Best That You Can Do
Karen spends the weekend in the city, in the room she and Jim had booked through Saturday.
After her incredulous You’re doing this?, choked out in an octave higher than her usual register; after he walked away with equal parts guilt, relief, and determination in his face; after the tears and the grief of shock, came a wave of shame and burning anger.
She should’ve dumped his ass months ago, months ago. He was never going to pick her. That single “yes” was the most honest syllable he’d ever uttered in their relationship.
She’d known it, and refused to acknowledge it. It was never going to happen. Probably not before the beach, but definitely not after.
Still, he’d been saying for months that he was in this, that he wanted to be with her. Pushed into saying it, maybe, but he’d said it, all the same. Said it with such a look of desperate effort in his eyes that she’d chosen to believe him.
God, she’d wanted to believe him.
So she just…did.
More fool she.
He’s been slipping away all week, if she’s honest with herself. Which, she has to admit sourly, she hasn’t been in a long time. She’d convinced herself that his physical presence meant something, that the increasing distance in his vague smiles and constant air of distraction had merely been obstacles to overcome. If she could just keep him focused, keep his eyes on her, on the future; if she could just get him out of Scranton, away from…everybody…
Well.
Hindsight and a bottle of Shiraz are 20/20.
She’s not completely blind. It was obvious that Pam had shaken him. She made a purposeful decision not to pry, not to ask what it meant, how it made him feel. She knew him well enough now to understand that if she did, he’d only retreat further.
And her patience had, seemingly, been rewarded. He hadn’t pushed her away. Hadn’t wavered about going after the job. He was finally showing himself amenable to change, to possibility. The haircut, for instance, had seemed…symbolic. When she was able to talk him into going to New York a night early, it felt like certain victory.
The empty hotel room serves as a glaring reminder of just how deluded she’d let herself become.
Housekeeping changed the sheets that morning, but somehow the pillow still smells like him.
She throws it on the floor and desperately tries not to cry. Bastard, she thinks instead, focusing on the anger.
It works, for a while.
Monday, her humiliation is complete.
She wants him to fight back, to explain himself, to protest that he really is a good guy so that she can rebut that assertion with a number of acidly phrased illustrations of exactly why Jim Halpert is a cowardly, selfish, deceitful, manipulative ass. So she’s disgusted and disappointed, but not particularly surprised, when he can’t even give her that. He stands with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, lips pressed firmly shut, eyes on the floor.
Only when her voice rises and cracks, humiliatingly, near the end of her diatribe, does he look up to meet her eyes with furrowed brows and a pained, sympathetic expression that only makes her angrier. She bites back the fuck you at the tip of her tongue and brushes past him out of the kitchen.
Even as she strides back to her desk, straight-backed and head high, she can feel the eyes on her. On Jim. On Pam. After she logs on to her computer she glances up to find Phyllis watching her with pursed lips and a pitying smile, and heat burns a path up her throat to her cheeks.
They all knew, all along. I’m the office joke. I wonder who’ll win the pool?
Jim's heading slowly back to his desk. His glance toward reception as he sinks down into his chair is so brief that if Karen wasn’t staring, she would have missed it. He makes no other move to go talk to Pam, though, and she’s more relieved than she’d like to admit. At least they’re not going to rub it in.
Or maybe this is worse, since it’s pretty damned obvious what happened, anyway, she thinks bitterly. Thank you, Pam. Being publicly cast aside for another was a nice twist of the knife.
The lump in her throat expands by half as tears sting her eyes. She turns her attention to her client list and picks up the phone, and doesn’t look up from her monitor for the rest of the morning.
At lunch, she grabs her purse to head out. She hasn’t decided yet if she’ll be coming back, and logs off her computer just in case. Pride demands she return, after all her tough talk this morning, but her determination is already wavering and taking the rest of the day off is extremely tempting. She watches as Jim disappears into the break room, and waits for Pam to follow him so she can escape unnoticed.
But twenty minutes later Pam is still behind the reception desk, feeding documents into the shredder. She glances toward Karen only once, and only briefly, but their eyes meet in that instant. Pam’s expression flickers through guilty, sad, and determined, in rapid succession.
It’s only a moment, but it’s enough.
Karen pushes in her chair and heads toward the front of the office. Pam has gone back to shredding, and doesn’t look at her again, but Karen sees her tense up as she approaches. Lingering by the coat rack, she waits until Pam glances back at her again.
“You don’t have to do that,” Karen says, quietly.
Pam gives a wary, nervous smile. “Do…?”
Karen glances at Jim’s empty chair, then gestures toward the break room with her chin. “You might as well go. It’s not like I don’t know.”
Pam’s faltering smile dissolves altogether. “Karen,” she begins, softly.
“Don’t,” she cuts her off, and walks away before Pam can say another word.
When she returns, a leisurely hour later, they are both at their desks. Jim knows better than to hazard a glance at her; Pam’s eyes flick briefly to hers before she looks away. Karen ignores them both and heads to her desk to continue her morning project: finding a way out of this hell.
There are openings in Akron and Utica. Akron wants a sales manager, Utica a branch manager. She applies for both. Neither city sounds particularly appealing, but anywhere will do.
Anywhere but here.
