Walking into Karen’s apartment, he never realized how much he could hate white walls. Pam would never have white walls. Pam probably has different colors in each room. Pam? Where did that come from? OK, focus. Karen grabbed onto Jim’s hand and led him into the kitchen. Oh great, candles. Something for her to burn me with.
“Jim, you OK? You haven’t said much this evening. Want some wine?”
I’d rather have hard liquor or a…
“Sweetie, wine?”
Why does it sound so fake when she calls me sweetie? “Um yes, wine would be perfect.”
“Say when.”
Can I just have the whole bottle? “When.”
“So do you want the news now, or should we wait until after dinner?”
“Yeah, about that. Maybe now would be a good time.” Oh, crap. Clarence, where are you?
Jim and Karen sat down on the couch in the next room. Jim had no idea what he was going to do. By now he trusted Clarence, and knew that Clarence wouldn’t steer him wrong.
“Last week I called Jan and…”
“You had no right to tell them that I wanted to transfer.” There, I said it. Real mature.
“Excuse me?”
“I know about the transfers, Karen. You had no right to say anything to them about me.”
“Who told you about the transfer?” Karen looked as if she was going to explode.
“Cla... I have my connections, but that’s beside the point. Why did you do it?”
“I thought we wanted the same things, Jim. I thought you were itching to get out of Scranton, out of sales. Is this what you want to do for the rest of your life? Sell paper, in Scranton, of all places?”
“I don’t know, Karen. I just know that it’s not your place to be making these decisions for me. You know, I happen to like Scranton. I grew up in this area.”
“But you left before, why can’t you do it again? For us?”
For us? “For us? Karen, there can’t be an ‘us’ if you don’t let me have a say in anything. It doesn’t work that way. Do you realize that in all the talks we’ve had, not once have you asked me what I wanted. Why did you think we wanted the same things?”
Panic crossed Karen’s face. “Jim, I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have told Jan you wanted this. I’ll call her in the morning and let her know to take off the transfers.”
Wait, did she say transfers? Plural? As in two? “Wait, so you’re not going to take it?”
“Well, Jim, if you’re not going, what’s the point?”
“Karen, you need to take this transfer. We both know how much you hate it here.”
“So do you think we can do it?”
Jim didn’t know what she was getting at. “Do what?”
“The whole long distance thing.”
How did I not see this coming? “Um, Karen, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that’s what I was heading for. You need to take this transfer because you have nothing left here. Can you honestly say that you thought this would really work out? I mean, we want different things. I don’t see how it can work.” OK, so now is about the time I should prepare for objects colliding with my head.
Karen wasn’t upset, she wasn’t angry. She actually looked happy. Relieved even. Two seconds ago she was gung-ho about a long distance relationship. Now this? “Wow. So this is really it, huh?”
What? This can’t be that easy. “I guess.”
“What do we do now?”
“Well, considering I was expecting head trauma, I don’t know.”
“How crazy did you think I was, Jim?” Jim just chuckled. She continued, “Maybe it’s just best we call it a night.”
“Yeah, maybe. Listen, Karen, I’m really sorry I couldn’t be who you wanted. You are really amazing, I know you have someone waiting for you in New York.”
“Thanks Jim.” There was a long pause before she spoke again. “So are we supposed to hug, or?”
“I think a hug would be OK.” He leaned in and hugged her, taking in his last whiff of coconut hair gel and citrus-y perfume. Before they parted, he kissed her right temple. “Bye, Karen.”
“Bye, Jim.”
