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TITLE: American Girl
AUTHOR: S.N. Kastle
CATEGORY: West Wing, Donna, J/S
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: "Aren't you a little old for this kind of thing?"  What it
feels like for an assistant.
SPOILERS: Takes place between "Somebody's Going..." and "The Stackhouse
Filibuster."  Can work as a stand-alone but fits within my "Chance To
Make It Real" universe.
DISCLAIMERS: Not mine.  Tom Petty is the man.
DISTRIBUTION: Pardon my cross-posts. 
THANKS: To NRC, who sounds like a PAC but isn't, but who gave safe haven
so this might near completion.  Also Jae, k, LS and Punk read various
drafts.  And then there is littlest LE, who always knows what kind of
girl I'm talking about.
FEEDBACK: Welcomed at snk@wearemany.net
 

tall grass
 
 

AMERICAN GIRL
 

     Well, she was an American girl
     Raised on promises
     She couldn't help thinking that
     There was a little more to life
     Somewhere else
     After all it was a great big world
     With lots of places to run to
 
                  -- Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
 

ONCE, DONNA HAD put her feet up on Josh's desk, just because that's what
the guy in movies would always do when he wanted to see how it felt to
be the boss. Josh had been stuck on the Hill in a budget thing, and
Donna had leaned back and crossed her ankles on the edge where there
wasn't any paperwork. She had shifted around and pushed back against the
wooden chair, twirling a pencil in her fingers and pretending she could
hear Josh answering her phone.

And then she'd caught her reflection in the window and started laughing
and went back to pulling research about agriculture subsidies. It wasn't
really any fun without Josh there to see it.
 

HE WAS LATE again.  Once, at the mall in Arlington, Donna had seen a
mother with three little kids, each tied around the waist with a
rainbow-colored cord so nobody got lost. If Josh wore a leash, he'd
never be late, and she wouldn't be left with lobbyists who really just
expected her to bring coffee and leave them alone.

"Are you sure you don't want coffee?" she asked.

"It's kind of late for coffee," the woman said, shaking her head again.
"I mean, if I have a coffee now I'll still be up for my eight o'clock
meeting tomorrow."

It was after nine on a weeknight and Donna wished she had a good reason
to be mad at Josh for making her work so late. She didn't actually mind,
she just wanted to be able to give him grief, and it was harder when she
had to invent mysterious men left heartbroken when she'd had to cancel.
She'd thought she'd meet someone, going out with Josh and Sam and Toby,
and she'd been ready to let Brad from the EPA buy her a drink at the bar
until he'd made a joke about blondes and she'd gone back to their table
empty handed. "Don't they give you guys a list of things not to do when
you're trying to pick up a girl?" she'd whined to Sam, and he'd just
looked at Josh and laughed and slung an arm around both of them.

Now it was nine o'clock and Donna was sitting in Josh's chair fixing the
month's calendar on the computer, and the woman kept talking to her. Her
name was Miranda Valencia, which was a much more exciting name than the
woman herself, who was tall but not so special looking. Miranda Valencia
had straight, dark hair to her chin and a long nose and weird, light
gray eyes. She had a little silver hoop high up on her ear and three
chunky silver rings on slim fingers with short-trimmed nails. She was
actually really pretty, which wasn't quite fair, given that she was a
lesbian.

Or, well, Donna assumed she was a lesbian, because she didn't imagine
that gay organizations hired straight women to lobby for them.  She was
young and kind of pushy, had insisted on sitting in the office while
they waited for Josh. Which normally Donna wouldn't mind, except now she
felt like she was supposed to play hostess. The phone rang and it wasn't
Josh but Leo needing numbers on the Michaelson rider.  Donna balanced
the phone on her shoulder and stretched over to the far side of the desk
to grab the right folder.

She hung up and Miranda was looking at her, seeming impressed.  "Does he
always make you work this late?" Miranda asked, recrossing her legs.
She wore a dark blue pantsuit, nice if a little tight on the top.  She
didn't exactly look like a lesbian but she was very well-scrubbed in a
clean, appealing way.

Donna shrugged. "It's my job," she said. When she forgot that, she
called her mother, who would talk about Dorothy's husband and Dorothy's
kids and Dorothy's cute new kitchen curtains until Donna remembered why
economic policy would always be more fun than her sister's life.

"Seems like you do his pretty well, too," Miranda said, smiling.  Donna
decided that Miranda was one of those opinionated women.  Which was okay
when you agreed with their opinions.  Otherwise it was just annoying.
"Are you sure you can't just do the meeting without him?"

"No, I'm really, really I'm just an assistant," Donna said.  "His
assistant.  I don't actually make decisions."

"Even when your boss is an hour late and it's already nine o'clock?"
Miranda had the kind of reasonable voice you wanted to agree with
because it just seemed to make so much sense. But still.

"Especially then," Donna said, but she turned off the monitor.  Donna
turned and faced Miranda across Josh's desk, because she didn't have to
be cranky with a stranger just because she was annoyed with Josh.  "Do
you want something else to drink? I think there's some beer in the
fridge. Or I could go down to the mess and dig around."

"Beer's OK," she said, and Donna went and rooted around behind Josh's
BLT from Tuesday and found two Heinekens. There was an empty plastic
utensil box filled with condiments on top of the fridge but no opener.

"How's this?"  Miranda pulled a Swiss Army knife out of her bag and Donna
handed her the bottles.  "Any chance I can at least get you to give me
some sense of where the White House stands on this?" she asked, handing
the caps and one beer back to Donna.

"I'm not really allowed to speak for the White House," Donna said, and
took a little sip.

"Okay, then, just Josh," Miranda said, and Donna shook her head. No
way.  She didn't get everything right every time, but she didn't make
the same mistake twice, not ever.  Well, certainly not in one week.

"Come on," Miranda said. "Help me out. This is my first time doing
something like this. I need all the help I can get. Even assistant
help." She had a toothy grin and this time Donna couldn't help smiling
back.

She liked Miranda, Donna decided. Opinionated in a good way.  Miranda
seemed a little out of her league, but she was nice. And everyone had to
start somewhere.  She had started somewhere.  She had started with Josh,
and even when he laughed at her he still usually didn't treat her like a
ball girl or something.  "He likes you to be pushy," Donna said, an
offering of sorts. "Josh has this, he's really into it when women argue
with him."

"Yeah?"  Miranda kind of raised one eyebrow in that way that men always
said they loved.

"Yeah."  Donna wondered if it worked on women, too.  It wasn't like
Miranda being both cute and pushy would get her anywhere with Josh if he
didn't like the idea.

"You've worked for him a long time?" Miranda asked.

"Yeah."  So long that sometimes, Donna forgot that she'd done other
things, like the midnight-to-eight shift at the Gap warehouse, counting
boxes of V-necks by the gross to make sure the Old Orchard mall didn't
run out.

"Then let me practice on you," Miranda said.  "You don't have to give
away state secrets or anything, just let me tell you what I was going to
say, and if I'm way off, just, you know, make me stop." She arched an
eyebrow.

"You want me to make you stop," Donna said.

"Only if I'm going astray."

Donna propped an elbow on an unwieldy tower of paperwork. "Okay," she
said. She was just helping the girl practice, that was all. Josh would
think it was funny. "Tell me why I should spend what little money
Congress gives us to run the federal government on this when I'm gonna
spend the next year fending off the radical right for selling out to
special interests."

Miranda coughed.  "Seriously?"

"You wanted me to be Josh, right?"

"Well," Miranda said.

"That's gonna be his first question."

Miranda cleared her throat. "Okay.  Okay, all right." She pulled out a
little notepad with glitter stickers on it and then looked up again.
"Because it's right," she said earnestly.

"Not according to Mary Marsh."

"Screw her," Miranda said, laughing, her eyes bright.

For no good reason at all, she made Donna think of Sam. Sam and how he
was always sure that being right should be enough.  Donna laughed, too,
but said, "Okay, hello, Miranda, astray? You can't do that yet."

"Not yet?"

"Probably not at all." She pushed against the drawer and leaned back and
took a drink.  This was kind of fun.  "Go on, go ahead."

Miranda took a breath and started again. "Because... the cost is
minimal. With such low unemployment, the federal government has to be as
competitive an employer as any Fortune 500 company."

"But they can afford to take a risk," Donna said. "They've got
shareholders.  We've got 240 million constituents. Plus we've already
got employment non-discrimination by executive order."

"But you're not following through after the hire!"

Donna shrugged and Miranda fumed and it was kind of cute, like how Sam
got when he was on a roll with a speech. Josh would think she was cute.
Josh would flirt because she was a lesbian and he'd think it was a
challenge, and because sometimes Josh tried incongruous things to make
up for being such a jerk to everyone. "So sue us," Donna said, smiling
and smirking like Josh, with half of her mouth up. "You could make this
argument to the CBO.  Why do I care?"

"You care -- wait, are you still being Josh?"

Donna blinked. "Yeah, of course.  I'm Josh. Why do I care?"

"Well, you, uh, hmm."  Miranda stopped and squinted a little. "You're
Josh here?"

"Yeah," Donna said, and put her feet up. "I'm Josh, and I just, I don't
really care much. Numbers are good, but you have to convince me this is,
like, worth my time. I have a million things to do, you know.  I'm a
busy guy."

"Okay," Miranda said slowly. "You care because you, well, you
understand. Right?"

"Well, no, I don't understand," Donna said. "I mean, you haven't sold me
yet. Him."

"I thought..."  Miranda chewed at her lip, and it was kind of cute.
Josh would think it was cute.  "Harry said that Josh was, you know."
Donna took a drink and Miranda waved her hand around in a little circle.
"On our side."

Donna shrugged, not sure what that was supposed to mean. They were a
pro-gay administration, everybody knew that.  "Of course he is," she
said. "You have to, don't you have, like, sob stories or something?"

"He wants sob stories?"

"He might. Yeah, yeah, I do."

"Okay. So, hypothetically. Hmm.  Hypothetically, I work for, okay, say I
work for you. And I'm in the hospital because of, you know, whatever, it
doesn't matter."

"It matters."

"Okay, I'm in the hospital with, like, uh, kidney problems. Kidney
problems. And my girlfriend wants to come visit me --"

"Shouldn't it be your girlfriend in the hospital?" Donna was not one of
those women who called her close friends "girlfriends." Her friend
Shannon always did and it sounded so natural.  Donna had tried it a few
times and it always sounded like she was afraid she'd get caught at
something.

"What?"

"The bill, it's partners of employees, so shouldn't she be the one in
the hospital?"

"Uh, okay, so my girlfriend's got bad kidneys. And not only do we get
stuck going to D.C. General because she doesn't have insurance --"

"She doesn't work?"

"She, uh. She's an artist. Or something." She glared at Donna. Josh
never seemed intimidated by lobbyists, even cute, pushy women lobbyists,
so Donna glared back and Miranda went on. "Okay, we still have to wait
three hours, and when they finally realize it's serious and they admit
her, they won't let me see her. Because, you know, I'm not anywhere on
the forms, we don't have the same name. So, I have to, I'm stuck out in
the stupid waiting room, and my girlfriend is in there all by herself
with like a zillion tubes in her, and the thing is, I'm the one who has
a doctor for a father, so I'm usually the person who figures out what
they mean. She's all alone, and I'm stuck in the waiting room."

No one had told Donna that Josh would be on a respirator in the GW
recovery room. She'd watched them working on him, cracked apart and held
open like the doctors were stuffing a turkey, but no one had told her
that after he'd still need a machine to make him breathe. He'd blinked
and she'd exploded into a crying-laughing jag and he just squeezed her
hand weakly until it had passed.

"Okay, yeah," she said to Miranda, putting her feet back on the floor.
"That's, yeah, that's what you should say." She stood up and put her
palms face-down on the desk. "We should just reschedule. He's gonna be
up there forever."

"Did I convince you?" Miranda asked, tucking hair behind an ear and
standing up. She tugged at her jacket and Donna wondered if Josh would
have told her she looked nice, that she was pretty.  Since it didn't
matter anyway.

"Yeah, you should, you should talk to Josh. He's the one who, he's got
to make the call."

"Should I be more pushy?"

Donna smoothed her skirt down. "No, don't.  That was fine." Miranda was
smiling, proud of herself, and Donna swallowed.  "That was fine."
 

"WHY AREN'T THERE any gays on this level, Josh?"

Donna had waited for Josh until the subcommittee meeting broke up around
two. She'd written a briefing memo for him about Miranda's pitch and
worked on the Mayh proposal and cleared off most of the papers that had
accumulated on the desk in the day and a half since she'd last cleaned
it. Sam had come by looking for Josh and stayed to talk for a while, in
a good mood for a change, and Josh had been in a good mood the last
couple of days, too.

It was the next day and everyone was still in a good mood and she kept
wondering what she'd missed.

"Gays? Donna, gays? Can we get, like, a noun here somewhere? I mean, a
real noun or something, to, I don't know, modify? And, anyway, aren't
you forgetting someone?"

"What?"  She wondered if he meant Sam.  Even with the call girl thing,
there had been rumors, always, about Sam.  His eyelashes were too long.
"Who?" she asked, and then felt petty.

"Isn't -- I thought, isn't Bonnie a lesbian?"

"Josh!"  There had even been rumors about Josh, for god's sake, but not
Bonnie.

"Notice -- did you notice how I said 'a lesbian' right there, not
'Bonnie is lesbian'? Because that would be wrong. The phrasing, I mean,
obviously --"

"Josh! Bonnie is NOT a lesbian!"

"She's not? She's not, you know, even a little bit of a lesbian?"

"Josh! She's had the same boyfriend for seven years."

"Wait, really?  I don't believe you."

"Yeah.  Devon?  He's a cop?  You probably met him at the barbecue
thing."

"She's not a lesbian?"

"No, she's not a -- Josh, seriously. Don't go around telling people
that."

"I'm starting to think maybe you're a lesbian, you know, you're saying
the word so much, not that that would be so --"  Josh started laughing.
"Except, you know, you're so straight I'm shocked you're not a
Republican."

"Josh."  Sometimes it hurt how little Josh thought she was capable of.

"It's not such a terrible thing to be," he said, squinting. "Oh, wait.
You can't be a Republican.  That's why we have Ainsley.  Maybe you
SHOULD be a lesbian, then.  We could have a Republican and a lesbian.
That sounds kind of like a joke, doesn't it?  A Republican and a lesbian
walk into a bar..."  He shook his head at himself.  "No.  Probably not a
way to do that that's not gonna sound bad, huh."

"That's not why I'm saying -- just. People say these things. And just
because they're said, just because people think they're true -- it
doesn't make them true."  She crossed her arms.

"Do you have a secret to tell me, Donna?"  He smiled at her like he
thought he knew the answer.  "You're looking awfully, I don't know,
perky today."  Sometimes, she thought that Josh thought she was in love
with him.  Which she wasn't.  Which didn't mean she didn't consider the
possibility sometimes. Sometimes, she let the idea of being in love with
Josh float by her like a breeze of some expensive perfume she'd spray on
her wrists at the Georgetown Sephora before a date.  For when she wanted
to smell like someone who didn't spend too many hours a day wrestling
with another man's issues.  "Do you?"

"I think she's cute," Donna admitted, just because for once she wanted
Josh to know she wasn't walking around the office all moony-eyed over
some guy he'd only mock.

"You think Bonnie is cute?  Seriously?"

"No.  Miranda."  Donna shrugged.  "She's cute.  I'd go out with her."

"Uh, okay."  Josh was rooting around in the top drawer for something and
didn't really look up.

"I'm just saying, you know."  If he was looking for the letter opener
she'd put it in the cup on the desk.  But she'd let him look for a while
longer, it was funny.  "If she asked me out, I wouldn't say no."

"Aren't you a little old for this kind of thing?"

"Josh!"  Once, when she was 19, she'd kissed a girl at a frat party on a
dare.  It hadn't been so different, except she tasted better, less like
beer and more like lip gloss.  She'd told Dave about it on the way home
and he'd leered and said "Anytime you want," but that made it sound less
fun.

"I mean --" he started, and then pricked himself on a push pin and
sucked on the bloody fingertip while making a little whining noise.

She stood up.  "You've got budget again in five minutes."

"Mokay," he said around his finger.

"Five minutes, Josh."

He pulled his hand out of his mouth like he was going to hold it up to
see which way the wind was blowing.  "I heard you the first twelve
times, okay?  I'm sorry if I --"

Donna stopped at the door and turned back to him.  "Do you know where
your notes are?"

"For budget?"

"Yeah."

"Uh, yeah?"  He looked down at the desk.  "No?"  He smiled like he
thought it was going to get him somewhere, like some girl had cooed and
said it was his secret weapon and he'd actually fallen for it.  "Do you
have them?"

"Exactly," she snapped.  "So just don't push your luck, all right?"
 

THERE WERE THINGS Donna did really well, like type.  She was an
excellent typist.  She could enter text from a book on her desk and sing
along to the radio and look around the bullpen periodically without
missing a beat.  When they timed her for her first temp job, the one
after the warehouse, she was at 65 words per minute.  She found a
tutorial online last year and she was up to 110, which placed her in the
97th percentile of all test-taking typists.  Sometimes she liked to
close her eyes and do neck stretches while she listened to Josh on the
Dictaphone, just because she could.

Sometimes, it felt like all Josh needed from her.

Josh walked past her to his office and then kicked backed and whirled
around.  Donna pushed the headphones around her neck because she knew
he'd never wait for her to stop and he was going to talk to her anyway.
"Hey, that lesbian is coming back," he said.

"Josh, she has a --"

"Miranda Whatshername," he said and she untangled herself and followed
him to his desk when he beckoned with a flick of the neck.  "I know.  Is
coming back today at three, but I forgot I have this thing with Sam."
Josh put his feet up and poked at his turkey sandwich with his pencil
eraser. "Does this bread have, like, is it possible there's rubber in
it?"

"What thing?"

"A thing," Josh said, ducking his chin.  "Just a thing.  At, uh,
Reynold's office."

Donna looked down at her memo pad.  "She's coming at three?  You made an
appointment for yourself?"

Josh pushed the sandwich away. "I know, can you believe I actually
remember how to answer my own phone?"

"You made an appointment for yourself for a time when you had another
meeting scheduled."

"This is why I leave the heavy lifting in your capable hands.
Donnatella Moss, my Rock of Gibraltar."

Sam rapped on the door as he came in.  "You and your mixed metaphors,"
he said to Josh, smiling.

"Donna's girlfriend is coming by today," Josh said, and Donna was sure
it was revenge for the stale bread.  Which was not her fault, all the
sandwiches had been labeled exactly the same.

"She's not --"  She sighed.  She always fell for it.  Every time.  She
had a younger brother, and still Josh got her every time.

"Hey," Josh said, tossing Sam the apple Donna had bought with the
sandwich, "did you know that Bonnie is not a lesbian after all?"

Sam perched on the bookshelf against the wall.  "Seriously?"

"I know!  Donna swears.  Donna AND her girlfriend swear they've never
seen Bonnie at a lesbian bar."

Sam looked at her like she'd known the answer to one of his rhetorical
trivia questions, something between respect and annoyance.  "You have a
girlfriend?"

"She's not -- she's just this lobbyist."

"Who wants a date with you," Sam said, like it was normal.  Like it was
a normal thing in her life.  Not that it was abnormal for someone to
want a date with a woman.  Even if someone was a woman.

"She wants health insurance for partners of gay federal employees,"
Donna said.

"Or maybe both," Josh said, and Donna threw her pencil at him, and Sam
said, "That again?" and the two of them laughed and Sam threw the apple
back and Josh caught it.

"And, anyway," Donna said, "she won't be coming by because Josh forgot
you two have to go to Reynold's."

Sam frowned.  "We're -- Oh.  Yeah."

Josh stood up and his napkin slid to the floor. "Donna, why don't you
take the meeting?"
 

JOSH AND SAM left early and Donna couldn't get Miranda on the phone to
cancel.  She showed up late, anyway, wrestling with an overstuffed
shoulder bag.  Donna was wearing a skirt and heels that day and they
were about the same height, Miranda in another pantsuit, gray this time
and better fitted.  She still looked clean and she smelled like
cinnamon.

"I tried to call you," Donna said as they stood in front of Josh's
office.  Miranda was trying to shrug out of her overcoat and Donna took
her bag.

"Really?" Miranda asked, sounding young again.  Her eyes looked more
blue than gray.  And they had had a little ring of dark gray around
them, what her grandpa used to call a fairie ring. If it was around the
moon it meant it was going to snow.

"Josh had this thing -- he, really, he should never be allowed to make
his own schedule.  He always double-books."  Donna handed the bag back
and Miranda smiled.

"Thanks.  So he's not here?"

"No," Donna said.

Miranda shook her head a little, but didn't seem too annoyed.  "Should I
practice on you some more?"

Donna felt silly and obvious, like it was a set-up.  "I think he'll
actually, eventually want to ask you some things himself, just he's not
here right now.  I'm really sorry.  I tried to call, I swear."

"I believe you," Miranda said, and she looked Donna right in the eye as
she smiled and Donna could feel herself blush.

"Can I, I feel horrible about this, twice -- I promise usually I'm a
better assistant than this."

Miranda played with one of the hoops high up on her ear like she was
killing time standing outside of some mall with a bunch of other hip
kids.  "He's lucky to have you," she said, her voice kind of low.

"Can I make it up to you?" Donna asked.  "Do you want, I don't know, do
you want a tour or something?  I have pens.  Or, I probably, I might
have a mug somewhere.  With the seal?"  She kept swallowing her words,
trying to get them back.  She sounded like she was fourteen.

Miranda cocked her head a little and stuck a hand in her pocket.  She
cleared her throat. "How about dinner?"

Donna looked at her watch.  "It's three o'clock, but, um, I think
they're still serving lunch in the mess, if you --"

"No, I meant, some other time.  We could have dinner."

"Oh.  Oh.  Uh, okay."  Miranda raised an eyebrow and Donna felt a giggle
in her throat that she couldn't catch.  She tried to turn it into a
cough.  "Yeah."  Cough, swallow.  "Sure, that would be fun."

"Okay," Miranda said slowly, looking down.

"How about tonight?" Donna asked, touching Miranda's shoulder.  "I have
to be here at eight for this thing, but I could have dinner before
that."
 

LUNA GRILL WAS the kind of place that made Donna feel like a Republican.
She was wearing a pearl necklace and was very conscious of it.  The
restaurant was small and full of hand-painted chairs and tables and the
menu listed a lot of dishes with organic vegetables and tofu.

"I'm working on a bill right now about soy subsidies," Donna said after
they'd ordered and their water had been filled and there was just this
very loud silence where she could hear herself breathe.  "I mean, I'm
not, it's not my bill.  Obviously.  I'm just pulling research about it.
For Josh.  It's, farm subsidies are a nightmare for budgeting."

Miranda smiled kindly and Donna closed her mouth and pulled at the
pearls.  "You like working for him?" Miranda asked, tearing her straw
wrapper into long strips and then tiny squares.

"Well, he's a real --"  She wasn't at a cocktail party.  She didn't have
to make a joke.  "Yeah," Donna said, folding her hands.  "He could, most
of the other guys don't have their assistants all to themselves, or, you
know, they think that if it's something important no one else can be
trusted with it.  Josh is really good about that."

"You like it?" Miranda asked, corralling the squares into a corner built
by the fork and knife she'd laid out at right angles.  "The whole
politics thing, I mean."

"Yeah," Donna said, and every time she said something like that she
could hear her voice stronger than she'd meant it. Her mom worked in her
dad's chiropractic office, making appointments and doing the insurance
paperwork, and at the end of the day they always packed up and left
together, and then her mom cooked dinner and later washed the dishes.
She was just sure that wasn't what she wanted, that was all.  She could
be opinionated too.  "You -- don't you?"

Miranda shrugged and put an elbow on the table.  "It's not -- I'm not so
sure it's my thing.  Before this, I was doing all this great grassroots
stuff with college kids, helping twenty-year-olds organize gay studies
departments and stuff. Not to say that, it's not like they don't have
politics of their own.  But it's, I don't know.  Cleaner?"  She leaned
in and Donna moved forward in her chair.

"But you're good at this -- I mean, you really are," Donna said.  "You
could be meaner, kind of, or just more, I don't know, unrelenting.  But
I've heard a lot of lame pitches, and yours really wasn't bad.
Especially for a first try.  I mean, it was good.  Opinionated.  I, uh.
Yeah."

"But I just can't -- I'm not the person who should get sent for things
like this.  I'm too nice."

Donna shrugged and sat back as the waiter brought their salads.  "So
play some hardball.  Josh will survive, I promise.  He's pretty
resilient."

"Apparently," Miranda said, laughing.

Donna shook her head because she didn't know what Miranda was talking
about.  Which was kind of okay.  Going out with guys, if they didn't
tell you how mysterious or successful they were trying to be in the
first five minutes of a conversation it was a shock.  Getting to the
salad and still finding something new about someone wasn't so bad.  She
waited for Miranda to go on.

"If I was going to play hardball," Miranda said, sounding older now,
"I'd go to your boss and tell him that we've known about his
relationship with Sam Seaborn for years and we'd hate to be forced into
a situation where that was a factor."

Donna tried very hard to chew before she swallowed.  In California,
during the campaign, one of the pool reporters had cornered Donna on a
bus and asked her if it was true that Leo was a drunk.  She'd swallowed
her gum and almost choked, and even though everyone already knew that
somehow it felt like she'd given something away.

She stared at the center of Miranda's forehead.  She chewed, and then
she swallowed, and then she wiped her mouth and took a drink of water.
The edges of Miranda's mouth turned up like she was laughing at herself,
and then she said, "That's what I'd say, if I was -- I'm just, I'm not
that kind of person, you know?  Which is why I think maybe I'm not right
for this job after all."

Donna played with the stem of the water glass and swallowed again.

Miranda leaned so her breasts were resting on the table's edge and
touched Donna's wrist lightly.  "I forgot to tell you," she said,
cocking her head a bit.  "I really love your necklace."
 

"WHERE HAVE YOU been?" Josh asked first thing.

"Dinner," she said, trying not to smile.

"For, like, two hours?  We have this thing at eight."

She wondered how long he and Sam had been gone.  Where they'd been.
"And here I am, fully prepared to get you there on time and stay late,
waiting up for you to finish, so stop kvetching."

"I'm not -- do you even know that that means?"

"I'm here, okay?"

"Where's the --" He flailed his hands in the direction of what had at
one point been labeled an inbox and Donna plucked a folder out and
handed it to him.  "Why are you smiling?" he asked, skimming.

"I'm not smiling," she said, turning away.

Sometime around dessert, she'd finally gotten up her nerve.

"So, what happened to, uh, the artist?" she'd asked.  Miranda hadn't
gotten it.  "With the kidney problems and no insurance," Donna said, and
swallowed.  "The girlfriend?"

Miranda had laughed and touched Donna's hand again and said, "It was
supposed to be hypothetical!"  And when the check came, Miranda had
paid. Donna let her but said she'd get it next time.

"You're still smiling," Josh said when he came back from the thing
around ten, and she was.  Next time.  She was sitting at her desk and
thinking about how Miranda scrunched up her nose in the middle of a
sentence when she was searching for a word.  "Where were you again?"

"I told you, dinner," Donna said.  Josh walked into his office and she
followed him.

"You have a date or something?"  Once, she had gone out with this
staffer from the minority leader's office without telling Josh, but he'd
been at the restaurant for some meeting and had come over to their
table. He'd shaken the guy's hand and joked about having her back by
midnight and then sulked around the office until she admitted that the
guy kissed like a fish and had picked his teeth clean with his fork.
She'd thought that meant something.

"I had dinner," she said, leaning against the door and swallowing.
"With Miranda."

Josh looked up and rolled his neck around until it cracked.  "You -- you
were just supposed to take a meeting with her."

"I wrote you the briefing memo already, Josh.  There wasn't anything
else to meet about."

"So you, uh, you had dinner?"

"She asked me out, and I thought --"

"She asked you out?  Like, on a date?"

Donna looked at her shoes.  Miranda's shoes were square-toed and looked
strong.  The heels on her own were too high.  "I said -- I thought, I
decided it would be fun.  You were the one who --"

"Donna, this isn't a thing you just decide. You don't just wake up one
morning and say, hey, you know what sounds like fun?  Years of
confusion. Heartache. Fear about your job. You -- you work at the White
House, Donna. This isn't sophomore year at Kappa Delta, you know?"

"Don't, don't do that, Josh!  I am not -- I know you think I'm just
here, you know, that I'm always around, that you can be as mean as you
want and I'll always come back. You don't notice -- half the things I do
here, you have no idea.  You don't know."

"I know," he said, sitting down, hands playing up and down his
breastbone.

"No, you really don't, Josh.  I'm not, like, playing at this. I'm not
some political groupie.  This is what I do.  You are, you are my job,
you know, and sometimes I have a life away from you.  And maybe
sometimes that life doesn't make quite as much sense as I'd like it to,
or as you think it should. I'm twenty-nine years old and I am a
glorified secretary --"

"Donna, you're not --"

"I don't even have time to meet men, let alone go out with them. And
this person asks me out, and, you know, so she's a girl, I get that.
But it was fun.  It was just dinner, I mean.  It's not --"

"You wanna hear a funny story?"

"No."

"Ten years ago --"

"Josh, I really don't want to --"

"It's a good story."

She flopped down in the chair and gave up.  "You're a lousy storyteller,
you know that?"

"Ten years ago, Sam and I worked on a bill to give partners of federal
employees benefits."

She'd been wondering how that worked, how they'd met.  Where.  What they
did.  She'd never asked.  Josh had never said except once right at the
beginning, when he said only "a long time ago" and then walked out of
the room.  Of course, now she had different questions to ask, but she
still wasn't sure.  She sighed.  "I didn't know that."

"I know.  And we went to this bar, to meet -- to meet the guy Miranda
works for now.  And, there's, there are.  Donna.  There are things about
me you don't know."  Josh shook out his neck and cracked his knuckles.
"There's this, see, the thing is."  He sighed and looked like he was
going to start another story.

"You and Sam," Donna said, because after a while it wasn't as much fun
to watch him squirm.  "I know."

Josh pulled at his ear and looked panicked.  "Uh, you do?"

"Yeah," she said.  "You know -- I mean, you realize that people know.
Other people, I mean.  Right?"

Josh sighed.  "Do I want to know?"

"Well.  Miranda --"

"Miranda knows?" Josh squeaked.

"She said it's just, like, something people know.  People who know."

"People who know."

"She thought I knew."  She knew Josh's shirt size and his social
security number and his mother's birthday.  She knew all that and some
girl she'd just met had made her feel like she'd been left off the
mailing list.  The rest of it was okay, but that part...

"It's not like -- almost all of it, the thing."  He sighed and ran his
hands through his hair.  "Most of it was a long time ago, before you.
The campaign was more -- we couldn't."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I know, I'm sorry, I know I should have told you this before, it
just, it was pretty much all ancient history, and --"

"I mean, wow, that must have sucked.  To do that, for this, you know,
and then."

"Yeah."  He tugged on his tie and then looked her in the eye, like he'd
thought she'd be difficult about it.  "Yeah."  Josh did this thing, when
he wasn't sure about something, wasn't even sure he wanted to try to
sell it.  His voice dropped off the end of sentences and he sneered a
little, like maybe the idea wasn't good enough.

"Well, good," she said.  "Good, then."  Good.  It was good.

"Yeah?"

"You should be, I want you to be happy, Josh."

"I know. Just, it occurred to me this might not be, you know, exactly
what you thought that'd look like."

For ten minutes on the way to O'Hare he'd laid his head in her lap.
When she picked him up at LAX two weeks later he'd taken one look at her
and laughed hysterically and called her irreplaceable.  "Irreplaceable!"
he said, grabbing her around the waist and holding her for a long hug.

"Sam's a catch," she said, and it was true. It was true.

Josh laughed quietly.  "So he keeps telling me."

They were good for each other, they must have been, all this time.  All
this time even before she'd been around.  It wasn't some pushy woman
Josh just liked to yell at.  It wasn't just for fun.  It was Sam.  "We'd
all hate for him to go unappreciated," she said, and unclenched her
hands.

"He's not -- Donna, you know, you realize you cannot, you absolutely
cannot say anything about this."

"Hey, I wasn't the one telling everyone Bonnie was a lesbian."

"Donna --"

"Don't worry about it."

"Really."

"Honestly, Josh. Do you think I have nothing better to do than gossip
about your love life?"

"Well, I still haven't seen that report for the, uh, soybean subsidies."

"It's right under the love note I've been writing to Miranda."

"You're writing a love -- oh."

"I got you!"

Josh sighed and rolled his eyes.  "You did."

"I got you!" she said again.

"You definitely got me, Donna."

"Don't worry about it," she said again, feeling charitable.  Josh called
her back from the door and she turned.

"Seriously, Bonnie's not a lesbian?"

"Josh!"

"I'm just saying --"

"She's really not.  I swear."

Josh shrugged and grinned.  "So it's just us, then.  You and me and
Sam.  We're it."

"Well, I --"  Her stomach flipped and she felt guilty and she wanted
that to be because it was true.  "It was just dinner, Josh."

"That's what I said.  And then the next thing you know --"

"Josh!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know.  People say these things, and then people think
they're true."

"Exactly."

"But, I mean, just so we're clear, you're on my side, okay?"
 

DONNA SAT AT Josh's desk after he left and called Miranda to say she'd
had a good time.  Even though it was late and she was supposed to wait
three days or maybe even five or seven, even though if she'd done that
to a guy he would have high-tailed it faster than a senator let out to
recess. But she had, in fact, had a good time, and Josh and Sam were
gay, and all of it felt like something she wanted to know more about but
didn't know who to ask. So she called Miranda and they talked about
music.

Miranda had laughed low in her throat and confessed she didn't like Ani
DiFranco.  "She's an acquired taste," Donna said, telling the lesbian
about lesbian music like she knew what she was talking about because she
had gone to a concert once, but no one was there to make fun of her.

Sam kicked at the door with his shined shoes.  "You're not Josh," he
said, and smiled anyway.

"Not in the slightest," Donna said, pushing herself up and out of the
chair.  She had just been staring at her reflection in the darkened
window with one hand on the phone as it rested in its cradle. Not
looking at herself, she wasn't one of those girls who was always looking
at herself.  Just thinking about how she was glad Miranda had happened
at the same time of all this, so maybe by the time she thought about
being disappointed it would seem like it had happened a long time ago,
all of it this one weird, long, very gay week.  And also that Josh would
probably ask her to lie for him sometime, to Sam, and that she would.
Sometime when Josh just couldn't handle how eager Sam could be about
something.  Or maybe not.  Maybe she didn't know anything about them,
about the two of them, about how they made it work.

"He's not here?"

"He's not here.  He went home, like, twenty minutes ago?" She flipped
off the desk lamp and the computer monitor.

"Oh," Sam said, and his mouth turned down for a minute.  He started to
turn away and then spun back. "Hey, how was your date?"

"It was fine," she said.

"What's her name?"

"Miranda."  She said it again in her head, like a song.  Miranda.  Like
an Ani song, with a little grunt in the middle.  Mi-RAND-ah.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah," she said, sweeping her hair back and re-clipping it.  "She works
for Harry?" Harry had once told Miranda that he could name eleven
senators and several dozen representatives who'd had affairs with their
staffers or interns.  With staffers or interns of the same sex.

"Wait, seriously?" Sam picked up the apple that was still sitting on
Josh's desk and tossed it from one hand to the other and then back
again.  "You had dinner with a lesbian named Miranda?"

"You know, I expected Josh to make fun of me, that I knew was going to
happen, but you --"

"No, it's just that -- do you want to hear a funny story?"

She sighed and then nodded.

"I was engaged to a lesbian named Miranda."

"Sam, that's not very -- are you serious?"

He nodded.  "Well, it wasn't really, I mean, she was -- she was a
lesbian."

"Right."

"And I just, uh.  You know.  Didn't want to marry a lesbian. Not
because, I mean, she was, she is a wonderful woman, don't get me wrong."

"Sam  --"

"It's just, you know, I don't really think I was what --"

"I know, Sam."

He stopped.  "Right.  Why would you think that was what I meant?  Of
course I wouldn't mean that."

"No, I mean."  She took a breath.  "I know about you and Josh.  He told
me."

She could see Sam swallow, Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his
throat like the words were stuck.  "Where did he go?" Sam asked again,
softly.

"He went home, Sam."

"Right."  He looked down at his watch and fiddled with his cuffs.
"Cause it's, I mean, it's late.  It's late now.  I just didn't know we
were.  You know.  Telling people.  I mean, I know people know."  He
glanced up.  "Uh, people know, right?"

"People know," she said.

"Right. But we haven't, like.  I mean, we haven't even told Leo, and Leo
knows, but we haven't even talked about if we were going to tell him."

It turned out Sam wasn't really any better at lying than Josh.  "You
thought he didn't want to tell people," she said, because once you knew,
things made sense.

Sam squinted and in the dim light from the hall he looked kind of old.
Ten years of Josh, of trying to figure out what he meant when he said
"not now" or "maybe later" or "you look nice today."

"You have no idea," he said.

"I have a little idea."

"Right," Sam said.  "Right."  He shook his head and shrugged and cleared
his throat.  "Her name was really Miranda?"
 

"YOU'RE NOT ONE of those, are you?" Miranda had said.  "One of those
girls who likes loud angry chick music just because?" And Donna had said
no, of course not, even though she figured it was probably true.

Once, when she'd first started working for Josh, she'd written a memo on
the wrong thing, twelve pages about voter participation and the gender
gap when it turned out he'd wanted directions to the Manchester League
of Women Voters.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "I always try too hard."

"Pretty much we like overachievers around here," Josh said.  "It's only
trying too hard if you believe in the wrong thing."

She was one of those girls who went out with lesbians almost by accident
and had a good time but maybe not enough to turn everything upside down.
Because there were Josh and Sam to consider.  Josh and Sam who'd known
each other for 10 years and still Josh said she was going to have to
take his side, like he was spoiling for a fight and just wanted to line
up his allies.  Like maybe he hadn't stopped being himself just because
it turned out he wasn't straight.  And Sam hadn't realized they were
telling people even though everyone already knew.

But then again.  If it was good enough for Josh, maybe it was good
enough for her.  Maybe she was good enough for Miranda, to be let off
the leash a little and see where she strayed and if she could find her
own way back.  If she would want to.  "If it was easy, it wouldn't be
real," Sam said, helping her put on her coat.  "We wouldn't screw it all
up so badly trying to make sure we got it right.  We wouldn't try so
hard."
 

END.

snk@wearemany.net

NEXT: decorated, a sequel to this story written by Ellen M.
AND THEN: funny girl, my sequel to that

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