Monday:

"This is a good road, you never stepped here,

you can't betray the faith that is kept here,

and no more tears will be wept here,

this is a good road."

- "This is a Good Street", Mudcrutch

"Do you have any experience with animals?"

That was the first question Jessie Montgomery asked when she entered Veronica Mars' office. She is a tall woman, and she refused to sit down.

"I found a lost dog once."

"You folks think dogs are people. I asked if you have any experience with animals." Jessie placed an unusual, inexplicably worshipful emphasis on the word animals.

"I retrieved my high school's parrot mascot."

"Real parrot?"

"Yes."

"Parrot's good." She sat down then, exhaling heavily. "I want to hire you to find some missing birds. Exotics, if you will."

"Yours or someone else's?"

"Let's say mine." She tried and failed to be subtle.

"I'll need more than that."

"I work for the Franklin Park Zoo. Head keeper in the aviary. Our birds are going missing."

"And you couldn't call the police because?"

"I needed someone more discreet." Veronica had to wonder why people always made discreet sound like a dirty word, which they did, invariably. "I'm in line for a promotion to avian curator, and I think they'd bypass me if they knew about this."

"I'll see what I can do. Any leads?"

After Jessie left, Veronica got the distinct impression taking that job was a terrible idea. But food wouldn't pay for itself. Sometimes she wished she ate less, or liked food less, but then she would find herself at J. P. Licks buying some of their painfully good, ludicrously priced ice cream and flirting with the cashier. She moved from her office to the front desk, and settled into the heavy wooden chair behind it. She unfolds the day's Boston Tribune, picking up where she left off when Jessie arrived.

The office was as similar to her father's as possible-furniture from the thrift store, mismatched and heavy and dark. Knock-off Tiffany lamps. "Mars Investigations: Neptune CA - Boston MA" in the window. A bell jangles when the door swings open, which it did then.

"I'm here about your help wanted ad." This is genuinely surprising. The ad, which Veronica had run in the local free paper for five weeks, says "Help Wanted: Crap Pay, No Benefits." No one has ever come in about the help wanted ad, except some teenagers on a bet to see if she was serious, and she was only running it to assuage her father's concern about his only daughter working alone in a P.I. office in Boston. He wanted her to hire a secretary. Preferably male. She told him that no self-respecting male wants to be a woman's secretary and she had Reserves. She could hear him raising his eyebrows over the phone: "I'm hoping you'll find someone my age or older, unattractive, possibly without a penis. And you forget I've met that dog. He's a pathetic excuse for a pit bull."

But that doesn't change the fact that someone was there, and they claimed to be interested in working for crap pay with no benefits. "For the secretarial position? Really?" Veronica said, and looked up.

"Really." Logan Echolls grinned back at her. She put down the paper.

"How did you find me?" The question is hostile but the tone is not; it is simply something Veronica needed to know if their conversation was to continue.

"What? No 'Nice to see you, Logan', no 'I've missed you, Logan', no 'How are you Logan?'"

"Not even a 'Here's an application, Logan,' though you will note I haven't kicked you out or sicked the hound on you yet. How did you find me?"

"Duncan gave me the address," he said, pulling one of the chairs against the wall up in front of the desk and putting his elbows up. Of course the good ex gave the bad, terrible, no good, very bad ex her address. Of course.

Though actually that didn't make sense. Duncan knew as well as anyone that Veronica Mars moved to Boston primarily to avoid Logan Echolls, though she should've known it wouldn't work.

But still, Duncan wouldn't have given Logan her address. She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"No," he laughed. "But that boy keeps a Roll-a-dex, like an old man, and I took a peek one day, and guess who's in it? You're not the only one with investigative chops."

"Seriously? I'm in Duncan's Roll-a-dex?" She had to ask.

"Mars Investigations is in Duncan's Roll-a-dex, and happy birthday me, there was an address in Boston." He shook his head and looked around incredulously. "Bahs-tahn. I guess he thought he might need your services some day." He made services sound dirty. But then again, Logan could make anything sound dirty. "Though honestly, if I knew it'd be that easy I would've just Googled a little more intensively."

"We don't have a webpage."

"Liar. I Googled it. That's how I found out that you need a secretary."

That paper had a website. If she had known, she would've advertised somewhere slightly more...low profile. But, okay, she was a liar: she'd owned since Mac gave it to her for my birthday years ago, though right now the website's not live. Still, Logan didn't know that.

"Logan, you can't be my secretary. Can you type one hundred twenty words a minute?"

"Veronica, I know this is not normal interview protocol."

"Logan, you don't want to be my secretary."

"No, I want to be in your pants. Right now. But I'll take what I can get."

"I'm wearing a skirt," she snapped back, and immediately regretted it. He grinned.

"Better yet."

"You're sober," Veronica noted, because usually when Logan visited he was not.

"The flight attendant ran out of those little liquor bottles. Gave them all to some couple on their honeymoon."

"Does that mean you flew business?" Veronica looked aghast, before realizing she'd changed the subject to something other than Logan's immediate departure. "Because you should really fly business back."

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"Yes. He works at an ice cream parlor. He took me clamming." She did have a boyfriend in Boston who took her clamming. It was terrible. She was knee deep in mud, and he just chortled and said, "What? I thought you liked dirty work." They broke up, needless to say.

"I don't believe you."

"Then why'd you ask?"

"To see if you'd lie about it. If you're with someone, why were you here over lunch?"

"Because we don't need to see each other constantly Logan. We're adults. Also, your attempt at spying is not going to help get you a secretarial position."

He hummed to himself, "Hey little freak with the lunchpail purse, underneath the paint you're just a little girl." Logan has a long-standing love of Tom Petty. The only explanation Veronica can offer is that Petty's a blond, but she doesn't like to think about any patterns Logan might have involving blondes, because she would be one of those blonds. "So why'd you run away from me Veronica?"

"I didn't run away from you."

"Yes you did."

"I was just tired of all of it. I'd never left Neptune. I needed to get out." This is half the truth. The other half of the truth-well, it was long and messy and it didn't need to be shared with anyone right then, especially not Logan Echolls, who knew most of it but just wanted to hear her say it out loud.

"Did you even graduate?"

"I did. In three years. But no one needed to know that except Hearst and me, so I took the rest of the money and put it into this."

"Embezzlement?" He sounded impressed.

"Not really." It was, really, but she didn't need to impress Logan.

"You embezzled from the Lilly Kane Memorial Fund."

"It was in the spirit of Lilly Kane," she says, finally, because she can tell they both agree on that. Lilly Kane-the girl who changed both of them. After Lilly died and her mother left Veronica remembers Logan or one of his friends making some crack about about her hair looking like it had been cut by a lawnmower. She had cut it with kitchen scissors, actually, the ones we used to cut frozen pizzas. Her father had attempted to remedy it in typical paternal fashion: he took her to Great Clips, where they sat in the waiting area with the little boys and old men who were there for twelve dollar Tuesday. A mother would've taken her to a proper stylist, but he did what he could. He noticed, and he tried.

She still want to Great Clips. On Tuesdays. It's the perfect storm of Lilly Kane and Logan Echolls and her father-sort of like the last time she and Logan broke up. She reminded herself that the last time she and Logan broke up was supposed to be the last time, ever.

"Look, Logan," she said. "I'm closing up soon. I'm having dinner with some friends tonight. Come back at nine tomorrow and I'll give you a trial run as a secretary. But stay away from me until then. Deal?"

"I like a girl who knows what she wants," he smirked, and sauntered out the door. When he is well and truly out of sight, she slumped forward and put her head down on the desk. And then she sent out a text: Something's happened. Can we have dinner tonight? Take-out, my place.

Yolanda and Chelsea were Veronica's Boston Best Friends, or at least that's their joke. BBFs. After Veronica and her father helped "find" Yolanda all those years ago, she and her husband Ben movedto Boston. She sent a postcard with picture of lobster trap on it that said "Trapped in Boston" on the front and had a short note on the back: "Give me a call if you're in town!" Four years later, Veronica was.

Chelsea and Veronica met clamming, the one time Veronica ever went clamming. Her boyfriend at the time was a Mainer, and they went up to a little campground on the coast with some friends of his. Chelsea was there wearing board shorts and a t-shirt from the county fair, and she was as deep in the mud as anyone, talking about how much she loved the smell of decomposing seaweed and cracking terrible jokes. Chelsea and Veronica shared a tent after Veronica broke up with Todd, and they went skinny dipping in the Atlantic after everyone else was asleep, and that was that.

And because they were her Boston Best Friends, Yolanda and Chelsea both showed up that night, and Chelsea came bearing Chunky Monkey as she always did, even though she had to cancel a blind date ("It was probably going to be terrible. The last guy June set me up with smelled like feet.").

"What happened?" Yolanda said, falling into her favorite armchair with a container of sesame chicken.

"Logan. Logan's back. Or here, I suppose, since he's never been here before."

"No shit," Yolanda said. "Boy's got it bad for you, my friend."

"Logan's your dead best friend's ex?" Chelsea asked. "The one who-"

"Yes. And now he's here, and he applied to be my secretary. And he propositioned me. That order."

"Doesn't waste any time, does he?" Yolanda muttered. If anything, Yolanda held Logan most responsible for everything that happened between her and Lilly and Veronica years ago. "But you made him leave, right?"

"Actually, he's coming back for a trial run tomorrow. I'm just planning to be as difficult as possible."

"I still don't know what the big deal is," Chelsea said. "This guy wants you. He's hot. Is that so bad?"

"Logan and Veronica are like a Shakespearean tragedy waiting to happen," Yolanda said. "Or maybe one that already has."

"Already has," Veronica agreed. "Only not quite Shakespearean. More like...some shitty teen drama."

"And you're both still alive-so worth another shot?" Chelsea asked.

"He's an asshole."

"Well, you gotta get rid of him Veronica," Yolanda said. "And I hope I never have to see him. And for God's sake, please don't have sex with him."

"What do you take me for?"

"Someone who has a lot of very, very good sex with Logan Echolls," she said.

"It was good," Veronica sighed.

"So why didn't you make him leave?" Chelsea said.

"Because he wasn't going to. I was hoping if I made it clear there was nothing here for him, he might go away on his own."

"Or maybe he'll settle in as your secretary, and hook up with some foxy cougar client, and you'll just have to sit by the sidelines and watch," Yolanda muttered.

"Two animal metaphors in one sentence there, 'Landa. You're going to have to be careful," Veronica said. "Though, speaking of, I got hired by a keeper at the Franklin Park Zoo today. She wants me to go undercover. As we speak the Franklin Park Zoo is considering Mallory Petersen's very impressive work history at the San Diego Zoo."

"Remember clamming?" Chelsea snorted. "You don't like dirty jobs, Veronica."

"Well, I've got one."

"And an ex-boyfriend for your secretary. I don't envy your life right now," Yolanda said.

Veronica sometimes envied Yolanda's life. There were nights when she'd be visiting Ben and Yolanda, and Yolanda would have her feet up in her husband's lap and they'd look at each other with love and sex commingled in equal measure-Veronica envied that. She tried to hold her father's love somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, then, so she wouldn't have to leave, and it helped a little to know she is loved, in a different way but not a different measure.

"Do you two have any ideas to make him leave?"

"Get a boyfriend," Chelsea said, at the same time as Yolanda said "Be as unsexy as possible."

"Or blackmail him," Veronica Mars said. "The most typical Veronica Mars solution would be to blackmail him."

"If it's typical Veronica Mars, he'd probably like that," Yolanda said.

"On to the Chunky Monkey!" Chelsea said, and then tells them a long story about the gas station clerk who hit on her when she bought it, which devolved into a discussion of terrible pick-up lines, which devolved or evolved and changed again, and eventually all three of them were sitting on the floor and then Veronica said, "Want to have a sleepover?" And they all giggled and Yolanda sent Ben a text and they ended up sleeping there, in the living room, Veronica and Yolanda curled up in armchairs, Chelsea stretched out on the couch, like children.