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Hi Pam, it’s Jim.

She’s not sure what possesses her, but she agrees to one final interview, a wrap-up they call it, something to seed through the series. Everyone’s doing it they say but she’s not so sure. Maybe it’s that they get Nick to ask her who was the cameraman who conspired with her to prove the Dwight and Angela affair or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t care anymore.

Maybe it’s exhaustion from sleeping on her friend Janey’s couch for the past three nights which is always an exercise in cat-related suffocation.

Hi Pam, it’s Jim

For atmosphere, she’s behind the reception desk but it’s seven in the morning and no one’s in yet. It’s Nick and with him is Terry, the sound guy who never speaks which is funny in itself. She tidies her pencils and then fans out her stack of post-its while they are setting up.

She’s not really sure what she’s going to say, but then she never is. She wonders if it’s because the documentary hasn’t started airing yet so the possibility that everything you say is really going to be on television hasn’t really hit home. She’s cried on camera.

She never thought she would be that type of girl.

As she flicks on her computer, she notices her voicemail light flashing. Pam knows it must be someone calling in sick because they always call particularly early to avoid the third degree from Michael or worse, Dwight.

She doesn’t bother listening to it just yet.

Hi Pam, it’s Jim

She grins as Nick and Terry make their way to her and Terry leans out a hand and flicks one of Dwight’s bobble-heads with a thumb and forefinger, tumbling the little guy onto the floor. Pam will go and retrieve it before Dwight gets in because she knows he will blame Jim. It’s not clever or complex enough to have been done by Jim, but blaming Jim has become almost reflex with Dwight.

She doesn’t want Dwight plotting Jim’s downfall all day. She’s a little too tired for that.

Nick shoulders the camera and Pam realises that she will never get used to talking into that big black eye. She can’t remember how many times one of the camera guys has told her not to try and look around the camera at them, but she still does it.

“Is this supposed to be a retrospective or something? Am I supposed to be doing a little summing up type thing?” Pam asks, making a circular motion with her hand as Terry brings the small boom mike around. Nick shrugs, the camera going up and down with the movement.

“They just wanted exit interviews with everyone. Your thoughts on how you think things will look, what you’re doing now, where you think you’ll be in five years, that sort of thing.”

“Seriously?” Pam asks, raising an eyebrow.

Nick snorts. “Just talk about whatever.”

“Okay.” Pam takes a breath. “I left Roy three days ago.”

Terry makes this kind of choked gargle sound and Pam thinks it’s the first time she’s heard him do anything other than the single time she’d heard him sneeze.

Hi Pam, it’s Jim. I’m just calling…

“It would help if Roy was a bad guy, but he’s not. I can’t blame any of this on him, not really. Yes, he was a bit insensitive and sometimes even thoughtless, but I knew that going in. He was the fun guy and I liked how I felt being around him. He was rude and brash and that was charming in its own way… in the beginning.”

Roy had asked her when she’d stopped being happy as she was leaving. She’d sighed and said she wasn’t sure, but she knew. It was just kinder not to say that she didn’t think she’d ever been happy. She’d just mistaken being settled for being content.

“It’s weird but I really don’t think he was particularly surprised.” She’s not sure why she’s saying all this to the camera, why it has become her confidante when she hasn’t even rung her mother yet. She supposes she should feel bad about that, but Pam has been feeling numb for a while and her thawing process hasn’t begun yet.

Hi Pam, it’s Jim. I’m just calling to let you know that…

“I guess we both knew it was coming. I’ve known a couple of people that have gotten married because they didn’t feel like they had anywhere else to go. I just… I didn’t want that to be the reason. I want to be excited, not relieved.”

This honesty thing is therapeutic and Pam knows that she will probably regret pouring her heart out like this, but for now it’s okay, she feels calm. Watching Michael interact with children, she had once asked Jim why they seemed to like him so much and Jim had given her a funny look and had said, “Maybe because he’s more honest than any other adult.”

“There’s a lot of ways I’d describe Michael, but honest isn’t one of them,” she’d said with a laugh, wobbling on her ice-skates because they had been rentals and she’d ended up with a mismatched pair because they hadn’t had two in her size.

“Imagine a world where everyone blurts every little thing that comes into their head, no matter how inane or embarrassing,” Jim had said and Ryan had chosen that very moment to barrel right into the back of him and knock them both flat, Kelly following close on his heels.
She hadn’t really understood what he was getting at but she does now.

Hi Pam, it’s Jim. I’m just calling to let you know that I won’t be in because…

Nick keeps leaning away from the eyepiece on the camera to look at her and she just knows he is dying to ask her questions, but that isn’t how it works. She resolutely looks into the big black glass eye and says, “I think it’s about time I started making my life better.”

The office door squeaks open and Ryan appears, laden down with dry cleaning and his mobile in his mouth. As he advances, looking thunderous, the phone starts ringing. He goes to the nearest bin and simply opens his mouth over it, the phone dropping in and continuing to bleat. The ringing degenerates into a garbled wail and finally quits.

“Oh look, I broke it. How unfortunate,” he says, pushing Michael’s office door open with a foot and hurling the dry cleaning inside.

“Don’t you need your phone?” Pam asks him with an innocent smile.

“Not as much as I need a break,” Ryan sighs and then starts as he finally notices the cameras. He straightens his tie and runs a hand through his hair. The phone starts up again, a discordant warble that is ended abruptly by Ryan stomping his foot into the bin. There is a crunch and then silence.

“Head cancer. I’m worried about… head cancer,” he says, then puts his head down and heads for his desk.

The camera swings back to Pam but Angela has appeared in the doorway, tugging her coat free and making a beeline for her desk, throwing a ‘good morning’ over her shoulder as an afterthought. Pam looks back at the camera and shrugs as if to say ‘show’s over’. Nick keeps the camera on her for a beat, as if he can wring more words from her by sheer force of will, but she merely blinks back at him until he lowers it with a resigned sigh. Terry has already dropped the boom.

An hour later, after she’s checked her emails and forwarded anything that had gone to the generic email address and had been for specific people, the voicemail light catches her eye again and she picks up the phone and dials the password.

“Hi Pam, it’s Jim. I’m just calling to let you know that I won’t be in because…well, because I’m flying out today. I was able to get my flight pushed forward and since Jan wants me to start in Stamford on the fifth, she okayed me rescheduling my holiday. She said she would call Michael to let him know. I just wanted to say good luck with the wedding and… everything. I’ll be…I’ll be thinking about you.”

On the third ring, it’s his flatmate that answers the phone and before Pam has a chance to say anything, he yawns and mumbles, “His flight was delayed. If you hurry, you can make it.”



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