1.

Pam opened every window in her apartment to let in all the sunshine of an exceptionally nice May morning in Scranton. She sat in a corner of her living room that had become her little studio, surrounded by a clutter of paintings, drawing and supplies. She set out to put the finishing touches on one last piece for tonight’s show.

She had been throwing herself into art for therapy more than anything else. It had been a rough six weeks. The angry breakup with Roy, while a blessing, had left her raw and alone. And day after day, she had to see Jim and Karen together, and think about what might have been. She could feel the self-destructive impulses. Some mornings she was sorely tempted to skip work and stay in bed all day and wallow in her own sadness. She forced herself to shower and get dressed anyway. She hadn’t smoked cigarettes since her partying days after high school, but she found herself thinking it would be nice to have one. She didn’t, however. There were nights when she wanted to keep throwing back wine until she didn’t give a shit about anything. She always stopped herself after two glasses. Well, sometimes three.

She painted, called her mom a lot, let herself cry sometimes, painted some more, and just generally did the best she could. Work was the hard part. She hated that how she felt at the end of the day was determined more than anything else by how things went with Jim. Whether he made small talk with her. Whether she noticed tension (good) or affection (bad) between him and Karen. She was stuck between wanting to be over him and wanting to keep hoping.

Making it harder, perversely, to move on was the fact that things had been getting a little better in that area lately. More and more often, especially when Karen was not in the immediate vicinity, he would treat her like a friend. Sometimes it even seemed like old times, as if nothing had changed. They had been laughing together more, had even teamed up on a few pranks. She even thought, a few times, that she caught him stealing glances her way, though she told herself they didn’t mean anything. Best of all, that awful feeling she sometimes had that she was invisible to him, that he didn’t even like her or care about her as a person anymore, was becoming less frequent.

Also less frequent, to her guilty happiness, were times when he and Karen seemed happy together. They were still a couple, but she could see it wasn’t smooth sailing. There were many days when they seemed tense with each other or didn’t interact much. Karen seemed frustrated, unhappy. She was icier than ever to Pam.

For her part, Pam did her best. She tried to treat Jim like a friend, nothing more or less. She resisted saying out loud the cutting remarks that sometimes came into her head, and tried to gracefully ignore Karen’s coldness and occasional outright rudeness. She even worked a little harder, took a little bit of pride in her job, tried to protect Michael from himself. At the end of the day, though, no matter how she acted and whether Jim flashed a smile at her or rolled his eyes at Karen, she went home alone, and often lonely.

However, she was excited about her show. She was taking two classes, and painting and drawing every day, and she was starting to see results. More and more she could make things look how she wanted them to look, and she was often quite pleased with how her efforts turned out. Unlike how it used to be, it didn’t seem to her that many of her classmates were obviously better than her.

She was especially excited to show one particular painting to on particular person. She had to admit that she loved that her work was hanging in the office and that Michael actually really liked it. So she set out to do something she was sure he would like even more. She had slyly taken several pictures of him with her cell phone camera during the course of typical Dunder Mifflin workdays, and finally managed to get one where he looked, not silly and ridiculous, but powerful and passionate. She used that picture as the basis for a painting. It had taken seven tries, but she was finally happy enough with it to let it be seen at the show, and to give it to him as a gift, if he wanted it.

The painting depicted Michael speaking to his troops in the conference room. He was striding forward and looked intense, passionate, and purposeful. After a lot of effort, she felt like she had captured that certain part of him that she actually respected. She made him sharp and the rest of the painting hazy, but tried to show that the others in the room were looking up at Michael with respect. It wasn’t, she had to admit, an especially realistic depiction of life at Dunder Mifflin, but that wasn’t the idea. She wanted to depict not the actual truth, but Michael’s truth, or what he wanted to be the truth anyway. It was her gift to him for being there when she needed it most.

When she told him about the show he promised he wouldn’t miss it, but just to make sure, before she left Friday she stuck her head in his office. “So you’re coming tomorrow right? Because there’s one painting I really want you to see.”

He seemed pleased. “Absotively posilutely I’ll be there. So what is this painting?”

“Not telling,” she said playfully. “See you tomorrow.”

Hopefully, Jim would be coming too. She agonized over whether to ask him, thinking it would hurt too much if she asked him and he refused, or just blew it off. But, like her mom told her, treat him like a friend. He was her friend and she wanted him to come. So Wednesday, with Karen out doing something or another, she had gone over to his desk and given him a flier. “This is for my art show Saturday, for my class. Swing by if you for a minute if you aren‘t…” She stopped herself. Such a half-assed request was no way to get what you want, she told herself. Say what you mean. “I hope you can come. I’d like you to come.”

“Wow Beesley very cool.” He hesitated a moment. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll try to make it. He paused again, seemed to be thinking. “Definitely. I’ll definitely be there.”

She was gratified and relieved, though she tried not to show it too much. “Thanks Halpert. And by the way, I’m bored, so feel free to come up with something to entertain me this afternoon.”

“I’ll get to right to work on that.”

2.

It had been a rough six weeks for Jim, too. The gossip about the Pam-Roy incident had reached Karen and engendered another round of angst and late night talks. At times, he thought of breaking up with her, but a combination of guilt about hurting her and dread of being back in the same hellish place he was at last year kept him from pulling the trigger. He couldn’t kid himself, though. The relationship wasn’t making him happy and there was no way it was going to go the distance. It was just a matter of time.

It had been a long week; they had both been busy and weren’t feeling very connected, and hadn’t made specific plans for the weekend. Karen had that feeling that she often had lately that he was getting farther away rather than closer. Friday they walked out together into the Dunder Mifflin parking lot together. She held his hand. “So, Halpert, where are you taking me to dinner tonight?”

He found, to his dismay, that the thought of going out to dinner at the moment with her was not attractive at all to him. “Uhm, I’m sorry. I think I’m going to have to take a pass. I’m just tired.” He could sense her annoyance. “Tomorrow maybe? I thought I might stop by that art show, maybe we could do that and go out afterwards?”

She want from annoyed to downright pissed. “You’re kidding, right? Pam’s art show? Our date for the weekend is going to be to see the little drawings of your former crush?”

Jim wasn’t exactly surprised at the reaction, but the tone was harsher than he expected. The tone of her voice was ugly, venomous.

“Yeah, I guess so. I promised her I would go. She’s a friend of mine and I want to go.”

With that, the camel’s back broke. Karen’s face melted into a blend of sad resignation and anger. “Fuck it Halpert, I give up. I just fucking give up. If you think I’m going to stay with you forever and be your loneliness insurance while you pine for someone else then fuck you.”

She turned away from him. He thought she was probably crying. “Hey, it’s not like that. C‘mon, let‘s not do it like this.” He tried to speak tenderly and put his arm on her, but she pulled away.

“Not do it like what?” She was in tears, and was almost yelling. “What, you want a sweet, gentle, goodbye, sorry it didn’t work out, best wishes? Is that what you want? So you can keep thinking what a nice guy you are? Fuck you. It’s hurt me so fucking bad trying to make his work while you were just floating along, one foot in and one foot out. I’m done with it. Go chase your receptionist or whatever you want to do. Fuck you. You’re not as nice as guy as you think you are. Not even close. You‘re pretty much an asshole.”

With that, she stormed away and got in her car, and tore out of the parking lot. Jim stood stunned. It stung. She hit a nerve. He had always thought of himself as a nice guy. Definitely not an asshole. Not the kind of guy who uses people and leaves them angry and bitter. “Shit,” he muttered to himself. He got in his car and just sat there, thinking.

Guilt is no fun, and so Friday night was not a fun night for Jim. He turned over in his mind how he had acted, how he got to where he was. His guilt though, was not mostly about how he had treated Karen.

He had hardly given her a chance. He had dropped a bomb on her and when she didn’t handle it just like he wanted he had bolted. “Pam, I love you, now dump your fiancé who you’ve been with since high school and start loving me back right this instant or I’ll never talk to you again. He hadn’t said it that way, but that’s what it amounted to. And when he came back…he was cold to her, and he knew it hurt her. That was hard to admit, but it was true. What was even harder, though, was to admit to himself that he had taken satisfaction in it. There was a part of him that enjoyed his revenge. Reject me? Hurt me? I’ll get myself someone new and wave her in front of your face and barely give you the time of day. How do you like them apples?

That satisfaction, though, had gone away. He would look over at her sometimes, and she would look sad and lost and it would just kill him. He had started trying to rebuild the friendship, and she had been great. She was as warm and nice as she always had been. It pissed him off that he felt like he had to act differently when Karen was around, that he couldn’t let Karen catch him being friendly.

When Pam asked him to come to the show, he could tell it was a big deal to her, but his immediate thought was what if Karen won’t go for it? He had realized how fucked up that was and promised her he would go, but just the fact that he had to go through that process showed what a mess things were. He felt bad about hurting Karen, but he was glad it was over. Relationships reach a certain point and they get toxic, he thought.

Finally, he finished his bout of self-flagellation and fell asleep. When he woke up, he found that he could hardly wait for the art show.

3.

Pam carefully packed her pieces and headed over to the community center where the show was. She was dressed, as was her recent habit away from work, with a little bohemian flair. A funky bright pink blouse, her favorite jeans, flip-flops showing bright pink toenails, a little something different done with her hair. She felt nervous, but more an excited nervous than her more usual anxious nervous. She was anxious for Michael to see the picture, and felt much less wary than last time that about other people seeing her stuff. She was pretty sure it wasn’t that bad.

She arrived early and carefully arranged her little exhibit. She was please with the variety; along with the picture of Michael there were both some very detailed sketches that she had tried to make look almost like photographs, but also some more abstract pieces. One was a watercolor where murky fields of slate blues and grays were pieced by ribbons of pink; another was a sort of mosaic of geometric shapes in bright acrylics. She thought they looked pretty cool.

Slowly people started filtering in. Her first visitor was Toby, who had enthusiastically promised to come. He had told her he really liked her picture of the building and was sorry he had missed the first show. He laughed at the picture of Michael, but added, “Oh man, he is really going to love that.” He complimented her other works effusively. He seemed genuine enough, but it was hard to tell. He was such a nice guy that he was going to say nice things no matter what. They chatted for a bit, and finally he said goodbye and left, a little to her relief. The small talk had started to get awkward, and she didn’t especially want him there when Michael arrived.

A few more minutes passed, and she had a few more stray visitors, a couple of whom actually seemed interested and asked her a few questions. As she chatted with one of them, she noticed that approaching her exhibit area was Mr. Jim Halpert. There were no Fillipellis in sight.