Invitation

‘We…’ Karen quickly amended, ‘I mean, I should have a party this weekend.’

Jim continued to focus on the framed print she’d asked him to hang on the living room wall of her new apartment. He’d somehow managed to put it in the wrong spot twice already, plus he wanted to see where she was going with this before venturing a response.

‘A welcome home to me thing,’ she elaborated.

He turned to look at her. She was wearing a pristine white terry cloth robe, her face was scrubbed clean, her hair still wet from the shower. All traces of the absurd makeover she’d had with Phyllis earlier that day had been erased. It was actually a bit of a relief – he’d found it slightly disturbing that such a striking transformation had resulted from little more than a new hairdo. He ran his fingers through his own hair. Karen frequently suggested he have it cut into a ‘more professional style,’ but so far he’d resisted by pretending to think she was joking.

‘Kind of short notice, isn’t it?’ he asked finally, trying to sound neutral.

‘I suppose,’ she replied. ‘It’s just...well, after living in that crappy hotel for so long, I feel like celebrating. And it would be nice to invite everyone over.’

Karen hadn’t really made any new friends in Scranton yet. A queasy feeling began to fester in the pit of his stomach.

‘Everyone?’

‘Well, everyone at work,’ she clarified impatiently. ‘And I’m sure they don’t have much to do on weekends anyway. You can invite anyone else you want too…’

She stopped short and stared at him and he realized his expression must have resembled a child's, just told he was going to the doctor’s office for a vaccination. He quickly rearranged his features into what he hoped passed for enthusiasm.

‘Sure. Sounds great,’ he erred on the side of overkill. ‘But, I’ll have to think about who, you know, who’s around and…’

The barely perceptible disappointment that clouded Karen’s eyes told him she knew he was stalling. She didn’t miss much, but she was not easily deterred either.

‘Okay,’ she regrouped, cheerful again. ‘Just drinks and cheese and crackers and stuff. Nothing too fancy…it’s not like this crowd would be into that anyway.’

Later that evening, he atoned by joining Karen on the sofa to watch a PBS crime drama she liked, but he found unfathomable. Inevitably, the plot involved a bucolic town in the English countryside, plagued by an inordinate number of murders. Just as the elderly detective, pulled out of retirement to solve the mystery, clued into the obvious fact that Lady Something-or-Other wasn't as upper crusty as she appeared, Jim noticed a list lying on the coffee table, written in Karen's precise handwriting.

‘You’re inviting Pam?’ he asked, reading the familiar names.

He wished he could reel the words back in as soon as they left his mouth. That very afternoon over coffee, he’d reassured her that Pam was just a girl he once knew, the object of a silly crush he’d once had. That she was no one.

‘Of course, why wouldn’t I?’ Karen’s tone was matter of fact, but laced with challenge.

‘No, nothing. It’s just that I think she’s taking art classes at night, so you know…she may not be free.’

‘I seriously doubt she has class on Sunday night, Jim.’

She turned her attention back to the television. Another local had come to an untimely demise on the estate, face down in her Ladyship's picture perfect pond.

The plot thickened.

He only ended up inviting three non-work friends and of those, only two were available: Mark and his old high school friend Will, with whom he still played ball on Saturday mornings.

‘Will…’ Karen squinted, as if trying to place him. She’d picked Jim up at the Y once and briefly met him. ‘Wait. Isn’t he the cute blond one?’

‘Um …I guess.’

‘Great,’ she chirped. ‘You should introduce him to Pam.’

Jim excused himself to get a beer.

Turned out, Karen had been right. Despite the last minute invitation, no one at the office had other plans. They all said yes.

All of them.

You must be happy

Karen seemed pleased as the guests began arriving late afternoon Sunday. She’d dressed up, but in a manner Jim could tell was calculated to appear not to involve too much effort. He supposed it was another sort of makeover, one where she was in full control. She wore jeans, but fancy ones; a simple black blouse, but in a silky expensive looking fabric. Her heels were an inch or two higher than usual, her make-up slightly heavier. She looked great of course - she always did - but a little untouchable too. He imagined hugging her would muss her perfectly smooth hair, kissing her would smudge the ruby red lipstick she’d meticulously applied.

She’d tidied up her new apartment too, though it had looked pretty clean to him to begin with. She’d lit candles, fluffed cushions, arranged cocktail napkins and wedges of imported cheese just so. He’d tried to be helpful with setting up, which mostly entailed staying out of the way and making a last minute ice run.

Everyone admired her spare, but tasteful furniture and commented on her travel mementos: the Provencal tablecloth from her college semester abroad in France; the black porcelain Wedgwood box she’d bought in London; the silver-framed photograph snapped at a fancy beach resort of herself with three girlfriends he didn’t recognize, smiling and suntanned with bright pink flowers tucked behind their ears.

Jim could see it written all over Karen’s face as she gratefully accepted her coworkers’ compliments - she wasn’t just the girl who’d followed him from Connecticut anymore; she was someone to reckon with - someone who knew things, who’d been and, more importantly, was going places.

She deserved that recognition. Much as he tried – sometimes the harder he tried – there were many things he knew he withheld from her. But this he could do. So, he did his best imitation of a dutiful boyfriend, smiling proudly, acting like this was exactly where he belonged.

‘You must be happy to have Karen living so nearby,’ Phyllis trilled.

He just nodded his head affably and said nothing. Thankfully, just then the doorbell rang loudly.

‘I should get this,’ he excused himself, backing away toward the front door.

Salvation was short lived. It was Pam.

She stood there bundled in her old puffy white coat, cheeks flushed from the cold January wind. She seemed tentative when she saw him, as if unsure whether to cross the threshold or to beat a hasty retreat. He didn’t know which he wanted her to do either.

‘Hey,’ he began after a frozen moment, awkwardly waving her in and closing the door behind her.

Before she could respond, Karen was at his side. She grasped Jim’s forearm and smiled warmly up at him and then back at Pam. Somehow, that fleeting gesture conveyed more about territory than an elaborate treaty would.

‘Pam! Come in,’ she exclaimed, an almost triumphant note in her welcome.

As Karen greeted her, he saw Pam’s eyes scan the room, taking in the crystal wine glasses neatly lined up on the kitchen counter, the perfect white orchid on an end table, its elegant arc defying gravity. It was only then that he noticed the misshapen clay pot, containing a small bunch of purple flowers, clutched in her hands.

‘Hi, Karen…congratulations on the new place,’ Pam said, hesitating a second before offering her gift with a self-deprecating, almost apologetic laugh. ‘This is for you.’

The pot was glazed a mottled turquoise, overlaid with whimsical black swirls that faded in and out over its uneven surface. Its contours were crude and amateurish, even he could tell that. And yet - it was improbably graceful. He’d never seen anything like it she’d made before – it had been ages since he’d seen any of her work, period – but he instantly knew it was from her hand.

‘Oh,’ Karen gave it a quick once-over as she took it from her. ‘Did you make this?’

‘Uh, yeah,’ Pam replied uncomfortably. Her embarrassment was palpable, an unexpected knife in his own gut. ‘It’s really nothing, just a silly thing…’

She trailed off as Karen’s gaze shifted over Pam’s shoulder across the room.

‘That was so sweet of you. Thanks!’ Karen said brightly, nonchalantly setting the pot down as she hurried over to Gil, who seemed to be appraising her artful spread of cheeses and grapes. ‘Drinks are by the kitchen!’

Jim stood dumbly next to Pam for a moment in the vacuum created by Karen’s abrupt departure. He would have been relieved that she’d flitted away and ended that exchange, if he wasn’t so brutally tongue-tied. Even the standard niceties – can I take your coat; get you a drink –seemed foreign and stilted.

‘Can I put this somewhere?’ Pam finally rescued him, as she began taking off her coat.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he sheepishly reached out to help with suddenly spastic hands.

When he clumsily brushed her arm as it slid out of her sleeve, it was all he could do not to jump back like she’d emitted an electric shock. He took a step away, widening the space between them as much as the wall behind him would allow. His eyes quickly darted over her. She wore everyday jeans and a fitted, thin red turtleneck sweater that he thought he remembered from the Christmas party. She’d looked painfully beautiful then too.

‘Karen has good taste,’ she smiled politely, glancing around again.

‘Yeah, well… I’ll just throw this on the…bed,’ the word stumbled haltingly off his tongue. He felt his face and ears burning as he fled to the bedroom.

When he returned, she was still where he’d left her by the door. He wanted to head in the other direction, chat with Angela about her cat, Kelly about The Hills, Andy …well, with anybody else about anything. But seeing Pam standing there by herself, it was as if he were helpless not to go back to her.

‘So, I’m supposed to be playing bartender,’ he tried to strike a congenial but impersonal note. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Sure…red wine?’

‘Thank you,’ he smirked half-heartedly.

‘I was afraid you were going to ask for a girly-drink, like Kelly,’ he explained when she looked at him quizzically. ‘Beer and wine are about the extent of my bartending moves.’

‘On second thought, an Appletini does sound good…’

‘Okay,’ he exaggeratedly feigned not hearing her. ‘One red wine coming up.’

She laughed, maybe a little too hard, a little too long. It wasn’t that funny.

Making light small talk with Pam, as if she was just someone he knew casually from work, proved excruciating. They’d chatted a bit more easily lately – about Michael’s kidnapping Jan to Jamaica and Dwight’s latest vision quest; he’d even truly been happy she’d made a point of telling him about winning an art contest the other day (perhaps a little too happy, Karen’s expression had suggested.) But now, stripped of the armor of the office setting, he felt like he was back to square one. He had no bearings.

He just couldn’t figure out how to be around her.

So, he poured her a glass of wine, conveniently remembered some task Karen had asked him to do, and focused on avoiding Pam for the rest of the evening. It wasn’t much of a strategy, but his only other option seemed to be taking her in his arms, professing his undying love and begging her to run away with him.

He hadn’t had much luck with that approach in the past.

Same old story

Jim noticed her as he passed the bedroom on his way back from the bathroom. The sun had set as the party waned on and the room was only illuminated by the streetlights outside the window. Pam was sitting half in shadow, wedged into the gap between the pile of coats and the pillows on Karen’s bed. He almost didn’t see her at all.

In fact, up to that point he’d been pretty successful at maintaining a wide berth from her. She’d smiled shyly a couple of times when she’d caught him inadvertently (or so he hoped it appeared) glancing at her from across the room, but he’d managed to stay engaged in conversation with Mark, or to look busy collecting empty glasses and fussing with the CD player. Even Karen had commented on his unusually energetic performance as a bartender-slash-deejay-slash-boyfriend.

‘Thanks,’ she’d pecked him on the cheek as he opened more wine bottles. ‘You’re really being great tonight.’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he’d retorted, honestly wishing she had no reason to be.

‘Guess I’ll have to think of a good reward for you for later,’ she’d laughed and winked at him. He’d chuckled back, but immediately looked around to make sure no one had heard them.

Now he regarded no one sitting alone in the dark. For a second, Pam remained unaware of his presence. He could easily have kept going, resumed his second-in-command host-with-the-most duties. He wouldn’t have had to interact with her at all, besides bidding her a perfunctory goodbye, thanks for coming as she left. Yet there he stood riveted to the spot, leaning on the doorframe, at a total loss for words.

‘Oh, hey,’ she looked up at him, slightly startled. ‘I’m just hiding in here for a minute.’

When he didn’t reply, she started to explain. ‘It’s just that Karen was trying to convince me to flirt with your friend Bill, and I…’

‘Will.’

She looked at him, perplexed.

‘His name,’ Jim corrected her. ‘It’s Will.’

‘Oops…okay, Will,’ she smiled, rolling her eyes at her mistake, before continuing. ‘I mean, he seems like a really nice guy and I know he’s a good friend of yours, but …’

She paused as if expecting him to interject something, to say something funny to let her off the hook. But he had nothing, no deflecting quips. Not for this.

‘S’okay,’ he replied at last, his tone chilly and dismissive. ‘You wouldn’t have much in common with him anyway.’

Pam flinched visibly. His implication was hardly subtle. Even in the dim light, he could see her mouth go slack, her brow knit with confusion and maybe even a little annoyance. But mostly, he could see the wounded look in her eyes. The ache he’d felt in the pit of his stomach when she first arrived, self-consciously holding her gift, twisted anew. He bit his tongue before he said anything else he’d regret.

The antidote to being her friend wasn't acting like an asshole; indifference was. But at the moment, making up his mind to have brown eyes or to be a foot shorter seemed more within his grasp.

‘Well, it was nice of Karen,’ Pam tried again, her attempt to not appear hurt betrayed by her faltering voice. ‘But… I’m just so bad at that kind of thing.’

‘I guess she thought…’ he began, but all that emerged was a mirthless laugh. ‘Hell, I really don’t know what she thought.’

Jim knew it would be best to cut and run now, to simply mumble an excuse about Karen needing him to do something and leave. After all, he wanted nothing more than for this conversation to end and he still had no clue what Pam wanted from him. Probably nothing at all.

Same old story.

Maybe it was the alcohol in his system, maybe he was just weary. But Christ, when she smiled ruefully at him like that she left him no choice. Everything beyond the bedroom – the voices of the other guests, their laughter, the blaring music – faded into blurred background noise.

He took a deep breath, crossed the room and squeezed into the small space left on the bed beside her. The same bed where not twenty-four hours earlier, Karen had moved above him and almost made him forget – if only for a moment. As he sat down, his eye caught the glint of the foil condom wrapper, still nestled amongst the trash by the nightstand. He swiftly – he hoped discretely - nudged away the incriminating garbage pail with his foot. If Pam noticed, she didn’t let on. She just slid over a little to make room for him, as if being together, here, like this, was normal.

It was anything but.

‘So, ceramics, huh?’ he asked. That seemed like a safe topic. ‘Didn’t know you were into that.’

‘Oh, I’m not really,’ she seemed relieved by his shift in attitude. ‘I mean, I hadn’t even used a potter’s wheel since high school. I was never any good, but there was just something about it I always liked. Then, last summer…well, I had a lot of free time, so I took a class.’

She stopped talking for a moment, staring out the window as if trying to remember something from long ago. Something that made her happy.

‘It just felt good to take this blob of clay and watch it rise up and take shape in my hands…’ she caught herself.

Jim’s mind raced places it had no business going, yet all too frequently did.

‘Wow, that sounded bad,’ she laughed nervously. ‘Anyway, it was fun, even though I still sucked at it. So, now I have like a dozen of these weird little lopsided pots.’

He wanted to tell her that he thought her pot was beautiful. He wanted to tell her so many things.

‘I guess it was a dumb gift for Karen,’ Pam concluded when he didn’t say anything. ‘But, I don’t know…I kind of like them.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ Jim said finally, so quietly he could barely hear his own voice.

It was odd sitting with her in the dark, so close he could sense the vibration in the air when she breathed. It was at once familiar and strange and wrong and right and he didn’t care. All he knew was how soft she looked in her sweater, how unnatural it was not to touch her, that he was made to touch her. He imagined pushing her back against the pillows, feeling what it would be like to cover her body with his own, her mouth with his. He wanted to pretend it was the end of a long evening at her - at their - place and everyone would soon be gone. He’d tell her, let’s clean up in the morning and he’d kiss her and she’d kiss him back and they’d have the whole night ahead of them.

He’d just be with her.

He lost track of how long they sat there together. It was probably only a couple of minutes, but it might have been hours.

‘Jim?’ Karen suddenly called from the kitchen, her voice cutting sharply through the silence. ‘Can you please come deal with the music? Put something less mopey on?’

Karen. Only then did it occur to him to wonder if she knew where he was. He didn’t want to think about it, but Pam took it as a cue.

‘I should go…it’s late,’ she said, standing up and searching through the mass of coats surrounding them like a fortress.

He watched her mutely as she found hers and put it on. When he impulsively reached out and caught her hand, it defied every sane instinct he had. But there were his fingers, desperately grasping the tips of hers. Holding on as if she was his to lose all over again. As if she ever was. Her gaze met his apprehensively.

‘You…’ he began hoarsely, then cleared his throat. ‘You don’t have to leave yet. I…’

But he could think of nothing to add that didn't feel like too much. And not nearly enough. Pam studied his face for a second before responding.

‘No, I should,’ she said, softly but decisively. ‘I’m sure Karen’s ready for everyone to go. She must be exhausted - with moving and this party…you both must be.’

Jim held on to her hand another second before letting it go. He watched her walk toward the bedroom door. She paused for a second and turned back to look at him.

‘Thanks,’ she said simply.

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know…’ she smiled faintly, perhaps wistfully. ‘For hanging out with me, I guess.’

And she was gone.

Life back to normal

The apartment was almost clean of party debris – the dishwasher had been loaded, the floor swept, the good wine glasses washed, dried and put away.

‘Late night OCD attack?’ Karen had teased, seeing Jim sitting at the counter, sorting the leftover Carr’s Water Biscuits and Stoned Wheat Thins into their respective boxes.

He smiled back at her distractedly and resumed the task at hand. It was true; it wasn’t like him to be so orderly. But at that moment, it felt good to put things back in their proper places.

‘Can you carry the recycling down for me?’ she requested as they finished up. ‘I’d really like to get all this stuff out of here before we go to bed.’

‘Yes m’am,’ he nodded.

He went to drop the beer bottle he’d just emptied into the bin by the back door. There, amongst the discarded wine and soda bottles, was Pam’s vibrant turquoise pot.

‘You’re putting this out with the recycling?’ he asked stunned, extracting it from the rubble and holding it up.

‘That?’ Karen said absently. ‘Oh, you’re right, I guess you can’t recycle clay. It made sense after a few martinis … ‘

‘But…Pam made it.’

‘The flowers were the gift, Jim,’ she replied with more than a hint of exasperation, as she pointed to where they were now displayed in a sleek glass bud vase on the coffee table, ‘not the vase…pot, whatever.’

When he continued to stare at her in disbelief, she went on.

‘Pam said herself it was just a silly thing… a cute little joke.’ She looked him directly in the eye before concluding, ‘There’s really no point in hanging on to it.’

And at that moment, he knew for sure she’d been aware of him sitting with Pam earlier. He nodded his tacit agreement to let it alone.

Life back to normal.

‘God, I’m beat,’ Karen yawned a few minutes later, affectionately squeezing his shoulder as she headed towards the bedroom. ‘I can’t believe we have to be up for work in the morning.’

‘Yeah, me neither,’ Jim agreed, as he stood and walked over to where his jacket was slung over the back of a chair. ‘Guess I’ll get going then.

‘You’re not staying over?’ she abruptly turned back towards him, clearly surprised.

‘Uh…well, I’m pretty tired too and I didn’t bring any work clothes, so…’

It was a lame excuse; it would hardly be the first morning he’d run home to change. But he just couldn’t stay. Not that night. He could see Karen deflate, but she didn’t argue and she didn’t ask questions.

‘I’ll take this down on my way out,’ he bent down to give her a quick kiss goodbye before hoisting the recycling bin.

‘Pick me up for work tomorrow?’ her voice sounded uncharacteristically thin and cautious as she watched him unlatch the back door.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he forced a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

Artifact

Jim jogged the two short blocks to his apartment and headed straight for the bedroom. He flung open his closet and dug out one of the boxes stacked against the back wall - the ones he still hadn’t unpacked since returning from Stamford. He kept meaning to, but somehow he never got around to it.

He walked into his bathroom, dug his hand into the inner chest pocket of his jacket and wrapped it around Pam’s pot. He took it out and there, in the bright unforgiving light, studied it closely. He turned it over, felt the weight of it, how cool it was in the palm of his hand. Its delicate lip was slightly chipped, probably from colliding with a beer bottle when Karen tossed it away. He ran his thumb slowly over the small spot of naked pale pinkish clay exposed beneath the pot's fanciful surface.

It seemed so raw, so vulnerable, so unspeakably sad.

Without looking up at his own reflection in the mirror, he gently rinsed the pot in the sink, then reached for a towel – the same one he’d used earlier that day when he’d showered before heading over to Karen’s place. He dried the pot carefully, like it was precious, a relic perhaps. An artifact of a time and place that never really existed, but that he missed all the same.

Back in his bedroom, he rummaged through his dresser and found an old soft t-shirt. He tenderly wrapped the pot in it, taking care to protect it as best he could. He placed the bundle safely in the box and put the box back in the closet.

He closed the door.

*******