Early morning, the sun still rising, flecks of white dancing before her eyes. She closes the cab door gently, quietly, even though she knows he won't be able to hear it from the 23rd floor. Even if she slammed it shut. With all of her might. Even then. She is wearing her favorite scarf-- red cashmere she bought on a whim from this boutique in Soho-- and rolling a cigarette from finger to finger to finger. It is winter. It is New York. She is leaving him for the last time.
The cabbie slams on the brakes, coughing. It is wet and hacking, loud in this preternatural stillness, and she wonders if it might be safer to descend into the bowels of the city. (The 5 to the Grand Central shuttle-- she traces the route in her head-- then the 1/9 to Penn Station where she'll catch the train to Princeton, where she is lecturing for the semester.)
Her phone doesn't ring. She turned it off.
*
In the end, he doesn't write that book at all. That book, n. The one everyone always assumed he'd write, after the administration ended, the one about faith and liberal ideology and a man who was at once too much and not enough. The one they'd pestered him about at dinner parties, over cocktails, so...
Blink and you'll miss it: he writes a love story.
Years pass: his children grow up and out, stumbling out into adult life. Blinking. Josh mentioned something about a doctor, one of them, a med student. And, laughing, a musician. Guitar in hand and backpacking around Europe, busking on street corners. That may have been a joke. She hasn't spoken to Toby in years.
Since she left, her breath in clouds. She imagined him, that day, brushing his teeth and shucking on a jacket. Calling her only the next afternoon, the next week, to be coolly informed by a machine that "this number is no longer in service." It wasn't. She'd had it changed. She still doesn't know why (still, ever, never).
It glares at her from the new fiction table at Barnes & Noble. His Book: his opus his book his blood. She has to blink back tears. Hands trembling. She doesn't quite run out of the store (quite), but someone yells, "hey, watch it lady."
So she misses the news bulletin. Misses the phone call. Misses the curb and stumbles out into the street.
*
She doesn't want to read it, so of course a copy shows up in her mail. Of course she stays up all night reading it. It's-
*
Earlier: she falls into the street. A car horn bleeps. She scrapes her leg, her knee is bruised, and she stumbles home with gravel stuck to the palm of her hand. The news has yet to reach her, so she begins removing her clothes the moment she walks through her door. Steps into the shower (hot). She hears the phone ringing as if in the distance. She sings "fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices" to drown out the sound.
Tomorrow is Christmas. She almost forgot (she can't).
*
It was Christmas Eve the day she left, and Penn Station was even more of a mess than usual.
The snow picked up around noon, and the world shut down. She sat perfectly still and watched through her window as everything disappeared. She fell asleep around dawn, sitting in the worn leather chair that still smelled of his cigars, and woke up bruised and sore. And got drunk. She pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose and drank until she couldn't see.
On the radio, Martina McBride sang Silent Night.
*
-Toby. The book is Toby. She cries, loud and messy, wiping her nose on her 500 thread-count sheets.
*
It opens with a quote: "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago; to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." -Robert F. Kennedy. And a dedication: To those who do. She laughs, hiccuping and painful, and turns the page. And another. Keeps turning pages until the sun is up and her foot asleep.
A cup of cold tea sits on the bed stand. The air feels strange, feels charged. Could be a change in barometric pressure, of course, but CJ believes in omens.
Her answering machine is blinking, red and angry. Her cell phone is bleeping. She thinks she could sleep for days, but too many years with the world on her shoulders makes her unable to ignore what could be a war, could be a coup, could be an invitation to Josh's "look how cool I am, calling this a Chrismukkah party" party. She wonders when she got so old.
Outside, bells chime. Winter in Boston. Sleet, not snow, fogging her windows.
*
"-my job," he said. "Let me do my fucking job, CJ."
"No, Toby," she said. "Let me fucking do mine."
*
Republicans are in the White House, controlling Congress, and CJ thinks this should bother her more than it does. Once, her world revolved around such things. Once, she cared. Once was more than enough. She checks her messages: Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Sam, Toby. The President is dead (long live the-).
Toby sounds old. Sounds weary. He coughs, once, and his voice crackles and cuts out.
CJ sits on the edge of the desk. It is cold beneath her legs. She shivers. Fiddles with a paperclip. Picks up the phone.
fin.
[once more into the fray]