Archive of Our Own

Somewhere along the way, Ann came to accept being mistaken for Leslie's wife.

She's beginning to wonder if the real mistake were not, in fact, her own.

*

Ann tugs the elastic out of her hair and leans in closer to the tiny mirror. She's going to be late if she doesn't get this right.

The nurse's locker room, however, isn't the greatest place to do anything more complicated than brush your teeth. Her elbow smacks the door of her locker when she pulls the comb through her hair again.

Frustrated, she collapses on the bench. The skirts on her stupid sundress puff out, then slowly deflate.

"Honey, you need a minute?" Her friend Lu leans against the bank of lockers, shaking her head. The beads at the end of her braids click and clack. "Got yourself in a lather."

Ann tosses the comb away. "Stupid hair, I can't --"

She's worked two consecutive shifts and her hands shake with tiredness and her hair looks like crap and now she's going to be late for Leslie's garden party.

Lu retrieves the comb. "Got a date?"

Holding out her hand for the comb, Ann rolls her eyes. "Oh, yeah, a hot one."

Lu straddles the bench, pulling Ann alongside her. "Here, let me."

Her body is warm and solid; Ann breathes in a hint of cocoa butter under the astringency of the hospital. Her head jerks right, then left, down and up as Lu works over her hair. Her scalp burns and throbs.

"Shiny white-girl hair," Lu mutters at one point, "just *slides* right off itself. Don't know how your mama managed."

"Made it up as she went along, basically." Her mom kept her own hair in a short, neat natural; it was springy to the touch and glowed coppery-red in direct sunlight. She kept Ann's hair, straight as her father's, in a little Dutch boy bob until Ann put her foot down the summer before sixth grade.

Ann always thought that when she got older, her hair would start to look like her mother's. Plenty of people were blonde as children, only to darken over time; babies got born with curls or blue eyes that disappeared.

It just stood to reason that, sooner or later, Ann would change, too. One morning, she expected, she'd wake up and realize that she had become herself.

*

Ann stops just inside the south entrance to Ramsett Park to smooth her skirt and take a deep breath. She touches the back of her head lightly. Lu french-braided her hair and pulled the ends up flush with her skull.

Two classes' worth of elementary-school students wave small paper flags and smack each other with miniature plastic shovels. A papier-mâché reproduction of the Statue of Liberty, dragged out for every patriotic occasion (however vaguely defined), teeters a little farther up the path. She looks much the worse for wear after surviving, by the skin of her teeth, the President's Day snowball massacre.

Next to Lady Liberty, Leslie greets new arrivals with a paper flag and sprig of evergreen bough. She appears to be dressed as a Cub Scout, possibly a forest ranger, in olive-drab short-shorts and an epaulette'd camp shirt. A lighter green sash, matching her knee socks, jauntily crosses her chest. A flag is stuck behind her ear, but keeps slipping down in front of her eyes; she swipes at it, as one might a mosquito.

"Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to Pawnee's first annual Flagarbor Day celebration and virtual picnic --"

The picnic has to be virtual. The city's raccoon infestation means that the no-food-eaten-outside rule of thumb became an official by-law last winter.

Arbor Day officially falls in the third week of April, but the city budget was held up on a divisive parking meter issue, so all city activities were put on hold. Now that it's so close to Flag Day, the two holidays are being celebrated together.

Everyone hopes that this will go better than the Ramadanukkah potluck two years ago.

Ann needs to take several more deep breaths, both to center herself and to clear her head. Leslie described this even as "like a garden party in Jane Austen! Or on PBS". If she *hadn't*, Ann never would have appeared in this sundress and agonized over her hair.

As far as she can see from here, there is a small garden across the park. The ragtag group of people milling around are a "party" in the most literal sense of the term.

She has started to understand Leslie's logic. How she gets from the literal to swooping flights of fancy, however, remains beyond Ann's ken. At least so far.

"Welcome!" Leslie beams as Ann approaches her, heels unsteady on the gravel. When she stumbles, Leslie grabs her elbow and thrusts yet another paper flag into her free hand. "Welcome to Pawnee's first annual Flagarbor Day!"

Leslie glances behind her, at the largest group of people, and bites her lip. She seems more nervous than usual. Maybe her mother's over there. Maybe her boss.

"Flagarbor, huh?" Ann tucks the twig into her braid. "What is that, like Victor Garber's less famous brother?"

Leslie blinks, her mouth slightly open. She might be offended, she might just be confused.

It wasn't *that* bad of a joke. Ann waves her flag lightly. "Flah-garber? Victor...? Anything?"

Leslie's gaze darts back to the group of suits. She straightens her blank sash and gives Ann a sickly, insincere grin. "Victor Garber!" she says, far more loudly than necessary. Ann takes a step back, but Leslie grabs her arm and holds her in place. "Why, I never! Oh, you're *funny*, you --" She looks around again and, sure enough, Ron Swanson is bearing down on them, scowling.
"Ahahahaha!"

Leslie pronounces each syllable. Ann smiles more widely and waves at Ron.

"Ron," Leslie says, stepping between them, "you've got to hear this --"

"No, I don't." He doesn't acknowledge Ann's presence. "Leslie, you ready? Your VIP here yet?"

"Why, yes, Ron." Leslie steps back with a flourish. "Yes, *she* is."

"Good. Whatever. Let's get this over with." His face is pink as boiled ham as he runs one finger around the inside of his collar.

"He's a little cranky," Leslie stage-whispers. "Poor guy needs a nap."

"I am prone," Ron says through clenched teeth, "to sun poisoning, so can we get going?"

"Yes, let's!" Leslie dashes ahead of them, waving her flags.

"That must suck, being a park guy who can't go outside." Ann doesn't want to be talking. Why is she talking?

"I am not a park guy." Ron's tone is somehow patient and bored all at the same time. "I don't care about parks. I care about small government and healthy private enterprise."

"Right," Ann says. "Well, I can see how that would be confusing."

Ron sighs and quickens his pace. When they reach the main group of people, Ron pinches the bridge of his nose.

"There is...a VIP section right up front," Ron says at last. "There's a sign."

"You should sit down," Ann tells him. Under his flush, Ron looks pale. Sweat shines across his cheeks and his eyes are slightly unfocused. She adds, "Do you have some water or juice?"

"Never complain, never surrender," he says and moves away. "Go stand in your spot."

Ann finds a little spot, about two feet by two feet, on the far side of the small crowd. It is cordoned off with red crepe paper and what seem to be stakes for tomato plants.

"That's you," April the intern says, just behind Ann, making her jump. "It's, like. Reserved."

In fact, the writing on the paper reads "Reserved for VIP!!!", repeated again and again. It's a nice thought, but Ann isn't sure how to get in; the paper is about hip high, too high to step over, too low to slip under. She rips the paper as discreetly as she can, slips inside, and stands close to the stake, holding the paper as if nothing ever happened.

She knows that this is Leslie's form of a compliment -- naming her a VIP, making her stand apart from everyone else -- and Ann is touched. She really is. She's also really embarrassed, so she faces front, keeping her eyes on Leslie and the ceremonies.

Children stutter through Joyce Kilmer's "Tree" and haltingly recite the lyrics to "It's a Grand Old Flag". A couple vets salute Lady Liberty while a recorder orchestra tootles a tune that might be "Old MacDonald" or the national anthem.

Just in front of her pen, there's a tarp spread on the ground and a large bundle of burlap shaped vaguely like a tree. When the vets have shuffled back to the crowd, silence descends.

Until Leslie jumps out from behind the tree, bullhorn to her mouth. "Can I get an A? A!"

No one says anything.

"R?" she asks, the bullhorn hissing with feedback. The crowd shifts and murmurs. "R!"

"...R," Ann echoes. Behind her, April snickers.

"B-O-R!" Leslie runs through the rest double-quick. "That spells arbor! Arbor Day, yeah!"

She jumps like a cheerleader and Ann suddenly wonders if she's going to do gymnastics. But when she lands, Leslie switches the bullhorn to her other hand and waves a flag. "Flag Day, wh-ut?"

"She sounds weird," April says.

"I think --" Ann pauses to watch Leslie strut like a rooster, head bobbing, to salute the flag, "I think she's pretending to be somebody else. Two holidays, two MCs?"

"What I said. That's weird."

"Yeah, okay." Ann claps heartily when Leslie finishes, then admits, "It is a little weird."

She shouldn't have said that. Unable to take it back, Ann refocuses on the tree and tarp in front of her.

Grasping the handle of a large shovel, its tip on the ground, Leslie spins around it like a pole dancer. Breathless, face cherry-red, she stumbles a little and bats the hair out of her eyes.

Ann was never the kind of person who'd laugh at someone else, but she wasn't ever all that judgmental, either. So when April laughs behind her fist and pokes Ann's arm to get her attention, Ann is surprised to hear herself whisper, "Be *nice!*"

April's response is lost in the shriek from Leslie's bullhorn. "And now for the main event! TA-DA!"

She rips the tarp back, showering clumps of dirt and mulch chips over the first row of spectators. A lone rock rolls into Ann's VIP pen.

Where the tarp had been, there is a hole. About the size of Ann's pen and about four feet deep.

"What's that, you ask?" Leslie cups her hand behind her ear, though no one's said anything.

"What's that?" Ann calls. Her voice sounds weird, raised this loud, and she squeezes her eyes shut.

"I'm glad you asked, VIP guest!" Leslie throws out her arm, looking for all the world like Vanna White. "This is a hole."

"What kind of hole?" Tom Haverford shouts from somewhere back in the crowd.

Leslie plants her shovel right on the edge of the hole. "Let's talk seriously for a moment, shall we?" She props her elbow on the handle and rests her head on her hand. "You probably know me best from my subcommittee's work on the Sullivan Street Pit. With this tree planting, I'd like to remind us all of one very important thing." She pauses and looks across the crowd, then back again, her lips pursed. "Here in Pawnee, no hole goes unfulfilled."

Someone blows a whistle, high and piercing. Leslie looks around, clearly as confused as the rest of them. A chorus of complaints from the kids goes up. "Mrs. MacKinnon's class, find your buddies, we're going now --"

Despite Leslie's protests, both classes have to leave. A good ten minutes passes while the stray children are hunted down and recorders are latched away in their cases. Ron Swanson must be broiling in his no-iron shirt by now; Ann feels a little dizzy herself.

But Leslie looks, if anything, more energetic than ever, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. She located one little girl under the Statue of Liberty's plinth and successfully disentangled another's long ponytail from her buddy's overall straps.

Once the kids have been seen off, she's back at her spot near the hole. She's got one arm around the wrapped-up tree and she's beaming like the sun just came up.

You've got to admire that.

Ann slips off her shoes and gets ready for the rest of Leslie's presentation. Normally, a tree-planting should consist of speech, hole, tree in speedy succession. With Leslie running this, however, it's anyone's guess how much longer they'll be here.

Leslie gives Ann a wave, small and (relatively) discreet; the sun is in Ann's eyes and, unsure of what she just saw, she has to shade them before she waves back. Leslie waves more vigorously. She seems to be convinced that Ann has suddenly gone blind.

She waves so hard that she doesn't notice the stoop-shouldered bald man approaching from the other side.

"Cool," April says. "That's, like. The mayor or something."

When he says Leslie's name and touches her shoulder, everything slows to a trickle.

The sunlight falls like a cleaver, sharpening the edges of everything, as Leslie flails for balance, arms windmilling, mouth opening. She twists at the waist, sees the man, then twists in the opposite direction, flapping her arms as she falls. Into the hole.

*

"Thanks to WebMD and YouTube," Leslie tells the documentary guys later that night, "I can fake a stroke like nobody's business. Wanna see?"

They decline.

*

The hole was only about four feet deep and Leslie got dirty, but remained unhurt. That was the end of the tree-planting, however, and, Ann thinks, probably the very last Flagarbor Day in Pawnee.

After she gets Leslie dusted off, Ann drives home. A headache flutters just behind her eyes and her feet hurt.

"How's Leslie?" Andy asks from the kitchen.

They broke up six weeks ago. Supposedly, he's renting her guest room until he finds a place of his own.

In other words, not very much has changed. Ann gets her bed all to herself these days, though. There is that.

"What?" She tugs out one earring, then the other, dropping them into the bowl where she keeps her keys. She hadn't told Andy where she was going after work; that's not any of his business any more.

Not that he listened when it *was* his business.

He waves his hand up and down, encompassing her from head to toe. "Never dressed up like that for me."

She's not going to fight with him. There's no point in fighting, not anymore.

Andy's pouring about half a box of Crocky Crunch (the cereal that bites back!) into one of her mixing bowls.

Ann unpins her braids, then shakes her head, letting them fly and whip against her neck. "Any idea when I'm getting the rent?"

On his way back to the couch, Andy huffs out a breath. He carries the bowl in both hands, carefully as a little monk in the Himalayas. "It's not the first of the month, is it?"

"No, the first was *three weeks ago*." She moves into her room and unzips her dress behind the half-open door. It falls with a murmur around her feet. "So..."

"Gimme til the first," he calls. She doesn't have to see him to know that he hasn't looked away from the TV.

"So that'll be two months' worth, then," she says, pulling down her t-shirt as she goes back to the kitchen.

"Yeah, whatever."

Ann drinks a glass of water and drums her fingers on the counter. Yeah, whatever.

*

The man at the tree-planting, Ann learns the next day, was the assistant city manager, not the mayor. The mayor is a figurehead in Pawnee city politics, both Leslie and Mark agree at lunch. All the power's with the manager's office and city council. Leslie launches into an explanation of the difference between Mayor-Council and Council-Mayor municipal government structures, with a tangent into New England-style towns with selectmen and weak county powers.

Mark distracts her by pushing his plate of cheese fries over.

"Ooh, fries!" Leslie's delight is pure and genuine. Even though Ann *knows* that about her -- it's pretty much the first thing you notice about the lady -- the level of her enthusiasm always surprises her. Leslie sticks two dripping fries under her upper lip and mumbles around them, "Now what am I?"

Mark glances at Ann, but Ann smiles at Leslie. "A cheesy walrus?"

One fry escapes, falling to the plate.

"Nacho narwhal?" Mark asks.

Leslie gives them a double thumb's up. She opens her mouth and chomps the fry.

"So what did he want, anyway?" Ann asks. She fiddles with the toothpick that held one wedge of her club sandwich together. Normally, she'd stop herself from fidgeting, but there's something *looser* about the atmosphere with these two. Well, with Leslie.

Leslie brings her own atmosphere with her wherever she goes.

Mark steals back a clump of fries and Leslie stabs his hand. "Who?" he asks with his mouth full.

"The city manager guy."

Leslie knocks her glass over. Chocolate malted spreads in a fast-moving puddle over the table. "Oh, crap! Emergency!"

"That looked --" Mark tilts his head. "Did you do that on purpose?"

Ann's too busy pushing the cold wet mess around with napkins to see if Leslie replies.

After it's been mopped up and the waitress summoned to replace the shake, Leslie sits back in the booth, fingers laced together over her stomach. The big bow on her shirt, white dotted-swiss today, droops slightly.

"Seriously," Mark says, more loudly. "Was he after you about that meeting?"

Leslie's eyes widen until Ann can see the whites all around the iris. She blinks very slowly, dramatically, but manages to keep her gaze levelled on Ann. "So, Ann!" Her voice is even louder than Mark's had been. "How's tricks in the ICU? Anything really gross going on? Or tragic? Tragic's good."

Ann has one side of the booth to herself. Looking back and forth between Mark and Leslie, she suddenly realizes that she has *no idea* what's going on. "I...what? What meeting?"

Leslie starts to upend her plate, but Mark catches the other side and holds it down.

Leslie sighs. "Nothing important. Nothing for you to worry about." She lifts her chin, the muscles along her jaw tightening. For a moment, Ann thinks she's doing a John Wayne impersonation. "City business, nothing for the average citizen to concern herself over."

Mark scratches his nose. He suffered no lasting injuries from his fall into the pit, save for a persistent skin irritation. The doctors haven't seen anything like it and suspect a new fungus or bacterium might be flourishing in the pit.

Ann holds up her hand to hold him off. "I think --"

Leslie shakes her head decisively. "Don't think, Ann. Gives you wrinkles. Let us take care of it."

"Wow, okay, that's insulting." Ann sits back, arms crossed.

Mark clears his throat. "Some pit business with the city manager, that's all. Meeting's tomorrow."

Ann nods and reminds herself to relax. There's no use getting upset over something Leslie says; Leslie says a lot of things. Anyway, why should she care, really, about the ins and outs of city government? Three months ago, she didn't even know her councilman's name, let alone anything else about local politics.

Leslie's municipal enthusiasm has gotten under her skin, she knows that much. Maybe she could use some of Mark's antibiotic ointment.

*

What happens the next day is subject to some debate. After watching the documentary crew's raw footage and talking to both April and Tom, Ann puts together what seems to be the most likely sequence of events.

Leslie is at her desk, answering email and updating the department's web page, when the city manager and his guest arrive.

In a display of remarkable competence and unusual verbosity, April tells Leslie that the visit is about the pit and the Wamapoke.

Without looking up from her keyboard, Leslie scoffs, "There aren't any more Wamapoke, don't be silly."

Anyone else in the same situation would have been extra-sensitive to pranks and other practical jokes. Just the previous week, April and Tom convinced Leslie to enter her name in a drawing to be named Queen of Rumania; she'd already drafted a new constitution and legislation to abolish the monarchy before Ron called a halt to the shenanigans.

So Leslie could be forgiven for thinking April was teasing her.

"And my meeting's not until two." She winks at the camera. "Like I'm going to *that*."

"Anyway," April says, dragging herself back to her desk. "Some guy's here."

Leslie firmly believes that jokes are an important part of teambuilding, so she decides to humor April. She gets up and peeks around the doorway.

Any thoughts she might have had about hiding from the afternoon's meeting must get quashed when the City Manager waves at her.

The blood drained from her face, Leslie glances back at the camera guy.

"You know a deer in headlights?" he tells Ann later. "Yeah, one of those'd eat her alive, she was so frozen."

Leslie takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. She walks slowly, deliberately, a man facing his firing squad with indelible, unspeakable dignity, out into the outer office.

"City Manager Paul Ulriksson! How are you, you nutty Swede?"

"Leslie Knope, you're a hard lady to nail down," he says and steps aside to make room for his guest. "This is the gentleman I've been wanting to introduce you to --"

"My email's broken," Leslie says quickly. "Server issues. Virus. Fungus. No cell service."

"Right," Ulriksson says. "At any rate, Chuck Dudley, Leslie Knope. Chuck's with the Wamapoke band, Leslie. My email told you as much."

Leslie presses her palms together and bows. Chuck Dudley, slightly taller than Leslie, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, pauses for a moment before he shrugs and bows in return.

"Chuck here would like to talk to us about that park project." Ulriksson claps Chuck on the shoulder as Chuck pushes his glasses back up his nose.

"Call me Dudley, really. Everyone does."

"There are..." Leslie speaks slowly, incredibly slowly, while looking up at the ceiling, "so...many projects. I...wouldn't...know...which..."

"The pit," April says from her desk and turns a page in her magazine.

"Sullivan Street?" Dudley says.

"Lot 48," Ulriksson says.

Leslie squints and tilts her head back and forth as if none of those names ring any bells for her. "I...think..." She shivers suddenly and appears to snap out of her daze. She clutches her stomach. "Irritable bowel! Irritable bowel syndrome is the sixth leading cause of digestive distress for single women aged twenty --"

Ulriksson steps back. "Leslie?"

"You okay?" Dudley touches her shoulder.

Leslie shudders again. "I have to go! To the little girls' room!" She rushes away, adding over her shoulder, "I'll be right back! If I can! If I make it! Hope I make it!"

She skids around the corner at the end of the hall and disappears from view.

They wait ten minutes before Ulriksson sends April after her. When April doesn't return -- she is later discovered asleep in the reception area of the defunct Early Childhood Nutrition program on the third floor -- Shirley the Rec Czar offers to go look.

By that time, Leslie has already climbed out the restroom window into the small decorative pine tree outside. Already well denuded by her office scissors when she needed Flagarbor Day sprigs, the tree bends in half under her weight and loses most of its needles.

Leslie is turning into the hospital's parking lot, jabbing at her cell phone's touchscreen for Ann's number when the office calls. That call goes right to voice mail. April says, rolling her eyes at the camera, "They're pretty mad. Where are you? Come back. Or don't, whatever."

This is, at least, Ann's most credible version of events. Tom included many more details, including Leslie's projectile vomiting on Chuck Dudley and breaking the glass on the window with her Shaolin fighting technique.

*

Ann doesn't learn any of this, however, until the next day.

As it stands, she is just clocking out for her lunch when Leslie's call comes through. She has been working third shift for the past three nights and she is gummy-eyed and sore when she meets Leslie under the awning for the outpatient clinic.

"Let's get away!" Leslie announces.

Ann starts to unwrap her turkey-pita sandwich, then stops and looks at Leslie. "Wait, what?"

Leslie's cheeks are flushed, her eyes almost glittery. "I think all this is getting you down. I know it's having an effect on me."

"All what?" Ann takes a bite. She has to force herself to chew. The breakroom fridge is a tiny subzero monster; there might actually be ice crystals between the layers of Havarti and lettuce.

"The pit, the park, *politics*..." Leslie rubs Ann's left shoulder with both hands. Ann doesn't move away; she's tired and this feels way better than she would have expected. Leslie's voice drops to a murmur in Ann's ear. "Whaddaya say, Annie P.?"

Ann rewraps her sandwich. "I say that's nice and all, but also impossible."

"What if I told you I had it all planned out?" Leslie adds, trying to slip behind Ann, reaching for her other shoulder. "Fact-finding junket, you and me, hitting the road like a research-intensive Thelma and Louise."

Thelma and Louise die at the end of the movie. Ann clears her throat. "Researching what, exactly?"

"Pits!" Leslie smiles dazzlingly. "And pit-like structures."

Ann tilts her head, squinting against the sun. "You think I should get away from the pit by...going on a tour of other pits?"

"I planned it for your birthday, but I'm moving it up. Executive decision!" Leslie yanks on Ann's hand. "C'mon --"

"How do you know when my birthday is?" Ann focuses on the smallest detail, the one with the best likelihood of making sense.

Leslie tosses her hair. "I have my ways, you know."

"Um." Ann pulls her hand back. She has to change the subject. "So, this made sense to you?"

"Yes. Come *on*."

"Leslie, I can't." Ann plucks at the neck of her scrubs. "I've got work, and -- don't *you* have work?"

Leslie doesn't look at her. "This is work."

"Don't you have that meeting?"

"This takes precedence." Leslie has her back to Ann. Her shoulders are set at a weird angle.

"Really? Because that meeting seemed pretty important --"

Leslie's hair lifts like wings as she turns around. "This takes precedence," she says again. "I don't expect you to understand the intricacies of bureaucratic prioritizing --"

Backing away, holding her hands up, Ann says, "Oh, no, of course I couldn't --"

"But I *do* expect your support," Leslie concludes firmly. She even nods, as if to underline her approval of this message.

Ann exhales through her nose. "I don't even know what to say to that."

Leslie's smile flashes on. "You don't have to say anything. Just get in the car."

Obviously, Leslie's upset. Her voice has gone half an octave higher, she's snappish, her eyes are darting restlessly. Ann could hug her, but Leslie's *also* being obnoxious. She only gets like this when she feels helpless.

Ann's lunch break isn't nearly long enough to sort all of this out. Leslie leaves in a huff and Ann's still starving.

The vending machine is out of Chunky bars, too.

*

When Ann wakes up from her post-work nap, it's still light out. A sunbeam crosses the room. Her dress is hung on the back of her door, waiting for her to have a chance to take it into the dry cleaner. The light bleaches out the flowers along the hem. The fabric glows like it's lit from within, round, convex, *full* of light.

Sitting up, she rubs her eyes, but the effect persists. She remembers fire lanterns they made at Girl Scout camp one summer, tissue-paper over popsicle sticks, delicate as anything. The girls set them afloat down the stream. The lanterns bobbed, flickered, winked away into the dark.

A few, Ann's included, were weighted badly, or just generally misshapen. They caught fire before floating very far at all. Her lantern went up like a torch; it spit sparks that caught others nearby, then sizzled down, away, eating its own reflection, into the dark water.

"Hey, babe --" Andy pushes open the door and the dress slips into the shadows. "You up?"

Ann stretches until her shoulders pop. "What if I weren't?"

"I dunno. Guess you'd be now?"

She slips back under the covers and covers her face with her arm. "Something like that."

Andy is probably waiting for her to say something else, even just ask what's up, what he needs. Ann rolls onto her side and tugs the pillow closer.

"So anyway," he says eventually. "You hungry?"

If she says yes, he'll ask if he can have some of what she's having.

"I'm sleeping," she replies.

She's never had to deal with this before, talking to an ex right after the break-up. She suspects that for other people, such conversations would be a lot more fraught and prone to anger. Talking to Andy *now* is, however, rather alarmingly like talking to Andy *then*.

She doesn't have the patience she did then, but he hasn't seemed to notice.

She wakes up again two hours later. The room is finally dark and the rest of the house is silent. Hurt and hungry, Andy has cleared out, making for the bar or his buddies' place. There's a Quizno's wrapper leaking oil on her afghan and an overturned two-liter bottle of tonic water on the coffee table.

He always confuses tonic water with club soda.

*

Now that she's rested and had some time to calm down, she should apologize to Leslie. Maybe they can have breakfast tomorrow before Leslie goes to work.

When Ann opens her phone, there are no fewer than 27 text messages waiting. That can't be right, unless Andy got really drunk and decided it'd be cute to spam her with lecherous babble.

The earliest message opens formally. Report to be read by my designated representative, Ms. Ann Lorraine Perkins of 647 Sullivan Street, City of Pawnee, into the official record of the next meeting of the --

Next message. This is going to take forever. Without looking away from the screen, she pulls out a kitchen chair and sinks down. -- subcommittee for development of Lot 48.

Ann realizes that she had just assumed Leslie gave up on her plan to tour pits. Sooner rather than later, she should really learn not to underestimate the woman's dedication, what Leslie herself would call "stick-to-it'iveness".

The first stop on the current fact-finding junket was the Ancient Polish Order of Krakow's replica elk and bear pit trap in Valparaiso, Indiana.

The result of human intervention and labor, rather than naturally-occurring pits and pit-like structures, which will be investigated as items (3) through (17) on the itinerary-agenda, this pit exemplifies --

Seventeen? *Really?* Ann rests her head on her hand, scrolling through screen after screen. Leslie's third-person report recounts, stiffly but quite thoroughly, the dimensions of the replica pit; the history of elk-hunting in the formerly vast forests of Poland and Lithuania, which were at one time the playgrounds of Europe's Best and Blue-Bloodiest; some personal details about Karl, her personal guide to the Order's museum of memorabilia; and an account of her lunch in the Order's dining room.

The Order first served female guests unaccompanied by husbands or brothers in September, 1977. On a personal note, this humble observer would like to say to that: Go, ladies! Excelsior!

Six more texts have arrived since Ann started reading. The final message is much shorter than the previous ones. Prefaced with "not for public dstrbn/off the record,</cite> it says, a, pls call in sick for me tmw. use nrsg insider smrts - kdny? glstn? mngtts? xoxo lk

After the wordiness and careful grammar of all the other messages, this one isn't just brief. Ann hears it differently, a whisper after a lecture.

Valparaiso is well on the way to Chicago. There's no way Leslie will be coming home tonight. Ann pictures her in her car, laboriously typing out text after text.

She sees Leslie is alone at a highway rest stop, a deserted one with a single working light. It flickers, the picture of futility, against the night. Leslie's feathered hair is falling in her eyes; her face is barely lit by the screen of her cell. She looks alone and very small.

*

Because her sleep schedule has gone completely wonky, Ann stops at City Hall when it opens the next morning rather than calling in. She's awake and restless anyway, and now she's both curious and concerned about what drove Leslie away.

Leslie *is* her work. A couple weeks ago, loopy on a pitcher of sangria, Ann elbowed Leslie hard and said, "I don't even know what your house looks like."

"Apartment," Leslie said and drained her glass. "Like my office. It looks like my office."

Drunk as she was, Ann was finding it hard to think clearly. "With computers and stuff?"

Leslie poured them each another brimming glassful. Her lips were stained cherry-red with sangria and the lamp over their table made her hair look like sunny cotton candy.

"Exactly like my office." She spoke the way Ann was trying to think: deliberately, cautiously, with exaggerated care. "Replica of the city seal and everything." She grinned at Ann, her teeth pink in the weird light. "I scavalged -- salvenged -- *took* part of one of the murals when they condemned the east wing."

"Wow," Ann said. City Hall's murals managed to be both horrifying and really ugly. "That's...unique."

Leslie saluted messily and raised her glass. "To the WPA, to the noble Wamapoke. And to us."

Ann tipped her glass against Leslie's too enthusiastically and sangria sloshed over the table. "Hear, hear?"

Ann can't think of anything that would drive Leslie away from work. She spends the rest of the morning playing detective, talking to April and Tom and the documentary guys, even to the secretaries in the adjoining offices, all in order to reconstruct what happened the day before.

The city manager showed up with someone representing the Wamapoke. According to Ron Swanson, who insists on speaking off the record even after Ann reminds him she's not a reporter, the band had been trying to get in contact with the department -- by which I mean Leslie because this is her project and not mine, as I don't do projects -- for about a week or so.

So now Ann at least has an idea why Leslie has been acting even stranger than usual. She's nervous, for some unknown reason, about the band's interest in the pit.

She grabs Mark right before lunch, interrupting him as he's giving his order to another planner guy for an Italian sub.

"Hey, I'm *hungry*," he says as she pulls him into his office. "Low blood sugar is nothing to scoff at. On my antibiotics, I need a full stomach all the time."

"We have to do something," she tells him. "This isn't going well."

"We have to do what and what's not going well?" He isn't looking at her, but rooting through his desk drawers until he unearths a box of granola bars. He shakes the box at her, offering her some.

Ann shakes her head.

"Suit yourself." Shrugging, Mark unwraps a bar and folds half of it into his mouth.

"Gross," Ann says and gets up to look out the window, over to the little slice visible of Leslie's office. "Leslie's gone AWOL and it has something to do with this whole Native thing."

Mark talks with his mouth full; she *thinks* he asks something like, "What Native thing?"

"The Wamapoke and the pit," she says.

Mark starts to choke. When he coughs, nuggets of oat-and-honey fly everywhere. Ann pounds his back until he sits back upright and breathes deeply.

"I see," Mark says. "Well, okay. Couple things come to mind first off."

He opens the top drawer of his desk and says nothing else. Ann can't help rolling her eyes. Every single civil servant is certifiable, she's sure of it. "Such as?"

Mark glances up. "Um, right. Well. First thing we do, we talk to the Indians." He must see something in her face, because he waves his hand and adds hastily, "Native Americans, whichever. Usually, if they have an interest in a site, we already know about it."

"But we --" Ann coughs into her hand. "*You*, I mean, you didn't know about this?"

Mark shrugs. "What can I tell you? They're a small band, this is a small city, things..."

He's dodging something, or several things, and Ann doesn't exactly care enough to find out what's going on. "What else? What about Leslie?"

He smiles at her and tips back in her chair. "Why do you care?"

"She's my friend," Ann says. Mark's eyebrows lift; she's never cared for the kind of person who dedicates himself to taking nothing seriously. "*Our* friend, actually."

"Yeah," Mark says. "Yeah, okay. You're right."

"Your enthusiasm's really heartening."

Mark sits back up and scoots his chair in. "Look, I don't know what you want me to do here --"

"Tell me what to do," Ann says. "Help me --" She can't bring herself to say "cover for Leslie". That's what she *means*, but Leslie would have a conniption at the very idea. "Help me smooth things over."

He still looks doubtful.

"For Leslie," Ann adds, and, "Why are you making this so hard?"

Mark scratches his neck. Ann grabs his elbow and twists. "Don't *do* that, you'll just make it worse."

He shoots her a glance, narrow-eyed and angry. At least he's feeling something.

"Fine, how about this?" He flips through a large spiral-bound agenda. "We meet with the Indians tomorrow. Talk to them, let them feel included in the consultation process, apologize on Leslie's behalf. Best case scenario, that'll do it."

"And worst?"

He looks up at her though his lashes. "Worst case, they find out we didn't do an environmental impact study and they file a motion to stop the development."

"And why didn't you --"

Mark grimaces. "Grandfathered in the studies the condo developer did. Cheaper that way, almost as good, nothing to worry about."

"Not to mention pretty *sleazy*," Ann points out.

"Yeah, well. What're you gonna do?"

"Why would they even care about the study?"

Mark scrubs his hand through his hair. "Archeological evaluation's usually part of the whole dealie. It's when you make sure you're not disinterring Sacajawea's mom or Pontiac's favorite peace pipe, all that jazz."

Stunned, not trusting herself to speak, Ann just stares at him.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Mark presses his hands on his blotter and studies his knuckles. "Frankly, I don't usually..."

He squints into the distance over her shoulder, looking for all the world like he's trying to read messages in clouds.

"Care," he says. "Don't usually care."

*

That's what Leslie does, though. Somehow, she's gotten them all to care about her park. It's never going to happen, but no one's going to say that. They all keep acting like it will, because Leslie believes it will.

Aside from paying her (all too high, always badly appraised) property taxes and water bills, Ann never cared about city government one way or the other. All politicians were egotists, all civil servants were dull-witted bureaucrats with red-tape fetishes.

Leslie believes otherwise. She's got them all believing different.

*

That evening, Leslie texts Ann three times before Ann gets a chance to call her back. "Could you *tell* me your report, maybe? Or email it to me?"

"Did you get the pictures?"

"No," Ann says. Her phone's too old. "Leslie, could --"

"I don't have much time," Leslie says. She does, in fact, sound harried. "I managed to give the documentary guys the slip yesterday but I think I'm being tailed."

"You're not being tailed. They're not --" Ann bites her lip. The documentary's grant covers work at City Hall and within the Pawnee city limits only. The crew's too cash-strapped to go to *Milwaukee*, let alone tail Leslie across the upper Midwest. "Where are you, anyway?"

"If you'd read my report --"

"Do you want me to read your report or do you want to talk to me?"

That comes out sounding much more impatient than Ann meant to. She squeezes shut her eyes and hopes Leslie won't freak out.

Leslie is quiet for a long time. In the background, it sounds like water moving. Waves lapping, maybe.

"I like talking to you," Leslie says finally. Her voice is small.

"I like it, too," Ann says. "Now. How's your trip?"

"It's revelatory! Today I travelled south, to the storied Mitchell Plains and uplands of southern Indiana. This area features what is known as Karst topography, which Wikipedia defines as bedrock composed of mainly limestone and other water-soluble materials. Both sinkholes and coal mines may be found in this area."

Ann nods along. When Leslie pauses for breath, she puts in, "So you went to some coal mines?"

"The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, acting on the advice of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service -- that's a federal agency, you know -- has closed all caves and mines until 2010," Leslie says. Her voice grows stronger with each fact until she sounds like her old self again. "White nose disease is *decimating* the bat populations on the eastern seaboard and the last thing we need is for that to happen here."

"Yeah," Ann says, "gotta save the bats."

"I attempted to gain entry on grounds of official city business, of course."

Of course, Ann wants to say. She doesn't; Leslie's sensitive enough these days and teasing won't help anything right now. "That didn't go over too well, did it?"

"No. How'd you know?" Leslie says. "They didn't call the office, did they?"

"No, but about that --"

Leslie whistles through her teeth. "Oh, wow, Ann, you're breaking up." She whistles again, the sound moving in and out; she's probably moving the phone around to mimic bad reception. "TTYL! Gotta go!"

*

The afternoon of the meeting with the Wamapoke, Ann returns to the nurse's station with her arms full of charts. She has too much on her mind, work and Leslie alike, to notice that someone is waiting for her.

When Lu points out the visitor, Ann wants to drop every chart and run in the direction she came from.

Marlene Griggs-Knope is built like a tank but looks twice as mean. Ann doesn't trust the woman one bit. She is the only person capable of making Leslie act unethically. She's mastered the stinkeye to a degree Ann had never dreamed possible.

And she makes small talk about as charmingly as Lenin might have, post-mummification.

"...so there's a lovely young man I think you'd be *perfect* with," Marlene concludes. She has a grip on Ann's forearm that could bend steel. "Why don't the two of you get together?"

Ann tries to step away but can't. "I'm not looking."

"You did break up with the musician, didn't you?"

For some reason, it feels imperative that she not look Marlene directly in the eye. "How did you know that? Did Leslie tell you that?"

Marlene laughs like a robot playing a tin flute, five notes in perfect, humorless succession. "Oh, *Leslie*. Leslie can't be relied on for anything."

Way to talk about your only kid. Ann's cheeks are suddenly hot. "I don't think that's fair --"

"I should know." She pats Ann's hand firmly. "So believe me when I tell you, she is unreliable. Not exactly the steady sort. Fickle, prone to flights of fancy."

It has been a long time since Ann was talked to like this -- since high school, probably, that everything was said in code and warnings were issued that sounded friendly until you really listened.

"I have to go," Ann says and tries one more time to get her arm out of Marlene's grasp. "Thanks for the blind date, but I'm really not on the market."

"Sure you are," Marlene says. If she says you are, Ann thinks, you must be. That's probably how Leslie's disastrous tête-à-tête with the senior citizen happened, too. "I'll be in touch."

"You don't have my number, do you?"

Marlene winks as she releases Ann's arm. "Oh, I have my ways."

That sounds just like something Leslie would say.

The difference isn't that, for instance, Marlene believes it and Leslie doesn't. The difference is that Marlene *does* have her ways.

About that, Ann has no doubts whatsoever.

*

Even an hour later, as she's pulling into the visitor's lot as City Hall, she can't shake the weird, chilled feeling that Marlene left in her wake.

Ann just got warned away from Leslie. That's what happened, right? It doesn't make any sense, but that's what happened.

It doesn't feel right to be sitting around this conference table again, maps of the pit and assorted documents spread all around, without Leslie.

She says as much to Mark, but he shrugs it off.

"This'll probably be a lot easier without her," he says.

"Maybe," Ann admits.

"What, still no Knope? We're Leslieless? Sans Knope?" Tom collapses into the biggest, comfiest chair at the head of the table and spins it around. "God, what're we going to do for shits and giggles?"

Mark laughs and Tom guffaws. Even April's lip twitches, but Ann can't join in.

She doesn't belong here; without Leslie, there's no reassurance on that score. The city manager reminds her of every high-level executive she's come across at the hospital: his friendliness is brusque and false, deployed as strategically as a sniper sighting a shot.

Chuck "Just Call Me" Dudley looks like a nice guy. An anthropology professor somewhere in Kansas, he looks the part, from his round glasses to the creased corduroy blazer, too long in the sleeves, over his open-collared plaid shirt.

Tom Haverford seems to have appointed himself chair of the meeting. He gives the city manager a long, obsequious introduction and only cedes the floor when Mark leans forward and says, "So, Chuck. What did you want to discuss?"

Tom pushes away from the table dramatically, raising his hands as if in surrender. "Planning goes for the touchdown, all right."

They snipe back and forth; the manager even gets in on it, all jovial and blustery. Ann can hear Leslie muttering, "Boys' Club. Bo-oys. Club."

Eventually, Dudley gets to make his presentation. He opens with a joke about Navajo courtship rituals that makes him snort and wheeze with laughter. Everyone else smiles politely.

He's a *goof*, Ann realizes. That's pretty awesome.

He summarizes the Wamapoke's history in the area, their relationships with the other Algonquin tribes and participation in Tecumseh's War, the betrayal of treaties by William Henry Harrison and other early state boosters. It's clear that he has given this talk many times; his voice is soft but carries, and the mildness of his tone belies the awful content of his words.

"Once Indiana became a state --"

"-- in 1816," Tom puts in, bizarrely.

Dudley nods. "-- and the first Treaty of Chicago --" He pauses, like any good teacher, but no one says anything. None of them have heard of it; if they ever had, they've long forgotten. "Anyway, that's when resettlement started."

"Go west, young man!" the city manager says and grins, like he should get a gold star.

Wincing, Dudley fixes his glasses. "Not quite. You've heard of the Cherokee Trail of Tears? Our cousins the Potawatomi had something called the Trail of Death."

"Oh, God," Ann says.

"Yeah." Dudley taps the state map on the wall behind him, tracing the route across the Mississippi. "Ours was pretty bad. The Trail of Ghosts, it's called."

Once the presentation's over, she watches everyone's attention shift. Like Jell-O around a spoon, it slides back over Dudley, ignores him all over again. She doubts they really listened in the first place.

Same as it ever was, really. Whenever there was a problem -- at school, with Girl Scouts or soccer league -- her mother sent her father to deal with it. The chances were just much better that the white guy would get listened to. He never finished his GED and her mom had a social work degree, but none of that mattered.

So the meeting listened to Dudley and then went back to normal. They might as well have flipped a sign from open to closed.

She doesn't bother saying anything. Mark and the manager are trading zoning codes while Tom tries to talk over them and get the manager's attention. Failing that, he starts regaling April with facts about local industry. Dudley sits slightly apart, head tilted, listening.

"Sorry," Ann says when their eyes meet. That sounds incredibly stupid and presumptuous, so she adds, "I -- I wanted to apologize for Leslie. For her absence."

When he smiles, it makes him look all of ten years old. "No worries. She's the Parks gal?"

Ann nods slowly and smiles back. "Among other things."

After the meeting winds down, she walks with him back to the parking lot. As they pass the mural depicting Chief Wamapoke's execution, she wonders how Leslie would deal with Dudley. The lie is on the wall; the truth is right here in the flesh. People survive, one way or another, sometimes through what they leave behind, others in the flesh.

It's hard to believe that Dudley and the rest of the Wamapoke could ever be considered a threat. *This* is the bogeyman who drove Leslie to hit the road to play professional hooky?

It's both ridiculous and a real shame. Dudley and Leslie would like each other a lot. They're both pretty goofy, they're both outsiders.

"Are you sticking around here or --?" Ann asks when they reach her car. Clouds have moved in since she arrived, though of course the temperature hasn't dropped. It looks like they're facing another thunderstorm that just wrings more humidity out of the air.

"Couple days," Dudley says. "Get to go to a summer camp tomorrow and do my best to pretend dreamcatchers are authentic."

Ann laughs and he gives her that goony grin again. When she offers him her number, he looks both surprised and pleased.

Something falls and closes inside her chest, like blast doors or a bank vault. Surprised at the strength of her reaction, she wants to say, no, nothing like that, wave her arms, shoo him away.

Not because of anything he did or said. She just knows he's going to ask her out and that is the last thing she wants. Not with anyone.

Well, hardly anyone.

*

It's while doing some routine paperwork at the start of her shift that Ann gets some of her best thinking done. Some people like the shower or the commute, but she prefers the focus on forms and constant noise of the hospital. The meeting has been at the back of her mind all day, the way she will half-remember a dream, the thought gauzy and pale.

She double-checks the follow-up regimen that a new attending has specified for an older mother.

"That's what I wrote, isn't it?" the doctor asks.

"Sure," Ann says. "But you should know that --"

"Just follow the instructions."

Ann doesn't fume so much as deflate. She'd *expected* the doctor to brush her off, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck to be ignored.

Ann's shaking her pen, urging the last drops of ink to last, when she realizes something pretty important.

Leslie's actually the only person to *listen* to her. Not all the time, but much more than anyone else. Andy never did, and the doctors at work don't have to.

She's not sitting around wailing and moaning about this. It's not even something she ever thought about, one way or the other, until now.

Now, she can't stop thinking about it.

*

She doesn't hear from Leslie that night. On her way home in the morning, she leaves a message, but it sounds weird and stilted. Like a preteen asking to speak with her new crush.

Ann grimaces into the rear-view mirror.

*

When Leslie calls the next evening, Ann clocks out for her break and sits in the hospital's garden. The sky is still stained with light, but it is fading fast, lavender to pewter, and the clouds are so high they look painted-on.

She tells Leslie about the meeting with the city manager and Chuck Dudley. She feels obliged -- Leslie prizes thoroughness and honesty equally, after all -- to include the worst-case scenario that Mark described. "...so, I mean, it's possible that they could get the site back."

As soon as she says that, she knows she shouldn't have. Leslie's intake of breath is sharp and whistling.

"What? They can't have it back! They've got all that land in Oklahoma or wherever --"

"Kansas," Ann says. "Their reservation's in --"

"-- Kansas. What do they want with our pit?"

"Um, eww?" Ann knows she heard that right, but she doesn't want to believe it.

"Yeah, yeah, we all know the pit's disgusting."

"No, you." Ann raises her voice. "Eww to *you*. That's just --. Eww."

Leslie snorts. "Impressive vocabulary, there."

She really can get mean as a cornered raccoon. Ann takes several Lamaze breaths and rolls her shoulders until she can speak. "You did not seriously just say the Wamapoke can't have your pit. Leslie, come on."

"*Our* pit. I said, our pit."

"No. Eww, god --" Ann slumps down. "God, that's even worse."

"I don't know what you're getting so upset about," Leslie says. Snatches of country music play in the background. "You're the one who came to me, you're the one who demanded that the city do something about your godawful ugly pit, and now --"

That's right, let's start blaming each other. Ann digs her toes into the cold gravel. "Leslie, take a breath."

"Why? I can't talk then. I'm fine."

"Listen to yourself," Ann says. She props her forehead in the palm of her hand and closes her eyes. "The pit could be a sacred site for the Wamapoke. That's way more important than --" Frustrated, she kicks at the gravel. "You know."

There is a long pause. The music has switched to a woman's voice. The crickets have gone quiet, but a truck's horn, out on the highway, is going endlessly.

Finally, Leslie says, "Thank you for this conversation. I think we really made some headway tonight."

That's how she closes each subcommittee meeting. Ann has overheard her say it on the phone, too, and, once, to her mother.

"Leslie, I didn't mean --"

"Best to you and yours," Leslie adds in the same robotic deadpan.

Ann only knows that Leslie has hung up when her phone's screen dims. She kicks the gravel again. Pebbles lodge in the back of her clogs.

*

She doesn't sleep when she gets home. Instead, she cleans the bathroom, kitchen, and her bedroom within an inch of their lives. Andy sticks his head into the bathroom, sees her on her knees with a sponge and bottle of Ajax, and just backs away, the way one would avoid engaging a bear.

She falls asleep on the stripped mattress, still wearing her plastic gloves, and doesn't stir until Leslie calls again. She wakes with a start, fully conscious, ready to ask just what the hell Leslie thinks she's pulling with the Wamapoke.

Before she can say anything, Leslie asks, "How did they even find out about the pit in the first place?"

Ann switches the phone to her other ear. "Hello to you, too."

Leslie speaks more quickly, worried, Ann suspects, that she'll be interrupted. "What about the condos? Why do the Indians hate parks but love condos?"

"They don't hate parks, Leslie."

Leslie's snort sounds wet and nasal. "Could've fooled me. Now, please answer the question."

So they're still pretending that this is merely subcommittee business. Ann tilts her head back and closes her eyes. "They didn't know about the condo development."

"Huh. Unlikely. But the park?"

"They read the article. Someone read the article --"

"Damn that freedom of the press," Leslie mutters. She sounds genuinely embittered. She probably *is*. "How many great leaders has it entangled and ruined?"

Neither of them says anything. Ann realizes, eventually, that Leslie was not posing that question rhetorically.

"I don't know. A lot?"

"More than we'll ever know," Leslie says mournfully. "More than we can dream. But not in dreams. In nightmares."

Is it possible to get emotional whiplash? Leslie makes her suspect that it's very much within the realm of possibility. One moment, Ann would like to throttle her (or flee in fear), and the next, like right now, she'd just like to hug the woman.

Leslie sniffles hard enough that Ann might, with a stranger, suspect sinusitis.

She can imagine, quite readily, how red the edges of Leslie's nostrils are, from too much blowing and crying, how bright her eyes must be with tears, even the flat little dent she gets in her chin when she clenches her teeth.

"Leslie," Ann starts to say, but then she's got nothing. "Leslie. It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"You don't know that!" Leslie blows her nose and Ann has to hold the phone away from her ear for the duration. After a shaky intake of breath, she adds, in an entirely different tone, "Of course everything's going to be okay. I don't know why you think --"

"Leslie." Ann uses the firm voice she uses with crying, flailing kids at vaccination time. She repeats herself, more loudly. "Leslie."

"What?"

"Don't worry. Please?"

"I wish I could promise you that," Leslie says. Her voice is a sigh, fretful and attenuated. "I wish I could give you a lot of things."

Ann wishes they were next to each other. She doesn't know what to say, but Leslie needs to see that Ann is listening.

*

When Chuck Dudley calls her, Ann lets it go to voice mail. She doesn't know what else to do.

*

She has spent the better part of week figuring out what's bugging Leslie and why. No one else, not even Mark, seems to have even noticed that Leslie was acting extra-strangely.

Who'd notice if Ann started acting out?

That kind of question is pointless.

No one would notice. No one except Leslie.

One of the first things she learned in nursing school was to deal with what's in front of her. Doctors obsess over diagnosis, about why and how someone got sick, but nurses don't look back. Nurses need to think more about the present: how they're going to help, how to work with the patient now that she's already here.

*

"Think it went real well," Mark says about the meeting. She ran into him as she was leaving the bar after Andy's sister's baby shower. It didn't take much for him to persuade her to come back in for a beer. Beer for her, ginger ale for him, actually, thanks to all the antibiotics he's on. "City manager's happy, Indians're placated, everything's okay."

Ann traces the condensation on the side of her bottle. "Is Leslie going to be okay?"

"Leslie's Leslie," Mark says. "Who can say?"

He has a point. Ann shrugs.

When he leans over, hand on the back of her chair, she pulls away from the table. Mark says, "Let Leslie worry about Leslie, okay?"

"Ugh." Ann stands up, a little unsteadily. "I'm going to get going."

*

So she's protective around Leslie, of Leslie.

Feeling protective, though, doesn't mean very much, not where Ann's concerned. She's protective of a lot of things -- her patients, the babies in NICU, Andy's vague rockstar ambitions, the nest of robins in her garage.

Whatever's going on here, she's feeling more than just *protective* of Leslie.

She didn't notice until Leslie left, and even then, it took her a while. But there's a sensitivity, like ozone after a rainstorm, that runs over her pores when Leslie's around.

She had just chalked it up to Leslie being both irritating and exciting, but it's more than that.

Now that Andy's gone, she savors the wide bed she has to herself. All the same, she also misses the presence, the warmth, of someone else. Not Andy; it's a more general nostalgia for the way familiarity slides into novelty, how bodies learn to fit together.

*

"Guess where I am?"

Ann is in the backyard, picking up the table and chairs blown over by the last thunderstorm. She tucks the phone between her shoulder and cheek and says, "I give up."

"The last time we spoke, I was standing on the glistening banks of Patoka Lake --"

"Leslie," Ann says and sits sideways in the nearest chair. "I wanted to talk to you --"

"-- but the lure of Karst topography proved too strong to resist," Leslie continues. "I realized that if the state of Indiana wanted to prevent me from exploring caves and mines, to retard the honest progress of fact-finding in the public interest, then so be it. I would press on. I would, in fact, visit the sinkhole capital of the continental United States."

Ann brings her knee up to her chin and wraps her arms around her leg. "I don't know where that is."

"Palmyra, Pennsylvania, dummy."

"Oh." Ann frowns and swallows. "I -- huh."

"It's very exciting, I agree," Leslie says. "I'll tell you more after I get back from spelunking."

"But I needed to talk --"

"Gotta go! More later!"

Ann finds herself smiling the rest of the day. She feels goofy, a little light, almost unaccountably *happy*.

*

She should probably talk to someone about this. About Leslie.

Thing is, Leslie's just about her only friend at this point. She's lost touch with people from college; she never managed to get closer than study-buddies with anyone in nursing school.

There's Charles at work, and Lu, but she can't imagine approaching either of them with this sort of problem. Lu's pretty religious, for one thing. Even if she weren't, there's a big difference between snarking with them about residents and patients and -- what she needs now. Sapphic love-affair advice, or whatever.

She has to laugh, then remembers Andy dozing out on the couch, and covers her mouth.

Other than Leslie, the people she talks to most are the documentary guys. And she doesn't talk *to* them so much as *at* their camera. Bob and Ray? Rob and Ray? She isn't even sure of their names.

Nor is this the kind of subject that she needs filmed for posterity, not while she's still working things out. What if she confesses to the camera and, later, it all goes to hell? She shouldn't care about looking like a fool, but she's only human.

Furthermore, discretion is probably best, if only out of sensitivity for Leslie's political ambitions.

At *that* thought -- wherever it came from, she doesn't even want to know -- Ann is on her feet, raking her hand through her hair and half-giggling, half-crying.

She's gone off the deep end. Hell, she's *jumping in*.

*

Our pit, Leslie had said.

For a lot of reasons, that wasn't right. Ann doesn't mind being included in the first person. That wasn't the issue. What was wrong was that the pit isn't theirs. It isn't anyone's.

She thinks of Chuck Dudley passing the murals. Their bad proportions and hideous expressions, stiff limbs and horrific gore fade before his goofy smile, the dimple in one cheek, sunlight reflecting off his smudged glasses. The past, like the truth, isn't ever gone, no matter how much you paint over it and try to ignore it.

The pit is bigger than any of them. Like a hatch on Lost or something, it bored right down into the heart of their secrets and only raised more questions.

Ann kicks a clump of dirt into the pit. When it hits bottom, it breaks apart and goes still. She dials Dudley's number.

"Make the city do the environmental study," she tells his voice mail.

*

She hasn't taken a road trip since college, when she drove twenty hours to Newcastle, Wyoming for her grandfather's funeral. She doesn't pack a case of Diet Cherry Coke and three bags of Doritos this time, however. Nor does she spend the drive alternately arguing with her mother and crying.

She just drives. There's a lightness inside her skin, something akin to elation, but quieter, the sense of a decision made and acted upon. It has been too long since she felt like this.

Moving east along the interstate, she watches the sky strengthen from early morning dusk into high-noon blazes, then mellow back down. She has made good time, just eleven hours, from Pawnee to Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Pretending that she's in Pawnee, she calls Leslie from a rest stop outside Hershey. Leslie is staying at the Forty-One Winks Motel in Annville.

"Get it?" Leslie says. She sounds -- proud. Proud and hopeful.

Touched, Ann smiles. "Good one."

Leslie giggles like a little kid.

*

"You need to come back," she tells Leslie.

She repeats this simple fact throughout dinner, over mozzarella sticks through to Mississippi Mud chocolate pie, past one more cocktail in the motel bar. The bar is dark, greasy with decades of smoke and loneliness congealing in the rarely-scrubbed corners, but their drinks are bright as torches.

Leslie takes a sip and the umbrella stuck in three cherries pokes her in the eye. When she has rubbed the tears away, she grabs Ann's hand. "Let's go swimming instead!"

As diligent as Ann can be, Leslie's stubborn ability to ignore what she doesn't like is nearly godlike. She excels at describing, even occasionally creating (however briefly), her own reality. The reality she wants, where Flagarbor Day *is* celebrated with an exquisite garden party, where a mid-level political appointee who got the job thanks to her mother's scheming *does* wield as much influence as Nancy Pelosi with all the grace of Jackie O., always belongs to a finer, prettier world.

It's all too easy to laugh at her for this talent, whether cruelly like Tom Haverford or bemusedly like Mark. It's a lot harder to join her, to try to *make* that better world.

Ann hasn't daydreamed in years; she was always an eminently practical person, even as a child. Since meeting Leslie, however, she feels a lot more ready to give it a try.

*

Leslie doesn't have a swimming suit. Ann realizes that "let's go swimming" actually means "you go swimming and I'll watch". Leslie curls up on a sagging deck chair, shoes off, her toes wiggling in the dark caps of her hose.

Ann luxuriates in the cool water, just floating. She closes her eyes and lets the driving aches unkink and loosen, before turning over and doing three slow laps. She isn't that drunk, but the buzz mixes sweetly with the motion, lulling her.

They didn't bring any towels with them, but the night is breezy. Ann sits sideways on another chair and wrings the water out of her hair.

"You need to come back," she says. "We need to talk about the pit."

"It's the Indian guy, isn't it? He got to you! Sneaky conniving --" Leslie just runs out of breath and slumps against the chair, waving one hand weakly. "What a jerk."

Ann swallows against the anger burning up her throat. She didn't come here to fight, no matter how hard Leslie's going to try and provoke her.

Still, she'd really like to yell.

Instead, she looks down at her lap and lets the words come.

"Look, I'm afraid, too," Ann says. "I know why you ran away. But if you lose the pit, that doesn't automatically mean you'll lose...anything else. Me, Mark, whatever."

Leslie's hair covers her face. Ann resists the urge to brush it back and make Leslie look at her.

"But if you don't come back," Ann continues, even more softly, "you might lose your job. Then you really would lose the pit."

Leslie inhales sharply as she looks up.

She looks past Ann, profile sharp against the foggy dark. Her eyes narrow at the horizon where headlights pulse along the interstate.

"I love my job," Leslie says.

"I know you do."

Now that Ann is finally saying everything she has to say, everything she practiced over 600 miles, time is passing too fast. Points and arguments that she thought would take hours to make just hang in the air, then flicker out.

She tastes chlorine in her mouth, feels her hands fidget in her lap.

"You need to stop badmouthing the Wamapoke. This isn't 1820," Ann says, following Leslie's gaze. "They weren't the bad guys then, either."

Leslie's mouth opens, but there is quite a pause before she says anything. "I beg your pardon. The murals alone --"

"Leslie." Ann grabs Leslie's hand and squeezes. "Think, okay? Just...*think* about what you're saying. You're better than this."

"Are you Indian or something?" Leslie asks, voice sulky.

"No, I --" Ann coughs to cover her flash of anger. "I just -- can't be with, can't be friends with someone who says such shitty things."

Of all people, Leslie should understand that sympathy goes beyond who you are and who's like you. She's the self-proclaimed outsider, after all.

Leslie's hair lifts in the breeze; her fingers curl around Ann's. The pool's water throws kite-shaped lights over their faces.

"Yes," Leslie says eventually. "You're right."

"Am I right because I'm right?" Ann asks, because she knows better now. She needs to make sure. "Or just because I'm me?"

Tilting her head, Leslie smiles a little as she looks at Ann. Her hand turns in Ann's, warm as an organ. "A little of both."

"Okay." Nodding, Ann exhales until her lungs are almost empty. "Okay. That's -- that's a start. Good."

These chairs aren't the most comfortable; the plastic strips on the seat stick to her thighs and bite into the back of her knees. Ann laces her fingers through Leslie's. Her hair is drying in wisps that lift in the breeze and tickle her cheeks. Ann doesn't want to move, though. Maybe she's worried about spooking Leslie.

Or herself. Maybe both.

"What're you scared of?"

Leslie's question is so quiet that Ann nearly misses it.

"Me?" Ann tries to laugh. "What are you talking about?"

Leslie looks at her, straight on, with wide guileless eyes and mouth set in a stubborn line. There are faint wrinkles around her eyes, descending from her nose. She looks tired and brave, shaken up and determined. Her eyes are the color of a new bruise.

"You said," Leslie says and coughs. She still sounds hoarse when she adds, "Before, you said 'I'm scared, too' but you don't have anything to be scared about."

Ann frowns; more than anything, that sounded like an accusation.

"I think you'd make a great First Lady," Leslie continues, her eyes just as wide and dark as earlier. "You're beautiful, and gracious, and kind. Like Lady Di."

"Oh," Ann says. Her skin prickles with goosebumps despite the night's warmth. "Oh, wow."

She's never seen Leslie look so fragile. The bones beneath her skin seem as breakable as balsa wood.

Leslie opens her mouth again, but Ann drags her chair closer, shushing her.

"I --" She doesn't want to crush Leslie's hand. The last week has been awful, awful and crazy. She didn't understand until she knocked on Leslie's motel-room door just how much she *missed* her. "I'm afraid of -- you not being here."

Leslie tilts her head.

"I think -- like, I need you. In my -- whatever. In my life."

Leslie laughs, low and throaty. The sound is disconcertingly kind of sexy. "I'm a civil servant, Ann. Everyone needs me in their life."

Ann's free hand glows a little as she reaches up and brushes the hair back off Leslie's forehead. She cups the side of Leslie's neck; her thumb moves back and forth along Leslie's jaw. "Like this, though?"

Leslie closes her eyes. "Probably not, no."

"Good," Ann says.

"You never know, though." Leslie's eyes fly open as she grins at Ann. Ann gets closer. This close, their heads tipped together, Leslie's breath breaks softly against Ann's cheek when she speaks. "You never know. I have to be there for --"

Ann kisses her openmouthed, feeling the words vibrate against her tongue. Leslie's lips are sweet from her cocktail and root beer lip gloss. She laughs into the kiss and bumps their noses together, scooting closer. Her hand closes in the wet tangle of Ann's hair.

*

Ann returns her rental car in Harrisburg, shaking off Leslie's offer to split the penalty fee as she had, earlier, convinced Leslie to drop her driving convoy idea.

On the drive back to Pawnee, they stop at two more pits. The impact crater in Defiance, Ohio is far less impressive than advertised. It's about the size of a large puddle and not much deeper. Ann starts to wonder where the dividing line occurs between "hole" and "pit", but then Leslie returns to the car. She has two bottles of Pepsi and a carton of chocolate milk and wants to make what she calls "melted floats".

The open-pit mine outside Pokagon (not Pokemon, no matter how many times Leslie insists), Michigan, is a lot more notable than the meteor site. It's also depressing as hell.

"Nasty," Ann says under her breath.

Leslie gazes out over the scarred earth, gouged open and clawed empty. "Just the circle of life," she says, almost reverently. "If gravel was alive. And garden centers were nursery schools..."

She trails off and catches Ann looking at her.

"Okay, it is pretty nasty," she says.

Ann knocks their shoulders together and grasps Leslie's hand briefly. "Told you so."

"Yes, you did." Leslie smiles up at her. For a moment, Ann feels 150 feet tall and grand as the Statue of Liberty.

Lady Liberty never grinned back, though, nor noogied your head. Ann does both until Leslie laughs so hard she nearly pees herself.

*

"In point of fact, Harvey Milk was the *third* lesbian or gay homosexual elected to public office in these United States," Leslie tells the documentary crew.

Ann clears her throat gently. "He, um. He wasn't a lesbian."

Leslie shakes her head. "We shall see, we shall see. What *I* want to talk about today is Kathy Kozachenko and Elaine Noble, the sisters who preceded him. Ladies first, am I right? Or --" She winks saucily as she leans into the camera. "Am I right?"

The doc guys have hit the mother lode. Small-city parks management has *nothing* as a topic compared to a lesbian's fight for respect, recognition, and revitalizing of public works. They're talking about the festival circuit, possibly more grant money. Maybe even enough to rent a room and stop bunking down in their van.

Leslie holds up a paperback book she just happens to have in her lap: The Naked Civil Servant. Ann bought it for her as a joke, but it has become Leslie's bible.

"Annie, scoot into the shot. Don't be shy."

Ann slides down the couch, her arm around Leslie's shoulders as they lean in, framing the book. Leslie beams toothily at the camera while Ann just tries to remember to smile.

"Watch out world!" Leslie crows as she shakes the book for emphasis and smooches Ann's cheek wetly. "Here we are!"

Ann isn't Leslie's wife. She's something better, but there isn't a word for how she feels, who she's becoming, not yet.

Just give them some time to dream one up.

[end]