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Running Down a Dream

by S.N. Kastle

 

It's Josh's turn with the laptop, so Sam takes a shower because it's the next best thing to sleep. He hasn't slept for more than three hours at a stretch since sometime in South Carolina. Yesterday he took a twenty-minute cat nap, except he woke up in the middle when he remembered that Mark Whitson had been reelected to the Senate four times, not five. Then had to find his phone and call CJ to tell her.

So you slept for ten minutes twice, Josh said, when Sam insisted he wasn't really all that tired, and Sam nodded. Josh laughed.

Sam and Josh have one room with one bed because they didn't think they'd have time to sleep. They just needed a desk and a phone line and, if they were lucky, maybe some ESPN.

There's no ESPN, and when Sam comes out of the bathroom the lights are off and Josh is lying on the bed. Sam stubs his toe on something that is either a nightstand or a chair. He says, "Josh, what the fuck," but softly, because the room is quiet with the TV off.

Josh is asleep, mountains and valleys of blankets on the far side of the mattress, ribs rising up and down like shifting plates of the earth. Josh is a slumbering seismic shift, and Sam has been waiting for a natural disaster since sometime before South Carolina. Somewhere before Nashua.

Sam uses his dirty undershirt to wipe his chest dry and squeezes his sore foot. He leaves his jeans unbuttoned and limps to the desk. Josh sounds like he always does when he's asleep, sniffing and groaning a little just before he turns onto his other side. Breathing in and out in even patterns ripped through with the occasional sigh. Sam wasn't in the shower long and Josh is barely under.

He turns on the desk light and Josh burrows deep into the bedcover with a low whine. "What -- what are you doing?" Josh squeezes his eyes shut tight like he's eaten something sour and claws his hand out into the air as if he wants to hit Sam but isn't close enough. The room is small and angular and Sam could probably kick the bed frame from under the desk if he tried.

"I just have to -- just go back to sleep, I just have to get this line down." Sam flips open the computer. The Davies speech is almost done. Almost.

Josh punches the pillow, buries his head under and then lifts his head up, pillowcase on top like a bonnet. "This one line. This is the one that's going to do it."

"Maybe not this one," Sam says, deleting four false starts and pressing his sore toe against the carpet until it stops hurting. "Maybe one like it. A better line."

"How in the world could there be a better line than the other line," Josh mumbles. He puts his hands over his ears.

Sam knows that he gets himself in trouble by working too hard on single lines. Little things that should be easy. Throwaways. Keep it simple or get it the hell out of your paragraph, Toby says. Sam has unlearned years of lawyering in four weeks to get this right and the only thing that's saved him is how badly he wants not to fuck it up.

He doesn't want to make things complicated. One line. One better line. He closes his eyes for a second. Subject. Verb. Object. Point. Done. He shuts the laptop and turns off the light, easing around the desk and onto the bed, lying on his side.

Josh's body is perfectly still, face pressed into the bed. The worn cotton shirt between his shoulderblades catches the wind of Sam's exhalation and flutters like a sail. They're eight inches from touching and Sam has never wanted so much to get something right.

"You can open your eyes now," he says.

Josh cracks his neck and scratches his ear without lifting his head. "I don't want my eyes open." His words are muffled and distorted. "I want to be asleep."

"Then go to sleep. Who even decided we were sleeping? I didn't know we were sleeping." Sam rolls onto his back and crosses his arms beneath his head. "I wouldn't have taken a shower yet if I'd known we were sleeping."

"I finished my stuff," Josh says, and when he shrugs apologetically it makes the mattress bounce. He shifts onto his side and Sam closes his eyes.

Maybe if he spent enough time without sleep, just wandering around his life with his eyes closed, he would develop sonar capability. Josh's mountains and valleys would be underwater reefs and the water would move through them like air through his lungs.

Sam really needs to get some sleep. He doesn't need to make things complicated. He can catch three hours, four if they're lucky. Tomorrow it will make all the difference between being able to know the answers the first time and having to call back during a nap. He'll sleep, and then he'll be awake, and then things will be as easy as they seem when he just tries really hard.

Josh touches his arm with cool fingers. Sam breathes slowly and simply. "Tell me the line," Josh says.

Sam opens his eyes. Josh's forehead is on Sam's pillow, almost resting on the inside of Sam's arm. Sam gives clear and concise instructions to his body not to unfold around Josh, not to make things any more difficult than they already are, working like this with this man who has no idea how hard Sam's trying.

"The line," Josh prompts, and pokes a finger in between Sam's ribs and his hip.

Sam doesn't move, just opens his mouth. "Good men are made great by the people they serve. You can make me a great leader."

"Oh man." Josh kicks off the blanket. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" Sam's voice comes out small and timid. He's not sure what he's done. Maybe he's so tired and aching for more than Josh's fingertips on his waist that he's finally done something.

"One more time. The thing you just said."

"Oh. Oh. Good men are made great by the people they serve?"

"That's it," Josh says, scrambling to get up. His pillow falls on Sam's head and shoves it under his own pillow. "That's --" Josh pauses, hovers just out of reach. Then he grabs Sam by the shoulders, squeezing, pulling him up. "That's perfect," he says. Sam breathes in, Josh's sweat and deodorant and a day of campaigning on his skin like grease on a ball bearing, just enough to keep him shiny.

Josh grins wide and crazy and bounds off the bed. "You sleep," he says, orders, and turns on the small nightlight on the baseboard, the one that had tried to trip Sam before. Josh is hunched over the glow of the monitor, his face screwed up in concentration and then relaxed, over and over. Good men made great.

Sam slides down the mountain of pillows and wraps himself in the scratchy blanket. There's almost no light but the harder he shuts his eyes, the more everything looks like it's on fire, shadows and bright shapes through his closed lids. He opens his eyes again and spreads out on his back, two pillows under his neck. He watches Josh work until he falls asleep.

 

END.

 

Credits: Sorkin et al. The Hyatt tried to give me the bureaucrat's special, source of the oldest cliche in my oldest fandom: one bed, two people. Tom Petty came to me in a dream and said, "So, me and Del were singing 'Little Runaway." I slept for an hour on the plane. Punk rightly pointed out that Sam is one crazy fucking dolphin. None of that is her fault.

 

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