Author's Chapter Notes:
This is just a result of my strange obsession with Steve, the vending machine guy. I always wonder about how Jim knows him, how well Jim knows him, if he's ever going to have an on-screen appearance, etc. This story doesn't really answer any of those questions, but like I said, Steve won't leave me alone!
I don't own any of this stuff but oh, oh, oh, how I wish I did.
It must be a Wednesday. Jim had lost track of the days again. Most days at Dunder Mifflin were the same, and often, Mondays would run into Tuesdays and Wednesdays into Fridays. Then, somehow, it would suddenly be Saturday and Jim could never really remember the week that got him there. Sometime this would bother him; that he was doing something so hugely unproductive with his life that he couldn’t distinguish one 9 to 5 day from the next. Lately, though, these dismal thoughts had come less often. Saturdays were the days he woke up with Pam next to him in bed and the days he didn’t have to think about anything else but being with her. When he didn’t have to satisfy himself with sidelong glances at her desk and surreptitious hand holding in the conference room. Saturdays were the most important day of the week and who cared what happened in between?
This week, however, Saturday was going to be the most important days of his life and he was losing track of the days for an entirely other reason beside monotony. Moreover, though, he was pretty certain he was losing his mind. Ever since he had closed that deal at the golf course (one of his most desperate sales, he must admit) and Ryan was forced to lift Jim’s probation, Jim had been able to think of little else besides how the ring that was burning a hole in his pocket would look on Pam’s finger. He had just gotten accustomed to introducing Pam to people as his girlfriend and the thought of introducing her this time, next week, as his fiancée was enough to make him delirious.
But it wasn’t Saturday yet and he was going to have to control himself before he either ruined the surprise (what was left of it) or Pam actually called the ambulance she had jokingly threatened to the last time she had caught him staring at her so intently from his desk that he hadn’t heard her shout his name several times from across the divide.
No, it wasn’t Saturday yet. He leaned back in his chair, staring absently at Dwight and tried to think of every time he had fallen a little bit more in love with Pam. He remembered the cell phone ceiling cache and Yankee swap and (with a grin) Dwight in a box in the warehouse. He remembered that horrid movie script and one particular trip to the drugstore and countless afternoons hanging out in the break room.
Jim was woken from his reverie as Steve the vending machine guy crossed the threshold of the office, rolling cases of soda behind him on a dolly. So it was a Wednesday, Jim concluded with finality. Steve definitely came in on Wednesdays. He waved casually in Steve’s direction, and remembered Pam carefully balancing a wallet in J10. And just like that, he was overcome with the sensation of lead in his stomach and the feeling that Saturday couldn’t come soon enough.
Then suddenly he realized he couldn’t wait. Saturday wasn’t soon enough. Jim rose quickly out of his chair and followed Steve into the break room.
******************************************************
It was worse than the perfect storm. Michael actually had to write a short report for corporate on the branch’s last quarter. The report had been due to New York by that past Friday, but Michael had managed to get his deadline extended to Monday. Then Tuesday. Now it was Wednesday and Pam was under direct instructions from Ryan to stay at the office with Michael until he finished writing. Pam didn’t know what she was supposed to do to force Michael to work, but she had resigned herself to staying late and had told Jim he could go home without her. When he suggested that he stick around and they have a rooftop sandwich and soda party, she insisted weakly that he shouldn’t feel obligated to stay and keep her company. But her feeble persuasions fell on deaf ears and she was secretly (or not so secretly) thrilled that he was staying.
“It doesn’t take much to make me happy these days,” she said into the camera as the rest of the office prepared to leave. “I mean, yes, I’m missing Deal or No Deal on TV tonight and I have an art final to finish and I would love for Michael to just finish the two page report so I could get out of here, but, um, Jim’s going to stay late with me and that’s…that’s good too,” she finished, grinning.
Sitting back down at her desk, she could see Michael in his office playing with his truck and other assorted desk toys. She couldn’t see his computer screen, but she was pretty sure if she could, it would still be just a blinking cursor at the top of a blank sheet of white. With a sigh, she got up and knocked softly on his office door.
“Hey, Pam-o-rama! What’s hanging?”
“Just seeing how that report for corporate was going…”
“It’s going…great. It’s…wait. Why are you still here? It’s almost six.”
“Ryan told me to stay to…make sure you finished the report. It was due four days ago.”
“Pam! Pam Pam Pam! Ryan is a twerp, don’t listen to anything he says. Ever.”
“He’s my boss too, Michael, and he told me to stay…”
“I’m not five, Pam. I can do my homework by myself.”
“I’ll just be outside if you need anything, Michael,” Pam sighed, giving up. “Please try and work some.”
Outside Michael’s office, Pam spotted Jim inside the kitchen bent over the counter and just the site of him lifted her spirits immeasurably. Getting closer, she could see him finishing up grilling a BLT and flipping it out of the George Foreman onto a paper plate.
“This is quite a departure from your usual office fare,” Pam remarked, entering the room.
“Well tonight’s a special night,” Jim replied, looking at her with a grin.
Pam’s heart rate instantly accelerated, (as it had done almost every time he looked at her in the past month since he hinted at a proposal) but Jim didn’t mention anything more, so she brushed it off and concentrated on forcing her heart to resume its normal rate.
“Hey, you want to go grab some sodas and chips and I’ll meet you up there?” he said, nodding upwards and passing her a handful of change.
“Sure.” Her reply was quiet and feeble, still recovering, as she was, from Jim’s offhand comment. She couldn’t go on like this, she thought to herself as she continued through the kitchen to the door at the opposite end. Her health couldn’t take it. Her heart was working so much overtime lately that she was sure that when he did ask her she would have a full-fledged heart attack. And that would be unfortunate, as she was so looking forward to launching herself at him and shouting ‘Yes!’ over and over again until he was only able to stop her by kissing her. As she pulled on the door to the break room, a small giggle escaped and she wondered how and when she had become so cheesy and delirious.
She didn’t know the answer to that question, she thought, scanning the vending machine contents for a bag of pretzels, but she knew she was ready to marry Jim. It wasn’t even a decision she was ever conscious of making. She had just woken up one day and there it was, an automatic, inbred knowledge, like breathing in and breathing out. In. Out. In. Out. Jim. Pam. It was that simple.
Then, suddenly, something almost caused her to shout out loud. She didn’t shout, but some of the coins she had been jiggling in her palm slipped out of her hand and rattled onto the floor.
There it was. Right in front of her face, eye level, flipped opened, the metal coil of B3 wrapped securely around the box’s velvet base.
She had stopped breathing. In and out, Pam. In. Out.
She glanced around. Jim was nowhere to be seen.
She turned back to the machine, looking at that perfect ring that glistened, strangely beautifully, between two candy bars under the florescent lights.
She looked around again, certain Jim was going to be behind her this time, with some sort of explanation or plan or even just a goofy grin, but she was still alone, the hum of the lights above her head the only sound.
Was she supposed to pay to get her ring out of the machine? Tearing her eyes off of the ring, she glanced down at the remaining coins in her hand and laughed. Giggling, and feeling a little absurd, she fed the machine two quarters and a dime and, hand shaking, pressed B. 3. The little coil seemed to move in slow motion, and Pam couldn’t quite believe this was real. Feeling truly silly now, and with small bursts of laughter escaping from her lips, she stooped down and groped around in the bottom of the machine until her hand closed around the soft velvet of the box that had tumbled down from its perch.
She brought the ring close to her face and touched it lightly with a finger to assure herself that it wasn’t some kind of hologram or other elaborate fake proposal joke. But wait, she thought suddenly, she still hadn’t been proposed to. Jim had still not made an appearance. She snapped the box closed and strode back into the kitchen. Jim was gone.
What on Earth was going on? She held herself back from a run as she walked briskly across the office (where Michael still sitting absent-mindedly in his) and out into the hallway where the ladder to the roof was.
Tucking the ring into her pocket, she climbed quickly and poked her head out onto the roof.
There he was, bent over, lighting a little grouping of citronella candles.
“Hey,” she called, unfolding the rest of her body from the hatch and reaching into her pocket to retrieve the ring. “Look at what Steve stocked the machine with today.”
Jim turned and, when she saw what she was holding out to him, grinned.
“Awesome! You know, I was going to buy you one of these, but this one was probably much cheaper! How much was it? Like fifty cents?”
“Sixty,” Pam replied, tears of excitement starting to fill her eyes and mingle with the laugher shown there. “Kind of rip-off. It didn’t even come with a proposal.”
“Oh, but didn’t you know?” Jim asked softly, as if he were about to tell her a great secret. “Those are free.”
And her laughing came to a stop as he took the ring gently from her hand and got down on one knee just as Pam had imagined him doing every night for a thousand nights.
In and out, Pam. In and out.
They left the office that night hand in bejeweled hand, sixty cents poorer and blind to anything or anyone around them.
*************************************************************
The next morning Ryan opened his email, sighed loudly at his empty inbox and picked up the phone receiver to dial Scranton, PA.
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