"Reason's Prisoner: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by CretKid aka Cal

Title: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Author: CretKid aka Cal

Category: General

Summary: "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time" Macbeth:V:5

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Not mine. If we didn't care about the characters this much, we wouldn't be doing this in the first place.

Notes: This is the beginning of a series. I've always had a fascination with Shakespeare. Blame the Bard for the titles. Since I've vowed to write shorter stories, as I seem to produce those at a faster rate, I figure they should also have a theme and sort of work together. Hence, a series.

Comments to cretkid@juno.com

"Have we eaten on the insane root

That takes the reason prisoner?" Macbeth, I:3

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

==============================

"They airbrushed my face!"

CJ looked up from her briefing notes and stared with non-interest at the man standing in her office doorway. There wasn't room on her plate for any more pet projects. The days were too long already. "What are you babbling about?"

Josh tossed an open magazine, spine broken and pages already sweat-rumpled, on top of CJ's desk. It landed askew on her briefing notes. "My face! They airbrushed my face!"

"Who?"

"New Yorker Magazine."

"Why are you in the New Yorker Magazine?"

"Don't you remember? Human interest story? Anniversary sort of thing for Rosslyn but not really because the edition comes out like a month prior to the anniversary. You gave me the go ahead after that miscreant writer kept hounding me for weeks." Josh flopped on her couch and crossed his ankles over her coffee table. She glared at him before he could drop his feet though, so he redirected them for the floor.

"And you actually gave in to her wishes?"

"Well, it was more like Donna telling me to do it, give the kid a chance sort of thing. Donna said it would be therapeutic."

"Was it therapeutic?"

"Well, yeah."

"Then why are you whining to me?"

"Because you chased after me for days prior to Ms. Woodward-Wanna-be arriving on my door step to make sure I didn't say anything stupid! You checked her credentials; there wasn't supposed to be any doctoring of photos! I'm holding you responsible."

CJ wondered where the hell Donna had disappeared to, and whether or not there was room for two in whatever hole she had found. She rubbed her forehead to forestall the impending headache. "When exactly was this?"

"You mean when she was actually here? Maybe a month ago."

The pieces were starting to click together. CJ leaned into her hand, her words slightly muffled. "And where was I a month ago?"

"Other than chasing me around with a rolled newspaper? I don't remember."

Crossing her arms on her desk, she stared down Josh as he made himself comfortable on her couch. "Do you remember the filibuster?"

"How can I forget? And that's not a rhetorical question."

"Do you remember that I had a head cold after I came back from Napa?"

"No, not really."

That didn’t surprise her. "Well, I had one. I went home; I took some cold medicine; I came in the next day; two days later it turns into walking pneumonia and I was out for the rest of the week."

"Yes. Oh. Right." His head rolled along the back of the couch.

"I was sneezing and coughing."

"I remember."

"You called me Rudolf the Red-Nosed Press Secretary."

She could tell Josh was trying his damnedest not to snicker. He bounded forward, elbows on his knees, and clapped his hands together. "Well, really, I mean I have never seen anyone's nose that red before."

"Yeah, real witty there, buddy." CJ leaned back in her chair.

"They airbrushed my face!" Josh stood up and paced in front of her desk. "That is not my face!" He jabbed at the picture lying on her desk.

"I'm sure your fan club will send out a petition for a retraction the minute they see the article."

"Wake up on the wrong side of the dungeon this morning?"

There was an insufferable smirk on Josh's face. She closed her eyes and started to rub her temples. "I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth."

Josh dropped back on to the couch. "No, seriously, you're in a bad mood." His tone was light and joking.

"Ya think?"

CJ wasn't in a frame of mind for light and joking. She wanted to stay in a bad mood; it would give her a small edge over the press corps that morning. If they saw her with a no nonsense attitude, they wouldn't be haranguing her over piddling details above and beyond what she was willing to doll out. Sometimes her report with the press corps worked to her advantage.

She decided that if Josh stayed in her office for much longer, she would be in danger of catching whatever happy disease he was intent on spreading through the West Wing.

"The Children in Poverty thing?" Josh asked.

"That is high on the list of the things that I don't want to deal with today."

"It's old data. It’s not a story."

"Despite that fact, it will not stop The Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, or Newsweek from asking for a White House comment."

"Four weeks ago, everyone was ecstatic about the provisions in the Family Wellness Act for children, especially those in low income families. That report is a crock of crap and everyone knows it."

CJ stared him down in that way she knew made most of the men in the West Wing cringe. She could have dressed him down for trying to tell her how to do her job, but she knew she wouldn't. Twenty minutes. That was all she asked for. Not much, just enough time to go through the reports again, make sure she hadn't missed anything on the wires before her thing with the gaggle. Another knock on her door drew a frustrated growl. "What?" she snarled without looking at her visitor.

"Testy today?" Toby asked.

"Death wish today?" she responded. She refused to meet Toby's eyes. Maybe both of her visitors would get the hint that she really wanted to get work done that morning. CJ could feel her eye start to twitch, and from the comically horrified expression slowly traveling down Josh's face, he had noticed as well. He was up and backpedaling through her office door.

"You know what? I think I'm going to go." Josh careened through Carol's office and down the hall.

CJ turned her attention to the briefing notes on her desk. "What do you want?"

"Morning wires," Toby said.

"What about them?"

"Read them?"

"Obviously." CJ wondered where he was going with this question and answer parade.

"I got a phone call this morning."

CJ had yet to get through a day without having received an early morning phone call. "Let me guess. It has nothing to do with the recent report that 1 in 6 children in the United States are living in poverty."

"Rob Mendoza."

CJ looked up and leaned back in her chair. Toby was standing in her doorway, hands in his pockets and staring out her window. If it was Supreme Court Justice Robert Mendoza on the phone with Toby, then it could only be one story in the wires that had Toby in her office. "New Jersey Senate move for impeachment against State Supreme Justice Paul C. Venre."

"5 AM, CJ."

She continued undaunted. "Allegations that Judge Venre willfully misrepresented himself with regards to questions concerning racial profiling during his confirmation hearings last year." She pulled her glasses off and rubbed at the red spot that had developed on the bridge of her nose.

"For once I was actually asleep," Toby complained.

CJ really didn't have any sympathy for him; she had yet to sleep until 4 AM, let alone 5 AM. "Allegations that crept up because of the recent cessation of hearings in the New Jersey court system about state troopers preferentially stopping minorities on the New Jersey Turnpike."

"So you're familiar with the story." Toby took a step closer to her desk. His attention turned to his shoes.

"Yeah."

"This is going to be a thing."

"Yeah."

"Just thought I would warn you." His voice was typically quiet. That was refreshing. The decibel level would not add to her headache.

"I didn’t need to be warned. This isn't green beans, Toby."

"It's not only Republican senators in the New Jersey Senate that are calling for the impeachment."

"I am aware of that."

"The DNC is looking to front James Lucas of Middlesex for that district's Congressional seat next year."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Mendoza wants to groom Venre for a possible Supreme Court seat."

CJ dropped her glasses on the desk and rubbed her temples. Her headache had just jumped from tolerable to downright unbearable. She mentally added another bottle of Tylenol to her shopping list. "Okay, I didn't know that."

"I didn’t either, until the phone call this morning."

"Explain something to me. Venre is accused of non-acknowledgement of the practice of racial profiling while he was State Attorney General, and Mendoza is backing him?"

"Because the guy's record is impeccable. The allegations are a matter of semantics and vocabulary. Venre was one of the most fierce proponents of the DOJ's investigation into racial profiling when he was State Attorney General."

"This could be very bad if it gets leaked, Toby. Who else knows?"

"Mendoza assures me that no one else does." Toby was in front of her desk at that point.

"Yeah, that'll be the day." She idly played with a pencil on her desk. "What do you want me to do?"

Toby looked at her for the first time since he entered the office. His hands were out of his pockets and his eye caught the open magazine on her desk. "Sit on it. Hopefully no one will put the connections together. Unfortunately, the list of the DNC's prospects is pretty much common knowledge. You may get stuff on Lucas."

"The President has a speaking engagement tomorrow with the ACLU. We're going to have to brief him." She had a self deprecating smile plastered to her face. President Bartlet hated to be told what he could and could not answer at any sort of conference.

"Let me worry about that. We can't get out of the appearance. It's been on the books for weeks."

"I know."

"It will look bad for all of us if we back away from normalcy."

"I was at the meeting, Toby."

Toby pointed to the thick folder on her desk. "I suspect you’re going to get bombarded about the Children in Poverty report."

She cringed. During the State of the Union, they had promised to change those very same statistics. The report was based on a study done two years previous, but no one would notice one word about the health care incentives, government money for day care or immunization programs that their administration had provided. Only the statistic.

"I've got my stock bin answers ready from the State of the Union. I spent all of last night reading through the report. I've got it under control."

"Good."

Toby picked up the magazine, briefly looked through the article, and tossed it aside. She had been willing to bet he would have dumped it in her waste can, but didn't comment on it. He had wanted no part in the New Yorker story; neither had she. When her advance copy had arrived, she had dumped it on Simon Glaser's desk to proof and give it the White House stamp of approval.

"I'll have a copy of the President's speech on your desk by this afternoon," Toby continued. "Sam and Josh are prepping him for the question and answer period at 2 PM."

"You want the Press Room?"

"No. Just in case someone sniffs out the story." He tapped her desk and nodded towards the door. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah."

CJ grabbed the magazine from the corner of her desk, and without bothering to glance at it, dropped it in the waste bin. She rummaged through her desk for a bottle of Tylenol. Finding the bottle empty, she carried it to Carol's desk, waved it in front of her assistant's eyes. Obligingly, Carol reached into a bottom drawer and pulled out a new bottle from their secret stash.

As CJ manipulated the child-proof cap, Carol leaned over the edge of her desk. "I take it you don't want to go over messages?"

Her answer was a slammed office door.

END