Jim starts his new position as Assistant Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin Stamford on June 19th. It’s been thirty-eight days since he stood in the parking lot at DM Scranton with his heart in his hands and a lump in his throat, wanting nothing more than to give the woman he loved anything and everything, only for her to refuse it. Twice. It’s been twenty-one days since he loaded up the last box into the back of his Corolla, handed Mark his set of house keys, and headed down I-84 towards Connecticut.
It’s been nine days since Pam walked down a church aisle in a white dress and married Roy.
As he sits at his new desk in his new office with his new (admittedly spectacular) view, he tries to think about anything other than whether or not they’re back from their honeymoon and if they are, if Pam took the day off so she could visit the DMV and the social security office and anywhere else she needed to go so she could transition from Beesly to Anderson. He tries to not picture how beautiful she must have looked in the dress he’d accidentally seen a photo of, with the satin strip at the top and the lace sleeves, her hair curling loosely at her collarbone. He tries especially hard to not envision himself waiting for her at the front of the church, never more sure of something as he is the fact that he loves her, wholly and unconditionally and eternally.
Desperate for something to take his mind off of thoughts of Pam and the way that thinking of her now makes him sick to his stomach with regret and longing and all those other horrible things that come from unrequited love, he casts his eyes around for something—anything—work related. The desk before him is bare because of course it is, it’s his first day. He isn’t even able to access any information about the clients he’s inherited because of some system glitch that/s completely locked him out. He wouldn’t put it past Michael to have somehow done something to his credentials, purposefully or not, as payback for Jim having left with no notice. He smiles at the thought and automatically glances to his right, looking for curly red hair and a soft pink cardigan and a flushed, smiling face all too willing to theorize on Michael’s hacking abilities and whether or not he was able to rope Dwight into helping. Pam’s not there, though, just a blocky grey industrial printer that is completely void of the charm he’s so used to having ten feet away.
He’s going to go crazy. More likely, he already is crazy.
He’s been in Stamford three weeks, unable to start until today because “Thomas wants to finish his last two weeks before you replace him” and “corporate already approved your vacation, you should relax!” To hell with Thomas, he thinks, and to hell with vacation. How is he supposed to enjoy Australia knowing that the love of his life is now inexorably linked to the luckiest, most undeserving bastard in the world? And doesn’t Thomas know that Jim needs this, is actually craving the monotony of his nine to five?
Because without something that he has to do in order to earn a living, he won’t do anything except stare at the four walls of one of his living room, or maybe his bedroom. He’ll turn the TV on and go through the motions, maybe try to choke down a bowl of tasteless cornflakes or something, but none of it distracts from the utter emptiness he feels inside his chest. He can’t make himself leave his new apartment because what’s the point? He can’t talk about it to his family, because what would they have to say that would do any good? “She doesn’t deserve you, Jimmy.” “You’re better off without someone who doesn’t see what she has right in front of her.” “You’re in a brand new city! Go see the sights, meet new people!”
Yeah, no thanks.
Maybe all that stuff is true, but it sure doesn’t feel that way right now. He can’t think of anybody more deserving of someone who would love them the way that he loves Pam. And when he's around her he's the best version of himself, or at least the version that he likes the most. And what good is being in Stamford if everywhere he goes reminds him of the person that isn’t there to share it with him, the only person that he wants?
So. He needs to work. He needs to be doing something that produces some kind of quantifiable results, because the work he’s been doing for the past five years has produced nothing but heartache.
Since that seems impossible, he settles on familiarizing himself with the office. It’s bigger than the one in Scranton and absent of the years worth of accumulated clutter that seemed to be all over the place at his old branch. It has a more professional atmosphere, too, which he both appreciates and despises. Appreciates because he assumes that he’ll spend more time being busy because it’ll be expected of him, and being busy means that he'll also be (hopefully) distracted. Despises because it’s just another reminder that he’s not where he was.
Not that he even wants to be there. It would hurt too much, considering how much it hurts from 150 miles away. It’ll hurt forever, he thinks; that constant stabbing wrenching pain in his heart and his gut and his head and his entire body for every minute of every day. Every beat of his heart pumps a reminder through his bloodstream; each thump-thump sounding more like I can’t.
Thoughts like that are counterproductive to not acknowledging the fact that he can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t focus on anything except for regret and heartache and shame and so on. Going down that path is nothing but an endless cyclical pattern that only ends in numbness and self loathing, so he shakes his head free of the hurt (as much as he can, anyway) and pushes away from his desk. Maybe if he gets up and walks around, tries to get to know some of his coworkers, he can start to fill his brain with more than just the fleeting memory of what it felt like to wrap his arms around Pam, to feel her lips against his...and the knowledge that there’s another man--her husband--that gets to experience those things for the rest of his life.
That thought propels him out of his chair. He’s already had enough of the man in the desk in front of him (“Andrew Bernard, Cornell ‘95. You can call me Andy. I’m the big dog around here. The Nard Dog. So watch out, Scranton.”) and the desk behind him is empty because its inhabitant is out on a sales call, so he heads towards the break area. An incredibly pregnant woman is in there, fanning herself at the table, and Jim smiles at her. Perhaps attempting some small talk is what he needs. “Any day now, huh?”
“Excuse me?” The woman (he thinks her name is Hannah) narrows her eyes at him. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Oh, just, uh...it looks like the baby is almost ready to make an appearance,” he says with a lame gesture to her belly. Her eyes narrow even further.
“Who do you think you are to comment on a woman’s body? How do you even know I’m pregnant?” He looks around the room a little frantically as though the cabinets or refrigerator are going to tell him what to say, and surprisingly enough, they do. There’s a paper bracket stuck to the freezer door bearing the inscription HANNAH’S BABY POOL and several dates within the upcoming weeks. He points to it and Hannah scoffs. “Whatever. Learn some boundaries.”
Jim nods awkwardly and backs out of the break room. He turns towards the back of the office, where a few more desks are arranged. Another salesman is back there in a large L-shaped corner desk, Tony. Jim stops and smiles in what he hopes is a genial way. “Had a case of foot-in-mouth back there with Hannah,” he jokes. Tony stares at him blankly and blinks slowly. It’s a little reminiscent of Dwight, actually, and Jim finds himself missing his former coworker. Just a little bit, but still.
Nothing in comparison to how much he misses another former coworker, but, there’s nothing he can do about that, really.
With Tony still thousand-yard staring at him, Jim turns away. Everyone else is busy, so he makes his way back to his desk. Maybe Josh and the IT guy have found a way to get him back into the system so that he can actually get started doing the job he was hired to do. Maybe the guy in the desk ahead of him, Andrew or Andy or Nardo or whatever the hell he wants to call himself, has settled down enough to hold a conversation that isn’t as weird as the ones they’ve had already. Maybe he’ll just bang his head against the desk until he passes out.
He’s too busy contemplating the pros and cons of giving himself a concussion to notice that the person assigned to the desk behind him has returned from the sales call. It’s not until he’s in his chair and aimlessly opening and closing the drawers looking for a distraction from his thoughts that he becomes aware of someone new in his immediate vicinity.
When he swivels his chair around, he finds a woman getting settled into the desk. She’s dressed smartly in a grey suit and white shirt. Her long dark hair is shiny and her olive skin is actually pretty striking. She glances up and makes a face when he realizes that he’s looking at her. “So. You’re the new guy, huh?”
“Um, yeah. Yep. That’s me, Jim. Jim Halpert.” He reaches his hand across her desk and after a moment of hesitation, she puts her hand in his. It’s small and warm, not as small as Pam’s, but he’s not thinking things like that right now.
She gives him a look that makes him feel as though he’s being sized up. Despite that, she seems fairly normal in an office of weirdos. Not that he doesn't have experience with that, but Stamford weirdos are different than Scranton ones. One normal person in the office would be a good thing, he thinks. A friend, maybe. He could use one of those.
“Well. Nice to meet you, Jim Halpert. Karen Fillipelli.”
