Go Big, Go Home, Part 2/?
Title: Go Big, Go Home (Part 2/?)
Rating: PG 13 in this episode (swearing)
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes off from somewhere between "Pawnee Rangers" and "Meet and Greet" - AU from there. (The only spoilers I've read beyond this - which are pretty minimal - aren't entirely consistent with where this is going.)
Word count: about 5600
Summary: Leslie and Ben both have some work to do after they break up. Hijinks ensue. If you can say that about responsible grownups like these two.
Part One.
Thanks to rikyl and stillscape for all the help and encouragement! And to the ficathon for all the prompts, some of which might be addressed in upcoming parts. I feel the need to note that making out is part of the plan here. Just not this episode, sadly.
Comments are the best thing ever - tell me what you think!
***********************
Thwack.
Donna looks up from the reports she’s reading to see the most perfect thing she could possibly be seeing right about now. It’s a silver and gold paisley print bag from her favorite boutique in Indianapolis, which sells the only cream that Donna considers worthy of her feet. And it’s been dropped in the middle of her desk.
“You got it!” She grabs the bag, pulls out the small jars inside, and examines them with glee.
“I did.” Ben seems at least a little bit pleased with himself.
She looks up at him with mock concern. “Did you survive the trip?”
He cocks his head. “It was a bit... well, not my typical stop in Indianapolis, let’s just say that. But they were very nice to me in the store, once I found it.”
“They do know how to treat you right.”
“They do.” Huh. Donna thinks she smells something in the air. Something familiar.
She gets up from her desk, and leans in to Ben. He’s no Jean-Ralphio; he stands his ground and doesn’t exactly cringe, but damn, he looks uncomfortable, and he does lean back a bit.
“Um... what?”
Donna sniffs his neck, and then reaches out and grabs one of his hands and rubs it a bit, testing.
“Uh-huh. Thought so.”
“Good lord, what?”
Donna steps back, smiling broadly. “Relax, Bruce Wayne, it’s OK. Your secret is safe with me. You just stay in that metrosexual closet all you like, but I’ll know the truth: that you bought some of their men’s line for yourself and you liked it.” Donna pokes his chest with her index finger for emphasis, then folds her arms, satisfied.
Ben shifts a little on his feet, looks down, and chuckles sheepishly. “Well, fine, yes, I do appreciate your discretion in the matter - or Tom would never shut up about it. I did also get something for my mother’s birthday, so thank you for the recommendation.” He looks up again and smiles.
“Well, way to treat yourself.” Donna is smiling back at him. It’s good to see that boy feeling happier, even for just a moment.
Just then, Leslie walked back into the office. Aaaaand the moment’s over.
“Oh, hey.” Even she doesn’t normally smile that brightly just seeing people she works with.
“Hey.” Ben’s smile, on the other hand, fades to something just barely polite.
“So, what are you doing here? What’s going on? What’s up? What’s happening? Ooh, what’s in the fancy bag? Who got something fancy? Is it somebody’s birthday? Donna, I couldn’t have missed your birthday - I must have you programmed into my early-alert system. Where did this bag come from?” Leslie sounds like she’s had extra sugar in her mochaccino this morning. Which, sure, is likely, but only part of the story.
These two. “Well, Ben here was in Indianapolis the other day, and, because he is an extremely classy individual,” she shoots Ben an appreciative look, “he brought me back something from my favorite shop there.”
Ben is shuffling backwards, “Yeah, well, I really should get going.”
“Well, that’s so nice of him, how nice of you, Ben!” Leslie seems to consider for a moment, making that thinking face with her brow furrowed. “Uh, what took you to Indianapolis? Did Chris send you for something?”
“Um, no, it was not. Not city business. Something personal. I took a personal day. That’s why I had time to go shopping.”
“Ah. Good. OK.” Donna makes a mental note to play poker with Leslie sometime. It would be a very lucrative evening. She must not have been paying these two any attention at all to miss what was going on with them. Seriously, they are not subtle.
“Well, uh... I hope it was personally... pleasant!” Leslie comes up with, finally.
“Yes, thanks. Well, OK, I’ll be going. Enjoy the... stuff, Donna.”
“Oh, I will. Don’t be worrying about that. You too.” Ben glares at her - at least he’s distracted from his flustering, though - and finally makes his escape.
Leslie seems stuck at Donna’s desk. She’s got one finger on the bag, tracing the embossed paisley swirls, clearly unaware she’s doing any such thing. “Wow, so you guys have been hanging out lately, huh, that’s good, I guess, because he doesn’t know that many people in Pawnee yet, at least, I assume he doesn’t, I don’t really know, so that’s nice of you, I guess you have found something in common, that’s great, awesome.”
“Sure, we’re hanging out sometimes. He’s a peach.”
“A what?” Leslie’s head snaps up.
“A peach. A nice guy. I mean, I’m not interested in him for myself, but hanging out with him is like having a great boyfriend on speed-dial, you know? Nice guys are hard to find.”
“Yeah, I know.” Donna looks at Leslie. Leslie is looking at the bag again.
“This is so totally you, Donna.”
“It really, really is.” Donna contemplates the bag herself, looks back up at Leslie, who doesn’t meet her eye.
This is a different kind of moment.
“OK, back to work!” Leslie heads into her office, shuts the door, and sits at her desk. She puts her hands on the keyboard, and looks at her computer, but Donna doesn’t see her actually type anything for a good long while.
Donna shakes her head.
***********************
Ben blinks, wonders what he’s looking at, and then realizes he’s been staring at the same set of Public Works capital expenditure figures for a few moments now without processing anything about them. He waggles his pen for a moment, then sighs, tossing it aside, and rubs his forehead. He stands and walks a few steps to stand in front of the framed map of Pawnee on his wall.
No, that’s not enough. He needs more detail. He goes back to his computer, and pulls up Google Maps. What he needs is a satellite view; just zoomed in enough to see the size of the buildings.
~~~~
“If you think about the past few years, what have you really enjoyed the most? What has gotten you up in the morning actually wanting to go to work?”
That’s a touchier question than James realizes. Because, for a while, recently, the answer was “who”, not “what.”
Ben has driven up to Indianapolis to see a friend of his, someone he worked with years ago in a particularly cursed little town in northern Indiana. James has about ten years on Ben, and he has a quiet focus and insight that Ben has always appreciated. He’s one of the very few people Ben has ever talked with about being mayor; about actually being mayor, and what went wrong, rather than just the excitement of getting elected, or the epically crappy aftermath, which is what anybody else has focused on. It’s been months since they saw each other face to face - since before Ben took the job in Pawnee.
“Well, I always used to like the auditing process. Going in and getting to the bottom of things, solving the problems as quickly as I could, really having the power to make things happen, cleaning things up, doing things that really seemed critical. I didn’t mind moving around, at the time. And then lately I’ve gotten a view of what it’s like to actually see projects through, see things take root, get to,” he clears his throat, “get to know people. Get to know the community.”
Ben looks around the busy downtown cafe, full of government workers, before he continues. James has known Ben for a long time, so he takes a sip of his coffee; waits. “But the thing is, I still like making big changes, working on really hard problems. I don’t necessarily just want to do the same thing year after year. Pawnee is kind of nuts, so even regular things aren’t exactly routine, but still. So, the short answer is, I don’t really know. I’m all over the place.”
“Sounds like you still want the challenges of consulting but in a place where you get to see things through. So what you want is an opportunity that will let you do both, in an ideal world.“
“Nicely put. Yeah. If that exists.” Ben drinks some of his coffee.
“Well, look, if you want to stay in Pawnee, then you probably need to think about what institutions you have there which are big enough to give you a meaty enough challenge. And which are going through enough change to keep you interested for a while, to really dig in. Would you want to go to a smaller organization and be more senior? Be in charge?”
“I’d be open to that, yeah. But it’s not critical. What I don’t want is what I have now, in my role now. For a, uh, a few reasons. Ultimately I don’t think I’m going to grow if I keep playing this same type of support role to someone else. It’s too easy. I’ve been doing it for too long. I need to force myself out of it. And, since Chris doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, that means I have to. Chris and I have old patterns that would be too hard to break. And Chris is...”
“Chris.”
“Yup.” Ben gives a half-smile and raises his eyebrow, and they both laugh. “And, somehow, for whatever reason, now is the time that I’ve decided I need to address all this. I just, I think I need some new patterns.”
“I do know. That’s why I got off the road myself, got into something different. Which is proving to have its own challenges, but that’s a story to tell you over a beer. Look, Ben, you know as well as anyone, the thing about places the size of Pawnee, even when they're a fair size, is that they tend to be small towns at heart. Everybody who matters knows everybody else who matters. So, start with: who do you know?”
~~~~
Who does he know? He reaches for his notebook and draws quick lines to make a table. One column he labels “Places” and the other he labels “People.” He uses his mouse to navigate through the satellite view of Pawnee, pausing at all the big buildings. The county office. The hospital. The community college campus. Sweetums. Kernsten’s. The school board. A few downtown office buildings. He fills in the table where he can. The “People” column doesn’t have very many names, but he figures it’s a start.
“Ben!” Chris is in his running gear, with his headphones just about to be popped into his ears.
“What’s up?” Ben minimizes his browser window, trying to make his movement seem subtle.
“I need you to fill in for me at a meeting at the County office. You remember Cindy Miller, right? Runs HR for the County? We need to talk about some job-creation grants they want to partner with us to apply for, which we can’t approve as they stand, but it’s at the same time as my deputation to Council. And I’m sure you’d enjoy catching up with Cindy, since the two of you share a history.”
“Listen, you realize that I only ever met Cindy for that one coffee, right?”
“Right, but still. Time for you two to reconnect! I’ll forward you the meeting invite.” Chris jogs out.
Ben picks up his table again. He writes Cindy’s name down in the “People” column, in the row marked “County Government.” Chris might be deeply, deeply clueless, but Ben found he usually had other people’s best interests at heart. Cindy had struck him as smart, and plugged-in, and she hadn’t seemed to take his lack of interest personally.
~~~~
James squinted at Ben. “So, if I can be so nosy, why are you sticking with Pawnee? You’d obviously have more opportunity in Indianapolis or even Bloomington or Muncie, if it came to that. Or Chicago. And if you left town it would be easier to explain why you’re looking for a new job after less than a year in your current job, which is going to be tough.”
Ben looks down ruefully. “Yeah, I know. And, excellent question. I think I know part of the answer and don’t know part of the answer, how’s that? But yes, I’m sticking with Pawnee. Although I know how strange that may seem to you.’
“Intriguing.” James looks at Ben, smiles, and leaves it there.
~~~~
Ben looks up at the map of Pawnee on the wall again, and rubs his jaw. And then he looks back at his computer, maximizes the browser again. He types in Leslie’s address - at least, he types in just a couple of the characters and Google fills in the rest for him. He should remember to clear out his cookies from time to time. He switches to Google Streetview, looks at her house just for a moment, brow furrowed, before clicking on the X to close the browser.
And then he turns back to the Public Works document he was reviewing, shaking his head a bit to focus.
*************
Ann writes another name on the whiteboard under the category of “high school friends” and turns back to Leslie.
“Okay, so, who else?”
Leslie surveys the array of information she’s brought with her for their Saturday meeting in a conference room at City Hall. It ranges from address labels torn off last year’s Christmas cards, to a printout of of her contacts list, to a stack of her school class pictures dating back to preschool. There’s even a pile of photo albums and another of scrapbooks on the floor next to her.
The whiteboards on both walls are completely covered with Ann’s small, neat handwriting. Hundreds of names are listed under various categories; Childhood Neighbors, Current Neighbors, Former Colleagues, Nursery School Classmates, Elementary School Classmates, High School (there are multiple sub-categories here: Field Hockey, Yearbook, Model UN, Student Council, Dance Committees...), Community Center Classmates, College Friends, Members of the Public Art Commission, JJ’s Regulars, Snakeholers...
Leslie takes a deep breath and lets it out with a puff. “I don’t know, Ann, I think this might be it.”
“Are you sure? Take a good look at it first.” Ann shakes her hand and squeezes her wrist. Shakes her hand again.
Leslie looks up at “Current Colleagues” and sees a name missing. She’d been flipping through scrapbooks while Ann listed those names based on the City Hall roster, so she hadn’t noticed the absence at the start. She looks over at “Former Colleagues” and sees Mark’s name.
“Ann. Ben’s not on there, under Current Colleagues. I think we can assume he’s a supporter.” She looks down, flips a page in a scrapbook.
Ann hesitates. “Well, I didn’t really figure you would want to be asking him to actually get involved with your campaign, I mean, not actively. He’s kind of done enough, don’t you think?”
Leslie looks up again. “Oh. Yeah, maybe you’re right.” She hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before. God, right. Geeze. Right. She avoids Ann’s eye.
“Huh...” Ann has taken a few steps back and is looking back and forth at both of the whiteboards from a more or less equal distance in the middle of the room.
“What?”
“Well, just. Yeah, I left off Ben. But look at this list. I mean, Leslie, half of Pawnee is on here, and these are just the people who you think will be interested in helping on your campaign.”
“Well, I hope they will, anyhow.”
“Leslie, I’m sure they will. This is pretty amazing, though. What are they all going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s another meeting with William and Elizabeth. We need to ask some of them for campaign contributions...” Leslie screws up her face at this. She’s got to figure out how to get comfortable with that somehow...
“...but some people can help me in other ways - by putting up signs, making phone calls, organizing people to vote, planting poison ivy on Marcia Langman’s lawn... “
Ann is deadpan: “Let me do that one. And what do you want done to Doug Forbes, while I’m at it?”
Leslie giggles. “Hm, I don’t know. He does seem to love his boat more than anything else in the world.” Doug Forbes is seriously the most boring man on the planet. All he wants to do is cut taxes, and work on his boat. “Replace his boat wax with lard and see how long it takes the raccoons to swarm it?”
“Consider it done.” Ann nods decisively.
“Ann, you’re the best!” Who else would say that? Is she serious? Wait, can she actually sabotage her opponents’ lawns and boats? Is that against some rule?
Ann laughs, and then, looking bright-eyed, says, “Seriously, Leslie, I have a proposal. Put me in charge of your volunteers. I don’t know anything about getting people to give money, but I can make schedules and organize people, and if I use my nurse voice they’ll do exactly what I say. I really want this opportunity. I think I’d learn a lot, too.”
“Oh, Ann, you’re such a beautiful nurse. What a nice offer. Thanks for that.”
“But, just to be clear, I am not putting any itchy plants on anybody’s lawn and I’m not taking lard anywhere out in the open where a raccoon might come and attack me for it.”
Leslie beams at Ann, and Ann beams back. “So, let me check with William and Elizabeth about that offer - they really know what it takes to organize a campaign. We’ll get back to you.”
Ann’s smile falls. “OK...”
Leslie starts packing up her things. “OK, great, well, you can stick around here, right? Put all of these into the spreadsheet format that I forwarded to you from Elizabeth, and then send it to me to double-check. Right now I’ve got to run, though, because I’m having something delivered at home.”
“Uh, I was going to go grocery shopping, but I guess I can do that tomorrow...”
“Great! Thanks, Ann, you’re the best campaign assistant a girl could have. You’re like an intern except I can ask you to do more stuff because you’re such a good friend!”
Just as Leslie straightens up from picking up the scrapbooks and albums to take back home, she sees Ann's face - is it kind of scrunched up? Hard to tell. She grabs her bin full of materials and races off, leaving Ann sitting down to her laptop. She needs to get home before the deliveries from The Container Store and Amazon arrive. She really needs those bins and that scanner for all the stuff that’s been excavated from her basement...
*******************
“Tom, seriously?”
“What? Ben, you said I had to think of everything I’d actually accomplished, and be specific. So, that’s what I did!”
Tom and Ben are sitting on the bench under the mural of the Massacre of the First Homestead. They’d meant to meet for a coffee somewhere outside City Hall, but Chris asked Ben to help him turn down a funding request at the last minute, at a meeting of the Pawnee Heritage Society, so this saved them some time.
And, as Tom pointed out, nobody usually came down this hallway because they didn’t want to see all the intestines and blood.
True enough. Ben had then suggested they sit on the bench directly under the mural, rather than across from it.
“Yes, but Tom, in a resume, you actually have to tell the truth.”
“Which I have!”
“Tom.” Ben just looks at him, eyebrows raised.
“Fine, I guess I stretched the truth a little here and there.”
“A little? Tom, you did not plan a party for Jay-Z. You’ve never met the man, and I am pretty sure he’s never heard of Pawnee.” Ben’s a little proud of himself that he knows who someone on Tom’s resume actually is.
“I did too plan a party for Jay-Z! You would have loved the budget, Ben, it had ten thousand dollars for dry ice alone! It was the hottest dry iciest event ever!” Of course it was. Would have been. Never mind.
“Yeah, but the point is, it didn’t actually happen.”
“It did happen, on paper!”
Ben sighed. This was the jobhunting version of taking April and Andy to the bank.
“Tom, in a resume, if you’re going to try to be a party planner, you can only claim credit for parties that you plan that actually happen. Where there was a client who paid you money and, I don’t know, knew you existed. You can’t just talk about your unrealistic grandiose plans and think that people will hire you based on that.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Tom looked a bit defeated by this.
“Look, Tom, I was only at your last party for about 20 minutes, but it was incredible. People were having a great time. And, sure,” he looks around the hallway, to make sure Ron isn’t about to kick his ass for what he’s about to say, “I wasn’t the most broken up about Li’l Sebastian, but that video you guys did really touched people. Leslie--” he has to stop to clear his throat and stall for time, how is he going to end this sentence? “-- she told me she watched it over and over again.”
“Anyhow, Tom, I really think you can stick to what you’ve actually done, and work with that. You’ve got some good experience. Don’t.. don’t bullshit people.”
Tom looks like this might actually be sinking in. “Hey, man, thanks. Really. I’m glad you decided to be my resume buddy. I’ll work on it again and bring you another draft in a couple of days.”
“Sure, yeah.”
“OK, now, let’s see yours.”
Ben is feeling a bit smug, to be honest, as he hands his resume over. It was kind of tough to get going, since it was the first time he’s written a resume in over ten years, but once he had it all down on paper, he was fairly pleased with it. He’s also going to send it to his friend James in Indy, to get a second opinion from someone who understood how the world really worked, but he was happy to have a chance to help Tom out and set a deadline for himself to sit down and do this.
“Dude, this isn’t bad. Nice clean layout. I mean, it’s boring, but you said that’s what you were going for.”
“Well, I actually said I was going for professional. But thanks.”
Tom scans down, flips over to the second page. “Wait. Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Ben Wyatt, Teen Mayor!”
“What are you talking about?” Ben is irritated with himself for getting jumpy but can’t seem to help it. After all these years.
“OK, relax, don’t start showing me any of your scars or anything. There’s only so much pasty white I can handle at this time of day. But the mayor thing, it’s part of your personal brand.”
This is new. “My personal what?”
“Your personal brand. Everyone has one. It’s just a question of whether they take advantage of it. Mine is cosmopolitan, sophisticated, life of the pre-party, the party, the after-party, and the after-after party, ready to satisfy in every way.” Ben wonders if Tom should edit that last part out after the whole Joan Callamezzo thing, but keeps that thought to himself for the time being.
“I see.”
“Your brand, on the other hand, is teen mayor, turned into boring budget guy. Or something like that. I haven’t really thought about it. But come on. If someone Googles you, and - don’t look at me like that, some people in Pawnee have moved beyond Altavista - if someone Googles you, the mayor thing is what’s going to come up. All of Pawnee saw you have a massive meltdown on local television.”
Oh, god, that’s actually completely true. “Look, Tom, it was almost twenty years ago, it’s not really relevant, and, uh, you may recall, it’s not like I was particularly successful at it.”
“You were successful in getting elected, right? That’s got to count for something. And it’s part of your brand equity. It’s a conversation starter. Although don’t keep the conversation going by talking about your gay thoughts, not in a professional setting, that’s my suggestion, for free.”
“Yes, thanks for the tip.” Ben figures he deserved that one. Plus it’s kind of funny.
“Listen, it’s part of who you are. Who you really are. You can pretend it didn’t happen, but all the people who matter know it did happen, and you need to be honest about it.”
Ben considers this. Maybe Tom’s right. Maybe he’s better off acknowledging it up front, versus just waiting for someone to Altavista him. Or Google him.
“Honest about what?” Good lord, for such a barrel-chested guy, Ron can certainly sneak up on people.
“Hey Ron.” Ron’s looking at Ben the way he did the day of the horse funeral. Wait, what exactly does he think Tom’s telling him to be honest about? No wonder he looks like he’s about to run Ben through the nearest woodchipper. Which is probably at Ron’s house, come to think of it.
“Ben here doesn’t want to admit on his resume that he was a teen mayor.”
“Really. Not that I care, but why are you talking about Ben’s resume at all?”
“He volunteered to be my resume buddy when I said I was having trouble getting started on the whole job-hunting thing. We both update our resumes, and trade to give each other critiques. It’s like Wikipedia, except for not being online and just being us. And nobody’s going to arrest us for leaking state secrets.”
Ben can’t help himself, and mutters, “That’s not Wikipedia, Tom.”
“I see. And why aren’t you doing this with that Jean-Claudio fellow?”
“Jean-Ralphio got his old job back at Lady Foot Locker. But they said I was unprofessional when I quit, which is totally not true,” Ron shoots him a look, “OK, fine, it’s kind of true, so they won’t take me back.”
“Makes sense to me. But Ben, I wasn’t aware that your entertainment conglomerate had come to an end. Why do you need a new resume?”
Good question. “Well, you know, it’s always a good exercise to update your resume, to reflect on things, and I thought I would give Tom a hand. And you never know. Sometimes reasons arise so that you need a resume.” Ben is tapping his pen as he says this, but then he looks up to meet Ron’s eye. Ron still seems dubious and a bit... hostile? Ben wants to reassure him, but it’s tricky with Tom right there. “Nothing bad. Just... you never know.”
“Nothing bad, that’s good. For everyone,” Ben notices Ron emphasizes that last word just a bit, “who might be concerned. And you’re right. You never know. Although I never understood why people can’t just state their intentions for the job in one sentence and call that an application. Carry on, gentlemen. ”
Ben’s mildly disturbed by the look on Ron’s face when he looks up at the horrific mural, as he heads on down the hallway.
Ben stands up. “Well, Tom, I better get going, but thanks.”
“For what?”
Ben smiles, waves his arms a bit. “For introducing me to my personal brand, I guess?”
“Any time, man.” Unfortunately, these days that’s probably true for Tom. It occurs to Ben that it could have been him in that position, if Chris had ever happened upon him and Leslie.
“Text me when your resume’s ready and I’ll take another look.”
“Only if you agree to put your mayor thing on your resume.”
“Deal, I guess.” Ben can always take it off later. If he wants. But maybe he won’t.
***************************
It’s really far too much paper. It collects dust and it’s silly to hold on to all of it, and she’s allowed herself to keep one out of every twenty things she scans and recycles, and she’s already called for a special recycling pickup and she has a scanner and a shredder for the really embarrassing things like the letters she wrote but never sent to Bill Clinton (which she should have shredded a long time ago but she wasn’t living at home during the whole Monicagate thing and later they kind of conveniently slipped her mind) and some of these papers are already starting to fall apart so it’s high time she did this, really, and, hey, is that the first community center class schedule she ever put together in the history of the world?
But what it comes down to is, it’s far too much paper.
This is kind of the mirror image of the people-mapping exercise she did with Ann. With that, she was looking outward and onward - to everyone who she knows who can help her with her campaign.
William had said to her the other day, "These are the relationships that you will be able to have for years, the ones that will take you to the next level." So they are crucial to her political career. She just has to learn how to use them.
And here she’s looking backward, at all the things that have made her who she is. All the birthday cards (OK, she’s keeping them, there’s glitter on some of them! you can’t scan glitter!), and the calendars going back to the early 1980s, and the newspaper clippings of Pawnee events, and the phone bills (OK, these she can scan and chuck out, why did she even - oh, this bill was the day that guy called her collect to break up with her, that’s why, what was his name?), and, well, just, every piece of paper she could ever keep that would tell the story of her life when her biographer needed it.
And the editor of her Collected Letters.
She is partway through an entire box of her first grade handwriting practice, when she reaches for the next notebook and finds a shoebox instead. She pulls it out and looks at it, although she already knows what's written on the outside of the box.
Men’s loafers, size 9, brown.
These are her father’s letters. He wrote one to her every year, until he died when she was 20. She had found them in his house, in this very shoebox, each of them labelled “For Leslie, to be opened when you are 21,” and the year it was written. She’d conscientiously waited until her 21st birthday, and then sat down with a freshly baked batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, which her father had taught her to make, and read them all through in one go.
And then she’d put them back in this shoebox, and in this box, and not touched them since.
She sits down and reads them all again. She can still hear his voice as she reads, although it’s gotten a bit fuzzier with the intervening years. She can hear his sense of humor and thoughtfulness. She can hear the deep love he had for her.
Now that she’s older, she can hear his tone of regret, in the later letters.
He writes about what she is like at the age she is when he’s writing, what he thinks she’ll remember later about having been that age (he’s right about some of that, but only some). He talks about what he thinks she’ll be doing, what she’ll be like when she’s older. He actually says, in a letter from her teens, that maybe she’ll run for office someday.
And in every letter he says he hopes she’ll be surrounded by people who she loves and who love her.
She is. She really is. The people closest to her - Ann, Ron, even her mother - do love her, and she loves them.
And in so many ways this campaign is allowing her to have the bigger life she’d always dreamed of. She’s getting a chance to meet all sorts of people, to get a different view of her city, to hear new perspectives. Everything is broadened, wider, bigger. If she closes her eyes, she feels like there has been a proliferation of concentric circles, with her at the center. In her mind, they are all different colors, kind of glowing, like the northern lights, not that she’s ever seen them, she wonders if they have them in Minnesota, or, maybe, other, non-Minnesota states that also border Canada.
But to do this, to have this bigger life, she’s traded Ben.
He’s not at the center with her. There’s just nothing next to her where he should be, in her life. He’s not on her list. He isn’t in any of the circles. And maybe all these other people are pushing him farther and farther to the periphery. He’s going to fall off the edge of the world, her world.
He’s not in her bed, either.
It just seems... ridiculous.
In his last letter to her, her father had written, Leslie, I know you are a really special person. I like to think I’d recognize that even if I weren’t your father. You have a glow and an energy that envelops people and brings them happiness in ways you don’t even recognize yet. And you have a power that you are going to have to learn how to control in order to be able to do all the things you are capable of. I know you can do this, but it may take some time.
And I hope that you have people around you who care about you, who understand everything that you are, who challenge you, who bring out the best in you and make you think. And who love you for exactly who you are and who you can be and what you do. For all those things. Because you deserve that.
God, she misses Ben. And her father. She misses him, too.
And so she sits there, on the floor of her office, with her shoebox full of love next to her, and the traces of her life all around her, and she puts her head down on her knees and she cries.
Part Three.
Rating: PG 13 in this episode (swearing)
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes off from somewhere between "Pawnee Rangers" and "Meet and Greet" - AU from there. (The only spoilers I've read beyond this - which are pretty minimal - aren't entirely consistent with where this is going.)
Word count: about 5600
Summary: Leslie and Ben both have some work to do after they break up. Hijinks ensue. If you can say that about responsible grownups like these two.
Part One.
Thanks to rikyl and stillscape for all the help and encouragement! And to the ficathon for all the prompts, some of which might be addressed in upcoming parts. I feel the need to note that making out is part of the plan here. Just not this episode, sadly.
Comments are the best thing ever - tell me what you think!
***********************
Thwack.
Donna looks up from the reports she’s reading to see the most perfect thing she could possibly be seeing right about now. It’s a silver and gold paisley print bag from her favorite boutique in Indianapolis, which sells the only cream that Donna considers worthy of her feet. And it’s been dropped in the middle of her desk.
“You got it!” She grabs the bag, pulls out the small jars inside, and examines them with glee.
“I did.” Ben seems at least a little bit pleased with himself.
She looks up at him with mock concern. “Did you survive the trip?”
He cocks his head. “It was a bit... well, not my typical stop in Indianapolis, let’s just say that. But they were very nice to me in the store, once I found it.”
“They do know how to treat you right.”
“They do.” Huh. Donna thinks she smells something in the air. Something familiar.
She gets up from her desk, and leans in to Ben. He’s no Jean-Ralphio; he stands his ground and doesn’t exactly cringe, but damn, he looks uncomfortable, and he does lean back a bit.
“Um... what?”
Donna sniffs his neck, and then reaches out and grabs one of his hands and rubs it a bit, testing.
“Uh-huh. Thought so.”
“Good lord, what?”
Donna steps back, smiling broadly. “Relax, Bruce Wayne, it’s OK. Your secret is safe with me. You just stay in that metrosexual closet all you like, but I’ll know the truth: that you bought some of their men’s line for yourself and you liked it.” Donna pokes his chest with her index finger for emphasis, then folds her arms, satisfied.
Ben shifts a little on his feet, looks down, and chuckles sheepishly. “Well, fine, yes, I do appreciate your discretion in the matter - or Tom would never shut up about it. I did also get something for my mother’s birthday, so thank you for the recommendation.” He looks up again and smiles.
“Well, way to treat yourself.” Donna is smiling back at him. It’s good to see that boy feeling happier, even for just a moment.
Just then, Leslie walked back into the office. Aaaaand the moment’s over.
“Oh, hey.” Even she doesn’t normally smile that brightly just seeing people she works with.
“Hey.” Ben’s smile, on the other hand, fades to something just barely polite.
“So, what are you doing here? What’s going on? What’s up? What’s happening? Ooh, what’s in the fancy bag? Who got something fancy? Is it somebody’s birthday? Donna, I couldn’t have missed your birthday - I must have you programmed into my early-alert system. Where did this bag come from?” Leslie sounds like she’s had extra sugar in her mochaccino this morning. Which, sure, is likely, but only part of the story.
These two. “Well, Ben here was in Indianapolis the other day, and, because he is an extremely classy individual,” she shoots Ben an appreciative look, “he brought me back something from my favorite shop there.”
Ben is shuffling backwards, “Yeah, well, I really should get going.”
“Well, that’s so nice of him, how nice of you, Ben!” Leslie seems to consider for a moment, making that thinking face with her brow furrowed. “Uh, what took you to Indianapolis? Did Chris send you for something?”
“Um, no, it was not. Not city business. Something personal. I took a personal day. That’s why I had time to go shopping.”
“Ah. Good. OK.” Donna makes a mental note to play poker with Leslie sometime. It would be a very lucrative evening. She must not have been paying these two any attention at all to miss what was going on with them. Seriously, they are not subtle.
“Well, uh... I hope it was personally... pleasant!” Leslie comes up with, finally.
“Yes, thanks. Well, OK, I’ll be going. Enjoy the... stuff, Donna.”
“Oh, I will. Don’t be worrying about that. You too.” Ben glares at her - at least he’s distracted from his flustering, though - and finally makes his escape.
Leslie seems stuck at Donna’s desk. She’s got one finger on the bag, tracing the embossed paisley swirls, clearly unaware she’s doing any such thing. “Wow, so you guys have been hanging out lately, huh, that’s good, I guess, because he doesn’t know that many people in Pawnee yet, at least, I assume he doesn’t, I don’t really know, so that’s nice of you, I guess you have found something in common, that’s great, awesome.”
“Sure, we’re hanging out sometimes. He’s a peach.”
“A what?” Leslie’s head snaps up.
“A peach. A nice guy. I mean, I’m not interested in him for myself, but hanging out with him is like having a great boyfriend on speed-dial, you know? Nice guys are hard to find.”
“Yeah, I know.” Donna looks at Leslie. Leslie is looking at the bag again.
“This is so totally you, Donna.”
“It really, really is.” Donna contemplates the bag herself, looks back up at Leslie, who doesn’t meet her eye.
This is a different kind of moment.
“OK, back to work!” Leslie heads into her office, shuts the door, and sits at her desk. She puts her hands on the keyboard, and looks at her computer, but Donna doesn’t see her actually type anything for a good long while.
Donna shakes her head.
***********************
Ben blinks, wonders what he’s looking at, and then realizes he’s been staring at the same set of Public Works capital expenditure figures for a few moments now without processing anything about them. He waggles his pen for a moment, then sighs, tossing it aside, and rubs his forehead. He stands and walks a few steps to stand in front of the framed map of Pawnee on his wall.
No, that’s not enough. He needs more detail. He goes back to his computer, and pulls up Google Maps. What he needs is a satellite view; just zoomed in enough to see the size of the buildings.
~~~~
“If you think about the past few years, what have you really enjoyed the most? What has gotten you up in the morning actually wanting to go to work?”
That’s a touchier question than James realizes. Because, for a while, recently, the answer was “who”, not “what.”
Ben has driven up to Indianapolis to see a friend of his, someone he worked with years ago in a particularly cursed little town in northern Indiana. James has about ten years on Ben, and he has a quiet focus and insight that Ben has always appreciated. He’s one of the very few people Ben has ever talked with about being mayor; about actually being mayor, and what went wrong, rather than just the excitement of getting elected, or the epically crappy aftermath, which is what anybody else has focused on. It’s been months since they saw each other face to face - since before Ben took the job in Pawnee.
“Well, I always used to like the auditing process. Going in and getting to the bottom of things, solving the problems as quickly as I could, really having the power to make things happen, cleaning things up, doing things that really seemed critical. I didn’t mind moving around, at the time. And then lately I’ve gotten a view of what it’s like to actually see projects through, see things take root, get to,” he clears his throat, “get to know people. Get to know the community.”
Ben looks around the busy downtown cafe, full of government workers, before he continues. James has known Ben for a long time, so he takes a sip of his coffee; waits. “But the thing is, I still like making big changes, working on really hard problems. I don’t necessarily just want to do the same thing year after year. Pawnee is kind of nuts, so even regular things aren’t exactly routine, but still. So, the short answer is, I don’t really know. I’m all over the place.”
“Sounds like you still want the challenges of consulting but in a place where you get to see things through. So what you want is an opportunity that will let you do both, in an ideal world.“
“Nicely put. Yeah. If that exists.” Ben drinks some of his coffee.
“Well, look, if you want to stay in Pawnee, then you probably need to think about what institutions you have there which are big enough to give you a meaty enough challenge. And which are going through enough change to keep you interested for a while, to really dig in. Would you want to go to a smaller organization and be more senior? Be in charge?”
“I’d be open to that, yeah. But it’s not critical. What I don’t want is what I have now, in my role now. For a, uh, a few reasons. Ultimately I don’t think I’m going to grow if I keep playing this same type of support role to someone else. It’s too easy. I’ve been doing it for too long. I need to force myself out of it. And, since Chris doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, that means I have to. Chris and I have old patterns that would be too hard to break. And Chris is...”
“Chris.”
“Yup.” Ben gives a half-smile and raises his eyebrow, and they both laugh. “And, somehow, for whatever reason, now is the time that I’ve decided I need to address all this. I just, I think I need some new patterns.”
“I do know. That’s why I got off the road myself, got into something different. Which is proving to have its own challenges, but that’s a story to tell you over a beer. Look, Ben, you know as well as anyone, the thing about places the size of Pawnee, even when they're a fair size, is that they tend to be small towns at heart. Everybody who matters knows everybody else who matters. So, start with: who do you know?”
~~~~
Who does he know? He reaches for his notebook and draws quick lines to make a table. One column he labels “Places” and the other he labels “People.” He uses his mouse to navigate through the satellite view of Pawnee, pausing at all the big buildings. The county office. The hospital. The community college campus. Sweetums. Kernsten’s. The school board. A few downtown office buildings. He fills in the table where he can. The “People” column doesn’t have very many names, but he figures it’s a start.
“Ben!” Chris is in his running gear, with his headphones just about to be popped into his ears.
“What’s up?” Ben minimizes his browser window, trying to make his movement seem subtle.
“I need you to fill in for me at a meeting at the County office. You remember Cindy Miller, right? Runs HR for the County? We need to talk about some job-creation grants they want to partner with us to apply for, which we can’t approve as they stand, but it’s at the same time as my deputation to Council. And I’m sure you’d enjoy catching up with Cindy, since the two of you share a history.”
“Listen, you realize that I only ever met Cindy for that one coffee, right?”
“Right, but still. Time for you two to reconnect! I’ll forward you the meeting invite.” Chris jogs out.
Ben picks up his table again. He writes Cindy’s name down in the “People” column, in the row marked “County Government.” Chris might be deeply, deeply clueless, but Ben found he usually had other people’s best interests at heart. Cindy had struck him as smart, and plugged-in, and she hadn’t seemed to take his lack of interest personally.
~~~~
James squinted at Ben. “So, if I can be so nosy, why are you sticking with Pawnee? You’d obviously have more opportunity in Indianapolis or even Bloomington or Muncie, if it came to that. Or Chicago. And if you left town it would be easier to explain why you’re looking for a new job after less than a year in your current job, which is going to be tough.”
Ben looks down ruefully. “Yeah, I know. And, excellent question. I think I know part of the answer and don’t know part of the answer, how’s that? But yes, I’m sticking with Pawnee. Although I know how strange that may seem to you.’
“Intriguing.” James looks at Ben, smiles, and leaves it there.
~~~~
Ben looks up at the map of Pawnee on the wall again, and rubs his jaw. And then he looks back at his computer, maximizes the browser again. He types in Leslie’s address - at least, he types in just a couple of the characters and Google fills in the rest for him. He should remember to clear out his cookies from time to time. He switches to Google Streetview, looks at her house just for a moment, brow furrowed, before clicking on the X to close the browser.
And then he turns back to the Public Works document he was reviewing, shaking his head a bit to focus.
*************
Ann writes another name on the whiteboard under the category of “high school friends” and turns back to Leslie.
“Okay, so, who else?”
Leslie surveys the array of information she’s brought with her for their Saturday meeting in a conference room at City Hall. It ranges from address labels torn off last year’s Christmas cards, to a printout of of her contacts list, to a stack of her school class pictures dating back to preschool. There’s even a pile of photo albums and another of scrapbooks on the floor next to her.
The whiteboards on both walls are completely covered with Ann’s small, neat handwriting. Hundreds of names are listed under various categories; Childhood Neighbors, Current Neighbors, Former Colleagues, Nursery School Classmates, Elementary School Classmates, High School (there are multiple sub-categories here: Field Hockey, Yearbook, Model UN, Student Council, Dance Committees...), Community Center Classmates, College Friends, Members of the Public Art Commission, JJ’s Regulars, Snakeholers...
Leslie takes a deep breath and lets it out with a puff. “I don’t know, Ann, I think this might be it.”
“Are you sure? Take a good look at it first.” Ann shakes her hand and squeezes her wrist. Shakes her hand again.
Leslie looks up at “Current Colleagues” and sees a name missing. She’d been flipping through scrapbooks while Ann listed those names based on the City Hall roster, so she hadn’t noticed the absence at the start. She looks over at “Former Colleagues” and sees Mark’s name.
“Ann. Ben’s not on there, under Current Colleagues. I think we can assume he’s a supporter.” She looks down, flips a page in a scrapbook.
Ann hesitates. “Well, I didn’t really figure you would want to be asking him to actually get involved with your campaign, I mean, not actively. He’s kind of done enough, don’t you think?”
Leslie looks up again. “Oh. Yeah, maybe you’re right.” She hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before. God, right. Geeze. Right. She avoids Ann’s eye.
“Huh...” Ann has taken a few steps back and is looking back and forth at both of the whiteboards from a more or less equal distance in the middle of the room.
“What?”
“Well, just. Yeah, I left off Ben. But look at this list. I mean, Leslie, half of Pawnee is on here, and these are just the people who you think will be interested in helping on your campaign.”
“Well, I hope they will, anyhow.”
“Leslie, I’m sure they will. This is pretty amazing, though. What are they all going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s another meeting with William and Elizabeth. We need to ask some of them for campaign contributions...” Leslie screws up her face at this. She’s got to figure out how to get comfortable with that somehow...
“...but some people can help me in other ways - by putting up signs, making phone calls, organizing people to vote, planting poison ivy on Marcia Langman’s lawn... “
Ann is deadpan: “Let me do that one. And what do you want done to Doug Forbes, while I’m at it?”
Leslie giggles. “Hm, I don’t know. He does seem to love his boat more than anything else in the world.” Doug Forbes is seriously the most boring man on the planet. All he wants to do is cut taxes, and work on his boat. “Replace his boat wax with lard and see how long it takes the raccoons to swarm it?”
“Consider it done.” Ann nods decisively.
“Ann, you’re the best!” Who else would say that? Is she serious? Wait, can she actually sabotage her opponents’ lawns and boats? Is that against some rule?
Ann laughs, and then, looking bright-eyed, says, “Seriously, Leslie, I have a proposal. Put me in charge of your volunteers. I don’t know anything about getting people to give money, but I can make schedules and organize people, and if I use my nurse voice they’ll do exactly what I say. I really want this opportunity. I think I’d learn a lot, too.”
“Oh, Ann, you’re such a beautiful nurse. What a nice offer. Thanks for that.”
“But, just to be clear, I am not putting any itchy plants on anybody’s lawn and I’m not taking lard anywhere out in the open where a raccoon might come and attack me for it.”
Leslie beams at Ann, and Ann beams back. “So, let me check with William and Elizabeth about that offer - they really know what it takes to organize a campaign. We’ll get back to you.”
Ann’s smile falls. “OK...”
Leslie starts packing up her things. “OK, great, well, you can stick around here, right? Put all of these into the spreadsheet format that I forwarded to you from Elizabeth, and then send it to me to double-check. Right now I’ve got to run, though, because I’m having something delivered at home.”
“Uh, I was going to go grocery shopping, but I guess I can do that tomorrow...”
“Great! Thanks, Ann, you’re the best campaign assistant a girl could have. You’re like an intern except I can ask you to do more stuff because you’re such a good friend!”
Just as Leslie straightens up from picking up the scrapbooks and albums to take back home, she sees Ann's face - is it kind of scrunched up? Hard to tell. She grabs her bin full of materials and races off, leaving Ann sitting down to her laptop. She needs to get home before the deliveries from The Container Store and Amazon arrive. She really needs those bins and that scanner for all the stuff that’s been excavated from her basement...
*******************
“Tom, seriously?”
“What? Ben, you said I had to think of everything I’d actually accomplished, and be specific. So, that’s what I did!”
Tom and Ben are sitting on the bench under the mural of the Massacre of the First Homestead. They’d meant to meet for a coffee somewhere outside City Hall, but Chris asked Ben to help him turn down a funding request at the last minute, at a meeting of the Pawnee Heritage Society, so this saved them some time.
And, as Tom pointed out, nobody usually came down this hallway because they didn’t want to see all the intestines and blood.
True enough. Ben had then suggested they sit on the bench directly under the mural, rather than across from it.
“Yes, but Tom, in a resume, you actually have to tell the truth.”
“Which I have!”
“Tom.” Ben just looks at him, eyebrows raised.
“Fine, I guess I stretched the truth a little here and there.”
“A little? Tom, you did not plan a party for Jay-Z. You’ve never met the man, and I am pretty sure he’s never heard of Pawnee.” Ben’s a little proud of himself that he knows who someone on Tom’s resume actually is.
“I did too plan a party for Jay-Z! You would have loved the budget, Ben, it had ten thousand dollars for dry ice alone! It was the hottest dry iciest event ever!” Of course it was. Would have been. Never mind.
“Yeah, but the point is, it didn’t actually happen.”
“It did happen, on paper!”
Ben sighed. This was the jobhunting version of taking April and Andy to the bank.
“Tom, in a resume, if you’re going to try to be a party planner, you can only claim credit for parties that you plan that actually happen. Where there was a client who paid you money and, I don’t know, knew you existed. You can’t just talk about your unrealistic grandiose plans and think that people will hire you based on that.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Tom looked a bit defeated by this.
“Look, Tom, I was only at your last party for about 20 minutes, but it was incredible. People were having a great time. And, sure,” he looks around the hallway, to make sure Ron isn’t about to kick his ass for what he’s about to say, “I wasn’t the most broken up about Li’l Sebastian, but that video you guys did really touched people. Leslie--” he has to stop to clear his throat and stall for time, how is he going to end this sentence? “-- she told me she watched it over and over again.”
“Anyhow, Tom, I really think you can stick to what you’ve actually done, and work with that. You’ve got some good experience. Don’t.. don’t bullshit people.”
Tom looks like this might actually be sinking in. “Hey, man, thanks. Really. I’m glad you decided to be my resume buddy. I’ll work on it again and bring you another draft in a couple of days.”
“Sure, yeah.”
“OK, now, let’s see yours.”
Ben is feeling a bit smug, to be honest, as he hands his resume over. It was kind of tough to get going, since it was the first time he’s written a resume in over ten years, but once he had it all down on paper, he was fairly pleased with it. He’s also going to send it to his friend James in Indy, to get a second opinion from someone who understood how the world really worked, but he was happy to have a chance to help Tom out and set a deadline for himself to sit down and do this.
“Dude, this isn’t bad. Nice clean layout. I mean, it’s boring, but you said that’s what you were going for.”
“Well, I actually said I was going for professional. But thanks.”
Tom scans down, flips over to the second page. “Wait. Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“Ben Wyatt, Teen Mayor!”
“What are you talking about?” Ben is irritated with himself for getting jumpy but can’t seem to help it. After all these years.
“OK, relax, don’t start showing me any of your scars or anything. There’s only so much pasty white I can handle at this time of day. But the mayor thing, it’s part of your personal brand.”
This is new. “My personal what?”
“Your personal brand. Everyone has one. It’s just a question of whether they take advantage of it. Mine is cosmopolitan, sophisticated, life of the pre-party, the party, the after-party, and the after-after party, ready to satisfy in every way.” Ben wonders if Tom should edit that last part out after the whole Joan Callamezzo thing, but keeps that thought to himself for the time being.
“I see.”
“Your brand, on the other hand, is teen mayor, turned into boring budget guy. Or something like that. I haven’t really thought about it. But come on. If someone Googles you, and - don’t look at me like that, some people in Pawnee have moved beyond Altavista - if someone Googles you, the mayor thing is what’s going to come up. All of Pawnee saw you have a massive meltdown on local television.”
Oh, god, that’s actually completely true. “Look, Tom, it was almost twenty years ago, it’s not really relevant, and, uh, you may recall, it’s not like I was particularly successful at it.”
“You were successful in getting elected, right? That’s got to count for something. And it’s part of your brand equity. It’s a conversation starter. Although don’t keep the conversation going by talking about your gay thoughts, not in a professional setting, that’s my suggestion, for free.”
“Yes, thanks for the tip.” Ben figures he deserved that one. Plus it’s kind of funny.
“Listen, it’s part of who you are. Who you really are. You can pretend it didn’t happen, but all the people who matter know it did happen, and you need to be honest about it.”
Ben considers this. Maybe Tom’s right. Maybe he’s better off acknowledging it up front, versus just waiting for someone to Altavista him. Or Google him.
“Honest about what?” Good lord, for such a barrel-chested guy, Ron can certainly sneak up on people.
“Hey Ron.” Ron’s looking at Ben the way he did the day of the horse funeral. Wait, what exactly does he think Tom’s telling him to be honest about? No wonder he looks like he’s about to run Ben through the nearest woodchipper. Which is probably at Ron’s house, come to think of it.
“Ben here doesn’t want to admit on his resume that he was a teen mayor.”
“Really. Not that I care, but why are you talking about Ben’s resume at all?”
“He volunteered to be my resume buddy when I said I was having trouble getting started on the whole job-hunting thing. We both update our resumes, and trade to give each other critiques. It’s like Wikipedia, except for not being online and just being us. And nobody’s going to arrest us for leaking state secrets.”
Ben can’t help himself, and mutters, “That’s not Wikipedia, Tom.”
“I see. And why aren’t you doing this with that Jean-Claudio fellow?”
“Jean-Ralphio got his old job back at Lady Foot Locker. But they said I was unprofessional when I quit, which is totally not true,” Ron shoots him a look, “OK, fine, it’s kind of true, so they won’t take me back.”
“Makes sense to me. But Ben, I wasn’t aware that your entertainment conglomerate had come to an end. Why do you need a new resume?”
Good question. “Well, you know, it’s always a good exercise to update your resume, to reflect on things, and I thought I would give Tom a hand. And you never know. Sometimes reasons arise so that you need a resume.” Ben is tapping his pen as he says this, but then he looks up to meet Ron’s eye. Ron still seems dubious and a bit... hostile? Ben wants to reassure him, but it’s tricky with Tom right there. “Nothing bad. Just... you never know.”
“Nothing bad, that’s good. For everyone,” Ben notices Ron emphasizes that last word just a bit, “who might be concerned. And you’re right. You never know. Although I never understood why people can’t just state their intentions for the job in one sentence and call that an application. Carry on, gentlemen. ”
Ben’s mildly disturbed by the look on Ron’s face when he looks up at the horrific mural, as he heads on down the hallway.
Ben stands up. “Well, Tom, I better get going, but thanks.”
“For what?”
Ben smiles, waves his arms a bit. “For introducing me to my personal brand, I guess?”
“Any time, man.” Unfortunately, these days that’s probably true for Tom. It occurs to Ben that it could have been him in that position, if Chris had ever happened upon him and Leslie.
“Text me when your resume’s ready and I’ll take another look.”
“Only if you agree to put your mayor thing on your resume.”
“Deal, I guess.” Ben can always take it off later. If he wants. But maybe he won’t.
***************************
It’s really far too much paper. It collects dust and it’s silly to hold on to all of it, and she’s allowed herself to keep one out of every twenty things she scans and recycles, and she’s already called for a special recycling pickup and she has a scanner and a shredder for the really embarrassing things like the letters she wrote but never sent to Bill Clinton (which she should have shredded a long time ago but she wasn’t living at home during the whole Monicagate thing and later they kind of conveniently slipped her mind) and some of these papers are already starting to fall apart so it’s high time she did this, really, and, hey, is that the first community center class schedule she ever put together in the history of the world?
But what it comes down to is, it’s far too much paper.
This is kind of the mirror image of the people-mapping exercise she did with Ann. With that, she was looking outward and onward - to everyone who she knows who can help her with her campaign.
William had said to her the other day, "These are the relationships that you will be able to have for years, the ones that will take you to the next level." So they are crucial to her political career. She just has to learn how to use them.
And here she’s looking backward, at all the things that have made her who she is. All the birthday cards (OK, she’s keeping them, there’s glitter on some of them! you can’t scan glitter!), and the calendars going back to the early 1980s, and the newspaper clippings of Pawnee events, and the phone bills (OK, these she can scan and chuck out, why did she even - oh, this bill was the day that guy called her collect to break up with her, that’s why, what was his name?), and, well, just, every piece of paper she could ever keep that would tell the story of her life when her biographer needed it.
And the editor of her Collected Letters.
She is partway through an entire box of her first grade handwriting practice, when she reaches for the next notebook and finds a shoebox instead. She pulls it out and looks at it, although she already knows what's written on the outside of the box.
Men’s loafers, size 9, brown.
These are her father’s letters. He wrote one to her every year, until he died when she was 20. She had found them in his house, in this very shoebox, each of them labelled “For Leslie, to be opened when you are 21,” and the year it was written. She’d conscientiously waited until her 21st birthday, and then sat down with a freshly baked batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, which her father had taught her to make, and read them all through in one go.
And then she’d put them back in this shoebox, and in this box, and not touched them since.
She sits down and reads them all again. She can still hear his voice as she reads, although it’s gotten a bit fuzzier with the intervening years. She can hear his sense of humor and thoughtfulness. She can hear the deep love he had for her.
Now that she’s older, she can hear his tone of regret, in the later letters.
He writes about what she is like at the age she is when he’s writing, what he thinks she’ll remember later about having been that age (he’s right about some of that, but only some). He talks about what he thinks she’ll be doing, what she’ll be like when she’s older. He actually says, in a letter from her teens, that maybe she’ll run for office someday.
And in every letter he says he hopes she’ll be surrounded by people who she loves and who love her.
She is. She really is. The people closest to her - Ann, Ron, even her mother - do love her, and she loves them.
And in so many ways this campaign is allowing her to have the bigger life she’d always dreamed of. She’s getting a chance to meet all sorts of people, to get a different view of her city, to hear new perspectives. Everything is broadened, wider, bigger. If she closes her eyes, she feels like there has been a proliferation of concentric circles, with her at the center. In her mind, they are all different colors, kind of glowing, like the northern lights, not that she’s ever seen them, she wonders if they have them in Minnesota, or, maybe, other, non-Minnesota states that also border Canada.
But to do this, to have this bigger life, she’s traded Ben.
He’s not at the center with her. There’s just nothing next to her where he should be, in her life. He’s not on her list. He isn’t in any of the circles. And maybe all these other people are pushing him farther and farther to the periphery. He’s going to fall off the edge of the world, her world.
He’s not in her bed, either.
It just seems... ridiculous.
In his last letter to her, her father had written, Leslie, I know you are a really special person. I like to think I’d recognize that even if I weren’t your father. You have a glow and an energy that envelops people and brings them happiness in ways you don’t even recognize yet. And you have a power that you are going to have to learn how to control in order to be able to do all the things you are capable of. I know you can do this, but it may take some time.
And I hope that you have people around you who care about you, who understand everything that you are, who challenge you, who bring out the best in you and make you think. And who love you for exactly who you are and who you can be and what you do. For all those things. Because you deserve that.
God, she misses Ben. And her father. She misses him, too.
And so she sits there, on the floor of her office, with her shoebox full of love next to her, and the traces of her life all around her, and she puts her head down on her knees and she cries.
Part Three.