Re: Parks and Recreation
anonymous
June 11 2011, 02:42:18 UTC
After that it’s war.
April misorders his lunch for a week straight. Ben eats every single meal he gets and thanks her for the variety.
She purposely drops five phone-calls in one day. He has Kathleen the grandmotherly executive-assistant for the Budget Director ‘let’ April shadow her for three afternoons until she ‘gets the hang of it’. (There is something about sweet, elderly women that is apparently April’s kryptonite. He files that away for later and doesn’t notice that he’s starting to devote maybe more attention to this thing than is healthy).
She ‘forgets’ to tell him Chris rescheduled a seven am meeting. He ‘forgets’ to tell her when Chris leaves early for the weekend and says she can take off too if she wants.
Then one afternoon he has to legitimately give her a rush set of edits he doesn’t have time to do himself before he heads into the prep meeting for Snerling (no games, no ulterior motive).
April follows him back into his office and throws the stack of papers down on his desk, crosses her arms over her chest.
“I don’t know why you gave me this. We both know I’m not going to do it.”
Ben just stares at her for a second in disbelief. “It’s your job.”
She shrugs. “So? Maybe you should fire me.”
And there’s something about it, about the insolence of it, and the pretense, and supposed lack of caring. He has never met anyone so fucking determined to ruin their life before it’s even begun, to completely and utterly screw up their future just out of sheer obstinacy. Because there’s a mind at work somewhere under that apathy, an insane, brilliant, completely terrifying mind that’s copied his keys and locked him out of his computer and basically made his life a living hell, but done it all with a kind of panache you’ve just got to salute.
She could be something, could probably be anything she wanted, and he cannot tell you what he would have given to have still had those kind of options at the age of twenty-one. And here she is, standing in his office, slumped against his wall and trying to throw all of hers away. And he can take everything else, can take the caustic and sometimes sexually-inappropriate post-its inside his copies of reports, can take the liverworst sandwiches and split-pea soup. He can even take having to call IT and discovering his login has been changed to ‘micropenis’ (he is still trying to figure out how she pulled that one off). But he’ll be damned if he lets her get away with treating opportunities he would have killed for like garbage.
He loses it. Absolutely, fucking loses it.
“What the hell is your problem? Do you really think that you’re going to be able to get through the rest of your life like this? Because you won’t. You’ve gotten lucky because you don’t actually take responsibility for anything, but sooner or later you’re not going to have a choice and all it takes is one real screw up and everyone will turn their backs on you. Trust me you have never been that alone in your life.”
April just rolls her eyes at him like he’s an idiot. “Whatever. I hate people, anyways.”
That is the most completely bullshit response he’s ever heard. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need them.”
“Um, yes it does.”
“Fine. Then you can stay up here when we go to Snerling. Just you in this office, alone. All day. Every day. For three straight months. Take messages, file papers and not have to talk to anyone. It should be like heaven for you.”
That gets her. He knew it would. Because if she’s alone, it means he’s not here to screw with. And as best he can tell he’s at least a good five to six hours of her day, every single day. She’ll be climbing up the walls in less than forty-eight hours without him and they both know it.
April misorders his lunch for a week straight. Ben eats every single meal he gets and thanks her for the variety.
She purposely drops five phone-calls in one day. He has Kathleen the grandmotherly executive-assistant for the Budget Director ‘let’ April shadow her for three afternoons until she ‘gets the hang of it’. (There is something about sweet, elderly women that is apparently April’s kryptonite. He files that away for later and doesn’t notice that he’s starting to devote maybe more attention to this thing than is healthy).
She ‘forgets’ to tell him Chris rescheduled a seven am meeting. He ‘forgets’ to tell her when Chris leaves early for the weekend and says she can take off too if she wants.
Then one afternoon he has to legitimately give her a rush set of edits he doesn’t have time to do himself before he heads into the prep meeting for Snerling (no games, no ulterior motive).
April follows him back into his office and throws the stack of papers down on his desk, crosses her arms over her chest.
“I don’t know why you gave me this. We both know I’m not going to do it.”
Ben just stares at her for a second in disbelief. “It’s your job.”
She shrugs. “So? Maybe you should fire me.”
And there’s something about it, about the insolence of it, and the pretense, and supposed lack of caring. He has never met anyone so fucking determined to ruin their life before it’s even begun, to completely and utterly screw up their future just out of sheer obstinacy. Because there’s a mind at work somewhere under that apathy, an insane, brilliant, completely terrifying mind that’s copied his keys and locked him out of his computer and basically made his life a living hell, but done it all with a kind of panache you’ve just got to salute.
She could be something, could probably be anything she wanted, and he cannot tell you what he would have given to have still had those kind of options at the age of twenty-one. And here she is, standing in his office, slumped against his wall and trying to throw all of hers away. And he can take everything else, can take the caustic and sometimes sexually-inappropriate post-its inside his copies of reports, can take the liverworst sandwiches and split-pea soup. He can even take having to call IT and discovering his login has been changed to ‘micropenis’ (he is still trying to figure out how she pulled that one off). But he’ll be damned if he lets her get away with treating opportunities he would have killed for like garbage.
He loses it. Absolutely, fucking loses it.
“What the hell is your problem? Do you really think that you’re going to be able to get through the rest of your life like this? Because you won’t. You’ve gotten lucky because you don’t actually take responsibility for anything, but sooner or later you’re not going to have a choice and all it takes is one real screw up and everyone will turn their backs on you. Trust me you have never been that alone in your life.”
April just rolls her eyes at him like he’s an idiot. “Whatever. I hate people, anyways.”
That is the most completely bullshit response he’s ever heard. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need them.”
“Um, yes it does.”
“Fine. Then you can stay up here when we go to Snerling. Just you in this office, alone. All day. Every day. For three straight months. Take messages, file papers and not have to talk to anyone. It should be like heaven for you.”
That gets her. He knew it would. Because if she’s alone, it means he’s not here to screw with. And as best he can tell he’s at least a good five to six hours of her day, every single day. She’ll be climbing up the walls in less than forty-eight hours without him and they both know it.
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