Leela scowled and jabbed her thumb into the intercom button again.

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

"I can do this all day, you know," she snapped. "All day."

Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

There was a beep and a sudden burst of static from the intercom. Then there was a breathy sigh and the blonde head of Dr Cahill appeared on the screen.

"Mrs Filmore," she said haughtily, "I've told you a hundred times. He isn't here."

"Bullcrap. Where else would he be? Let me in or I swear, I'll kick this door down!"

"It's reinforced steel. Be sensible."

Leela considered this, and then smiled brightly. "Okay. Just give me ten minutes and I'll get my spaceship. I can't promisethere won't be any lasting damage to the infrastructure, but under the circumstances, I think I'll take my chances."

"Mrs Filmore, please!"

"You'd better stand back, doctor."

"Stop this, you're being -"

"About half a building back."

"Alright, alright!" Cahill threw her hands up in despair. "Wait there, I'll buzz you in."

She cut the connection and vanished. When she opened the door to the Head Museum, looking harrassed, Leela brushed right past her and strode purposefully down the hall. About halfway down, she paused. Cahill sighed.

"It's this way."

Leela stared around the tiny office she was shown into. There were two desks here, and a clear divide between the two halves of the room. Cahill's half was tidy and efficient-looking, perfectly respectable, except where hints of girlishness showed through. (A can of hairspray on her desk, a pair of fluffy pink dice hanging from her computer screen, a Hunk of the Month calender on the wall.) The other half of the room – the half that belonged to Lars – looked as though a bomb had hit it. His desk was elbow-deep in crumpled paper and discarded gum wrappers, and when she sat down, more crackled beneath her boots. His computer screen was covered in sticky fingerprints too, where he'd tilted it to get a better view, and the home screen was a jumble of memos, reminding him to do everything from buy groceries, to change a head's H2OG solution, to celebrate his Minesweeper high score.

Leela sank into his chair, defeated.

"He's not here."

Cahill took shelter behind her own desk, and sniffed. "I did tell you."

The cyclops let this pass without comment.

"This place is a sty," she said instead. "What has he been doing?"

Cahill eyed her warily. "What do you mean?"

"This!" Leela gestured with one arm. "It's a mess. This isn't like Lars."

The doctor only laughed. "Of course it is. This is how it always looks. I gave up nagging him about it years ago. He says he likes it this way, and you know men! He can be so stubborn. I'm sure you've noticed."

Leela huffed. "I assure you," she said defensively, "my home does not look like this. You could eat your dinner off my toilet seat. If so inclined."

For the first time, Cahill looked genuinely interested. "He isn't like this at home?"

"No!"

"Oh." Cahill opened a pamphlet from a pile on her desk and began to read with new intensity. "Tell me, have you ever considered your husband might have split personality disorder?"

"What?"

Cahill looked up and met her gaze. For a moment she looked disarmingly professional.

"Last night your husband began referring to himself as two different people. Generally not a good sign, I think you'll agree."

"What? What did he say?"

Cahill waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I don't know. Something about pizza. He wasn't very coherent. Although he had just discovered you were cheating on him, which may account for that."

Leela gaped at her. "He told you that?"

Cahill shrugged. "Of course. He was very upset, you know. He also turned down my sexual advances."

Leela frowned, resisting the urge to fiddle with the end of her ponytail, as she usually did when stressed. Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the detritus on her husband's desk. Pictures. There were pictures everywhere, taped to the walls, the front of drawers, the hood of the lamp. Some of them made very little sense – a tacky postcard from the Museum of Space Travel, for example, depicting Mars before it was colonized, or a beermat for LoBrau, Bender's favorite beer. But the majority were of Leela herself. There she was poking around under the hood of his Hovercar, frowning in concentration. Asleep on the couch, drooling a little. Cuddling Nibbler, looking the softest she'd ever seen herself look. And there in the middle, an old one, one he must have taken from her own album, though she hardly remembered it. It was an Xmas Eve lock-in at Planet Express – she was wearing a lime-green paper hat, and she could see the palm tree in the background. The crew were all squashed together for a group picture, pressing their weight against the chimney guard in a bout of paranoia. The Professor and Hermes were untangling a batch of fairy lights. Zoidberg was hugging an unpulled cracker to his chest as if it were his firstborn child. Bender had one hand lying lazily against the chimney-guard, while the other arm snaked out of shot, presumably holding the camera. Amy was admiring a new watch on her wrist. Leela and Fry were on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, but with their arms stretched across the chimney guard, their fingers just touched. Behind Bender's head they had caught each other's eye, and were smiling. Isn't this crazy? Fry's smile seemed to say, and hers mirrored the feeling, but at that moment neither of them would have wanted to be anywhere else. How old was that picture? 3003? 3004? It felt like a lifetime ago.

She shook herself.

"Lars doesn't have any kind of disorder. I don't know what you're talking about. He gets a little . . . absent-minded . . . sometimes, but that's it."

Cahill laughed. "That's one way of putting it."

Leela narrowed her eye. "I don't think I've ever told you this before, but I really don't like you."

Cahill giggled, high and girlish. "Oh, stop."

"I mean it. Keep your hands off my husband, you hussy."

Cahill sighed. "Honey, I could have my hands all over your husband and it wouldn't make a difference. I doubt he'd even notice." She shot Leela a sharp look. "You know, the first time I met you, I didn't like you either. Oh, at first I thought it was the colossal eye or those unflattering stretch-pants that bothered me, but now I see, that wasn't it. It was Lars. He worships you, you know. It's the strangest thing."

Leela scowled. "Jealousy is an ugly emotion," she said stiffly. The eye remark had stung more than she wanted to let on.

The doctor, however, only laughed. "Oh," she said lightly, "that too, but that's not what I meant. No. What was really strange was that he never had eyes for anyone else. I mean, there were other women, more attractive women . . ." - she paused, carefully polishing her fingernails - "but he never showed any interest. But the moment he met you, he was like a different person. He flirted,he dated,hell, he even learned how to cook. A whole side of him he'd just packed up and put into storage - until the very second he met you. Don't you find that odd?"

Leela hesitated. The truth was, she didn't know all that much about Lars's life before he'd met her. He dismissed it as nothing worth talking about, and Leela was happy to leave it at that. She didn't want to hear about Lars's exes any more than she thought he'd want to hear about Sean or Adlai Atkins, or even Fry. (The only one she'd been unable to avoid filling him in on was Zapp Brannigan, but he'd taken that pretty well, really.) Still, she had always assumed there were exes.

"I . . ."

Cahill raised her eyebrows. "Do you believe in love at first sight? Because it took one corny line and a few late-night pizzas before I knew I was a goner. How about you?"

Leela frowned, trying to remember how she'd felt the first time she'd met Lars. Flattered, she supposed. Hopeful. She had wanted a date, she remembered that much, but in love? That was a lot more substantial. No. She hadn't really known she loved him until Xmas Eve, when she was huddled in an alley for the second time in her life, about to be gunned down by Santa Claus. She'd been terrified, on edge, but Lars had been comparatively relaxed. "We'll get through this," he'd said, and that had helped, though not enough to make her forget imminent death entirely. She'd been craning her neck, on the lookout for heat-seeking missiles, when he'd whispered in her ear : "But if we don't, this seems as good a time as any to ask you. Will you marry me?" And she'd laughed, the tension sunk like an iceberg, because, well, what a way to take her mind off it. That was the moment she'd known.

"What are you trying to say?"

Cahill pursed her lips. "Professionally speaking, I think you need to go talk to your husband ."

"And personally speaking?"

The doctor smiled brightly.

"It might not be a bad idea to go armed."