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Monday Morning
She had promised herself a lot of things. She would be more honest, assertive. She wouldn't be anyone's doormat ever again. She would look people in the eye and mean what she said. Her desire to keep this promise she made to herself was strong enough to overpower her old, self-dismissive instincts that still plagued her all too frequently. She was living alone, driving her own car which she paid for all by herself. Art classes at night. Cooking for one-- finally cooking what she wanted to eat-- no more munching on side-salad while Roy and his brother devoured her labor-intensive meat offerings. She was also heavily in debt, but she didn't care. She was breathing again after years of slowly suffocating. She was nowhere near where she wanted to be, and getting there was making her feel alive again. And then her newfound strength failed her completely.
It was only for a brief moment. She would quickly recover, as she had trained herself to do. She was at her desk sorting through some paperwork when she heard the front door opening. Her instinctive upwards glance was met by pure hatred. Not the overt, in the moment, angry glare that was actually relatively common at Dunder Mifflin Scranton, but a frighteningly mechanical, unemotional, seething hatred-- so subtle and so real it was terrifying. Pam's supressed instincts took over and she quickly averted her eyes downward, shrinking in her chair and hiding from the world.
As she hurried by, Karen tried halfheartedly to force a smile as her eyes met Pam's, but before she could get her lips to move, Pam had recoiled and looked away. In another life, we would be friends. In fact, they had been friends. The weeks immediately after the merger had been a tough time for Karen-- she had left her friends, her family, her home behind in Connecticut. She was living in a motel in a lethargic new town, and worst of all, the man she had followed to this little crap-town had been treating her with an aloofness that he had shown none of in Stamford, the source of which Karen had not yet known. The low point for Karen came after Angela kicked her out of her stupid party planning committee meeting, and each of the other women withered when she glanced at them asking, begging, for their support. Karen slumped in her chair... exhausted, alone, beaten. Jim looked at her every once in a while and flashed an apathetic smile. Karen had so desperately wanted him to come over to her, to soothe her, to be the man she had gambled everything for. It was Pam, though, who had extended the lifeline to Karen with her simple offer of friendship. Karen had tried so many times to forget this, but she never quite could.
Ten minutes earlier, she had been pulling into the parking lot, riding happily in Jim's passenger seat, holding a coffee in both hands, enjoying the easy, gentle banter that had marked their relationship in Stamford but was only recently coming back. Jim had recently dropped his silly insistence that they not carpool to work to maintain some "professional separation." Not 48 hours earlier, Jim had told her she was beautiful. Not looked beautiful, but was beautiful. They had been at the cocktail party in New York all evening, and Karen felt pretty in her dress and makeup but Jim barely seemed to notice. Later that night, though, they curled up on Jim's couch in their pajamas to watch some TV and wind down the day, and after sharing a giggle at one of his snarky comments he had pulled her tighter toward him, looked over at her and waited until she made eye contact, and then he had said it. You're beautiful. She had melted for a moment, almost moved to tears before she attacked him.
As they got out of Jim's car, everything seemed normal enough. They hadn't noticed that the large truck parked a few spots away wasn't empty. Karen saw it coming at the last minute. Jim never saw it. Roy had emerged from the driver side and in an instant was on Jim. Roy didn't punch him, but pushed Jim hard with both hands back into the frame of Jim's Saab. As Jim recoiled, turned to face his attacker, and instinctively raised his hands to protect his face, Roy did punch him. Hard. Squarely in the face. Karen was in a state of panic-- she had gasped inaudibly, frozen briefly by sheer disbelief at what she was witnessing. To her horror, Roy drew back to hit the now stunned and defenseless Jim again, Karen picked up a word here and there from his screaming rage, "engaged" , "trusted," "asshole," but she really didn't care what this man had to say. It was almost as if she had watched the whole scene in slow motion as an observer. The burly man landed another punch. The skinny guy pinned against the car began to slump over, but the bigger man grabbed him with his left hand to hold him up so his right could keep punching. After the third punch, the sharp cry from the large man as the stream of scalding hot coffee came flying into his eyes and face. The woman, dwarfed by the two men, pulling out her keychain, flipping the cap off the tiny bottle of mace, and going right for the eyes. As he screamed and fell backwards, she had followed him, making sure to get some in his mouth before switching back to his desperately closed eyes. She was still spraying when a pair of large, gentle hands calmly restrained her and a deep voice eased her off her adrenaline rush. Lonny told her to take care of Jim - he would keep Roy away.
That's when Jim broke her heart again. He had only just managed to stand up, and had to lean against his car to keep from keeling over. Blood was spurting from his head. He looked like hell. As Karen ran to hug him he only halfheartedly embraced her with one arm, all the while looking over her at the flattened Roy and gesturing with his other arm. "You never deserved her, you motherfucker. You never deserved her." When Karen, with the help of a now present Daryl dragged Jim away toward the building, he continued to try to face Roy, continued to yell. "She's too good for you, you prick." Karen didn't need to know who Jim was talking about. She could hear the passion in his voice. This wasn't standard post ass-kicking anger that had the normally mellow Jim yelling with such honest emotion. As she left Jim in the lobby with Daryl and ran upstairs to get some bandages, the words continued to stab her. She's to good for you. You never deserved her. This was a guy who was barely rattled when she joked that she had slept with half of Dunder Mifflin corporate, and yet he held such a deep reservoir of jealous passion for her. A "crush." Jim would heal. They would talk this through and work it out again. Jim would convince her that he was with her now, and that things would be OK. She had come too far, fought too hard not to let him. Karen knew it would be a long time before Jim made her feel beautiful again.
