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Spoilers for The Fire and Booze Cruise.
Pam was bored. She had already collected and sent all of her faxes, she had no messages on her voicemail, Michael was out of the office for the day, and she had nothing left to do. She had to man the phones of course; however they certainly weren’t ringing with any frequency. It was only 1pm. She had already eaten an early lunch with Jim which was (as per usual) the highlight of her depressing existence as receptionist for Dunder-Mifflin Paper Products. Now Jim and Dwight were out meeting with a big client, so her favorite distraction was gone. Not even the camera crew was around to entertain/aggravate her – they typically only came in a few days a week. How the hell was she going to fill four more hours? A girl could only play so many games of spider solitaire before she went crazy. She decided to set the phones to voicemail and wander around the office for a bit; see if anyone was equally bored and wanted to kill some time with her.
She approached Kelly first, figuring that they could at least talk about her upcoming wedding, since Kelly never seemed to tire of the subject (which was amazing, since Pam did tire of it, and it was her wedding). However, Kelly informed her that she had a deadline to get something to corporate by the end of the day, so she couldn’t chit chat. She looked heartbroken over the fact that she couldn’t spend the afternoon gossiping and looking through bridal magazines with Pam – it just figured that the one time Pam sought her out she actually had to do some work.
Pam wandered over to accounting, where today it was just Kevin and Angela (Oscar had called in sick that morning, but there had been suspicious male laughter in the background when she spoke with him). She plopped down in Oscar’s chair and grabbed a handful of m&m’s out of the jar on Kevin’s desk.
“So, what’s going on guys? Are you as bored as I am?”
Kevin smiled at her and started to answer when he suddenly stopped and looked over at Angela, who was glaring at him over the partition between their desks.
“If by bored, you mean working hard, then yes, we are. We don’t have time to socialize, Pam”. Angela ducked her head down and went back to examining the spreadsheet on her computer. Kevin shot Pam an apologetic glance, and she knew he was too scared of Angela to disobey her. Dejected, she got up and began wandering aimlessly.
She was walking past the conference room, marveling at the silence of her typically bustling work place, when she noticed that the door to the small office that the camera crew used, the one with the sign that read “Crew Only”, was slightly ajar. This was where they housed their equipment and they referred to it jokingly as “base camp”. It was tiny – smaller than Michael’s office and crowded with camera equipment, monitors, wires, and tapes. She was intrigued – this door was never open; someone must have forgotten to lock it up when they left yesterday. She glanced around but due to the emptiness of the office, nobody was anywhere near her. She pushed the door open a bit more and entered the room, gently shutting it behind her.
Slowly picking her way through the mess that surrounded her, she was immediately drawn to the stack of DVDs on the table against the wall. Examining the labels on the cases, she realized that they contained the raw footage that the crew had shot. She was ecstatic – nobody but the crew had seen this stuff. She was especially curious about the talking head segments – she had a sudden urgent need to know what everyone had been saying when they were alone with the cameras. She knew that she had certainly opened up more than she had intended on a few occasions, so she was pretty certain that everyone else had let their guards down a little. Peeking out the door she saw that nobody was paying her any attention, and everyone was too far away to hear anything going on in the small room.
Excited, she closed the door and randomly picked out a DVD from the pile, which didn’t seem to be in any particular order. The label on the cover read ‘October 2005 – Office Fire” and she giggled at the memory of Ryan and his burning pita. She popped the disc into the player and turned on the television, placing the headphones on her ears and sitting on the edge of the desk.
Immediately, she’s laughing at the sight of Michael running past everyone on his way out of the office and of Dwight “saving” Kelly from the smoky breakroom. She picks up the cover to read it again and notices that it says “Disc 2 of 6” from that particular day. ‘Wow’ she thinks. ‘They really get a lot of footage’. Thinking it best to start from the beginning, she locates disc 1 from that day and places it in the player.
The screen fills with an image of her own face, as she answers the phone at her desk. “Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam.” Ugh. How she hates those words. She watches as ‘video Pam’ transfers the call to Jim, and instantly remembers what had been going on. That had been Katy on the phone. It was when Pam really realized that Jim was actually dating her. She also remembered the nauseous feeling that had washed over her when she made the realization, because the same feeling crept up on her now, just watching the disc. On the screen, she was being interviewed in a talking head about the phone call. God, she was so clearly not impressed by the “Jim and Katy” situation. She cringed at how obvious she seemed, asking Jim to give Katy his direct extension. More disturbing however, was the why in this situation. Why was Pam upset then, and now for that matter, about Katy? She felt herself relax as the realization dawned on her. ‘Of course – Jim is like, my best friend.’ She thought to herself. ‘It only makes sense that I would be extra protective of him, and I just didn’t think that Katy was the right girl for him’.
In fact, she remembers more from the day of the fire, when it became painfully obvious that Katy and Jim had little in common during a game of “Desert Island”. She giggled to herself when she recalled the night of the recent booze cruise, when Katy had not only revealed that she had been a cheerleader in high school, but went on to demonstrate an actual cheer for them all (“A-W-E” clap clap “S-O-M-E” clap clap….). Not so funny was Roy’s reaction to the news and his excitement over her impromptu performance.
Had she imagined Roy’s reaction to Katy that night? Maybe that was just her being paranoid, again, that she and Roy weren’t very well suited to each other. He was always laughing and saying what a dork she had been in high school, but the truth was, Pam was still that same person. Sure, she didn’t wear black turtlenecks everyday, but she was just as sensitive, creative and intellectual as she had been then. His comments, even though they were made in jest, still hurt her because essentially he was making fun of what Pam was. Still. As in, currently.
She decided she must see for herself. She had to find the DVD of the booze cruise night to see that whole conversation between herself, Roy, Jim and Katy. Was it as awkward as she remembers? Sifting through the pile on the desk, she spots a few labeled “January 2006 - Lake Wallenpaupack” – jackpot! She puts in disc one since she’s not sure how far into it the conversation occurred, to watch the Pam/Roy/Jim/Katy dynamic with a critical eye.
What she was NOT expecting was to find herself, having watched all five discs from that night, in tears. She’s stunned. She can’t move. She can’t think. Actually all she can do is think and the thoughts are all running together and she’s crying and she can’t breathe and she needs air NOW.
She’s running up the stairs to the roof. It’s the only place she can think of to go. Someone could walk into the bathroom; she could see Roy in the parking lot. She had to regroup before she saw anybody. She had to think. What. The. Hell. Was. That???? How is it possible to be blind to so much of what’s happening right in front of you?
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© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali
© 2006-2023 More Than That | Skin created by Kali