“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”

Shit, Jim Halpert thought. Shit shit shit shit shit. No one was supposed to be there. That was the plan. Wait until after 5pm (not hard, given that he’d spent the whole day running around trying desperately to figure out where his sister Larissa had gone when she disappeared from her college dorm, only to find out she’d been in the library with her phone dead the whole time. Mom and Dad needed to learn how to chill—and apparently, so did he). Let everyone who worked at the place he was supposed to be starting at today leave (he didn’t think this would take very long: his impression of Michael Scott as a boss was that it was probably a struggle to wait for the clock to hit five, but hey a job was a job). Call in, leave voicemail pretending to be extremely sick, promise to come in tomorrow (thank God for “twenty-four-hour flu”), show up tomorrow and trust that Michael wasn’t organized enough to be mad at him. Done and done.

But no, apparently someone was there, still answering the phones at 5:30.

Someone who was still waiting for him to respond. And since he couldn’t be sure when she’d leave, he probably couldn’t count on just calling back and leaving a voicemail either. He cleared his throat.

“Uh, hi. This is Jim Halpert?” He cursed himself for making it a question, then cursed again when he realized he hadn’t managed to make himself sound sick in the slightest—and this being a real person, she’d probably notice if he dropped his voice an octave and started suddenly sniffling next time he spoke.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I caught that, Jim.” He heard a ghost of a laugh in the voice, which wrapped itself in a little tendril around his brain stem and whispered “interesting.” She’d apparently heard him cursing, but it (hopefully) amused her rather than distressing her.

“Uh…” Since when was he this tongue-tied? He was Jim Halpert, bullshitter extraordinaire. He’d once convinced his parents that the tooth fairy’s going rate at his school was $5 a tooth. He’d gotten out of a course requirement at the University of Scranton by pretending he already spoke French—and passed the oral exam. He’d even made his new boss think he was actually excited about selling paper. He could do anything. So why couldn’t he lie to this woman on the phone? “I was rather hoping you hadn’t heard that.”

“Heard what?” That ghost of a laugh was now well on its way to reincarnation, and he was beginning to think that maybe that ought to be his goal from now on. “What can I do for you, Jim Halpert?” He liked hearing her say his name. Which was weird, given that they’d only exchanged about ten words, at least three of which were him blindly cursing.

“I, uh, was supposed to start work there today.”

“Oh, you’re Jimbo!” The laugh was now alive, awake, and doing cartwheels down the street. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”

“Yeah, about that…”

“Do you want me to tell Michael you were sick?” She paused, and he spent the pause wondering how it was that she instinctively knew what he’d been planning to say, but dismissed the thought as absurd. Everyone calls in sick. It didn’t require much of a leap. “Or I could just say you’re dead. Then you wouldn’t have to come in at all.” He heard a little gasp, as if she’d just heard what she’d said. “Not that I don’t want you to come in at all. Not that I do want you to come in, I mean it’s just that, well, when you come in you’ll have to meet your deskmate, Dwight, and there’ s really just no coming back from that. Though I suppose you’ve already met Michael and you were planning to come in anyway…you can stop me at any time, you know.”

He grinned, not that she could see it. He liked her rambling, and he really liked the way it made her voice go from the artificially bright, cheerful sound she’d clearly been forcing when she answered the phone to something much more human—and appealing. Could you fall in love with a voice? “Oh, no, far be it from me to stop someone on such a roll. Let me see, where were we: I’m dead, Dwight (whoever he is) is apparently a menace…did he kill me, I wonder?...and we apparently share the same opinion of our boss. Did I get all that right?”

She giggled lightly. “Just about. Although it’s probably not fair to Michael to compare him to Dwight. Dwight’s…well, if you decide not to be dead, you’ll meet him, and I really don’t think I can do justice to that experience. But Michael’s harmless.”

Jim plopped down in a chair, leaned back, and crossed his legs. “Implying Dwight isn’t?”

“Let’s just say there’s a reason that the available desk is across from his.”

“Is it across from yours too?” He hadn’t flirted this shamelessly since he was in grade school and thought Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley were the ideal model for a relationship, with all the braid-pulling and slate-breaking that implied.

“Uh…actually, yes.” Could you hear someone blush over a phoneline?

“Then I guess I’d better not be dead.” When she didn’t immediately reply, he panicked and filled the dead air. “I, uh, wouldn’t want to smell up your work area with my zombie stench or anything.”

“I hate to break it to you, Jimbo, but zombies aren’t dead.”

“Excuse me, Pam? Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, I think you’ll find dead right there in the name. And I prefer Jim.”

“Sorry, Jim, but George Romero didn’t know what he was talking about. Zombies are clearly undead, and you know un trumps dead.”

“So picky.” He recrossed his legs the other way, trying to distract himself from just how comfortable he was feeling with this stranger on the phone. “Are you suggesting, then, that my dead stench would be somehow worse than a zombie’s?”

“Your words, not mine. But yes.” He felt as if she’d stuck her tongue out at him.

“All the more reason for me not to be dead then.”

“So…”

“Yes?”

“If you’re not dead, and you aren’t sick, why did you miss work today? Michael missed you, you know.” She giggled again. “He says you’re his best friend.”

He rolled his eyes. “Is he the reason you were calling me Jimbo?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s not my best friend.” He tried to find an excuse, but for some reason his normal bullshit faculties still weren’t working. So he prevaricated. “I never said I wasn’t sick.”

She laughed—not a giggle, not a laugh hidden in the depths of her words, but a full-on belly laugh—and he felt a strange sensation in his chest. “I think we’re beyond that, don’t you, Jim?”

“I suppose so.” He sighed, deliberately extending the sigh so it would be audible through the phone. “If you must know, I was helping my parents track down my elusive sister.”

“Is she on the lam?”

He chuckled. “Yes, in the very dangerous and deadly realm of the University of Scranton library.”

“Why did you have to track her down there?” She sounded puzzled.

“Because my mom is easily frightened, my sister is the baby of the family, she only started freshman year two days ago, and she doesn’t remember to charge her phone.”

“And you were at home?”

“And I was at home.” He shook his head. “Good thing I’m moving out next week, assuming Michael doesn’t fire me so I have a source of income.” Mark had been making noises about wanting a roommate for forever, and while Jim loved his parents, he had no desire to become the third side of a triangle that included their empty-nest syndrome and his sister’s newfound discovery of independence.

“Nice. I remember when I moved out of the house. I suddenly developed a much greater appreciation for my parents when I didn’t have to live with them, and…well, anyway, it was nice to move out.”

He wondered what she’d been about to say. “Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s my story. Six hours of wandering around campus followed by twenty minutes of my sister making fun of me for forgetting she’s a bookworm. How was work?” He put the phone down for a moment and buried his head in his lap. How inane a question could you ask? He must sound completely pathetic. Which, to be fair, he was, since he desperately didn’t want the conversation to end even though he’d now ostensibly achieved the purpose of the call.

“Work was…work.” She sounded hesitant, but then brightened. “You’ll find out tomorrow, won’t you? No death?”

“Not any that I’m planning at any rate.”

“Good.” She went on quickly as if she’d revealed something with that word. “We should definitely find a way to spin your little adventure when Michael asks tomorrow.”

Bullshit the boss? This was a woman after his own heart—which was dangerous, since he was already hanging on her every word. “Like how?”

“Hmm…it’s always best to stick as close as possible to the truth. How about this: you were called away for a very important meeting with a member of the university community on behalf of neighborhood interests.”

“Not bad. Although that makes it sound like I’m a politician or something.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, I’m just not sure I could sustain it. How about this instead: I building close connections with individuals in the university library, for the betterment of Dunder Mifflin.”

“Then he’ll expect you to make a sale.”

“Oh yeah. Good point.”

“Could you?”

“Make a sale? I don’t know. I’ve never tried before.”

“What a great job opportunity this is turning out to be, then.” They both laughed, and Jim made a decision.

“You know, what the hell, I’ll…” and the line went dead.

What the hell indeed, he thought.