“Please state your name and your place of employment,” Scully muttered and Mulder chewed on the inside of his cheek in total discomfort. This day was like some kind of circle of hell where a poor, unsuspecting FBI agent was teased with one of his wildest fantasies which was then ripped away from him by forces totally beyond his control…like work, and life, and missing refrigeration salesmen. It was straight out of Dante. Mulder rubbed his face in frustration.

“Dwight K. Shrute,” Dwight stated firmly, leaning down toward Scully’s tape recorder as if the three centimeters between it and his mouth would make a difference. “I am the appointed number three here at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton, and I am also the head of a number of committees, namely the committee to…”

“Just…” Scully interrupted tiredly, and Mulder was grateful because the day before Dwight had continued his list of responsibilities for almost fifteen minutes. “That’s fine, Mr. Shrute,” Scully assured him. He nodded his consent and pursed his lips at the two agents. “Can you please inform us of your whereabouts and activities yesterday beginning at 5 PM?” she asked him, her hands clasped tightly and her leg bobbing subtly under the table. Mulder scratched his eyebrow and shuffled some papers in front of him.

“Certainly,” Dwight began, “Yesterday at 5 o’clock I was here at the office. Michael and I were having an important meeting involving the state of his…finances…” Mulder watched as Scully raised an eyebrow, “At approximately 5:13, I exited Michael’s office and entered the lavatory where I proceeded to approach the urinal and unbuckle my…”

“That’s…a general synopsis would be fine. We can do without the play by play,” Mulder jumped in, sure that the details of Dwight Shrute’s urination were not relevant to the case. Dwight bristled a bit before pushing a notebook toward Mulder.

“Since the federal bureau arrived I have been documenting my activities. Perhaps you would find that more useful than a spoken account,” Dwight offered. Mulder glanced at Scully and wondered how these sorts of cases always ended up being weirder than the conspiracy-loaded, alien-heavy mysteries involving file cabinets in the Pentagon and ashtrays full of Morley’s. But Scully’s face was stone-like and he realized that, today, she wouldn’t be commiserating with him…at all. He sighed.

Taking the offered notebook, Mulder nodded feigned gratitude and tried not to be irritated by this guy’s small town ignorance. Maybe he really had been a rodeo clown…

Mulder furrowed his brow and met Dwight’s very attentive stare.

“Could you expound on this theory about Vampiric activity?” Mulder wondered curiously. Scully shifted in her seat and huffed out an angry breath. Her response dripped from her lips with unmasked disdain as she took the notebook from Mulder’s hands and closed it determinedly.

“Please, spare me,” she muttered. Mulder shrugged and watched in practiced resignation as she stood and left the room, heading toward the kitchen on irritated feet. Dwight leaned back in his chair and eyed Mulder suspiciously.

“You know a common sign of vampirism is red hair?” he asked, his voice draped in an all-business tone. Mulder nodded.

“Yeah I know.”

***

“Please state your name and your place of employment.”

“I choose to exercise my fifth amendment rights.”

Scully sighed and ignored the way that Mulder let out a half chuckle beside her.

“Mr. Bratton,” she began tiredly.  She was finding that everything that escaped her mouth today was accidentally coated with a tinge of lazy exhaustion. “We interviewed you yesterday…”

Creed simply smiled a vacant smile and nodded at them.

The silence was heavy in the room and Scully guessed that Mulder was probably squinting in confused curiosity. He was always fascinated with this type of person, something about their pure brand of crazy appealing to his psychologist’s intellect. Scully was just annoyed. At everyone in the room.

Mulder shifted in his seat.

“I figured out why I know you,” he announced finally, referencing the day before when he had sworn the name Creed Bratton was oddly familiar to him. “You were in the Grass Roots,” Mulder pointed out, and Scully found herself rolling her eyes. Why, she wondered, did Mulder always feel the need to play pop culture factoid games on the days when she already wanted to strangle him from pure frustration? Wasting time seemed like his life mission…

Creed simply smiled a vacant smile and shook his head at them.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he stated. Mulder cocked his head and Scully began to tap her pencil on the table top in annoyance.

“Sooner or later,” Mulder offered dryly, “love is gonna getcha…” he muttered, as if reminding this guy of the lyrics to a song from the sixties was going to remove the look of strange blankness from his face. It didn’t work, and Scully wasn’t surprised.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” she interjected, “Just tell us where you were last night so we can move on to the next interview.” She didn’t mean to sound like a stern school teacher, she told herself, sometimes it just happened. Creed sighed.

“I’ll tell you where I wasn’t,” he began cryptically, “I wasn’t here.”

Mulder shifted in his seat.

“Here in this room? Or here in this building?” Mulder asked. Creed smiled.

“Yes,” he told them, agreeing to something that hadn‘t been said…or just agreeing to everything…in general. “Also, you should consider the idea that these people have joined some sort of a cult,” Creed informed them conspiratorially. Mulder leaned forward and raised his eyebrows in interest.

“There’s been cult activity in the area?” he wondered, and Scully slammed her pencil down on the table and reached out to stop her tape recorder. The two men turned and looked at her in concern.

“Please,” she begged, looking to Mulder with narrow eyes and a raised eyebrow, “spare me.”

*** 

What kind of guy, Jim wondered, left his lunch in the car two days in a row? It was bad enough on Thursday -- he’d gotten into his car to go home and the entire interior had had a very special tuna fish aroma, but today he was admittedly annoyed with himself.

It didn’t help that Pam had been snapping at him since he’d walked in that morning, glaring at his back whenever it was turned toward her and answering his jokes and quips with blank stares and, at one point, even an eye roll. It had taken him something like an hour and twelve minutes to figure out what exactly it was that had her so testy.

An hour and twelve minutes after his arrival at the office, he’d been in the men’s room washing his hands and had looked up at himself in the mirror and realized…

Casino night.

Right.

He should’ve burned it instead.

No wonder Pam was acting like she wanted to decapitate him with the edge of her plastic yogurt spoon.

After the realization of his unfortunate clothing choice he’d been tip-toeing around her, trying hard to avoid prolonged conversation and any sort of lengthy eye contact. At 12:37 he’d watched her step out of the office with Angela’s cat in her arms and her cell phone in hand -

And he’d thought Now would be an excellent time to eat lunch.

But unfortunately he’d left his lunch in the car.

Again.

He shook his head at himself and clutched at his brown paper bag, wondering if he was the only person above the age of ten who actually packed a sack lunch. He meandered through the parking lot, shouldered his way back into the building, and headed toward the stairs, deciding he could use any kind of half-assed exercise he could muster. But as he pushed through the door clearly marked STAIRS, he paused…because he’d recognize her voice anywhere.

“Yeah sunglasses and trench coats and everything,” she was whispering, probably trying not to be overheard by the omnipresent ears of the federal governement, and he stopped dead in his tracks because he was a little caught off guard by her presence. It sounded like she was sitting on the steps about two levels up, but he couldn‘t see her at all. “Mom, can you please drop that?” she pleaded quietly, and he felt his mouth tip into a half grin at the idea that Pam was spending her lunch hour on the phone with her mother. “Because it’s too hard. We don’t really talk anymore and even if we did what would I do just walk up to him and ask him to take off his shirt?”

He frowned. Why did this feel like something he should not be listening to…

“Not…like that, I just meant…” she heaved a sigh and he turned to look at the door he‘d just come through, wondering whether he should go back and take the elevator, but deciding that would make too much noise…or it made more sense for him to just wait a second because eventually she would hang up and he could…ok so he wanted to eavesdrop…whatever. “I’m glad this is funny for someone,” Pam muttered unhappily. Jim pursed his lips in curiosity. “God this day just keeps getting worse and worse. And like what is he…” she sighed again, “Who does he think he is? Coming into work dressed in that sweater like I wouldn’t remember it or like that didn’t mean anything… Seriously, mom, every time I see him I just want to cry or like…puke. All over his shoes. Maybe then I’d magically have his attention… What?” another sigh, and her voice began to climb in volume with her clear frustration, “I just meant that it’s like I don’t even exist to him anymore and he acts like last year never even happened… Yes, mom, Casino Night. If he remembered Casino Night he wouldn’t wear that damn sweater!” There was a pause and when she started talking again her voice had returned to the quiet hush of earlier, “I tried to tell him on beach day but it was like…Karen was sitting right there and I didn’t want it to seem like I don’t…I mean I wanted to respect his feelings, you know what I mean? But I still went through this whole embarrassing display of proclaiming that I missed him and it was just so…And now it’s like that never happened, either.”

Jim’s face twisted in disbelief because in his mind beach day had changed everything for them. They were able to joke again, they were able to exist peacefully in the same room again, and he gave her all of the credit. She went on.

“No, you’re right, actually. It’s not like it never happened, it’s like just… Maybe he‘s listening to me but he‘s…like he‘s not really hearing me. Does that make sense?” she paused and he held his breath, absurdly concerned that she would hear him exhaling at the bottom of the stairs and point out how wrong he was to be listening to this particular exchange. Yeah, he thought to himself, this was so very…totally…wrong. “Uh huh,” she murmured, and he smiled. He leaned back against the wall behind him and crossed his arms, cocking his head to the side. “Right. Yeah, like he takes everything I say literally, and…ugh why do I keep using the word friends around him? It‘s like some kind of nervous tick or something…” she muttered helplessly, “I’m such an idiot.”

His mind was churning and he was almost afraid to let the puzzle pieces fall into place. What the hell was she saying exactly? His fist tightened against the brown paper bag in his hand and it rustled noisily just as she cleared her throat. He rolled his eyes at himself.

“Ok, mom, how many times are we going to have this conversation? I can’t just walk up to him and say that,” she stated emphatically and he chewed nervously on his lower lip. He was a jerk, he thought to himself, and wrong on so many levels. “I know that’s what he did, but he is…stronger than me.”

Stronger than her?

“Yes he’s stronger than me and he can talk to people and just walk up to them and say things, even really hard embarrassing emotional things. I can’t do that. That’s why he’s a salesperson and I am not,” she proclaimed. He heard Angela’s cat meow unhappily. Pam sighed. “This cat is such a little…” she drifted off and he smiled to himself again, feeling some of the tension that had been brewing inside of him settle. There was a long pause and he waited through it, hearing the cat meow again. Finally Pam spoke. “Stop saying that.” Pause. “Yeah I know.” Pause. “I know that.” Pause. “Thank you, mom.” Long, labored pause. “Ok, seriously, you really want me to just walk up to him and say ‘Hey Jim? Hi, uh listen so I’m in love with you, but I didn’t want to say anything because it seems like you’ve totally just moved on and I definitely don’t want to get in your way. So don’t feel weird or anything, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Oh and don’t ever wear that sweater again because it gives me a heart attack.”

He stood up from the wall and was standing there staring at the empty steps in front of him in absolute shock, feeling the ice around his heart melt a little and sort of puddle somewhere near his shoes. What the hell…

“I’m not going to say that to him, mom, it‘s just…I can‘t…Whoa, hey!” He froze in an absurd fear that she had found him out. “Stop!” Jim looked up and felt his pulse get fast and frantic, his panic only magnified by her sudden exclamation. She squeeled in a very Pam kind of way and he thought he heard her standing up, moving around…he thought he heard the cat meow. His mouth dropped open and his eyes took in every possible hiding place (there weren’t any) and it took him practically a half hour to figure out he should just go out the door he’d come through, by which time he could see the cat heading down the steps in his direction. Pam was fast on it’s heels and muttering expletives, her phone still pressed to her ear, and the last thing he thought before his brain just totally froze was that he had no escape…this was it, he was done.

Pam stopped dead on the landing and stared down at him in pale-faced horror.

“Oh God,” she whispered. He moved his mouth a few times but nothing came out…not that that surprised him, he didn’t really know what to say, and she shook her head as if she were stuck in slow motion. “Mom, I have to go…” she muttered, and closed her phone with an audible snap without waiting for a reply.

“Pam…” he forced out, but she held up a hand, and he noticed a sheen of tears appear in her eyes.

“Just…um…I have to get that cat. Where did she…did you see where she….uh…”

“Oh, right, um…no I think she went um…” and he pointed down the final flight descending into the basement of the building. She nodded mutely and jogged down toward him, bypassing him skillfully without making eye contact at all. He wondered if she’d learned that from him. “Pam,” he tried again. She didn’t stop or pause or even slow down, simply holding up a hand and shaking her head.

“Angela’s going to kill me,” she called out, and he thought he heard tears in her voice. His head dropped low as she disappeared down the stairs and that was the only movement he seemed capable of at the moment because his entire being was too busy replaying the things he’d just heard…

He shook his head.

Unbelievable.