June, of course, is winter in Sydney, Australia, as indeed it is in the entire southern hemisphere, and they do teach geography in the Scranton, PA public schools.

But despite what ought to have been quite sufficient preparation for this basic fact, Jim was rapidly realizing that he really hadn’t planned this Sydney trip farther than “go away from Pam Beesly fast.” It was colder than he’d expected—fortunately, he’d tossed a rain jacket in with his other things due to an abundance of caution, and colder than he expected still wasn’t actually cold—and after eating a ravenous lunch at the Thirsty Bird he didn’t have the foggiest clue what to do next. He supposed that when in a city you’d never been in before, you should walk around and see things, so that was what he did. He walked up and down the central business district in Sydney, and possibly beyond (he didn’t really know) staring into shop windows and pondering buying trinkets and geegaws, but always putting them back, because the person he always wanted to buy them for was getting married to someone else…sometime soon.

That was the other reason he’d gone to Australia, of course. He was terrible at time zones, and so he didn’t actually know when Pam was getting married. He felt somehow that he’d feel it deep in his gut when she was married, some kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi voices-shouted-out-and-were-suddenly-silenced thing, but until the actual deed was done he was unable to calculate the difference in his head. That was on the one hand merciful, because it meant he couldn’t stand there and say “in twenty-seven hours she’ll be Pamela Anderson” or anything like that, but it was also excruciating because it meant he was always looking over his metaphorical shoulder in fear that it was now.

But he wasn’t there for Pam. He wasn’t there for Pam. He wasn’t there for Pam. That became his mantra. He wasn’t at the little tea shop for Pam, even though the little teal teapot in the window was a painful reminder. He wasn’t at the frozen yogurt place for Pam, and so it was mere coincidence that he kept glancing wistfully over at the mixed berry flavor (created by swirling blueberry and raspberry). He wasn’t at the ice skating rink, or the basketball court, or the dojo for Pam either. And he definitely wasn’t taking a Sydney Harbor Cruise—the last time he’d gotten on a boat thinking of Pam had been bad enough.

Nor was he going to the Opera House, not right now, not when he had to work so hard to be not there for Pam.

That last promise to himself, at least, he was able to keep, if only by the happy coincidence that he found himself back at his hostel, now sans German tourists, and sat back down heavily on his bed. What was he going to do in Sydney?

**

Pam did not anticipate falling asleep on the flight from LAX to Sydney, so of course she did. This would have been a matter of grave frustration to her, had she been aware of it, which definitionally she was not, because she had hoped to spend the time planning what she was going to say to Jim when she got there, with a side dish of how she expected to find him in a city of several million people and probably more than one American tourist with a cute but dorky haircut.

Instead, she slept. It was much needed, in all truth, for she had not really slept, not proper good sleep, the kind that relaxes and relieves stress, worry, and obligation, for at least month if not longer. At first she’d blamed it on wedding planning stress, then obviously on Jim’s kiss and declaration, and then finally on her own nerves about the realization that no, it really wasn’t working with Roy and the painful reality of cancelling the wedding. And last night she had literally not slept, as she’d had to pack and then meet Izzy ridiculously early for the long drive to her long flight. She slept the sleep of the blessed, and it was beautifully, mercifully relaxing.

Of course, she did not sleep fifteen hours, so it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a chance to gameplan her encounter with Jim, if she could engineer one, but at least she was in a position, once she awoke, to attack the problem with new eyes and something less than a multiweek sleep deficit on her side.

Unfortunately, neither her new eyes nor her relaxation provided any more clues as to what she should actually do.