Another Saturday Night


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Another Saturday Night-How I wish I had someone to talk to... I'm in an awful place.

"Dear Jackass, I hate you and everything you stand for."

Sam calmly removed the top page from his yellow legal pad and threw it over his shoulder. It flitted to the ground behind him.

"Dear Jackass, how could you do that to Mom? How could you do that to me?"

Shaking his head, he tore that sheet off as well, performing the same action. With the sheets of yellow legal paper behind him, he could have easily re-papered the walls of the entire White House, including the West Wing, and the OEOB.

"Dear Jackass, do you really know what you did? Do you have any idea? Did any of the repercussions cross your mind as you drove to Santa Monica to see this woman?"

He started to tear off that sheet but waited. That letter had potential.

"You broke my heart. You broke the heart of my mother, the woman you stood with, before God and everybody, and made a promise to. You promised to love and cherish, honor and obey in sickness and in health. You bastard."

He thought about scratching out that last sentence but let it stand instead.

"And don't start about how I, Don Quixote, avid chaser of windmills, am a politician and fully versed in the lying tongue. I happen to be working for a man who is the real thing. President Bartlet is the best man we've had in the White House in some years."

He thought for a moment, wanting to put what he truly felt on the paper. He wasn't sure if he could. Thinking back to the conversation with Mallory the night before, he remembered that she said she never showed Leo the letters until after rehab. Sam would show his father the letters eventually.

"There are two men here in Washington that I look up to as father figures. Well, there's an uncle (maybe big brother) figure as well, but my father figures may surprise you. They may surprise you greatly. The first is the President. I have never met a man with so much heart and caring. I wish you had a sliver of his compassion. The second is another of my many bosses-Leo McGarry. And, in that respect, maybe there is hope for you yet, you goddamn son of a bitch. I'm sure you read the papers about him. Yes, he had a problem. But he solved it. He didn't let it go for twenty-eight years until he was caught. He actively sought help. He actively sought to repair the damage he had done. I pray to God that you do something to make it up to my mother. She is much too sweet a woman to be treated in such an ugly, despicable way."

He wanted to rip that sheet of paper off the ledger and crumple it up to throw it at the nearest wall. It wasn't that he didn't like the letter-that was the best one he had been able to write since he started trying to write Mallory's suggested 'Dear Jackass' letter. It was just that he was still furious. He really didn't want to think about what was going on. All he wanted to do was get past it. He knew, though, that ignoring the problem wouldn't make it go away and neither would letting his thoughts torment him. What he really wanted was to find some sort of balance between ignoring and thinking about it-just enough so that he wouldn't drive himself crazy.

Getting up, he wandered into his kitchenette and opened the refrigerator door. There were two beers left over from the last time Josh had come for a visit. There was a bottle of water left over from his dinner at the mess that night. He didn't even want to think about how old some of those Chinese food cartons were. He started to reach for one of the beers but sighed and closed the door instead. He really didn't want anything.

Looking helplessly around his kitchenette, he realized he really didn't have anything to do besides work on that letter. The last of the pardon recommendations were in the hands of the President. There was nothing he could do about those any longer. He was caught up on most everything else. He could always watch some C-Span, see if "Booknotes" was on.

"God, this is pathetic, isn't it?" he groaned, leaning against his cabinet.

He could go back to the White House and see if anything needed attention. Maybe a reporter was out looking for a story. He didn't really know of one, but maybe he could help some cub reporter out. Of course, that wasn't anywhere near his job description.

He could always go work out. He hadn't been to the gym in quite some time. Who knows, maybe he'd try one of those punching bags and pretend it was his father he was hitting. He shook his head; maybe that wasn't the best thing either.

Just as he was giving up on coming up with an idea of his own and was ready to just wander the streets of Washington, someone buzzed his apartment. Maybe it was Josh, coming to kidnap him to take him on the bar-hopping trip he had missed the night before. Maybe it was Toby to argue about the finer points of the latest issue being battled on Capitol Hill. Maybe it was... He ran out of people that would come visit him on a Saturday night. "Yeah?" he asked, pressing the intercom button.

"Can I come up?"

"Mallory?"

"Yeah. It's cold. Can I come in?"

He buzzed the door open immediately and stepped out into the corridor to meet her as she ascended the stairs, rubbing her gloved hands together. "Hi," he said.

"Did I interrupt anything? I mean, are you working on something pertinent and I just absolutely ruined your train of thought?"

"No, not at all," he said. "Come in." He held the door open for her as she walked into his apartment.

"They said on the Weather Channel that the bottom would drop out today. I didn't think they really meant it," she said.

"You want some coffee?" he asked.

"You have some made?"

"Well, it's instant. It's not the greatest, but it's coffee and it'll be warm."

"Okay," she said agreeably, smiling at him.

"You can sit if you like," he said, wandering into the kitchen.

"Thanks," she said. She was about to sit down on his couch when she saw his desk and the sea of yellow paper behind it. She walked over to the entrance to his kitchen and leaned against the wall. "Are you, um... blocked?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, putting a kettle of water on.

"It's either that or you decided to paper your floor."

"I'm taking your advice."

"I told you to paper your floor?"

He smiled a little. "Dear Jackass letters."

"Oh," she said, looking back at the sea. She didn't remember having that many rough drafts. She did remember a lot of scratched out sentences and phrases. "Are they helping?"

"To some extent," he said with a nod, leaning against the counter again.

"Good."

Sam looked at her for a moment as she stared at his wasted paper, still rubbing her hands together. He wasn't sure why she had come by, but it was certainly better than him running around the streets of Washington D.C. after dark with absolutely nowhere to go. Knowing his luck that week, he'd get mugged. "Not that I don't like that you came by, but I'm just wondering: is there a reason for this visit?"

"Oh, I was just in the neighborhood."

"Mal, I'm pretty sure the last time I took you home, it was in Silver Spring, Maryland. This is downtown D.C."

"So?"

He shrugged as he crossed to her, taking her hands in his to help warm them.

"I came because I heard you were distant today."

"Your father again."

"No."

"Who told you?"

"Cathy called... Ginger called..."

"I'm doing better today than I was yesterday," he protested.

"Yeah, you're not kicking desks anymore. At least, not that I know of."

"No, I'm just wasting paper. The environmental lobby will have my head. Of course, they were already after my head so I guess I should get used to it."

"The GDC speech."

"Yes."

"Well, you slapped them down on eco-terrorism."

"For the record, *I* didn't do it. Toby did it. The President agreed with him, which is, on the one hand good I suppose, because he was being consistent but..." He sighed.

"But you still don't like it."

"No, I don't. I didn't. It wasn't my call, though," he said with a shrug. "You know, it's been a *really* crummy year."

"The millennium not turning out the way you wanted?"

"The leadership breakfast that should have been a push-over photo-op turned into a disaster not to mention the fact that two days before, Josh and I tried to set the White House on fire-a complete and total accident, by the way. Then there was Toby and the drop-in. The State of the Union was probably our *one* bright spot. And even then, we have some in the Democratic leadership pissed off because we were able to make, by the *skin* of our teeth, a last minute deal. The thing in Colombia, the Surgeon General media frenzy. You know, come to think about it, it really wasn't all that great last year either. Josh at Christmas exploding in the Oval Office. The Mars probe got lost. The Ainsley Hayes debacle-which ended with me thinking Lionel Tribbey was going to come after *me* with his cricket bat just because he was wrong about Gilbert and Sullivan. And then we couldn't get control of either house of Congress at the midterm elections. Before that was the sh..." He drifted off, shaking his head and closing his eyes. The teakettle was about to whistle.

"The shooting."

"Yeah. That," Sam said distractedly as he took the water off the heat and filled two mugs.

"Sam?"

"Yeah."

"Are you all right?"

"Of course," he said, stirring the instant coffee.

"Because you seem... agitated. I understand that the shooting wasn't exactly-"

"It wasn't just a shooting, Mal. It was an assassination attempt. People tried to *kill* Charlie. They wound up putting my best friend in a hospital for several months. They shot the President of the United States of America. The only *good* thing that I take from that night is that the twenty-year curse has come and gone and *I* survived. The President survived. Josh survived. We all... we all lived. The shooters didn't, but the Secret Service did what they were trained to do and, had the members of West Virginia White Pride not been shot, it could have been much, much worse. Somebody could have died. Somebody could have wound up comatose and potentially died a vegetable some forty years down the road." Sam handed her a mug. "Of course, if I had been shot and killed, I never would have known about my father's infidelity."

"Don't talk like that."

"Don't talk like what?"

"Like things would be better off if you died. Isn't the truth worth something?"

"I could have lived without *that* truth," he said. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a can of creamer. "Cream?"

She looked at him for a moment, hoping her expression wasn't one of pity as she feared. Sam's apartment was definitely the epitome of a bachelor pad. "Sure."

He scooped some into her cup and stirred it for a moment. "Sugar?"

"No, this is good, thanks," she said as she sipped. She spoke a little prematurely. It wasn't all that good, but it was tolerable coffee.

"Okay," he said, scooping some creamer into his own cup.

"Do you honestly think things would be better off if you were dead right now?"

He shrugged. "Whether it is or isn't, we'll never know."

She nearly dropped her cup. "Sam..."

"What?"

"Did you or did you craft most of all three State of the Union addresses?"

"Yeah," he said slowly.

"And the campaign stump?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So?" she asked incredulously.

"Mal, I don't have a death wish or anything."

"Well that's good."

"It's just weird if you think about it."

"I don't try to think about things like that."

"Well, when you do what I do, sometimes you really wonder. Especially after weeks like this, when the only things that are around to cheer you up are Big Block of Cheese Day meetings that tell you longitude and latitude isn't accurate. I go sailing, Mallory, all the time when I can. I rely on longitude and latitude. I relied on my father, I-"

His telephone started to ring.

"Excuse me," he said, leaving his coffee in the kitchen as he crossed back to his living room to grab the phone. "Hello?"

"Sam."

Sam was silent, closing his eyes before taking a deep breath. "What do you want, Dad?"

Mallory watched him, sipping her mediocre coffee.

"I can't try to patch things up again?"

"Dad, I don't have much time to myself. I was very lucky to get out of the office at a fairly decent time tonight. I'd like to spend what little personal time I have to myself."

Mallory silently wondered if she should leave.

"Sam, I am very sorry about this."

"About what-that you were caught? Or that you actually did what you did?"

"Sam," said his father with a heavy sigh.

"No, if you can't answer my question, then I don't think we're ready to discuss this yet."

"It's now Saturday. You learned about this on Tuesday."

"Yeah, well, when the both of us are ready to discuss this, we'll discuss this."

"Samuel-"

"Don't," he said. "Just... Just don't."

"Don't *what*?"

"As much as you would like to think, *Dad*," he said, his voice full of contempt, "that I am still your little boy, I'm not. You aren't the guy that I thought you were and, obviously, I'm not the son you thought you had."

Mallory wanted to reach out and get him to hang up the phone. His anger, in her opinion, would have been better used in a Dear Jackass letter instead of now because Sam could, potentially, regret what he said later.

"Well, when you grow up, do give me a call," said Sam's father before hanging up.

Sam looked at the phone receiver in his hand. That wasn't the way the call was supposed to end; Sam had every intention of hanging up on his father, not the other way around.

"Sam?" Mallory asked gently.

"He hung up on me," he said, hanging up.

"That's the problem with having a conversation with one party on one coast and the other on the opposite one," she said gently, crossing to him.

He shook his head, sighing.

"This frustration you're feeling..."

"Yeah?"

"It could, possibly, you know, be better used on that yellow legal pad."

Sam looked down at his desk, at the half-written letter, before looking back up at her. "What are you doing tonight?"

"Drinking your instant coffee."

"You'll stick around for a little while?" he asked hopefully.

She nodded. "If you want me to."

"I'm going to do this, this thing," he said, pointing to the letter. "Do you mind waiting?"

"Not at all."

Sam retrieved his coffee from the kitchen before sliding into his chair. Mallory removed her coat and gloves before sitting down on his couch, sipping her coffee and watching him work. She didn't think she had ever seen a hand move so fast with an ink pen. In half an hour, he had filled three pages.

Signing his name, he tore the sheets off the pad and folded them, stuffing them into an envelope and sealing it. He wrote his father's name on the outside before sticking the envelope into his desk drawer. Over the course of finishing the letter, Sam had calmed down considerably. Before he left his desk, he scooped up the sheets of used paper from his floor and stacked them up neatly. He'd take them to the recycling center on his way into work in the morning.

He crossed to Mallory, sitting down beside her wordlessly. They looked at each other for a moment in silence. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Sure," she whispered back, smiling softly at him.

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