Chapter Text
He never thinks about it afterwards, of course, but there’s a solid twenty-four hours during the Convention when Dan thinks everything is going to work out. Richard’s the flavour of the month, both Jonah and Selina are talking about cabinet positions, and Amy finally - fucking finally - seems to understand just how great they could be.
Fucking her in front of a whiteboard with a winning delegate count is the stuff dreams are made of.
And sure, she’d been not quite herself, aloof in a way that didn’t feel like her, as though she’d walled herself up somehow, retreated to some place inaccessible...but that was just the rush of victory. It’s not every day you propel a failed breeding experiment to the peak of political power - Dan knows, he’s been there. And if electing Jonah to Congress was enough to give him a pang of conscience, well then of course Amy was feeling a little screwy.
But the way she’d shoved him downwards, determined to get what she wanted before giving him anything...
He’d observed her little transformation with some amusement. At least, he’s tried to be amused and not annoyed with her for waiting so long to realise what had been obvious all along. If she’d been willing to flash a little leg all those years ago...who knew what they could have accomplished?
It had always been obvious to him that Amy could have reduced the entire male population of D.C. to paste if she’d taken advantage of what she had - it had just never crossed his mind to say so, both because he didn’t need the competition, and because he knew the insulted feminist bitchfit she would inevitably have thrown if he’d breathed a word wouldn’t be worth it.
They were going to rule D.C. he’d known it - she’d run Jonah, he’d run Richard, they’d fuck whenever the fancy struck them (and with how she looked in that red dress, the fancy would strike a lot). Now that Amy had finally put away any ideas about babies or relationships or that he would ever treat her any differently to any other woman he fucked...they were going to have so much fucking fun.
And sure, Amy running out of the room almost as soon as she’d finished whacking him off was disappointing, but she had places to be...and he couldn’t honestly say he hadn’t thought of doing the same. (He picked her underwear off the floor where she’d left it, figuring he was doing her a favour - and it would be something to tease her about later). (Her speedy exit didn’t worry him). (And he didn’t remember how....vivid she’d been, that morning in New Hampshire, it didn’t even cross his mind. That was a whole month ago).
When Richard tells him he’s fired, it only strikes him that he might not find a way out of this latest fuck-up when, hours later, he calls Amy.
His call goes straight to voicemail.
And his next call. And his next call.
He starts to get a bad feeling, but shrugs it off and texts her instead.
Four days later, the message still hasn’t delivered.
She’s fucking blocked his number.
What’s more, when he looks her up on Instagram and Twitter, he discovers she’s blocked him there too. (He’d take some heart in the fact that he can still access her LinkedIn, but even Amy never went on LinkedIn, so it wasn’t particularly comforting).
Richard was letting him stick around the Iowa office for a while, so he could come up with a plan for his next steps. It wasn’t where Dan wanted to be (he should have been out on the campaign trail, steering Richard, ensuring he was an effective surrogate for Jonah and Selina... he does wonder, sometimes, in the armpit of the night, which one of them told Richard to fire him, which one of them was fucking infantile enough to still resent him for no fucking reason). (Of course, he’s still him, so he doesn’t wonder long).
His relentless networking has at least stood him in good stead, because he still has some offers to consider. There’s a local news station in South Carolina that wants him for his new anchor, some bullshit talk radio start-up that wants a director of issues, a couple of bullshit think tanks, and a property consultancy.
No lobbying firms though, which seems as clear a sign as any that his burned bridges have become public knowledge.
And there’s something about the property job - they want someone who can schmooze international buyers, gladhand the local planning fucks who get up in arms about preserving natural beauty or whatever, charm major investors...
There’d been this blood red streak of knowledge, back when the first TV offer came through - when he knew, he just knew, that was where he was supposed to be.
So, in the end, it’s an easy choice. And it’s not like he had much in Iowa he felt like keeping anyway - it’s easy enough to pack up his suits and his laptop and his skin products, sell his car and his furniture, and book a flight to California.
On his last day, he grabs dinner in one of the only two decent restaurants in Des Moines, and, as luck would have it, he runs into Layla.
She’d stopped answering his calls two - maybe three - weeks before the Convention. He hadn’t precisely cared - he’d been so sure they were going to make it back to D.C., and...and after New Hampshire, he’d made his point, so...whatever. (And Amy had been fine with that, he’d left her in Jonah’s Mom’s house, eating onion rings and attempting to flirt with one of the Secret Service Agents. Sure, she was hunched over like fucking Atlas, the weight of the world - or at least a small moon - on her shoulders, but that was just Amy. She’d get over it).
Layla doesn’t exactly look friendly. “Dan,” she says, “I thought you’d be out campaigning by now.”
He shrugs. “I’m relocating. There wasn’t a place for me on the campaign.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
He gives her a funny look at that, and she continues. “I see Amy on the TV almost every day now -”
“So what? Amy doesn’t have anything to do with all of that.”
“Are you sure? Cause I can’t imagine ever wanting to work with the guy who made me get two abortions again.”
“Two?”
Layla looks stricken for a second (which is hilarious, she’s gabbled about Amy’s private medical details in every conversation they’ve ever had where she came up, so now is not the time for a crisis of conscience). “Yeah,” she says, “I guess you didn’t know. She called me not long after we saw her in New Hampshire. Since I was her doctor the last time.”
Layla’s still pissed off, clearly, thinking he’d betrayed her or something, which is hilarious - he only decided to date her in the first place so Amy would... okay, not only, it was also useful to have someone fuckable on tap, but...
“Is she okay?” He says, mostly to have something to say.
“Of course she’s okay,” Layla says. “I am a good fucking doctor, and a medical abortion is a very safe procedure - which I’m sure you know. People don’t usually leave it as late as she did the first time, not unless they have doubts.”
“Well,” he shrugs. “All’s well that ends well.”
Layla stares at him for a moment, and then laughs, “I guess she really was doing me a favour. Goodbye, Dan.”
Which - she’s not wrong. Calling up his girlfriend to drop an abortion bomb is a more cold blooded move than he usually expects from Amy - and he finds himself wondering why she had to ditch him just when she was getting really interesting.
He never thought about the baby (or babies, he supposes he should say now). Never, not once, let himself contemplate the possibility, never imagined what the kid would be like, never pictured the life they would have together, never considered any option but the one Amy had taken.
He never thought about it, which is another way of saying it was all he could think about, all he could see, every time he looked at Amy, every single time.
It didn’t matter what she’d say or what she’d do, it was always somewhere in the back of his mind.
“I’m thinking about having this baby.”
She’d been too fucking cute to bear, all wound up and tense and barely able to look at him she was so scared of...of him, of what he’d say, maybe, or what he’d do.
Which showed at least that she hadn’t had a complete psychotic break.
He’d wanted to tickle her - pull her hair - tease her about whatever the fuck - kiss her until she smiled again.
She was so fucking tiny and so fucking scared and fighting through it anyway, holding her heart out with both hands, and...
He wanted to shake her. She knew him, knew him better maybe than anyone, knew exactly what he was capable of and how easy he found it all, how little he really cared about anyone, even her. She was too goddamn smart to be this dumb, to think this could ever end happily, to think this could ever end.
He wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t going to settle down and change dripping diapers and rub her sore feet and pretend her post-pregnancy tits were just as good as her pre-pregnancy tits. He wasn’t going to lie by her side while she read idiotic feminist books and he wasn’t going to make her eat breakfast every morning since she insisted on skipping it and he wasn’t going to hold her fucking hand when things got hard. He wasn’t, he wasn’t, he wasn’t.
How could she even want him this way, knowing what she knew?
And fuck her for…for making him feel as though he should do something, as though he should drive her to the clinic and keep her away from asshole protesters and sleep by her bed all night, just in case.
That wasn’t him.
And it seems she’s finally learned that lesson.
He’s almost tempted to invite her out to California for a short holiday, now that everything’s clear between them - they could fuck all night and talk all day and she could sit in the club house reviewing emails or whatever on her phone while he played however many rounds of golf were needed to close a sale.
But he doesn’t.
Mostly because…
She hadn’t called him. She’d made her decision - called his girlfriend to get the medication - and never said a word. He’d stuck his fingers, his tongue into her, and she’d maintained a steely silence (well, not silence - he knew what the fuck he was doing, she couldn't have been silent if she tried - but she hadn’t mentioned anything about his managing to knock her up a second time.
And obviously he was glad - it’s not like he’d enjoyed the whole fucked up experience the first time round - but…
She’d been off. He’d thought it was just the thrill of victory or her finally settling into enjoying sex like a normal person, without getting them tangled up in all kinds of fucked up feelings. He’d thought Amy had finally learned to be an adult about things.
But…
Maybe that just wasn’t something that could happen. He’d always thought that he and Amy, deep down, were the same, able to see one another clearly…but she’d always cared more about, well, everything than he had.
In retrospect, Amy seeming not to care, should have rung an alarm bell. She’d been hopped up on Jonah’s possible victory, energised by her ludicrously inflated delegate count, but…she hadn’t seemed to care about him.
And wasn’t the way it had been before - when she was pretending not to care while wanting to tear him limb from limb - it was…real. Which, it’s not like it bothered him - it didn’t, it was better, Amy wanting him that way had always been inconvenient, even if it was flattering, it wasn't something he wanted.
Well, no, he did, just so long as she didn’t make the mistake of wanting anything from him.
But it seemed like with Amy, the two things went hand in hand.
It’s not like he hadn’t noticed her perpetual sadface ever since… ever since the Nevada recount. He hadn’t cared - he hadn’t been about to change or anything - if Amy was dumb enough to keep setting herself up for that kind of fall, it was no business of his, but… he’d noticed.
So, he doesn’t call her. Not for a visit, not to make fun of campaign fuck-ups, not even to get his name out there at some California fundraisers.
He settles in to his new life and it’s good. He’s a natural at his new profession, he gets a lot of downtime for exercise and self-care, and all the sex he could ever want from bored trophy wives and Hollywood wannabes and college students.
After nearly twenty years (give or take) of D.C. shenanigans, manipulating the Laguna assholes is like playing on the easy level.
It takes little more than a year for him to decide to sell his D.C. condo and settle out there permanently.
Which means a trip back East, just in time for Jonah’s impeachment hearings (asshole couldn’t even make it twelve months). He’d been in touch with various people - connections he’d made over the years - in the hope that they’d throw clients his way, mention his name to anyone hoping to buy or develop property in California, and he uses the trip to see one or two of them, spread his business cards around.
He figures the trip is one last D.C. hurrah, and so he looks up old fuck buddies, stocks up on some bespoke hair products from one of his favourite Georgetown boutiques, and meets up with Ben for a drink.
Ben is…fatter than ever - more tired, more depressed, more miserable…and prepping for his fourth marriage. (Not that Dan would ever miss a day at the gym anyway, but Ben is a reminder of just why not).
He’s relieved when Dan says he has dinner plans - because apparently Kent and Amy and who knows who are going to join them at the bar later, to celebrate testifying against Jonah. (He’d watched it, on his phone, earlier in the day, and wondered where the fuck this confidence was way back when they were testifying together and he’d had to practically ram a prozac down her throat).
Ben’s in good spirits, overall, though he clearly misses the rough and tumble of real politics. He nods along and seems willing to be impressed by Dan’s stories, and even takes a couple more business cards to distribute.
He says he doesn’t miss the White House, and Dan can almost believe it.
It’s sheer chance he sees Amy at all.
He’d said goodbye to Ben, went to the men’s room for a piss, and then got caught up in a phone call to his realtor. Ten, fifteen minutes later (he’s not sure exactly how long), he’s finally able to leave, and that’s when he sees her.
She’s standing at the bar, with Kent and Ben and Bill Erickson, and…
Erickson has his hand on the small of her back, and she’s laughing at something he said, throwing her head so her curls swirl out around her, smiling that wide smile of hers that he remembers.
This is how she used to look.
The Amy in his head will always be the Amy he first met way back when - bright and shining and too fucking cute, pretending to be cynical and pretending not to be idealistic and pretending not to be sweet, and never, not one day in her life, able to hide a fucking thing from anyone.
She’d been…big, wide and expansive, the glow of her energy enough to light up a room.
It had been something to be the centre of it for so long.
But since Buddy fucking Calhoun - since the Nevada recount - since she walked away from Selina the first time maybe… she’d been getting smaller and smaller, holding herself in, holding herself back, narrowing herself down to fit into the ever shrinking spaces made available to her.
He hadn’t cared, no, he’d do it all again, in a heartbeat, and never regret any of it for a moment, but… he’d noticed. He’d definitely noticed.
Turns out, all that was needed for the old Amy to come back was for him to leave her alone.
From the way Erickson is standing, they’re definitely fucking.
And Dan could go over there, he could muscle his way in to the conversation, could grab her attention like it was his fucking birthright (because isn’t it?), could weasel his way into her bed once more (it might take a while, but he’s pretty fucking sure he could manage that)…
And then he’d leave.
He’d go back to California, and he wouldn’t ask her to come with him or see him again or anything, because come on, and Amy would be…reduced all over again.
It’s not that he minds, certainly not in the way another person would, but…he’d just rather think of her like this. And not just because she’s fucking hot in that deep blue dress, no… because he just would.
He’d never told her - and he never will - but he’s always thought… well, perhaps it was the writer in him, all the years he spent getting speeches just right, hunting for the exact right word in the exact right place, but…
Amy wasn’t always “hot”. And she definitely wasn’t always pretty, christ no, not with all the faces she made when things didn’t go her way. But she was…without a doubt, when she smiled, when she smiled and she meant it, she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.
It’s been so long since he’s seen her look like that, that he forgets himself for a minute and just gazes.
That’s his fucking girl.
And then he leaves, and meets up with… Ashley? Or maybe it was Madison (Maddie for short) (he doesn’t give a fuck and neither does she) for the night, and three days later he gets on a flight back to L.A, where he spends the next thirteen years golfing, surfing, getting expensive facials, selling overpriced houses, and fucking like it’s a competitive sport.
His first wife is probably his favourite. She’s dumb as shit, but when she wants something - when she really, really wants something, she gets this wide-eyed look, this passion she can’t hide, and he thinks it’s cute enough to tolerate for at least four years or so.
His second wife is… is a shit show, frankly, is a walking advertisement for pre-nups (and post-nups). She reminds him of Selina, from time to time, and that is absolutely not a compliment. It was fun, for the first three months maybe, but the second three months amply demonstrates why marrying anyone was a mistake.
His third wife is the most satisfactory. She’s more malleable, more willing to be what he wants her to be, ready to dress and fuck and talk the way he likes. (And if he buys her a whole new wardrobe the first year, so what). The thing is though…that very aimlessness, that willingness to be moulded, to be who and what he wants, there are times (few and far between) when it just pisses him off.
There’s just something missing, and even if he can’t ever work out what it is, its absence still bugs him (occasionally) (very, very occasionally). Fortunately, he spends little enough time with her that he doesn’t notice it terribly often - and when he does…well, there’s always someone else around to distract him.
He decides to go to Selina’s funeral more or less on whim. (More). (Less).
It’s nice to be sure that she really is dead after all.
And - well - he’s curious.
Amy hadn’t been at Ben’s funeral - stuck in Rome at a G8 summit with President Talbot (or maybe it was a NATO conference in Warsaw, he wasn’t sure).
He’d… kept an eye on her - from a distance. In the first years, it was hard not to - she’d show up on TV, wearing some impossibly tight dress and talking rings around everyone who dared argue with her…
He’d jerked off, once or twice, watching her. (He still had her underwear from the convention somewhere, he thinks, though he doesn’t usually keep souvenirs).
It was through her TV appearances that he’d realised she was engaged - there was no hiding that big fuck off rock on a HD tv screen - and then, a few years later, properly married.
All of that stopped, of course, once she became Chief of Staff - she either didn’t have the time or the inclination. She still showed up in pictures behind the President, looking, if anything, even hotter than she did on TV, all dominant and powerful, ready to crush the world under her heel while drinking a cold martini and then strangle the Speaker for dessert.
He might mention it, once or twice, at cocktail parties and unspeakably dull fundraisers for charities he can’t even remember the name of.
Anyway, he takes very good care to sit beside her at the service. However much she might try to pretend to ignore him, he can tell she knows he’s there - her whole body twitches the moment he sits down.
He’s so glad he picked out the right kind of dress for his wife to wear at the funeral.
Afterwards, they end up going for drinks at a kind of reception thing. He’d planned to talk to her, find out if she’d ever gone to visit Selina all the way out in Meemaw’s Maryland mansion, but before he can even get started, Richard joins them. He wants to hear about Amy’s dogs, apparently, since he’s so sad that he’s no longer able to serve as their primary vet. He makes Amy promise to bring them to the Residence one Sunday, so they can visit (and so she can update him on the task force she’s running, and Richard can tell her how her niece is settling in at the White House Counsel’s office… but Dan suspects it’s mostly about the dogs).
It turns out, his wife, of all people, fucking worships Annette Splett (who seems impossibly graceful to be married to Richard), which just gets embarrassing for everyone.
Amy catches his eye, though he thinks she doesn’t mean to, her expression so endearingly familiar, so refreshingly exasperated…
For half a second, he feels thirty years old again, trying not to laugh at her frustration, trying not to be distracted from the latest political fuck-up by the urge to tease her.
Just that expression on Amy’s face makes him feel younger than any of the twenty year olds he’s fucked in the last month.
Richard offers her and Bill a ride on Air Force One, and almost before he knows it…they’re gone.
And it…niggles at him.
It’s not that he wants to see her again, no, not really, but…
Apparently, sending her a big fuck-off bunch of flowers when she became Chief-of-Staff hadn’t soften her up any, because she still has him blocked on all social media, still doesn’t answer his calls.
Which, whatever, it’s not like it matters, but…but he does feel a little kick, inside, when eighteen months or so later, Bill Erickson calls him.
They do want to look at houses in his area - something to do with Bill’s son being a broker for one of the big production companies and living out that direction (Dan stops listening thirty seconds in to the conversation - all he really gives a shit about is… is selling another property, that’s what).
But his interest level does pick up when Bill calls to rearrange the visit, saying that Amy’s going to come instead (it’s something to do with Amy going to Palo Alto and a difficult to reschedule medical appointment, not that he really listens).
“I’m always happy to show Amy a good time,” he says, not really caring how obnoxious he sounds. “As long as it doesn’t bother you.”
“If the thought of her being in your presence for five minutes bothered me,” Bill says, “I wouldn’t have married her. Whatever charms you had ran out a long time ago. Someone with as many divorces as you have ought to know, women don’t get nostalgic for men who - how did she put it - treat them like a used condom. Find her a nice house, Dan, if you’re even capable of doing that much.”
Fucking Bill Erickson.
Why the fuck did Amy marry such an unrepentant asshole?
There’s something about that phrase - the pissed-off tone in Bill’s voice as he said it - that makes him think it came from Amy, somehow, that she used it to describe…
Christ, he’d been doing her a favour.
She had a temporary psychotic break and got weird ideas into her head, and he’d been the one to make it clear to her just how fucking stupid she was being. If she was dumb enough to take it personally, that’s on her.
It’s just that…
He knows Amy. Or, he knew her - he knew her then, knew her in ways she didn’t even know herself.
She’d have burned up inside if that’s what she thought.
He remembered how fucked up and subdued and sad she’d been after she came back from Nevada, how she barely seemed like herself (until…) and it’s not like she’d actually loved Calhoun the infinite fuck-up.
She was just really fucking bad at letting things go, he knew this, he’d always known this.
And she had loved him, back in the day, he knew that too.
Oh, she’d tried to hide it - not knowing it was fucking pointless - but he still remembers waking up beside her, that last night in New Hampshire. She’d been unbearably goddamn cute, and just…just…just too much to fucking take.
It wasn’t that she was curled into him, and it wasn’t that they’d had sex again, it was… it was a tiny thing, to tell the truth.
He’d woken up, sometime in the middle of the night, and made to get out of bed, to go for a piss (and, maybe, gather his things and go back to his hotel room). And Amy had…noticed, in her sleep, making a sound of displeasure, reaching out to him.
Acting on instinct, really, he’d bent to press his face against hers, saying, “It’s all right - I’m just…bathroom.”
“Okay,” she said, half murmuring, and sank back into sleep with a smile on her lips.
He’d fucked her sister and told her to abort their kid and slept with her best friend (not that she knew about that, and, for so many reasons, she wasn’t going to if he had anything to say about it), and yet, still… she smiled, because she knew he was there.
It was so fucking backwards it actually pissed him off on her behalf.
There was no rational universe in which Amy was the one pining for him. Obviously it was supposed to be the other way round, obviously he should never have had a chance with her, obviously…
When she properly woke up, when she sat up in the bed, bristling with the attempt to seem angry, to seem like she didn’t care, to seem like she could match him for heartlessness…
She didn’t stand a fucking chance.
The unfairness of it took his breath away - for maybe half an hour or so.
He kissed her, because there was nothing he could say that would make it better. He kissed her, because when they weren't talking, when they were touching, nothing seemed quite so sharp, quite so jagged.
But if she had to learn the hard way, then she had to learn the hard way. Bringing Layla to the funeral had been the obvious choice - and spinning a line of bullshit so she thought their arrangement was something real, so she thought he needed her support at the deeply emotional occasion of Jonah’s father’s funeral… well that was the work of seconds.
And, recovered from his late night crisis, he could definitely see the funny side in Amy’s little geisha act. (As though she’d ever needed to put on a performance for him, as though she’d ever needed make-up or tight dresses to make her more attractive in his eyes, for fuck sake, didn’t she know anything about him?)
He was doing her a favour.
Because sure, he’d thought about it - about them, about what it could be like - he thought about it, in flashes, when she smiled or laughed or tore some pissant blogger to shreds over the phone, whenever they went for drinks together or he used to have to bully her into eating an actual meal.
But thinking about it didn’t mean he’d ever actually do it.
(And if he never thought about it with anyone else, well… so what).
Somehow, Amy, Amy who always saw through his bullshit, always knew what he was really doing, somehow Amy hadn’t understood what he’d meant.
Which might be why he spins her an actual line of bullshit when she comes to see the house.
It might be true.
Or it might not.
He doesn’t even really care - it doesn’t matter to him - it doesn't mean anything… but he wants her to believe it.
He hadn't committed the genuinely selfless act of walking away when he could have fucked her one more time (he never got to fuck her as much or in as many ways as he wanted) only to be treated like the bad guy.
He'd disappeared on her because she was special - it was different to how he'd disappeared on everyone else.
It's not a long conversation - they sit together for ten, maybe twenty minutes tops - and Amy seems...still distant, still sealed off from him in the way that used to drive him nuts whenever she tried to sustain it.
But her eyes go round as plates when he tells her she's his favourite person, and he knows then, knows he has her, still, some small part of her at least.
And maybe she knows it too, because for the next five, six years, every time he suggests meeting up one on one, she gives him the same answer. "Ask me again in a year."
The So-Cal political-business circuit was all too eager to embrace a former Chief-of-Staff, wanting to hear her speak about managing peace in the DRC, about snapping the spine of half a dozen Congressmen in order to get paid maternity leave through the House, about telling big oil to self-euthanize.
So, he sees her, her and Bill, from time to time - at benefits and charity auctions and fundraisers for local candidates.
It doesn't help that it seems to take Amy an improbably long time to properly retire. She doesn't fully relocate to California until four years after they'd bought the house (which pissed him off, because he had actually gone to some effort to find one that he thought she'd like), and even then... she still spends a huge amount of time flying off on speaking arrangements, consulting on political problems, chairing the board of some environmental non-profit she's inordinately attached to.
Between all of that and the time she and Bill spend travelling (they must have visited every obscure capital city in Europe and half of Asia), there aren't many days in the year she's actually free.
But seeing her, in passing, from time to time, whets his appetite, if anything, so he keeps asking.
And finally, in 2051, she agrees to see him properly.
Not that she seems happy about it.
He’d suggested meeting at a little cafe, down by the beach, that he thought she’d like, but she doesn’t seem pleased with anything. She doesn’t seem pissed either, just absent. She insists on taking a photo of the two of them though, for he’s not sure what reason.
Finally, he snaps, and says, “Did someone piss on your morning pastry? What’s your fucking problem?”
“This was a mistake,” she says, glaring at him (same as always) (and, same as always, he finds himself wanting to piss her off more). “I’m going to go.”
“It’s been more than thirty years, and you’re still -”
“This isn’t about you, you colossal botoxed gargoyle!”
“Well then what?”
Amy gives him a long look before saying anything - and for the first time… for the first time, he thinks she seems old. Properly old, the way he isn’t.
“Bill’s dying,” she says, her face twisting as she says it. “We got the diagnosis about three weeks ago. Cancer - one of the bad ones. Anyway, he doesn’t want treatment - and even if he did, the prognosis wouldn’t be…you know, he was always so strong, and he doesn’t want to -”
“And this has what to do with me?”
It’s all a bit too real… too serious… he can feel something tight in his chest.
“Nothing,” Amy says, and she looks tired. “He just - he’s the one dying, but he’s worried about me - keeps saying I never properly settled in here, and, I don’t know, maybe he thinks I won’t know what to do with myself when - anyway, I promised I would try to…see people - make friends, like that’s a thing - so he’d stop freaking out about it, and -”
“So, the picture is for him.”
“Yeah - you never know, it might make him feel better. Or maybe it’ll piss him off, but…he’d be more like himself then.”
“I’m sorry, Ames.”
“Don’t you start being fucking nice to me,” she says, “I can’t - just, don’t. This is just for him, it’s not - you don’t have to pretend like you’re a person.”
She brushes tears away from one eye, he doesn’t reach out to squeeze her hand, and they spend the next half hour bitching about the Governor’s latest ballot initiative.
He doesn’t go to Bill’s funeral.
In fact, he doesn’t see Amy again for a year or two or three, and then, it’s sheer chance.
He’d gone for an early morning surf, and on his way back up the beach, he practically trips over a tiny woman and her immense dog. He’s so busy apologising, and hoping the dog’s not going to rip his throat out or something, that it takes him a moment to realise it’s her.
“I thought you liked little rat dogs,” he says, once they’re through the awkwardness of hello, and he’s sitting on his surfboard next to her..
Amy shakes her heads. “The greyhounds were perfect for D.C. but…I always wanted a big one. We just didn’t have the time. Or the space.”
“So what kind of mutt is this?”
She gives him a Look, and he grins, instinctively, automatically, because some things never change.
“She is called Emer, and she’s mostly Irish wolfhound.”
“Hence the name. And the fact that she’s about the size of a horse.”
Amy shrugs. “Well I feel…more secure, with her around.”
(The dog has its head in Amy’s lap as she says this, seeming happier and more contented than any dog has a right to be. Dan’s not sure she has the intimidation factor Amy has in mind).
“So,” he says, “Why haven’t I seen you?”
“Oh,” she says, and looks out to sea a little. “Things were difficult for a while. Sophie…she had a stroke, and then another. And you’d think that would be it, but she made me the executor of her will, so…I had to go out there, and talk to the lawyers, and help her kids get sorted, and it just… anyway, once that was all done, I went away for a while. You know, Bill, then Sophie, it was a rough couple of years.”
“Well,” he says, and decides to give her this one, it might lighten her mood. “I’m getting divorced again.”
Amy laughs so hard she startles the dog, who gives Dan a wounded look.
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” he says - not surprised by her reaction exactly, but irritated all the same.
Amy snorts. “Yeah, no, I hope she takes you for all you’ve got.”
“I have a very good divorce attorney.”
“Of course you do,” she says. “Did you even let the poor girl finish college? If she needs a character witness, tell her I’m happy to write whatever testimonial she needs.”
“I think she’ll do just fine.”
“Well,” Amy says, with a little twinkle. “She’ll be getting away from you, and I can attest that life drastically improves when -”
“All right, all right,” he says, “You want to come for breakfast?”
She lets him buy her coffee and eggs benedict, and they spend an hour or two just…enjoying each other, in the way he never did with any of his wives.
They see each other slightly more often after that.
Not very - he’s too busy cruising for wife number four, and Amy spends a lot of time with her grandkids (though they aren’t hers, not technically). They have a standing date though, to watch each election together - and Amy introduces him to her new election tradition of getting massively, massively stoned (ever since Richard’s first presidency, apparently, when it was legalised. Dan might owe Richard a debt of gratitude just for that, because seeing Amy well and truly baked was a life experience he hadn’t known he needed).
And then one day, about six months after his fourth marriage, he gets the call.
In her sleep.
Just like her mother, she’d had a massive heart attack, and simply never woke up. Bill’s son - Jake? Jack - and his family had been staying for the weekend, and found her the next morning.
Nothing about the funeral feels real.
More people come to it than he’d expected. Jonah and his wife, (who Amy had been friendly with, he thinks), former Presidents Talbot and Splett, Sue, three or four young Congresswomen she had unofficially mentored, Ezra Ryan, inexplicably, and even Ed Fucking Webster, of all people. (He’s gotten even skinnier with age, which…Dan didn’t even know that was possible).
Jack Erickson gives a speech about what a wonderful stepmother Amy was, how she stepped up when his real mother died, how she was a devoted grandmother to his kids, how she and Bill made each other happy…
None of it sounds like the woman he knew.
And then there’s Amy’s niece. She’s the least Brookheimer looking person he can imagine, with her dark skin and untamed hair, but she has a certain…precision to her that’s familiar. And her eulogy is…is just a little hard to take.
“Anyone who knew my Mom and my aunt, knew that they had a…complicated relationship. Though, if Amy was describing it she’d use much shorter words than that. I didn’t really get it, as a kid - she was just Aunt Amy. She’d show up at Christmas, or Thanksgiving, give us all some ridiculously generous present and then…some random guy in a suit would show up, because he needed to know her opinion and it just couldn’t wait and… I don’t think any of us really understood that… she was a rock star. It wasn’t until I was much older - after I’d been through law school, and done some time in the White House Counsel’s office - that I realised… Amy was the smartest person in every room she was ever in. Three different Presidents trusted her, and they don’t get to trust many people, believe you me - but she was someone they could rely on. I didn’t realise this about her, you see, when I was a kid, I didn’t see it, but…I think my Mom did. I think my Mom knew exactly the kind of person Amy was, and that was hard for her. Never feeling like she quite measured up. I think it took her a long time to get over that - and it maybe wasn’t until she realised - you know, up until she and Bill got together, I know my aunt went through some tough times. I remember my Mom saying at the time, that she knew Amy was going to be all right, because she was smiling again… and she’d been…sad, for a long time by then. And you know, Amy had the best smile - and the best laugh - she’d fill up the room. I’ll just finish up by saying, I know she did great things while working with you President Talbot, things she felt really good about, and I just hope, wherever she is, that she knows we’re all so fucking proud of her and that she’s finally somewhere she gets to swear as much as she likes without anyone pretending to be shocked.”
Laughter ripples across the crowd, and Dan… Dan wants to punch someone’s throat in.
It’s the worst room he’s ever been in.
Afterwards, there’s a wake, which he goes to because…because he doesn’t know why. He sidles up to Amy’s niece, if only for something to do. Jonah’s been talking at her for a solid seven minutes, so she’s almost certainly grateful for the rescue.
“It was nice of you to mention me in the eulogy,” he says.
“I’m sorry?” She gives him this look of not-quite hidden disdain that makes something twist in his chest. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced?”
“The time I crashed your family’s Thanksgiving? Your grandpa wasn’t very happy about it.”
“Sorry,” she says, with a smile that’s not sorry in the least. “That happened maybe five or six times, I wasn’t…thinking of anyone in particular. Are you someone she used to know?”
He’s so…affronted that it takes him a second too long to think of a response, and Jonah and his wife interrupt him, because apparently Amy’s niece knows them.
Maybe that’s why he agrees to take Amy’s dog.
He’s not really sure why he does, but it would make sense.
The dog is Amy’s last loose end, apparently. It’s too big to live with Jake in L.A. and requires far too much attention for her niece, who is a State’s Attorney somewhere he doesn’t give a shit about, and therefore never at home.
He can afford a dog walker, and his wife will do the rest, he’s sure of it.
It’s a mistake.
It takes all of three weeks for him to grow to loathe the damn dog.
Emer - which he just about remembers is her name - mopes.
He’d never thought it was possible for a dog to get depressed, but apparently Amy’s was capable of wonders.
She’s barely willing to go for walks, she doesn’t eat much… she slumps on the floor the whole time, ignoring him even when he does bend down to pet her (once or twice a week).
And his wife is pissed at him.
So pissed, she makes him take the fucking animal to the vet, because apparently he wants nothing to do with the walking rug he insisted on adopting. He has to skip his pilates class and facial, since the vet claims to be busy, and sit in a waiting room that smells of animals.
To add insult to injury, when the vet finally comes out to meet them, Emer actually perks up at the sight of her.
Her name is Megan, and she’s tiny, blonde and barely seems to register him as a sexual presence. In fact, she’s far more interested in his miserable dog than him.
She pets Emer, examines her for any physical injuries, and finally says, “Mr Egan… I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do - she’s grieving.”
“Can’t you…give her something for that?”
“Dog prozac? No. She just has to…learn to do without Amy.”
“She’s a dog, not a fucking -”
“You have to understand - Amy was her owner - she walked her, fed her, took care of her…she was everything to Emer, and now she’s just…vanished. And since, Emer’s a dog, she doesn’t understand what’s happened - her entire life has been turned upside down, she’s surrounded by strangers, she’s been taken away from her home and… the one person she loved is gone. It’s going to take a while.”
“So, what, I just have to put up with a manic depressive pet for the rest of my life?”
“Well…she’s not ill,” Megan the vet says, “But I suppose you could explore…other options, if it’s really a problem.”
“Fucking kill her, Amy’s fucking dog…”
“I’m not recommending it - I could look into re-homing possibilities, if…”
“This is Amy’s dog.”
But the vet just stares at him, and he realises he hasn’t made the convincing argument he’d hoped. She takes a deep breath and says, “Just, pay attention to her, make her feel at home…take care of her. Eventually, she’ll adjust.”
“You mean she’ll forget, Amy?”
“I doubt it,” Megan says, reaching down to pet Emer again, “Wolfhounds tend to be loyal, and they form real bonds with their family. So, she won’t forget, but she won’t grieve as much.”
“That’s just fucking…why did she get a dog if she was only going to leave it behind? She’d no fucking right to make something love her that much if she was only going to fuck off and abandon it, who the fuck does she think she is?”
“I’m sorry,” the vet says, “I didn’t realise - I thought Amy’s partner had -”
“She’s not my partner, she’s not my fucking partner, she’s…”
He sinks back against the wall, that twist in his chest he’s been feeling ever since the funeral intensifying, as though some giant fist was trying to tear the heart right out of him. He only barely hears Megan’s voice.
“Mr Egan? Mr Egan?”
They call an ambulance - thinking he’s having a heart attack - and his wife comes (reluctantly) to meet him at the hospital.
She sits beside his bed, pissed the fuck off, and insists - insists - that he get rid of Emer. “That fucking dog” is nothing but a waste of time and energy and money, and she doesn’t like the smell, and…
He has no idea why he married her.
He has no idea why he married any of them.
He can barely remember what they look like - what they tasted like - what they said or what they thought about anything.
“Is this some weird grief thing? She was just some girl you bullied into an abortion like, fifty years ago, like get over it, she sure did. Also, if you think you have to look after her stupid fucking dog as a way of like saying sorry, the time to do that was when she was alive. She’s not going to know now, is she, since she’s fucking dead?”
Okay, so maybe he married her because Amy laughed far too much the one time he joked about it. (They’d fallen asleep on her bed, watching the election, and he’d woken up to find his arms full of her. According to Amy, it was because she thought he was Bill, and the bed had always felt cold without him - her face fell a little as she said it, and he’d made that dumb joke to lighten the mood. She wasn’t supposed to find it that funny).
His wife drives them all home - since his heart attack was illusory - and there’s a whole half hour when he just… feels like shit.
She’s gone.
She’s gone and he’s stuck with her sad-eyed fucking dog, and…and he doesn’t know why…why he never told her. Why he gave all of his time, and his energy, and his fucking life to women and things and places that have never, not once, mattered.
“I could at least have gotten you to the Senate.”
He could have had a life - he could have had her every day and every night and he could have told her, he could have made it so she would never have had that bruised look on her face when she looked at him, not once, he could have given her everything she wanted, every single thing, he could have attended her funeral and been surrounded by their family and their friends, and instead…and instead he’s stuck with a miserable dog and an (over fucking priced) bungalow and a wife who gets pissed at him for interrupting her massage appointment with his heart attack.
The last time he felt like this, Amy had all but thrown him over her shoulder and dragged him to the hospital and sat with him…
He spent twenty years not missing her, but it’s like he was saving it up, because now he misses every single thing about her in a complete and perfect way he would never have thought he could even feel. No one would ever believe it. (If he could just see her again, see her face, see her smile, for even a minute or two, he feels like the knot in his chest would disappear, but...)
It hollows him out for…oh, a good three weeks.
He stops shaving, skips sessions at the gym, ignores his wife (well, ignores her more).
And maybe he’s finally getting old, but the thought of fucking one of the country club housewives…just doesn’t appeal in the same way anymore. He’ll do it, obviously, he’s not changed that much, but everything just seems kind of...flat
Six months later his wife tells him that either Emer goes or she does.
He doesn’t miss her.
Sure, Emer still seems to dislike him, and sure she’s kind of starting to smell, and sure, he doesn’t even like dogs, and her constant fucking feelings piss him off in all kinds of ways he doesn’t want to examine, but…
She’s Amy’s dog.
And having a big, beautiful, well-appointed Laguna bungalow all to himself isn’t so bad.
**********
Laguna Beach residents were honoured with a visit from former President Richard Splett yesterday, who came to attend the funeral of local property magnate Daniel Egan. While the funeral was not well-attended, President Splett was happy to read a eulogy for his old friend and former employee, who he said was a fine man, who had found happiness in his California life, after the years they spent working together in D.C. This was of great comfort to Mr Egan’s former wives, three of whom attended the funeral.
Mr Egan left his fortune to an environmental charity, formerly chaired by Amy Brookheimer, Chief of Staff to President Kemi Talbot, and an old friend. His dog, the Irish wolfhound Emer, has been adopted by the Splett family.
It’s the last time their names appear together in print.