Elise :: Chili’s :: September 2005
A party was coming in, which I was absolutely thrilled about. Money, lots of alcohol being circulated and a tab being built up. I needed this after a long week of class and finals for my graduate work.
I was happy-- until I found out that the party was Dunder-Mifflin paper company.
Don’t get me wrong, they were all very nice people, every year-- but, I mean, that Michael guy.
I just didn’t know what to say about him.
He knew me as “the hot girl who used to date that kid who sat in the back part of the office.” But most people called me Elise.
The Dundies could be summed up in a couple of ways: a rousing rendition of “Mambo No. 5” with new names attached, Roy leaving Pam for the night, an inexplicable amount of hurt feelings and mixed messages, an award for things that pretty much anyone would deem inappropriate for work, a kiss that almost no one expected.
Except me.
This years Dundies, well, they were a little different.
I knew Jim and Pam from a long time ago, back when my boyfriend used to work at Dunder-Mifflin. All was well in the world back then. Now, things were changing. Which is to say I had the time to wonder what ever happened to them.
They didn’t remember me, but that was okay. I remembered a few things about them-- the kind of things that stick with you, the ones you want to refer to when you’re having a bad day and all you want to do is smile again.
They were those kind of people.
Though I knew they weren’t really dating, it always seemed that way. She’d gaze at him and he’d gaze at her and both of them were utterly oblivious.
They needed a fresh pair of eyes, to help them see what they really wanted.
Once, I tried to give it to them.
After Connor was done with work one day, I stopped by to surprise him with tickets to a movie I can’t even remember the name of. I asked Jim and Pam if they wanted to come.
Pam spoke first and declined quickly, muttering something about Roy and plans later.
Jim took his time to answer. He listened to Pam, face falling just enough for me to notice. He said no, made some wisecrack joke that made Pam laugh.
And that was their problem.
He never really let her know what he was feeling. She denied everything.
I know that everyone’s not the same, but I couldn’t help but think they were a little crazy. Connor and I had become a couple, easy. Why couldn’t their story be the same, free of complications and just-- the way it should be?
I had more time to contemplate this than I’d bargained for.
Connor dumped me a few days later, with one of those classic lines I never got tired of hearing. “I think we should see other people” was just code to me for “I have no original personality.”
Okay, total lie. I missed him like crazy. I called him once or twice, trying to be discreet, but he just wouldn’t have it. His name was the one I’d hear all the time, to no end, attached with his last name. It was already the same as my own: Jones. It was so common, but we still constantly joked that we had to be related somehow. I always said it wouldn’t be too tough a switch if we ended up getting married...
I had to stop thinking about this. Damn Dunder-Mifflin.
Michael stood making another speech and I worked through the Dunder-Mifflinites with pitchers of cheap alcohol, serving up drinks and more drinks. Pam was especially relaxed, she and Jim were just talking and giggling about almost everything that was going on.
Not hard to do, everything was so ridiculous. Don’t Go In There After Me, Spicy Curry, and Bushiest Beaver. I wondered, like I had many times before, how they ever tolerated Michael as their boss.
Then she got her award.
“Whitest Sneakers,” it was. And the speech may have been about the cutest thing I’d ever seen.
That kiss had been a long time coming.
My mind constantly reverted back to Connor. Dark eyelashes, soft hair, awful taste in movies. He always called me on my break at work, told me stories about Dwight and Jim’s pranks, made me believe that he was going to marry me someday.
There were some things I couldn’t will myself to forget.
And it was probably that way with Jim and Pam. They’d always have this night, no matter the outcome. I was sure nothing happened, and by the looks on the faces of their co-workers, no one really expected anything to.
When Pam fell off the chair, I almost died laughing when Dwight, of all people came to the rescue. No one else laughed with me and Connor just kept creeping into my mind. The first and only Dundies I attended, not served, had been spent mostly laughing at Dwight and Michael.
r32;Now I had to go it alone, if I wanted to laugh at all. There was something about that which made me think of unwanted attention-- maybe I’d seen it somewhere before.
I called Connor that night and regretted it as soon as I heard a girl’s voice answer the phone.
Hopeless romantics didn’t really have a place in Scranton, did they?
It felt like I could learn something even more from Jim and Pam, but last time I heard, Pam was banned from Chili’s for reasons I never found out.
I hoped that, whatever it was she did, Jim laughed about it with her and turned it into something she smiled about.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t have any doubt that’s what happened.
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