“Psssst….”

Pam continued feeding overdue quarterly statements into the fax machine. She was wondering if she had the power to requisition a new fax machine. This one still used mimeograph ink; she was sure of it.

“PSSSSSTTTTT…..”

She tried to yawn convincingly as she punched in the 11 digit code for corporate.

“Is something the matter, Michael?” Dwight was halfway out of his chair, staring worriedly from Michael to the idiot new receptionist. It seemed impossible that she hadn’t figured out by now that “Psssst…” was Michael’s signal for ‘come over here right now and act casual, but not too casual, just sort of casual-like.’

Michael made a strange hand gesture in Dwight’s direction. It looked like a variant of Michael’s hand gesture for ‘stay there, I am busy’. Dwight was 63% sure that it was not the regulation hand signal used by surveillance ops teams to communicate ‘stay there, I’m busy’. But then doubt crept in. Maybe it was a super-secret hand gesture that only the Green Berets used. Hmmm, Dwight sat down again. Michael had said he was ‘at one time’ part of a super-secret government hush-hush army slash navy slash seals commando unit. Dwight did a quick scan to make sure no one was watching while he typed “hand signals” “secret” “commando” into the internet search engine.

“Isssst-Pay, Am-Pay!”

Jim raised an eyebrow. Oh, this day was looking up. Michael doing Pig Latin. Truly a Valentine’s gift from on high. Jim pushed back from his desk and turned to face Michael. “Ichael-may, oo-day eed-nay elp-hay?”

Startled, Michael stopped his frenetic hissing. He turned in confusion to look at Jim, “What?”

“Oo-day ou-yay eed-nay elp-hay, Ichael-may?” Jim glanced quickly over to see if Pam was listening as he repeated the sentence. He could see her head turning slightly in his direction, the shadow of a smile looming.

“What did you…. oooh no,” Michael looked accusingly over towards the accountants. This had to stop. Oscar was infecting the whole office with is hispanicity, Now JIM OF ALL PEOPLE was speaking Spanish! “I’ve told you a hundred times, Oscar. No Spanish in the office.”

“Michael,” Oscar didn’t bother to look up from filing papers, “I wasn’t talking.” Under his breath, he said “and I’ve told you a hundred times, I can’t speak Spanish.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Angela whispered accusingly as she handed him another folder to re-file. He sighed and kept filing.

Pam, unaware of the drama in accountant-land, straightened the fax sheets in a neat stack on her desk as she innocently asked, “Ichael-May, ould-way ou-yay ike-lay ome-say ice-ay eam-cray?” She tried not to smile too much when Jim nodded and mouthed “nice.” She just gave him a tiny ‘thank you’ bow of the head.

This was too much for Michael. Now he had an entire office full of Spanish-speaking employees. “Okay! That’s it. We’re in America, people! This is America! The land of the free! Where anyone can do anything they want. So from now on, you can only speak English! Do you hear me?” He turned on his heel and strode proudly back into his American office, satisfied he had defended his country against the non-American speakers.

“I-ay ear-hay ou-yay,” Stanley said in a bored voice.    

If anyone had asked her, Pam would have said she was looking at the cute little teddy bear that Roy got her for Valentine’s Day. The fact that her eye passed by Jim’s card whenever she looked towards the teddy bear was just chance. Roy had placed the teddy bear right there himself, right next to the card. And the fact that her eyes lit up each time she saw it out of the corner of her eye, well, that just meant it was a really funny card. Honestly.     

“Pssssst…..”

Pam felt a moment of déjà vu. She shouldn’t have looked up, but that’s what déjà vu does to you. It makes you do stupid things. Any other time, she would’ve kept her head down and kept right on typing. It was Valentine’s Day after all. No good could possible come from Michael ‘Call me Super Boss’ Scott on Valentine’s Day.

“What is it, Michael?” She used her firm, mommy voice.

He stage whispered, “Shhhhhh! Come here!”

Now the entire office was staring at them.

“No, not you!” Michael barked at Dwight who’d jumped out of his seat. “I need to talk to Pam. Go away. This has nothing to do with you!”

Pam picked up her steno pad and followed Michael into his office. Not even Jim’s thumbs up could lift her feeling of doom.

She tried to be all business-like as she sat down across from him, “Jan said those reports were due last….”

Michael waved aside the trivial matter. She could see he was sweating slightly. She wondered if maybe he was ill. “Listen, did you get that email I sent you?”

Pam nodded. He’d sent out an animated valentine to all the office staff showing a guy trying out the “top ten worst pick up lines ever”. After the #1 worst pick up line (“Do you have any raisins? No? How about a date?”), Michael had put a personal message - ‘totally doesn’t work on sober chicks’. So it had been an educational valentine.

“Well, what do you think? Yes or no?” Michael was watching her eagerly.

For a confused moment, Pam wondered if Michael had asked a question and she hadn’t heard it. Maybe she’d been zoning as she thought about pick up line #2 “Are you a parking ticket? Because you have fine written all over you”.

Pam stalled for time, “Well, what do you think?”

Michael stood and struck a forceful pose. “Good question, Pamela. Good….”

“Pam,” Pam said. She hated it when people called her Pamela.

“Pam,” Michael continued. “Very good. Yes. My answer is I will do whatever you say. I’m a real open-minded guy. Ask anyone. My friend T. P., haha, that’s not toilet paper, that’s Todd Packer, but he could be! Toilet paper! Write that down!” Pam obligingly wrote T.P. in her steno book. “Great, email me a copy of that once you’ve gotten it typed up. Now, where was I?” He looked at Pam for a couple of seconds. “Oh right, so you got the valentine’s and you thought it was like the best you ever got, am I right?”

Pam obligingly lied to the man who’d hired her, “Yeah, sure. It was great.”

“What! You mean you really liked it?” Michael looked stunned; hopeful, but stunned.

She’d never met such a man who needed so much reassurance before. “Um, yep,” Pam nodded.

“Ah…wow. I can’t believe Packer was right. Stop the presses: Todd Packer is a god! Alert the media! Did I tell you about when he had two girrrsss…. never mind. Man, I can’t believe he was right!” Michael clutched the back of his chair as if the room were somehow unstable. “Shwowza. Okay, then. So…. there we go!”

Pam smiled as she started to stand, “Okay, good. Is that it? I’ve got to get back to work. Figure out where petty cash…”

Michael lurched forward. “No wait! We have to discuss, uh, the uh, the details...”

“Details?” Pam looked down at the letters T and P on her notepad as if they would explain what details he was talking about. Oh my god, she thought, does he want to write up more bad pick up lines to send out ANOTHER hi-larious email?

Michael was pacing back and forth in almost a drunken manner. He was now sweating profusely. “Right. Yes. I mean, I’m sure you do this all the time. Maybe you have your own personal way of….” Michael rubbed his knuckles nervously.

Pam sighed. This was going to be just like the phone system he’d implemented. Line one if it was a girl with a sexy voice, line two if it was his mother, line three for corporate, and line four for everyone else. Which would have been fine if a) he could remember his own system and b) he’d told her that Jan was a sexy voice and not corporate and oh, c) that his mother had a smoker’s voice that made her sound more like a man than her son did.

Michael had obviously taken her silence as an accusation, “No, wait… ha ha, just joking. I know. Let’s call Packer and see what he thinks!” Michael lunged for the phone, knocking over several toys on his desk in the process.

“Wait,” Pam had heard enough about Todd Packer from Jim, Phyllis, Angela, and well, everyone, to know that asking this Packer guy for advice was a big mistake. She envisioned the next few hours of her life wasting away as she sat listening to Michael and T.P. trade lame pick-up lines. An image of Jim giving her that big thumbs up came unbidden to her mind, “Maybe you should ask Jim.”

“Jim,” Michael pondered that.

“Right, yeah, because… I hear he’s got a good system for this sort of thing,” Pam nodded knowingly. She figured Jim’s system for picking up girls HAD to be better than Michael’s. Heck, even Dwight had better pick-up lines. He'd 'complimented' her on her thighs, “perfect for birthing”….

Michael was turning over this news about Jim. “Really? You’ve seen Jim do… hey, you’re not dating him are you?”

“No, of course not. Don’t be…,” Pam backpedaled. Never call the boss stupid. That was from How To Keep Your Job 101. “I mean… he just seems like he’d be able to…”

“Right, you want Jim in on this? I’m cool with that. Makes me no diff.” Michael crossed his arms in a gangsta pose.

“Ok, good… I’ll go get him.” Pam hurriedly stood up before Michael could begin rapping or busting a move or god knows what.     

Jim leaned against the wall. From the playful way Pam had told him that Michael wanted to see him, Jim knew she’d set him up. He just knew it. And standing here he could see her ‘casually’ glancing at him as Michael rambled on. He was so going to get her back.

Listening to Michael drone on about his previous Valentine conquests was sheer torture. If Jim wasn’t planning on sharing this wealth of sadness at length with Pam later, he would have faked a sudden attack of indigestion and gotten out of there.

He sighed inwardly when Michael started closing the blinds while still prattling on about his worst Valentine's Day (a blind date who turned out to be his neighbor’s terrier). Michael closing the blinds was a sign from God that some unforeseeable disaster was about to happen. A disaster that could easily be avoided if Michael had even an ounce of common sense.

With the last blind closed, Michael turned to Jim, “So what I’m saying here, James, my man...”

“Jim.” Jim hated it when Michael gave him nicknames.

“Jim, is that you can see I am a man of the world and I know what’s what and who’s who and what the score is and how to play the game and how to shoot, score, goal!” Michael shut the door with an overhand shooting motion.

Jim felt strangely trapped. He kept his cool though… he’d felt strangely trapped since about, hmm, yeah, the third day he’d started working at Dunder Mifflin.

“Ok, so the ladies want me, need me, but they have their little demands. Their little wants.” Michael put a fatherly hand on Jim’s shoulder.

Jim looked at the fatherly hand, “Michael, you’re not going to start telling me about the birds and the bees are you? Because I…”

“No, no! Ha ha! I could, but too much, too fast. No, this is about Pam!” Michael leaned suavely against his desk. His hand slipped and he fell awkwardly on the floor. After Jim had helped him up, Michael returned to the matter at hand. “Yes, indeed. Jimmy have you…”

“Jim.”

“Jim, have you noticed my new secretary?” Michael pointed helpfully in the direction of Pam’s desk.

“Pam? The new receptionist?” Jim wondered where this was going.

“That’s the one. Pamela. Now listen closely.” Michael leaned in. Jim leaned in. “She wants me bad.”

Jim nodded.

“I sent her a valentine…” Michael whispered.

“The one about pick up lines?” Jim had happened to notice her name on the cc line.

“No. That’s the one I sent to all my closest friends. No, this one was a…” Michael’s voice lowered an octave “a nasty valentine’s card.” His voice returned to a normal pitch. “You know, like Janet Jackson nasty!”

“Uh huh,” Jim decided to go with the obvious. “You do realize she could file a sexual discrimination suit against you.”

“Nuh uh! See I want to have sexualness with her! That’s like the exact opposite. It’s like sexual incrimination.” Michael considered how to explain to Jim how these things worked. The poor kid looked so confused. “Okay, for instance… take Phyllis. She could file maybe. Or, Meredith right? Yick! See, you couldn’t pay me enough to sleep with her. Not even a million, bazillion dollars. Let me tell you, she’s offered. Hard cash! But you see, I have to discriminate against them sexually because I think they’re ugly. That’s just the way I was built. I only like hot women. It’s eugenics.”

Jim stared at Michael.

Michael looked pleased at the awestruck reaction, “Back to Pam, okay? Here’s the deal. She’s dying to have some Michael lovin’ being that, and I’m quoting The Toddster here, ‘she’s a horny secretary who wants to bang her boss’…” But there’s a catch…”

“Uh…” Jim could think of a few catches.

“She won’t do it with just me, right? She insists that you be there, too. What do you say? Me, you, Pam, my place, bottle of Don Perringnong, strip teasers, chocolate, the works!” Michael’s eyes glistened as he looked off into the imminent future of Pam, Jim, and him, naked… and loving it!

Jim decided to throw out a reality check, “Um, yeah, thanks… but…. what about Roy?”

“Who’s Roy?” A light dawned in Michael’s eyes. “No way!” he whispered, “you’re guh…that way? Packer said, but I never…” Michael shook his head at the enormity of this news and how it would affect the sexing up of his new secretary. “I don’t think Pam will….”

“I’m talking about Pam’s fiancée!” Jim’s voice almost cracked. “Roy! The guy who works in the warehouse. Roy!” None of this seemed to be sinking in. Jim gave another try, “Downstairs, in the warehouse? Big guy? Works out?”

“Holy cow,” Michael swiveled around in his chair. “Packer was right! She is easy!” Michael was willing to be magnanimous. “Well, ok, he can come too. I’m going to have to buy more chocolate though. Unless, do you think chocolate milk’s okay?”     

Pam looked over again at the closed door. She wondered what was going on. Michael only closed his blinds when he didn’t want anyone to know that he was up to something stupid. He closed his blinds a lot.

As she waited she scrolled through her email. Nothing interesting from Jim.That hardly seemed right. She’d been in Michael’s office at least 5 minutes. Surely Jim had sent her a message, something like a new cut and paste version of Michael’s Valentine, one that showed Michael chatting up penguins or something.

In desperation, she checked her spam filter. Sometimes his stuff accidentally got sent there.

Nothing.

But wait….  An email from Michael: 

VALENTINE’S GREETING FROM ONE HOTTIE TO ANOTHER: LOOK INSIDE

Directly below Michael’s email was the exact same tagline in an email from the notorious T.P. aka Todd Packer. Pam’s name was just one of many names on the cc line of that email. She instantly deleted it.

Hesitantly, she clicked open Michael’s message. There was just an attachment that directed her to some website called ValentinesFerUUU. Even more hesitantly, she clicked on the attachment.

An animation of a cartoon dominatrix whipping a cupid popped open.

Pam’s eyebrows shot up.

A message scrolled across the bottom. 
WHO’S BEEN NAUGHTY? HOW ABOUT WE HOOK UP AND GET NAUGHTY TOGETHER? TONIGHT, MY PLACE, CLOTHES OPTIONAL     

“Michael!”

Michael dove for the ground at the sound of Pam’s screech.“Hide!” 

When Pam barreled in 7 seconds later, Michael was in a protective fetal position beneath his desk.

Jim nodded. This looked about right. “So… yeah. I think I’ll be going.”   

LATER:

Jim set a mug of lukewarm coffee in front of Pam. “Hey... did you know that Michael’s first kiss was when he gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to a terrier named Squiggles?”