January 10, 2006

Jim opened his eyes. It was still dark in the room, the darkness before dawn, but Jim instantly knew where he was, "Oh shit," he thought as awareness flooded in. Next to him, in the creaky four poster bed, Katie rolled over and draped her arm around him. Oh shit, Jimbo, he told himself, you are the stupidest person in the history of stupid people. Michael Scott is a brain surgeon compared to you. Dwight Schrute is Sherlock Holmes compared to you. What the hell were you thinking?

He felt fine, too, no hangover, so he didn’t even have alcohol as an excuse. He had arrived at Katie’s shortly after six, a bottle of wine in hand. Her place hadn’t changed much in the two months since he had seen her last. It was still cute, like a college dorm room expanded to a kitchen and living room. Jim wasn’t really a big fan of cute. He liked it when it was naturally occurring, as in puppies and kittens and his nephew Davie, but manufactured cuteness wasn’t his cup of tea. He and Pam had laughed over Angela’s new poster of instrument playing babies, agreeing that it was hideous, and thankful that they didn’t have to look at it every day, like Oscar and Kevin did. Katie’s apartment wasn’t as bad as that, thank goodness, but its cliched girlishness still made him uncomfortable the first few minutes he was there.

Their conversation was awkward too, at first, given their history. They had dated pretty much over the summer and into the fall, keeping it light, not talking about anything serious. He had invited her to the Dundee Awards, but she had been unable to make it, because of a prior commitment. As a result, he had ended up spending the evening with Pam, and she had kissed him, albeit under the influence of massive amounts of Margarita. After that it was really hard to keep up his interest in Katie. They still went out now and then, but when she invited him to a big party at Halloween, one where he knew he would be shown off as her boyfriend, he had manufactured an excuse not to go. He suspected that she hadn’t really bought his excuse and things had cooled off quite a bit between them, then. Even so, a couple of weeks later, at his barbecue, when Ryan had asked his permission to ask her out, he had hesitated. Not out of jealousy, he realized, but out of concern. Ryan was a bit of an oddball. He and Jim got along pretty well at the office, and he was serious about business school, but on the weekends he was a big partier, according to office rumor. Jim suspected he was something of a player, and didn’t want Katie to get hurt. But in the end, there was no reason for Ryan not to ask her out. Katie was a grownup and could make her own choices. And she had gone out with Ryan a couple of times, though according to Ryan, nothing had come of it. Jim did wonder from time to time if Ryan had slept with her, but it was more idle curiosity than a burning desire to know.

On the phone, Katie had mentioned frozen pizza, but what she actually had was fresh Boboli pizza shells, Ragu pizza sauce, grated mozzarella and a variety of toppings. Jim wondered if she had made a mad dash to the store before he arrived. At any rate, assembling the pizzas and opening the wine had broken the ice, and they were soon laughing and talking much as they always had. He told her about the D-M Christmas party, leaving out all mention of Pam and teapots, and repossessed Christmas cards. She told him about Christmas with her family and what a zoo it had been. Neither of them was seeing anybody at the moment. They joked that things were so bad dating-wise, that neither of them had even seen any of the big Academy Award contender movies, like Brokeback Mountain or Crash, so they would have nobody to root for on Oscar night.

While the pizzas were baking, Jim and Katie moved a pile of magazines off of the coffee table so that they could eat there and watch TV. Jim knew that she subscribed to People, Us, Martha Stewart Living and Cosmo, all classics of modern day literature. He noticed that the Cosmo was opened, but he didn’t catch the article she had been reading, before Katie moved the magazine. But, lying here now, beside her, Jim could almost picture it, "The Prodigal Boyfriend: Ten surefire ways to make sure he comes back for good." He was pretty sure she had used all of those surefire ways on him last night. Especially what he imagined were numbers nine and ten. But then again, she had always been pretty good at nine and ten, back when they had been dating. And they worked…he had to give props to Cosmo...because here he was.

Jim moved Katie’s arm so that she wasn’t actually strangling him, and sighed. One night stands weren’t his modis operendi, and even if they were, he would never do that to Katie. Therefore, since he was here, he must be, as Cosmo put it, "back." Maybe not "for good," but at least for the time being. And why not? Maybe this was the way to finally change the status quo, by pulling himself out of the equation. He had tried it before with Katie, and Pam had pulled him back in, but maybe this time it would be different. This time he would try harder.

The room was growing lighter. Jim could make out the Klimt poster on the wall opposite the bed. "The Kiss," he believed it was called. He really had to get home. Was it late enough to leave? He wanted to shower and change and be by himself for awhile, before going to work. Would she be hurt if he left now? Maybe he should read some Esquire type articles himself, like "The etiquette of sleeping with one woman while in love with another," or "Is it considered cheating on a woman if she’s living with another man?" Read them…hell, he could write them!

Carefully, he disengaged himself from Katie, and got up. Retrieving his clothes was a bit of a project, since they seemed to be scattered all over the room, and it wasn’t quite light enough to see all that well, yet. He got dressed in the bathroom so as not to wake Katie up, and stopped in the kitchen to leave her a note. "Dear Katie, "he wrote, "Thanks for a wonderful evening. I’m sorry I had to leave so early, but I have to get home and do some wash before work, which I didn’t do last night. I’ll call you later. I was thinking, maybe we could see the new Harry Potter movie this weekend, or anything else you’d prefer. Plus I owe you dinner. (The pizza was great!) Talk to you soon. Jim." He grimaced at the note… was that the best he could do? He contemplated writing Love, Jim, but decided not to add hypocrisy to his general stupidity. At the last moment, he went back into the bedroom, and kissed Katie on the forehead. She smiled at him in her sleep, and he felt so guilty he wanted to cry. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t Pam.

When he got home, Jim did throw a load of wash into the machine, while he ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and some toast. While his wash was drying, he took a shower and was able to grab a shirt right out of the dryer, so that it didn’t need ironing. Usually little things like that…unburned toast, which with his toaster was by no means a sure thing, and shirts hot from the dryer were enough to make him feel good about his day. But not today. Feeling thoroughly miserable, for reasons he couldn’t quite define, he put on his winter coat and went to work.

Pam was already there when he got in. She was in one of her bubbly moods today, wearing her pink sweater, her cheeks still pink from the cold. Jim could barely look at her. He forced a smile, and said, "Hi."

"Check your E-mail, "Pam said laughing.

Jim sat down and logged into his computer.

From: Mscott

Sent: January 10, 2006 8:06 AM

To: Jhalpert

Subject: Fun! Fun! Fun!

To all employees of Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch

It’s time for our First Quarter camaraderie event!

Date: Wednesday January 18, 2006

Time: Wednesday afternoon until…whenever!

Please bring the following:

Rubber soled shoes

Bathing suit

Toothbrush

Ski mask

I am not at liberty to divulge any of the exciting details, but trust me…it will be Fun! Fun! Fun! Guests are invited, so bring that significant or otherwise other.

Michael Scott

Regional Manager

Dunder Mifflin Scranton

Jim couldn’t help but laugh, and some of his depression lifted. Michael’s camaraderie events were even worse, if possible, than his parties. Last year, Michael had reserved half of the Idle Hour Bowling Lanes, and they had all gone bowling. Michael had shown up in a custom bowling shirt, with his own shoes and ball, and had proceeded to bowl a 53. Dwight had pitched a fit about wearing rental shoes because of the germs and had almost gotten them all thrown out. Meredith had gotten plastered despite the fact that the only alcohol was cheap watered down beer. It was suspected that she had somehow brought her own. Phyllis had dropped a bowling ball on her foot, but fortunately nothing was broken. She had spent the rest of the evening with her foot in a bucket of ice water. Roy had bowled a 245, to his own 147, because it turned out that he belonged to a league. Even Pam had beaten him, with a 152, which she had never let him forget. The food had been horrible; greasy pizza and stale nachos. Michael and Dwight had practically come to blows over the right method of scoring the last three frames. Toby had ruled in favor of Dwight, because he was actually correct, and Michael had scowled at both of them for the rest of the evening. At one point, Michael had tried to give some sort of a motivational speech about bowling over the competition, but there was so much noise because of the league bowlers on the other side of the lanes, that nobody heard a word he said. That had actually been the best part of the evening.

But this…mystery event had all of the makings of a Michael Scott classic. He looked at Pam and made a face. They met in the break room over coffee and tea, to speculate on what possible event could incorporate all of the items they were requested to bring.

"Maybe it’s a pool party," suggested Jim.

"In January?"

"Hmmm…I know…it’s a pajama party!"

Pam shook her head; "Pajamas aren’t on the list."

"Ah...but it won’t matter that we don’t have pajamas, because we’ll all be in disguise with the ski masks."

"Right. Like we wouldn’t recognize naked Kevin, even in a ski mask!"

"Or Michael."

"Or Dwight!"

"Ewww, " they chorused.

Pam sobered, "Actually Roy is really annoyed because we were supposed to be going away on Friday and now we have to postpone it until next Friday."

"Oh? Where are you going?"

"Skiing in the Poconos."

"Sounds nice...for how long?"

"A week."

"Nice." A whole week with no Pam at the reception desk. January just kept getting worse and worse, "So is Roy planning to come? To the naked pajama pool party, that is."

"Well, he didn’t want to…you know he hates these company things, but Darryl told him attendance is mandatory."

"Yeah," Jim mused, "Katie will probably hate it too, but what can you do?"

"Katie?"

"Sure. The memo said that guests were invited, so…"

"Oh...of course, but I thought that you two weren’t…had…"

"The rumors of our breakup have been greatly exaggerated, " Jim intoned.

"Oh! Well…that’s great. I mean, you two are such a great couple. You know, we should double date...the four of us…that would be really…"

"Great?" he smiled, "Sure...why not?"

"Hey," Pam said, studying her ring, nervously, "You never claimed your favor. From the bet!"

"Oh...that’s right."

"So...what is it? Yesterday you seemed so…"

"I want one of those Italian heroes from that place with the good bread tomorrow for lunch."

"Oh." Pam looked puzzled, "That’s it?"

"That’s it."

"That’s not much of a favor."

"Get me double provolone. It costs extra."

"Ah. Well, your wish is my command. I guess we’d better get back."

Back at his desk, Jim decided that now was a good a time as any to bite the bullet. He dialed Katie’s cel phone.

"Hey Katie, it’s me. How are you doing?"

"Yeah. It was. I had a great time."

"Me too."

"I’m really sorry about that. But it was either that or wear my 76ers tee shirt to work."

He looked up and saw Pam staring at him with an odd look on her face. As soon as she saw him she smiled and went back to her computer.

"Hey, listen Katie, how would you like to come to a naked pajama pool party next Wednesday night?"