Title: Heartbreak Jamboree
Fandom: Parks & Recreation
Rating: PG
Length: 1800 words
Content notes: casual drug use
Notes: Set post-"Comeback Kid". Thanks to G. and aphrodite_mine for indulging me.
Summary: "Never apologize," Ethel says, stuffing the baggie down the front of her sensible cardigan. "Never explain."



Used to be, Ann's door was always open.

That probably wasn't the best policy in City Hall. She soon found that "public health director" was a lot closer to "school nurse" than anything policy wonk-y. In a year here, she has palpated twisted ankles, set a broken wrist, checked countless tonsils for strep, handed out painkillers and throat lozenges, written informal referrals for ophthalmologists, periodontists, urologists, and fertility specialists.

As time went on, she stocked her desk with tongue depressors and travel-sized aspirin packs, instant cold packs, pregnancy tests, and plump, tidy rolls of Ace bandages.

If she had a cot behind her desk for recuperative naps, she'd be all set.

There's a mark on the floor, inky black and ineradicable, the limit of where the door swings open. Beyond there, the floor boards buckle and the door stopper scrapes to a halt. Within the open wedge, the floor boards are brighter and smoother, fanning open to welcome anyone on the threshold.

This morning, she closed the door for the first time. She has a pile of reports to catch up on and email to answer, and she isn't exactly feeling her most friendly or patient these days.

Around 1:30, she heard Leslie's voice out in the hall, that particular bright, chattering register that is hers alone, and she sat up, grateful for the imminent distraction.

Leslie passed by, talking spiritedly, never slowing down.

In a couple minutes, though, Ann knew that there would be a volley of texts, possibly also a few voice mail messages, to apologize and catch up.

She was wrong.

She knows she's being stupid: Leslie is busy, busier than ever, which is saying something given her default level of frenzied activity, so if she didn't stop by today (or, Ann doesn't have to remind herself, yesterday or Monday) or call in the last...five days, then that's just to be expected. She and Ben have to "get out in front of", as the pols would say, the latest Bobby Newport sex scandal.

She knows she's being stupid. Doesn't mean she's able to stop.

"Hey, Perkins!"

Ann looks up, eyes bleary from the footnotes's tiny text. The cranky old lady from the fourth floor is perched on the threshold, clutching something in her hands like an elderly, but still alert, otter.

"Yes?"

"Hide these!" She tosses a baggie of -- Ann catches it, sees baked goods, brownies or big cookies, and starts to ask just what they are when the lady wags her finger. "I said, hide 'em, Perkins, get crackin'."

"...what?" She's worked too much this week. This month. Even if she's back down to two jobs, since Leslie fired her as campaign manager, Ann's bone-tired and slow on the uptake.

"Stash 'em for me, I'll make it worth your while."

Nodding furiously, half apologetic, half confused but intimidated, Ann fumbles to stuff the baggie into her desk's top drawer.

The lady -- Muriel? No, Muriel's the much nicer old *Black* lady from the fourth floor, this is Ethel, the cranky old *white* lady -- checks over her shoulder. "Criminy, that heel Traeger's headed right for me."

She slides around Ann's door and wedges herself between it and the wall, making a warning SSHHH with her finger at her lips, lest Ann not realize that she is, after all, hiding.

Ann sits very still in her chair, eyes downcast on the state public health report on meningitis in swingers' clubs, while out in the hall Chris stops and talks to someone for an unbearably long time. Finally, with a hearty slap on the back and sincere farewell (it has been literally great talking to you!), Chris moves on.

Very carefully, without moving her head, Ann glances over at Ethel's hiding place.

Ethel is already in front of her desk, hand out, demanding back her cookies.

"What are they?" Ann works the bag loose from where it's caught on all the junk in her drawer. They look like brownies but they're shaped like pie pieces.

Ethel taps her foot ostentatiously. "Any day now, junior."

"Here, here, sorry," Ann mutters. She's on a real streak of foot-in-mouth, messing-up big and bigger time. "Sorry."

"Never apologize," Ethel says, stuffing the baggie down the front of her sensible cardigan. "Never explain."

"Right, okay."

Ann looks back down to her work; she's somehow irritated Ethel, and it's best to just let her go.

But Ethel clears her throat. She's standing in the doorway, looking over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised. "You coming, Perkins? Or are you planning to dawdle and sulk your way through another day?"

Ann shouldn't waste time wondering just how, exactly, Ethel thinks she knows her. It's not like she's getting any work done here, so she gets up, takes her own cardigan off the back of her chair, and pulls it on as she follows Ethel out of the office and down the hall.

Ethel has one of the biggest dowager's humps that Ann has seen outside of textbooks. It doesn't seem to slow her down, however; she scuttles down the next hall, around a corner, and stops in front of a door Ann has never noticed before. On the wall next to it, a tin fallout shelter sign has been carelessly painted over; the three downward-pointing triangles peek through the chalky paint.

"Are you sure we should...?" Ann asks, then bites her lip.

Scowling at her, Ethel huffs out a sigh and yanks open the door.

Inside, as the door bangs shut just behind her, the darkness is all-enveloping, almost velvety. Ann's balance wavers for a moment; she reaches out for Ethel's shoulder.

In response, she gets a shrug and cackled, "Hands off, girlie!"

Lights flicker on at the sound of Ethel's voice, huge and dazzling for a moment before they shrink down to reasonable size.

"I brought company," Ethel says, far ahead of Ann now.

"Someone handsy, sounds like," a woman replies.

There's a quick, kind of moist sound that Ann recognizes as a kiss, and as she creeps around a pile of file boxes into the light, she sees Ethel on a velvet chaise lounge, legs folded back, head resting on the shoulder of her friend, Muriel.

"Perkins," Ethel says crossly. "Meet Muriel."

Ann stops where she is. Her voice feels croaky, caught in her throat like a fly in a spider web, something small and struggling against the backdrop of something far larger and more grand. "Hello?"

Muriel's hair is just like Ann's Nana's, soft and snowy, crimped around a beautifully wrinkled face that's all soulful eyes and wide, smiling mouth. "What's this about getting fresh and feeling up my lady?"

Oh. Nana never talked like this.

Ann stubs her toe on a crate of god knows what and sinks down to sit on it. "I didn't mean --"

Muriel waves her hand. Her rings catch the emergency lights and sparkle; Ann thinks of geodes, lights hidden and locked up, far underground. "Joking, kiddo!"

Ethel unrolls the baggie and portions out brownies, one for each of them, describing in great detail how she starts with Duncan Hines mix, but then goes "off-road", including the use of shattered Toblerone bars, extra fudge frosting, and her secret ingredient, all baked up in a pie tin rather than a rectangular pan. "For maximum taste," she explains.

Ann has never been much of a baker. For all she knows, shape does make a difference. She breaks off chunk after chunk of brownie, getting frosting all over her fingers, sucking them clean.

The ladies are giggling and rubbing noses, entirely in their own world. The ladies are adorable, canoodling and cooing, feeding each other bits of brownie and tickling each other.

The sight makes it hard to breathe. A heavy, flat, *thick* sadness settles in Ann's chest. Right under her breastbone, growing heavier with each passing moment.

"What're you doing down here?" she asks when she's has eaten more than half her brownie and her jaw is threatening to lock up from the gooey sweetness. She needs to distract them, just to give herself a break. "You've got an office upstairs, right?"

"No work talk!" Muriel tosses a crumb at her. "This is a girl's party."

Ethel stretches out her legs and rolls her head around. Her pantyhose is dark at the toes; the toes themselves come to an uncomfortable-looking point, thanks to decades of poorly designed shoes. When she catches Ann looking, she wiggles her toes and Ann feels a giggle burble up through the sad weight, dispelling it bit by bit.

"Remember that waitress at May Lillie's?" Ethel asks.

Ann cocks her head, totally confused, but Muriel says, "Of course!" She nods and squints in Ann's direction. "I can see a faint resemblance..."

She has no idea what they're talking about. Even after Muriel explains -- "you see, in those days, girls like us liked to keep to ourselves, and May Lillie's was a bar that catered to our interests" -- she has a hard time following.

"Dykes," Ethel says plainly. "We had a tradition at Lillie's, you see. Heartbreak jamborees. One of us lost her woman, the rest of us gathered her close --"

"But I'm --" Ann starts to say, but her voice leaves her. She feels very warm and, suddenly, weirdly spongy. Like nougat. When she tries to remember what she was going to say, the thought vanishes.

"-- to our, ha!" Muriel snorts and has to catch her breath. "Welcoming bosoms, you could say."

Ethel shakes her head, shooting Ann a look full of affection and fond impatience, a sort of can you believe her? look. It's been a long time since anyone gave her one of those; longer still since she was the subject of one. "Hard booze, loud music, and my special brownies."

"-- but I'm sober twenty-three years," Muriel puts in, "and your generation's music might as well be jackhammers and dentist's drills, so that leaves us --"

Ethel waves the now half-full baggie. "Brownies!"

Pot brownies, Ann comes to understand in the next several minutes, as she feels increasingly flushed and fizzy-headed, languorous and silly all at once. She's fairly sure the hospital's next drug tests are several months off, but there's something else she's forgetting, something important that she needs to remember. Facts and truths keep shimmering at the front of her mind, but when she tries to concentrate, they dim and melt away, running fast from her grasp.

Ethel and Muriel are slow-dancing to music only they can hear while Ann reclines on the chaise, gulping a warm can of Vernor's and smiling up at the ceiling, wreathed in shadows.

She's forgetting something, but it feels too good to worry.

It probably wasn't all that important. Not in the long run, anyway.