********
So I heard this amazing quote once by Ben Stein, the guy with the sloooooww voice from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”
Good advice. But he didn’t say anything about the fallout from the decision.
********
Karen had been really civil when she came over Sunday night with a box of CDs and a couple of my t-shirts she’d commandeered over the last few months. She put the box on my coffee table and I took everything out so I could use it to pack up her things, and she didn’t say anything, just stood cross-armed near the door like she needed an easy escape route.
It was a little embarrassing, and definitely telling, how few of her things had ever made it to my apartment. How little I’d let her in. There was an assortment of personals from the bathroom, a bottle of perfume, that Rich Dad, Poor Dad book she loaned me that I never read. She never had a drawer in my bedroom and I never gave her a key. It took less than five minutes to clear her out of my life.
She took the box from me without meeting my eyes. “Thank you,” she said curtly, and turned for the door.
“Karen…” I didn’t really have a follow-up to that. I had no idea what I wanted to say, what I should say. How sorry I was, or that maybe under different circumstances…but even I didn’t know if that was true, and she wouldn’t want to hear it.
She just looked at me and I shut my mouth. I can never seem to say the right thing to her.
“Are you happy?” she asked, and the question was not full of venom or resentment, just curiosity.
I didn’t want to answer. It would only wound her and I’d done enough of that. Quite honestly, the question surprised me. Karen’s not a masochist.
“You are,” she answered herself, assessing my expression and nodding a little. “Well, good for you. Have a nice life, Jim.” And she was out the door.
So the next day, when she reamed me out in full view of everybody, I wasn’t really surprised, and frankly I was kind of relieved. It eased my guilty conscience a little to have her call me out on everything I’d done, so I just stood there and took it because it seemed that the least I could do was let her vent. And I was sorry, more than she’d ever believe, but I can’t deny that above all I was simply relieved that it was finally and definitively just over.
When she headed for Pam, though, I was ready to intervene. Pouring it on me was one thing, but Pam… all my protective instincts reared up and Pam had to give me the slight shake of the head that said she’d handle it.
“Do you think Pam can take her?” Kevin giggled as the door fell shut behind them.
I gave him probably the coldest look I’ve ever given anyone in my life and his smile faded and he suddenly became very interested in his pencil cup.
They were only gone a few minutes. Karen came back first and went straight to her desk, not looking at anybody. Pam was a few seconds behind and headed directly for the ladies’ room. When she came out, close to ten minutes later, her eyes were dry and she was composed but she gave me one brief, hard glance that said unequivocally, Don’t look at me.
My heart started racing triple-time and I was pretty sure I was going to be sick, but I did what she wanted and by the end of the day I had a headache and blurred vision from the strain of staring straight ahead at my monitor.
At five o’clock sharp Pam grabbed her coat and bolted out the door. And I knew it was hopelessly obvious and going to fuel even more gossip but I practically knocked my chair over in my haste as I ran out after her. The door to the stairwell was swinging shut and she was already at the first-floor landing when I called her name. “Pam!”
She stopped. Thank God, she stopped. “Where are you going?” I blurted, breathing hard as I came to stand next to her. My heart-rate felt dangerously unstable. Is this what a panic attack feels like?
“I…” She looked up at me with huge, tear-filled eyes, and whatever she saw on my face made her look away immediately. “I just had to get out of there,” she whispered, staring down at the cracked linoleum, clutching at her purse strap in a white-knuckle grip.
“I’m sorry.” I dared to reach out to touch her shoulder, and nearly let out a sob of relief when she didn’t flinch or pull away. “I never meant—”
She shook her head. “I’m not blameless,” she said quietly, a little bitterly. “I just didn’t… I can’t do this.”
I can’t. Those fucking words again. My throat closed up and I shut my eyes tight and reached behind me to grab onto the railing, afraid I might actually collapse. Not again. Oh dear sweet Jesus not again.
“Jim. Jim!” Her hand was on my arm and when I opened my eyes her alarm was palpable. “Just… not here. ” She reached up to touch my face, her eyes wide and soft. “Not here, okay?”
I nodded but I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe.
Her hand fell from my cheek and she patted my arm like she was comforting a child, her eyes unreadable. “I have to go, but I’ll call you later, okay?”
I managed to nod again and she turned and hurried down the second flight of stairs. I heard the door bang open and closed and I squeezed my eyes shut and slid down the wall onto the landing, sucking air into my lungs in huge painful burning gasps.
I’m going to have a heart attack and die at the age of twenty-eight. Jesus.
I couldn’t move for a long time.
********
I don’t remember going home, or getting in the shower, or opening a beer, or doing any of the things that brought me to end up on my couch in my sweats, mindlessly watching SportsCenter. I waited and waited for the phone to ring and picked it up to call her no less than eight times but somehow managed to stop myself each time until I plugged it into the charger in the kitchen so it would be out of sight.
By nine I couldn’t take it anymore, and called my sister in the desperate hope of perspective. “Hey Jimmy!” Amy chirped. “What’s up?”
I had to clear my throat a couple of times so my voice wouldn’t shake. “Not much,” I forced out, rubbing at my eyes. “Just, uh, haven’t talked to you in a while.”
“I know! How was New York? Did you hear about the job yet?” she asked eagerly.
“Oh.” Fuck. I hadn’t told Amy or Jon or my parents about backing out of the job. I hadn’t talked to anyone, or thought about anything but Pam and her skin and her scent and that look in her eyes that said she wanted me. The soft tickle of her whisper in my ear that she loved me, loved me.
Was that just yesterday? It all seemed like an extremely vivid hallucination.
“ ‘Oh’?” she echoed, instantly suspicious. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” The background noise of running water ceased abruptly.
I closed my eyes and wished briefly that I hadn’t called. “I, um…I decided I didn’t want it.”
“Really.” Her tone was skeptical, questioning, but one of the reasons I usually call Amy when I have something on my mind is that she doesn’t pry, doesn’t judge, doesn’t give unsolicited advice; she just listens. I heard her breathing on the other end of the line, waiting.
“Yeah, I…” And suddenly it was spilling out of me, Pam at the beach, the interview, the note, Karen in the city, the most amazing two days of my life followed immediately by this. The tears clogging my throat were audible in my voice and that’s another reason I call Amy at times like these, because she’s the only person in the world I can show this side of myself to without feeling like a complete pussy.
She was quiet for a long moment when I finished, and I waited, half expecting the lecture I’d heard before about living too much in my head and the dangers of impulsive decisions and how I sometimes forget to think things through. Hoping, though, that maybe she’d say something positive like you did the right thing, everything will be fine, she told you she loved you, right? Because that’s what I’m clinging to and, Christ, I need someone else to tell me I’m not crazy.
“Wow,” she said finally. “That’s…wow, Jimmy, you’ve really, um, that’s quite a turnaround from when I talked to you last.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed at my eyes again. My head was throbbing.
“So she hasn’t called you yet? No, or you wouldn’t be talking to me,” she answered herself. “You haven’t called her, I take it.”
“No.” I made a horrible mistake, didn’t I? Fuck, just say it already so I can hang up and go drink myself to sleep. To death. Whatever.
“Well, maybe you should. Find out what Karen said to her. Maybe she, I dunno…threatened her, or something?” She sounded doubtful, but her willingness to explore any reason that didn’t immediately restate her longstanding opinion (Pam is too weak and conflicted to ever admit she has feelings for you) was a little encouraging.
“That doesn’t really sound like Karen,” I had to admit.
“People do weird things when they’re upset, Jim.” She sighed. “Okay, so that’s not really likely. She’s probably just … I dunno. I don’t know Pam. But it seems like she has a hard time—” She stopped abruptly. “Okay, now you did say she told you she loves you?”
“Yes,” I said softly, the memory of the moment striking me with such visceral clarity I had to close my eyes, seeing again her face, her smile so open in its honesty, her auburn hair spread out like flame on the pillow, her fingers raking through my hair again and again in a gentle caress as she looked up at me. I’ll carry that image with me to my grave.
“If she does, she’ll call you,” Amy said quietly. “She has to know you’re…” she trailed off.
Insecure. Nauseated. Terrified. Paralyzed. Take your pick. “Yeah,” I agreed.
The phone beeped in my ear and my heart immediately kicked into overdrive again as I pulled it down to see who it was. Pam.
“You’ve got a call,” Amy observed. “Is it Pam?”
“Yeah,” I breathed.
“Guess she does love you,” she said slyly. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Bye.” I grinned as I clicked over. “Hey.” Did I sound casual? I was pretty sure I was about to have another panic attack.
“I’m sorry it’s so late,” she said immediately. “I just got home from my class. It was the second to last one of the term and I really couldn’t miss it but I’m sorry, I should’ve texted you to tell you I was going but I was really behind on my project and—”
“Pam, slow down, it’s okay.” It wasn’t, really, but she was talking so fast it was getting hard to understand her.
“It’s not,” she echoed my thoughts, her voice full of tears. “I’m sorry for how I ran out today. That was—I’m sorry,” she repeated. “But my class is at five-thirty so I have to go straight there, and my finals are due on Wednesday, so I thought I’d work on them for a while and then call you in like an hour when I wasn’t feeling so… but then I looked up and it was nine and—”
“It’s okay.”
She took a deep breath and went on more calmly, “And then I thought I’d come over to see you, but I…I don’t know where you live,” she said softly, “and I’m just so…tired, I guess. I just want to go to bed.” I could hear her moving around, putting the kettle on.
“That’s…understandable.” I didn’t know what to think. This was not how I’d envisioned the day ending when I woke up this morning.
“Are you mad?” she asked in a small voice.
“No.” Mad was definitely not the right word for how I felt. I wasn’t sure what was. “Get some sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” I sighed.
“Good night,” she said softly.
“Good night.” I suddenly felt extremely drained. The idea of climbing into bed for about twenty hours sounded really appealing.
“Jim.” It was almost a whisper.
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
I closed my eyes. Teared up a little, actually. Such a girl, Halpert. “Love you too,” I murmured.
I was exhausted, but I didn’t sleep.
********
Karen was gone the next day. Toby said she packed up after everyone left and was taking some personal days until her transfer to either Albany or Utica. To say I was relieved would be an understatement, and if that makes me a jackass, so be it.
Pam was late, a rarity for her. She gave me a smile that seemed genuine enough but then went immediately into hiding behind her desk, avoiding my eyes as diligently as the day before.
I had calls to make. Three accounts up for renewal kept me busy for a while, but it was almost impossible to concentrate, what with glancing up at Pam every ten seconds. Right back where I started. Only now she’s told me she loves me and I know what she looks like when…
“Question.”
I sighed. “What is it, Dwight.”
“Do you have the updated pricing lists for the new ‘neon’ cardstocks.”
Wow. A real question. “Yeah…” I rifled through the hanging folders in my bottom drawer and handed him the manila folder with the updated price sheets.
“Jim.”
“Whaaaaat.”
“Have you looked at these.”
“What?” I snapped.
Dwight thrust the folder back at me. “Have you looked at these,” he repeated.
The pricing lists were gone; in their place was a stack of papers with various messages printed out
in huge, bolded block letters.
Oh dear Jesus.
JIM HALPERT IS A DECEITFUL LYING SCUMBAG
JIM HALPERT IS A CONNIVING GUTLESS WEASEL
JIM HALPERT IS A JUVENILE SLACKER WISEASS
JIM HALPERT WILL PROBABLY NEVER EVEN NOTICE THESE BECAUSE HE’S SUCH A LAZY SHIFTLESS WASTE OF SPACE
Holy crap.
Dwight smirked. “Well, somebody’s certainly got you pegged.”
“What’s that you got there, Jim-bone?”
Oh dear God no. Michael and his unerringly horrible timing had crept up right behind me; he snatched a sheet out of my hand before I could snap the folder shut. “Jim Halpert has a tiny penis,” he read aloud, and giggled. “Oh man!”
Now that is just not true.
Phyllis twittered.
I dropped my forehead into my hand. Not happening. This is not happening.
“Ooh, looks like someone was mad,” Michael chuckled. “Hell hath no fury—”
“Michael, I should shred that.” Pam was suddenly beside my desk, holding her hand out for the paper like a schoolmarm telling a student to spit out his gum.
“Oh Pam, it’s funny. Slim Jim here broke the girl’s heart and this is her revenge.”
“It is not funny,” Pam said firmly, her mouth set in a thin hard line more reminiscent of Angela. She still had her hand out expectantly, and Michael reluctantly handed the sheet over, glancing longingly at the folder I held in a death grip, far enough away from him that he’d have to wrestle me for it.
“Oh, fine,” he grumped. “You’re no fun, Pamalama. Jim doesn’t mind, do you Jimbo?”
“Yeah, I do actually.”
“You guys,” he sighed disgustedly, flapping a hand at us. “Well, Jimboree, it’s always hard to break up. Let me take you to lunch.”
Visions of Hooters flashed through my memory. “Can’t,” I said reflexively. “I’ve got a… sales call.” Fuck, he’ll want details. Who’s it with…
“At lunch?” he prodded, as I knew he would, because Michael never just lets anything go.
“Yeah, it’s…well it’s in, uh, Elmhurst, so…” I trailed off helplessly. “Maybe another time.” I jumped to my feet, still clutching the folder of invectives. “I…need some coffee,” I muttered, making a break for the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with him?” I heard Michael ask behind me.
“I’ve been telling you for years, he’s unstable,” Dwight said.
********
“Hey.” Pam touched my arm as she edged past me to take the chair beside me, peeling the lid off her yogurt. “You okay?” she asked gently, her expression a mixture of concern and amusement.
I sighed. “Now I have to pretend to go to Elmhurst at lunch.”
“Yeah, I heard that. Quick thinking, Halpert.” She grinned and bumped my shoulder with her own and the concern vanished from her eyes, leaving only amusement. “So…what other little gems did she leave for you?” she asked, sliding her hand toward the folder.
I slapped my hand down on top of it. “You’re funny.”
“Oh, come on. We both know she’s wrong about…at least one of those things,” she said slyly.
I didn’t dare answer that but I couldn’t help grinning, which seemed to be what she was after anyway. She leaned a little closer. “So if there’s no client, you’ll just be taking a long lunch, then,” she said, her gaze turning mischievous.
“Uh…yeah, I guess,” I said slowly.
She turned the spoon upside-down to lick the yogurt out from underneath, which I have always found incredibly erotic (although I never told her that), and now all I could think of was her mouth and…
I dragged my gaze up from her lips and our eyes locked for a long moment.
She looked away first, smiling a little and looking extremely satisfied with herself. “Looks like I forgot to pack a lunch today,” she said lightly, a note in her voice I hadn’t heard since Sunday morning. “Wanna meet me for a sandwich? Noonish?”
I nodded, struck dumb by the look in her eyes.
“Good.” She smiled and stood up, giving my shoulder a squeeze as she moved to chuck her empty yogurt in the trash. “See you out there.”
Her every touch paralyzed me. I couldn’t move for five minutes.
********
That forty-five minutes of fumbling, frantic, semi-public sex in the backseat of my Saab parked in the shadow of a Subway was easily the best lunch invitation I’ve ever had. Pam was a different person when we were alone; she parked next to me and slid into my car and practically attacked me with barely a word of greeting, yanking at my shirttails and belt with no regard for foreplay. Not that I was complaining…but then when I returned to the office, about fifteen minutes after her, she barely glanced in my direction for the rest of the day and my tired, paranoid brain started working overtime again, wondering how she could turn it off so easily, what that meant…she doesn’t love me like I love her, this whole thing is just something she’s been curious about…
The part of me still capable of rational thought knew better, but I have a tendency to see shadows everywhere, and she still scared the hell out of me on so many levels. She had my heart in her hands and she could just destroy me, so easily, unthinkingly.
We lingered after everyone had left that night, and I smiled hopefully as I gave her my address and a hand-drawn map to my apartment, which really wasn’t far from hers. “Come over?”
She shook her head and looked truly regretful, but that didn’t keep my heart from plummeting into my stomach. “I really can’t…I’ve got to finish up my last two projects, and it’s due tomorrow…”
I nodded and smiled and prayed it didn’t look as fake and tight as it felt. “Yeah, totally, that’s, yeah,” I stammered, nodding and smiling some more and feeling completely ridiculous and vulnerable. When did I turn all needy and clingy like a teenage girl?
“Walk me to my car?” She looked up at me with that light in her eyes I’d seen all weekend and reached over to lace her fingers through mine as we headed to the elevator.
I kissed her silly at her car and she was warm and responsive and so clearly happy, it almost made up for sleeping alone…again.
********
Wednesday.
I was late, because I couldn’t sleep. And when I did, finally, it was close to two in the morning and I apparently turned off my alarm when I thought I’d hit the snooze.
Today I really did have a couple of sales calls to make, and I was glad to be out of the office. Fresh air and all that. Pretending not to notice Pam was exponentially more difficult than it had been when we weren’t speaking, so it was a relief to be somewhere else where I could actually concentrate and do my job and feel like a normal, functioning adult for a few hours. I deliberately did my route backwards, starting with the closest places and making my last call out in Hazleton, an hour’s drive, after lunch. By the time I got back, it was past five and Pam’s car was gone.
She hadn’t called me all day, and I hadn’t called her. It was disconcerting and frustrating, not knowing how to act around her. The secrecy made it feel more like we were having an affair than starting a relationship, and although we were both agreed that we didn’t want anyone in the office to know about us—for a while at least—it filled me with a sick kind of déjà vu to go back to acting like we were “just friends.” Like nothing had happened. Oh, but yesterday she gave me a blowjob at lunch. It was confusing and wearisome and I didn’t know how to feel about anything.
Not eating and not sleeping wasn’t helping matters, so I stopped to pick up some beer and ordered enough Chinese to feed a family of five when I got home. Pam was at her class, so another long night alone loomed. I texted her to call me when she was finished, but I wasn’t really expecting an answer and when an hour passed without one I drank another beer and stretched out on the couch.
At least the Phillies were winning. Hamels was on his way to a no-hitter.
********
I woke up abruptly to a sound like something banging on a window and sat up in alarm, coated with sweat and more than a little disoriented. It was dark except for the TV, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
The banging came again. Knocking, actually. Pam, I thought immediately, but without much hope. I heaved myself off the couch and stumbled to the door, peering through the peephole.
It was Pam.
I yanked open the door a little too eagerly and she was standing so close to it that she nearly fell into me. “Hey,” she said, startled, taking a step back to regain her balance.
“Hey!” I pulled her inside, not bothering to hide my delight. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to see you?” she asked, glancing around uncertainly. “I’m sorry…were you in bed? I tried to call but I just got your voicemail.”
I frowned; I hadn’t heard the phone ring. “I, uh…fell asleep on the couch.” Which was part of the reason I was sweaty; that, and the four beers. I plucked at my damp shirt self-consciously.
“Oh.” She shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy. “I should go…”
“No—please, don’t,” I said quickly, softly, hating how much it sounded like begging but too desperate to just be with her to care. I flipped on the overhead light in the entrance and squinted a little at the sudden brightness. “Do you want something to drink? What time is it? How was your class?”
She laughed. “Um…let’s see… no thank you, I’m fine; it’s a little after nine; and my class was good. Great, even.” She put her purse down on the little mail table by the front door. “You sure you’re up for company?”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding.”
She relaxed visibly and smiled, stepping forward to slip her arms around me. “I’m kinda…grungy,” I apologized, but she just tightened her grip and laid her head on my chest, sighing deeply. I wrapped my arms all the way around her and breathed her in and it was like something tight and coiled inside me was suddenly loosened and made warm.
She pulled away after a long moment and made a show of sniffing my shirt. “Had a few beers, Halpert?”
“Hey, I’ve been a lonely man.” I smiled down at her, that stupid dopey grin that I absolutely cannot control when she stands this close to me.
She turned toward the living room but kept her arm around my waist. “So you gonna show me around?” she asked, already heading toward the kitchen, half-pulling me to keep me at her side.
It wasn’t a big apartment. Living room, bathroom, the one kitchen. Bedroom. Pam broke off from me then and skimmed the edges of the room, trailing her fingers over my desk, briefly studying the bookshelves, pausing to read the notes and mementos stuck to the bulletin board. “Wow, Jim, the Police?” She turned that shining grin on me. “Were they as good as Scrantonicity?”
I shook my head. “Amazingly…no. Kevin’s band, much tighter.”
She laughed, wandering back to me, and put her hand on my hip. “Your directions were really good, by the way. Excellent map.” She reached up and slipped her other hand around my neck to draw me down to her. “We’re not so far apart,” she murmured against my lips.
I gripped her waist and pulled her against me. “I’m glad you came over.”
She wrapped her arms around me again and I sighed against her neck. “I should take a shower,” I mumbled, wondering how bad I stank.
“You’re fine,” she said, muffled against my shirt. “Jim?”
“Mmm.”
She looked up into my face. “Do you want company…tonight?”
Oh my God. She’s so freaking adorable. “Well, I dunno, I need my beauty sleep,” I teased.
She drew back and smacked my arm. “That’s it, I’m going home.”
“You are home,” I said carelessly, and sucked in a sharp breath. Dumbass. Way to send her running for the hills.
She smiled and didn’t seem alarmed by my slip of the tongue. “My bag’s in the car.”
********
We developed a sort of unofficial system of switching off where we stayed; a few days at hers, a few days at mine, until our things were so hopelessly intermingled we had to spend an entire weekend going through laundry and personal effects locating lost items. It gave me a weird but not unpleasant twisting in my stomach to find her socks and panties and shirts mixed up with mine, like a glimpse into a future I’d only dreamed of in my fantasies.
For a long time we drove separately to work to maintain the illusion of our platonic friendship, but nobody seemed too interested in the nature of our relationship. We ate lunch together and joked around and pulled a few pranks on Dwight and none of our co-workers questioned that we weren’t exactly what we were before. Work buddies. Friends. All those years of hanging out together had made us sort of invisible, I suppose.
Angela’s suspicious, of course, because Angela’s suspicious of pretty much everything and everybody. Except for Dwight, and isn’t that ironic—the weirdest guy in the place. But whatever. Maybe they’re a perfect match. Judgmental, self-important, utterly lacking in humor… yeah, they were made for each other. But if there’s one good quality they both share, it’s that they do not gossip, so even if she’s seen anything…damning ... she’ll keep quiet about it. I think. I hope.
I have got to remember to tell Pam how I saw them that day. It’ll blow her mind.
---------
Author's Chapter Notes:
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
- Peter Ustinov
Love is a serious mental disease.
--Plato
- Peter Ustinov
Love is a serious mental disease.
--Plato
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks to all who have been following this story! Your comments are welcomed and appreciated.
