~~~~~
He's not allowed to say that part of him wishes she wouldn't go, that it will be hard, or that he will be lonely. Pam would tell him to turn the car around in an instant. Worse, she would worry and she wouldn't do what they are taking her to Brooklyn to do. He wants to tell her that there are schools she could go to in Scranton and that there's a ring in his messenger bag on the floor of the backseat. He carries her ring with him everywhere now, waiting for both inspiration and nerve to strike. The thought of proposing still makes his heart race. She'll say yes, of course, but he really wants to ask if she knows what she's signing up for. And, if so, could she fill him in?
He ignores all of his maddening, caveman impulses to not allow her out of his sight and carries boxes upstairs, too impatient to wait for the ancient elevator. He notices the ketubah on the wall in her sublet and wonders where one finds a calligrapher as he jogs back down the stairs. He kisses her in the stairwell as they pass.
They find a pizza place down the street and, while they eat, he asks her repeatedly if she has everything she needs. She smiles at him like the Mona Lisa, like she used to, and it knocks the wind out of him. He follows her upstairs and watches her open boxes for a little while before he says that he should go. The sun is lower than the tops of the buildings and the soft hair on the back of her neck is sweaty. He can't bring himself to stop kissing her, but, after a while, he can feel her leaning back toward the door. She wants to get started. He says that he loves her and she says it back, natural as breathing, even though it used to be so hard, so scary. She says "thank you," and doesn't explain why, but the look in her eyes, their old, silent language, says everything.
Jim gets to work early on Monday and moves the box of Pam's things from reception, tucking it under his desk. He looks through it while waiting for a client to return his call and finds a old picture of himself and Pam at an office Christmas party. She's laughing and glancing sideways at the photographer; her left hand is on its way up to her mouth. She's holding a red plastic cup in her right. He's standing next to her with one hand in his pocket, looking up at the mistletoe hanging over them. His mouth is half-open and he is leaning toward her slightly. He didn't notice it that afternoon, as he was making some asinine comment about poison ivy, but she is standing directly under the sprig of greenery while he is keeping his weight on his heels, using his height to lean in without actually getting close to her. He found her standing there. He remembers the high color in her cheeks and the huge smile on her face and remembers thinking that she had probably gone back to the punchbowl for seconds. It was impossible that anything about her, least of all her joy, could have been for him. He left her there when Kevin called to him from across the room, but he sees now that it would have been so easy to lean in just a little more and taste the sticky-sweet punch on her lips. Surely she would have kissed him back and laughed and surely he would have spent the rest of the evening feeling like he'd been dropped down a flight of stairs. He tapes the picture to the corner of his monitor and looks at her all day, noticing that he can see Roy's engagement ring on her pretty finger.
When he goes home that night, he turns on the stereo and fixes dinner. He sits down at the kitchen table with his laptop and begins arranging songs that remind him of how it felt to stand on her street in Brooklyn. He burns a CD before he leaves for work in the morning and sends it to her during his lunch break. He makes a copy for himself and listens to it every day for a week. Somehow, it feels a little like being there with her.
On Tuesday, Michael escorts Julie, the temporary receptionist, around the room, introducing her to everyone and making an ass of himself. They pass by when Jim has a free moment and Michael says that she should watch out because "Jimbo here has a thing for secretaries." When he tries to protest, Michael claps him on the shoulder and sends Julie back to her desk. As she sits down, she looks over at Jim. Inclining his head toward Michael's door, he rolls his eyes. She looks a little relieved. He sits with her at lunch and does his best to make it clear that there is at least one completely boring, normal person in the office. On Tuesday, she tosses him an eye-roll that reminds him of Pam, and he feels his cheeks get warm.
Out of curiosity and with larger plans urging him on, Jim throws himself into his work. He makes a deal with himself - he has three months to figure out if he hates this as much as he thinks he does. He's not sure what the point is, save that he'll know and that's worth something. When Wallace calls and asks if he'd be willing to help with post-Ryan damage control, Jim says yes right away.
She doesn't leave him alone. She emails him multiple times a day, sometimes no more than a sentence. She is happy, distracted, and brimming with new things to tell him. Her joy is contagious and thrilling. He is leaving a meeting with a client one afternoon when he gets a text message - "Haircut. Consider yourself warned." The thought of her slows him down as he walks through the parking lot. He receives sketches rolled up in mailing tubes a couple of times a week and cell-phone camera photographs of her, her neighborhood, and school. She calls him on her first Friday night away and says that she just came back from Sabbath dinner at her neighbor's apartment and "We should do that sometime." He asks if she'll light the candles and she says "Of course!" He's sitting on his living room floor when she answers and he tips over onto the carpet.
He can't leave her alone. He calls her more than she calls him. He sends her postcards and tries to make their separation into a joke. He's reading so much that the clerks at the library know his name. He copies and sends passages that remind him of her. Because he remembers the name from a literature survey course he took seven years earlier, he brings a collection of Neruda's poems home with him one night and spends the evening in bed. The next day, he sends photocopies of about half of the book to her.
He is told to be absolutely frank and to do whatever it takes to pacify clients. So he calls them, explains the situation, and makes himself available to answer questions. He takes them out to lunch, Michael in tow, because he is preternaturally good at this after you get a couple of drinks in him, telling stupid jokes and somehow remembering everything about everyone's kids. Jim reviews contracts, pulling discounts out of thin air. He shakes hands and smiles a lot. There is a crystal-clear, tacit agreement that Ryan is the scapegoat and Jim makes use of him at every opportunity. He knows full well that Ryan's only real crime was being a moron, and that punishing him won't fix a thing, but that bastard tried to get him fired and Jim refuses to let it slide. He tries not to enjoy being deposed, looking Ryan in the eye while he explains how he and the other salespeople were ordered to enter their sales twice. He is asked his opinion of the success of the website by the attorneys and by Wallace and he gives it. Ryan flinches when Jim uses the word "incompetent."
After three weeks of the computer, the mailman, and the phone, he takes Friday off and leaves Scranton on a bus early on Thursday afternoon. It takes three hours to get to the Port Authority, and more time still to get to Brooklyn on the subway. He is sweaty and jittery, taking two steps at a time out of the subway station closest to her place.
He has seen photographs of her new clothes and hair, but she looks utterly different coming down the street to meet him. She's wearing a cotton skirt and a tank top, her hair pulled back in a scarf, sandals on her feet. Her legs are bare and she is beaming, raising her arms to embrace him. He lifts her off the ground and kisses her. He keeps one arm around her waist and touches her hair. "Look at you," he says and she ducks her head a little, "you look amazing."
She leans close to him and he can smell her lotion and the salt of her sweat. "It's my New York City disguise. I seem to be fooling everyone. Shhh."
He feels much as he did in the first month they were dating - stunned stupid and utterly useless - as she leads him down the sidewalk to her front step, where an old woman is waiting with an expectant look on her face. Pam introduces her as Mrs. Chapsky and Jim gets both of his cheeks kissed. He is impatient to get away, but he waits for Pam to excuse them. They go upstairs and he gets her naked before she can get his shirt off, much less get to the bedroom. When she wiggles free of his grasp and heads down the hall, he just stands there for a moment and watches her incredible curves disappear around the corner. He leaves a trail of clothes when he follows her.
She takes him to a Middle Eastern restaurant in Williamsburg that night and then to a show at a club. He enjoys the music and gets more than a little drunk. He feels out of place and stays close to Pam, who, in her New York City disguise, looks much more at home. He's just a paper salesman in a polo shirt, jeans, and beat-up canvas sneakers. He stands against the back wall of the room with his arms around his girlfriend, hoping that she doesn't care that he's dripping sweat. She tilts her head up to kiss him and she tastes like beer. He's got her tank top pulled up a fraction of an inch at her right hip and he's playing with her bare skin.
They go back to her apartment in the middle of the night and draw a bath. While they stand in the bathroom in their underwear and wait for the tub to fill, Pam announces that she's not going to class in the morning, and, when he tries to argue with her, she just shakes her head and hugs him. He unhooks her bra and licks the sweat off her shoulder. He wants to spend the entire weekend touching her. She sits between his knees in the water and he slides his fingers up the inside of her thigh and pushes two of them inside of her without any preamble. She is hot and wet and she makes a noise that he feels in his chest.
He receives a formal introduction to Pam's widows at Sabbath dinner in Mrs. Farber's apartment. He is reminded of his grandmothers and the smell of freshly baked, eggy, dense challah dredges up things that he didn't know he remembered. Mrs. Farber, Mrs. Chapsky, and Mrs. Rabinovich hover and ask him the kinds of questions that let him know that Pam talks about him all the time. They sit down at the table, Mrs. Farber lights the candles, and then sets the kiddush cup in front of Jim, telling him to say the blessing. He blanks for just a moment, but then, even though he's never done it before, the words and the gesture are there like a reflex, like muscle memory. Mrs. Rabinovich nods her approval and Pam smiles from behind her wineglass, surprise widening her eyes.
They're lying on her bed sometime before midnight, listening to the radio that she turned on after he explained the concept of a Shabbes goy. She's petting his hair and studying his face. She begins, "How on earth..."
He knows to what she's referring. "It's just a formula. Always starts the same way," and he recites. "It's pretty easy to remember. I heard it a lot when I was a kid."
"You are just full of surprises."
God, I hope so, he thinks, but says "Don't underestimate me, Pam." He is trying to tease her, but he's so touched that he can't stop himself from smiling.
~~~~~
A week later, Pam calls Jim and tells him that one of her classmates asked her out. She sounds genuinely surprised, which amuses him. He had to convince her that Toby had a crush on her, that it wasn't a business meeting when Ryan asked her to dinner, and that the bartender at Poor Richard's was hitting on her. She would deny it and shake her head firmly and he would say "You have no idea, do you?" which never failed to make her blush and tell him that he was being silly.
He feigns nonchalance, "So are you going to go?"
"No, I told him that my boyfriend was coming into town and I couldn't."
"Ooh, efficient. The ol' not 'I'm not interested, I'm taken' one-two." Jim lies down on the couch. "What's the poor sap's name?"
"Ben."
"Ben, huh? Sounds like a douchebag."
"Jim, he's really nice. And he's - he's cute."
"Great, now I'm going to have to come over there and smash his clunky glasses."
"Oh, yeah. You're scary."
"What? I'm like a jungle cat. He won't even see me coming. Just a little rustle behind the plant in the coffee shop and then - wham - Ben's just a splatter and a shredded Bad Religion t-shirt."
He has earned a laugh. He imagines that she is sprawled out on her borrowed bed in front of the only air conditioner in the apartment, probably wearing the boxer shorts he accidentally left there. Her hair is a little wild from the humidity and her shorter haircut. She's completely foreign, entirely familiar, too far away, and he's not allowed to say that he misses her.
~~~~~
Story Notes:
Again, Halpert is a Jewish last name, so I go with that. You don't have to read "A Better Version of Me" before you read this, but, you know...
Author's Chapter Notes:
Part one of three.
Chapter End Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
