaper in her eyes and like even the hair on her head hurt at this point, maybe it wouldn’t be a thing after all. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
*
On Wednesday she was in the office by 6:54am.
Morning briefing: 10:00am.
Afternoon briefing: 3:00pm.
Agency announcements from NASA and Interior took the place of the evening round-up.
Then, capturing the hearts and minds of sports fans and romantics and long-suffering New Englanders, that night, the Red Sox tied up the World Series against the Giants, bringing it all down to one final game.
All day, CJ didn’t get a single question about Chicago.
*
Thursday
“What’s up with Ed Aldo?” the President asked. At his back, morning light spilled into the Oval across the Resolute Desk. “Five minutes ago we were at the table with Caleb Dunne and that other guy who’s name I can’t remember.”
“Well, you might be surprised to hear this, sir, but we were wrong,” Toby said.
“Us?” the President said, sarcastic. “Color me shocked.”
“Dunne and Wozniak are, on this most rare of occasions, in line with Ed Aldo. He’s holding eleven votes on C.A.R.E. hostage,” Leo explained.
“Democrats?” Jed asked.
“And three Republicans,” Josh said.
The President looked at Leo. “Does he actually have three Republican votes, or is he just saying he does?”
Leo nodded. Believe it or not … “He’s got ‘em.”
“Ed Aldo’s been in Congress longer than two of my daughters have been alive. He used to be head of the AFL-CIO in a state with like the fourth lowest union membership in the country—Why’s he throwing a wrench in the gears on this? The Southwest needs this bill.” He turned up his palms. “What’s this about?”
“Water rights,” Josh said.
“Water?”
Josh explained, “Over the last decade, private companies have been buying up the rights to control water in the Colorado River. They’re mostly diverting it to alfalfa farms, which is extremely water-intensive.”
CJ didn’t quite follow. “And? Resource management isn’t, like, a new concept to most agricultural districts,” she asked. “What makes this different?”
“There’s less and less water, for one,” Leo said. “Decreasing snowpack in the Rockies has meant less runoff into the Southwest for the past twelve years. USGS predicts a mega-drought in the next five to six.”
“Add to that the fact that most of these companies are foreign. In fact, seventy-seven percent are owned by a handful of transnational shell companies,” Josh added.
“Chinese?” the President asked.
Leo’s made and Oh it’s worse than that face. “Saudis.”
“Why now?”
Will pointed out, “He’s eighty-two and his district is going red. DNC is on the fence about if its even worth fighting to keep his seat.”
“Cue the Swan Song of Edward Aldo,” CJ said.
“Yeah.”
The President stuck his hands in his pockets. “The weather and private companies based in countries I’m not in charge of,” Jed sighed. “We don’t make it easy, do we?” He nodded to Josh and Toby. “Talk to Aldo.”
“Mr. President, I think we should really consider supporting his proposal,” Toby said.
“Guy holds a gun to your head at the eleventh hour, you don’t negotiate, Toby,” Leo said. “Why?”
“Cause he’s right.”
“Toby…” Leo warned.
“He’s right,” Toby said again, voice low.
“Talk,” Jed told them. “No promises yet.”
Debbie knocked on the door to the outer office, signaling time was up.
“Anything else?” the President asked. “Hey, has anyone made progress with that guy doing the murals all over town?”
“F.B.I. and D.C. police are on it,” Leo said.
“You seen the most recent one?” Josh asked.
“There’s another?” CJ asked. She glanced up at Josh, then Leo. “What was it this time?”
The President looked both bemused and impressed. “Guy did the D.C. monuments in the style of Picasso’s Guernica.” He followed them to the door. “After he does his community service or whatever, you think I can commission them for a presidential portrait?”
“Probably not the best idea,” Will Bailey offered. “On the off chance that we'd like to, you know, discourage the concept of citizen makeovers.”
“Why not?” the President challenged. “I’m curious what kind of demonic take they’d throw at me. My likeness rendered in the anxious existentialism of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, perhaps. Or maybe the all-consuming madness of Francisco de Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son?”
“Pun intended?” Josh quipped.
“Well,” Leo said, dry, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, given that a) it’s a federal crime for which this person or persons is likely to do some time, rendering them incapable of any kind of portraiture for the near future, and because b) you haven’t got a son.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a Charlie,” Jed said, pointing.
Without glancing up from the mountain of briefing books on his desk, Charlie said, “Since you have the run of the Smithsonian, National Archives, and National Galleries, I think you can do without some punkass street tagger’s delusions of grandeur. But if it makes you feel better, Mr. President, pretty sure my social life has already been devoured.”
*
CJ turned into the hall outside her office when she almost smacked into Danny.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” she said, avoiding looking at him. She was busy. A busy person. There were things she needed to focus on that weren’t, you know, seating assignments and vetting press credentials. That’s what she had Carol for.
“Wanna know something interesting?” Danny asked, entirely too chummy. He followed her into her office.
“No.”
“Ah-kay.”
She threw her file on her desk and spun around, folding her arms across her chest. “What?”
“Rumor has it some of the folks at NASA figured out what was wrong.”
“NASA?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna tell me or just wanna draw out the suspense?”
“Got a source saying there might have been a mix-up with the units of measurement.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Got specs in centimeters, but if they need to be in inches, then…”
She stared at him. “You’re telling me those nerds went to school for twenty-five years and forgot to account for the metric system?”
Danny lifted one shoulder. “No confirmation yet, but thought you might want to tee up, just in case.”
She looked away. Some days…“Thanks,” she said, allowing that the tip was a decent gesture, coming from him.
(Then again, what’d he have to lose?)
She obliged him with a momentary nod of thanks. “Houston, better start counting your lucky stars.”
“It's a planetary orbiter. Stays inside the solar system?” Danny pointed out.
She rolled her eyes. Moment over. “Did you need something?”
“You ask Toby about that thing?”
CJ sat behind her desk. “Danny, I actually have things to do, so if there isn’t…”
“Nah, that was it.”
“Okay.” She looked up at him.
This was the point where, if he was a damn adult, he’d actually say something.
“Okay.” He turned to leave.
“Heard there’s a thing going on later,” CJ said to her desk. That was as close to a softball as he’d get.
“Oh yeah?” Danny raised an eyebrow.
CJ refused to react one way or another. “You think you’re the only one who has sources in this town?”
“What kinda thing?” Danny asked, like he didn’t know.
She felt a stab of hurt. She thought she was past this. That they were past it. Why he wouldn’t just admit when…
CJ grit her damn teeth. No. No games.
“Nevermind. Out of my office. Go cover NASA, woudja?”
Something in his expression sparkled. “Maybe I will.”
CJ narrowed her eyes.
Danny held her gaze, expectant. Daring her, even. She realized the idiot not only knew she knew, but was waiting for her to bring it up.
Honestly, would she never learn? She stabbed her tongue against her cheek. Whatever.
“Out.”
*
“Carol!” CJ shouted. “Get me the evening wires from AP and Agence-France?”
“Evening?” Carol asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s three in the afternoon?”
“But we can agree that it’s not in France, right?”
Carol rolled her eyes. Specificity would have been nice, you weirdo, she communicated silently. “Sure thing, boss.”
CJ frantically typed out her beats for the afternoon briefing.
“Here you go. Oh, and there was an update that came in.”
CJ looked up. “Artemis?”
Carol nodded. “The girl in Chicago. From the Trib story on Monday?”
“Yeah?”
“She died.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
“Toby’s looking for you.”
*
“Game six was in San Francisco,” Will was explaining as CJ shoved past him. “So the final one will be in Boston on Friday night.”
“Wowww,” Donna feigned.
“You know, I find it pretty hard to romanticize the mass-marketing of the commercial behemoth that is professional sports, but that’s as close to a modern fairy tale as you’re gonna get,” Will continued.
“I’m sure,” Donna breezed, focusing on her actual work.
CJ ducked into Toby’s office. “What’s up?”
Toby had his feet kicked up on his desk. He blinked up from a yellow legal pad. “What’s the temperature in the room?”
“Well, it’s bad,” she said, sinking into his couch and laying her head back for one blessed moment of respite. “But not as bad as it could be,” she admitted. “Not as bad as I expected.”
“What are you getting?”
She shook her head. “This week? High-tech boondoggles, Smokey the Bear, and endless puns is about the extent of it. The puns, at least, are mostly directed at Congress.”
“Puns?”
“‘USA Today: Does anyone in this House C.A.R.E.?’, etcetera, etcetera…” she quoted. “So much for a banner week,” she said to the ceiling.
“They’re still trying, with the orbiter?”
“Yeah. Kay’s sending updates every six hours.”
She thought back to Danny’s annoying questions, all of them. She remembered something.
She tilted her face over to Toby. “Danny told me to ask you who the most powerful figure in New York state politics was.”
Toby tapped his pen in curiosity. “Danny’s asking?”
“Danny told me to ask you.”
His shoulders shrugged up in question.
She shrugged. “Trying to make a point of some sort.”
“Why’s he–?”
She gestured in the air. “I’ve given up trying to understand.”
Especially now, she didn’t add.
He shrugged. Okay. “Most powerful figure in New York state politics? Easy.”
“Yeah?”
“Guy named Robert Moses.”
Didn’t ring any bells. “Governor?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Senate?”
Toby looked at her, kind of amazed. “You really don’t…?”
“I don’t,” CJ bit out, irritated. “So unless you’re gonna make me run through the rest of the legislative branch, could you just–?”
Toby tossed the legal pad aside. He reached for the pink ball he abused when he was feeling frustrated. Or happy, or enraged, or anything, really.
“Bob Moses did not hold elected office.” Toby tossed his rubber ball in the air. “He won no races. He ran exactly one campaign during his political lifetime, which he overwhelmingly lost.”
He stood up as he spoke and came around the desk. “And in the last century, not one single person comes anywhere even close to having affected as much change as he did in the forty some-odd years of his career.”
“What’d he do?” CJ felt her brow crease like Josh’s shirts. “How’d he do it?”
Toby sat on the edge of his desk. “Guy was a New York City planner. When I say he both built and bent the entire public sphere to his will…”
Toby gave a little laugh at what CJ imagined was some intended form of understatement.
“This guy—He created modern New York basically from scratch. All of it: The Triboro and the Verrazano; the West Side Highway; Battery Tunnel; Shea Stadium; the UN; Lincoln Center. Pretty much every housing project in the city.” He bounced his racquetball on the floor. “Name a major public works project in 20th century New York, and Bob Moses was behind it, one way or another.”
“Okay.”
He bounced the ball a few times, squeezed it in his palm. “He also annihilated whole communities in the process of creating others. Built a city around the flow of cars and only marginally included any room or funding for public transit. Actually there’s a fairly strong argument to be made that the whole of his career could be summed up by that Joni Mitchell song.”
CJ sat up, stretching her neck. “Which?”
“You know the one.”
“Maybe,” CJ lied. She did, actually, but he didn’t need to know that. “You should sing it.”
He made a face at her. I'm not singing it, his expression said. He bounced the ball a couple more times. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
She twisted her mouth to the side, denied her small, sad scrap of amusement. She didn’t really get where Danny was going with this, but it didn’t matter.
Then she thought: He’s going, too.
“Lotta cities modeled their post-war projects on his,” Toby said. He glanced up at her. “Chicago for one.”
“Right.” CJ dragged herself to her feet. There was work to do. “Thanks.”
“Look up how Moses was finally kicked out,” Toby said.
She lingered in the door, deflated further and now annoyed. Could someone, with, just, any kind of a direct answer here! “C’mon. Toby, what’s this–?”
He bounced the ball a few more times.
“Look it up.”
“I’ll be sure to do that in my hours of spare time tonight.”
*
She was coming back from the mess with a deeply pathetic-looking salad around seven when Josh caught up with her in the hall. “They caught the guy doing the thing.”
She made a face at him like, Literally, that means nothing.
“The rogue artists,” he clarified.
Okay. “It was a group?” She stopped in her tracks. “I forgot a fork.”
She turned and headed to the desk outside Josh’s office.
He read from a file in hand. “A couple, actually. Inna Howlan and Nick Chandrasagar-Alessio.”
“A couple? Donna do you have–”
Saintly, all knowing Donna handed her a plastic thing-y of utensils. “Here.”
“Yeah, married couple, actually. Did BFAs at RISD and have been in the community organizing slash art slash protest scene for the past few years.”
“Priors?” CJ asked, ripping the package to get at her fork.
“None?”
“So what’s their deal? Tryna get some free publicity for their bad taste?”
Josh read from his file. “‘We create art for the people. Art to seed thought and to motivate deed. Art to lift, and art to restore. The District of Columbia is an intentional political community just as the marking of art is an intentionally political act. We make this city our canvas,’” he read. “That’s from a statement their group put out in support on their website. I’m betting there’s more than just paint in their studio, if you know what I mean.”
CJ stabbed at a piece of wilted lettuce. “What was it this time?”
“Frieda and Diego?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Josh asked.
“I’m just curious.”
Josh frowned at a page. “It was…scribbles? With target-y bullseyes and satellites.”
Donna looked over Josh’s shoulder. “Wassily Kandinsky. Russian Modernist. Several Circles. Circle in a Circle. Squares with Concentric Circles. He had a whole geometric period,” she said.
Josh’s mouth turned upside down like a Muppet.
“What? I did art history!”
“Useful,” Josh mocked.
Donna rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”
Josh shook his head and followed CJ as she headed back to her office. “Hey, you going to this thing later?”
“What thing?”
“Danny’s goodbye drinks.”
She felt her mood darken. She sat at her desk and scanned her email. “No.”
Josh’s eyebrows dusted the ceiling. “Really.”
She met his eye, nonplussed. “I wasn’t invited.”
He gave her a look. “I doubt he’d mind…”
“I have work to do.”
“CJ. Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“You like Danny.”
She wanted to yell.
“Wish him good luck for me.”
*
Friday
Danny knocked on the jamb.
“You keep stopping by,” CJ said, feeling her pulse tick up. Annoyance, probably.
“I like our talks. Also I didn’t see you last night,” he said, sounding oddly hurt.
She ignored that and closed her laptop. “Taking a last look around?”
He stepped into her office, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Somehow I doubt it’s the last I’ll see of this place.”
“Assuming they let you back in.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Danny nodded at the paper on her desk. The one that had been there all week. “Whatcha reading?”
“Nothing.”
His eyebrows rose expectantly.
She held up the days-old paper. “Uh, the Tribune story on the girl in Chicago.”
He stood upright, humor dissipating. “I thought–?”
She shook her head. “It’s the one from Monday.”
“Ah.”
She rose to toss it in the recycle bin without comment. She leaned on the edge of her desk. CJ bent her head back to the ceiling. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah?” He sat on the arm of her couch.
CJ tried to organize her thoughts. She looked at him, searching. Danny didn’t bullshit her. He gave her the hard truth, whether she wanted to hear it or not.
“Sixty years ago, in the post-war boom, we tried to change housing in this country. Create opportunities for millions of people through publicly funded projects that would be a stepping stone to a better future. Or so we claimed.”
He clasped his hands together, listening. “That’s true.”
“And yet, every part of urban renewal was an abject failure. I mean, abject.” She flung up her hand. “It red-lined whole neighborhoods, destroyed thriving communities of—shock of shocks!—mostly minorities, and gave them pennies for their trouble. We built dehumanizing public housing projects from coast to coast and then blamed poor people for living there. For decades.”
Danny nodded. “And your question is?”
“My question is: What the hell!? We spent decades on this stuff. What other well-intentioned, massive, systemic failures are we perpetuating this very minute? How many other kids do we need to let down in the most fundamental ways? My God—We spent over $250 million dollars to lose an orbiter on a planet no one will ever visit. That money could have been used to build better housing or incredible schools or expand national parks. It could have gone to a little girl in Chicago. It should have kept her safe. Where do we get the audacity to impose these useless, broken policies?”
“What’s the alternative?” he asked.
She sighed and folded her arms across her chest. Facing the facts.
“So. You're off again.”
“Across the troubled waters,” Danny flirted. She could tell he was trying to tease her. Distract her, maybe.
“You could have mentioned it.”
“Ah, I like keeping you on your toes. Gotta keep working those sources.”
“Where to this time?”
“Why? You thinking about taking a vacation?”
CJ scoffed. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Stranger things,” he speculated.
“Singapore? Joburg? Brussels?” she guessed.
“Not quite.”
“You gonna make me hunt the International section for a byline?” CJ asked.
“Virginia,” Danny said.
She sputtered in surprise. “What?” she asked. “You're–?”
Danny held her eye. “Spent the last year working with intelligence sources in and around the Pentagon, Langley. Thought maybe I'd put ‘em to good use. Let some young hotshot take over the incarceration beat.”
Her mouth ticked up. “Incarceration?”
He stood up and came closer. “Don’t get me wrong: It’s a nice prison, but a prison nonetheless…” He looked up and around her office in emphasis.
She dipped her head. “So you’re leaving the White House…”
“...but not D.C.,” Danny finished.
She leaned back, considering this information in a new light.
“Well. That’s interesting.”
“Maybe. Suppose that depends.”
“On what?”
“If it means you'll have dinner with me,” Danny said.
She blinked, still thrown by the fact that he was sticking around this time. “Why?”
“See, though you might get by on coffee and some form of aggravation-based biofuel, most people get their nourishment and energy from regular meals.”
CJ shook her head at the mock condescension. “No, you idiot, I mean–”
“I know what you mean.” He looked at her. “Because I know you got rules, and principles. And ‘cause I still got a crush on you.”
CJ felt herself being, against her will (mostly...), a tiny bit charmed. “You’re a real glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
His idiot eyes sparkled. “Must be all those years of Catholic school.”
A knock at the door. Danny backed away.
Carol stuck her head in. “CJ? Leo’s looking for you.”
He took the cue. “Bye.”
*
The afternoon briefing came and went. The press room was emptier than usual, even for a Friday. Word had gotten out over the holdup on C.A.R.E.; CJ spent most of the briefing being adamant it would pass. Be nice if that were true, she thought, tossing her notes in the bin on the way out of the press room.
In the bullpen, she grabbed a cold cup of coffee, sipping as she watched a silent news story from NBC4 about the kids who’d been arrested for their bad art projects. They were giving a statement; both wore deeply unflattering jumpsuits. Presumably what they’d been wearing when they were arrested.
“Yikes,” Donna said, watching a clip too. “Feel a little better about my bad hair day, now.”
“You look fine,” CJ assessed.
“Ugh,” Donna fretted.
CJ tapped her coffee cup as she watched. “Think I’d prefer the bad outfit rather than the tackiest thing I’ve ever done splashed across the Metro section and local news.”
“Everyone keeps knocking on them,” Donna said. “I don’t get it.” She sounded odd.
“Why not? They’re idiot kids,” CJ shrugged.
“Everyone’s so worked up about baseball this week and that’s fine, don’t get me wrong. But don’t you think there’s something…” Donna trailed off.
“They defaced public property, they don't get an exhibition at the Frick.”
“You don’t–? I thought you at least…” Donna waved it off. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I don’t–” Donna looked thoughtful, searching for the words. “We live in this country where every day people show up at work or to school or other public places, armed and ready to do real and lasting harm to make a point. To hurt people.”
Donna stood up and gestured vaguely with one hand as she sorted the interdepartmental inbox of mail.
“And these twenty-something kids think the best way to vent their frustration en masse is to create grand, politically motivated art for people. And I don’t care that everyone thinks they’re bad or tacky or just a bunch of New Yorker cartoon rejects. That’s something. They decided that it was important to use their talent and energy and whatever scraps of free time they had to make something. That, however big or small, for however many people, that it was worth doing. That it was worth the risk.”
She sighed and shrugged, meeting CJ’s eye. “I don’t know…I think there’s something admirable in that.”
CJ thought about this for a moment.
“Josh thinks they were probably stoned,” she said.
Donna smiled a little, against her will. “They’d have to be. I mean, you spend all that time and effort, what if you get to morning and Uncle Sam doesn’t have pants yet? The anxiety would kill me.”
CJ smiled. “Indeed.”
“Hey,” Toby said, appearing at CJ’s shoulder. “Leo’s office, now.”
“What’s up?”
“Josh talked to Aldo.”
“Did he get him to–?”
“Let’s find out.”
*
“He wants a push on regulation and oversight,” Josh explained. “Every one of the votes he’s holding up is a district along the Colorado River going through some version of this. They’re all going dry.”
They’d all been pulled from Leo’s office into the Oval, and gathered around the desk in discussion.
“Regulation. Well, the American West loves that,” Leo said. “What else is he looking for?”
“For the White House to be a strong and vocal supporter of whomever runs in his place in the Midterms.” Josh hesitated. “Sir, I think he’s right.”
“Water shortages, dry wells, crop failure…Sir, water regulation might be more popular these days than we think. Worth polling on, at least,” Toby said.
“More than forty million Americans rely on the Colorado for water,” the President said, thoughtful.
He clasped his hands and stared at the landscape painting on the wall. A Hudson River Valley work by Frederic Edwin Church.
“The story of the American West is the story of the Colorado River. Francisco de Ulloa, Jedediah Smith, John Wesley Powell...Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tuscon, Los Angeles…You know the name Rio Colorado comes from the Spanish for ‘red river’, and was so named for the ochre bluffs and mesas it cut through from the Rockies to the Gulf of California.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded to Toby and Josh.
“Tell Ed Aldo he’s got a ballgame.”
“Yes, sir,” Toby said.
“After we get C.A.R.E. passed, we’ll sit down. He’s got a point to go along with his problem.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s next?”
*
CJ ducked into Leo’s office to grab her notebook and the file folders Carol had handed to her after the afternoon briefing.
“You doing okay?” Leo asked.
CJ paused a second before she said, “Not a lot of wins this week, Leo.”
“A lot more than some weeks,” he pointed out. Leo glanced at the folder of articles Carol had printed for her. “What’s that?” Some of the headlines stuck out from the folder.
She showed him. “Something I was looking into. How this New York City planner guy fell out of favor or whatever.”
“You’re talking about Bob Moses.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Leo grinned, eyes crinkling in genuine, deep-held mirth. “Oh man, do I love that story.”
“You do?” She leaned back against his table.
“Oh yeah.” He came around his desk opposite her and sat on its edge as he began.
“For thirty-plus years, Robert Moses had the keys to the kingdom in New York. Titan of his time. Upstate, downstate, Long Island…He worked the key players of every administration, state and local, and knew exactly who controlled the purse-strings. Probably the most powerful force in New York politics in the entire 20th century.
“Toward the end of his career, he’s getting ready to pave the West Village and build a connection between the Holland Tunnel, from Jersey, going across the Bowery and the Lower East Side, over to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges. Basically guy’s looking to steamroll Houston from the Hudson to the East River and slap a 10-lane expressway on top for good measure. He also wanted to bulldoze a huge section of Greenwich Village. Whole thing was designed to transform Lower Manhattan. It’d be unrecognizable.”
CJ hugged her briefing folder to her chest. “What happened?”
Leo nodded with awe and respect. “I’ll tell ya what: Jane Jacobs happened.”
He put his arms behind his head, thinking back.
“This middle-aged woman with no real career to speak of, she hears about this highway plan and is pissed. You’re gonna come into my neighborhood and smash it up so a bunch of townies from Hoboken can get to Queens faster? Not on my watch!
“So, Jacobs, she gets together with some people in the neighborhood and organizes. Moses is outraged. This little housewife and mother, trying to take on one of his grand, transformative public works projects? Course, he also thought it laughable. So, dismissive as he is, he barely gives a second thought to her or the group she puts together in opposition.”
Leo smirked again.
“Now, in the reality you and I inhabit, Jane Jacobs was actually a highly-regarded architectural critic and urbanist, but you can imagine how an elder statesman of the inter-war New York City political machine thought about a fifty-year-old writer from Scranton, living in a Village rowhouse.”
The corner of CJ’s mouth ticked up. “Sure.”
“This is the late 60s, so, you know: there are marches, there are protests. She gets the Italians in Little Italy to push back, the Chinese in Chinatown; she gets the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans; she gets the laborers and the NYU academics; the business owners and all those housewives fired up. Rumor has it she even got the downtown Mafia dons on board. She writes in every local newspaper and is on every radio program she can book. Even gets arrested one night after a fight starts at a public hearing.”
CJ’s brow furrowed. “Seriously?”
“Serious,” Leo nodded. “Charged with inciting a riot and criminal mischief. She could have faced years in prison if convicted.”
“Damn.”
“In the end, her group caused enough trouble to kill the Lower Manhattan Expressway Project, just as it killed the public housing development that would have razed most of the Village. You imagine New York without Washington Square? I can’t.”
Leo shook his head. “That’s political power, CJ: Leveraging whatever scraps you can get your hands on. It finished Moses. He was out by 1970, and history has not been kind to him, despite all he built. He didn’t know when the party was over. All empires fall. All reigns come to an end. Soon enough, this one will, too.”
She turned her head. The door to the Oval was open, but the office was dark. “Yeah.”
She thought about kids with paint versus kids with guns; about spirals and circles and spheres and orbits, like that Kandinsky painting; objects that spun and spun and spun in place forever; trapped in an endless rut that never nudged off course.
She headed for the door, asking as she went, “You heading out?”
Leo looked down at his desk for a moment, smiling to himself. “You know what? I think I’ll stick around for a bit and head up to the Residence. I’m feeling oddly affectionate for the underdog all of a sudden.”
*
She found herself at loose ends, and not because she didn’t have a mountain of work on her desk. She saw Toby’s light on.
“Good work,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “Josh and Charlie and some of the guys are going up to the Residence for game seven.”
CJ rolled her eyes. “Great.”
“You know the President subjected to me to some Red Sox history earlier this week.”
“Your favorite.” Much as she didn’t like the hat, she’d take it over Jed Barlet’s idea of fun facts any day.
“Back in the day, this one group of supporters used to sing to distract the other team when they were at bat,” Toby explained. “They were doing this one song during the 1903 World Series when the batter from Pittsburg strikes out and Boston wins, so it became a favorite.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a line that goes: Don’t blame us if we ever doubt you, you know that we couldn’t live without you.”
She held her hands out. “Well. Maybe they’ll get to sing it tonight.”
“Maybe they will.”
The glow of eggy yellow street lights slashed across the floor in between lines of shadow. She thought of headlamps, late at night; of million wattage floodlights, perfectly calibrated for HD cameras; of the rattling tungsten in filthy, chipped paint stairwells.
She spent more time in this building than in her own apartment. What did it say that she knew every cast of light, in every kind of weather, in almost every room in the joint? Not much, CJ was pretty sure.
“CJ?" Toby gave her the affection of his full observation. “You good?”
He meant well.
She forced herself to smile. “I’m just grand.”
He watched his briefcase as he packed it up, contemplative. “Are you?”
She placed a hand on the doorframe. “Go home, Toby. See your kids.”
“And you?”
She thought of the chilly emptiness of her apartment. A stack of mail she hadn’t opened, and about three weeks worth of laundry to get around to doing.
“Not yet. Still a couple things to do.”
“Catch the end of the game. Have a beer. Do something.”
“We’ll see. Good job on the water regulation. You and Josh.”
“You know, David Brower used to say we don’t inherit the Earth, we borrow it from our children,” Toby said.
CJ smirked. “Call an ambulance. I must be having an aneurysm, because I think I just heard diehard Brooklynite Toby Ziegler citing a radical Berkeley environmentalist.”
“I may be coming around on some views,” Toby admitted to his desk, quietly.
CJ crossed her arms. “What the hell happened?” she teased.
He shrugged. “I had kids.”
*
Joni Mitchell crooned softly from a soundstage in 1970. CJ stared at the wall of TVs without seeing anything in particular. It was after nine. It was probably too late to join the guys in the Residence. She should just get out of here.
A knock at the door.
CJ blinked. She sat up, surprised. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What are you still doing here?”
Danny leaned against the jamb. “See Josh earlier. Left a couple things in the press room. Check Air Force One lost and found. Catch up with Steve.”
“Okay.”
Danny watched the muted monitors against her wall. “I was thinking about what you asked me earlier. About audacity, and why it matters.”
“Yeah?”
Funny. She’d been thinking about what he’d asked her.
He sat on the arm of her couch. “Y’know, ‘bout two hundred years ago, there was this Irish immigrant kid who came to New York. John Conness. Youngest of fourteen–”
“Jesus Christ...” CJ crossed herself and gave deepest thanks be for birth control.
“Kid had almost nothing to his name. Manages to get through New York public school before he takes off with the rest of the forty-niners for the Gold Rush. Years go by, and the guy makes a decent name for himself out West. Ends up an abolitionist, and campaigning for the rights of indentured Chinese laborers on whose backs the railroads were getting built. For his sins, he was elected Senator from the great State of California, where, in 1864, he submitted a bill to the legislature in Sacramento.”
“For what?” CJ asked, listening.
“Nothing special, people thought. Protection of an unknown tract up in the Sierras that some wily old hermit had shown him. But Conness was a savvy guy, and he got the support he needed. Later that same year, the bill got sent on to Washington, where Lincoln signed the Yosemite Land Grant and paved the way for that unknown tract to become one of the first national parks in existence. A place carved out and protected ‘for the betterment and enjoyment of the people’ for all time.”
CJ looked at him, bemused. “When did you get time alone with the President, and who allowed that to happen?”
Danny shrugged. “Eh, I was doing some research before the parks thing the other day.”
She smiled, feeling a stab of affection for him. Guy really was a nerd. A talented nerd, but a nerd nonetheless.
“Urban renewal was a disaster, no doubt about it,” Danny said. “Drew arbitrary and racist lines across half the communities in the country, and corralled a generation of minorities into convenient urban squalor. There’s bad policies, ‘cause policies are made by people, and people are biased and imperfect. But just as often, something good gets done, like a dirt broke immigrant kid growing up to invent the idea of a national park. And, if you ask me—bearing in mind I’m as biased and imperfect as the next guy—the trend line from bad to good seems to be ticking up these days. So keep your chin up, wouldja?”
He stood up and went for the door.
CJ turned her head against the chair. “You know, for a guy who’s job description is more or less to be our professional critic, you’re strangely optimistic.”
“Just for lost causes. And not my job anymore.” He rapped his knuckles on the jamb twice. He turned to walk away.
CJ threw a pen at his head. “Hey. Yosemite Sam.”
“Name’s Danny, last I checked?” He held up his press pass.
CJ turned off the desk lamp. She turned off the TVs. “Bit late for dinner. Buy a girl a drink.”
His expression brightened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She switched off the light and grabbed her bag and coat.
“Should I bring my notebook?” Danny teased.
“Why would you bring your notebook?” CJ said evenly. “You don’t work here.”
“No, I do not.”
He grabbed his messenger bag and coat from the press room. CJ waited, leaning against the wall. “John Conness, Senator of California…” she mused, idly. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Eh, mostly I just make it up.” Danny shrugged into his coat. His defunct press pass fluttered against his tie.
CJ looped the lanyard over her finger and slid it over his head. She dropped it around her neck. Danny raised an eyebrow.
“Making sure they don’t let you back in the building.”
“Thorough.”
The air was late October brisk. Leaves scuttled against the pavement. The door to the security guard gate had just swung shut when, from one direction, and then another, car horns and shouts and shocked screams erupted across the night.
Cheers echoed from down the street, followed by howls and clanging and even more car horns beeping in staccato celebration.
“I think they won!” Danny laughed.
CJ grinned, despite herself. “I think they did.” She didn’t care, but still. She shook her head. It made a nice story.
“Eighty-five years. Wow!” He smiled like a kid.
“Guess the curse is broken.”
“Guess so. It had to end sometime.”
A group of frat guys or interns or whatever ran down 17th, wearing various shades of green and white and red, screaming past.
CJ thought of what it was to be young and to feel that rush of joy in you. What it meant to be part of a team. Big and organized and made up of moneyed, professional athletes. Of thoughtful researchers and dedicated film editors; surveyors and cartographers; politicians and conservationists.
She thought of methodical math nerds, orderly going through a sequence of steps, observing the results; a set of scrappy, misfit idealists with a longshot pipedream to save their neighborhood and community; a couple moving in synchronicity to craft and create something they believed in.
“Gonna be a long night for the sports writers in Boston,” she said.
Danny grinned. “Doubt anyone will be sleeping much anyway.”
She elbowed him playfully. “Jealous?”
Across Pennsylvania, a girl was sobbing and shrieking and ecstatic and overwhelmed by love.
Danny caught her eye. “Not even a little.”
CJ took his hand as they crossed Lafayette Square and the October night sounded with chaos and joy around them.
*
One week later
“Guess what?”
“What?” CJ said, pouring coffee into mugs.
The newspaper was tossed on the kitchen counter.
“Artemis came back online.”
CJ looked up, eyes wide. “It did?”
“NASA got it talking again,” Danny said.
“Praise the good nerds,” she sighed as he pressed a lazy morning kiss to her neck. She didn’t even glance at the article.
“You don’t wanna know how?”
“I don’t really care, to be honest. But I'm glad they did.”
She kissed him again, and when she pulled back, said, “Yeah, okay, yes, fine. Of course I want to know how they did it. It’ll come up later anyway.”
He grinned and opened the paper so she could read.
*