Tritypch: The History of the World
(A story, in three parts)
Santa Barbara, M*A*S*H, The West Wing

august (appelsini@hotmail.com)




I. something about rain (santa barbara)

Santa Barbara in spring. "Keep walking," she says, shutting the door behind him, trying not to notice blinking eyes and stumbling. He has no money, no car keys, and, for the first time, she knows with some certainty that only one of them will survive this.

She piles his suits on her lounge room floor. She contemplates burning them, throwing them on the lawn, giving them to the first person who didn't look at her with whiskey eyes.

She fell in love with the man who told her he was drowning, and she's not sure, now, how she expected things to be different from her cold coffee, waiting-for-the-phonecall days.

He's the smartest person she knows, even when he raises the bottle of scotch (he wasn't going to have) to toast her, saying "there, but for the grace of scotch, go I."

She used to think it was enough to love someone. When she closes the door on him, when she says, "come to me sober, or don't come at all", she realises that she has to be able to survive them as well.


Michael visits, and he's glad to see Mason go. She wants to laugh at his optimism, wants to tell him sometimes she thinks she's have to die before it will be over.

She feels like a joke, a parody, a carbon copy of the person she thought she'd be.

"None of this is your fault," he says, all understanding and concern.
"I know. I really do know," she replies, truthfully.
"I want to say I'm sorry, Julia, but I'm not."
"I married a man who hates himself, Michael. And who doesn't seem to care much for me."
"Yes."
She looks out of the window. "Yes."



II. ten dollar poker face (m*a*s*h)

Korea in the summer. He's been insisting to BJ that he's gonna write a musical. Summertime, and the living is easy. Sometimes, BJ laughs.

He says a lot of things, here, that he doesn't mean. And sometimes, in summer, when Margaret has faked him out of every last dollar he has, he thinks a lot of things that he does.

"I'm beat!"
She shuffles the cards. "I know, hand over the money."
"No, I mean it, I'm really beat. Tired. Bamboozled. I must be, you and your poker face just seduced me outta my last ten bucks."
"You leave my poker face out of this, Pierce. Ten bucks, thank you, or you're doing my laundry for the next month."
He turns to BJ. "She has the body of Dietrich, but the mouth of a Nazi trenchman."
The peanut BJ's been trying to toss into his mouth hits him squarely in the eye. "Your mother would hate her."
He bangs his fist down on the table, toppling the coconut shell drink holders Radar had given them for Christmas. "He's right, Margaret, especially if she knew you faked me outta my last ten dollars."

When he stands out the front of her tent, he makes a real show of peeling off each bill and placing it in her outstretched palm.

One dollar. Two dollars. They'd had 78 hours without operating, and it's making him feel good. It's making him feel... something. It's making him feel something.

"Three dollars." He holds up the next bill, squints an eye at it, and then at her. "This one, in particular, I am going to miss. Did you know, Margaret, that I raised this dollar from a baby. It was left on my doorstep, and I nursed it back to health."
"That right, Dr Schwarzter?"
"Of course, it has a little martini problem, so clearly the humane thing to do would be to keep it with me. You can visit it any time you like. Preferably at night time."

He leers at her, and, unexpectedly, she stares back at him. Quietly, she stretches out her palm and says, "four." And, when he places it in her hand, she says, "do you ever think, when you say things like that, of what it means? Now?"

Five dollars, fingers grazing her palm, eyes down. "I'm sorry."
She sticks a finger under his chin. "You're only half-way there, buddy."
"What?"
"Five more dollars."

Korea in the summer, 78 hours without touching blood.

Sometimes, he thinks they didn't try hard enough.

"You know Margaret, everything I had could have been yours."
She fairly snorts. "I'd be the luckiest woman in the world."
Six. Seven. "My charm, my wit."
"Your still, your insubordination."
"My whoopee cushion and collection of 'Nudist Gardener'."
"You're an alcoholic."
"So are you!"
"Three more, Hawkeye, there's only seven dollars in my palm."

He thinks about saying something ridiculous, something cheesy like, "and my heart". Except that he doesn't mean it, not really, and if does, it's only because they've had 78 hours without operating. It's easy to be in love when you're not inside a kid's stomach every day.

So, instead: "Eight. Nine. Ten."
And she says, "C'mon, everyone's going to Rosie's. I'll buy you a drink."

And sometimes, in Korea, in the summertime, when Margaret has faked him outta every last dollar he has, he really believes that they just didn't try hard enough to make it work.



III. little things (the west wing)

Washington in autumn. CJ tells him she doesn't want to drink anymore, and he has to shake the memory of Andi standing outside a Washington bar in a black dress and boots she was too old to wear, saying, "we only fuck when we're drunk."

"Well, thank god for Jack Daniels," he'd replied. Ten minutes later, he'd caught a taxi home, sitting sober in the suit she'd bought him the week before.

CJ tells him she doesn't want to drink anymore, and he remembers those last months with Andi, when there was no alcohol, no sex and no kindness. He supposes he should be troubled by the fact that he links the three together.

"What, ever?"
CJ scans over the papers she's placing on his desk. "I just, you know, I don't think there should be a well-worn path straight from the West Wing to Michael's, is all."
He smirks. "A well-worn path?"
She stares at him, and then crosses the room. "I'm going to be late for the television guys, and you're being an asshole."

He blinks as the door shuts.

CJ tells him she doesn't want to drink anymore, and he finds her in the mess hall that evening, drinking milk and eating a honey sandwich.
"What the hell is this?" He picks up half a sandwich and separates the bread. They both watch in fascination as honey falls from one piece to the other.
"The briefing ran over, and then Mark wanted to-" She stopped, and looked up at him. "I'm having some dinner."
"Milk and honey? Jesus, CJ, if you give me a pipe and slippers we'd be an, an, episode of 'Happy Days'."
He watches her pick up her glass and say, "Mr Cunningham didn't smoke. And you call yourself a conservative."

He laughs, and so does she. His hand behind her neck, and he leans across to kiss her.

"Josh'n'Sam are going to Micheal's. So I thought, you weren't serious about before, were you?"
"Yeah, because when I say, 'I don't want to drink as much', I really mean-"
"-Yeah, okay. But, for the record, you didn't say 'as much', CJ."
"Toby."
"You didn't, excuse me, but you said, 'I don't want to drink anymore', and-".
"-fine." She stacked her glass on top of her plate and stood up.
"What?"
"I have to get some stuff from my office. I'll meet you there."

He blinks, again, and then follows her.

She looks tired as she rinses the dishes. She does it with such repetition that he reaches and turns the faucet off.
"I know you hate it when I, but, is there something wrong?"
"No." She stares at her hands, and then at him. "I feel like I've been doing this since I was twenty four."
"What this?"
"This. This. We get drunk and I go home with you. I'm sober, and I tell myself that things should be different, but then I know I’m just gonna get drunk and go home with you. And all the things that I said I wouldn't do: I won't get involved with someone from work, I won't get involved with someone who doesn't much like himself-". She stops and looks at him, again. "I won't get involved with you, again. I say I'm not going to do it, but then I do, because I know that I'm going to be in a bar, and I'm going to look at you, and, and, it's going to happen anyway."

He never quite stopped thinking about Andi in moments like these. Andi packing her bags while he didn't watch Melrose Place on tv. The first night she didn't come home. The first night he didn't, either.

"And it's been like this for, god, almost twenty years, Toby."

CJ looked tired, and he knew that he loved her. He had just always thought that everything else was incidental.

"Hey kids, come on. Sam wants to get at that pool table and I, quite frankly, want to open a can of whoop-ass the size of Delaware on him. Swear to god, if I have to hear about "the summer I learned to hustle" again and be expected not to make Richard Gere jokes, I'm gonna-"
"Jesus Josh, take a fucking breath, would you?" Toby interrupts, barely shifting his gaze off of CJ.
Josh misses a beat and then: "you know in some cultures, circular breathing is a much admired talent."

CJ smiles, and Josh turns to her. "Hey, you've been absent-woman all day today. How did the television guys go?"
"They didn't seem receptive to my 'the internet will bring you down' joke, but otherwise fine."
"So, what's the story? Are you coming to Michael's?"


CJ uses her press corp voice to say: "Yeah. We've got a few things to talk about first, though, so we'll meet you there."
"What things? Please, I want to go home tonight, please tell me they're not going to happen in the next eight hours."
"They're not going to happen in the next eight hours." Toby interrupts, quickly.
And then, quietly, she adds: "We're just talking, Josh. About the, the history of the world."



*fin

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