THE SPIRIT OF THE STAIRWAY AND THE POWER OF LOVE

ACT 2

For no particular reason at all, Jeff took her to the Tap House.

In his old life, Jeff had frequented several restaurants on a regular basis. Morty's Steak House for steak. Nirvana for Indian. Masamoto for sushi. The Tap House was for lunch meetings with clients who didn't necessarily realize they would be picking up the bill. The cuisine was neo-American, which was a nice way of saying upscale chicken and Cobb salads and club sandwiches, good enough that he'd relished eating there when he could, and expensive enough that even with the salary he'd been pulling in back then, he didn't go routinely.

The Tap House was good food. He hadn't eaten there since he couldn't remember when… probably at least once since he'd started at Greendale, but Jeff couldn't be sure. It was good food and he wanted some good food. That was the only reason he picked it, he told himself.

In the car on the way over Annie had frowned, when he drove past the shopping center that housed both Señor Kevin's Taqueria and the nearest Mister Wow-That-Burger, without turning in. "Where are we going?"

Jeff grunted. "I just feel like something different," he said.

"Oh, yeah?" He glanced over and saw she had that same half-smile she'd had when she'd accused him of trying to make Disney eyes at her.

"It's my treat," he reminded her. "It's only fair I pick the restaurant."

"Okay," she said, and changed the subject.

She tried to talk him out of it when she saw the actual cloth tablecloths and napkins, and how a significant fraction of the clientele were in suits, and again after they'd been seated and she'd looked at the menu and its prices. He briefly considered lying — claiming he had a gift certificate he needed to use before it expired — but instead he just assured her that he'd taken her there on purpose, knowing full well what kind of place it was.

That got him a sly smile, like she thought he was up to something and she'd figured it out.

Still, she'd ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, a garden salad Jeff knew was meant as a side item. He talked her into taking it with steak tips, then added his own order, an antipasto plate, and two glasses of wine for good measure.

"Did you used to eat like this every day?" she asked him.

"Not every day," he admitted. "Sometimes I missed lunch completely, sometimes I just ran out and got a take-out sandwich at the counter across the street from the office."

"Really," she said in a tone that indicated she didn't fully believe him. "I always pictured three-hour lunches as a regular part of your workday…"

"Hey, just because I made up part of my resume, and just because I hate working and doing things, doesn't mean I was bad at my job," Jeff reminded her. "Sometimes a thing had to be done and I was the only one there to do it."

"Uh huh." Annie sipped her wine carefully.

He felt suddenly self-conscious. "At some point when you're single-handedly steering UCHealth, you'll alternate between power lunches and skipping meals, too, I'm sure."

"Mmm, yeah." There was a comfortable silence, and then she assumed a pensive expression. "I've been thinking about changing my major," she told him.

"Oh? What new field of study would you be smashing with your Annie-powers?"

"It's probably silly." She fidgeted in her seat a moment. "I was looking at the hoops you have to jump through to become an FBI agent."

Jeff looked impressed. "Clarice Starling, Dana Scully, Annie Edison?"

Annie seemed slightly taken aback he wasn't more dismissive of the idea. "It was actually something you said, a while back. I don't know. It's probably silly."

"I don't think so. You are…" He paused, to choose his words carefully. "I don't bet against you," Jeff said simply. "I have no clue what the process is, but if you want it, you can do it."

"More school. Moving to Virginia…"

He froze as Annie took another careful sip of wine. The angel and devil on his shoulders were arguing again.

Going to Virginia! Makes sense; that's where Quantico is, right? Definitely she's destined for bigger things than this town.

No. Wrong. Can't let her go. Hold her down. Talk her out of this. Keep her here. Clip her wings.

Clip her wings? The angel of Jeff's better nature clucked its tongue. Now who's the monster?

Ignorant of the thoughts racing through Jeff's brain, Annie continued. "But it's just a… you know, a childish fantasy. Troy and Abed rubbing off on me."

"Mmm-hmm." Jeff hoped he sounded unconvinced, rather than hostile to the idea. He forced himself to feel supportive of the idea of Annie going away to become a superhero.

"I'm committed to hospital administration," she asserted, as much to herself as him. "I've spent almost four years on this degree."

"Uh-huh."

"I wrote out my life plan when I was fourteen. Granted, there's been some revision since then. I wasn't planning on a nervous breakdown or an Adderall addiction or Greendale Community College… I was going to go to Harvard and meet my future husband…" She stopped as Jeff raised a hand.

"So maybe, just maybe," he began, "the childish fantasy isn't the one you came up with after you were old enough to legally drink wine at lunch, but rather the one you came up with when you were literally a child?"

"Fourteen isn't really a child…" Annie protested weakly.

"A fantasy of control," Jeff continued. "A fantasy that you can decide at fourteen how the next fifty years of your life will go, that you can control when and where you'll meet the man of your dreams, that you know then who you're going to be and who you're going to want to be, when you grow up. And maybe the mature thing is to look at who you are now, what you want and what you need, what you're good at and what you enjoy doing, who you like to spend your time with. Not your picture of how your life was supposed to be, because the you of ten years ago was an idiot and didn't know all the stuff you've learned since then. And who knows that the you of ten years from now will know, do, want?"

Who was he really trying to convince that she's an adult, he wondered: Annie or himself? Obviously she was old enough to know her own mind, sign binding contracts, buy liquor or vote. There was no reason for Jeff to think he was being predatory or inappropriate. Doubly so, given that he wasn't doing anything except taking a friend to lunch. She was a friend.

But then, why even use the word 'predatory'?

Across the table, away from Jeff's internal maelstrom, Annie looked thoughtful. "Well, maybe…" Then she smiled. "Jeff, are you Winger speeching me?"

He grinned back at her, pushing the dark thoughts away. "Maybe a little…"

Meanwhile Britta stomped down one of Greendale's hallways, furiously ignoring Chang at her heels.

"Come on, Britta! Come on come on. We both know you're going to say yes eventually, do we have to go through this?"

"No! No means no! How many times can I say you tried to murder us?"

"Everyone else has let that go," Chang protested. "You're living in the past, Britta! Chang back to us! Chang back to the future!"

"Chang…" Britta scowled. "Did you just use 'Chang' for 'come?'"

Chang snickered.

"Ew. And for the last time, no! I'm not your friend and I'm not helping you out!"

"Oh, Chang on, Britta! It's not even a big deal! I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend at the dance tonight so I can fool my brother into thinking that I've successfully moved on from my estranged wife and he won't contest the happily-single clause of our great-uncle's will and the suet farm will finally come out of probate and we can sell the stupid tax write-off and I can pay off my credit card debt. It happens every day in America. Just be my date to the stupid dance!"

"No! I already have a date to the stupid dance!"

"Who?" challenged Chang. "That bug, Troy? I'll murder him, just like I tried to murder you!"

"I'm with Troy, he… wait, no, he's meeting us later," Britta recalled. "I'm actually going with Abed." She shuddered with panic. "Oh, God, am I going on a date with Abed?"

"Abed?" spat Chang. "That is not okay!"

"I know, it's weird, right?" Britta stared at the ground, trying to remember why that had made sense. "Why did I agree to that?"

"So don't agree to it — go to the dance with me!"

Britta shook her head, tabling her confusion for the moment. "Chang, I am not going to the dance with you — not to impress your brother, not to indulge Abed, not for a million dollars!" She reconsidered; a million dollars would spay and neuter a lot of feral cats. "Not for less than a million dollars!"

"A million… I work at Greendale, you think I know how much money that is?" Chang counted on his fingers. "There are ten billions in a million, right?"

"No!" Realizing she could simply walk away, Britta spun around and did so.

"I'll show you, Britta Perry!" Chang shouted after her. "Some day I'll know how much a million dollars is, and then watch out!"

Somewhere along the way they'd transitioned from the restaurant to a coffee shop. Two empty cups sat on the table between them. "So what about you?" Annie was saying. "You told me you're going to open a solo practice when you graduate."

"Did I?" Jeff made a face, and pretended not to remember.

She nodded. "Then you predicted we'd meet randomly years from now and I'd have forgotten your name."

Jeff recalled the conversation clearly. He'd been depressed over the beginning of their last academic year together. He'd nearly said something he would have regretted. "Well, obviously you forgetting my name is not possible," he said.

If she noticed the pause before he'd replied, she didn't acknowledge it. "Your prediction, not mine."

"I've just got to make sure you're never in a position to forget my name." He tilted his head back, pretending to consider. "I could set your phone's wallpaper to a picture of me."

"Oh, but then I'd remember your face, not necessarily your name," she countered.

Jeff liked the way she'd responded so quickly. He could turn it back around on her, though. "That's an easy fix. Add a caption at the bottom. Jeff Winger: Your Favorite Greendale Memory."

"Oh?" Annie arched an eyebrow. "In this dystopian future, you're my favorite Greendale memory, but I need to be reminded of that because otherwise I'd forget?"

"That's just the slogan. It's all about advertising the brand," he said lightly.

"You changed the subject," Annie noted, changing it back. "Do you still plan on going into business for yourself?"

He tried to think of a glib response, and failed. "I don't know." Jeff tried to take a sip from his coffee and realized it was empty. "The plan was that I'd go back to my old firm, but that's done. I never wanted to do a private practice, deal with all the business and overhead stuff. I have this sense that it'd be tough row to hoe, because who wants to hire the lawyer who was almost disbarred because he didn't graduate college and he never went to law school?"

"Probably you won't want to play that up in the advertising," Annie counseled him. "Focus instead on how you did pass the bar exam, and how the bar association didn't technically disbar you, they only suspended you. You're such a good lawyer you lawyered the lawyers into letting you lawyer!"

"That'd be a good slogan. It'd really drive home the idea that I'm a lawyer."

"What can I say? I have a gift." She looked smug for a moment.

It frightened Jeff how much he was enjoying himself, so he forced himself not to think about it. "I may be able to scrape together a client list from our time at Greendale," he said instead. "Pierce, obviously. Although I don't know if I could stomach being his attorney. Every day, it'd be 'Pierce, sign a pre-nup,' or 'Pierce, I told you to sign a pre-nup,' or 'no, Pierce, I can't fix this because you wouldn't sign a pre-nup.'"

Annie laughed. "Okay, that… yes. But have you ever thought about doing something else?" She leaned forward. "You just pointed out I was fourteen when I decided to become a hospital administrator. Weren't you ten or something, when you decided you wanted to be a lawyer?"

"I'm good at it, though," he protested. "I'm such a good lawyer that I lawyered the lawyers into letting me lawyer, remember?"

"Yes, yes." She nodded dismissively. "Still, just ask yourself if it's what you want to do."

Jeff snickered. "Annie, when you get to be my age —"

"You're thirty-four. I've seen your driver's license."

"Still. World of difference between thirty-four and twenty-one."

"Thirteen years. Really only twelve," she added, "because you just had a birthday and mine is in a couple of months."

"They're twelve important years," Jeff insisted. "They're the time you get to spend screwing around making bad choices about your life path, and still have enough time later in life to correct them with no lasting damage."

She shook her head. "So, what? If your fake degree hadn't been caught until this year, say, you'd just be like, 'well, too old now to start fresh, not like when I was thirty, better just give up and drink, bluh bluh bluh, scotch scotch scotch.' That's what you'd sound like."

"I'm a real lush in that timeline, apparently. What do you think I should be doing, then?" he asked her.

Annie looked down at the table. "I don't know," she said.

"Well, you must have some idea." When she didn't reply, he pressed her a bit. "Annie…"

"Okay, okay, fine," she said, admitting defeat. "I made a list." She pulled out her phone and called up a memo. "Consultant," she read aloud, "beccause you're good at sounding like you know what's best. Lobbyist: you're good at getting people to do things for you. In-house counsel for a non-profit: they'd offer to pay you so little you wouldn't be overshadowed by other applicants who hadn't been suspended by the bar association. Teacher slash professor: you know the dean would hire you in a heartbeat, and teaching would make you feel smart. Full-time homemaker slash primary caregiver parent with a careerist spouse: I think you'll make the right woman extremely happy to have you as her life partner someday. Motivational speaker: again, right in your wheelhouse. Magistrate judge: legal background, plus you make important choices and sound authoritative. Career counselor: um…"

"Career counselor?" he repeated.

"Yeah, I know. That was the last one." She looked embarrassed, which on her was almost unbearably adorable. "I was reading a book on career counseling at the time."

"In case I came to you and said, Annie, help counsel me on changing careers?"

She gestured around them. "Well, it happened, didn't it?"

Back at Greendale, out in the quad, Pierce was struggling into a lab coat. "I don't see why I have to wear this," he complained. "It's my RC DeLorean, after all."

"I've told you," Abed said. "You're Doc Brown."

"Wait, I'm Christopher Lloyd? I thought I was the burly charismatic one, Biff." Pierce adjusted his coat. "Why aren't I Biff? Is Biff gay? Is Jeff Biff?"

"We've gone over this. Chang is Biff."

"Well that's just bad casting. Chang looks nothing like Biff," grumbled Pierce. "Is it too late to change?"

"I only have a few minutes for this before I have to go pretend to sexually assault Britta," Abed said. He checked his wristwatch. "I got a wristwatch just for this."

"Wait, wait, Britta is playing the Tea Leoni part, not Annie?"

"Lea Thompson," said Abed.

"Aybed, you're going about this all wrong." Pierce gave up on trying to button the lab coat. "Speaking as someone who saw all three Back to the Future movies in the theater, it's obvious. You should be planning to pretend to sexually assault Annie, but then Jeff comes in and pulls you off her, and finally… well, I guess it could be Troy. Troy comes in and tells Jeff to get his damn hands off her, and then punches the gay bully right in his gay bully face!" Pierce smacked his fist into his hand, for emphasis.

"I've heard and appreciate your notes, Pierce, but we're going another direction." Abed busied himself placing the model DeLorean at a line he'd marked on the cement with chalk. "Also," he added, looking up, "generally when we talk about Back to the Future we try to downplay the date-rape plot point."

"Fair enough."

Back in the coffee shop, Jeff and Annie's conversation had drifted to how Jeff had never been skiing, despite living in Colorado his entire life.

Annie chortled. "How is that even possible? I was skiing in preschool. I was one of those little babies in adorable baby-sized snowsuits that you see on the bunny slope."

"Yes, you grew up in a solid gold house with diamond shoes and a bunch of servants I'm sure," Jeff said. "Mom couldn't afford lessons."

She clucked her tongue apologetically. "Even so, it seems like the kind of gung-ho flashy thing you'd be into. Showing off for ski bunnies…" Annie waggled her eyebrows at him.

"There were a couple of school trips," he admitted. "And one big firm-wide thing, a few years ago. But I didn't want anyone to know I didn't already know how to, and…" He shook his head.

She lifted her chin, looked him in the eye, and covered his hand with hers. "I will teach you to ski," she announced.

"It may be too late for me," he said solemnly. "I don't know if I could fit into an adorable baby-sized snowsuit…"

As she laughed, Annie's phone buzzed for the eighth or ninth time. She finally checked it, and did a double take. "Oh, God, it's almost six."

"What? No, it's…" Jeff checked his watch. "Shit. Wow. Yeah." He tried not to think about how he'd just spent literal hours chatting with Annie Edison, with no sense of running out of things to say or even of the passage of time. "That explains why the barista's been glaring at us."

"Has she?" Annie asked anxiously. She looked around, searching for an angry glare aimed her way.

Jeff chuckled. "No, no, it's fine. They don't close for another half-hour."

"Still, we've been sitting her for like four hours, we should get more coffee or something. Sort of pay rent on the table."

He shrugged. "They could ask us to leave, but then all the guys would go, too. Probably cost them more business than the table'd generate otherwise."

"The guys?"

"The guys who only came in here because they saw you in the window and they can't believe how good you look."

She did that thing she did sometimes, where her head bobbed and she looked pleased and embarrassed at the same time. "All the guys ogling Annie. I'm amazed you didn't go with 'all the women ogling Jeff.'"

"I call them like I see them. And," Jeff added, "I figured that went without saying."

"Have you checked your phone?" Annie asked him, indicating hers.

Jeff hadn't — the only person whose texts he was ever interested in was sitting across from him — so he dug his out and began scrolling through the messages. A moment later he let out a low whistle.

"I know, right? We should go back to campus before Abed electrocutes somebody." Annie grabbed her purse and rose to leave.

"You don't think Pierce can… I don't even know. Safely send him back in time?" Jeff asked as he stood.

"Not back in time. Back to… the future!" That last part was pronounced grandly, and louder than Annie had meant it to, judging from the embarrassed way she acknowledged the other customers' curious glances.

Storm clouds rolled in as they drove back to campus and Jeff fretted that they'd get rained on. Still, though they reached the main hall in advance of any falling rain, he hesitated on the steps.

Annie noticed his reticence and turned to him, saying nothing but giving him a questioning look.

"We don't have to go in," Jeff said.

"Hm?" She sounded bemused.

He tried to come up with a way to articulate that he'd enjoyed the day more than any in recent memory, that being off-campus with her and out in the world had felt like a special occasion, one he wasn't ready to end. "Uh…" Dammit, Jeff, you're a lawyer, he thought. Talk your way out of this! Use words!

Suddenly Troy bounded around the corner of the library and spotted them on the steps. "You guys!" He skidded to a halt. "You guys!"

"What? What is it?" Annie asked him.

"Do you know where Britta parked? I'm supposed to be pulling Abed off of her in the back seat of her car, but I can't find her! I need to be there in…" He checked the time on his phone. "Six minutes ago!"

"That's okay," Jeff said, trying to calm Troy down. "I'm sure Abed…"

"But it might not be Abed!" Troy almost shouted. "It might be Chang! Abed was really confusing about that!"

Annie had her own phone out and was placing a call. She held up a finger. "Hello, Britta? Is anybody molesting you? Uh huh? Huh. Okay, good." She pulled the phone away from her mouth long enough to say "Britta says she was waiting for you and Abed in her car, Chang showed up and tried to get into the car, she started the car and almost ran him over, and then she drove to her apartment because she never actually agreed to play Lorraine."

"Who's Lorraine?" Troy asked.

"Troy," said Jeff, "have you ever seen Back to the Future?"

Troy shrugged. "I dunno, I guess? Yeah. I think I have. Why?"

Jeff patted him on the back. "You should go to Britta's."

"She does sound pretty upset," Annie said, off the phone. "No no, I'm still here," she told the phone. "Yeah. We're sending Troy over, is that okay? Great." She hung up and said "Britta says yeah, come over."

Troy looked torn. "But Abed needs us at the dance!"

"Jeff and I will take care of it," Annie said, smiling at Troy. Without taking her eyes off Troy, she lightly swatted Jeff on the arm as he stood next to her.

"Absolutely," Jeff agreed.

Troy nodded uncertainly, but dashed off into the night.

"Well, that happened," Jeff said. "All's well that ends well. You want to go get a drink?"

"Jeff! We promised Troy we'd dance!"

"But that was an idle promise!" Jeff looked pained as Annie made eyes at him. "Fine."

He smiled as she flounced smugly up to him, enjoying the moment.

Jeff extended his arm, to walk her into the dance. "Milady?"

She smiled shyly. "Milord."