DISCLAIMER: Sorkin, Wells, Lowe, NBC, et al.
CATEGORY: Sam POV, angst
SPOILERS: None. My take on a possible outcome of Sam's campaign. (A little late to the party, etc. I still felt the need to write it.)
NOTE: Yes, the title comes from William Goldman's 'The Princess Bride' (Westley: "My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches"), but the sentiment behind the line really doesn't enter into the story. I just thought it made a cool--and appropriate--title.
SUMMARY: This is not his world. It does not belong to him. He is a visitor and a tourist.
THANKS: To Jessiquita, who makes me laugh both at her and with her.
* * *
A UNIVERSE OF BEACHES
by, Sid
* * *
It is dusk and the beach is quiet. Sam walks, his sneakers dangling from the tips of two fingers, his other hand shoved into his pocket. He loves the cold, rough feel of the wet sand between his toes as he meanders along the water's edge. Sometimes the water laps up at his feet--not much, just enough to tickle and to soak his bare ankles. There is a breeze, a quiet one that ruffles his hair like a mother's loving touch, smelling like salt and sea and the coming of an early autumn. The scent of spicy lamb meat drifts from further inland, and he hears laughter and a babel of conversation from the outdoor restaurant where it is being cooked, voices speaking in honeyed Greek.
He is thinking. Again. It seems to him he can do nothing but think these days and as there is nothing else demanding his attention, he indulges himself. He thinks about everything, and sometimes about nothing. Rarely, in his years with the Bartlet administration, did he have time to think of anything but work. Work and power, who has enough, who has too much. Multiple Sclerosis and press briefings and States of the Union and gunshots and polls and numbers and words, words, words. Thoughts that filled his head, swirling like a sandstorm, suffocating him in their intensity, staying with him even in his dreams.
It feels relaxing now, almost decadent, to think about smaller things. To remember his first car, his first kiss, his first apartment. To imagine seeing his image reflected in a miniature version of himself. To reflect on the plot of an Arturo Perez-Reverté novel. To remind himself of the funny thing his brother had said on the phone the day before. To walk along a beach and think of nothing but how pretty the water looked in the fading sunlight, how good the air smelled at the ocean. For his thoughts to be his own.
He is tired now, so tired, and he feels old; old in body and in spirit. His shoulders seem to hang lower these days, no more carefully straight posture, no more confident stride. And there is gray in his black hair, at his temples and scattered around his forehead. He looks sophisticated, distinguished, like fading aristocracy, but it cannot be denied, tired and old too.
It has been nearly a year since he left DC for his own campaign, and yet it has been a lifetime. Months of looking at himself, looking hard, at the degrees and the money and the pretty-boy face and the political pedigree, and seeing only a middle-aged man with nowhere to go, no idea which way is up, nothing to show for almost 40 years on this earth. Lost. Confused. He supposes it is a mid-life crisis, but he feels no desire for a red Porsche or a 20-year-old blond, only for peace. Only to be able to look himself in the mirror and nod and say, "Samuel Seaborn, you did the best you could, and your best was pretty damned good."
He can't, in good conscience, say this to himself, and there is no one around to say it for him. For the first time in ages--maybe in his whole life--Sam is truly alone. He has been alone for the past six months, his only company a suitcase full of faded clothes and a passport that is tattered with stamps from exotic locales, torn pages, and what looks to be a beer stain. In six months he has not touched a cell phone or a laptop. He has with him only two credit cards. For all intents and purposes, he has left technology behind. He is unreachable. Once a week he slips into an internet café, or finds a payphone, and reaches out to his mother, or his brother, for a few minutes at least. He has not spoken to anyone else, and he only speaks to them half-grudgingly. He loves them both, loves their concern, the way his mother makes him feel loved and his brother makes him laugh; but here, in this self-imposed exile, contact with the outside world comes at a price. For six days he can pretend he has created a world of his own, a world of his choosing with no interruptions that he cannot ignore. But on the seventh day, that moment when he sees the AOL logo spread across the screen, that moment when the ringing on the line begins to indicate an international call, he is brought back to earth and reality.
This is not his world. It does not belong to him. He is a visitor and a tourist.
He is a fraud.
He started off in Ireland, landing at the Shannon Airport. He spent two weeks traveling the country before the beautiful gray days began to depress him further, and then he moved on. London this time, but London was too exciting, there were too many people and too many things going on. He managed three weeks there before claustrophobia made his skin crawl, and then he boarded a plane to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam was so different from anywhere he'd been before that for ten days he was revitalized. On the eleventh day he overheard a teenage girl whisper to her friend about the old American with the black hair, and his spirits sunk low, and then it was on to Paris.
For the next two and a half months, he moved around Europe like an aged Goldilocks. Too noisy, too quiet, too crowded, too cold, but in his case, never just right. He arrived on new soil, found peace for a few days and stayed, hoping he could extend the feeling of calm that would spread through him. He was never able to. He stuck to coastal countries, and discovered secluded beaches, and he walked till he could walk no more.
Sometimes he bought souvenirs, but then he would admonish himself for turning self-imposed exile into a chance to buy paperweight Coliseums, and he would mail everything to his brother.
Sometimes he bought an overpriced ticket and spent the day on a coach with other tourists, traipsing through museums and gift shops, taking pictures seen on postcards the world over, looking less and less like a wealthy American politician, and more and more like a backpacker trying unsuccessfully to hang on to his youth.
He liked the tours, liked putting someone else in charge so that he could merely follow and enjoy, but then on more than one coach, he was recognized.
"Didn't you work for the President?"
"Didn't you run for Congress?"
"Aren't you--you're that guy!"
"Sam Lyman! That's who you are, isn't it?"
"You're the guy that lost in California!"
Yes, I worked for President Bartlet. Yes, I ran for a seat in the California 47th ; yes, that's Orange County. Sam Seaborn, actually. Yes, I'm the guy who lost in California. No, I wasn't the one who was shot. No, I no longer work for President Bartlet. No, I wasn't fired because I lost.
"So how long did you really know the President had MS?"
"You know, I didn't vote for Bartlet either time."
"Are you on vacation?"
Vacation. What a word. The wrong word. 'Vacation' means packing up the wife and kids and driving to the Grand Canyon during the summer. 'Vacation' means taking a week in Vegas because you're overworked and you need a break. 'Vacation' does not mean losing a political campaign, packing a suitcase full of clothes, and buying a one-way ticket to Europe because you have no idea what the hell to do with the rest of your life.
"Yes, I'm on vacation."
* * *
Sam has been in Greece, on this island, at the same hotel, for the last four weeks. It is his longest stretch yet, the feeling of peace has lasted, but he doesn't let himself dwell on that. It doesn't do to call too much attention to the good things. They disappear much quicker that way.
He is aware that this trip is self-indulgent, as much an excuse to run away as to find himself. He hasn't done any finding anyway. In all his reflections, his inner monologues, he has not stumbled upon even a single discovery previously unknown. Either he knows himself very well, or he is hiding better than he thought possible.
It's not that he wanted the Congressional seat especially. Maybe he had built himself up to work for it, to be pleased if the election had been called in his favor, but he did not particularly have his heart set on it. It did not crush him to lose. It was a blow to his ego, in a small way. It was frustrating, after such promise. It was humiliating, letting Will Bailey down. It was not, however, a crushing disappointment.
No, losing the election didn't break Sam. What broke him was losing his sense of purpose--and then losing his way altogether.
* * *
He doesn't feel sorry for himself. To do so would be the worst kind of self-indulgence. Life has been good to Sam--good, but not too good. Things have come easily, but not too easily. He has suffered, wept, and hurt. He has made others suffer, weep, and hurt. There has been enough bitterness to make him appreciate the sweetness of life. He has no right to pity himself. He does not pity himself.
He's not angry or sad.
He doesn't want to change the past.
He's not heartbroken.
He's just lost. He lost hope, and now he is lost too.
His life has not been for nothing, he knows this. With his contributions, laws have been improved, speeches have been made to move people to their feet and then on to action, a good man has won the most powerful job in the world, friends have been given unswerving loyalty, a mother has regained her confidence, a brother has had a shoulder to lean on.
He is lost, nonetheless. It was building for a long time. Maybe it began that horrific night in May when Josh nearly lost his life. It could have been a year later when CJ left his bed and said one night was one night too many, and then never met his eye again. Maybe it was his dad and the woman in Santa Monica, or his mother and the empty bottle of Valium at her bedside. Maybe it was Kevin Kahn and the video, and standing helplessly to the side afterward, afraid to make a move because it would be the wrong one again.
Maybe it's all those things.
* * *
Sam awakens to find himself sleeping on the sand. The morning tide is in, the air is cool, and he shivers for a moment, wondering how he managed to fall asleep on the beach, thinking he has never slept so well as he did on cold sand with the smell of salt water in his nostrils and the sound of gentle waves in his ears.
Tomorrow he must call his brother. He will be forced to give non-committal responses to questions about his well-being and when he is coming home. The tentative suggestion that he is depressed will resurface.
He's not depressed. He's lost. They're different things.
He could have gone back to the White House, easily. A new, even more prestigious job was waiting for him. Friends were waiting for him, and a look in CJ's eyes that he couldn't read but thought he might like to. He could have gone back, but he didn't. He flew to Ireland instead. At the time he couldn't have pinpointed the exact reason, but he thinks that maybe he can now.
There is a fork in the road that stretches before him. He can see ahead with little trouble: Three more years in the White House. Maybe consulting afterward. A few years after that, another attempt at a political seat--maybe this time a seat he actually wants. Maybe a marriage somewhere in there. He can see it all without trying. It's a good life, and it calls to him. There is nothing terrifying about it. There is nothing surprising about it either.
The path that is shrouded in mystery and darkness terrifies him. He boarded a plane to Ireland because, for the first time in his life, he began to see that his life held no destiny. He had choices beyond those he had already chosen. The life he had created for himself was not permanent, it was not set in stone. There were no obligations--not even those to himself--that could stop him from changing whatever he chose to change. The potential makes him dizzy, almost sick. He has realized after nearly forty years that there is still room to grow, still opportunities to be had. He is overwhelmed with the knowledge that he does not even know where to begin.
Sam sees the beach stretched out before him, grains of sand, their number incomprehensible to the human mind, and every grain a universe of possibility.
FIN