Jim walked up the steps and through the revolving doors of the Philadelphia Media Holdings building and got in the elevator, taking it up to the eighth floor. He had the notes from his interviews with Utley and Howard in his messenger bag, ready to be typed up and sent to his editor, but he felt like he could hardly concentrate today. Even with their incredible performance on the diamond yesterday after he interviewed them, his mind was elsewhere.
He was completely preoccupied with thoughts of her. On the day they had spent together. He kept replaying it in his mind over and over, wanting to soak up every smile and every laugh they shared. He was jolted back to reality though, by the pile of papers on his desk, and so he decided he had to stop dwelling on her for a while and actually get some work done.
“Hey Jim,” his desk mate, an older woman, greeted him as she sat down with a mug of coffee in her hand.
“Hey Phyllis, how was Penn State this weekend?”
She beamed, “Oh, Bobby and I had a wonderful time. I mean, the baseball team sucked more than a vacuum cleaner, but ladies’ soccer did well, and we had some time to go to the Matson Museum too.”
“Wow. Busy weekend.” Phyllis nodded and turned her attention back to her computer before Jim snidely commented, “So, ‘sucked more than a vacuum cleaner’… Is that going in the official write-up?” She shook her had at his remark, but stopped abruptly as her eyes went wide. She motioned to Jim to watch out, but it was too late; he had already turned to see what she was looking at.
Their editor was making a beeline straight for their desks.
Jim quickly turned around, praying he would walk right past, but no such luck. He stopped in front of them and held out his arms, “There they are! My dream team!”
“Hi Michael,” they mumbled.
Michael put his foot up on Jim’s desk, “So how was your weekend?”
“Oh, well Bobby and I—“
Michael stammered, “Blhulahah, not you, Phyllis. When do I ever ask you how your weekend was? I was asking the big guy over here! How was your weekend, man?” He hit Jim on the shoulder, perhaps a little too forcefully. “Saw the game, obviously.”
“Yeah, I’ll have a draft of the interview I did with Utley and Howard by the end of the day…”
“Jim, Jim, Jim,” Michael waved his hands to silence him, “I’m not even worried about it. We are friends, and I know you got my back. I know that you… feel me… dawg.” Their conversation grew silent, Jim secretly hoping Michael would dig himself into a deeper hole of stupidity, but he didn’t. Instead he changed the subject, “So what’d you do on Saturday? Day off and all.”
Jim’s expression immediately brightened at the thought of Pam, but he tried his best to conceal it, “Oh, I showed my new neighbor around Rittenhouse. We walked around, I showed her different places in the neighborhood…”
“That sounds fun,” Phyllis nodded.
Michael held back for as long as he could, but eventually burst into laughter, “So, a ‘her,’ huh… Did—did you get any?”
Phyllis glared at her boss, “Michael…”
“I’m just asking, Phyllis! Men talk about this kind of stuff! If you can’t handle it, maybe you should go write wedding announcements, or stuff about fashion…” He ignored her glare and turned back to Jim, “So, did you?”
Jim sighed, “No, Michael, she’s my neighbor. And, she has a boyfriend.”
“BFD, boyfriend ain’t husband,” Michael replied, causing Jim to put his head in his hands, mortified. Michael continued, “I just think, you might be in a bit of a dry spell—”
“What!”
“And you just need to get laid, and then you’ll remember how to talk to women again. I mean, you spend the whole day with this neighbor girl, and you don’t even make a move?? That is being way too intro…versile, my friend…” Michael contemplated all the possibilities his buddy had to get some action, and finally he came up with something. “Hey, what about that girl, Katy?”
Phyllis spoke up from behind her computer screen, “No, they broke up, like three years ago.”
“Thanks Phyllis,” Jim said exasperatedly before looking up at Michael, who still wanted an explanation. “Plus, she’s a Sixers Dancer, and I was just a copy editor back then—”
“She broke up with you because of your job?” Michael furrowed his brows.
Jim sighed, not wanting to rehash his former relationships, “Well when you spend most of your time with NBA basketball players, yes, a lowly copy editor seems a little below your league.”
“She was blowing half the team,” Phyllis commented nonchalantly, getting stunned looks from both Jim and Michael. She gave them a smirk, showing them she could handle guy talk, and added, “Still is, I’m pretty sure.”
“Anyway…” Jim brought the conversation back on track, “Whether or not I’m going through a ‘dry spell’ is no one’s business but mine, and as for my neighbor…” He glanced at the front entrance and was saved by the woman walking through the door, “Oh, Michael, your wife is here.”
“Oh! Gahh! Where?” Michael ducked behind Jim, but this made Jim even more adamant on waving her over. Michael stood up and played his absurd behavior off like he was looking for something, “Nope, I do not see your contact, Jim—Oh, hey babe, how are ya feelin’?”
His wife, about six months pregnant and scowling, answered him coldly, “I’m feeling fine, Michael. Except, someone didn’t leave enough milk this morning for me to have cereal, and so I had to waddle my way down Broad Street to the corner market in this ridiculous heat—”
“It’s actually pretty chilly out today—”
“Don’t use up all the milk next time!!” she screeched. Surprisingly, the rest of the office hardly paid attention to her ranting; she did it enough that people hardly noticed anymore. She looked around at Michael, Jim, and Phyllis, who all seemed extremely uncomfortable, and finally told him, “You need to drive me home. I am not walking anywhere else today.”
Michael nodded and escorted her to the door, leaving Phyllis to stifle her laughter.
“Jan’s nuts,” she commented, turning her attention back to her work.
“It’s just cause she’s pregnant,” Jim said in her defense. Phyllis shrugged in response, and so he let the conversation drop and turned back to his computer.
… … …
Pam was sitting in her office, intently focused on the final touches to the updated exhibitions page of the PAFA website, when she was startled by a knock at the door.
“Pam?” a Hispanic man cautiously peeked his head in the doorway and told her, “The meeting started five minutes ago.”
She looked at the clock on her computer screen, “Oh shoot! Thanks, Oscar.” She quickly gathered up her things and followed him down the art-filled hallway to the conference room. Her boss and everyone else in the Development and Marketing department were waiting for her. “Sorry Ryan,” she excused herself sheepishly, “I was just finishing some updates to the website.”
“That’s okay. Just, don’t do it again, alright?” Pam nodded her head and Ryan continued, “Alright, so everyone knows we’re gearing up for Reverberations, right? Over thirty artists, over a hundred works of art, all sponsored by Bank of America…?” His staff nodded their heads. “Great. Now, the opening is May 18th, and there is a Preview Party on May 16th—Pam, do you have the literature on all that?”
She took out her mock-ups, “Yeah, um, here are the brochures that will go with the exhibition, and this is the invitation for the Preview Party…”
Ryan looked them over with a discerning eye, “Okay, for the brochures, I’m not exactly set on the color scheme. Why don’t you go over next door and take a look at some of the works, and then come back here and give me a couple different options based on what you saw, okay?”
“Okay—”
“Don’t interrupt.”
“Oh, I just—”
“I also want the text here to be bolder, and for these invitations, can you get the Bank of America logo on there somewhere? We’re sending it out to their Board of Directors, after all.” Pam nodded and he went on, “All right. Exhibition Coordination: Oscar, how’s the planning for the Preview Party coming along?”
“Uh, great, actually. It looks like we’ll have enough money in the budget for people to each bring a guest—“
“What party-planning service did you go with this time?”
“I went with a woman named Angela Martin. She’s been exclusively with the city council for years, but recently she started her own private party-planning service.” Everyone chattered in agreement about how the city always put on wonderful events, and Oscar continued, “She’s taking care of the catering, the music, everything.”
“Good,” Ryan nodded his head in approval, “And lastly, Patron Relations… Toby, do you have an updated guest list ready to go when Pam is done with the invitations?” A dejected man at the far end of the table slowly nodded his head, and Ryan took it to mean a yes, “Okay, great. I think we’re set for the Preview Party then. If there’s any last-minute changes, I’ll send you all a memo.” He dismissed his staff and they slowly filed out of the conference room and walked back to their offices.
Pam and Oscar quickly caught up with Toby, worried about his sullen demeanor, and Pam spoke up first, “Hey, are you okay?”
Toby turned back and looked at the both of them, and then said plainly, “My wife wants a divorce.” His two friends stood there in the hallway with him with shocked expressions as he went on, “Yeah, she told me on Saturday. She wants full custody of Sasha, too.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Oscar patted Toby on the shoulder. “But don’t worry, it’ll be okay.”
Pam gave him a forced smile, “Yeah, I mean, no judge would side with her. You’re a great dad.”
A small hint of a smile started to appear on his face as they each gave him a hug. He murmured jokingly to them, “So, for our next book club meeting, let’s not read anything with too much of a happy ending, okay? I think that would make me even more depressed…”
“Sure thing,” Oscar chuckled, knowing beneath the solemn exterior that Toby would be all right. They all parted ways and went back to their offices, and that’s when Pam remembered her assignment. She quickly got her digital camera out and went over to the Fisher Brooks Gallery next door, where they were just finishing organizing the artworks for Reverberations.
She walked around and gazed upon all the different works and mediums of art. The collection was named Reverberations for the intense color and geometry of its works, and looking at all of them, Pam could definitely see the theme playing out. These artists seemed so bold to her, so confident in the way they put their pieces together. It seemed as though they really had a message to convey through their canvases, and it made Pam wonder what kind of message she had to convey in her own, simple sketches. It was nothing like trying to capture the hands of the peasants, but she felt like she had her own story to tell.
She felt like hers was a story of triumph, and of growth. After getting her Art History degree, she had moved back to her old neighborhood, hung out with her old high school friends, got into old habits… It was comfortable, but she knew it wasn’t where she belonged. And so she resolved to go after what she wanted. She took computer graphics courses and quickly rose to the head of her class. She got excellent recommendations and landed an entry-level job at PAFA, and slowly worked her way up from there.
People could see how diligent and creative she was, and it seemed like the more responsibility and privilege they gave her, the more brilliant her designs became.
Now she was finally living her dream, and felt like she had achieved almost everything she had set out to accomplish. She only had a couple remnants of her old life back in Kensington, one of which was Roy. She didn’t know why he couldn’t just be happy for her success; was it really so bad that she made more money than him? That she would be able to support him if they wanted to get married and settle down?
To him, it was, and it seemed like that small difference in ideology made all the difference.
And then she thought of Jim—how down to earth and considerate he was of her—and she let the notion pass through her mind that maybe he was the one she should be with. He seemed to understand who she really was, and not just have some vague memory of who she was back in high school. She thought of their conversation on Saturday, and how he said the one you’re really meant to be with will just understand you instinctively, and she smiled as she pondered how “instinctive” he already seemed toward her.
Realizing she was still on company time, she quickly snapped a few shots of the works with the best color schemes, and then headed back to her office to load them onto her computer. She worked diligently on the brochures for the rest of the day, but couldn’t seem to keep her mind off her new neighbor.
… … …
“Hey,” Jim said as he walked up to the mailboxes in the small lobby of the rowhouse. Pam looked over at him with a smile and tried to conceal the red flushing up in her cheeks.
“Hey,” she replied, attempting to sound casual. They stood there and looked through their mail, making faces at bills, dropping junk mail into the recycling can at their feet, and eventually she found the courage to speak again, “You… went to work today?”
Jim gave her a smug smirk, “Yes Pam, despite what you may think, sports writers don’t spend their whole lives at the stadium.” She laughed and they started to make their way up the stairs as he questioned, “Did you go to work today?”
“I did,” she replied with a grin. “We finished planning an exhibition opening.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Yeah, it should be good. We got this woman who worked for the city events committee or something to work on it.”
Jim raised an eyebrow at her, “Angela Martin?”
“I think that was her name…”
“She lives in this building.”
Pam leaned against the door to her apartment and touched her fingers to her forehead, a twinge away from smacking herself silly, “Oh, gosh! Right! I met her a few days ago! That’s the party-planning Angela?”
“It certainly is. She put together that huge fundraiser last year in the park—”
“I remember that!” Pam laughed a little at herself for not putting two and two together, and then realized. “She seems kind of…”
“Frigid?”
“Yes.”
Jim shrugged, “She is I guess, but she does a great job. You’ll be fine, just don’t get on her bad side.”
“Might be too late for that…” Pam admitted. “I gave some homeless guy money when she told me not to.”
“Creed?” he inquired and she gave a small nod. “Oh man, I want to hear about your encounter with Creed. You wanna come in for a beer and tell me about it?” he asked hesitantly.
Pam bit her lip, knowing she should be calling and checking in with Roy, but after remembering her reflections in the art gallery this afternoon, she ultimately decided against it. If she was seriously considering dumping Roy for this guy, she at least needed to find out more about him.
“Sure,” she replied. “Just let me put my stuff down and I’ll be right over.”
“Great!” Jim said a little too enthusiastically. They smiled at each other and went into their apartments, Pam dropping her stuff just inside her door and scurrying back over to the other side of the hallway. She playfully knocked on the door, pretending to act very sophisticated, and giggled when he opened it and gave her a look, “Well, imagine meeting you here. Come on in.”
“Thanks.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed or commented to me about this story. I'm really glad you're all enjoying it so far, especially how all the characters are being included. You meet many more in this chapter, so please read, review, and enjoy!
This got bumped up to a T rating for something Phyllis says in this chapter. Yes, Phyllis says something that gives this a T rating! I made her feisty. :)
EmilyHalpert is the best beta a girl could ask for.
This got bumped up to a T rating for something Phyllis says in this chapter. Yes, Phyllis says something that gives this a T rating! I made her feisty. :)
EmilyHalpert is the best beta a girl could ask for.
Chapter End Notes:
DunderSnob pointed this song out to me: http://youtube.com/watch?v=SNL9Ja8afhM
Works pretty well, dontcha think?
Works pretty well, dontcha think?
