Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
“Jim Halpert.” He closed one eye. Two Dimensional Jim. He opened the eye, and contorted his face into a terrible parody of a sad clown mask. Ugly Is as Ugly Does Jim. He pinched his lower lip between two fingers and pulled it down to expose his lower teeth and gums. “Vim Halfert.” He let go of the lip, turned from the mirror, and checked his watch. Six thirty-five. Would it take twenty-five minutes? Surely not. Nothing takes twenty-five minutes to get to in Scranton. He wandered into the front room, where the Phillies game, ignored, burbled. Something to Something, in One Inning or Another, and . . . Ryan Howard batting. Jim laughed a little every time Ryan Howard came to bat. He turned up the volume just in time for Howard to pop meekly to shortstop.
He was so good at killing time at work -- five minutes, ten, the little discrete bits by which life passes between eight in the morning and five in the evening. A call, an email, a minute or two flicking things at Dwight. He picked up a basketball and dribbled it twice before remembering that he had downstairs neighbors now. He remembered this two or three times a day, but always forgot it by morning.
Six thirty-seven. To hell with it, he could drive around the block a couple of times before showing up. He snapped off the television and plunged through the new darkness of his apartment, through the doorway and out into the hall, where he was greeted by the not entirely welcome sight of two men bearing television cameras.
“C’mon, guys,” Jim said, coming to a halt. “Take a night off, will ya?”
*
Pam felt distinctly as if she had spent the entire hour and a half since she’d got home from work spelunking in some unfamiliar cave. What had once been a nice and orderly closet had now become two completely different things: a pile of unsorted clothes on the bed, and a gaping empty space in which she could have sworn there should have been something more. She looked from the clothes, which all seemed drab and stupid in the harsh light that poured from the ceiling, to the closet. She had expected, at this point, with only fifteen minutes to go, and all of her clothes eliminated, that there would be one final outfit hanging in there, the obvious, the glorious one that would shimmer in the evening dusklight and shout, “Pam! Pam Beesly! Together we are fabulous!” No such luck. She jammed one arm under the pile of clothes and emerged with a cordless phone.
“Hello, Beesly residence. Anne speaking.”
“Mom.”
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Pammy?”
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Mom, I have this date tonight -- in fifteen minutes -- and I can’t find a shirt or a skirt or shoes and I don’t even know what I’m supposed to wear and I’m totally freaking out and he’s going to be here any minute and I haven’t even paid any attention to my hair and all of my clothes are ugly and I’m feeling very, very boring, like I have nothing to say -- ”
“Pamela, calm down.”
“Um -- “
“Where is he taking you?”
Pam opened her mouth and began to speak before she realized that she didn’t actually know where they were going. What came out was a sort of indistinct groan.
“You don’t know.”
“Not really.”
Silence. Pam pinched the phone between chin and shoulder and began pawing at the clothes again, grasping desperately at anything that seemed remotely colorful. The first thing that came out was a pink pullover -- pink, what had she been thinking? She held a lock of her hair next to it to confirm the obvious. Yeesh.
“You’ll have to aim in-between.”
“Very helpful, thanks, Mom.”
“There’s that red sweater.”
“It’s kind of hot tonight. I don’t want to be sweating like a hog at the -- at the --” Pam pawed a sparrowsegg dress shirt out of the pile. When had she bought this? “ -- the, uh, slaughterhouse. Okay, I think I found a shirt, hold on.” She dropped the phone on the bed, pulled off the t-shirt she’d been wearing since it had become clear that this dressing thing was going to take a while, and fastened herself into the blue dress shirt. She picked the phone back up.
“ . . . anything red or blue would be great. Pam? Pam?”
“Hi. I found a blue shirt.”
“How blue?”
“Bright, bright.”
“Do you have anything yellow?”
“Are you kidding?”
“It was just an idea.”
“I am not dressing up like an Easter Egg for my first date with --” Pam bit off the sentence and pressed one slender finger into the pile of clothes. There was something in here that went with this, she knew it.
“With who?”
Shit.
“Somebody new. How about that beige --”
“Honey, nothing beige. Do you still have that flippy black skirt?”
“Somewhere.” The doorbell rang. “Oh God, he’s here --”
“Who is it?”
“Jim. What should I do?”
“Answer it!”
“But -- but --”
“Are you decent?”
“Mom!”
“Well, then, answer it. Jim will think you’re beautiful anyway.”
“I don’t --”
“Bye, Pam.”
The line went dead. Pam looked down at herself. The jeans she wore had large holes in the knees. Not the kind of holes that said, “I am hip and wear tattered clothes ironically because, obviously, I am the coolest person on earth.” These were the kind of holes that said, “I only own two pairs of jeans, one of which is for gardening. These, by the way, are my gardening jeans.” Pam dropped the phone and stuck her head out the bedroom door.
“Hello?”
A baffled man’s voice, barely recognizable as Jim’s, sounded from the landing.
“Pam?”
“Jim?”
“Yes, I think this is Jim. If you are Pam, then I am Jim.”
“Can you wait a second?”
“I suppose --”
“Are the cameras out there?”
A pause.
“No. No cameras tonight.”
“Okay, if I come open the door, will you promise not to look at me too closely?”
*
The door flew open. Before Jim could do anything -- almost before he recognized the blue-and-auburn blur before him as Pam -- she was gone.
“Hello?”
“Come in! Make yourself -- “ Something banged in the back room. A couple of whispered curses snuck through the air as he stepped tentatively onto the clean white carpet. “Comfortable.”
“What?”
The bedroom door creaked open a bit. Pam’s head popped into view.
“Make yourself comfortable. I’m just having a -- a -- I’m fixing my hair.” Very clearly she was not fixing her hair. Both hands were occupied with an earring.
“You look --” But she was gone. These brief glimpses of her had set his head to spinning a bit. He took a couple of long steps across the living room and held an ear to the bedroom door. She was talking to herself. Come on Pam, you know where these things are. This isn’t that hard. Where is -- ? Jim eased away from the door, peering around the apartment. It was not like he expected. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, he had expected -- messier, maybe. Paints everywhere, or something. The walls were bare, everything arranged neatly and symmetrically around an electric fireplace. No television. Maybe that was in the -- bedroom. He shook his head and went to tug at hair that he no longer had.
“Still just the one kitchen, eh?” he called, stepping into the kitchen. The counters all clean. A small table. A charcoal pencil. A mantle clock on the windowsill. A drawing -- a very tall building, a very tall man on the steps. He stared at this picture for a moment, wondering. Jim had drawn stick figures sometimes in high school. That was the extent of his artistic talent. It was something in the hands. Those longboned, lovely hands.
“Yeah, just one kitchen.”
He turned to find her in the doorway, radiant in blue, a half-smile on her lips, the full light of her face turned right on him. When her mouth parted to show her teeth, he felt almost as though he had to blink.
“You --”
But then her mouth was on his, and it all stopped: He felt her hand lightly on his chest, felt her lips flex against his, smelled hints of peach -- or something, a fruit, it was wonderful and sweet -- from her hair, closed his eyes and saw nothing but the warm light against his eyelids, heard his own startled breath -- and then, as suddenly as she came, she left again, and all that was left was the ghost of the pressure her hand laid across his sternum. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, trying to bring it back.
“Wow.” His eyes blinked open. She was back in the doorway, her shoulders against the doorjamb, her right foot pressed against her left calf, a thumbnail between her smiling teeth, sheepish but proud of herself all at once.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
*
“We should do that again sometime,” Jim said.
Pam said nothing. She edged across the room, reached out and took one of his hands in hers. She intended to lead him out of the kitchen, but instead they just stood there for a moment, looking at each other, smiling dumbly back and forth.
“You look great,” Jim said.
Pam nodded.
“Come. We go.” She tugged on his hand. He began to shuffle, reluctantly, out toward the living room. “What are you doing?”
“I liked it in there,” he said, somewhat wistfully. “Good things happen to me in there.”
“Good things happen everywhere sometimes.” As she said it, she realized that it was true. She also realized that the door to her bedroom was hanging open, its riot of discarded clothing on display for the whole world to see. She let go of his hand and dashed across to the door.
“Were are you going?”
“Nowhere.” She closed the door and turned to him. “You’re not wearing a tie.”
“Should I be?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who knows where we’re going.”
“I suppose I am. Shall we?”
*
A certain amount of embarrassed confusion cropped up at the oddest times. Take that moment, as they left: They had held hands before. Would they now? Should they all the time? Some shuffling, some fumbling of wallets and purses and fingers and coats. Jim stumbled on the stairs, catching one of those big feet behind him and almost toppling down onto Pam. Together they caught him, his hand on the rail, her hand again on his chest.
And then she didn’t recognize his car. It turned out they were walking anyway. The night was hot, and black, and Pam’s coat too heavy. She worried about sweating too much, worried about when to touch him, where -- the elbow, the shoulder, the small of the back? She felt stupid and tongue-tied. He felt lost, overwhelmed, unable to find his gait. He walked too fast, slowed down, and then walked too slowly. They talked about the weather -- God, the weather! -- and when Pam gripped his elbow to keep him from stumbling into the street against the flow of traffic, he thought he might swoon.
The food might have been wonderful, it might have been terrible, neither of them tasted it. They talked. Said nothing, really. Jim watched Pam’s hands. They did not like to be idle: When she was not eating -- and she did not eat much -- they twirled her spoon, spun her plate, played with a button on her blouse. Sometimes she just held them together, flexed them and gripped them. In the office her hands were behind that desk, and he never saw them. Was this why she drew? To keep them busy?
She resisted the urge to reach across the table and pull a lock of his hair down across his forehead. She didn’t like this neat new look nearly as much. Maybe someday she might say something about it. For now she enjoyed picturing her hands in it, undoing the careful combwork he had clearly done. She watched him sit forward and lean back, his tic of rolling one shoulder an then another, like an athlete gone cold. He didn’t do this at work. At work he was all loose limbs, long arms and big feet and ease.
They left and were silent on the street for many blocks, and it was night, and it was dark, and it was warm. When they spoke, it was quiet.
*
What was that drawing?
What drawing?
The one in your kitchen.
My only kitchen.
Yes, the only drawing in your only kitchen.
What did it look like?
Black and white. A building. A guy coming out of the building. A big building.
It’s just a building. Somewhere. An imaginary building and a real person.
Who is the person?
The person is you.
*
His phone buzzed. They were back in her neighborhood now, the night parting around them, its humidity sticky between them. She gazed up at the stars. He looked mostly at her face, broad and bright in the moon.
“Are you going to get it?”
“No.”
“I will then.”
Before he could react, her hand darted into his pocket, quick as a bird, but lighter. Then she had it open, its cool light illuminating her.
“I’m going to read it.”
“Who’s it from?”
“I’m not telling.”
She one button, and then the next, and the next. With each button she pressed, her smile broke wider and wider, until finally she let fly with a laugh altogether huger than he expected, clapping her hands together, taking wanton liberties with the safety of his phone.
“What? What?” He tried to take it from her, but she held it far off to her other side, where he couldn’t reach.
“It’s a text. From Michael.”
“Oh God.”
“He says, ‘Are you decent?”
“Am I --”
She pressed more buttons, her head turned away. He wanted her face back.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m texting back, ‘No’.”
“Don’t. Please don’t. Just turn it off, please.” But she had done it. And now she turned, and she laughed, right at him, right in his face. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her happy like this. Suddenly, on an impulse, he took her head in his hands and covered her grinning mouth with his. For a second longer she convulsed with laughter, but then, slowly, silently, she molded her body to his, and she was no longer smiling, and he could feel her hips against his, and her lungs expanding, and her hands, one still clutching the phone, on his shoulderblades, and her tongue, and her hair, and her knee pressed against his shin, the tips of her fingers, the tip of her nose, the brush of her eyelashes. Her eyes closed. And then she laughed, a quick snort, and backed away, but she took his hand in hers.
“He says, ‘Sweet’. Okay, I’m done. I won’t read any more of your texts.”
“Can I have my phone back?”
“Not yet.”
*
She clicked to the contacts, unable to resist the urge. Some small part of her wished she could find out when he had called whom and who had called him, starting the day he left. Starting Casino Night. She had called her mom. Did he call somebody? Who would he call? Jim would call . . . she couldn’t imagine him on the phone with anybody he wasn’t trying to sell something to, not at the moment anyway. Or she didn’t want to.
“Who is ‘Big Shitbird’?”
He laughed. She liked it when he laughed.
“That’s Andy.”
“Because?”
“Haven’t heard him call me Big Tuna?”
“Oh. I remember. Okay, who is Big Turkey?”
He laughed again. This was a fun game.
“That’s what Andy calls Ryan.”
“’Dwigt!’”
“Yep.”
“Have you ever actually called Dwight?”
“Have you ever called Angela?”
“Um.”
She scanned forward, hoping to miss it, but it was too big, like there was a red flag, a blinking light, a force that compelled her to stop: Karen. Pam hesitated, and then opened the entry only long enough to see an unfamiliar area code on the phone number. Too much. Too much information. She went back to the contacts and scanned to P.
“Hey! I’m not in here?”
“Yes you are.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
He took the phone from her, and in a moment handed it back.
“I’m under ‘Plum’?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re sweet, I guess.”
She squeezed his hand a little harder.
*
At her door they stood in silence. Every time he stepped back as if to leave, he felt her tug him -- by the hand, the fabric of his shirt, just with the pull of her eyes -- and he returned. But she would say nothing, and he could not move himself to speech. What did he want? He wanted to carry her bodily up the stairs and tear off her clothes. He wanted to go home and savor the taste of her tongue on his. He wanted to stand here forever. He wanted to walk farther with her, to steal an hour now that they might not have later. He wanted whatever she wanted.
By degrees they came together, and soon they embraced: A simple embrace, her hands twinned behind his back, her head on his chest, his left hand on her hip, his right thumb hooked suggestively, simply, perhaps ignored, in the waist of her skirt, his hand dangling, idle. They were that way for a long time. He wanted that to last forever.
“Will you come up?” she said, finally, barely audible.
“Do you want me to?”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want.”
“I do. I mean I will. If you want me to.”
“Absolutely I do.”
He trailed her up the stairs. She held her hands behind his back, and in them held his fingertips. She relinquished them to open the door. He followed her inside, wondering -- what would be said? How would this be done? But she never looked back, never spoke. As he closed the door, her hands were occupied before her, up to something. And then she shrugged off her shirt, dropped it to the floor. Her back bare, milkwhite, bisected by a red brassiere. A freckle beneath her shoulderblade. He would have to memorize these things one day. That would be good. She crossed into the bedroom. Left the door standing open. For now he would follow.
*
She awoke the next morning on a bed of clothes. At first, she panicked: He had left her alone. But then came a thump from outside the bedroom door, a voice, the acrid smell of burnt food. She stood, and was shocked to find herself completely in the altogether. Casting about for anything, she found his shirt, its sleeves rolled up, crumpled up on top of the pile of sweaters at the end of the bed. She pulled it on, buttoned it within shouting distance of the collar, and trickled with the sunlight into the other room.
He stood at the stove in his dress slacks, no shirt, no shoes, his hair in his eyes -- longer still than she had realized --, mumbling to himself. He poked resolutely at a frying pan with some distinctly worse-for-wear eggs wiggling inside.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
“Hi.”
He started nearly out of his pants and then looked at her, his eyes blasted wide.
“Hello. Hi. I was just -- I was trying to --”
“Here.”
She slipped in front of him, shunted him out of the way with her hip, and took hold of the pan. The eggs were ruined.
“Can you open the cupboard under the sink?”
She heard him shuffle, and the cupboard slide open. She turned and dumped the eggs in the garbage.
“I’m sorry, I can’t really cook,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
She could feel his eyes on her as she moved about the kitchen.
“I’ll teach you,” she said.
“My mom always said I should learn to cook. To impress girls.”
“You should. Look. What you have to understand,” she said, buttering the pan, cracking eggs into it, “is that you can’t understand it.”
The eggs sizzled in the butter. The room began to smell of breakfast.
“No?”
“Nope.” His hands snaked around her midsection, and she felt his bulk move behind her, felt his shoulders above her own. “It’s intuitive. It’s chemistry, but without the math.”
“No math.”
“But chemistry just the same.”
