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CJ is pacing her office when Margaret opens the door to let Angela Blake inside.
She sits down only because she doesn’t want to offer a seat to Angela while she stays standing. She’d rather have kept moving — too agitated at the prospect of maybe hiring Josh’s replacement to be still for very long.
Leo set it up after she refused to meet with Cliff a second time. She doesn’t care how similar Leo says that man is to Josh, she’d prefer a deputy she can stand to be in the same room with. “Angela, hi, thank you for coming in,” she greets.
“It’s good to see you,” Angela tells her. “Congratulations on the job.”
CJ nods, still a little uncomfortable at those congratulations after what had to happen for her to get it. “Thanks,” she says anyway. “You know why we called you in, right?”
“You’re looking to make me your Deputy Chief of Staff,” Angela tells her. “You don’t want to replace Josh Lyman, but you have to, and you know it’ll be me. So we’re going to have a job interview of sorts until you’re comfortable offering me the position.”
“Wow.”
CJ’s not making the best impression, she thinks; it almost feels like this is her interview. Angela raises her eyebrows. “Did I get it wrong?”
“No,” CJ admits. She picks up the phone to ask Margaret for two coffees. “Milk or sugar?” she asks Angela, who shakes her head.
CJ sighs. She taps her fingers on Leo’s desk — her desk — and looks back at Angela, trying to determine how to approach this.
“Leo called you, not me. It was his decision,” CJ says eventually — deciding to be honest rather than polite. “I don’t know you. I know you’re good, I know he trusts you, I know you’re qualified, I just—”
“More than qualified,” Angela interjects. CJ doesn’t mind, but looks surprised anyway. “I practically ran the labor department from ‘91 to ‘95. That’s why Leo called.”
CJ tilts her head. Margaret comes in with two cups of coffee that both women thank her for. “Leo ran the labor department,” she can’t help but correct.
She should’ve considered what Angela was getting at for a moment longer.
“I was his Chief of Staff, and this was before Sierra Tucson. These were the years that led to Sierra Tucson. You wouldn’t say that you run the White House? Especially on the days the President can’t get out of bed?”
CJ looks down. There's nothing provocative in what she's saying, just the same honesty she had wanted to give Angela herself. It’s still not something she wants to be reminded of; not something that should have needed reminding. “Right,” she says. “And no one found out,” she adds. “No one even knew he went to rehab, or needed it. No one who mattered, anyway.”
Angela shrugs with just one shoulder, like CJ is stating nothing but the obvious. “Of course not,” she says. “No one has to know what’s happening behind the scenes.”
“So you’re saying if I hire you, I could develop a substance dependency and no one would have to know?” she tries to quip; it doesn’t sound funny at all. She thinks Josh would’ve laughed.
Angela doesn’t. “You could develop anything you want, CJ. I’ll keep the show running, no one would know.”
“Oddly reassuring,” CJ says. Angela laughs at that.
“Look,” Angela starts then, taking a sip of her coffee before she puts the cup down on CJ’s desk and continues. “You’re not used to being able to fail and trust that someone has your back; if anyone around here screwed up, guarantee it’d be your head on the chopping block when you went out to the press. No one would be there with you. You’re not used to being able to fall back on someone and trust that it’ll be handled right.”
CJ doesn’t react; she doesn’t argue that. It feels like a disservice to Carol, but she knows better than to make that argument.
Angela continues. “I’m not either,” she puts it simply, leaning forward in her chair just slightly, like the two of them are friends already. CJ remembers they got along just fine when Angela had stepped in previously. “But I’ll have yours. And you may not know me, but you know you can trust me on that.”
“You make a convincing case for yourself,” CJ isn’t sure if she’s joking or giving genuine praise. She’s leaning towards the latter. She’s rapidly getting on board with the idea of Angela next door.
Angela smiles, lifting her coffee cup for a moment when she picks it up again. “It’s easier when you know you’re hard to turn down.”
CJ laughs, nodding her head in agreement as she leans back in her chair a little more comfortably than before. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Getting this position because Leo McGarry wanted me for it?”
“Yes.”
“Does it bother you that that’s how you got the job?” Angela asks. She’s not trying to make a point — she’s asking.
CJ hesitates. It bothers her more than she wants it to; she’s well aware that no one thinks she’s qualified — that most people believe she was given this job just for Leo’s kindness, or even because she blew the right people. She doesn’t know how to not be slightly bothered by that. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “It bothers others, too.”
“The only people who think that getting a job because Leo McGarry chose you personally is a slight against you, don’t know how hard-earned his faith is,” Angela says with a slight, comforting shrug.
CJ tilts her head to the side, chuckling quietly. “Fair point.” She looks at Angela; she has no reason left to stall that’s not her own desire for Josh to get back here already. She thinks the two of them can make this work just fine; Leo has faith in it. “Alright, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Right,” CJ stands up, waving her hand when Angela reaches for her coat. “Next door,” she explains. “It’s a Presidential appointment, I can’t give it to you myself. You’re okay?”
Angela’s standing, chuckling more nervously than CJ’s seen her before. She waits patiently for her to say something. “This is going very quickly, suddenly,” Angela says simply, though she walks towards CJ, following her to the door to the Oval Office.
CJ grins, patting Angela’s shoulder the way Leo often did to her. “Take a deep breath, you’ll do great. Expect some buzzing in your ears in three, two, one…”
She knocks, then opens the door and holds it to lead Angela inside, glad to see the President waiting for them with a cognac and a book — no world crisis they’re already running behind on. The contract for Angela to sign has already been drawn up, ready on the Resolute desk. She hadn’t been far off to think she was basically already hired.
“Mr. President,” CJ announces, glancing at her watch with a smile. They have plenty of time for whichever dramatics the President will choose to inflict on her new deputy. She closes the door behind them. “A moment for Angela Blake, if you have it?”