Monday morning Annie was at Beans 'n Things as it opened, about an hour and a half before her usual time. She flinched, despite herself, at the sight of Joe Brown's usual table empty, and felt like she'd upset the balance of the universe somehow.
"Triple short americano?" Jeanne the barista asked her.
Annie nodded and paid.
"You're in early," Jeanne observed as she made Annie's drink. "You beat your fella in."
"He's not my fella," Annie said quickly. "We went on one date. He's not anything. I mean — okay, that's kind of a rude way to put it…"
"No, no, I get it," Jeanne said. "If I see him, I'll tell him you never want to see him again." Seeing Annie's shocked face, she added "I'm kidding. I don't really care. Although he was a good tipper."
"What time does he usually get here?" Annie asked, checking the time on her phone.
"Usually? Hour, hour and fifteen minutes from now. Haven't seen either of you since last week, though. I thought maybe you'd decided to do your daily flirting someplace else."
Annie frowned. "He didn't come in Thursday or Friday, either?" He'd said he had, hadn't he, when he was texting? Maybe she'd misunderstood.
"No…" Jeanne handed Annie her coffee. "Are you worried he's cheating on you, making small talk with some other girl in some other coffee shop?"
"I told you, he's not… ugh." Annie sagged against the counter as Jeanne began filling the order of the other customers who came in after Annie. "He was flirty and he asked me out and I said yes and I shouldn't have but he seemed nice and low-key and the concert was soooo boring I spent the whole time thinking about how maybe it would have been fun if I'd been there with…" She paused for breath, and decided against finishing that thought. "So I'm coming in earlier, going to get to work earlier, going to be a go-getter, and also going to not see him again."
"Man, I'm terrible at feigning interest, I guess," Jeanne mused. "Because you seem to have decided that I care."
"That would make you good at feigning interest," Annie said weakly. She hoped they were engaged in friendly banter. Jeanne was hard to read, and it was early.
"It depends on what my goal is," Jeanne countered. "I could have told you he was a loser," she added, "I mean, come on, he was hanging out in a coffee shop looking to pick you up."
"I don't think that was why he —"
"He'd come in fifteen minutes before you got here, stick a twenty in the tip jar, and wait for you. Then once your bus was around the corner he'd leave. I guess he gave me the twenty so I wouldn't say anything," Jeanne said, "but he hasn't bribed me lately. And it's fun to, you know, stir the pot."
Annie strained to reconcile Jeanne's statements with the blandly cute and friendly guy who'd taken her to an awkward Natalie Is Freezing concert. "Huh," she said.
"If I see him again I'll tell him the jig is up," Jeanne continued blithely. "Unless you want to bribe me to say something else?" She sent a hopeful glance Annie's way.
Annie shook her head. Something seemed off, but then, she'd been off-balance ever since she spotted Jeff buying a latte the week before. "I couldn't afford it, and even if I could, I don't think it'd be worth it."
Jeanne made a face. "Well, see, now you have got me really mildly curious about your life, which sucks for me because I hate asking follow-up questions. You ask one, and then there's another, and another, and it's like, where do you stop? I have so many better things to do than ask follow-up questions. It's insane, the number of better things I have to do."
"Uh huh." Annie sipped her coffee.
"But okay, you twist my arm, ugh. So the guy was a drip and the concert was a bust?" Jeanne seemed to recognize each of the people who came in for coffee as they chatted, or at least she seemed to have a preternatural sense of what they would order. She barely had to glance at them, allowing her to focus her full attention on Annie.
Annie watched Jeanne work. "Um. Yeah. It wasn't his fault, he was just weird and nervous and I didn't know it until the concert started but I really don't like Natalie Is Freezing. A couple of my friends did, back in Colorado, and they played my school once but I wasn't really paying attention… I thought I'd give them a try. And Joe Brown is not somebody I want to see again. We didn't really click, like, conversationally, you know? Long pauses."
Jeanne said nothing for a bit. Just when Annie's sense of the mood of their interaction had shifted from kind of awkward to super awkward and weird, she said "Like that?"
"Yes!" Annie nodded, slightly relieved that the tension had ratcheted back down to pretty darn awkward. "He was anxious the whole time but he didn't seem to actually be any more into the date than I was. He kept running off and reappearing. We got burritos before the concert. I paid for mine myself. Afterwards we'd kind of planned to get drinks or something but instead he said he needed to get home to do some work, which saved me the trouble of coming up with something… So, you know, no hard feelings?"
"Man, this is why I don't ask people questions," Jeanne whined. "The answers are always sooo boring! I've completely forgotten why I thought I wanted to know about your stupid date. Maybe I had a microstroke. You can have a free mini-muffin if you leave right now."
At exactly 12:15, just as she was sitting down to lunch at her desk, Annie's phone rang. It took her a moment to identify the sound; no one had given her a reason to use her phone as a phone in weeks, not counting Jeff that one time.
It was an unknown number — Annie's first thought was that Jeff must have changed his phone again, then caved and was calling her from the new number, which was crazy. Probably it had nothing to do with anything.
"Hello?"
"Hello, can I speak to Annie Edison, please?"
"This is she," Annie said carefully. The voice was slightly familiar but she couldn't place it.
"Oh, excellent. My name is William Stone, I'm an attorney. We actually met once before —"
"I remember." Annie knew him now: the rangy lawyer who'd run the polygraph session with Pierce's will. "What's this about?"
"I'm calling because of an element of Pierce Hawthorne's bequest. Can you come in to my office? It would be much easier to explain in person."
Annie smiled. "Unless your office is in Boston that's impossible. I've relocated."
"Yes, I know," Stone said, surprising her. "I'm with Biddle Heath, near the courthouse downtown."
Annie emitted a surprised gasp.
"I can give you the exact address if you like —"
"That's okay, I'll just google it," Annie said. "Um. I actually work right near the courthouse. I could come over right now — my lunch doesn't end until one — or at six? Or tomorrow?"
"Six o'clock this evening would be great," Stone said coolly. "I'll tell the receptionist to expect you."
"Great…"
"I'll see you then."
Annie set her phone down carefully and tried to guess what else Pierce might have wanted from her, or to give her. He'd left his fortune to Troy, except for a handful of odds and ends, including the diamond tiara he'd given her. Maybe he'd only meant for her to have the tiara for a limited time, she mused. It was in a safety deposit box back in Colorado, which had seemed easiest.
ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 1218:
Weird thing just happened, got a call from Pierce's lawyer out of the blue
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
If only I had a lawyer of my own to advise me!
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
I wouldn't be able to pay him, of course, but perhaps we could work out some alternate arrangement…
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
I meant a contingency basis!
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Gross, Jeff! Get your mind out of the gutter
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Annie might have texted more, but the phone rang a second time. Assuming Stone had forgotten something, she answered it.
"Hello, Annie?" The breathless voice on the other end definitely wasn't Stone.
"Hello?" she asked, cautiously.
"Ha! Excellent. I need to see you. It's a matter of life and death, chaos and order, Betty and Veronica!"
Annie was silent for a moment. Could it be Joe Brown? "I'm sorry, who is this?"
"Oh! Ha, ha. Ha." The man didn't so much laugh as say the word 'ha' a few times. "This is Russell Borchert. I love computers?"
Of all the things Annie had been expecting, this was not one of them. "Doctor Borchert?" she asked, incredulous.
"Yes! Exactly! I have a PhD, so good of you to remember! I don't normally like to use the phone — I mean, anyone could be listening in. The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968, hello? Ha! But this is important. I need to clamp you, for Scarlett."
Annie waited a moment for him to elaborate, then prompted him. "Go on."
"Now I know you're in town, so it should be a simple matter to hop over here so we can hook you up…"
"Dr. Borchert —"
"Call me Russ!"
"Okay. Russ, I need a lot more information. Where are you? What do you want to do, exactly?" Can we do this without me being alone with you?
"Ha, ha, ha," Borchert chanted. "I was in a bunker, you know. Yes. Of course. Those are reasonable questions. Ha. You may recall when I was in the bunker I was working on my beloved Raquel, who heroically sacrificed herself so that we could all escape together…"
"Okay," Annie said, because it seemed easiest.
"But now I've built Scarlett and she needs data and of course you're uniquely qualified to assist with the calibration. Have you ever seen Blade Runner? It's a movie."
"Yes…"
"Wasn't it great?"
"Sure."
"I mean, Harrison Ford, I knew he was a talent, but he did so much…"
"Absolutely."
"Where was I? Scarlett. Calibration. I just need to put some electrodes on you — totally non-invasive, outside your clothes, don't worry — and ask you some questions, then compare them to the first data set and it'll only take a few minutes. The questions, I mean. It's like the Voight-Kampff Test in Blade Runner."
Annie had no recollection of the Voight-Kampff Test. Blade Runner was one of those sci-fi movies Abed watched; to her they'd all blended together. "Of course," she said.
"So you can do it? Great! Just come over whenever. I'll tell someone to expect you."
On the one hand, Annie liked to think of herself as a good and generous person, and Borchert sounded so eager… on the other hand, he was a weird creepy man with a creepy nipple fixation whose creepy magic door had almost locked her into a version of hell… "Where, exactly?"
"Any time between, oh, nine in the morning and nine at night should be fine. I'm usually here."
"Where?" Annie repeated, with what she thought was admirable patience.
"Oh! The Trapezoid Building. It's at MIT. Very easy to find — it's the one shaped like a trapezoid, you can't miss it. I'm in the top floor. Now the sooner we get this done the better, can you come in this afternoon? This evening? I can stay late if you can't make it until after nine."
"I…" Annie considered. She was pretty sure Vicki owed her a favor. She'd talk to her that night, get Vicki to accompany her into the bowels of MIT and visit the crazy man. The sad crazy man who needed her. "Okay. I can do tomorrow evening I think. Eight thirty?" Wrangling Vicki would be easier later in the day…
"Great! Even better! That will give me plenty of time to set up! I'll see you then!"
It wasn't until he'd hung up that it occurred to Annie to wonder how Borchert knew she was in Boston.
ANNIE to JEFF (OLD NUMBER), 1224:
Things just took a turn for the wacky
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Totally serious: I'd love to talk to you about this.
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Actually I'd love for you to go there with me.
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
I feel like I owe it to him? But I also worry he's deranged.
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
I could use a neurotic strongman to protect me
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Of course you'd probably just disclaim all responsibility and flee
[ERROR MESSAGE NOT DELIVERED]
Jeff collapsed into a chair in his hotel room and swore. Somehow an overnight trip to Wilmington, Delaware (corporate litigation capital of the world and all-around boringest city on Earth) had stretched into what was now its third day. Meetings followed meetings followed breaks to review documents followed more meetings. The amount of paperwork required for a multimillion-dollar shareholder suit had, in spite of Jeff's best hopes, turned out to be staggering. According to the specialists Stone had hired, they needed to file multiple briefs, letters, and memoranda with the court, all of which had different requirements. Any formatting error on a submission and the clerk of the court would shred it unread.
It was all the parts of being a lawyer that Jeff hated, compressed into a single weekend that was never going to end. He kept getting pulled into one more meeting, having his train ticket back to Boston cancelled and a new, later one issued, only to be similarly pushed back later in the day.
Keeping him down here like this was costing Via Laser Lotus an arm and a leg, between the billable time and the expenses, but Stone was adamant that the client wanted a Biddle Heath rep sitting in on all the planning meetings, and that the planning meetings had to be in-person, rather than over the phone like in a sane world. In theory Jeff's role as Via Laser Lotus's attorney was to liaise between the specialists and the client, and use his extensive background knowledge of Via Laser Lotus's operations to prevent the specialists from creating any conflicts. However Stone was the only one the client actually spoke to (religious reasons, again, Stone claimed in an email) and Jeff knew less about Laser Lotus than he did about Inspector Spacetime.
All the time he spent in Delaware was billable, which was great for his hours but ridiculously inefficient. Pulling all the facts together, Jeff couldn't help coming to a single, inescapable, insane conclusion: Pierce was alive and screwing with him.
It was, he conceded to himself, just barely possible that Pierce was dead but had drawn up a set of trustee instructions that foresaw his relocation to Boston. Pierce might be screwing with him from beyond the grave. Couldn't rule that out.
He glanced at his watch. Six o'clock. He had twenty minutes to get downstairs and across the street to another meal with the specialists. In a perfect world, he reflected, he'd spend that time texting with Annie. But his was an imperfect world…
JEFF to ABED, 1804:
You got a second?
Minutes ticked by. Jeff lounged as casually as he could in the hotel room's one easy chair, and played a round of Fruit Ninja, until…
ABED to JEFF, 1807:
Sure
JEFF to ABED, 1808:
I'm stuck in Delaware
Probably because Pierce thought it would be funny
ABED to JEFF, 1808:
Did you see Pierce again? Is he a ghost?
JEFF to ABED, 1809:
[Ghost emoji]
What are you doing?
ABED to JEFF, 1810:
That's not a no
I'm editing a scene for the movie
I should get back to it
JEFF to ABED, 1812:
Movie? [Question mark emoji]
When Abed didn't immediately respond, Jeff resisted the urge to text him again. You're just checking in with a friend, he told himself. Stakes could not be lower.
Still, he loitered in his room longer than he should have, waiting.
ABED to JEFF, 1822:
You can see it when it's done
If you wanted daily updates you should have pledged to the Kickstarter
JEFF to ABED, 1823:
Well have fun
I've got to wine and dine a pack of wealthy former English majors.
ABED to JEFF, 1825:
[Cool emoji]
[Cool-cool-cool emoji]
Did I tell you I got custom emojis for my birthday?
A sense of foreboding filled Annie as she approached the Biddle Heath offices. Though they were located in the same kind of nondescript Brutalist hulk as the FBI office — nondescript Brutalist hulks dominated the city center — the mood of the place felt different. As she stepped through the doors a strong scent of artificial vanilla struck her, cloying and sticking to her clothes. The source of the perfume, she saw, was a large candle burning in the middle of an ugly fountain, installed right in the middle of the lobby.
"Sign in, please," called a voice from the far end of the large room. Annie glanced that direction and saw a counter, both long and wide, with a single woman seated behind it. She wore a security uniform and had a blandly pleasant expression fixed on her face. The guard tapped a clipboard on the counter in front of her.
Annie frowned at her own disquiet. She was an adult, fully capable, a college graduate even. There was no reason to be frightened of an office lobby, even if she did have a sense that she was about to be ambushed. She strode as confidently as she could manage up to the counter, and entered her name (Annie Edison) and whom she was visiting (she started to write William Stone, but changed it to Biddle Heath when she saw that half of the other guest entries in the log were simply BH) and the time (five after six). She finished with a flourish, and smiled at the security guard.
The guard's expression hadn't altered an iota. "Reception's up on twelve," she said, and pointed to a bank of elevators on one wall of the big empty lobby.
"Thank you," Annie said with all the gravity the occasion deserved.
A short elevator ride later, she stepped out into another, smaller lobby. The receptionist, who might have graduated from high school the same year as Annie, smiled another professional smile at her. "Can I help you?"
"I'm here to see William Stone," Annie told her, ignoring the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Something about this place was messing with her. Get over it, she instructed herself. It's just an office.
"Oh, Annie Edison?" the receptionist asked brightly. "He's expecting you. If you'll just —"
"Annie Edison?!"
The sound of breaking crockery and someone crying her name with an interrobang diverted Annie's attention away from whatever instructions the receptionist had for her. She spun, finding the source of both sounds standing in a doorway: a small frog-faced man standing over a puddle of coffee and a shattered mug.
Annie reflexively took a step back. "I don't —"
The man started towards her, eyes wide. "Oh my God, I can't — what are you doing here? Why — does he know — what?" he sputtered. "Oh, jeez, mind the spill. Sheila, can we get a —?"
"Yes, of course," the receptionist said, in the placating tone of someone who has cleaned up (or arranged for someone else to clean up) coffee spills many, many times.
"What's the occasion?" The weird man let out a sort of yelp and cried "Jeff's in Delaware!" much louder than was necessary, and in an instant Annie realized something she probably should have guessed already.
"Jeff works here," she said slowly. "At Pierce's law firm." The sense of unease that had been growing since she entered the building suddenly broke over her. Of course Jeff worked there. On some level, she'd realized that before she'd even gone inside. She was in Jeff territory — not enemy territory, exactly, but not somewhere she could let her guard down.
"Pierce? Who?" The soft-skinned man reared back. "I mean, yes, Jeff works here — did you not — he said he and you — my name is Mark, I'm Jeff's best friend, it's amazing to meet you!"
Annie's perspective shifted, as she found a model to use for interacting with Mark: she was talking to a weird East Coast version of the dean. She could handle a weird East Coast version of the dean. "You're Mark… Cash?" she said, accepting his proffered handshake. "Although that's probably not your real name, is it?"
"It's fine, Tango calls me Cash, I call him Tango, it's just this thing we do." Mark glowed with pride and held onto her hand for a fraction of a second longer than Annie was entirely comfortable with. "I'm sorry, I'm just nattering on… can I get you a cup of coffee?" He gestured towards the hallway. "Espresso? Sorbet? Biscotti?"
"I'm fine, thanks," Annie said as Mark led her down the hall. "I'm supposed to be meeting with William Stone…"
"Sure, sure, sure." Mark half-turned as he walked. "I've got to say, it's amazing to finally meet you. We've heard so much — Eleanor and I — and here you are in the flesh!"
"Here I am," Annie agreed. "Um, what have you heard, exactly?"
"Oh, you know." Mark chuckled. "You're the greatest woman on earth, he never loved before and never will again, you're too perfect for this fallen world. Standard guy stuff."
Annie frowned. "Uh huh."
"Seriously, he's got it bad for you — you know that, I'm sure, you know how he is. Don't need me to tell you, get enough drinks in him and he refuses to talk about anything else."
Annie scoffed. "That doesn't really sound like Jeff…"
"Well," Mark admitted, "he does require some prodding, that's true. I said to him, Tango, you need to…"
Annie nodded absently. To hear Mark tell it, Jeff had improvised multiple blank-verse soliloquies on how he was her devoted slave, which didn't much match the man who'd fled Colorado rather than have a conversation with her. How many times had she tried to get Jeff to just talk with her? Each time he'd evaded or dissembled. Eventually she'd reached a breaking point, and that had been the end of the story, until —
Eventually she'd reached a breaking point, and that was the end of the story.
Except that was wishful thinking, obviously, because he was still constantly at the forefront of her thoughts. And she knew why he'd done what he did; she didn't need anyone to explain it to her. Jeff couldn't handle loving her, he assumed she would leave him and break his heart, and so he'd fled. It was the same strategy she'd seen from him so many times before: make a decision about Annie without consulting her, refuse to talk to her about it, deny that there'd even been a decision to make. Her whole long torrid history with Jeff Winger was the story of a man jerking a woman around…
But then, Vicki and Quendra had thought she and Jeff were dating, or had been dating a few years ago, sophomore, junior, senior year. She'd seen how unhappy he became, as she'd pulled away from him last fall. His heart-wants-what-it-wants speech aside, there'd been an electricity between them, that last week they'd spent together. And now a man she'd never met before was claiming Jeff had spent the last month, at least, pining for her.
Mark was still talking. "…First and inches, I told him, because it's blindingly obvious that if half of his stories are true than you're… oh." Mark stopped short and broke off his monologue as Stone abruptly appeared in an office doorway, silent and grim. "Will, this is Annie! Jeff's Annie!" Mark exulted.
Annie let out an involuntary little squeak. She cringed at her own embarrassing sound, hoping neither Mark nor Stone had noticed it. What had Jeff actually told Mark, that he would call her 'Jeff's Annie' so freely?
"Of course. Ms. Edison, so good to see you again." Stone spoke like a funeral director. He also wore a severe dark suit like a funeral director, some irreverent part of Annie observed. "If you'll join me in my office?"
Mark stood like a man who needed to use the restroom, shifting his weight from one leg to another. His face bore a pained expression. "I know it's… would either of you mind if I sat in on this? I'd love to be read into whatever —"
Stone raised a hand. "Sorry, Mark, not this time." He gave Annie a chilly look. "Please, come in."
At this point, Annie decided, there wasn't anything more that could shock her. She was fully shocked out. Done with the being shocked. Just 100% done. No more shocks left in her. She nodded solemnly to Stone, and stepped into his darkened office.
As Stone followed her in and closed the door, leaving Mark still out in the hallway, Annie discovered that she did, in fact, have one more shock left in her.
"Hello, Annie," said Pierce.
