“So what’s wrong with this one, Beesly?” Jim lounged on the couch next to Pam, who was sorting through apartments on a laptop with Karen standing at the kitchen island making free with Mark’s liquor cabinet. “I think it hit all of Karen’s preferences.”

“That’s right.” Karen came further into the room and handed Pam a glass. “It’s close to work, it’s cheap as hell, and I didn’t see any black mold.”

“Come on, Karen, I know you’re not that easy,” Pam piped up without lifting her head from the computer. Karen jiggled the glass and the clink of ice made Pam look up. “Thanks.” She took a sip. “OK, I take it back. Maybe you are that easy—or at least you will be after one of these.” She took another sip. “Yeah, I think after finishing this I wouldn’t care where I was.”

“It’s not that strong.” Karen rolled her eyes and headed back to the island. “Jim?”

“None for me, thanks.” He was nursing a beer that still had some depth left to it. He reached over and took a sip of Pam’s drink though, purely for research, and almost spat it out. “Yeah, definitely none for me. What did you find over there, airplane fuel?”

“You’re both weak, and you should feel bad.” Karen’s smile took the sting out of her words. “Seriously, though, Pam what’s wrong with the last apartment I looked at?”

“I just got a bad feeling from the landlord,” Pam insisted. “He was looking at you…well…” she went a little quiet and Jim nudged her.

“You OK there Bees?”

She smiled sadly up at him. “Yeah. I was just going to say he was looking at you,” she nodded at Karen “like Roy used to look at women when he thought I wasn’t looking.”

“Roy?” Karen looked quizzical. “Roy in the warehouse Roy?”

“Oh, you don’t know.” Pam handed Jim the laptop and took her drink back. “Yeah, we used to, uh, be engaged.” She took a pull of the drink and grimaced. “It went exactly like you’d think.”

“I don’t know, he’s kind of cute…” Karen mused, but then picked up her own drink. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yeah. He’s not a bad guy, but he had a bit of wandering eye.” Jim held his tongue. He didn’t think that was all Roy had, but that wasn’t his or Pam’s problem anymore.

“Ugh. I hate that.” Karen sipped her drink, notably without any expression at all. “So that explains why it was so weird when we had that all-staff meeting last week.”

“No, that was just Michael,” Jim interjected, and Pam barked a short laugh. “OK, it was a little bit that too.”

“Yeah.” Pam shrugged. “It wasn’t a bad breakup, you know, but anytime you’ve been together that long….”

“Ten years,” Jim supplied for Karen’s benefit, and she let out a low whistle.

“Yeah,” Pam said, and Karen reached over and clinked glasses.

“Well, here’s to new beginnings.”

“To new beginnings.” They toasted and Pam made another face. Karen laughed and made a show of draining hers.

“So, no on that one,” she went on as she headed back to the island and started mixing herself another. “Gee, Jim, it’s a shame I can’t just move in here. Your roommate knows his liquor.”

“Why can’t you?” Jim surprised himself by asking. “I mean, assuming Pam and I find a place, I’m moving out anyway, and I know from experience that Mark is as lazy as it gets about finding a new roommate—he’d probably appreciate you taking over the lease.”

“And it’s definitely affordable on my salary and commission if a slacker like you could make rent,” Karen added, smiling again to disarm the comment. “Seriously, do you really think so?”

“I do.” He looked at Pam, who nodded. “Does that work for you?”

Karen took a look at the bottle she was pouring from and nodded to herself. “I think I could do that. As long as you agree to take full responsibility for the damage I’m doing to this magnificent collection right now.”

“Wait, how do I end up owing you a favor,” Jim grumbled, but his heart wasn’t in the complaint. Now he and Pam just had to find a place.

**

“Seriously, she’s a bitch,” Karen ground out as Pam joined her outside of the party planning committee room.

“She’s not…OK, right now she is, but she’s not always,” Pam placated her.

“Does anyone ever stand up to Angela, or…”

“I think one of her cats did once. She came in with scratches all over her face.”

“Right.”  They laughed, but then there was a beat of silence, and Pam felt compelled to fill it. Karen was her friend, after all, and friends didn’t let Angela mistreat friends.

“Do you want to plan our own party? I liked your karaoke idea.”

“That sounds great. And thanks. We do a raffle too.”

“Sweet. How does this sound…”

The next few hours flew by. The Committee to Plan Parties was rocking, and Angela was not permitted to come a-knocking. They roped Jim in as well, since he clearly had nothing better to do, and as ARM he had authority to institute a party as long as it fit within the discretionary budget—a point he made to Dwight in no uncertain terms.

“What is our budget, anyway?”

“Well, the Party Planning Committee has two hundred dollars,” Pam started, when Jim raised his hand.

“Actually, the party planning committee has one hundred dollars.”

“What?” Pam looked across at him. “When did that happen?”

“When Michael put me in charge of the discretionary budget. Or, more accurately, when I decided to change the discretionary budget that Michael put me in charge of two minutes after Jan reminded him that someone had to be in charge of it three weeks ago.” He grinned. “We have two party planning committees, but only one line item in the discretionary budget, so I have officially decided that they get to split the budget.”

Pam threw her arms around his neck, while Karen looked aside with a smile on her face .

“OK, so one hundred dollars. What do we do with that?”

“What do we do? We raid Mark’s liquor cabinet.” Pam held out her hand for Jim’s keys, which he tossed to her.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” But he was grinning.

“That depends. Do you like vodka?”

By the end of the day Pam had managed to reconcile the two parties, but she nevertheless felt triumphant. Maybe it was the vodka; maybe it was finally having a female friend at work who could validate her feelings about their coworkers; maybe it was the fact that Jim’s contribution to the party had been to write letters on the back of each streamer they put up in the break room that spelled out nonsense words, which Dwight insisted on trying to read as some sort of code. This was partly her fault, because she’d been setting him up for weeks to believe that the CIA was recruiting him—but it was no less funny for all the preparation that had gone into it.

“Do you think he’s still trying to figure it out?” She leaned against her desk next to Jim in the wake of a successful party. Karen had left a few minutes before and now she and Jim were alone, except for a suspicious glow underneath the men’s bathroom door where Dwight was (they thought) working on the “puzzle” in a stall.

“Probably. You know, I’m a little disappointed in him,” said Jim in her ear.

“Why’s that?” she whispered back.

“It’s a simple Caesar cipher: three letters off in each direction, if you started at the door and moved around the room clockwise. And it says ‘meet on the roof.’” Jim’s head suddenly snapped around and he pulled her down to the floor. “Quick, he’s coming out.”

They crawled under the desk as Dwight moved swiftly past them muttering to himself—and they heard the distinctive creak of the trapdoor to the roof.

“I put a camera up there, streaming to Youtube.” Jim stood up and offered her a hand. “Want to watch it on your computer?”

“Ohmigod yes.” She sat down and logged in and Jim stood behind her with his arms around her as they watched Dwight desperately try to figure out what was going on with the camera.

It was the best Christmas ever.