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Dinner with an Old Friend

Leaving the office at the end of the day was always awkward since Jim had returned from Stamford. He never knew what to do or say as he hurried by Pam’s desk. He’d nod at her, or mumble a quick ‘good night’, but their eyes rarely met and there was no joking about something Dwight had done earlier, no small talk about their respective evenings. Even worse, he dreaded not seeing her until the next day, which he realized was truly pathological, given the torture that seeing her had become.

The mornings weren’t quite as bad, because Pam would often be on the phone or in Michael’s office when he arrived. During the day, they managed to benignly coexist, at least superficially. They’d somehow choreographed avoiding each other, tacitly agreeing not to eat lunch, visit the copy machine or get a cup of coffee simultaneously.  Yet leaving for the evening remained unrelentingly difficult.  Passing by her, pretending they barely knew each other was like a dull knife twisting slowly in his gut. Every day.

That particular day, however, Jim had an additional reason to be anxious when he left. He was meeting Sara for dinner after work. She’d called him a few days earlier, out of the blue. They hadn’t even spoken in almost three years and it had been five since they’d broken up for the last time. She was going to be in Scranton for a few days, visiting old friends, and she wanted to see him. Hearing from her had taken him by surprise and, though the thought of seeing her in his current state made him vaguely queasy, he couldn’t think of an excuse not to.

For more than two years during college, Sara had been his girlfriend. After graduation, she’d gone off to law school and they’d tried to do the long distance thing. But they’d been young and curious about whom they might be apart and it had just gotten too hard. Eventually they’d mutually, though painfully, decided to end it. He’d dated other girls before and after Sara, but never for nearly as long or as seriously. She’d been his first and - until Pam, or what might have been with Pam - his only love.

His time with Sara had been a wonderful and an awful thing and it had changed him forever. He’d learned how deeply he could care about someone and how miserable he could be when that connection withered away. Ever since then, he’d been careful with his attachments. Until Pam. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on him – that the only woman he’d felt incapable of not loving since Sara was the one who wouldn’t let him.

Jim’s memories of Sara had assumed an unreal quality, as if she were the beautiful, complicated heroine in a movie he’d once seen. Seeing her tonight, having her become an actual person again, was not necessarily a good thing. Not because he carried any kind of torch for her, that fire had long since petered out. His fear was dredging up the deeply buried part of himself that knew what it was to love someone and have her love him back. That he’d rub raw the fragile scab covering the wound of what he’d never have with Pam.

Pam hadn’t married Roy. The irony was that it didn’t seem to matter. When she’d sent Jim away that fateful night last spring, something had been shattered and he had no clue how to glue it back together. She was sphinx-like these days; he couldn’t fathom what she was thinking. Sometimes he’d catch her glancing at him and she looked almost mournful. Other times, she seemed to look right through him. Did she hate him? Miss him? Did she expect him to make things right? And if he tried, would she let him, reject him again, or even worse, be indifferent? He had no fucking idea.

All Jim knew was that the alternating waves of hurt and anger he felt when he looked at Pam needed to stop. He’d already started searching for a new job, but he probably wasn’t trying hard enough. He knew what he had to do, but the finality of leaving made his head and heart ache, no matter how agonizing the alternative. As he drove to the restaurant to meet Sara that night, he resolved for the hundredth time to simply remove himself from the situation. If only it was that simple.

When Jim arrived, he spotted Sara through the window before he even entered. She was still as lovely as she’d ever been, but different too. Her thick dark hair was cut above her shoulders now. It used to be long and she’d pull it into a messy ponytail when she studied. He remembered taking it down and running his fingers through it when she’d come to him at night. She was dressed in tailored pants and a silky blouse instead of in blue jeans and a t-shirt or his big old sweater. She looked more grown up, like the lawyer she’d become.

As he approached, she looked up at him with her familiar, but still striking pale blue eyes and smiled warmly. She seemed genuinely glad to see him. He started to feel a bit easier too, a little less weird. They hugged and found a quiet table in the corner. When the waitress came, they ordered a bottle of wine, both clearly needing a lubricant to get the conversation going.

‘You look great,’ Jim said. ‘Like a bona fide professional.’

‘Really?’ she answered, amused. ‘Well, it’s all an illusion. It’s still just me.’ She paused and took a good look at him. ‘You look good too…if it’s humanly possible, I think you’ve gotten even more handsome.’

Jim blushed and laughed. Sara always had a way of taking him off guard. It had always been one of their things: she’d be unnervingly direct and he’d get momentarily flustered.  She’d always held a certain power in that and apparently, Jim noted, she still did. But at the same time, he found himself unexpectedly reassured by how quickly they fell back into their old pattern of conversation.

As they ate dinner, Sara told him how excited she was about her new job in Washington. They talked about mutual old friends they had or had not kept up with. She told him about a serious relationship she’d recently ended, how wrenching it had been. How she’d sort of liked being on her own for a while. That she was happy. She said she’d heard bits and pieces about him over the years from Matt, Jim’s college roommate who lived in New York, where she’d also lived for several years. Matt had married Janet, another college acquaintance with whom Sara had become close friends.

Jim had visited Janet and Matt in New York a couple of times when he was in Stamford. During one drink-fueled evening at their apartment, he’d spilled some of the beans about Pam, though he hadn’t gone into much detail. Unbeknownst to him, however, Janet had instantly detected his despair and easily filled in the blanks. Sara didn’t mention that Janet had told her all about this.

‘So, are you still writing?’ Sara asked Jim, sipping her wine.

‘No, not really. I mean, sometimes I’ll start something, but…I don’t know, I just sort of fell out of it.’

‘Why? You were such a good writer,’ she pushed. She meant it. She still had the amazing letters he’d written to her years ago and had even saved a few of his stories. The one he’d written about their relationship, when it was in its death throes, was still one of the best things she’d ever read. It was poignant and funny and passionate and sad and eloquent and true. It was Jim.

Jim had no answer for her. Finally he joked, ‘I guess I’ve just lost the urge. Too busy selling paper – it’s an emotionally draining business, as you can well imagine.’

But Sara wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. ‘Well, you really should get back into it…use some of that damn paper instead of selling it. Seriously, you were incredibly talented.’

He just smiled. The wine was kicking in and it felt oddly comforting to be there with her, having her push him like she used to. Maybe he would try doing some writing again. Start with a journal or something. The problem, he reckoned, would be filling it with anything other than the word PAM, written endlessly across the pages.

‘So, what else,’ she went on, ‘other than not writing, what have you been up to?’

Jim told her about work, entertaining her with stories about Dwight and Michael that she had trouble believing he wasn’t making up. He told her about his aborted transfer to Stamford, his trip to Australia, his weekly basketball game, and the books he’d been reading. No mention of Pam.

Since he said nothing about his love life, Sara simply asked. He told her about a couple of girls he’d dated, Katy and the one in Stamford. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe enough time had passed that she actually felt like an old friend, but after his initial hesitation, he found himself surprisingly comfortable talking to Sara about this subject. He even told her about a horrendous one-night stand he’d recently had, turning it into a funny story. In reality, it had been a miserable experience, at least from the minute after he’d achieved the mindless physical release he’d sought. It had sated nothing, only made him feel even worse about Pam. As humorously as he spun it now, Sara saw right through to the core of intense melancholy.

‘So, why do you think it didn’t work out with anyone – I mean the ones that you got past the first night with?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jim tried to deflect by making light of it, ‘wrong time, wrong person…my consuming drive to be the world’s leading paper salesman.’

‘Come on, Jim,’ Sara pressed, ‘I told you all my dirty little secrets.’

Jim just looked at her, not knowing what to say. He didn’t even know how to begin explaining Pam to her. Sara took care of that.

‘Is it because you’re in love with someone else?’