* * *
Friday
A few weeks after that bizarre experience at Dwight’s farm, I called in the agreement Pam and I had made that night on our pushed-together homemade Schrute mattresses; namely that the next time we took a trip, I got to decide where. So when I arranged for us both to take a half day one Friday and told her I wanted to go to Philadelphia for the weekend, she rolled her eyes and teased me—Philly? Really going outside your comfort zone, Halpert—but she had no choice but to pack up a bag and get in the car.
“Are there going to be sports involved?” she asked, tracing a figure-eight pattern on the window condensation with her index finger.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I promised.
She glanced over at me with a small frown. “I wouldn’t mind, you know,” she said, then smiled. “Just as long as you don’t leave me behind.”
“I have other things in mind.” I gave her a suggestive leer, which unfortunately just made her grin wider and laugh at me, until I had to laugh too. “I dunno, I just thought, nice dinner, hotel, check out the art museum tomorrow?”
Her smile was huge. “Art museum?”
“Sure.”
“I’m so spoiled,” she said happily.
“Yes you are.” I brought out the seductive sidelong glance again and pitched my voice lower. “I’ll be expecting compensation,” I said, holding her gaze long enough to see the flush color her cheeks.
It’s still sort of shocking to realize I can do that to her. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to it.
* * *
It was mid afternoon when we got to the hotel, so we dumped our bags and decided to go for a walk and look around at the local shops. It was chilly and damp and Pam wound her arm tightly through mine, pressing up against my side as we strolled down the narrow streets. “I wonder if we’ll run into Ben Franklin,” she mused.
“I knew it. You’ve been carrying a torch for him all along.”
“I think I really missed out. There was definitely electricity,” she grinned.
“Does the eighteenth century turn you on, Pam? Should I make a trip to the costume store? Invest in pantaloons?”
“Might be interesting…” She squeezed my arm and then abruptly let go. “Can we go in here?” she asked, stopping in front of the blue awning of a store called Indigo.
“Absolutely.”
We stepped into a two-story gift shop that smelled like my aunt Cassandra’s house; patchouli incense, I think. Pam immediately went over to look at the primitive folk-art paintings on the walls while I wandered around checking out wooden boxes from Ghana, Indian silk scarves, a collection of human figures made of bottle caps and Coke cans.
“Jim! Look!” Pam held up a little green teapot from a table of Vietnamese tea sets. “It’s just like the one you gave me. Well, almost.” She fingered the bamboo handle and glanced up at me with a smile. “I like yours better,” she said, putting it back.
I grinned. “Nice save, Beesly.”
She wrinkled her nose at me as she ambled over to the table where I was looking at woven baskets. “I like this,” she said, picking up the one I’d been eyeing. It was medium-sized, black, with a single wide band of rainbow colors that swirled to a point in the center.
“They’re made of recycled telephone wire.” I pointed at the description card in the middle of the table.
“Wow.” She turned it over and around, examining it from all angles. “That’s so…creative, and practical! Look how tight it is. I bet it would hold water.” She handed it to me, watching as I fingered the coils.
It was really well made, and I liked the pattern. Most of the others on the table were kind of gaudy for my taste; striking, just really …bright. This one was still colorful, but more subtle.
I handed it back to her. “You like it?”
“I do.” She seemed entranced by it, tracing the pattern into the center with her index finger. “They’re all one of a kind?” she wondered, glancing up to read the card. She turned it over and blanched, chuckling a little. “So they are,” she murmured, putting it back.
I picked it up and turned it over. $78.
“A little steep,” she said ruefully, wandering off toward a table of African masks.
I went to examine a collection of Bolivian tin masks that vaguely resembled animals: wolves, bears, deer, an armadillo. As always, though, I had an eye on Pam, and I noticed when she went back to look at the basket a second and then a third time, running her finger along the rim, a small, thoughtful smile on her lips.
“You do want it,” I observed, strolling over to her.
She pulled her hand back immediately with a guilty expression. “It’s too much,” she shook her head, stepping away from the table. “This place is kind of expensive. We should go.”
I moved to block her escape and picked up the bowl. “Perfect size for the front table, don’t you think? For mail and keys?”
A smile flickered at the edges of her lips. “Jim…”
“We really should do our part to support the Zulu telephone-wire basket industry.”
“You shouldn’t,” she whispered, glancing around furtively like we were doing something wrong just discussing it.
“No?” I bit my lip, pretending to think it over. “You don’t really like it then?”
She quirked an eyebrow at me, a grin threatening to break through. “I didn’t say that.”
“Well, it’s settled then.” I brought the basket up to the register and tried not to grin too complacently at the way she practically skipped behind me.
* * *
We stopped at a coffee shop and found a corner table near the wall of books. Pam grabbed a thick volume of famous quotations while I split a huge blueberry muffin down the middle. “There’s a whole page of Hitler quotes,” she said.
“Excellent, we can test Dwight. Read some.”
“ ‘Great liars are also great magicians,’ ” she recited. “Yikes. Oh, listen to this: ‘What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.’ ”
“Scary.”
“But true,” she murmured, flipping the page, munching absently on her half of the muffin. “Do you think Dwight’s grandfather was really in the SS?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“Oh, do you remember that movie Life is Beautiful? How the guy was always quoting Schopenhauer?” She looked up expectantly until I nodded; I’m not normally a big fan of subtitled movies, but she’d told me I had to see it so, naturally, I had. “ ‘All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self-evident.’ ” She looked up and grinned. “Hey, it could be about us.”
“Ridiculed?” I lifted an eyebrow at her. “That’s harsh.”
“Well, you know what I mean. We were both like no, no, we’re just friends. You did it too,” she said sternly, apparently disagreeing with my expression. “ ‘And, Pam, it was like three years ago, so, I’m totally over it,’ ” she mimicked.
I grunted. “Like you didn’t know I was lying.”
“How would I know that?” she asked, softly, all the teasing abruptly vanished from her tone. “I believed you.”
I stared at her. She was serious. “Pam, I got an email from every single person in the office when you called off your wedding,” I reminded her. Except you, I wanted to add, but I left that out. “Pretty transparent, I think.”
Her expression went blank. “Well, I believed you,” she said woodenly, fiddling with her swizzle stick as she stared down into her coffee.
An uneasy silence fell.
I didn’t quite have it in me to crack a joke and lighten the mood this time. She’d admitted that she thought I had a crush on her, so she hadn’t been oblivious. Maybe she’d pretended not to see it, but to say she truly didn’t know? Everyone else had seen through me, but not her? My best friend?
Impossible. She had to have known.
“We should get going,” she said finally, pushing her paper plate away. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah.” I gestured to the book as I shoved my chair back and got up. “Did you want that?”
“No,” she said flatly, wrapping her coat tightly around her and stuffing her hands in her pockets. “Sometimes I just like to look at things,” she muttered, slinging her purse over her shoulder.
I stared at her. “What?”
She glanced at my face and her eyes grew wide. I had the distinct impression I wasn’t meant to hear that. “Nothing,” she mumbled, darting for the door.
* * *
If I hadn’t envisioned our first trip away together having anything to do with Dwight, I really hadn’t thought our second would be marred by one of our weird almost-fights. Almost because it never quite turned into yelling or open confrontation. We’re not good at arguing. Truthfully, there isn’t much we disagree about, so we haven’t had much practice.
When we did fight, though, it was generally with silence. This was one of those occasions. Dinner was quiet and tense. We drank a bottle of wine and pushed our food around and made awkward small talk and kept a small but conspicuous distance between us as we walked back to the hotel.
“I’m gonna take a bath,” she said, shedding her coat and heading immediately for the bathroom.
I sighed and clicked on the TV and flopped down on the bed. This was so not what I wanted for this weekend.
She was gone a long time. After what seemed like an hour I gave up waiting and changed into a t-shirt and boxers and climbed into bed. I left the TV tuned to the news but mostly kept my eyes trained on the strip of golden light under the bathroom door, wondering if she was going to spend the night in there.
I must have fallen asleep; the next thing I knew it was dark in the room and she was sliding under the sheets beside me. “Jim,” she nudged me gently.
I opened my eyes. “Hmm.”
Her eyes were filled with fear and worry. “I’m really sorry,” she whispered.
The remorse in her expression softened whatever resolve I might have had to hold a grudge, and I heaved a sigh. “Me too,” I offered. It was stupid to let the past continue to have a hold on us. Maybe she should have known, but I shouldn’t have lied. We both lied; we both made mistakes. Would it always be so painful to talk about it?
“I really love the basket,” she said softly. “You’re so…so… and I… that was just mean.”
I stared at her. “Is that what we’re talking about? The basket?”
“No,” she admitted. She edged closer to me, eyes wide, hesitant. Afraid? I lifted my arm and caught her around the shoulders to pull her to me, and she pressed herself against me immediately, wrapping her arm around my chest and burying her face in my shoulder. Her hair was still damp, her skin warm and soft, smelling of her cucumber melon body wash.
“Can I tell you something?” Her voice was muffled but it sounded like she was near tears.
I closed my eyes in sudden dread but managed to nod.
She sniffled; she was crying. “I’m scared you’ll never forgive me,” she whispered.
My eyes snapped open. “What?”
She lifted her head and her eyes were wide, terrified. “I’ll never be able to make it up to you,” she said desperately. “I wish I could take it back and just—tell you I needed some time, and…but I can’t,” she wept, “and I need you to forgive me, really forgive me.”
I hadn’t seen her cry very often, but it tore me up every time. “Pam, it’s not—I love you,” I said, softly.
“I know you do. And I love you too. So much.” Her expression became even more anxious and fearful, her eyes wide as they searched my face. “I love you, and I need you to believe that, to… know it.”
“I do,” I promised. I didn’t have any doubt about that, actually. It was there,unmistakable in her every smile and gesture, in the little notes she left me all over the place, in her surprisingly extensive and detailed knowledge of the things I loved and hated. “I do, Pam.”
She didn’t seem reassured. Her eyes stayed on my face, searching for something she wasn’t finding. I sat up a little, alarmed now at her palpable fear. “We both probably should have done a lot of things differently,” I said carefully. “Would you agree?”
She nodded, sniffled.
“Okay then.” I wiped tears from her cheek with my thumb. “Let’s make it official. I forgive you. Everything.”
She drew in a watery breath that turned into a hiccup, smiling weakly as she reached up to swipe at her face. “Really?”
“Everything,” I insisted, and because I couldn’t resist, added, “except for the quesadillas.”
She let out a shaky but genuine laugh. Last Sunday, I’d spent half the afternoon pulling shredded chicken off the bone and chopping up vegetables for fresh pico de gallo, only to have the whole thing ruined by the nasty white American cheese she’d picked up by accident. “I told you, I thought it was Jack,” she protested, shoving me gently.
I pulled her down on top of me with one hand, stroking her hair with the other. “Sure.”
“It’ll never happen again,” she promised, wrapping her arms around my neck and burying her face into the hollow of my shoulder.
The air felt different. Lighter. I heaved a sigh of relief. “Pam?”
“Mmm.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “For just… everything.”
She lifted her head and stared at me for a long minute, her expression soft and gentle and, most importantly, no longer afraid. “I forgive you,” she said finally, then added, “Everything.”
I rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. “Can we be done fighting now?”
Her smile turned mischievous. “That was not fighting, Jim. That was the silent treatment, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Was it?” I laced my fingers together at the small of her back, pinning her against me.
“Hmph,” she snorted. “I’m surprised you couldn’t tell the difference. I can be pretty loud.”
“Don’t I know it,” I grinned, and laughed aloud when she turned crimson. “Should we put that theory to the test?”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered.
“So is that what we’re doing when you’re being loud?” I pressed. “Fighting? ‘Cause—”
“Oh shut up,” she groaned, stretching up to silence me with a warm open-mouthed kiss.
Now that’s what I had in mind for this weekend.
* * *
Author's Chapter Notes:
The last part of this chapter tried to kill me. Seriously.
Takes place a few weeks after Money. Enjoy!
Takes place a few weeks after Money. Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
One more to go.
Incidentally, Indigo Arts is a real store in Philadelphia. indigoarts.com
Thanks to everyone who's been reading, and for all the lovely reviews and support on the boards. As always, I'd love to hear thoughts on this. I always wonder if my interpretations ring true.
Incidentally, Indigo Arts is a real store in Philadelphia. indigoarts.com
Thanks to everyone who's been reading, and for all the lovely reviews and support on the boards. As always, I'd love to hear thoughts on this. I always wonder if my interpretations ring true.
