a sophomore effort, appropriately scorned by the author
kay, when people talk about this 'style' that i apparently have, a few things get repeated, especially with the west wing stories. they mention the run-on sentences, the metaphors, the poetic-type descriptions, and vivid imagery, most commonly. i've kind of moved on from a lot of that (as well as from happy endings), but i did write like that for an awful long time, so.
this story is the clearest example of that 'style.' it was the second story i wrote, and i kinda let myself go. i overwrote it, is what i did. similar in general feeling to overthowing your fastball. i think there are more adjectives per line in this than should be legal.
i'm not totally against it. i like the whole premise, josh's house turning on him. i like the conversation in sam's office, and the one after they wake up on the floor. and, line by line, the description is terribly pretty, there's just too much, it's overload.
i look at it now with a wince on my face. the peeps who read it, of course, love it to pieces. with 'a campaign thing,' it's probably the most popular story i wrote in the fandom. irony!
Title: The Best Idea Ever
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Pairing: Josh/Sam
Rated: R
Spoilers: None
Archive: Sure, but drop me a line, please
Disclaimer: Characters herein depicted belong to Aaron Sorkin, Bradley Whitford and Rob Lowe. No money is being made off this story.
Summary: Josh's house turns against him. Hilarity ensues.
The Best Idea Ever
by Candle Beck
August in Washington and it was unacceptably hot.
Everywhere in the city, people wilted in the heavy wet air. College kids wandered around the boiling streets in cutoff jeans with their flip-flops smacking the asphalt, lucky 19-year olds being baked brown by the sun. The businessmen glared jealously, their long trousers and collared shirts plastered like gloves to their sticky skin. Rotund Midwestern tourists strolled by in white shorts and pastel-patterned vacation shirts, with shuttered black cameras pulling on straps around their necks, squinting as sweat rolled down their sunburned foreheads to sting in their eyes. Misplaced natives of the West Coast sprawled out shirtless atop brightly colored beach towels spread on the scorched grass, their eyes closed, their faces tilted up towards the flat blue sheet of the sky, letting the heat settle into the cups and dented lines of their bodies, homesick and dreaming of the ocean.
It was ninety-five to a hundred degrees every day, matched by the dense Southern humidity, which smothered the capital like thick, soaked cotton, so solid and palpable it seemed as if you should be able to lean a shoulder against it and rest your weight on it, as easily as you would a brick wall. Around the marble edges of the monuments and the Capitol building, the air shimmered, the merciless summer sun reflecting hard and ivory-bright off the bleached stone.
The air-conditioning in Josh's townhouse had chosen the day before the heat wave to die a whining, breezeless death. His landlord was on vacation and unable to do anything except frustrate Josh in absentia. The neat coincidence of the air-conditioning's demise, his landlord's disappearance and the arrival of the sub- tropic temperatures that barreled through the city like an invading army, all three misfortunes happening within two days, struck Josh as suspicious. It was as if forces were aligning against him, some spooky alliance with control over the weather, household appliances, and Mr. Camanetti's vacation schedule. Josh could picture the collaborators cackling wickedly as they devised the strategies of their master plan-to drive Josh insane with the heat, and then beat the hell out of him with pillowcases full of doorknobs. (The doorknobs part of the plan was, admittedly, pretty much just speculation, but it seemed to complement the twisted sadistic psyches of whatever power had saunarized his house.)
Josh kept all the lights out, trying to force some cool, dusty atmosphere into the dim rooms, but all he accomplished was being both hot and in the dark, marked with bruises on his shins and knees from the tumultuous relationship he was having with his coffee table, which he could swear was snickering as Josh limped away from his latest run-in with the devious piece of hand-carved mahogany.
Sitting despondently on the tile floor of his kitchen, rubbing his abused leg, sweltering and under attack by his furniture, Josh tried to silver-line his situation, noting optimistically to himself that by living in the dark, and without the expensive all- hours drone of the air-conditioner, he was doubtless saving heaps on his electric bill.
Josh sighed, and got up to totally negate his admirable (albeit unplanned) energy conservation efforts by standing in front of the glorious arctic wedge of the open refrigerator door for most of an hour, one arm lined atop the hollowed ranks of the egg compartment, nestling his head between the stacks of plastic ice-cube trays in the freezer, fully aware that he probably looked like some lunatic who believed in the intellect-expanding benefits of freezing one's brain.
When Josh finally closed the refrigerator, his cheekbones numb and the skin of his arms washed even paler by the white fluorescent light, and moved back into the living room, he found to his dismay that his television reception had gone out. The Anti-Josh Alliance was apparently having success enlisting new recruits.
No TV, too dark to read, too early to go to sleep, too hot to go outside, too many inanimate objects plotting his downfall to stay in the house-Josh defined an impasse.
Behind his back, he heard the refrigerator cough metallically, rattling and shuddering fiercely, and it was with a total lack of surprise that Josh turned and watched the slow, melodramatic final spasms that wracked the machine until it gave up the ghost and sank into a dull, stupid silence. The refrigerator squatted stolidly, seeming to glare sullenly at its owner, clearly laying the blame for its untimely descent into scrap metal on Josh's hour-long escape into the icebox's cool blue depths.
Josh could almost sense the stock of pop-sicles, ice-cream, and cold beer, which he had laid in the day before, as they began to go south inside the useless refrigerator. The idea of having to clean up the eventual sticky puddles of melted frozen food, having to clean up the mess in a refrigerator that didn't even work anymore, was enough to make Josh concede the day's battle to the enemy, accepting that he had been overpowered, and reconciling himself to suffer the night through in the blistering temperatures of his home.
Josh took a beer from the fridge while it was still cold and flopped bonelessly onto his sofa. He stared disconsolately at his own reflection in the dark glass of the TV screen, then at the motionless air-conditioner in his window, the flat metal panels almost sizzling, and he lifted his bottle in a mock salute to the persistence with which his house had forced the suffocating weather upon him, and the remarkable totality of the goal, the assault not complete until Josh was left in the Amazonian heat, in the shadowy dark, in maddening boredom, in pain from his barked shins, with his frozen food going bad, nothing to do but sit and drink and try to think of what exactly he had done to piss God off this much, what offense he had committed to deserve this intricately creative punishment.
The origin of his bad karma eluded him, although he did resolve to be nicer to Donna, just in case she had hexed him or something.
Josh kicked his bare feet up on the coffee table (stubbing his big toe hard on the table's lip), and said out loud to the room in general, his voice deep with a newly-invented tone of long- suffering bravado, "Must have been born under a bad sign, that's the only explanation. Cursed by the stars from the first moment of my life, it's gonna be rotten luck and bad hoodoo from here on out." Josh said `hoodoo' into the dim room again, liking the sound of it.
He nodded, looked out the window at the heavy golden summer moon, and repeated abstractly, "Born under a bad sign," as his rotten luck and bad hoodoo settled in around him for the night.
* * *
The White House, mercifully, had air-conditioning that worked (asking the leader of the free world to go without the miracle of climate-control during the DC summers would doubtless lead to the collapse of civilization), and as Josh came in the next morning, earlier than usual, he pondered whether he could convince Leo to let him move into his office until the heat wave passed. The idea of living out the season in the West Wing started out as a joke in his mind, a nonsense impulse that he would tell Sam about, and Sam would smirk at the picture of Josh brushing his teeth in the men's bathroom and wandering through the bullpen in his pajamas. As Josh thought back to the condition of his house, however, the notion began to gain seriousness.
He recalled his stifling, restless night, how he'd changed his sweat-drenched T-shirt and boxers three times before finally abandoning the illusion of modesty, stripping naked, trying desperately not to imagine how his mother would disapprove of her son sleeping in the buff. Even with all the covers flung off, his bed seemed to absorb and radiate heat, making him feel like he was lying on a hot water bottle, and he eventually moved onto the tile floor of the kitchen, the hardest yet coolest surface in the house. A night of tossing and turning on the stony plane, still too overheated and awkward to get any deep sleep, and Josh awoke far too early in the morning with fresh bruises on his side from banging into the sturdy wooden legs of the kitchen table, and all his sharp bones, his shoulder-blades and elbows and hips and ribs, aching from grinding against the tile all night long.
The wretchedly uncomfortable night gave much credence in Josh's mind to the whim of leaving his house to stew without him for a month or two while he took up residence in the White House (plus, he would have the coolest mailing address in the world).
Josh arrived at his side of the building, saw that he'd beaten Donna in, which was unsurprising, given the early hour. He swung through his door, loving the crisp cold breeze that wandered by, and began to go over the basic logistics of his white-columned, best-security-system-in-the-world, air-conditioned dream.
First snag was that Josh had no couch in his office, and knew from experience that sleeping at his desk was good for neither his back nor the important government documents he invariably ended up drooling on. Having the Secretary of the Interior jovially comparing the dribbling marks on a report (and former pillow) from Josh's office to the soggy, gnawed ears of his four-year old son's favorite stuffed rabbit was hardly conducive to the kind of professional, sophisticated image Josh tried to project.
CJ had a couch, but she also had a bad habit of rousing Josh by clamping onto his ear and hauling him upright, whenever she caught him sleeping at inopportune times or in unsuitable places. Josh had learned his lesson early and well, during the campaign, when he had drifted off in a Detroit pub after two pints, pleasantly hazy and fuzzily tired, the waxed stretch of the wood bar looking soft and inviting. He'd bundled his arms into a makeshift pillow and snugged his head into the nest, sighing contentedly, and it never occurred to him that the bar of a still very-much-so-open tavern might not be the best place to bed down for the night. He had barely begun to wander off into a foggy doze, just starting to breathe deep and slow, when suddenly a sharp, narrow vise took hold of his right ear and jerked him unceremoniously out of his lovely cave and easy drowse. Josh had yelped and bolted up on his bar stool, gaping startled and hurt at CJ, who glared back, admonishing him caustically, "I'm thinking that a newspaper printing a photograph of Bartlet's senior political director passed out on a bar would probably not make a very good impression on, you know, everybody in the country." On the other side of CJ, Toby was chuckling quietly, his hands wrapped around his glass. Josh blushed, feeling like a fourteen year old at a frat party. He rubbed his ear and scowled, arguing, "I wasn't passed out, I just put my head down for a minute. There a law against that or something?" CJ sighed, half-turned to roll her eyes at Toby, then patted Josh on the shoulder, saying mildly, "I swear, Josh, you're the only person I know who can turn two drinks into a lost weekend. It's almost like a talent." Toby snorted, "Yeah, come see the performance of the amazing human lightweight, eighth wonder of the world." They'd all cracked up at that, even Josh giggling uncontrollably, almost sliding off his stool, catching himself at the last second, his barely-avoided journey to the floor setting off a fresh string of laughter.
CJ kept the ear-grab as her preferred method to return Josh to consciousness, despite numerous comparisons of her to a 19th century schoolmarm, and Josh soon avoided like the plague any situation that might lead to him falling asleep in an inappropriate place while CJ and her pinching fingers were within a hundred mile radius.
Even if he got CJ's permission to bunk on her couch, he still didn't trust her not to appoint herself his alarm clock, waking him up every morning in her unique way, until the day when his much- beleaguered ear would finally follow Van Gogh's example and take leave of his head, yanked off like an apple from a tree by CJ's gracefully thin, surprisingly strong arm.
Leo had a couch, but the idea of sleeping in his boss's office made Josh squirm anxiously, feeling all of ten years old, envisioning thousands of ways he could humiliate himself in front of the man he respected more than pretty much everyone else on the planet. What if he talked in his sleep, said something idiotic or embarrassingly private? What if he flung his arm out unconsciously and swept one of Leo's fragile vases off an end-table, toppling it to explode on the floor, smashing to powder the perfect foreign porcelain, exquisite and no thicker than a nickel? Good God, what if he drooled on Leo's stately, elegant leather couch? If that ever happened, Josh would have to find himself a deep hole, a mineshaft, carve out a new home in the coal and granite, rather than ever look Leo in the eye again after such a catastrophe.
Toby had a couch too (Josh realized that everyone on the senior staff had a couch in their office except for Sam and himself, but decided not to take offense, instead resolving to ask Sam to form a couchless club with him, something to the effect of, `The People- With-Couches-Smell Club'). Toby would probably claim not to give a damn if Josh ended up sleeping in a gutter, would probably forfeit his couch with an impatient wave of his hand and an annoyed, "What the hell do I care?" but Josh knew that Toby's supposed indifference would evaporate the first time the older man got stuck on the wording of a speech, and began to eye Josh as a more satisfying target than the wall for the frustrated pegs of his little rubber ball.
Regardless, Toby's couch was the most promising of the selection, unless he wanted to curl up like an old dog on the Presidential seal of the carpet. Josh headed over to Communications, finding Toby's office dark and empty.
Sam was next door, though, the desk lamp glowing soft and yellow, striping through the blinds of the glass window that faced the bullpen. Sam was scribbling on a legal pad, beating out a swift tattoo on the surface of the desk with his pen as he read over his work, his lips moving faintly, his eyebrows pulling down in displeasure a moment before he briskly scratched out whatever line or phrase had struck him with disfavor. Josh watched as Sam worked out a new chain of words to replace the ones he had discarded. Sam moved his head in a hesitant, considering manner, turning his eyes up to the ceiling of his office and murmuring softly to himself. Sam paused for a half a moment, and then he dropped his head back down, grinning slightly, his pen dashing across the pad, moving nimbly and with bright confidence.
Josh smiled, liking seeing his friend write words that would be spoken by the president of the country. Josh was glad that Sam was here on this simmering morning, because Sam more than anyone else would understand his plight.
Josh moved to the doorway of Sam's office, tilting his shoulder against the jamb. Out Sam's window, the trees and shrubbery of the North Lawn sagged under the early morning heat, looking like melted green wax. Sam was engrossed in his speech, his head bent down, his hair a clean dark halo, and he didn't seem to notice that Josh had come in.
Leaning against the doorframe, Josh marveled at how cool Sam looked, how fresh and uncluttered, his hair not stiff with dried sweat, his face not flushed by the sun, Sam blissfully unperturbed by the weather, as if the city wasn't firmly in the smothering grip of the huge hot fist of summer, as if Sam moved in his own calm, airy cloud, as if Sam was able to carry the perfect California days of his childhood with him wherever he went.
Josh broke the gentle quiet of Sam's office, saying without preamble, "My house has turned against me."
Sam lifted his face smooth and quick, startled but not so much so that it made him clumsy and awkward. Sam crooked a smile at Josh, greeting him easily without actually saying the words.
Sam took his glasses off to focus on his friend. The frames ruffed through Sam's hair, leaving a feathery wedge sticking out from the side of his head, making him look mussed and young.
Josh saw Sam's face go quizzical as he considered Josh's non sequitur, shifting his mind to try and find his bearings in the abrupt conversation. "Your house . . . I'm sorry, what are you talking about?"
Josh came in and took the chair in front of Sam's desk. "My house, Sam, you remember my house," he said pedantically. "That place where I keep all my stuff? It's got, like, a roof and windows and everything." He waved his hand in front of him, abstractly sketching a vague shape in the air, a dubious suggestion of his home.
Sam rolled his eyes at Josh's entirely useless explanation and replied, "Yes, thank you. I am familiar with your house. I am, however, not so much remembering it as a sentient being with the emotional capacity to regard you as an enemy."
The other man spread his hands wide in exaggerated incredulity. "And yet that's exactly what has happened. I'm surprised as you are, believe me."
After a moment of attempting to reconcile what Josh was saying into some comprehensible form, Sam gave up and asked, "Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?"
Josh leaned forward, his gaze intent and earnest. "Sam, there is a conspiracy working for my ruination."
"A conspiracy," Sam repeated flatly.
Josh nodded, eager to relate his sorry circumstances to his friend and enlist Sam and his considerable talents as an ally. "Yes. A large-scale, well-managed, possibly internationally- based organization which could, even at this very moment, be devising their next fiendish plot against me."
Sam looked at Josh like he was waiting for a punchline, then asked, with seemingly ingenuous curiosity, "Who composes this ring of master criminals, I wonder?"
With an absolutely straight face, Josh answered, "My air- conditioner, my television, my refrigerator, my coffee table, my landlord, and the weather. And that's just so far. The group keeps getting bigger, they must have a really effective recruitment strategy."
Sam nodded slowly, as if in deep thought, then said in a deadpan, "Wow."
"What?"
"You've really kind of gone off the deep end, here."
"Sam!" Josh cried in frustration as Sam let amusement brighten his face, smirking at his friend.
"Oh, come on! You tell me that your coffee table and the weather have ganged up with a bunch of other scheming inanimate objects in order to torment you, you really expect me to let an opening like that go by?"
Josh leaned back in his chair, regarding Sam coolly. "I'm not sensing a whole lot of support from you right now."
Sam grinned. "That is a shrewd and accurate observation."
Josh scowled across the desk briefly, mentally kicking Sam out of his couchless club. Josh filed away Sam's mocking of his misfortune, making a note to get revenge at some point, and doubled his efforts to convince the other man of the reality of the Anti-Josh Alliance, determined to make Sam appreciate the gravity of the situation.
"This is serious, Sam. It's ninety-five degrees in my living room, I can't watch CNN or SportsCenter, I can't keep anything cold to drink, and that damn coffee table is aiming to kill me in my sleep! A little compassion wouldn't be, like, totally out of line."
Sam, visibly tamping down his mirth, humored Josh, sobering his expression and trying to infuse genuine concern into his eyes. The pretense of heartfelt interest and empathy was fairly convincing, except for the suppressed laughter crinkling at the corners of Sam's eyes, and the occasional twitch of his lips reigning in a grin.
"What exactly did you do to incur the wrath of your appliances?"
Josh shrugged, "That is a true mystery. I mean, I'm always yelling and cursing at them-"
"That's not specific to the stuff in your house," Sam interrupted. "You vent quite a lot of frustration at the coffee maker here, you know. After we lost the vote on S.R. 153, you were so upset, you ended up viciously insulting the poor thing's mother, which was a little strange."
Josh half-smiled bashfully, blushing a bit, "So, you, ah, heard me that time?"
"I think the majority of the greater metropolitan area heard you that time."
Josh winced at the reminder of his embarrassingly nonsensical temper, cocking his head to the side with a slight look of self- deprecation of his face, acknowledging his rather ridiculous tendency to target his anger at blameless devices, or Donna's roommate's cats, or the infuriating trees with their stupid leafy branches.
Josh continued, "Okay, but me ranting at my stuff is nothing new, I've been doing that for years. Why would they wait till now to get back at me?" He cupped his chin and tapped his finger against his cheekbone, musing, "I knew I shouldn't have called my toaster a communist last week. That was probably the final straw."
Sam struggled to remain composed, but Josh's concerted, sincere determination to find a logical explanation for an absurd turn of events, his stubborn lack of irony and steadfast refusal to recognize the preposterousness of what he was saying, entertained Sam to no end, and he had to fight hard to keep a grin from sparking across his face, or laughter from slipping imprudently out of him.
"You called your toaster a communist?" he asked, his tone and expression remaining mild with enormous effort.
Sighing, Josh nodded, shrugging, "Yeah, something about the way it kept burning my toast-I knew it was looking to instigate a revolution."
That was almost too much, and Sam hid his escaping giggle by faking a quick cough, holding his hand over his mouth for a moment to cover his persistent quirking grin.
Having regained a measure of control, Sam looked at Josh with his best imitation of studious attention. "So, what . . . what's your strategy for fighting this . . . confederacy?" Sam inquired, barely holding back a snicker.
Josh, still oblivious to Sam's trammeled merriment, outlined his proposition without a hint of self-consciousness. "I was actually thinking of maybe just staying in the office until stuff blows over. You know, because it's cool here and there are three TVs in every room. You think Toby would mind me crashing on his couch?"
Sam arched an eyebrow. "You really want to sleep in Toby's office? I only share one wall with the guy, and sometimes it's still too much aggravation. If you can stand him as a roommate-" Sam shrugged-"You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din." At that moment, the man in question materialized in the doorway, his suit jacket already peeled off and thrown over his arm, a reassuringly familiar expression of grumpy irritation coloring his features.
"It's a little early in the morning to be reciting Kipling, Sam," Toby said by way of salutation.
"I thought that was Cary Grant," Josh said artlessly. Sam and Toby both turned incredulous stares on him, and Josh sensed that he had just revealed the vast and untapped depths of his ignorance. He said defensively, "What?" glaring at the two speechwriters, daring them correct him.
Toby just shook his head and returned his attention to his deputy. "I need the draft of the ALF-CIO speech by noon."
Sam nodded, slipping his glasses back on as he scanned over what he had been writing when Josh had come in. "You'll have it." Toby made a small noise of acknowledgement, his mind already on the next five things he had to do that day, and moved to go into his own office.
Sam shot Josh a what-are-you-waiting-for look, and Josh spoke up quickly, his hesitantly questioning voice stopping Toby at the door. "Um, Toby? Do you think I could maybe . . . uh, sleep on your couch for a couple of days?" Saying it out loud made Josh feel more than a little foolish, like he was a kid too scared of the dark to sleep alone in his own room.
Toby regarded Josh with the vague aura of constant annoyance that was so effective in unsettling legislators and bureaucrats. Josh resisted his urge to fidget like a third grader in the principal's office under the impatient gaze. "What am I, running a flophouse now?"
Sam muffled a laugh, and Josh began to spill out his explanation, "You see, there's this conspiracy in my house. Sam says it might be because I got into a fight with the coffee maker and called its mother a dirty name, but there's also a possibility that the communists are to blame, and-"
"Yeah, you know what? I don't actually care," Toby said, cutting him off brusquely. Josh sat back, vaguely affronted, but knew not to take Toby's discontent personally. Toby continued, "You wanna crash on my couch, feel free, but be warned that the second you begin to snore, I'll duct tape your nose and mouth shut."
Josh blinked. "But then I wouldn't be able to breathe."
Toby tilted his head in sarcastic realization, said, "Really? That's interesting," then left Sam's office without another word.
Josh, thoroughly unsettled, looked at Sam wide-eyed. "Okay, now I'm a little scared."
Sam nodded, "I would think so."
Josh sighed, rising to let Sam get back to work. "I'm gonna go see if the Lincoln Bedroom is available," he said as a farewell.
Sam was already engrossing himself in his speech, sinking swiftly back into his writing, and he replied distractedly, "Yeah, good luck with that."
Josh paused at the doorway, feeling like there was something he was forgetting to say, but having no idea what it might be. Sam was tilted back in his chair, the legal pad resting on his raised knee, and the immutable August sun poured through the window behind him, washing him with bright yellow light. Josh watched him for a minute, his mind quiet, and then came back to himself, like he had been snapped out of a trance.
Josh shook his head to clear it and headed back to his office, leaving Sam behind in the beaming flash of morning.
* * *
Arriving home that night, Josh eased open his front door slowly, fearing a booby trap of some kind. He gingerly poked his head in and scanned the room, half-expecting to see all his furniture lined up in military ranks, awaiting the order to attack. Everything was in its place, though, the air-conditioner still dummied up, the television still a blank sightless black eye.
Josh crept cautiously in, and gently placed his backpack on the floor. The stuffy heat swallowed him up, clung to him as he moved, the air dense and hard to breathe in.
A brief trip to the kitchen resulted in nothing more than a futile glower into the dark, stale recesses of the refrigerator, which was beginning to reek to high heaven. "I hate you so much," Josh told it, too lethargic and exhausted to put much rancor into the words. He did kick half-heartedly at the door of a bottom cabinet, trying to muster up some righteous anger, which would at least be more interesting than being bored and meekly submissive. The impact of Josh's shoe clapped the cabinet door open, and there was a drawn- out creak as the metal hinges bent slowly, and then snapped off, the cabinet door breaking loose and falling like a drawbridge to the kitchen floor.
Josh looked down at the rectangle of wood, and the uncovered cabinet, the tin cans of soup and vegetables looking weirdly naked and vulnerable without the door to hide them. "That's just excellent," Josh remarked, his voice dull and dispirited.
He went back into the living room, fed up with the world in general. After guardedly testing the stereo, wary of everything, and ascertaining that it, miraculously, remained functioning, Josh scrolled down the band until he found a baseball broadcast, the Mets and the Marlins.
Josh lay down on the floor in the middle of his living room, his perspective all skewed and cartoonish, the coffee table and bookshelf looming hugely over him. With nothing working right, with his life whacked out of orbit, all Josh wanted to do was lie on the ground with his eyes closed and listen to baseball in the shadows of his untrustworthy home.
Josh fully expected the stereo reception to fuzz away to static at any moment, or a satellite to crash down through his roof, or a pack of wild dogs to burst in through his front door, but at that moment, with his demands decimated by circumstance, Josh had all he required, and he rested, simply content, determined to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.
Josh drifted off, floating hazily through the singed air, loose and random, daydreaming about Fenway Park, and palm trees, and constructing neat red and blue card houses on a thin motel room carpet, and silver-framed glasses, and cherry-bright cars. He was jostled awake an unknown amount of time later by a hand lightly poking at his shoulder, a well-known voice softly calling his name.
Groggily, Josh clambered up towards full awareness, like crawling through warm molasses, languor trying to drag him back down. He got his eyes halfway open, his eyelids feeling sticky, and gazed blearily up at his waker. Josh smiled charmingly, and said with drowsy affection, "Hey, look, it's Sam."
Sam, crouching beside him, his hand still on Josh's shoulder, grinned and nodded, "Indeed it is. What's going on?"
Josh flagged his hand lazily in the general direction of the stereo. "I'm lying on the floor and listening to baseball."
Settling to sit cross-legged beside his friend, Sam replied, "I can see that, yes." Sam reached behind him to dig into the brown paper grocery bag he'd brought with him. "I brought you some cold beer and soda. There's Fudge-sicles too, but I don't think they survived the trip from the supermarket to here." Sam withdrew his hand and licked at the melted chocolate confection smeared on his fingers.
Peering around at all the paralyzed, silent contraptions which were dotted uselessly about Josh's apartment, Sam pulled his shirt away from his body and flapped it a few times, creating a weak breeze across his chest. "It really is insanely hot in here," he commented.
Josh nodded, the back of his head sliding on the carpet. "Told you," he mumbled, wanting one of the beers Sam had brought but far too heavy with inertia to do anything about it. "Now you see how my house is against me." Josh's eyes flickered open, his forehead creasing in sudden puzzlement. "Wait a minute. This is my house."
Sam gave Josh a questioning look. "Yeah, I recognized it by its roof and windows and everything," he cracked.
Josh narrowed a suspicious gaze at the man above him. "How'd you get into my house?"
Rolling his eyes, Sam said patiently, "I'm pretty sure it had something to do with a door."
Josh considered this for a moment, then stated with bemusement lining his voice, "That door was locked."
Sam shrugged, rummaging through the bag again, pulling out two chilled beers as he answered, "Not five minutes ago, it wasn't. Maybe your lock's broken."
Josh sighed resignedly, and said with a tone of Zen-like acceptance, "That would not surprise me even a little bit."
Handing Josh a beer, Sam stretched out next to his friend, both of them gazing pacifically up at the ceiling. "Who's playing?" Sam asked as the game slipped back into their perception.
"Mets and Marlins," Josh replied, a yawn swelling the last word.
"What kind of name is `Marlins' for a baseball team, anyway?" Sam wondered, a hint of derision tingeing his voice. "Is it supposed to be intimidating? How exactly does a big fish inspire fear in the opposition? What, they're gonna beat you to death with their fins?"
Josh smiled, glad that Sam had come over to bring him beer and make fun of the names of baseball teams. "I don't know. But at least a marlin is a physical creature that is easily defined. What the hell is a Dodger supposed to be?"
Sam replied cheerfully, "The name comes from the old Brooklyn fans having to dodge trolley cars to get to the games at Ebbets Field."
Josh swiveled his head to the side to shoot Sam a disbelieving look. "I didn't think you'd actually have an answer to that."
Turning his own head to face his friend, Sam defended the immense store of utterly superfluous trivia that had been accumulated for years by his inner nerd. "You asked."
Josh snorted. "Yeah, rhetorically, I asked."
They fell into a companionable silence, the play-by-play floating down to them. Josh rested his drink on his stomach, pressing a wet circle in his shirt, and watched the illumination of car headlights driving past splash across the ceiling. There was a double play, and a sacrifice bunt, and a beach ball on the field, and a monstrous blast that slammed into the padded center field wall, about a foot short of a home run. Sam breathed evenly and calm, and Josh knew that if he looked over at his friend, Sam would look back and smile, and that was a good thing to think about.
Josh felt at peace.
Exhaustion was tugging at him again, the irresistible slide into a kind, whimsical doze, and he thought fuzzily that he should really thank Sam before he nodded off, thank him for coming over with cold drinks. His sleep-drunk words were slow and trailed prematurely into unconsciousness, so that all Josh managed to say was, "Thank you, Sam . . ." before he crashed into oblivion.
* * *
but wait there's more