The Fire of a Thousand Suns

CJ/Danny, mentions of others; very minor character death

Probably G

Spoilers through end of series

Not mine, never were, never will be, but they consume my soul

Feedback and criticism always welcomed

This is the third part of something that started out as one chapter with a working title of "California One", which is the coastal road that runs from approximately Leggett to approximately Los Angeles.

As far as I have been able to determine, Tassajara, "a valley not quite lost in the mountains", still exists as the Zen Mountain Center and is still open to the public during the summer. If anyone knows something to the contrary, please let me know and I will revise this story. A lot of this chapter is based on my memories of California from thirty years ago. I did research some on the web, but please let me know of any errors.

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Ventana Inn, Big Sur, CA mid-February 2008

Danny sat on the terrace of the inn, watching the sun begin to sink into the ocean. It was their last night of six at the inn and they had enjoyed their time here. Tomorrow, they would drive to Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo for the Hollis Foundation board of directors meeting and her presentation.

There had been several beautiful sunsets such as this one.

He was writing his second op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times. Howard Stackhouse had died yesterday, and he was writing about the deceased senior senator from Minnesota. He had just finished writing about the famous filibuster and he stopped to reread.

"At that time, my wife was President Bartlet's Press Secretary and last night, she told me some back story about the event. 'It was a Friday evening and everyone was trying to get away for the weekend. Why was this man sabotaging the Family Wellness Act? He had never seemed like a power-trip guy before. Why couldn't he compromise? When we discovered that his concern for autism was due to his grandson, the questions changed. Why didn't he tell anyone? Then everything changed. A few moments before, we were trying to defeat this man; now, we were trying to help him. I missed my father's birthday party – the last one he had before Alzheimer's claimed his mind from us. But it was worth it.' Last night, she cried for this man. It pains me to see my wife cry, but I think that Howard Stackhouse was worthy of her tears."

His wife. CJ was in the room, napping. The changes in the past twenty-four days were amazing.

When they left Santa Monica at the beginning of the trip, he knew that her regular clothes were beginning to be unwearable, but he wasn't prepared for the sight of her that first morning in the full top over her capris. She seemed to swim in it. He must have looked at her funny, because she smiled shyly. A couple of days later, walking into a diner in Rio Dell to eat lunch, he noticed that he could see the swelling start to push against the folds of her top. He had done that to her. New life, two lives they had created, was growing inside her, his children were growing inside her. He felt a kindred spirit with all men back when they first figured out the connection between sex and conception. He wished his father were alive so he could share his joy with him, ask his advice.

The people they met were friendly, welcoming. You need to come back in the summer, in autumn. Come for the fair, for the carnival. Bring the babies, we love families here. He never realized how different the northern part of the state was from Los Angeles, from the Bay area. The hamlets and towns here and in the interior reminded him of Maine, of rural Pennsylvania, of the Appalachian states.

Last night, they were at Nepenthe for dinner, when someone she had known at Berkeley came in. He was now a Zen Buddhist and he had just hiked over the Santa Lucia range from a monastery in the forest."Tassajara!" she exclaimed. "I forgot all about Tassajara! Do they still allow outsiders to stay during the summer? Do they still bake the bread and sell it? Are the waterfall and the swimming hole still there?" She told Danny about the old hot springs resort, an hour's drive from Carmel Valley on a 16-mile dirt trail over a mile high mountain. ("Or you can hike it from here, takes all day," Dan added.) The Zen community bought the property and used it as a monastery. It was open to the public from May through September and people could stay there in cabins, eat the excellent vegetarian fare, use the natural hot springs. There was no electricity, only one phone for emergencies.

"We need to come in the spring," she said, before remembering that in May she would be almost due, and then they would have two new lives in their care. "Or next year, or the year after that."

The sun was getting closer to the horizon. He remembered another sunset like this one, one that burned so brightly, you would have thought there were a thousand suns. They were in Bodega Bay at a bar on the shore. The cook was shucking oysters and barbecuing them on the half-shell on the grill on the terrace, slopping sauce on them so they steamed in the moisture.The smell was intoxicating but the cooking method couldn't guarantee that they would be safe for CJ. "Go ahead, enjoy them," she said. And so they sat on the deck, watching the sunset, he with the oysters and beer, she with a single hamburger, a salad, and orange juice. He got into a good conversation with the local men and they stayed for hours, until she was getting too tired. She had told him she would drive back to the motel and that he could drink as much beer as he wanted.

There were many occasions where she refused to let him deny himself because of her pregnancy. Here at the inn, she had to limit her time in the hot tub, but she insisted that he spend as much time as he wanted in it. She sat in a chair in the hot tub area, talking with him, working on her presentation for the Hollis people, or reading one of the romance novels to which Margaret and Carol had introduced her.

He looked up and saw her walking toward him. She was beginning to get that "pregnancy walk" that women developed. Sometime over the past few days, something shifted or the kids had taken a quantum growth leap and she was definitely filling out the maternity tops. She looked beautiful.

She sat down beside him and holding hands, they watched as the water turned red with the fire of a thousand suns.

The fire of a thousand suns.

It was after the DNC gala and they were in bed, sharing a pair of pajamas as had become their custom. Soon, the tops would no longer fit around her expanding stomach and he made a note to buy some larger ones. As long as they had drawstring pants, he could make do.

She told him of her conversation with John Hoynes.

"He's wrong about one thing," he told her. "If he had met you in school or right after, you wouldn't have been the person you are now, and you couldn't have handled him. Now if somehow, he had been unmarried as vice-president, I could definitely see the two of you getting together. It would have been like a young Hepburn with a young Tracy, only a thousand times as fiery. It would have worked. And the cow that Leo would have had when he found out would have made what he did about me look like killing the fatted calf for the prodigal son."

"Danny?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

He turned to look at her. "I wouldn't have gone down quietly," he said. "I knew I had to wait for you and I had to give you space. But I had my eyes here, I had people on my side. If anything serious had developed, with Hoynes, with Toby, with Simon Donovan, with that ranger guy, with anyone, I would have come back, fought for you, done whatever I had to do, given up whatever I had to give up, the reporting, the paper, I would have taken a job mucking out cages at the zoo, whatever I needed to do to have you, Jeannie. If you had told me that you wanted to be a nun, if you had told me that the angel Gabriel had come to you and said that God wanted you to be the mother of His Son, I would have fought God for you even if I had to burn with the fire of a thousand suns as punishment for taking you from Him. I would have gone to hell and back for you, I would have fought to the death for you, Jeannie."

He stopped, shaking with emotion, needing to catch his breath. Tears in her eyes, she put a hand to either side of his face and gently kissed his mouth.

Calmer, he touched her lips with his fingers. "But if I had lost, if I were dying on the ground, there were some to whom I would have minded losing less than to others. There were some more worthy of you than others."

She raised her eyebrows in silent question.

"Well, God for one," he laughed. He lowered his gaze, took her hands in his. "CJ, about the boys' names - "

They had decided that since his parents were both dead, as was her mother, and her father was dead in mind if not in body, they would honor their parents in their children. His mother was Caitlin and hers was Kathleen, so there was a redundancy. If they had one girl, they had decided to use Mrs. Landingham's name, and she would be Caitlin Delores. His mother's middle name was Siobhan, hers was Sarah, so a second girl would be Sarah Siobhan. A single boy would be Padraic Talmadge ("Pad-Tal for short," she joked). But they didn't want Sean or Henry, their fathers' middle names. Leo was an obvious choice, but they still hadn't found a second middle name if the twins turned out to be two boys.

He kissed her hands, lifted his head, and looked into her eyes. "CJ honey, how do you feel about Padraic Leo and Talmadge Simon?"