Disclaimer: The Office and its characters do not belong to me. Nor does Warren Zevon’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” which will probably crop up in other things I write.

He buys time with a laptop and a cell phone and moves on a Thursday without seeing her again. His heart is grateful.

***

Day One

Thursday is different. Stamford is hot and humid even at night, two words he never associated with Connecticut. Connecticut is supposed to be cold, he thinks, repressed and dry and sterile. Jan puts him in touch with Josh, who is genial and tells him to come in on Monday. Spend Friday settling in, spend the weekend getting to know Stamford.

The first thing he thinks is that Josh doesn’t sell it like Michael sold Scranton. But maybe that’s a good thing.

Day Two

Friday is a beginning, which is new for him. He’s used to Fridays meaning the end, the reprieve. His apartment is on the third floor of a building that needs fixing, but it’s got two rooms the size of his bedroom in Scranton plus a bathroom and he doesn’t have a roommate. So, that’s a plus. He calls his mother, lets her know he’s in and unpacking. She asks if he needs anything, he says no.

This is the furthest away he’s lived since his--(he redacts his own thoughts)

The radio distracts him while he unpacks and the assemble-at-home furniture takes shape. A table, some chairs. The couch he stole from his dad’s living room when he moved into Mark’s house and then again when he left Scranton.

We made mad love, shadow love

Random love and abandoned love

Accidentally like a martyr

The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

That night he walks until his feet hurt. He finds a bar called the 21st Amendment. It makes him laugh. He tells himself he’ll come back tomorrow, that no good can come of staying in his apartment alone. He sounds like his mother.

(she’s right though, because all he does is lay in bed in the dark and wonder whether that girl is thinking of him too)

Day Three

Saturday is melancholy, the kind that sets in with idleness. So he runs errands, thinking that it will keep him busy until at least five. He is done by two. He wonders where this efficiency was when he worked in Scranton. So he finds the 21st Amendment and orders his first drink.

One thing he quickly discovers about this bar is that, unlike Chili’s, they have absolutely no policy about over-serving their patrons. And for a bar filled with what looks like a small hive of young professionals, they play a lot of lo-fi folk. Or indie. Or whatever it’s called.

By seven, he is thoroughly drunk but since it’s just beer it doesn’t count. Beer-drunk makes him slow, maybe a little emotional, but it’s not like he’s falling over himself and projectile vomiting onto nearby onlookers.

But he stumbles when he stands and his foot gets caught in the barstool and the whole damn thing nearly puts him flat on his back, but he recovers at the last second. And everyone is staring in that mild, trying-not-to-stare way, even the people at the tables. An olive-skinned woman in a pantsuit rolls her eyes as he makes his way towards the restrooms in the back, and he hears her companion--another woman, another pantsuit--say:

“With guys like that around, no wonder you’re single.”

When he gets back to the bar, he settles his tab and spends the last of his cash buying a round for the two of them. He tips his imaginary hat as he unevenly backs out.

(he almost calls her, because in one week it’s all over. he doesn’t make the call. he is a coward)

Day Four

Sunday is a hangover, enough to keep him in bed until the afternoon.

His mother calls and asks if he went to church. He lies.

Josh calls to remind him to come in early tomorrow, just to handle what he calls logistics.

He misses her.

It sucks.

Day Five

Monday is starting over. He signs what needs to be signed and shakes hands with Josh and the HR guy whose name doesn’t stick in his brain. Josh promises to introduce him to the sales team as soon as everyone filters in. It never happens, he just goes to his desk and starts making calls.

At lunch, he eats a tuna sandwich because nowadays ham tastes like nothing (if nothing was watercolors and jellybeans and drugstore shampoo) and the guy who sits at the desk in front of him calls him “Big Tuna.”

Jesus Christ, he hopes that doesn’t stick.

The girl who sits behind him looks familiar, and he can tell she doesn’t like him very much.

It’s nothing like Scranton, but maybe that’s what he needs.

Day Six

Tuesday is weird because suddenly everyone realizes that he’s not just another salesman, he’s actually the Assistant Regional Manager.

Reactions are mixed, to say the least. Half the salespeople are convinced he’s there to fire everyone, but the other half think that increased management hiring means that there won’t be any downsizing.

Jim doesn’t tell anyone that behind closed doors, branch closure is the catchphrase.

He hears someone call him Big Tuna and sincerely wishes he were here to fire everyone.

Day Seven

Wednesday is a pissing contest, because the guy who sits in front of him--Andy--keeps mentioning that he went to Cornell like that will save his job. Karen (who sits behind him and has a name that Jim finds much easier to remember) rolls her eyes and she looks so goddamn familiar. She brings in three clients but loses the fourth to Staples and he can tell she won’t let that go.

He likes that about her.

She definitely doesn’t like him.

(his parents don’t come to his college graduation, but Larissa is there to tell him what happened. the car is still running and so is he)

Day Eight

Thursday is when it all starts over, because the cameras show up Stamford. Filming him. The producers take him aside and say that this is all flavor footage, to sort of get a feel for the new environment and the space. They won’t actually be filming until September. He doesn’t believe them.

He debates quitting. In the end, he doesn’t.

Day Nine

Friday is the day he places her, remembering the rolling eyes and the tricky barstool. He thinks she catches the recognition, because she smirks a little bit and at lunch she comically tips her root beer bottle back when she takes a drink.

He laughs at work for the first time since he moved to Stamford.

Her name is Karen Filippelli. He wonders if she likes to draw. (he doesn’t ask her)

Sales goes out for drinks on Fridays, she says, and he’s welcome to come.

“Even though I’m management?” He raises an eyebrow.

“You sit in the field,” she replies. “Management-of-the-people.”

Yeah. He wonders if she’s engaged to a giant jackass too.

But when he gets in his car he flips open his phone and he sees what day tomorrow is, sees that her hair isn’t curly and her skin isn’t pale and her hopes and dreams haven’t been crushed by time and self-doubt.

He drives right past the bar and crawls into bed and is wide awake until

Day Ten

Saturday is the tenth day of June. Judgment Day. He almost doesn’t make it out of bed, but he decides he has to escape thinking.

The bar is forgiving in a way that nothing else can imitate. He hands the bartender his credit card and tells him to keep it open.

He’s going to forget her if it kills him.

The shots go down easy and he’s not crying in public so he’s definitely on a hot streak this month.

Props to him.

He is far too drunk for his own good when Karen walks in, with another friend, and he’s chatting up a pale girl with curly strawberry blonde hair like he isn’t dying inside. They sit down just in the corner of his field of vision, and he thinks he sees a hint of concern on her face even though she can’t know what’s going on, not really.

The night goes on, the girl gets friendlier (drunker) and so does he, and he starts to ask if they should get out of here when a blur of dark hair gets between them and pulls him away and asks him if he’s all right, and Karen looks him straight in the eye and he tells her everything, that he’s running like he has been his whole life, that he fell in love and got crushed but it starts before that because his sister killed herself and no one ever talked about anything ever again and now he’s creeping up on thirty and he’s completely, utterly alone unless he’s with her and she just doesn’t feel the same way but

(but that’s all a stupid fantasy)

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks. She nods.

They go back to her place and he is rougher with her than he would be if she was really who he was thinking of. Backs hit walls, she scratches his chest.

He calls her Pam when he comes.

It evens out.

Day Eleven

Sunday is regret. He wakes up relatively sober before the sun comes up and she’s still passed out next to him. After he finds his clothes, he slips his shoes on and starts walking back. He doesn’t get lost, but he doesn’t make it to the bed either.

The phone wakes him up and his cheek feels like it’s been fused to the floor. He doesn’t pick it up. Because maybe it’s her. Because maybe she did it.

(because maybe she didn’t)

***

Karen frowns as she hangs up the phone. He looked like shit last night, even without the liquor, and something about him leaving with that girl ate her insides so much that she called the company directory and waited until the automated database spat out “HALPERT, JAMES” and ten digits.

A junebug crawls up her windowsill. She’ll see him on Monday anyway.

(she hopes)