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The doors leading from the lounge to the hotel’s landscaped garden are open. Groups of Hoynes’ supporters are putting on coats and going outside where the first snow of the season has started to fall.
The terrace has been sociably lit in a circle around the French doors and from this vantage it is possible to describe each perfect, white blossom. Beyond, there is only a grey, textured darkness where the world seems to gradually come to an end.
A movement at the beginning of this darkness catches Sam’s eye and he watches for a long time a couple kissing. A young man and woman. He has draped his coat around her shoulders but Sam can still see the gold of her gown and of her shoes. She is a small woman and she stands a little on tiptoe to kiss him. He has his hand through her short, blonde hair and they are both scattered with white. Sam is struck by the perfection of the picture.
Steadying himself against a wave of dizziness, he walks away from where most of the snow watchers are gathering. He finds a post to lean on, close enough to the edge of the shelter that he feels spots of melting wetness on his face. In the silence he thinks he can hear the flow of the distant Hudson, seeming to rise in volume, increasing to a roar, forging a cave-dark tributary, storming through his mind.
“Hey, are you all right?” Someone touches his arm, silencing the noise.
He turns and sees a man of about his own age, shivering in just his dress suit. His soft, brown curls more subject to the breeze than anything else outside that night.
“You were kind of swaying about there,” he says, his hand still on Sam’s arm. “You looked like you were about to tip over the rail.” His accent is something like New York though not exactly.
“I’m fine,” Sam says, uncertainly. He thinks he might recognise this man, someone from the campaign perhaps.
“Do you want to go inside now? I think you should…you know.”
“I’m getting air,” he explains. “Just for a few minutes. I’m…you don’t have to…”
He stops talking as he meets an unexpectedly beautiful gaze. The most astonishing eyes he thinks he has ever seen.
“But thanks.”
Snow settles on one of the man’s lashes and he blinks it away. “Are you with anyone?” he asks. “Can I get someone for you?”
“I’m here with my wife,” he nods over the man’s shoulder. “She’s over there.” He turns and they can both make out the woman in the gold dress still, unbelievably, engaged in the kiss. Sam remembers the guy now; he is one of Lisa’s work colleagues.
The man from the campaign turns back to Sam. The grip on his arm is firmer.
“Man,” he breathes. “That sucks.”
Sam is uncomfortable with the drama of the moment. “It’s not…it’s all right. She’s got good reasons. She’s…” He stops talking under the man’s incredulous stare.
Sam is swaying again, even he realises it now and the man unexpectedly puts an arm around his shoulders. Is it the first time in months anyone has touched him, except accidentally?
“Come on, let’s go inside.” He is not taking no for an answer this time. “It’s too damn cold.”
Back in the hall the atmosphere, thick with smoke from burning out candles and after dinner cigars, immediately overwhelms him. He thinks he really might pass out here and he stops to grip the back of a chair and tug hopelessly at his bowtie.
The man rests a hand on Sam’s back. “Um, do you want to…I think you should sit down.”
But he suddenly knows from the way the room is orbiting just above his head that he is going to throw up. He walks out of the hall in a focussed search for the men’s room. He does find it in time and afterwards stands in the passageway outside with his back against the wall taking deep, unhappy breaths.
He tries again to loosen his tie, which he has apparently fastened into some version of a noose. Failing, he closes his eyes. He must decide what to do next. But he cannot think further than the way Lisa’s lover…he had to be her lover…held her with such uncomplicated ease.
After a moment he becomes aware of someone beside him. He is unaccountably pleased to see the man from the campaign with the disorganised hair. He has a glass of water in his hand.
“Did it all come out all right?” He asks with amused sympathy.
“You’re not funny.”
“Have a sip of this.” Sam takes a drink of the icy water. His stomach somersaults and he hands the glass back.
When he comes out of the bathroom for the second time the man from the campaign is waiting for him. “So maybe that wasn’t the best idea.”
Sam throws him an accusing glare and goes back to trying to undo his bowtie.
After this goes on for a while, the man bats Sam’s hands away and with one swift action the tie is undone. Sam pops open his top couple of shirt buttons and breathes. “Thank you.”
Sam thinks this man’s eyes could hold whole universes.
It is a dizzying thought and he feels a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Where’s your room? You ought to just lie down.”
“I can’t. I mean…my wife…she’s got the key. I can’t see her tonight.”
The man from the campaign nods in understanding. “You can use my room. I’ve got to work for a few more hours anyway.”
Sam looks at him, touched beyond words, “You don’t have to do that.”
“Its okay,” he steers him toward the hotel’s central staircase, red-carpeted all the way up to the bedrooms and trailed with ropes of tiny silver tinsel stars. “Just don’t barf on the floor.”
Sam lets himself be guided. He is grateful for the solid support of the hand at his elbow, distantly conscious of the casual intimacy of the touch.
“You’re from the campaign?” He asks when it occurs to him he does not know whose room he is about to wander in to.
“Campaign director, as a matter of fact,” the man says. “And even though your life might have just fallen apart at our fundraiser I hope we can still count on your vote.”
Sam pulls words out of the fog. “I don’t know. Hoynes is Lisa’s thing, really. I have trouble identifying where he stands on some issues.” Then stops. “You’re mocking me?”
“I am.”
“Okay. But I have trouble with some issues.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Oh.” Sam stops for oxygen at the top of the stairs. He thinks this steep ascent would have been impossible without… “What’s your name?”
~*~
Sam wakes in a darkened room, confused by the unfamiliar surroundings and by the presence of someone who has none of Lisa’s recognisable sounds and perfumed scents. His eyes adjust to the darkness and he sees a man, quietly taking off his dinner jacket, slipping off his bowtie. Then he remembers. Josh Lyman.
He closes his eyes and listens. He should be uncomfortable in this stranger’s hotel room, but he is not. Instead he is as comforted by Josh’s presence as if it is a regular thing to be woken by him and he falls back into sleep.
When he wakes again he does not know whether it is minutes or hours later. He hears no movement so he looks for Josh. He is sitting in an armchair across from Sam, his fingers steepled at his lips. He seems to have been watching him.
“Josh,” Sam says. “Do you want your bed?”
“Its all right, go back to sleep,” comes the whispered response.
Sam sits up, he feels better than before, not really dizzy or sick anymore. He finds he is on top of the covers, still dressed apart from his shoes and his dinner jacket. “I’ll go,” he says. “And get another room. They’re bound to have…”
Josh appears before him, half undressed in just his trousers and a T-shirt. “There aren’t any more rooms. All the…because of the snow.”
Sam looks up at him. He carries a post-party scent of alcohol and cigarette smoke. He is drunker than he was and has lost his teasing humour as if he has taken it off with his suit. He sits on the edge of the bed, close to Sam, and speaks with an air of urgency, barely disguised. “You can stay here tonight…you can just…its all right.”
Without thought Sam touches Josh’s face, his fingertips on the line of his cheekbone. And Josh, as if he has been waiting for this signal, uses both his hands to bring Sam in to kiss him.
~*~
When next he wakes his head is pressed firmly into the side of a man’s neck. The deep breaths and warm, male scents remind him. Josh Lyman. Josh has his arms around him and when Sam shifts a little to an easier angle the embrace tightens.
“Where were you…don’t go.” Sam is not sure if Josh is even awake when he speaks because his eyes don’t open and the words are breathed out in a sigh.
~*~
When Sam wakes again the quality of the darkness in the room has changed and this is the only means he has of telling it is morning. Josh’s fingers are stroking slowly through his hair.
“I don’t do this,” Josh says, when Sam moves slightly to look at him. “I want you to know. I mean, I have done. But with my job…I honestly don’t.”
Sleepily, against the undulations of Josh’s chest, “I don’t care.”
“I saw you when you came in yesterday evening. You were…I really, really don’t do this.”
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