June 3, 2006

She felt underdressed as she looked at herself for the tenth time in her mirror. She tugged at a couple of the loose curls that hung over her shoulder and she smoothed the skirt of her dress over her legs again. She brushed another layer of lip gloss over her lips. It probably was not necessary for her to put more on, was it? She sighed as she stood still. Everything was perfect. She had the dress, she had the matching heels, she had the make-up – as sparse as that was, and she had the jewelry that she had made herself. There was just something missing. Was it him?

The buzzer shocked her out of her thoughts and she quickly ran to the window to get a peek of him before she went down to meet him. He was dressed in a tuxedo; an actual tuxedo. She grinned like a little girl and quickly grabbed her purse, practically skipping down her stairs to meet him at the front door.

“Hello, handsome,” she said as she opened the door and propped herself against the frame.

“Hello to yourself, beautiful,” he said as he held out his hand for her.

“Where is our vehicular transportation?” she asked with a smile.

“Right over…there,” he pointed back a couple of buildings to a small black limousine, parked on the side of the street.

“You’re kidding,” she said, the smile disappearing from her face.

“Nope,” he said. “Got to arrive in style.”

“You’re kidding!” she repeated. She had never been in a limousine before; not for her high school prom, not for any of the fancy events that she and Roy had gone to, not even for her own wedding.

“You’ve never been in a limo before, I take it?” he asked as he pulled her out of her doorway and towards the vehicle.

“Never,” she replied as she dumbly followed.

“Not even for your own wedding?” it was as if he was reading her thoughts.

“Nope.”

She stood on the curb as he stepped down into the gutter and opened up the door.

“After you,” he said with a sweeping motion of his hand. The smile returned to her face and she slid into the back seat, only to be surprised by Michael and Ryan sitting across from her with their respective dates.

“Hot!” Michael exclaimed, which immediately earned him a slap on his hand from his date and turned Pam’s face a bright shade of pink.

“Michael, be nice,” Jim said as he slid into the seat next to Pam and stretched his arms out over the back of the seat, “it’s her first black tie event in New York City…right?” Pam nodded with a smile as she resisted the urge to lean against his side or lean her head back just a little bit farther so her neck would be touching the sleeve of his jacket.

“I’m just saying,” Michael said, “if you dressed like this when we eat lunch…wowza.”

“Michael!” his date exclaimed angrily, earning him yet another slap on his hand as Ryan laughed softly.

“So what should I expect from this gala?” Pam asked, genuinely curious.

“A lot of noise, a cash bar and lots of pretentious rich people,” Ryan replied.

“Cash bar…psh,” Michael chided. “For the amount of money the companies have to pay to get a seat at this thing, you would think they could at least make the booze free.”

The rest of the ride is lost in an intense conversation between Ryan and Michael about the good and bad aspects of the dinner gala; with a small interjection from Jim every once in a while to egg them on further. Pam however, lost her train of thought after only a couple of minutes as she watched the city go by through the tinted window of the limousine and the unmistakable feeling of Jim’s hand on top of hers until they arrived at their final destination.

**

She felt as if she was trapped in a sea of people. Jim pulled her along, his arm around her waist the entire time and she wasn’t really sure if it was because he wanted his arm around her or if he was afraid that she was going to become lost and scared. She was certain that if she felt his hand leave the top of her hip that she would lose her mind because as she looked around at familiar faces of people she’s never met before she felt far too overwhelmed to enjoy or notice anything else.

She took a sigh of relief when they made it past the cameras outside without anyone from the media asking for a picture but only felt overwhelmed again as they entered the dining area where they would spend the next three or four hours. The room was enormous, big enough to fit several thousand people – and she was certain that there had to be several thousand people present.

Jim led the two of them to their table, and she was amazed how she knew it was their table and not someone else’s since they all looked the same. All the tables were draped with cream colored tablecloths and elaborate flower centerpieces filled with spring flowers and golden branches that towered four feet over every table.

“I feel like I’m at a wedding,” she whispered to Jim as the two of them sat down in their seats.

“Is it too much?” he asked nervously.

“Did you plan this?”

“No.”

“Did your company plan this?” she asked, though she assumed that if they had, they would be sitting at a table a little closer to the stage.

“Oh heavens no,” he replied quickly. “I think I would have the decency to think of something a little more tasteful.” She flashed him a look of confusion. He sounded bitter, he seemed kind of bitter. She didn’t know him that well, so for all she knew, he could have hated black tie events…but it didn’t quite seem like that was the case.

**

She was amazed at how tipsy she could feel from two vodka tonics and she was also amazed at how much funnier Michael seemed to become after she had allowed herself a little bit of alcohol.

She felt like applauding herself for making it through the appetizer course, the soup course, the dinner course, the cheese course and finally the dessert course without once yawning at the mind-numbingly boring award presentations. By the time she started working on her third vodka tonic that Jim had generously purchased for her, she was quite enjoying herself and the ten other people – excluding Jim – that were sitting at the advertising company’s table. She even started to ignore the fact that Jim kept getting up and leaving the table, though she did start to notice that every time he returned he seemed a little quieter, a little more reserved, and maybe a little angrier. It wasn’t until he came darting back to the table for what Pam thought was maybe the fifth time in the past hour and bumped her knee a little too hard with his own that she began to suspect that something was up.

“Jim is everything okay?” she asked as she leaned towards him, only murmuring the question in his ear so only he could hear.

“How much do you know about me?” he asked suddenly as he turned to her. She was taken aback by the forwardness of the question and shook her head slightly to try and figure out where he was going with it.

“I guess…not much,” she replied with more of a shrug than a concrete answer.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” he said and she smiled a little, but it disappeared when he wasn’t smiling back at her.

“What do you…”

“It’s just that I know everything about you,” he said. “I know that you have a mother and a younger sister and that your dad died from cancer and that you were engaged for nine years or some ridiculous amount of time and you know nothing of me.” Her eyes widened a little bit.

“I guess that’s all true,” she said slowly. He downed the rest of the scotch in front of him and turned to Pam again.

“You want to go outside and get some fresh air?” he asked. She nodded earnestly.

He pulled her out onto an empty balcony that overlooked the New York City skyline. The night was warm and from up high, she felt a new sense of liberation. The air felt so much cleaner than it did down on the street, the air smelled sweeter – maybe it was the lilies from inside the party, she relished in the feeling only briefly before she realized that she wasn’t alone and that Jim was standing dangerously close to her.

“What do you want to know about me?” he asked.

“I don’t know…” she replied slowly as she stepped over to a marble bench near the ledge and sat down, folding her hands in her lap.

“Anything,” he said.

“Anything?” He nodded. Her mind drifted back to the evening that he had helped her create the glorious work of art that had gotten her an ‘A’ for her final exam and she smiled. “Tell me about your life. Where were you born? What is your family like?”

“I was born Poughkeepsie, New York in 1979.”

“No way, you’re lying,” she said.

“Completely serious,” he said.

“When’s your birthday?” she asked eagerly.

“The third of September,” he replied. “Yours?”

“Three days after Christmas,” she replied with a smile.

“Oh, well, my family had already moved away from New York at that point,” he continued. “We moved when I was only a couple of months old when my father got a job in Annapolis, Maryland. Of course, my father didn’t like to stay at one job for more than a few years, so when I was six, we moved to Boston. He didn’t like Boston – for whatever reason – and he was offered a really horrible job in Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

“You lived in Scranton?” Pam asked, he nodded. “No way, did we go to school together?”

“I was home schooled,” he replied with a smile. “But of course, then we moved again when I reached high school and I spent the rest of my teenage years in Hartford, Connecticut.”

“You sound like quite the nomad,” Pam said.

“Well, my father died my senior year of high school, and that kind of set me free again,” Jim said quietly.

“Oh…right,” she said quietly. “So where did you go to college?”

“Went to Boston for college,” he said, “I really liked it there when I was a kid, even if my parents didn’t. And so college was college, I went to NYU for a graduate degree and then here I am.” Pam nodded.

“What about your family?” she asked. “Mother…another mother?” She giggled.

“No, mother, deceased father, a brother and a sister,” he replied. She nodded again.

“Personal life?” she asked. “Any saucy girlfriends?” She was about to laugh to herself, when she noticed that his face had completely changed with the question. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

“No…no,” he said quietly.

“Okay…” she said as he stayed silent for a few moments. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue,” he said quickly, she smiled.

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“Really?” there was something completely endearing to her that his favorite food was grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Of course, they’re delicious,” he said, the smile returning.

“Okay,” she thought a little more, “what’s your favorite thing to do on the weekends?”

“What weekends?”

“Any weekend, normal, typical weekend,” she said.

“Sleep until eleven in the morning, eat pancakes and walk around Central Park,” he said.

“How New York of you.”

“Keep the questions coming,” he said.

“Okay,” she thought for a few moments. “Where is your favorite place that you’ve traveled to?”

“Paris,” he replied quickly.

“Paris?” she suddenly forgot every question that she was going to ask him. “You’ve been to Paris?”

“Yeah, I went with…” he quickly stopped himself. “A couple years ago.”

“Did you go to the Louvre?” she asked, hardly noticing the falter in his voice.

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“I don’t think these questions are about me…” he said with a sly grin.

“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve wanted to go to the Louvre my whole life – the art and all,” she replied shyly.

“It’s enormous,” he said. “You could spend three days inside of it and not even see it all.” She nodded vigorously. “You should really go someday.”

“I want to,” she said quietly. She turned her head to the side and took a deep breath.

“Any other questions?” he asked.

“Kind of,” she replied quietly and slowly.

“Go for it.”

“What’s wrong with you tonight?”

“Excuse me?”

“You seem…different. I mean, I realize that I don’t know you that well, and we really haven’t spent that much time together so that I can really know your mannerisms and what-not, but you seem…off,” she said carefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he looked down into his lap.

“No, it’s fine, it’s just…I’m confused,” she said quietly. “It’s like you’re hiding something or skirting around something.” He smiled weakly and nodded.

“You know me better than you think,” he said.

“So what is it?”

“I…uh…when I was in graduate school,” he began, “I met this woman. This wonderful, quick, brilliant woman,” Pam nodded. “And we got married after six months together.”

“You’re married?” Pam asked with a shocked gasp.

“No, no, not at all. We divorced another six months later,” he replied quickly.

“Oh.”

“Anyway, um…today would have been our anniversary,” he said quietly. “And I…I shouldn’t be dragging you into this.”

“Into what?” she asked as she leaned towards him.

“It’s just that you’re the first woman that I’ve actually…liked since the divorce,” he replied quietly, he thought maybe he was completely skirting around the issue. “And…is that weird for you to hear?”

“No,” she said as she shook her head and smiled warmly.

“Good,” he said with a sigh. He looked up at Pam and then looked beyond her shoulder and his glance quickly dashed back towards Pam. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Here the balcony or here the gala?” she asked.

“Here the gala,” he replied. “And the balcony as well, I suppose.”

“Sure,” she said with a smile.

“Will you be crushed if we can’t take the limousine?” he asked.

“Why can’t we take the limousine?” she asked.

“I don’t want to leave Michael and Ryan stranded,” he replied. She smiled and nodded.

“A taxi is fine,” she said, “as long as I don’t have to ride in it alone.”

“Deal,” he stood up and pulled her up alongside of him. As they made their way back into the party, she realized that his arm was around her a little tighter than it had been before and he kept looking over his shoulder.

As they made their way out of the main entrance, his hand slipped along the small of her back and he took her hand into his. As she slipped through the door behind him, she took a glance over her shoulder to see a woman standing near the bar with a glass of wine in her hands staring right at her. She suddenly felt an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach and wondered if there was more that Jim wasn’t telling her.