Unlike them, he doesn't want to run for the edge. He'd like to wait.

If everything could just freeze right now, he'd be happy to go over. If everything had just stopped six months ago, he'd be glad of the fall.

The world should have frozen with them standing together, smiling, in the Oval Office as he signed a bill into law. Not ended with them together, stressed, in the Oval Office as he vetoed a bill into impeachment.

There are ten days, he tells them. He doesn't have to do this now. Why don't we wait?

Why didn't they wait those months ago, to go on camera, to come clean? He could have gotten them out of it: sent Jane Pauley and the crew away, hired someone to murder the AP, Reuters, and Agence France reporters.

But they want it. They want the edge, they want to go over into nothingness.

At least, that's what he thinks as he watches them hold their breath while the President vetoes for the first time since taking office 33 months ago-give or take-that's what he thinks.

Sometimes, it's hard to wait. He knows the value of waiting, though. He knows.

He wishes everyone else did too. Not just the staff, not just the President.

His father. Nobody wants to find out his entire childhood-no, his entire life-has been a lie up to a point. He couldn't have waited? He couldn't have told them all in his will? He couldn't have waited until he got home and slept with his wife instead of having an affair?

The car couldn't have been picked up the next day, Mrs. Landingham? You couldn't have waited one more day?

That girl, the driver, she couldn't have waited five minutes, two minutes, thirty seconds before she got in her car?

God couldn't have waited fifteen years? No, no, make it twelve. It's all right to be diagnosed with a degenerative illness in the final term. Nobody minds that.

He couldn't have waited until it was all over to tell them? The President. No, he wouldn't wait.

He made his decision. He chose. He does not wait.

He said he would veto the bill, they know he will veto the bill. He's going to veto the bill.

A moment of silence for the defeat that would have been and may still come.

He's vetoed the bill.

And the world doesn't end with them standing in the Oval Office together watching him veto the eradication of a classist pile of bullshit.

It goes back. They know what will happen now. They can't wait. They have to act.

Act, he tells his brain. Act. No more waiting. It's done.

The veto is a chance. It is a big risk to take, he's been told. They all know it is a risk, a hell of a chance to take, but they relish it. The wary tension in their faces is a thin cover for a practised excitement which verges on the sexual. This is the game of not waiting.

They separate, he contemplates. How many can be convinced, how many will not move, how many they cannot ever be sure of again. The comforting nearness and deceptive cold over the edge. He wonders if they have already fallen, or if this feeling of joyous, abandoned vertigo is merely fate's hands on his shoulders, getting ready to push.

No more waiting.

It is time for chances. For vetoes. For risks.

It is time for running. The edge will not wait, either.

They will go over, together, as if going over was their goal all along.