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"Galatea"

In the story, he is brilliant and talented and utterly alone. He creates 
her using all of his gifts, falls in love with who he imagines she is, then
receives the divine gift of reciprocation.

In a later version of the story, he is brilliant and talented and alone, 
and he makes the mistake of telling her he has no doubt she'll always be 
there. How could she not? He created her; where would she go? 

She shows him, leaving while appearing to stay by his side.

*   *   *   *

In their story, he is brilliant and talented and skilled at deflecting 
intimacy. He is passionate and charismatic; women are drawn to him because 
it's so easy to imagine what it would be like to have that intense 
attention focused on them. There is a string of ex-lovers who would be more
than happy to tell them that he never quite turns that radiant regard on 
them, and the day they realize it's not their fault is both heartbreaking 
and liberating.

He is an artist at the top of his form; his muse is America and he serves 
it like no other.

In their story, she is coltish and tentative, utterly unaware of her 
strength and all too aware of her weaknesses. She is compassionate and 
quixotic; men are drawn to her because it's easy to imagine her making them
the center of her world. There is one ex-lover who can attest to the loving
attention she paid to him. The day she realized she could be more than the 
pedestal for his achievements was both heartbreaking and liberating.

She is still growing into who she could be; her muse is potential and she's
oblivious to it.

*   *   *   *

When he meets her, he realizes that she could be useful. When she tells him
she could be valuable, he doesn't agree, but he doesn't disagree. He thinks
it will be a long time before she knows who she is, but so long as he can 
keep that ignorance from doing real damage, she will come in handy.

He spends his days nudging her into purposefulness, forever discovering 
new facets to her surprisingly resilent will; he spends his nights in a 
sweaty sparring match with someone whose resistance he knows well. 

One morning, watching Donna skim through four newspapers with an 
efficiency he knows she didn't have before, he realizes she pays a lot of 
attention to him. It's a refreshing change from women who implore that he 
concentrate on them; it's a startling contrast to his lover, who demands 
that he bend his regard to her point of view.

Later, after it ends with Mandy, he realizes that comparing his 
relationship with her to his interactions with Donna is specious. One woman
carved herself a place as a political player; the other lets him mold her. 
It doesn't occur to him that his gratification over playing Pygmalion is 
self-indulgent.

*   *   *   *

She loves working for him. She thinks he saved her life, and she's 
perpetually amazed that someone who talks to senators and diplomats should 
pay attention to her. She hides her awe and respect behind irreverence; 
she's reasonably sure he sees through it.

For the first two years, she follows him in hallways, learning everything 
she can from him. She can feel herself growing in his presence, basking in 
the light of his attention, thriving. He wakes things in her that she 
didn't know were alive, much less sleeping.

Becoming good enough for him is her new goal. 

Her muse is patient, and bides its time while waiting for her to realize 
that she could be so much more than what another man thinks she could be.

*   *   *   *

He is a natural teacher -- many people who love what they do are. He loves 
teaching her and she seems to love learning from him. She doesn't ask 
obvious questions, but she asks the right ones; the rapidity with which she
can understand complex issues impresses him, although he'll never let her 
know.

There are days when he notices her listening or reading intently, and he 
swears he can see her growing into the woman whose ghost he saw in Nashua. 
But there is still something in the fluttery way she comports herself 
around him sometimes that evokes the wide-eyed girl, and he hopes that 
she never loses that innate sweetness.

It occurs to him that he can see to it that she doesn't. He tells himself 
he's only concerned about her sense of self; he won't admit that he wants 
to shape that sense. She needs him to push her into who she could be.

One night, he runs off at the mouth and tells her that she's repeatedly 
jeopardizing her tiny self-identity. The look in her eyes still comes back 
to him on the bad nights when he turns all his attention inward and asks 
why he's still alive.

*   *   *   *

After he's shot, she focuses all of who she is on making him better. She 
doesn't know who she would be without him, so she sets her mind to ensuring 
she doesn't have to find out.

She realizes somewhere in all of this that she thinks she might love him. 
On one bad night, she drinks a bottle of beaujolais and cries, wondering 
why she had to fall in love with someone who's too good for her and what 
she's going to do when he notices.

Then things change, and she suspects he won't notice for a while. He's too 
wrapped up in his own pain, he's taking it out on her and while she spends 
a lot of nights staring at the ceiling in abject misery, she's grateful 
that she has something to live around. She goes back to taking care of 
him, protecting the man who's making her what she is right now.

*   *   *   *

He opens his eyes one day and realizes that Donna's been quietly making her
own way when she hasn't been tending to him. 

She's still not a confident and polished player; he recalls hearing about 
her raising her hand in the Oval for permission to speak, and thinking 
about it makes him grin at her girlish uncertainty. He can still send her 
into a tizzy by withholding information, and she hasn't learned the art of 
graceful recovery yet.

But she is slowly and gradually doing more things right on her own. There 
will be a point where she won't turn to him at all; she won't need to.

He realizes this one evening after she correctly anticipates the materials 
he needs for a briefing on the tobacco case, and he can't decide if Donna's
growing competence makes him proud or sad. The closest comparision he can 
make is to the feeling he had after finishing his thesis: he was glad to be
done, but regretful that what he created no longer needed him to shape its 
final form.

The difference is that this time, he wants Donna to continue needing him. 
He doesn't yet know why.

*   *   *   *

Her mistakes bother her more than they used to. After one particularly 
trying day, she sits at her desk, compulsively organizing files and looping
over the days' events, hoping to figure out what she did wrong so it 
doesn't happen again. She also wants to ease the nagging sense of 
embarassment; she worries that she's becoming weak if she can't shrug off 
mistakes. After all, she makes them all the time.

It comes to her in a flash: she's doing things -- big things -- right much 
more often than she used to, and she's grown accustomed to feeling good 
about her work. This revelation, that she's doing something she can be 
proud of, startles her. She tells herself that she works with people who 
are much smarter and more disciplined than she; she tells herself that the 
real secret to running the country is to pull people into a hazy penubra of
charisma, and real charisma coms from exuding brains and confidence.

Her logic fails to puncture her growing sense that maybe, she's smart and 
disciplined too. And her muse stirs a little, whispering that she needs to 
start giving herself a little more credit instead of waiting for Josh to 
give it to her.

*   *   *   *

Things shift between them. He wants to figure out why, but now they are 
engaged in the fight of their lives. On some nights, he watches her work 
and thinks, she is becoming who he always thought she could be. He 
congratulates himself on his foresight. Sometimes, he even congratulates 
himself on his Galatea, marveling at who he must be to have steered Donna 
toward who she is.

Then the fight gets brutal and wearying; he has no time for 
self-reflection. When things are at their worst in the White House, the 
President insists that they all take the night off and watch My Fair Lady. 

He's not sure if it's supposed to be reward or punishment, but he's not 
going through it alone, so he hovers around Donna until she capitulates and
comes with him. They sit quietly through the movie -- not normal behavior 
for him, but she shushes him with a stern look until he shuts up -- and he 
watches Eliza Doolittle turn into Audrey Hepburn, gracefully springboarding
from idolizing Henry Higgins to declaring her independence from him.

After the movie, he's in a foul mood. When Donna tries to tease him out of 
his temper, he snaps at her, telling her that if she wants to entertain 
him, there's another satellite coming down soon.

The next day, neither one of them says a word about the previous evening. 
She is careful to keep their conversations work-related; when she leaves, 
he sits at his desk and stares at a memo tagged with a note from her. She 
shouldn't take his temper tantrums so gracefully, he thinks, because that's
a sign that she's entirely too used to his anger.

It doesn't occur to him until much later that he shouldn't be taking out 
his anger on her at all.

*   *   *   *

Things shift between them, and it worries her a lot less than it would have
a year ago. She realizes one morning that it's because she's beginning to 
value her own self-regard almost as much as she values his. The thought 
surprises and pleases her; she spends the rest of the day buzzing around 
the office in a light mood, refusing to give in to the darker countenance 
of her coworkers.

She surprises herself again when she decides she feels extremely useful. 
She's running the offices of two of the highest profile non-elected 
officials in the country while her friend Margaret struggles to adjust to 
running the Oval. She's keeping things going while they all endure the 
scrutiny of media and enemies. She's learning that her own judgement is 
surprisingly sound.

Sometimes, when she's bolting down the hall, she'll sense Josh watching her
fly by him. She's afraid to stop and find out why he's looking at her; 
she's afraid of the why. She feels useful and strong, but she loves him and
she worries that it makes her weak.

One night, she drinks a bottle of beaujolais and tells herself that he 
helped make her who she is, and he could as easily unmake her. Then she 
bursts out laughing over how dramatic that sounds, and how wrong.

The muse plants the idea that Josh has only given her the tools to be who 
she is; she can wield them any way she wants.

*   *   *   *

She leaves the office in a shimmery silver wisp one night and he watches 
her go with bile in his throat. The same foul mood that settled over him 
during My Fair Lady returns with a vengeance; he spends the rest of the 
evening pushing it down and arguing with Congressional staffers over 
tobacco lawsuits.

The next day, he snarls at her over coffee, then says, by way of apology, 
"I'm guessing your date with Freddie went badly."

"That would be because I didn't go out with anyone named Freddie, but 
thanks for asking," she says, then returns to Leo's office to prepare for 
the afternoon staff meeting. It occurs to him while Sam's carrying on about
AMA's condemnation of Abigail Bartlet that Freddie was the name of Eliza's 
suitor in My Fair Lady. 

He spends the rest of the day wondering if he's gotten so feeble-minded as 
to begin comparing his life to saccharine musicals. He spends that night 
trying to remember the story behind My Fair Lady.

A few nights later, he has his answers: My Fair Lady was based in some part
on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. He gets Donna to run out and buy him a 
copy of Pygmalion the next day and stays in his office until one in the 
morning reading it. He likes Shaw -- the wit and astringency with which the 
writer viewed the human race play nicely to his own sensibilities -- but by
the time he gets to the epilogue, he feels as though he's reading his 
future writ dark. He winces through the final paragraph, and the last line 
makes him pause: "Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to 
her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable."

He rips the playbook in half and spends the rest of the night brooding out 
his window.

*   *   *   *

One night, she comes into his office and he's smiling at her. It startles 
her because she hasn't done anything to merit it.

Then it occurs to her that she doesn't need to think of his attention as 
something she earns for doing what he wants; she should start thinking of 
his regard for her as something she gets because of who she is.

It occurs to her that perhaps he's beginning to see her as more than the 
girl he picked up out of the figurative gutter. Perhaps he likes who she 
is, and it doesn't matter how she came about to be that person.

She knows she's not perfect yet, but she feels perfectly fine with loving 
Josh now. Her muse smiles and settles back to see what will happen next.

*   *   *   *

A month passes. He watches her bloom as she holds everyone together. He 
thinks back to the day in Nashua when he sensed the courage and resilience 
she didn't even know she had; he thinks back to a night where they sat in a
darkened theatre and he congratulated himself on his post-modern Eliza. He 
consoles himself with the idea that he didn't really create her, he just 
offered a critical eye on a work in progress. 

He realizes, over time, that while he can't put a label on his feelings for
Donna, he wants her to reciprocate. He renews his scrutiny, looking for 
signs that she still thinks of him as one of the better men in her life.

So long as she thinks of him as a man, he thinks, and not Pygmalion. He's 
gone back and read the original myth, and while the ending is happier, he's 
all too mindful that it only stops with Galatea stepping off the pedestal.

What happens if she realizes that he's been playing Pygmalion? He wonders 
this, then looks at Donna meeting Leo's irate glare with a level gaze and 
thinks that at some point, Donna began carving herself without him.

He's still a little sad over her growing independence, but his mind refuses 
to let him dwell on it. Instead, it circles around to the intriguing 
possibility that when she stepped off the pedestal, they stopped being 
creator and masterpiece and became man and woman.

*   *   *   *

Summer melts into fall. She holds her own with Oliver Babish, bristling 
indignantly when he suggests that she'd help in a cover-up because she has 
an improper relationship with Josh. Afterward, she watches Josh simmering 
on C-SPAN while congressmen fire questions at him; she knows that her 
concern is more than professional, but she feels her love for Josh isn't 
anyone's business but her own. She feels sure that soon it will become 
Josh's business too. She's waiting for an internal nudge that tells her 
when the time is right.

She now has more confidence in her own instincts than she does in anyone 
else's. That terrifies her if she thinks about it too closely, but she 
decides that nobody is both smart and one hundred percent certain of their 
own abilities, and she can live with the uncertainty so long as she can 
draw strength from her own sense of self-reliance.

Josh still takes the time to explain things to her; as she told Leo once in
the Oval, "I let him." She listens, because she likes learning from him and
she likes it when he pays attention to her. She also likes knowing that 
he drops by to ask if she has questions; it makes her suspect that it's 
his slow and indirect way of trying to get her attention.

It occurs to her one night as they're reviewing campaign contributions for 
one judiciary committee member that he's sustaining their Socratic 
dialogues because he has no other idea about how to keep her attention. 
This is, she reflects, a significant shift from their early days when 
talking to her was something he did as an afterthought.

No, she thinks later. He always had something in mind when he was talking 
to her. But now what he thinks of her is balanced by what she thinks of 
herself, and her own self-regard has grown dramatically. Ironically, she's 
not nearly so self-conscious as she used to be; for a while, there wasn't 
time for her to fixate on her own flaws, and once she had the luxury of 
self-reflection, all the things she used to think about herself weren't 
true anymore.

Her muse tells her that sometimes true beauty gets forged in fire. She 
snorts softly at the florid imagery, then turns back to telling Josh he's 
dead wrong about his funding strategy.

He walks her out to her car later that night and it seems to her as though 
they're both slightly off-step. As she's driving home, it occurs to her 
that whenever you step off safe ground and onto new territory, it's going 
to feel shaky at first. It also occurs to her that if she trusts her 
instincts on this, she and Josh can hold on to each other as they figure 
out how to negotiate this new ground together. 

*   *   *   *

She finds him in the Sculpture Garden, staring at nothing in particular.

"Josh," she starts.

"I'm just ... Leo wants ..."

"Leo wants me to work in his office full-time," she says calmly, and he 
wonders if she knows how this makes him feel.

"He told you this?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

They sit together for a moment. He figures one of them will speak soon; one
of them always does. They don't do long silences; they always look for each
other in the spaces between words.

"It could be a good thing," she says, still serene.

"It could. You could drive him crazy with your questions, and he could 
drive the President crazy, kind of an extended payback for what we've all 
gone through over the past few months ..." he says, trailing off because he
doesn't feel very funny. What he feels is a little empty.

Somewhere, and he's not sure whether or not he's imagining it, he hears the
scrape of marble against slate.

He wonders if this is what Pygmalion heard when Galatea stepped off the 
pedestal. He wonders if Henry Higgins heard the soft rasp of leather 
against a dance floor and felt his heart pound as the woman he created 
looked him in the eyes, really looked him in the eyes, for the first time.

He hears the bench creak a little as Donna sits next to him.

"If I go work for Leo, who's going to drive you crazy? I take that part of 
my job very seriously," she says. 

He looks at her and she's giving him this smile. He realizes then that she 
knows damn well what she does to him, and she doesn't do it because she 
needs his attention, but because she likes his attention.

Galatea doesn't necessarily like Pygmalion. Eliza doesn't like Henry. Donna
likes him.

He grins back at her and says, "I have no doubt as to your abilities to 
continue vexing me."

"I could invent new ways to get to you," she says, and there's something 
slf-assured and certain in that sentence.

Somewhere, long before the two of them realized it, she grew into her own 
sense of self. He has no doubt that she is now as sure of herself as she is
of him.

"You wanna know how you get to me?" he says. He leans in to kiss her, and 
she's meeting him halfway; it occurs to him that Eliza and Galatea always 
waited for someone to kiss them, but Donna's her own woman and she'll do 
what she wants.

"So that's it?" she asks with a smile that lights up her face.

"Can you think of a better way?" he asks, and she shakes her head no 
before they kiss again. He thinks briefly of Pygmalion as her mouth moves 
against his and decides that the problem with that story was that Galatea 
never had a choice. This way, his Galatea finished creating herself, then 
picked him of her own free will, and that makes it all the sweeter.

When they break, he takes her hands in his and leads her out of the 
Sculpture Garden. He hears not a whisper of leather against marble or 
marble against slate. He hears her whisper how she wants to drive him 
crazy, and he hears his own rasping response.

This wasn't part of the story at all, not until now.

*   *   *   *

He fumbles his keys a little, but she makes allowances for him. After all, 
she reasons, her lips on his neck may have distracted him.

He pulls her through the door, and they barely make it to the bedroom. Four
years of sexual tension won't be defused gradually and slowly, and both of 
them now feel much freer to focus their attention on each other now that 
they know it won't be rebuffed.

She can't get enough of his hands. When he scratches his fingers down her 
back, she arches into his touch unselfconsciously; as he sweeps his palms 
over her breasts and along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, she 
wills her body to open up to him and memorize his touch.

He can't get enough her skin, marvels that her long limbs tangled around 
his must have been shaped by some divine influence. All he can do is run 
his hands over everywhere he can reach, marveling at the way she responds 
to his touch and smiling over the foolishness of the idea that he ever 
shaped something so beautiful as she.

When he brings her over the edge the first time, she draws his fingers into
her mouth, tasting him as he caresses her cheek. When he comes, their hands 
are entwined, a testament to this new thing that belongs to both of them.

After they've recovered the power of speech, he murmurs into her breastbone
that she's a work of art. Then they both begin laughing unreservedly.

*   *   *   *

There is a point in the story where Galatea steps off the pedestal and 
Pygmalion is forced to figure out what happens when you get what you want. 
There is a point in another iteration where Galatea steps off the pedestal 
and realizes exactly how she ended up there to begin with; she spends the 
rest of her life out of arms' reach. Both stories end with the creation 
breaking her artist's heart. He deserves it for playing God.

Then there is the story where Galatea laughingly tells Pygmalion that she 
may be a work of art, but she created herself, thank you very much. And it 
hurts his ego a very little, but what he gets in return is enough to 
mollify the loving sting. Because in this version of the story, she stays 
and they create something beautiful together.