Story Notes:
I claim no ownership or affiliation with NBC or The Office.
After the holidays, Jim gets left in charge of the office a lot. Ever since the second week of January Michael's been calling out on particularly cold and dark days, and since it’s the dead of winter in northeastern Pennsylvania, everyone wakes up to those more often than not.
When Michael calls out, he gives Pam ridiculous reasons for not coming in, which she always laughs over with Jim after she hangs up the phone. Excuses like, his toilet caught on fire in the middle of the night, or he left his keys in the ignition of his car the night before, and when he woke up the next morning the car was still there, but the keys were gone. It's kind of sad, really. And funny. But mostly sad.
He and Pam still laugh over it though, because it's Michael and that's what you do. They've made it a rule that since they do work together, talking about work is permitted, but only at work unless the work-related conversation pertains to something that happened to either one of them personally. In other words, gossip is out of bounds anywhere but inside the confines of Dunder Mifflin. That had been Pam's decision.
"So, today Michael's very sorry that he's not going to make it in, but he's pretty sure he's having an allergic reaction to his new toothpaste. Apparently Jan wanted him to stop using the Spider-Man kind, so she bought him Rembrandt and it gave him bumps all over his tongue," Pam tells Jim as she rinses out her coffee mug in the kitchen. "I tried really hard to get him to stop talking right after the words 'allergic reaction', but he was adamant about finishing the story."
Jim shakes his head and leans against the counter. "That's the second time in two weeks that his excuse has been toothpaste-centric," he says. "This is too weird."
"Yeah. I don't know what's going on," Pam says. She dries her mug and begins to wipe around the sink with a paper towel. "But this is definitely not like Michael."
She's right, of course, but Jim can't think about it too much. When it comes to Michael, asking yourself 'how' or 'why' is, well, you just don't bother doing it.
* * * * *
"I'm going to need you to call a branch meeting today," Ryan tells Jim over the phone later. He's started to take this tone over the past couple of months, a tone like he never used to have. The kid's always been kind of a smug little fuck, but today his smugness is extra-amplified. Jim hates it.
"Oh! Um, okay," he agrees, and he sounds like a total suck-up. "Is it about the e-mail you just sent out? Because we all got it, and I don't think--"
Ryan cuts him off. "No, I'm sending you another e-mail with what I want you to go over. If we're being perfectly honest here, Jim, I'd rather you give the meeting while Michael's out, instead of it turning into a two hour-long interactive discussion on new American Gladiators versus old American Gladiators."
"You heard about that one, huh?" Jim flippantly asks.
"Listen, I have to go," Ryan says. "I have lunch with colleagues. When you're done with the meeting, have Pam do a brief write-up and send it to me." Jim says okay and hangs up. Seriously, ‘colleagues’?
He clicks open the meeting agenda. It's arranged and typed up in a no-nonsense kind of way that a four-year-old wouldn't be able to misinterpret. By this, Jim figures that Ryan has been typing up Michael's agendas, presumably because he thinks Michael will be more apt to follow them that way. And more than likely, the template for the agenda had been found in Jan's old Word docs. Jim's just surprised it doesn't include diagrams and big, colorful arrows, or that it’s not typed in Comic Sans.
When he reads the agenda, he's kind of surprised to see that it's about correct phone usage and etiquette, which is easily a meeting that Toby could give. He's ready to call Ryan back and ask why HR wouldn't be doing it instead, but Ryan's at lunch and it's already almost 1:00, so he figures he might as well ask Toby himself. He prints a copy of the e-mail and heads back to the annex.
"Hey, Toby," he says, leaning against Toby's desk.
"Hey," Toby answers. He hangs up his phone and turns in his chair a little.
"Yeah, so, Ryan needs a meeting held today on phone etiquette. Phone stuff, I mean, isn't that something HR normally handles? Or..."
Toby reaches for the e-mail in Jim's hand and reads it. "I can check with the director to see if this falls under human resources," he offers. "But I don't think so."
"Could you, man?" Jim asks, trying really hard to not sound like a baby. "It's just, I have a lot going on today." He doesn't, but when he holds meetings, people call him Michael, so he can easily find enough things to do to make what he said a true statement.
He watches as Toby types a quick e-mail to the HR director. While they wait for a response, they don't talk to each other, which is still kind of messed up to him even though it's been that way since before the holidays. He just adds it to the ever-growing list of weird.
"Okay," Toby says, refreshing his e-mail. "Barbara says unless the meeting were in response to an actual situation of phone misuse, like, say, someone getting fired over it, it's really not an HR issue."
He gives Jim a sad little smile, and Jim can't decide whether he's more frustrated with Toby or Ryan at the present moment. He holds in a sigh of disgust and mutters a thank you before turning to go back to his desk. It's not the first time over the past few weeks that he's been thankful for no cameras.
* * * * *
Jim gives the meeting with barely any enthusiasm. Really, what he could have done was speak the information into the little tape recorder he knows Michael's been keeping in his top drawer ever since he started thinking that that was how telephone calls were recorded. And then he could have put the recorder next to Michael's blowup doll and she could have given the meeting. Her facial expression would have showed a lot more interest in phone etiquette than his did, too.
* * * * *
At least things outside of work are going pretty well. He and Pam take turns cooking dinner during the week, but it usually ends up the two of them cooking together anyway, if you really consider what they do cooking. Jim's gotten pretty good at grilling things in the freezing cold while standing as close to the door as possible, and Pam is a master at instant Uncle Ben's.
They're at her place tonight, and she's tearing lettuce for a salad as he sits at her kitchen table, going through her junk mail. Flyers, mostly. He reads them out loud to her.
"So if we get to Target before Sunday, we can get this bright purple Dyson vacuum for only $499.00." He flips the page of the flyer. "I don't know about you, but I plan on being there as soon as the store opens."
Pam goes to the fridge for salad dressing. "Good," she says. "Then I won't have to pull out your 1980s piece of junk vacuum that your mom gave you, anymore."
"I keep telling you," Jim says, looking for other funny things that are on sale. "That's exactly why I vacuum as little as possible. If I were to buy a vacuum I'd actually use, then you wouldn't do it for me."
His phone vibrates against the table just then, and when he sees who it is, he groans. "Shit," he says out loud. It's Chad, this kid he's known for about ten years who doesn't understand the universal signal of being sent straight to voicemail. The only time Jim had been free of Chad's calls is when he lived in Connecticut and for a short while after moving back to Scranton, but not even a week after he and Pam got together, they'd run into Chad at a party and Jim had given him his new number out of...something. Drunkenness, or pity, or whatever.
"What?" Pam asks, putting down bowls. "Who is it?"
"No one," Jim says, opening his phone and hitting 'ignore'. "Just Chad."
"Chad." She repeats the name as if she's trying to remember if she's heard the name. "Isn't Chad the one I met that one time? The one who kept calling you 'Pantyliner'?"
"Yep," Jim sheepishly admits. "The one who's been calling me that since freshman year of college."
"Oh, God." She sounds sympathetic at first, but then she giggles. "You know who that kind of sounds like? Todd Packer."
"Uh, no."
"Jim has a Packer," she jokes. "Hey, Jim, when you and Chad Packer go to strip clubs, who normally gets beat up first? And which one of you is the wingman?"
It would have been funny if it weren’t true. Not the strip clubs part, because Jim’s never been out in public with just Chad and nobody else, but essentially, Chad was Todd Packer. Or a junior version of Todd Packer, like the son that Todd Packer will never have. And that’s not even the point here. The point is that Jim has really shallow and immature friends. Friends who think good nicknames come from feminine products. He gets it, okay?
But it sucks when your girlfriend calls you out on it.
* * * * *
Later, while they're cleaning up, Jim finds three real estate magazines on the corner of Pam's kitchen counter. He picks them up and when Pam sees that he has them, she gets kind of adorably flustered.
"Thinking of becoming a homeowner, Pam?" He says, trying to make his voice sound like a commercial for one of those loan places.
"I was just looking," she explains, drying a plate. "I mean, I know they're saying it's a terrible time to buy a house and all, but Toby was telling me that his mortgage payments aren’t much higher than the rent I play for this place, and you wouldn't believe the amount of money I've saved by being single--I mean, by not being engaged.” She takes a breath and continues. “I’ve just always wanted to have a house, and I've never realized how possible it was. And—and I was just looking." She doesn't sound apologetic, but she bites her lip the way she does when she's a little embarrassed.
"No, that's--that's great!" Jim says, and he kisses her. "Pam Beesly, taking steps towards becoming a responsible adult. With a mortgage."
She pauses, like she's unsure of what to say. "Maybe you're next," she finally blurts out. Well, it comes out sounding stronger than if it had been blurted out, like she's been holding it in for a while.
And it hits him even harder than the Packer thing, because this time she's serious.
Before they go to bed, he lies and tells her he has something to do tomorrow night and he can't make it for dinner. Pizza delivery, exorbitant amounts of beer, and feeling sorry for yourself all count as having something to do, right?
* * * * *
Michael is out again the next day. By ten o'clock, when the door to his office remains shut and the lights inside stay off, Jim looks over at Pam and she just shrugs and shakes her head. He must not have called, and that's even weirder than any of the excuses he'd given for not being in.
By four o'clock, Ryan (thankfully) hadn't called him to ask him to do anything, and Jim manages to block out Dwight's loud, angsty sighs due to Michael's absence. The past couple of weeks have been hard on Dwight. Every time Michael goes on vacation or is gone for an extended amount of time, Dwight goes through his own kind of seven stages of grief, the first stage being "tyranny" and the ending stage being "silent, mopey tyranny".
Jim finds himself thinking about how weird everything is, about how a year ago Dwight was working for Staples, Andy's phone was in the ceiling, and how the falling snow outside the window was a blur in the corner of his eyes, as was Karen's face as she sat next to him while he told her he was still in love with someone else. Cut to this year, where Dwight's where he's always been, the hole in the wall has been patched, and Jim's with Pam. Except Pam wants to buy a house. He wonders how it's possible for things to change so little, yet everything be so different, all at the same time. He wonders too many things, actually. Maybe that's his problem.
* * * * *
It starts to snow as Jim's leaving work, and as he's driving, it piles up and obscures his view of the yellow lines on the street that badly need repainting. He randomly wonders if the people who paint lines on roads ever think about their futures; if they worry about where they're going once the road they're on seems to end. It's a dumb thing to think about, probably, but he doesn't know what else to do.
So he goes home, puts on sweatpants and a t-shirt and calls Alfredo's for pizza. While he waits, he clicks through tv channels. It's not until right before the commercial break when he realizes that he's been watching Hannah Montana on Disney, so he quickly changes it, but the same thing happens after fifteen minutes of Crossroads which they're showing on VH1. He figures he's only a 'tween comedy away from Amanda Bynes so he turns the tv off completely.
The newspaper is just as uninteresting. Since he's lived in that apartment, he's insisted on getting a regular newspaper delivery, but rather than being more informed, he just ends up with more recycling to bring outside. He reads three wedding announcements of kids he graduated high school with, glances at the sports page, and then pulls out the classified section. And as many times as he's opened the classified section, he's never found what he thought he was looking for in the first place. Like, he'll tell himself that maybe he wants a bigger apartment, but instead he sees that some guy in Stroudsburg is selling a "slightly scratched" PS3 for $75 and that suddenly becomes more important. Or, he hears about this company in Mount Pocono that pays their sales reps almost twice as much as he's making, with better commission and ridiculously good benefits, but instead of looking under 'Employment' and trying to find the number, he looks at the ads for puppies and wonders how hard a Rottweiler would be to train.
He throws the classifieds on the couch next to him and it slides to the floor in three separate pages. He debates calling Pam and having her tell him he's going to be okay, because she broke off a ten-year relationship, walked across hot coals, and designed a logo for a commercial all in less than a year and a half, and that would make her the authority on okay. But he'd told her he had plans, so, no.
Taking a walk might not be a bad idea, despite the fact that it's nineteen degrees outside and snowing. It's already seven o'clock and it's pretty dark, but he doesn't really live in the suburbs anymore. In fact, that had been a huge part of the ad when Jim had first read about his place before he moved in. "Within walking distance of the best of Scranton's nightlife!" it had said, which was a crock of shit. 'A string of decrepit dive bars' is not the same as 'nightlife', whether or not he could walk to them.
Or even better, he could just sit here, close his eyes and wonder when growing up suddenly meant more than just becoming another year older at every birthday.
* * * * *
After very little time spent deciding, that's exactly what he does. Seven-thirty comes, his pizza comes (which he accepts and pays for, then puts on his coffee table and it sits there until it gets cold and congealed and probably gross), then it's eight o'clock and he's still on the couch, thinking. His phone vibrates at around eight-thirty, and he knows it's Pam, but he doesn't answer it because the last thing he wants right now is to bring her down, too. Instead, he gets up from the couch, his knees cracking from sitting for so long, and goes into his bedroom to his desk.
He opens the top drawer and pulls out a stack of Christmas cards still in their envelopes. He flips through them, and there’s one from Angela, one from Mark and his girlfriend, one from Kelly and Darryl which Jim's pretty sure Darryl has no idea about, one signed "Happy Holidays from the Utica branch" in Karen's handwriting (which he knows is just a formality, but it was nice of her to refrain from writing "fuck you" anyway). Then there's one from Michael and Jan, and it was taken on an actual ski trip that they'd gone to the Poconos for on the weekend before Christmas. Jan had won it in some kind of grocery store drawing, so it had been all-expenses paid. In the picture, Michael is trying to make a wedge with his skis while Jan is holding on to his arm. Her smile is a little too big and plastered on, and Michael looks overly happy, but not genuinely so. It's a pretty disturbing picture, now that Jim gets a better look at it.
He slides it back into its envelope and turns it over in his hands.
Fifteen minutes later, he's putting on the gray wool peacoat that Pam bought him for Christmas (she'd thrown his old black coat into the back of his closet with gusto after she'd given him this one, saying that in the matter of a year he went from looking like a little kid in his grandpa's dress jacket to a guy who just showed up for his first day on Wall Street. Which she'd said would have been fine if he actually did work on Wall Street) and shoving printed MapQuest directions to Michael's condo in his pocket. On his way out, he grabs the pizza from his coffee table.
The snow's getting worse, and according to MapQuest ( from the directions on the Christmas card envelope), Michael lives almost twenty minutes away right outside Clarks Summit. Jim is seriously thinking about turning around at the next gas station he passes and going home because he's not even sure why he's going to Michael's in the first place. Maybe he needs to see it with his own eyes, what his future is. Like, if he sees where he's headed, maybe he can know which steps to take to make sure that he won't be in his late forties, in an unhappy relationship with no savings and no friends and oh God.
Pam calls him just then, and he fumbles to open his phone while trying really hard to stay in the tire tracks of the car in front of him, since the snow is really starting to pile up.
"Hey," Jim says. His voice is gravelly from not talking for a long time, kind of like he just woke up.
"Hey!" She answers brightly. She's such a night person. "Were you sleeping?"
"Nope. I'm out, actually."
"In the snow?" He can hear her tv in the background and dishes clinking as if she's putting them back in the cabinets. He kind of misses that, even though it's only been one day without it.
"It's not too bad," he lies. "I just have something I really have to do."
She pauses, and he knows she's wondering whether or not to ask him if everything's okay, but they also both hate when people do that at every little thing, so she doesn't.
"Okay," she says. "Be careful."
"I will," he promises.
* * * * *
When he pulls up to the driveway of Michael's place, his car isn't parked anywhere. The lights are off too, and he hopes that Michael and Jan aren't the type to go to bed early. He wonders if maybe he should've called first, but this isn't a social visit and he's been conveniently losing Michael's phone number since 2001 anyway.
He grabs the pizza box and walks up to the front door, almost slipping and falling on his ass because nobody's shoveled from last the snowstorm they had. He doesn't know whether to knock or ring the doorbell, because the doorbell would wake them up if they were sleeping, but they also might not be able to hear a knock. In the end, he decides to use the doorbell and just get everything over with.
Michael opens the door wearing his blue Race For The Cure t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts. His hair is a mess and he looks like he hasn't been sleeping well. Jim suddenly feels like he's seeing something he should never, ever see, like he's crossed into another dimension where he doesn't belong.
Michael seems pleasantly surprised to see Jim, emphasis on the 'surprised'. His jaw drops when he opens the door, and he kind of looks around and behind Jim to see if anyone else was there, but he doesn't look too disappointed to find out that there isn't.
"Jim!" Michael finally says. "Come in. I--"
"Thanks, um." Jim steps in, shaking the snow from his shoes. "Your walkway's kind of a safety hazard," he points out.
"Yeah, I ran over the shovel last week and I haven't bought a new one yet," Michael explains.
Jim looks around. The condo is meagerly furnished, but the stuff it's furnished with looks expensive in a bare kind of way, like you see in magazines where there's just a table and one chair with a blanket over it in a room. Maybe a skinny vase of flowers here and there. Except Michael's living room has a leather sectional sofa and a 70" flatscreen that both take up most of the space, and the other stuff in the room is mostly decorative. It's the most confusing room arrangement Jim's ever seen, and he's lived with some pretty creative guys in his life.
"Whoa," Jim says appreciatively, gesturing towards the tv. It's still kind of awkward. Michael still hasn't asked Jim why he's there, and Jim still doesn't know. "That's some tv." Crossroads is just ending, and the credits flicker across the screen.
"Jan and I bought it right before we thought we were going to millionaires."
"Oh," Jim says, sitting on Michael's couch and putting the pizza down. He opens the box. "It's from Alfredo's," he says, offering some. "It's from, like, two hours ago, though."
Michael sits down next to Jim and grabs a slice. He shoves it glumly into his mouth. "Thanks," he says with his mouth full. "Jim, what--"
"What's going on, Michael?" Jim interrupts. "You've been to work seven times since New Year's."
Michael doesn't immediately answer. He drops his half-eaten disgusting cold pizza slice back into the box and folds his arms across his stomach as if it hurts.
"Jan left," he explains. "She took the car. And now I have no car, and no Jan. And I really need a car to get to work, and a Jan, for other things."
"Where did she go?" Jim asks. Michael opens and closes his mouth, then opens it again. "She said she had some things to think about, and that she had a plane ticket to go to see her sister. But that's her fake excuse for everything, so I don't--" he sighs loudly.
"Did she take her stuff with her?"
"No, her stuff's still here, but she's gone, Jim, and my heart...is just..." He picks up his pizza and takes a bite, taking a loud breath around a mouthful of food. He swallows and throws the slice down again. "I can't even eat. Everything tastes like cardboard to me now."
"Cold pizza always tastes like cardboard," Jim explains. "And it was not right of Jan to take your only car to go think about things."
"But Jan's always right," Michael says pathetically. "That's the first thing you learn about dating Jan."
"Trust me, what she did wasn't right. And you know you can't keep not showing up for work, right? Because then you'll have no car, and no condo."
"I already have no car, Jim, and my condo is nothing without Jan lying here on this couch every day when I get home from work." Michael puts his face in his hands.
"I'll take you tomorrow to go rent a car until Jan comes back," Jim offers, feeling what he tells himself is charitable but is really more like sympathetic.
"I don't have money to rent a car, because Jan has a spending problem."
"I'm pretty sure it's not just Jan that has the spending problem, but if you can't afford it then I'll pick you up and take you to work for a few days."
Michael looks thoughtful for a minute, and then he speaks up again. "I--I think I feel like how you did when you ran away to Stamford, Jim. Like everything's just spinning around me so fast that I can't see what's happening anymore. And I kind of feel like how Britney Spears did when she found out that her mother, Samantha, didn't want her and that she was a mistake."
It takes Jim a minute to register what Michael's talking about. "Oh, you're talking about Crossroads now," he realizes out loud.
"It's like when she read that poem to Ben, she was talking about me. ’Not a girl, not yet a woman. All I need is time, a moment that is mine, in between'. Those are some of the most inspiring words I've ever heard."
"That's, yeah. I don't know how accurately Crossroads parallels your own life, but that thing you're feeling? That means you want things to change."
"Change," Michael repeats, rubbing his eyes. "I don't know how to make things change. Right now I just feel like being in Jamaica, where problems don't even exist."
"That's the thing with running away," Jim says patiently. "Your problems follow you. And trust me, you end up coming back eventually to twice as many as you left with. It's just an easy way to make things more complicated."
Michael breathes out heavily, leaning back against the couch. "So what do I want to change?"
"For starters, there's your relationship. I mean, there's got to be boundaries somewhere. If you want to stay with Jan, you have to stand your ground on some things."
"I stand my ground on plenty of things, Jim, but Jan stands a lot harder."
"Well, it has to be equal give-and-take, in order for it to work out."
"Yeah, that's what Dr. Phil says on his advice website. You're like a young, better-looking Dr. Phil, Jim. With more hair and who's like a son to me."
Jim grimaces. "Uh, thanks."
There's silence between them as some show about Scott Baio being pregnant starts on VH1.
"Why'd you come, Jim?" Michael suddenly asks. "To my house. Why did you come to my house?"
Jim doesn't know. "I...was worried," he answers simply. He doesn't elaborate on what he was worried about, because in all honesty it had been about himself and what was to come in the next twenty years of his life. It had nothing to do with Michael's wellbeing. But then he realizes that Michael has nobody else to worry about his wellbeing, and that fact alone makes Jim's trip depressingly successful.
"You were worried? About me?" Michael's looking at Jim but Jim just stares at the tv.
"I was worried," Jim repeats.
Michael's quiet again, but he puts his hand on Jim's arm. "You're a good man, James Halpert," he says earnestly. "And you have an awesome girlfriend who's smart and has real boobs."
"I don't know, Michael," Jim says. "There's a lot more I want."
Michael makes a psssh noise. "A guy as smart as you can have anything he wants," he declares, and Jim turns to him, kind of surprised. "And I, as your boss and friend, support whatever you do."
Jim nods. "Thanks," he says, and he means it. Michael turns to him and gives him a sloppy hug, his chin digging into Jim's shoulder. Michael sniffs, and Jim awkwardly pats his back.
"I love you, man," Michael chokes, and Jim pries himself out of Michael's arms.
"I know," he says.
"Promise you'll never leave me." Michael wipes his left cheek with the back of his hand.
"I...can't promise you that," Jim says.
"Then promise you'll never go to Utica."
"I promise."
Jim looks at his watch, and it's almost 11:00. He starts to get up from the couch.
"Want to have a sleepover?" Michael suddenly asks, looking up at Jim from where he's still sitting. "I have ice cream. And Hairspray on DVD."
"Uh, no. I'm just going to take off."
"Are you sure? Chubby Hubby. Zac Efron," Michael says, as if those things are too tempting to pass up.
Jim points at his watch and starts walking towards the front door. "I'll take a rain check," he says.
"Okay. Oh, and Jim?"
"Yeah?"
"Pick me up at 7:45 tomorrow. I'll buy you pancakes at Denny's."
Jim nods, figuring that even if he has to drive Michael to work for the rest of the week, it's better than being Michael for the rest of the week.
* * * * *
The snow stops as soon as Jim merges on to the highway. He's the only one driving at this hour of the night, with about three inches of snow on the ground, but the plows have been out and the roads are clear for as far as he can see. He isn't in much of a hurry to get home anyway; there's still a lot to decide and he'd like to go to bed tonight having some idea as to where to start in all of this growing up business.
It's okay, though. He knows what he doesn't want, so that's as good of a beginning as any. It's motivation for change, at least.
And if all else fails, there's always the Nashua branch.
69 cups of noodles is the author of 31 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 1 members. Members who liked stuck to the ceiling, don't mean a thing also liked 1089 other stories.
