Friday he turned to cracking Dwight’s password. This should be a piece of cake.

Frodo. No dice. Starbuck. No. Katee Sackhoff. No. Who knew Dwight could still surprise him.

He didn’t realize he was smiling, just a little, or that Karen saw it from her desk. He didn’t look her way much. That would require looking past Dwight, who generally glared and started looking for evidence that Jim had pranked him again. But this was new Jim—Stamford Jim—who learned after being called into Josh’s office and reminded that this office had higher standards for employee behavior.

Monday morning, he sent Pam an IM.

bigtuna: C’mon, can I have a hint?

He waited, hearing the ping from her computer. She snorted. Almost a laugh.

pbeesly: Big Tuna? Seriously?

He sighed, grumbled, shot a glance at Andy, who was humming again. Today seemed to be Wilson Phillips. “Why do I know that?” he muttered, outraged, and ran a hand through his hair impatiently.

bigtuna: Andy set up my account in Stamford.

bigtuna: He could keep this up all day long. (That’s what she said.) Don’t make me work with Wilson Phillips stuck in my head.

She laughed, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle as Dwight looked up sharply at her.

pbeesly: No hints. Sorry, those are the rules, and they are unflinchingly rigid.

No, those were the rules of jinx. How could he forget forcing himself to cry when Michael asked him to share a story about a drug-addicted relative?

bigtuna: Damn. What about Dwight’s password? Help me out here. I already tried Frodo, Starbuck, and Katee Sackhoff.

pbeesly: I am so disturbed you knew how to spell her name.

bigtuna: iMDB. It’s not Gollum again, is it?

Battlestar Galactica was also Karen’s favorite show. He’d seen a lot of it lately.

Pam logged off, got up and went to deal with Michael’s faxes from corporate. There had been a lot of them since the merger.

When she came back to her desk, Jim was still lost in thought. He tried to work, but he kept thinking about the day of the jinx. Sitting across from her in the break room while she teased him, he’d been so tempted to tell her. She saw it, he knew she did. “Misunderstanding, my ass,” he muttered, glad the cameras weren’t here today.

pbeesly: Jeez, Halpert, don’t mope all day. One hint. Dwight’s password. You’ve got the wrong blonde.

pbeesly: You don’t want to listen to his stuff anyway. It’s mostly score from the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.

bigtuna: I did not know you could buy the BSG score. Wow.

Jim pondered her hint about the wrong blonde. He tried Caprica, Six, D’Anna, Three, and even Legolas, none of which worked. Two days passed before he noticed the way Dwight looked at Angela when he thought no one was looking. He tried Angela, and found himself staring at sci-fi and fantasy scores, along with dozens of podcasts.

He really had changed. That was sobering. There was a time he would have picked up on that vibe much sooner. He thought about burning Karen a CD from Dwight’s playlists, but stopped. Instead he pointed out to Dwight how much they had in common. At first Dwight thought it was a prank, but before long Dwight and Karen spent their Monday breaks together chattering about Jesus imagery and the mechanics of downloading. Angela fumed every time, which made contributing to Dwight’s happiness completely worth it.

Once a week or so, he tried a few more passwords (Michael Scarn, Dwigt, jinx, TWSS), but none worked. Maybe he didn’t know her so well anymore.