After Jan’s…complete and total meltdown and Michael’s “you can’t fire me, I quit” routine (well, “not hire me” and “I withdraw”—he was definitely still at Scranton), Karen and Jim looked at each other.

“Well.”

“Well.”

“At least he gave us his endorsement?” Jim tried to find the silver lining.

“Yeah, but how much weight do you think that has?” Karen shrugged. “Good luck, Jim. I meant it—may the best person win.”

“Me too. It’s been a pleasure working with you.” They shook hands and then hugged.

“Oh, and Jim?”

“Yeah?”

“If you do get it, and keep in mind I’m not at all suggesting you’re better at me than this, but if you do—you and Pam have fun here, OK? Because you don’t get to take my two best friends in the office away to not have fun.”

“Got it.” They hugged again and she headed out for lunch with her friends. Honestly, that was probably a sign that Karen would get it, Jim thought. She was a New York kind of person. She already had friends here; moved in those kinds of circles; had that kind of confidence. But he wasn’t going to just let her have it, even if they were friends. After all, he didn’t relish the idea of Pam commuting to Pratt from Scranton—and he had no doubt at all she’d get the job.

“Jim, we’re ready for you.” David stood at the door and waved him in. They shook hands, and Jim took his seat.

“Just so all our cards are on the table, here,” David began. “And there are no surprises: I don’t know how I feel about hiring a Sixers fan.”

“Oh, I should leave.” Jim started to get up and then sat down again as they both laughed. He and David had bonded over basketball like their wives bonded over art—David didn’t like the Sixers but respected The Process, and was himself a self-avowed doomed Knicks fan—and they’d established a comfortable banter about the respective incapacity of their teams.

David riffled through the papers in front of him. “Uh, let me ask you a question, Jim. You’re clearly a very bright guy.”

“Thanks.” Where was this going?

David went on in the same vein. “Always hit your numbers, personable, you make a great impression on everyone you meet—“

Honestly, this kind of complimentary lead-up made Jim nervous. It reminded him of his mother, who loved him dearly but would often, back when he was just treading water at Dunder Mifflin, wind up this kind of list with “so why don’t you have a girlfriend.” He wanted to head David off before whatever the Dunder Mifflin Corporate equivalent was—so he cracked a joke. “I’m sorry, wait, so is the question ‘How’d I get to be so awesome?’ Because, I don’t have an answer for you.”

David laughed, but apparently the interruption sidetracked him. “Uh, oh, hey, do you have your quarterly numbers?”

Now he was on firmer ground. “Yes, absolutely.”

“And that, uh, questionnaire.” There was a long HR form that he and Karen had spent a good time that morning making fun of to each other and wondering if Toby had had a hand in making it. “Sorry to make you fill that thing out…”

Rule one: don’t make your boss apologize in an interview. They don’t like it and it makes them feel bad. “Oh, no, absolutely.” What was he saying? Why had the absolutelys he used on Dwight started to crop up? But David was still talking.

“…that’s a HR formality. We have this very irritating HR guy here, he’s probably the only person you’re not gonna like. Kendall. Ugh.” David laughed and Jim reached down to pull out the questionnaire from his briefcase. Papers cascaded, including one attached, if he was not very much mistaken, to a cleaned-up gold yogurt lid like the ones Pam had made for the Office Olympics a while back—or like the one Pam had eaten for lunch yesterday. Attached was a note, or rather a caricature—of him, as a red kangaroo with boxing gloves, and the tagline “knock ‘em dead.” His heart warmed. If he were the Grinch, it would have grown six sizes—since he wasn’t, he was worried it would burst out of his chest.

“So, first up…” David was still going on, so Jim hurried to catch up.

“There you go.” He handed over the quarterly numbers—he’d done really well since coming back, partly because for once in his life he felt motivation towards the future—and the questionnaire.

“How do you think you function here in New York?” OK. A real question. Game face. Do this for Pam, who thinks you can knock ‘em dead.

“Honestly? Pretty well. There are places open here after eight, which is a plus.” David laughed. “I haven’t spent a ton of time here, but it reminds me of another city I know, a city where I really turned everything around: Sydney, Australia.” He went on to describe how he (and Pam) had explored the city and how the energy and vitality of the city had ignited his creativity (mostly to get out of moving to Stamford, but he omitted that key detail).

“Great, great.” David nodded. “You’ve been in the Scranton branch a long time.” Jim tried hard not to think of that as a condemnation. “What have you liked most about that place?”

Without hesitation he knew the answer to that. “The friendships.” Pam. Karen. Toby. Kevin. David himself, although he wasn’t actually at Scranton. Even Kelly, Dwight, Michael…all of them were, in one way or another, his friends. Even if in Dwight’s case it probably didn’t make sense to anyone but him and Pam—not even Dwight.

“Okay. Well, we want the person who takes this position to be here for the long haul. So… long haul. Where do you see yourself in ten years?” This was a classic, and one he’d prepared for with Pam when they’d done mock interviews in their living room. Although they hadn’t mentioned the point he felt compelled to start with.

“Well, personally, I’m kind of hoping to be married with a couple of kids by then.” He grinned at David. “But I’m going to assume you meant professionally, in which case, David, I don’t think I’m going to be VP of Northeast Sales at Dunder Mifflin.” This was the shock start, intended to get attention. “Because I don’t think there will be a VP of Northeast Sales at Dunder Mifflin.” He leaned forward. “We’re going to have to pivot from our traditional way of doing things. Do you remember what happened when Stamford closed? Josh Porter and Ryan Howard tried to steal business away and join with our larger competitors. We’re going to see a lot more of that over the coming years: moves towards consolidation, moves towards acquisition.” He straightened. “But I don’t think we should be playing those games. I think what makes Dunder Mifflin Dunder Mifflin, what makes it tick, is the personal touch. That’s why Michael’s actually surprisingly effective at Scranton: he has some odd ideas, but they’re his, and our customers respond to that. I think ten years from now Dunder Mifflin is going to look different: we’re going to use the Internet more, we’re going to provide things we don’t provide right now, and we’re not going to be organized the way we’re organized now. But I want to be here; I want to be a part of it. I think we need to move ourselves towards providing a more all-inclusive product: not just paper and stationary, but more graphic design, more website production, more marketing and development in general. I said I want to be a part of it, but ten years from now I want to be running that. I want to be making sure Dunder Mifflin provides everything people use paper for—not just the paper they use for it.”

David nodded, then grinned. “Well put. I’m guessing Pam came up with the part about graphic design.” He winked. “But we won’t hold that against you. We believe in teamwork—friendships, right?”

Jim grinned back. “Right.”

David leaned back. “I have a bunch of other questions here that HR is making me ask. I’m going to ask you them, but Jim—I think we both know where we stand. You dirty Sixers fan.”

**

Pam was very confused. This would ordinarily not be a good thing when one was in a final-round interview that one wanted very badly to do well on, but that was itself the confusing thing. This didn’t feel like any interview she’d been on before.

“And this is where we do the classes that don’t need quite as much room.” Her ‘interviewer’ led her into a hallways filled with what looked like, and probably were, normal classrooms. “Things like our cartooning class—which I’m sure you’ll want to take, with your eye for the ridiculous—and of course the computer-based design courses.” They passed a classroom filled with Apple desktops. “But what I really wanted to show you is up ahead.” They entered a much larger room, and unlike the others this was filled with people: students, intent on their canvases, an instructor circling the room, and a man standing in the middle who was, unless she was very much mistaken, extremely extremely naked.

She was not mistaken.

Heads swiveled towards them as they entered the room.

“Hello, Audrey,” called the instructor to her guide. “What can we do for you? Make it quick, Inigo here is paid by the hour.”

Inigo grinned slowly. “By which she means please, take your time.”

“I’ll be just a minute, Dale.” Audrey—that was the woman’s name! Pam had been so flustered by the lack of interviewing in this interview that she’d forgotten—waved at the students. “Everyone, say hello to Pam. She’s one of our admitted students for the fall.”

“Hi, Pam,” the class chorused, but Pam barely heard it. Admitted? Surely there was some mistake.

“Now, Pam,” Audrey continued, “this is our figure-painting room. Don’t worry, the models aren’t always naked.” Pam was well aware she was coloring up, but it had nothing to do with Inigo, impressive as he might be. It had to do with the idea that she was going to have to explain to this perfectly lovely woman that she was not yet an admitted student and she was dreading that conversation and its attendant embarrassment. “I thought, since you did such lovely work with your young model back in…Scranton, right?...you’d be spending a lot of time in here. We have voluntary as well as scheduled class times here.” She apparently noticed that Pam was discombobulated, because she took gentle hold of her arm and steered her back into the hall. “Thank you, Dale!”

“Bye, Pam!” Everyone in the class chorused again.

“Now, Pam, you’re not going to clam up on me just because of a naked man, are you?” Audrey chuckled, and Pam felt her heart sink through her shoes.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just…I think there must have been some mistake. I’m here for an interview?” She avoided Audrey’s eyes. “I’m not an admitted student.” She slowly raised her eyes. She was a fancy new Beesly. She could say this to someone’s face. “I think you might have meant someone else.” Although, if so, what was all of that about her portfolio? This woman had clearly seen it.

“Oh, I see!” Audrey clapped her hands and started walking, which required Pam to move to keep pace with her or be left behind. “There has been a mistake, but it’s not the one you think it is, dear.” They quickly reached what Pam realized was Audrey’s office, where they’d started the tour—the floorplan must have been circular—and entered. Audrey went straight to her desk and picked up a folder Pam recognized as her own portfolio. “This is an interview, but it’s not an admissions interview.” Audrey flipped the folder around to show Pam the giant “ADMITTED” sticker on the front with a blank underneath it. “This is an advisor interview. We’re checking to see if you and I are compatible, or if you’d like to work with another faculty member.”

“Oh.” Pam sat down heavily in the chair in front of Audrey’s desk. “I see. Uh, thanks?”

“You’re very welcome, dear.” Audrey sat down at her desk and put her hands flat on the desk itself. “Shall we start over?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” No wonder the woman knew her portfolio well enough to comment on it! “I’d be happy to work with you.”

“Excellent. Then that’s settled.” Audrey picked up a pen and wrote her own name in block letters underneath the ADMITTED on the sticker. “Now, is there anything else I can tell you about Pratt?”

An hour later, dazed with success and still only barely really accepting that she was in to art school, Pam sat at the fountain where she was supposed to meet Jim. Neither of them had known which of their interviews would finish first, so they’d agreed to meet as close to halfway between as they could without being in the water—at least, as close as they could and could also easily find on the map.

“Hey.” Jim walked up to her—she must have been really deep in her own head not to notice his approach—and smiled down on her. “How’d it go?”

She took a deep breath, and could see the look of concern that passed across his face. “It went…” suddenly things clicked into place and she bounced to her feet in front of him and threw her arms around him, burying her head in his chest. Everything she’d experienced that morning poured out of her in a single rapidfire sentence into his pectoral muscle. “It was really weird because apparently I’m already accepted and the lady interviewing me was just trying to figure out if she should be my advisor and now she is my advisor and I got in. I got in, Jim!”

“I’m not sure I heard all of that, but it sounds to me like you got in?” He gently moved her away from his chest and bent down to kiss her. “That’s wonderful, Beesly.”

“Thank you!” She was suddenly full of air, like a parade float when they turned on the helium. “I’m going to art school!” She spun in a little circle and then looked up at him quizzically. “What about you?” Oh no, her heart said. This is when he tells you the bad news. He didn’t get it. He’s not moving here. You’re going to have to do this long-distance, either from him or from school. Well, from school, because she wasn’t moving if he wasn’t. She started to brace herself.

He must have noticed it because he brandished his cellphone at her. This was confusing for a moment until he explained. “Just got off the phone with David Wallace. It sounds like we’re both moving to the Big Apple.” He bent down to kiss her again, but she put a finger across his lips.

“Did you just call it the Big Apple?” He nodded, her finger still against his mouth.  “Dork.” She leaned up and kissed him, and he spun her around in a circle until she was facing the fountain and he was between her and the bench. “Like I would ever let you live in a different place from me, Halpert.”

“Speaking of which…” he put her down and she instantly felt the loss of his arms around her—but only for a moment, because he was getting down on one knee and fumbling in his pocket. Oh my god, she thought. This was really happening. There were no jitters, which surprised her a little—just pure excitement, the exact level of excitement there had not been the last time she’d been proposed to. Assuming that was what he was doing and he wasn’t about to tie his shoelace. “Would you care to make that official?” She started to nod frantically and he grinned. “Pamela Morgan Beesly, will you marry me?” She nodded harder and he quirked an eyebrow. “I’m kind of gonna need a verbal yes/no here, Pam.”

“Yes, you dork, I’ll marry you.” She launched herself at him but he caught her on his knee, where she perched as she kissed him again until they had to come up for air, not that she wanted to.

“Thank God.” He grinned. “After all, I might have told David Wallace that in ten years I wanted to be married with kids, and that was going to be pretty difficult if the only woman I want to marry turned me down.”

“You told David…” she slapped his shoulder. “After all the times we rehearsed that question?”

“Hey, I told him the other stuff too.”

“You better have.”

He shrugged the arm not holding her on his lap. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“So….” He drawled this out. “I don’t really believe in long engagements…”

“Go on.”

“What do you say to a fall wedding?” He held up a hand. “Late enough that we can plan it around the start of my new job and then your fall semester. Say, October? 8th?”

She smiled. This was what an engagement was supposed to be like. A decisive decision to spend the rest of their lives together from that moment on. “October 8th it is.”

He squeezed her close. “All right. Then it’s a date.”