May 2009

The little white pill made no sound when it hit the mosaic of tiles that made up the bathroom floor.

That would make sense because after ten minutes crawling on her hands and knees in nothing but a towel which was slowly slipping off, it had still not surfaced.

It shouldn’t have been hard to spot, a spec of white amongst the speckled gray, multi-sized rectangles that had lined the room’s lower surface, probably since before Jim was even born. In their schedule to rehab and modernize the house, the bathroom was last on the list and now would be delayed even further unless the new company she was part of took off, something that was not looking likely.

But she wasn’t thinking of that as she felt around for the errant pill, checking lines of dingy ivory that ran between the tiles and were almost certainly not the color of the original grout and hadn’t been in years. But even in its soiled state it seemed to be the one place the small white speck might be camouflaged from view. 

She decided the pill must have spontaneously combusted when it bounced off the counter to the bathroom floor and at 4am that seemed a reasonable explanation as any for why she still couldn’t find it.

She couldn’t waste more time looking for something she believed no longer existed, at least in her current state of semi-consciousness. The van would be pulling up soon and if she weren’t out there waiting for it, she couldn’t be sure Michael wouldn’t honk or worse yet, call for her with the megaphone he used to advertise their new company as they drove around making deliveries.

Already running behind, she abandoned her search and instead spun the wheel one click to the left and pushed out the next tablet into the safekeeping of her hand and then right up to her mouth where she swallowed it without even a sip of water to wash it down.

Jim always seemed amazed at her ability to do so, given that he absolutely needed to drink something when taking any kind of medicine, even the tiny red sinus pills that he doubled up on while they suffered through their first cold together. He insisted with a nose like his, the regular dose wasn’t enough and because he had to take four instead of the normal two, that’s why he had to have an excess of liquid to wash them down, preferably apple juice. During that illness, she teased him for it, asking him if her needed a spoonful of sugar too. In answer he pulled her close and with his husky voice that was even sexier from his cold, responded, always if you’re the nurse to provide it.

She continued to give him a hard time about his pill-taking difficulties since then but always made sure to bring him a glass of something with which to wash down any medicine he needed to swallow, often offering the patient a little extra sugar with his pills.

As for her, she had been on her birth control so long she could pop them like candy and had taking them down to a science. She knew she could skip the last seven ones of the pack, they were inactive, just there to keep her on track and if she wanted to delay her monthly visitor a few days she could just start the new one early, something she never did before she started at art school and had to schedule her period to make its visit when Jim was not also in town.

Now it was a regular thing. She would adjust her cycle to their plans so it didn’t interfere with birthdays, romantic holidays, even weekends.

She was already off cycle this month but she wasn’t all that worried. The pill, she figured would show up, later or tomorrow, and she could take it then and still be protected. Besides, they seemed a little off rhythm themselves, right now there wasn’t anything going on to protect herself from.

The lost pill was never found.

By the time she got home that night, exhausted and exasperated and more anxious than the day before about how much longer she’d have a job, even if it was one that still hadn’t paid her a cent, she didn’t even remember to feed herself dinner much less recall the pill that likewise didn’t make its way to her mouth.

The next morning at 4 am, since Jim had carried her from the couch to the bed the night before, there was no alarm set to wake her. She was still snoring gently, her body curled up against the warmth of her future husband. It wasn’t until she heard the old van’s horn an hour later that she realized she’d overslept. It was Jim who went outside to silence him while she scrambled to get ready. She was lucky to run a comb through her curls and stuff a breakfast bar in her mouth before she was off.

Back in the bathroom, the dial remained in position on day 13, with another forgotten pill still encased in its plastic protection within the rotating wheel.

The entire week was a blur of early mornings, extra stress and not a lot of sleep.

By the time the weekend came she could barely remember to take off her make-up and change into nightclothes before she went to sleep, much less know which pills she’d missed and where she was in the cycle.

It didn’t matter all that much in any case since, she’d been too tired and too tense to even think about sex any time during the week.

The next two days off seemed to pass in a whirl, reason being she’d slept for almost all of it, and that was the most exciting thing that was happening in her bed.

While she managed to stay awake, aside from trying to sneak in some wedding planning and the weekend's regular household chores of cleaning, laundry and food shopping, she and Jim worked together to polish up her resume, and his too. Ever since Charles Miner showed up, Jim was feeling like his credentials would also need to be at the ready.

For the immediate situation, however, it was mostly so she could apply for some weekend jobs.

Jim had insisted she didn’t need to.

He swore to her he would never use money as a reason to postpone marrying her.

That though the words had not yet been said officially, for richer or for poorer was how he loved her, and he would have Creed marry them in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot if need be. Jim was sure he had some kind of ordination and license to perform weddings.

Of course, he also snuck in a dig about the fool who lost her over something as irrelevant as finances.

But even with his promises and assurances they would get married before the year’s end, she knew money was on his mind. Not just for the wedding, but to keep up the payments on the house and so they could start a family once they were espoused, something that had been coming up more and more during the pillow talk about the future that followed their nighttime, and sometimes daytime activities, back when they were engaged in them regularly.

Finances were on her mind too, because while she would marry Jim in her new professional work suit, hell she’d marry him in the old tee shirt of his she often wore to bed, she did want to be able to walk down an aisle in her dream dress, in a church adorned with flowers and celebrate the union with a reception at least as nice as Phyllis’ had been.

Different for sure, as she was no copycat, and besides that event had been planned previously with a much lesser groom in mind. For this future husband, she wanted everything to be sparkly and new to match how he made her feel, all the time.

Even lately, when she was too tired and preoccupied to let him take her there in the bodily sense.

How she wished she had a DeLorean with a flux capacitor or Hermione’s time turner so she could go back to when she had her original response to Michael’s going off and starting a new paper company. The one where she knew it was a big risk and the future mother in her tried to cajole him into giving up on his half-day dream. That was the instinct she knew she should have followed instead of the gut reaction she imprudently reacted on later that day.

While she was at it, she would time travel back a little further to the day Jim insisted on wearing his tux to work and get him to change his mind or at the very least bring a suit so he could swap out his attire once Charles Miner showed up.

Then, even if she still had her momentary lapse of reason, at least Jim wouldn’t be so concerned about losing his job too and their having a mortgage, an upcoming wedding and zero income.

He was good at putting on a brave face for the cameras at work and especially for her, but she knew it was affecting him. There was only so much he could hide from her.

What she also feared he was keeping concealed was his anger or at least disappointment in her.

Had she still been with Roy when she quit her job to follow Michael in his new venture, she would have gotten an earful and then some, once the cameras were no longer capturing his reaction. Had it still been Roy she was going home to during this time, each difficulty or problem the new situation created for her, from the long hours and early mornings to the lack of sleep and most of all, the effect on her libido, would have been matched by a larger beratement from him on the other end.

There was a part of her, so conditioned by her former finance’s ways, that assumed every man, even Jim, would lose their patience when things didn’t go as planned and have little tolerance for the long stretch when she wasn’t in the mood.

After over a week, she half-expected him to carry on about his needs in response to the later. As for the former, she had more than thought he was going to at the least give her a bit of a hard time when they were no longer being filmed the day of her exodus.

After all, she of all people knew better, knew what a colossal error it was to give up what she had to be part of the Michael Scott Paper Company.

It wasn’t her biggest mistake.

She’d had a few doozies before this one.

Saying yes to Roy for one. Saying no to Jim.

She had come to her senses just in the nick of time to fix the first one. The second took a little help from outside forces to make right. If not for Michael Scott’s insane coal walk challenge, David Wallace’s practical interview questions and a whole lot of courage from her, she might be in a different situation altogether. She didn’t even like to think about what that might look like.

Even art school in the end was, in her opinion, a mistake that left her both disillusioned about a career in graphic design but also dissatisfied in her old job as a receptionist and ultimately became the catalyst for her walk out.

In those first weeks, when things seemed at their worse, when she would come home too stressed to cook or even eat and it was her holding out on being intimate, she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Jim to display his anger, call her a fool, tell her this was not what he signed up for.

Her logical side told her it was Jim; he wasn’t like that and there was nothing to worry about that they hadn’t made love in a few weeks. Their relationship was about so much more than the physical and he was supportive of all her choices, even this rash, impulsive, stupid, stupid move.

But there were those moments when her irrational side pushed out ahead and she worried if her running out of Dunder Mifflin and joining up with of all people, Michael Scott, was going to be the very thing that destroys yet another of her relationships, turning them from Jam, the adorable name that Kelly had coined for them, to jelly.

But Jim kept insisting he was fine; he would wait forever for her. In the years he ached for her while she was with Roy, he had gotten quite good at suppressing what his body desired. As long as he had her heart now, that was all that mattered to him, although he also let her know with a very Jim-like smirk, he rather did enjoy their sex life and would be ready and waiting when she wanted it to resume.

Deep down she knew that he’d say something like that and mean it.

In fact, the only time he did raise his voice was when she pushed him one too many times to yell at her for the predicament she put them in. He yelled, yelled how much he loved her and because of that love, he could never be mad at her for trying something new.

That night the passion he had while professing his love was enough to get her going, but it seemed that day had been a tough one at the office for him, perhaps why he could no longer accept her self-condemnation.

Another setback with Charles had him stewing in worries of his own and that concern about his work performance seemed to have a direct correlation on his performance elsewhere.

It was turning to jelly alright.

 ---

By the next Friday, another pill was forgotten as the dial, much like her head, was no longer in sync with the days.

The ring in her pill case wasn’t the only thing out of sync. Coinciding with her first few sales, when she started to gain a little confidence and feel a little better about her new job, Jim was hitting a new low at his. He’d finally discovered what a rundown* was and it wasn’t good, not for him or his sense of security at Dunder Mifflin.

The foot he’d lodged in his mouth during that first tux-clad meeting had become permanently stuck there, Charles Miner not able to be won over by the charm that Jim usually possessed.

No matter what he did, he only seemed to get himself deeper and it was making him feel like the piles of manure they’d had to shovel during their stay at Schrute Farm. Worse yet, it was Dwight who seemed to have the new boss fooled into the delusion that he was not only normal, but professional and savvy in the ways of the Scranton’s operations. It was Dwight who had become Charles’ guy, making him in a way, untouchable.

Pranking Dwight now was a big no-no, not while under the watch of the new boss.

Without that release, and her right there at reception to cheer him up through the even more interminable days, he seemed to be bringing the pressures of work home with him.

When Andy began barking at him about her, something he of course mentioned to her before he started in on his lesson-teaching prank, he thought it might provide the same boost to his mood that pranking Dwight always had. Plus, with him explaining to Andy how much love he had for her and what a good relationship should look like, he was ready to express that love in the way that they’d not been able to all month.  

They got a little head start on what was going to be an active night when he came down to her new office to share the details of how his prank went down.

Michael told them to get a room as he passed them on his way back from his sales call. When they followed him back in, they learned how that night, Pam would need to stay late to help prepare the order for the newly landed Harper Collins account.

Once home, she tried, tried to get herself in the mood, but she was just too tired.

The next night, it was him. The day of watching Charles being duped into believing Dwight was managerial material, and Dwight rubbing it back in Jim’s face took its toll. No matter what Pam tried, Jim couldn’t get the thought of Dwight as manger out of his head and there was no way he was letting Dwight into their bedroom.

Not since before they were dating had they had this long a dry spell.

When they first were together, they waited, it being too soon after he’d been with Karen. But that lasted about two weeks before his gift of peonies broke down her walls.

When her father came to stay, they curbed their activity for the time he was in the house, but the minute he left to run an errand or go to work himself, they would immediately find each other and get together for what little time they had privacy.

Even while she had been in New York and he in Scranton, they found creative ways to connect and pleasure each other from across the miles.

But this was something they’d never experienced before and didn’t quite know how to get over it.

That is until once again, David Wallace came to their rescue.

---

“I was going to send out the search parties soon. It’s been too long.”

Beth, though busy at another table, had noticed the couple the minute they walked in. They looked as happy as ever; obviously they were still basking in the pleasures of being reunited, engaged and living together in their new home.

The costs of that new home and an upcoming wedding to save for, if Beth had to guess, were playing a role in keeping them from coming in more often, but she was still ready to give them a playful tease for staying away so long now that Pam was back in Scranton full time.

Pam’s face seemed more radiant than she even remembered as Beth focused on the bright smile that was drawn across her face as she passed by the other diners on the way to their seat.  But it was the glow that Beth noticed, the rosy hue in her cheeks that most often didn’t show up until she had her first Berry Smash cocktail.

The grasp Jim had on her hand, firm with love, not ownership, combined with what Beth’s excellent intuition sensed was a kind of pride, was written on his. It had her wondering if there was something special that brought them in tonight.

Whether or not there was, when she finished with the table she was serving, she rushed to theirs to greet her favorite couple and throw them a bit of guilt for their long absence.

“Yes, it sure has,” Jim said flashing Pam one of the signature grins that Beth knew by now had a second meaning behind them.

Beth had an uncanny ability to read her customers, and these two she knew better than most. That expression said he had something else on his mind and it was not the meal, at least not the one he was going to have at the restaurant tonight.

“Way too long. I think maybe the longest we’ve gone.”

He spoke, never taking his eyes off the woman across from him even as he responded to Beth’s comment.

Pam did look up at her, and she saw it, there in Pam’s expression, that little sparkle that said something magical had happened that day.

“We’ve had a lot going on lately, a huge amount on our plates that was keeping us from our regular activities, but we finally made it back and are looking forward to enjoying our meal again tonight.”

Beth noticed the twinkle in Pam’s eyes, the suggestion not quite hidden in her expression as she flashed back to her fiancé, the corners of her mouth ticking upward as she spoke. Something was up with these two this evening, that was for sure but it was clearly not something they were going to share.

What they did finally spill were the events than had kept them away so long. Beth stayed with the couple long enough to hear about her big move as well as the reason they were back celebrating tonight.

“Say congrats to our little mogul here, in a matter of weeks, she went from her first paper sale to helping sell off the whole company.”

Pam blushed as Jim went on to brag about how she managed to land a promotion and pay increase and in a roundabout way put Jim back into good graces at their place of business, by way of summoning the Dunder Mifflin CFO, who was still a big Jim fan, into town to buy out the Michael Scott Paper Company that she was an instrumental part of.

Beth, while getting no points for the occasion, was thrilled all the same for them but it was a busy night, some award ceremony at the local middle school had swarms of families coming in to honor their offspring. She apologized for having to leave them so quickly but had to get back to her other patrons and was off soon after they ordered.

The crowds kept her occupied much of the night so she didn’t even get to deliver their meals personally, having only a quick minute to check in again as they were finishing up their meal faster than she’d ever known the two of them to eat.

They were quite evidently in a rush to get home for their something sweet after dinner.

What Beth didn’t know was that tonight they started with the dessert.  They were anxious to get home to have a second taste.

---

The buyout offer and rehiring of Pam served as the initial aphrodisiac, and the champagne she polished off with Michael, ensured they would not be able to wait until after the visit with Beth at Christopher’s that he reserved for them as soon as he heard the news.

When she exited from the conference room, he took one look at her and knew there would be no trouble tonight. In fact, they’d be lucky to keep themselves from attacking each other in the car on the way home.

It was the fastest he’d ever driven home, the feel of her fingers on his thigh and running through his hair making it a quite uncomfortable trip as his pants seemed to shrink more and more with every block.

The sound of her giddy laugh and her chants of can you believe it? made it difficult for him to focus on the road and he almost pulled off to the side and took her right there on Mulberry Street.  

Somehow, he managed to get them home safely.

When it happened, on the entrance way floor since they barely made it through the front door before their clothes were thrown off and their bodies were reunited, it felt like stars colliding.

The way they melded into each other, their bodies becoming one in a harmonious dance on the tiled hallway, it was assurance they were Jam once again and would be forever.