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TITLE: Women
AUTHOR: Sabine
ARCHIVE: Anywhere, drop a line -- sabine101@juno.com
CATEGORY: Josh
RATING: R
SPOILERS: Vague for ITSOTG and "Noel," vaguer for TCATW.
SUMMARY: "And we really all are women here, when all is said and done."
DISCLAIMER: Aaron Sorkin and Brad Whitford are responsible 
for this one, I'm just the girl at the computer writing it down. 
Original characters and the rest of it is mine, with beta by Punk M. 
I've known men like this. You probably have too. 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: For Pene, august, Dawn, and Punk. 
These women. 


				Women


"Josh Lyman." He sits down. The stool is sticky, and the orange 
track lighting cuts the barroom perpendicularly, illuminating a web 
of dust mites. "Seat taken?"

She smiles with one side of her mouth. "Erika Yager, and go 
ahead, knock yourself out." 

He likes the way her steel-blue Armani Exchange pants stretch 
across the tops of her thighs and hang straight and wide around her 
skinny bare ankles, her feet dangling a couple inches off the floor. 
He surprises himself by knowing "Armani Exchange." She's got 
black suede sneakers on, and he thinks they might be DKNY.

"Crazy blizzard," he says. "I didn't think anyone would be out here 
tonight."

"You're here," she points out, not looking away from Craig Kilborn 
on the TV bolted above the rack of Kentucky single malts.

"I am indeed here," he agrees. To the bartender, "Bass and a shot."

Bartender slaps them down on the counter, and Josh knocks back 
the whiskey and swipes a hand across his mouth. Erika crosses her 
legs, and he watches her breasts move a little closer together under 
her white tailored shirt as she raises her arm to pick up her drink.

"They're calling it the storm of the century," he says.

"That's awfully dumb," she says. "Seeing as we're, what, three 
months into it?"

"Into the century?"

"Three months into the century," she says, eating an olive off a 
yellow plastic sword. 

He nods. "The media tends to be brilliant like that."

"I write for DC Style," she says, plastic sword between her teeth. 
"And you are?"

"Uh, I, uh, I work in the White House," he says, the way he used to 
say, "I go to a little college in New Haven." 

Kilborn's muted, and the stereo's playing Tom Waits, "Cold, Cold 
Ground." On TV the closed captions say "[LIGHT LAUGHTER]." 
Josh looks at Erika, who is scratching her clavicle with the tip of a 
fingernail and staring vaguely into space. 

He hadn't intended to make a friend tonight, to pick someone up, to 
take someone home, but now she's here and she's got this great, 
long, thick brown hair and he can imagine it spread across a 
pillow. He can imagine her lipstick coming off on his lips. He 
thinks about how long it's been since he's gotten laid.

"DC Style, huh," he says, raising his eyebrows. "So you're 
uniquely responsible for CJ Cregg's newfound love for Issey 
Miyaki." 

"You work for CJ?" Erika looks interested, and Josh rolls the 
words around in his head. Saying "no, she works for me" seems 
unnecessarily arrogant, but a "yes" answer would be inaccurate, so 
he just shrugs. "She's great about taking my calls," Erika says.

"She's great, yeah," Josh agrees. "CJ's great. Absolutely great." 
Erika squints at him, and he wills himself to shut up.

He's forgotten how to do this. After a day of rapidfire debate with 
the most brilliant political minds in the country, he finds himself 
desperately unable to make small talk, so he smiles instead. She 
smiles back, and she's got a dimple too. Tom Waits sings "when 
the road's washed out, you pass the bottle around..." and Josh takes 
a draw off his beer. 

"What do you do in the White House, then?" Erika asks. 

He nods, debating, stalling. "I work for Leo McGarry," he says 
finally, and hopes she doesn't know who Leo McGarry is. 

"I did a column on him once," she says. She doesn't elaborate, but 
Josh figures it's the Valium or the divorce or the hearing, 
something exploitative he'd rather not have her recount. 

She flips the plastic sword around on her tongue and then slides it 
halfway between her lips, and when she opens her mouth Josh can 
see that her tongue is pierced. He watches the steel bar flutter and 
imagines he can hear it clicking against the inside of her teeth. He's 
indescribably aroused. 

He came here straight from work, and he knows the light in the bar 
is just hazy and ambient enough to render his dress shirt backlit, 
giving Erika a full view of the lines of his t-shirt underneath. He 
feels like someone's ugly math teacher, old and lecherous, and he 
wants to put his jacket and coat and scarf back on. Erika pulls the 
sword out of her mouth and drops it in her martini glass with a 
clink. 

"It's getting late," she says. 

"It's freezing outside," he says, pulling his shoulders up near his 
ears. "I'm not in a hurry to get back out there."

"I only live two blocks away," she says, trailing off and looking at 
him. He waits for it. He's seen enough women like her, gone home 
with enough women to know she'll ask, to know that's what she 
came to this bar for, but he waits for it anyway, partly because he's 
nervous, partly because he's rusty at this. "You want a cup of 
coffee or something? Something warm?"

He wants something warm. He stands up, pulling his jacket over 
his shoulders. "Sure," he says. "I'd like that."

Her lips are hot on his chest.

The round, strange end of the tongue barbell flicks against his 
nipple, and he can't tell if it's warm or cold, but her lips are hot and 
his fingers move across her back, tracing circles around each 
knobby vertebrae of her spine. 

She's got white sheets, white pillows, a white comforter bunching 
up under his back, and the rest of her apartment is blonde wood 
and stainless steel, spare and elegant and intimidating. He'd lined 
his shoes up carefully before letting her pull him onto the bed, and 
he finds himself neurotically distracted by the fear that he'll stain 
her comforter, her clean white sheets. She moves her mouth up his 
chest, squeezes him between her thighs and doesn't seem to care. 

Sometime before four he goes home in a cab. He showers, thinks 
about sleeping, makes coffee instead, reads the paper. He goes in 
to work early.

"You got laid," Sam says, in Josh's office with the door closed. 

"And you can tell this how?"

"I've known you a long time," Sam says. "You're never poker-
faced the morning after. In fact, you're not poker-faced when we're 
playing poker either. So, yes. I can tell. I'm very good at these 
things."

Josh lets his eyes widen, and stretches his arms up above his head. 
"That's, like, sort of sick, you know?" 

Sam nods. "I know. I'm not proud of it. But there it is." 

"I got laid!" Josh says, spitting out the words on an exhale and 
letting his arms fall at his sides. "Have you ever, uh, you ever been 
with a girl with one of those barbells through her tongue?"

"Tell me everything," Sam says, leaning forward in his chair. He's 
in a blue shirt with a deep blue tie that hangs between his knees. 
Josh watches Sam's tie swinging, and remembers the barbell.

"Whole lotta fun, my friend," he says. "You can't even imagine."

Sam's paying attention. "That's all I get?" he asks. 

Josh shrugs. "You really, uh, want the graphic details? Because to 
tell you the truth I would find that deeply weird."

Sam stands up. "You're right. Plus, I've got work to do. So I'll just 
go, then."

"Catch you later?"

"Sure," Sam says, and shuts the door. 

Josh leans forward into his hands and rubs his eyes. He's got 
budget in twenty-five minutes, which is not quite enough time for 
the conference call he needs to make to OEOB, and not quite 
enough time for him to take a nap either. He realizes he's sweating, 
that the heat's cranked up to something like eighty-five because of 
the blizzard, and he's got big o-rings of sweat under his arms. The 
back of his shirt is wet too. 

He wonders how Sam's shirts are always so clean, smooth, how 
Sam never manages to spill coffee on himself or get mustard on his 
elbows. Josh realizes he wouldn't have the first clue if Sam had 
gotten laid. He wonders if Sam has, recently, and he wonders why 
Sam hasn't told him and he hasn't asked. 

There's a knock at his door.

"Yup!" he calls. Donna comes in. 

"Call for you on O-4," she says. "It's a girl, Josh."

"Well," he says, "seeing as they make up fifty-one percent of the 
population, I'm not terrifically shocked by that fact. Do you know, 
uh, which girl?"

"You had sex, Josh Lyman," Donna says, tipping her head to the 
side and squinting. "I can tell. I've got a sixth sense, you know."

He yawns, a little afraid he's blushing. "I've heard," he says. 
"Who's on the phone?"

"Stacy," she says. "Oh, or Ellen. Elizabeth? Anyway, it's a normal 
name. Shouldn't you know her name?"

"I'm expecting a call from Eleanor Murphy at State," he says. "Is it 
her?"

"Do you want to play this game, or do you want to answer the 
phone?"

He realizes. "It's, was it Erika?"

Donna nods victoriously. "I told you it was a normal name," she 
said.

He laughs. "Donna, with you, I wouldn't begin to presume what 
you'd consider a normal name. But can you just tell her I'm in a 
meeting? I'll call her back?"

"Yeah," Donna says. "Want me to say when?"

"Nah," Josh shakes his head. "And get a number."

She goes back into the bullpen, leaving the door open behind her. 

He never gets Erika's number, and he makes Donna ignore her the 
two times she calls the next day. He isn't sure why.

Thursday night he goes to hear Vaya Con Dios at a club on Grand 
street, except it isn't the same Vaya Con Dios, apparently. This 
band has four white guys in shirts and ties, the lead singer in a 
fedora and the guy on the bongos with a little goatee. Josh 
overhears the word "ska" but he doesn't really know what it means. 
They're good enough, and they play late, and he nurses one beer 
for four hours watching a freckled girl with dyed-black hair and 
big catseye glasses talk with her hands. When he'd come in, she 
had been sitting at a table in the corner with her back toward him 
and he wrote her off as twenty-something-early and not his type, 
until halfway through the evening when she'd moved so she could 
lean against the wall. She lights a cigarette, and in the match-flare 
he can see her face, and she has lines around her eyes. She isn't a 
kid.

His beer is warm when the ska band finishes their set, but the 
freckled woman is deep in conversation with her friends and Josh 
can't stop staring. When she gets up to use the bathroom, he 
follows her.

"Hey," he says, when she comes out, drying her hands on her 
jeans.

"It's open," she says, waving a hand at the bathroom door.

He chuckles. "No," he says. "I've just, I've been watching you, and 
you seemed really cool, so I just, I just wanted to say hi."

She pushes her glasses down her nose and gives him an 
exaggerated squint. "Hi," she says. 

The corridor is narrow and he realizes he is in her way, so he 
flattens his back against the wall so she can pass him. She squeezes 
in front of him, but stops, faces him, and peers up with a grin. 
"Hi," she says again. She spreads her hands out flat and presses 
them against his chest. He trembles. "You got a name?"

"Josh Lyman," he says.

"Tish Glass," she says, her palms hot through his shirt. "I gotta get 
back to my friends now," she says. "We're cutting out of here; my 
kid's with a sitter and I need to get home."

"Oh," he says, not sure what to do with his hands. He stuffs them 
in his pockets. "Okay, then," he says.

She lets go of his chest and pushes through the corridor, walking 
backwards like a tour guide. "Have a nice night," she says, waving.

"You too," he says.

She turns away.

"I like the way you talk with your hands," he calls after her, and 
she stops and turns around again to look at him.

"Huh?"

He pulls his hands free from his pockets and wiggles his fingers to 
demonstrate. "The way you talk. With your hands. It's 
very...graceful."

She laughs. "Okay," she says. "Take care, then, Josh."

"Yeah," he says. "You too."

Outside, it's still snowing, tiny too-cold flakes cutting fast and 
furious diagonals in the glow of the streetlamps. He feels his lips 
chap, his eyes water in the wind, and he nudges at his scarf with 
his chin, trying to warm his face. With his head down, he lopes 
down the sidewalk and trots in place at the stop light, waiting for it 
to change.

Something on his shoulder. A hand. He turns around. Tish.

"Hey there," he says.

"I called Taylor's dad," she says. "He'll take her tonight. You 
busy?"

She looks even older, outside in the snow in the streetlamps. 
Crow's-feet cross her temples, and he can see a handful of greying 
roots under the ink-black dye. But her mouth is wide and her lips 
are freckled too, it looks like, and she balls her slender hands up 
next to her mouth and blows into them to keep warm.

The light changes. Walk. She is wearing a gas-station attendant's 
jacket, the zipper patched with duct tape. It says "James" on the 
embroidered breast patch. A metal chain runs from her belt to her 
back pocket, likely attached to her wallet in there. From the chin 
down, she is sixteen years old, and Josh squirms. The light changes 
again. Don't Walk.

"Nah," he says, smiling. "I'd really love to do something, but I've 
got work in like three hours, and I should at least pretend to sleep."

She shrugs. "Okay," she says, digging in her pocket. She comes up 
with a Sharpie and a yellow carbon receipt, and she scrawls some 
digits on the yellow paper and hands it to him. "This is me, if you 
ever just wanna hang out," she says. 

He nods, stuffing the paper in his jacket. "You really are..." he 
begins, and then stops. "It was great to meet you," he says. "Go 
home and be with your kid."

She nods back. "Yeah," she says. "Taylor's dad's a sonofabitch. I'd 
rather not leave her with him, actually."

"So it's all good then," Josh says. The light changes again. "I 
should really go."

"Scram," she says. And she turns away down the sidewalk and is 
gone by the time he crosses the street.

"Something, something is, like, seriously wrong with me."

He stands in the doorway of Sam's office, picking at flaking paint 
on the jamb.

"What do you mean?" Sam asks.

Josh shuts the door and sits down. "Like last night," he says. "This 
totally amazing, this really cool girl at this club --"

"You went out again last night? Something is wrong with you," 
Sam nods.

Josh shakes his head. "Listen to me. Listen to me. I'm at this club, 
right, and I'm watching this girl, she's probably thirty-five but she's 
made it so she looks like she's seventeen, she's got this great face, 
this totally expressive face, and she talks with her hands --" Josh 
realizes he is talking with his hands, and he lets them fall into his 
lap. 

Sam smiles. "Keep going."

"So I go up to her, just to say hey, except next thing you know 
she's calling her kid's dad and telling him to babysit the daughter 
so she can come fuck me."

"You got laid again?" Sam's eyebrows go up. "I wouldn't have 
thought."

Josh shakes his head again, harder. "No," he says. "That's what I'm 
saying. I said no. I went home. I can't believe it."

"Something's seriously wrong with you, my friend," Sam agrees. 

Josh groans, leaning back in the chair and covering his face with 
his hands. "And the other girl? I never called her back."

"What was wrong with her?"

"Nothing!" Josh says, throwing his arms in the air. "It's me. It's all 
me."

Sam shrugs. "You're in a bit of a bind, there, Josh," he says. "You 
might have some stuff to figure out."

Those words resonate, reminding Josh of post-traumatic stress 
disorder and therapy. He shudders. 

"Relax," Sam says. "It's no big deal. It happens all the time. You're 
busy. You've got an important job. You don't need to leap into bed 
with every cute girl who deigns to talk to you."

"Deigns?" Josh grins. "They line up for my autograph, I'll have you 
know."

Erika hadn't been the first since the shooting; back in December 
there had been a string of women, all of them bleeding together, 
white girls with dark hair and brooding eyes who took their 
contacts out before coming to bed. He'd fucked until he was bored 
and sore. And then there were none, for a long time. Well, for a 
long time comparatively, for Josh, who was used to conquests and 
the thrill of going home with new girls who laughed and made him 
breakfast he never had time to eat. Women were magnificent, 
brilliant, amazing creatures, and for some reason, now, they bored 
the hell out of him.

Something was seriously wrong.

"Josh? Are you in there?" Donna, knocking on Sam's door.

"Ayup," Josh says, and she opens the door.

"Erika called again," Donna says, with a bad news look on her 
face. "She wanted to give you a head's-up."

"Oh, that can't be good," Sam says.

"Nah, it really can't," Josh squeaks, scrunching up his face and 
looking at Donna for the rest of the story.

"I took the liberty of going down to the newsstand and picking up a 
copy of the magazine for you," Donna says. "I don't want you to 
freak out, now, Josh. You have to understand that I'm just 
delivering this thing. Which is not to say that I don't agree with 
her, insofar as it's my responsibility to support my fellow woman 
in times of crisis --"

"Times of crisis, Donna?" Josh asks. Donna reaches behind her 
back and comes forward with a copy of DC Style, which she 
extends toward him.

He takes it. 

"Don't freak out, Josh," she says again.

"I'm not gonna freak out," he says, thumbing through the 
magazine. "Do I look like the sort of guy who freaks out?"

"Maybe I should read it," Sam offers, standing up. Josh snarls.

"The Nation's Elite," by Erika Yager, page forty. He flips to it. 
Sam sits down again. 

"It takes a special kind of arrogance to work in the White House," 
Josh reads aloud. "A unique and marvelous breed of self-centrism 
that manifests itself, after hours, in a sexual game of political 
slumming. Man walks into a bar like a bad joke and lies to you 
about his job, with the ridiculous and megalomaniacal hope that 
you don't recognize him from the Post or know that when he slinks 
out at four in the morning, he's going to work at 1600 Pennsylvania 
Avenue, in the same building as the most powerful man in the free 
world. Like he really thinks you'd fuck him if you didn't know 
that." 

"No, now wait," Sam says, standing up again. "I take offense at 
that."

Josh squints at him. "Do you have, like, hemorrhoids or 
something?"

Sam sits down. "What?"

"All the standing up and sitting down, it's like you're in synagogue, 
or, like, at a Bob Dylan concert."

Sam looks at a spot on his desk as if it's a bug that's crawled onto 
his lunch plate. "Oh," he says. He looks back at Josh.

"I believe I was in the middle of lambasting myself and men 
everywhere," Josh says, finding his place in the column. "I'll just 
keep reading, then."

"Josh..." Donna is still standing in the doorway. "You should have 
called her back," she says. "Men don't know that. But most of the 
problems in this world are caused because men don't call women 
back. Wars are started by men who are frustrated that their 
girlfriends won't sleep with them, and you know why?"

"Because they didn't call them back?" Josh ventures.

"Because they didn't call them back," Donna says. "Think about 
it."

"Please, please get out of here," Josh pleads.

"Leaving."

She shuts the door behind her when she exits, and Josh looks at 
Sam.

"This is, like, a bad 'Sex in the City' episode," Josh says.

"Does she use your name?"

Josh skims the article and shakes his head.

"Well then," Sam says. "You're not in too much trouble. I mean, 
what are the odds someone will identify you?"

"...a certain upper level West Wing staffer with Grand Canyon 
dimples and receding Einstein hair," Josh reads, and moans.

"Oh," Sam says, nodding. "A few people might identify you, then."

Josh rubs his forehead. "My hair's not receding that badly," he 
mutters.

"What else does it say?"

"In this liberal administration, these are the men who think they 
love women, who would swear to anyone that they've got nothing 
but respect for the fairer sex. They'd probably use the phrase 'fairer 
sex,' and it's not unreasonable to think they wrote poetry in college. 
They love their mothers. They watch us with dreamy eyes, 
captivated by our each and every move, they tell us we're 
incredible, amazing. They're swayed by good oratory. They're not 
afraid to cry, but they never, ever do."

"I'm not afraid to cry," Sam says. "I cry all the time."

Josh wonders if this is true. He knows Sam's braver than he is, that 
for all of Sam's purported clumsiness he's stronger than Josh, better 
able to go after what he wants. Better able to figure out what he 
wants. Sam probably cries, though Josh has never seen it and never 
wants to. Josh doesn't cry. Sometimes he wishes he could. He turns 
back to the article instead.

"What frightens me," he reads, "is the sheer dishonesty at work. 
These are the men who vote straight Democratic tickets, who 
speak out pro-choice and who support gay marriage and bans on 
handguns. They're the men who raise money for battered women's 
shelters, all the while thinking 'I'd have treated her better' when the 
truth is that the kind of cruelty these men inflict leaves even deeper 
bruises. They leave me fearing not only for my heart, but for my 
country and my future."

"My country and my future?" Sam stands up, realizes it, sits down 
for the third time. "That's taking it a little bit too far, don't you 
think?"

Josh doesn't answer. "I gotta go get some work done," he says after 
a minute. "I have a thing in like an hour."

"Yeah," Sam says. 

Josh tosses the magazine on Sam's desk, turns, and leaves.

It's snowing by four, dark before five, and people leave early, 
afraid for the roads and the traffic. Leo comes in to Josh's office at 
ten of six with his coat on and a brown accordion file under his 
arm.

"You goin' home soon?"

Josh runs his fingers through his hair. "I have some things to finish 
up."

Leo shakes his head. "Josh, you gotta start getting more sleep. 
Please go home."

"I'm okay," Josh says. "I'm good."

Leo comes a little closer to the desk. "No, Josh, you're not. You're 
distracted, you're fucking up. I spoke to Eleanor Murphy over at 
State, she says she had to get the appropriations report from 
Donna. That's not acceptable."

Josh exhales. "Yeah, sorry about that. It took a little longer than I 
thought it would, people weren't taking my calls, I think because of 
the snow a lot of --"

"I don't need to hear it," Leo waves his hands. "Just fix it. You're 
coming in tomorrow, right?"

Tomorrow is Saturday, and Josh has a meeting on the hill 
sometime before lunch. "Yeah," he says.

Leo nods. "Good. Give Eleanor Murphy a call -- she wants to go 
over some numbers. I'm gonna be doing a family thing but I'll call 
in, and I'm on my cell if you need me."

"I won't need you," Josh says, standing up. "I got it."

"Good," Leo says again. "Then put on your coat. I'll walk you out."

Josh rolls his head on his shoulders, cracking his neck. "Nah, I 
really do have to finish this up real quick. I'll go home soon."

"Do," Leo says, and walks away.

Josh paces the length of the little office, rubbing his face. He's 
working on a counterargument against Indian gaming, and he's 
been hip-deep in precedent and overturned case files all afternoon. 
When he'd started his research, the sheer number of Democrats 
who had historically supported bills restricting gaming surprised 
him. It seemed like such a partisan issue, and every time it came up 
in election year he knew he'd voted right, voted to allow Native 
American tribes to use their judgment and open their casinos and 
support themselves. 

Now he isn't sure what right means. He seems to remember people 
he admires speaking out on behalf of the Indian tribes; he knows 
President Bartlet supports funding the National Indian Gaming 
Commission, knows Bartlet has tried to respect Native Americans 
as a sovereign nation. It's always seemed right to Josh too. Except 
now he isn't sure what right means.

His head hurts.

"Hey."

Sam's standing in the doorway.

"Yeah?" Josh tips his chin to his chest and looks at Sam with 
raised eyebrows.

"I was thinking I was going to get a beer. And you should come."

Josh waves an arm somewhere toward his desk. "I've got this 
Indian gaming thing --"

"Leave it till tomorrow," Sam says. "I know that article's been 
eating you --"

"That article has not been eating me."

Sam nods. "Okay. Still. Come out. We'll get steak sandwiches."

Josh's stomach rumbles, he realizes he hasn't eaten all day. Steak 
sandwiches sound good. A beer with Sam sounds good. Anything 
that isn't about Indian gaming sounds good. "Yeah," he says. "All 
right."

"What's wrong with you this week?"

They've found a roadhouse, or at least a roadhouse-style bar, a 
couple blocks away, and Sam's leaning against the wall of the 
booth, looking at the menu.

"I haven't gotten much sleep," Josh replies.

"I get that," Sam says. "I'm asking why? What's going on?"

Josh shrugs, sliding his menu to the end of the greasy table. "I 
honestly, honestly don't know."

"You should have called her back," Sam says. "So now you know. 
It's fine."

"What do you think about Indian gaming?" Josh asks, after the 
waitress brings him his french fries and coffee. 

Sam looks at him. "As, what do I think of Indian gaming as a 
philosophical concept? Or what do I think of it as a political 
question?"

"Political question." Josh eats a french fry, salts the rest. His hands 
tremble; he watches them like they belong to someone else.

"Well," Sam begins. "It's dicey. Take the question of taxation, for 
example, which is really only one of many points of contention 
where the NIGC is concerned, although to ask its opponents, you'd 
think it was the only thing that matters. Of course, that's not the 
case. To start with, in 1988, House Republicans --" Sam stops. 
"Josh?"

"Yeah? I'm listening."

Sam squints at him. "You know what I think of Indian gaming. In 
fact, you know pretty much my views on every political issue. 
Why are you asking me this?"

Josh rubs his eyes with greasy hands. "I do?"

"I'm fairly confident you do, yes."

"Okay," Josh exhales. "So tell me. What do *I* think of Indian 
gaming?"

"Josh?"

Josh presses his hands together in front of him, fingers steepled 
like he's a geisha girl bowing. He feels the tendons in his wrist 
stretch; he aches all over. "I just...Sam, I think, I don't know if I 
know who I am."

"What are you talking about?" Sam looks genuinely confused, 
almost as confused as Josh feels.

Josh sighs. "I grew up, right, I grew up and I'm supposed to be one 
of the good guys."

"You are one of the good guys, Josh."

Josh shakes his head. "Apparently I'm not. I...Sam. I love women. I 
mean, I *love* women. I think they're terrific, spectacular, 
underrated, brilliant, I think this world would be a better place if 
the rest of us would just shut the fuck up and let them talk for a 
little while."

"But you didn't call Erika Yager back."

"But I didn't call Erika Yager back. I didn't even want to. I didn't 
sleep with the girl with the kid, even though she had the most 
amazing face I've ever seen. I think -- I mean, I've always thought I 
loved women. I respect women. But what if I don't? What if I'm as 
bad as all those other assholes out there? What if I *am* all those 
other assholes out there?" He exhales, loud and hard, takes a sip of 
coffee and it's too cold and too weak. "I think I might be. I think I 
am."

"Josh --"

"I don't even know how I feel about Indian gaming, Sam!"

"What does that have to do with --"

The waitress comes over. She's young, probably in high school or 
should be, and her hair's pulling out of her ponytail after a long day 
and hanging in wiggly strands across her forehead. She moves like 
a dancer, sidling between the booths on her tiptoes, doing a little 
hop-skip even when she doesn't have to.

Another day, in another life, Josh would smile at her, ask her 
name. He'd find out what book she is reading in the breakroom 
between shifts; he'd find out that her parents don't know she has 
this job. She'd warm up his coffee and he'd call her "kid," just to let 
her know he wasn't trying anything. He'd say "good luck with your 
life," when he left. He'd tip her two hundred percent. Another day, 
in another life. 

Tonight he just wants to sit here with Sam, Sam who doesn't care if 
he doesn't smile. Sam who maybe, with all that Princeton-honed 
brilliance, can help him figure out what's wrong with him, what 
broke inside of him back in December and won't come right.

He realizes he hasn't spoken in a while. The waitress pokes the 
check under Josh's french fry plate and leaves again before he 
looks up. 

"I'm tired, Sam," he says, and he realizes only then that it's true. 
"I'm tired of all the work. I'm tired of explaining myself. The 
whole goddamned show."

Sam knows. "Trying to tell them that your job isn't more important 
than they are, except that your job is more important than they 
are."

"Trying to tell them I have the weight of the world on my 
shoulders, every day, and I don't want to burden them with it," 
Josh sighs. "That's it."

"That's it," Sam nods. He takes a french fry off Josh's plate.

"I can't do it anymore," Josh says. "They don't understand."

"Women?"

Josh peers into the black of his coffee. "Yeah," he says. "Women 
don't understand."

Sam shakes his head. "I don't think that's what it is."

"No?"

"I don't think it's women who don't understand. I think it's the rest 
of the world. Anyone who isn't you, or me, or Toby or CJ or Leo. 
Anyone who doesn't come to work in the morning with our special 
breed of arrogance. Anyone who doesn't genuinely believe they 
can change the world."

"Yeah," Josh agrees, thinking about the article.

"Your thing with women is different, I think," Sam says. "They are 
amazing. They face problems we only write about. They overcome 
obstacles with a kind of grace that puts me in absolute awe. And so 
you believe it gives them...it gives them a kind of credibility. 
You're a white guy from Connecticut, Josh. You're a liberal 
Democrat. I think that part of you wishes you could take on some 
of their oppression, share it out, shoulder that weight along with 
the rest of it all. And not just for them. But for you. To make you 
feel more significant, somehow. More real."

It hurts. "And they're beautiful," Josh says.

"Beautiful on top of it, beautiful because of it," Sam agrees. 
"Women are amazing."

"And I'm an asshole," Josh laughs.

"No," Sam shakes his head. "You're not. You're just learning."

"Well, anyway, I'm not the person I thought I was," Josh says, 
sullenly.

Sam purses his lips. "Maybe not," he says. "Maybe you're a better 
person."

"Maybe," Josh is dubious.

"Tell me this," Sam says. "Do you care about things? Does the 
work we do bring you rallying to your feet saying yes, yes, I want 
to do right by this world, and I want to do it now?"

Josh feels something tighten in his chest. He imagines this is what 
crying must be like; he vaguely remembers crying. His eyes are 
dry. "Always," he says, and his voice snaps a little.

"And tell me this," Sam says. "Do you want to fall in love?"

"No," Josh says, and it surprises him. "I can't."

"Good," Sam says. "Then don't. So you don't call the women back. 
You're still who you are. They're still part of you. And until then, 
Josh, you've got me."

There's something behind that, in Sam's words. Josh feels around 
and it scares him. There are questions there, but they're for another 
time, not here in this roadhouse with the coffee getting cold and 
Josh only barely remembering what it's like to cry. 

"Man, you're good," Josh says, cracking a smile. And there's 
something behind that too, but Sam just smiles back.

"I'm a writer," Sam says. 

Josh finishes his cold coffee, tries another french fry. A car squeals 
out of the parking lot and the red of the taillights cut across the 
frosted restaurant window. The snow is coming down fatter and 
slower than before, the flakes hovering in space, defying physics. 
A world of snow, outside, and Josh in here, with Sam, who picks 
up the check before Josh can slap his hand away.

"We're all fuckups," Josh says, clearing his throat, feeling awake 
and aware and better. "I'm a weak sonofabitch who can't even cry."

"You're amazing and brilliant," Sam says, in a rare display. "You're 
just scared. We're all scared."

"Yeah," Josh says. "We're all fuckups."

Sam shakes his head while he digs around for his credit card. 
"Nah," he says, smiling with half his mouth. "We're just all 
women."

*

"The peeling of the onion
As the pieces start to fall.
You begin to see the pieces
In the shadows on the wall.
Tearing down the missiles
The pictures start to come
The image of a rosary
on the barrel of a gun.

Where I am not the hunter
Still I am the hunter's son.
And we really all are women here
when all is said and done."
	-- John Stewart