Pam Beesly and Jim Halpert are actors, hired by Hollywood.  Or NBC.  Whatever. 

Sometimes she’s desperate to scream that at people who really don’t understand and who take the term “reality T.V.” way too literally. Like, yeah it says Pamela Anne Beesly on her birth certificate, and she comes up with like thirty five percent of her own lines, in the moment, but actually she auditioned and was hired and gets paid to pretend to be someone she isn’t who’s actually not pretending at all.

Basically how it works is that the plot is “suggested” to them in vaguely written script format.

It’s reality in as much as any reality television show is real, and she signed a contract that said she would never reveal how truly scripted the entire thing is. Jesus, she grew up in Hobbits Glen, Maryland and went to college in New York City. It isn’t like she’s actually a receptionist. Not really.

Although, she spends most of her time these days answering the phone at Dunder Mifflin-Scranton, so she guesses it’s more her life than she likes to admit.

She gets compensated nicely and she has a dressing room downstairs with her name on the door, and her Bachelor of Arts in drama from NYU seems to come in surprisingly handy whenever they ask the actors to ad lib. Which is actually really often.

She’s sleeping with a guy on the weekends named Graham who has a British accent and a flare for the acoustic guitar.

Jim is seeing some girl from As the World Turns, and sometimes during the shoot Pam teases him about it, asking if the girl pauses in the middle of their conversations to give an imaginary camera her reaction shot. He rolls his eyes at her and stands impatiently on his mark, waiting for direction from someone who isn’t her.

Off camera he does this thing where he plays with the coins in his pockets. It drives her crazy and she finds herself staring at the shadowed shape of his hand, outlined by the gray or brown or black of his pants, and blinking stoically, royally, chewing on her lip in irritation. It took her three months of working with him before she finally opened her mouth about it.

“Do you have like twenty dollars in quarters in there or what?” she’d wondered frostily. His hand had gone still and he’d looked at her, bored, unapologetic.

“Yeah,” he’d answered, and she’d day-dreamed for the rest of the afternoon about punching him in the mouth.

Sometimes she wonders if the problem is that she actually does find him attractive.

Devastatingly attractive.

She tries to avoid those kinds of men usually at all costs, attractive ones, ones that make her feel warm. Graham has an overbite and she finds that she is much more comfortable conversing with him than with someone who looks like Jim Halpert, and so she figures it’s actually the way that Jim’s torso makes her mouth go dry that originally made her hate him with every fiber of her being.

His arrogance only added to it.

He’s the type of actor who does read-throughs in a navy blue baseball cap with three days worth of stubble on his cheeks, looking gloriously masculine and grinning at anything female in the room because he can and because it works. She’s the kind of actress who does read-throughs in a messy bun, glasses, and an old sweater, looking unfortunately unkempt and going basically ignored by everyone else at the table.

She hates him.

She doesn’t smile off camera when he flirts with her, and usually he gets the message and just stops trying, instead matching her contempt with some of his own. He sarcastically calls her ‘sunshine.’ He points out her flaws.

She figures he’s just constantly angry with her because she refuses to bend over and French kiss his ass like all the other women on set.

Sometimes she thinks it’s unfortunate that they happened to be cast this way, so that when the cameras are rolling she’s forced to laugh at him and flirt with him and stare at him longingly when his back is turned. If Kelly had been cast as the receptionist Pam was sure Kelly would have had no problem gazing at Jim and giggling when he lifted his eyebrows in her direction, and then maybe their fans could have had the ‘reality‘ back in their reality television.

She tells herself to suck it up because this is why she gets paid the big bucks.

Acting.

The camera does a close up as he leans over her desk and she lets herself stare at the curve of his cheek and the straight line of his nose, she lets herself admit that he’s tall and attractive and really she’d like to throw him down on any flat surface available. She grins at him.

Acting.

He’s telling her something about marijuana and it takes her a second to realize it’s because they’re filming an episode about drug testing and she laughs with him instead of rolling her eyes like she’d originally wanted to. She’s sure the real Jim Halpert gets high all the time, but this fictional Jim Halpert is less likely to smoke up and she likes him better. She lets herself like him better.

Acting.

Later in the day she jinxes him and she tells herself that it doesn’t send an actual thrill down her spine to spend hours with him without his speaking, full of this certain kind of tension that comes from the mystery behind his eyes. It’s just her character. It’s just the fictional Pam Beesly that likes the performance he puts on for Michael and the warm way he looks at her when he finally buys her a coke. It’s just television.

Just acting.

She hates him, really.

Someone yells cut and he grunts in relief, mumbling to her that he needs a cigarette and practically knocking her over in his race to the door. She sighs and heads for the break room, silently thanking god or buddha or allah or whoever that they all have next week off and can be more themselves than this for seven whole days.  Jim will probably just go and have sex with As the World Turns girl and smoke pot for hours, not bothering to look at any of the notes they've gotten for the last two episodes of the season.  He'll probably run around signing autographs for twenty year old girls while she sits at home and watches America's Next Top Model reruns on MTV.

Yeah, definitely. She definitely hates him.

*** ...Like sands through an hour glass... ***

He comes back from his smoke break predictably smelling like smoke and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Can’t you buy some Febreze or something? Like spray a little air freshener after yourself?” she requests quietly and he tilts his head at her and offers a sarcastic grin.

“No because I love the look of disgust on your face every time I walk past you,” he informs her. She narrows her eyes and shakes her head and he laughs, which fuels her fire.

“It’s like they put an ad in backstage and listed all of the qualities I hate in a person when they were casting your part,” she mumbles for probably the thousandth time since they’d started working together. He shrugs and nods and looks over at Heather the makeup girl and winks at her in that way that is so Jim Halpert off camera. Pam tugs at the corners of her shirt and wonders when the last time was that she got a hair cut. Wonders if she should go blonde.

They yell action and she picks up the half cup of coke he pushes toward her and nods when he tells her that Dwight has retired from being a sheriff’s deputy, the camera filming them from the other side of the door and making her feel like she can say what she wants since she knows the sound will be covered with a voice over. She clears her throat.

“So are you going to donate your ruined lungs to science after you die of cancer?” she wonders, a grin on her face and laughter in her throat because she knows she has to look like they’re still talking about the office. He laughs at her and nods and takes a sip of his coke.

“I’m actually leaving them to you in my will,” he tells her and she looks excited for the sake of the camera.

Acting.

She’s having a terrible time.

“Great,” she tells him, “I’ll make them into earrings or maybe lamps for my living room.  Lung lamps.” She hears one of the sound guys chuckle and her grin widens a little because really, she’s funny. She is. He nods and looks like he’s considering her ideas.

“Don’t lie, Pam,” he accuses and she raises her eyebrow in interest, “You’re just going to add them to the shrine you’ve already built in my honor. And if I may, a little suggestion?”

She hums at him.

“Please,” she prods, gesturing for him to continue.

“If you start selling tickets at O’Flannigan’s you could probably turn that shrine of yours into an actual museum,” he reaches up and strokes his chin for a second as if in thought and she literally starts to feel bile rise up in her stomach. “I’m sure there would be hundreds of ladies who would spend lots of money to see my sexy black lungs,” he mutters and she shakes her head, rolling her eyes and downing the rest of the coke in hopes that it will bring this filming to a close that much sooner. As if answering her prayers, the director yells cut and crosses his arms, tilting his head at them and giving them both a look of resigned acceptance.

“Fascinating conversation, guys, thanks,” he tells them sarcastically. Pam wastes no time and stands, walking off set like she can’t get away fast enough because, really, she can’t.

“No problem,” she mumbles and heads straight for her dressing room. On the way she passes Toby who’s shedding a leather jacket, eating something that looks like a roast beef sandwich, and talking on his cell all at the same time. She smiles at him and shakes her head. “Impressive. I have no idea why they made talking on your cell and driving at the same time illegal.” He raises his eyebrows in answer and she pushes at the door to the room labeled “Pam Beesly” with her shoulder.

“Hey, you coming out to O’Flannigan’s tonight?” he calls after her, his mouth full and his jacket finally draped across one arm. She shrugs.

“Who’s going?” she wonders, thinking of the bathtub and recently purchased Miles Davis CD patiently waiting in her apartment.

“I don’t know,” Toby answers, “everyone who’s anyone,” and she laughs because it’s sort of a standing joke between them.

“Well then I guess I’d better be there,” she calls out, finally pushing into her dressing room and locking the door behind her. The lights are a little too bright and she squints, shedding her cardigan and skirt immediately in favor of a pair of well worn jeans and an old “ESPRIT” sweatshirt that she’d cut apart sometime during the 80’s.

She pulls her hair up into a bun and bends down over her mirror to put on some more blush and a little mascara. She stands back and looks at herself for a second, eventually just shrugging because she doesn’t really care that much.

O’Flannigan’s it is, she thinks, picking up her hobo purse and her sunglasses and exiting the room only to literally run into a now casually dressed and baseball cap wearing Jim Halpert, who holds up his hands like she’s going to accuse him of grabbing her breasts or something. She sighs and steps back.

“Sorry,” she offers and he wags his eyebrows at her, grinning, silent because he’s smart and probably figured out how much it had unnerved her earlier in the day. “You can talk, you know, the jinx is over,” she reminds him, bored. He purses his lips at her and pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You can also get out of my way,” she adds, belatedly realizing she’s supposed to be hostile toward him. A smile starts to pull at his lips and he stares at her for a second, assessing. She shifts and huffs because she hates it when he does this. Finally he steps to the side of her, bending at the waist a little and sweeping his hand out in front of him in a very Shakespearean invitation that she should proceed. She glares at him and walks by, reaching into her bag in search of her car keys and refusing to look back.

“See you at O’Flannigan’s,” he calls and she rolls her eyes. “Get those shrine tickets ready, it’s Friday. You never know when I might drink too much and kick the bucket,” he tells her as the door swings closed and she’s finally gloriously outside and beginning the week she has off and away from the cameras. She inhales deep and she unlocks her car and slides in, turning the radio station to Rock 107 and rolling down her window.

It‘s April and the weather in Scranton is almost nice.  She thinks it must be a goddamn miracle.

***...these, then, are the days of our lives. ***