January, 2009

They had been living in the house about a month and already it felt like their home.

In the end they did wind up setting their selves up in the master bedroom with new bedding and décor. Jim was only weird about having sex in it the first couple of nights. After a few more, he was able to erase it from her mind that Betsy and Gerald had ever slept there, or had done anything remotely similar to the activities they engaged in quite regularly. 

Along the halls, the old artwork and family pictures were replaced by Pam’s paintings and a singular photo she had enlarged of the two of them. As much as she appreciated seeing the dorky teenage Jim posed with his siblings, the rest of the childhood photos, graduation portraits and framed memories detailing the Halpert family history no longer belonged on the walls of the home she and Jim now shared. Besides, Betsy wanted them for her own new home.

The creepy clown however, was still there since Jim hadn’t figured a way to remove it from the wall, but not for lack of trying. Every night he warred with the framed vagabond in attempts to exile him from their otherwise picture-perfect home.

He read online tips from Bob Vila that suggested using a dry wall knife.

No luck.

Pam suggested using the turpentine she cleaned her brushes with.

All that did was leave a chemical odor in the air and stain a bit of the surrounding wall.

Even with a crowbar, that ugly tramp wouldn’t budge.

But other than the hideous print which she was still having a hard time understanding why his parents ever thought to buy much less hang on a wall—it could hardly be called art, that coming from someone who knew how subjective art was meant to be—and the den’s shag carpeting that sometimes gave her little electric shocks when she shuffled through it in her woolen socks, she loved her new home with Jim.

The best part, aside from the fact that she shared it with her future husband, was her dedicated art studio. Much of her spare time she spent in it, painting, but not until she brought home a space heater and Jim added some better lighting, a fresh coat of wall paint, and a plush, non-shag rug for the gallery-like, sitting area she created in the corner.

Sometimes Jim would recline in the papasan chair she brought from her place and watch her work, plying her with silly questions about her techniques and muses until she would throw him out for asking too many and keeping her from her craft.

But sometimes instead of throwing him out she would let herself become completely distracted and these times she was glad she decided the working art studio needed a cozy corner as the concrete garage floor was cold and hard. Maybe a shag rug would have been perfect in the space after all.

It was one of those times, where passion prevailed over inspiration, the fumes of paint serving as an aphrodisiac to ignite their desire for each other.

At least it was until her phone rang.

The first time they ignored it, the shrill ringtone unable to quell their appetite for each other in the moment.

But when it buzzed again, no more than 5 minutes later, Pam, out of concern for her mother who had been going through a rough patch with her dad, pulled herself from Jim’s embrace in thoughts to answer the call, checking the name on the screen before she did.

When she set the phone back down instead of flipping it open, Jim approached her again, nuzzling his lips into the spot on her neck that instantly got her excited and craving more.

“So not your mom, I guess,” he murmured into her soft skin.

“Nope,” she whispered hoping he would be too preoccupied with getting back to what they were doing to press her more.

“Neither call?”

Now she knew he was fishing. He was curious if the caller was the same both times and if so, who was so anxious to talk to her. But knowing how he felt about her friendship with Alex, she was not anxious to tell him. All the same, she was not in the habit of keeping things from him and while technically not offering up the information was not a secret, it wasn’t exactly honest either. Not telling him who it was would just make her look like she was hiding something which she absolutely was not.

“No, it was Alex.”

With the mention of his name, Jim pulled back from her neck and stopped kissing her just as she was afraid he might.

Jim was aware she still talked with the friends she made at Pratt from time to time, Alex mostly. He knew Alex was the one she had the most in common with, in that he was also a little older than the other students and had come to the extended design program after having worked a few years in an altogether different trade. They’d become good friends while she was in New York.

She also knew it bothered Jim, mostly because he insisted Alex wanted to be something more, despite Pam’s constant assurance that no matter what he wanted, she and Alex would never be more than just friends.

“Again, didn’t you just speak to him earlier?”

Pam returned to her easel and keeping her back to him, began to pack up her paints and brushes. The interruption and subsequent divulgence of the caller had already changed the tenor of the evening. There would be no more painting tonight or any other forms of creative expression for that matter.

But really there was no other way things could have gone once her phone rang. She couldn’t have ignored it with all that was going on with her parents, but when he all but asked who it was, she had no choice but to reveal the caller’s identity. It was the only action that did not feel like a betrayal to her future husband, even if she knew it would cut short what was heating up to be a very inspired art session.

She kept her head down as she draped a cloth over the work in progress and responded with a little edge to her tone.

“Yeah, my friend, she exaggerated her voice on the last word, “wanted my opinion on an important assignment he was working on for a class.”

She heard him mumble under his breath in response.

“And there was no one else he could ask.”

She ignored his last comment as she picked up her phone and started back to the house leaving him to close all the lights and the studio, hoping that the tension that was forming could be left there and not brought into their home with them.

                                       *******************************************

Jim stewed as he pulled down the heavy door and twist-closed the dead bolt. Before he turned back towards the house, he tried to access the rational side of his brain, the side that assured him how much Pam loved him and how her continued friendship with Alex was just that, nothing more than what she shared with Dwight or Stanley or Andy. Tonight, however, he couldn’t stop thinking of what he overheard back when Alex had tried to convince her to stay in New York. It was then that he recognized it, what Alex felt about her because it had once been him, having those same feelings about someone else’s fiancée.

Usually, he didn’t let his own jealousy get the better of him, but something about this was getting under his skin. She’d already spoken to him once today and now he was calling back and trying her repeatedly when she didn’t answer. Plus, the fact that his call came in when it did and pretty much cooled off what up to that point was getting pretty hot, didn’t help his mood or his levelheadedness.

As much as he wanted to leave his extreme emotions back in the garage studio, he was still quite agitated as he caught up with her inside.

She was in the foyer, thumbing through the junk mail that she’d already sorted when they’d first gotten home that day. He came up behind her, placing a gentle hand on her back he hoped would counteract the irritation he was still feeling.

“You know why I get upset Pam. You know I’m usually pretty cool about him but you had already spoken to him earlier so I just don’t understand why he was calling again.”

“I didn’t know there was a limit to how often I can talk to my friends,” Pam responded hotly.

“You know that’s not what I meant. But his timing was as if he knew what he’d be interrupting.”

Her defensiveness was not helping him keep his calm. Neither was the feistiness that he usually encouraged, when she was standing up for herself against Michael or Kelly, something she’d been learning to do more and more. Even when directed at him, as it sometimes was, he appreciated her backbone. In this instance though, it was just intensifying the anger he was feeling toward the guy with boundary issues.

“Jim, I told him to let me know how he did with the assignment. I’m sure he was just calling to tell me about how he did when he finished his classes.”

“He couldn’t just text? Or leave a message. When you didn’t answer, why did he have to call again 5 minutes later?”

“I don’t know, Jim. Maybe it was a butt dial. Or maybe he just was excited to share. What’s the difference I didn’t take his call. And you know I don’t always take all his calls. I don’t encourage him, but he is my friend. Just like Crystal is your friend.”

“Crystal is Doug’s girlfriend.”

“Crystal would drop Doug in a hot minute if you were free.”

She threw down the circular she was holding and stomped off, but after a few steps turned on her heel back towards him.

“He’s just a friend Jim. I can have friends.”

“Not saying you can’t but Pam, you have to know he still likes you.”

“And he still knows I’m engaged.”

“Yeah, well, you were engaged once before, too.”

He regretted the words as soon as they escaped his lips but it was too late to take them back. Despite their heaviness, they stayed aloft in the air as if suspended in a cartoon talk bubble, the ugly declaration adhering to the wall like the painting that wouldn’t budge.

She stormed down the hall and into the bedroom. The door slammed and he was left standing in the room with the clown and his words and his regret.

                          *******************************************

Retreating to the den, he fell to the couch and let his face drop to the large hands that had only an hour earlier been running down the length of her back and cupping her bottom to draw her closer to his own body. The shift the night had taken seemed impossible with the unshakable love that filled the home they now shared. That bond, the security system for their happiness, akin to the ADT alarms that protected their doors and windows, was supposed to be impenetrable.

Yet here they were fighting over a phone call and a deep-rooted insecurity that still lingered and reared its head from time to time. It wasn’t her fault and he knew it. She’d done nothing wrong. If anything, it was him who had crossed the line years before, but if given to do it all over, he would do it again. Was this what Alex was doing now?

Thinking back on it, now on the other end of things, he had a very different perspective of it all. He could almost understand why Roy came close to rearranging his face when he had learned of Jim’s actions on the night the office had their casino event.

Still, he wasn’t Roy, and Alex wasn’t him. He had taken years to cross that line. Years where he watched her be taken for granted and overlooked and held back from all she was capable of. He’d spent years bonding with her over laughs, pranks, in-depth conversations and shared experiences. In those years he’d come to know her with an intimacy that proved deeper than what she had with the man she had committed to before she even had a chance to know who she was herself.

Alex met her four months ago, had only met Jim once and was pretty brazen in his not-so-subtle pursuit of someone whose heart was tied to someone else.

But like Pam said, she hadn’t taken his call tonight. She hadn’t hidden it from him either, and she only got angry after he reacted like a jealous fool. He tried to tell himself once before he wasn’t that guy, but maybe there was a little bit that was. For that he owed her an apology and so he made his way to the closed bedroom door.

He knocked lightly and waited for her to respond. Her voice was still tinged with ire as she did.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

“It’s your house.”

“Our house, Pam.”

Silence came from the other side of the door.

“Pam, I’m so sorry,” he whispered as he dropped his head against the wooden barrier separating them.

He heard her move towards the door but hadn’t expected it when she pulled it open. When she did, he came tumbling into the room, his gangly frame falling towards her, his hands groped to grab hold of her to keep him from face planting onto the carpet. As he fell to the ground anyway the anger that had encroached their happy new home dissolved away as hysterical laughter replaced it.

Looking up at her from the floor, tears in both their eyes from their uncontrollable giggles, he reached out his hand and she helped pull him upright.

“You didn’t need to grovel at my feet,” she teased. “A simple apology would have been sufficient.”

It felt good to joke, to be like them again.

The mishap and consequent amusement between them did more to soften the edge of their argument than words. The kiss that followed eliminated the need to say anything more.

But the next morning he awoke to a slight chill that had nothing to do with the drafty old house.

Pam was slightly quieter than usual as she dressed that morning, apparently still bothered by the events of the night before.

In an attempt to put it from her mind again, he reminded her of their evening plans.

“Don’t forget about our date at Christopher’s tonight.”

The smile she gave him took a bit of the cold he was sensing away but it wasn’t the beam he expected. Usually, the widening of her cheeks could melt ice from glass panes but this morning there still remained a thin layer of frost on the windows and in the room.

“I haven’t. I’ve been looking forward to sharing our good news with Beth since I got back.”

Then she turned towards Jim so he could help zip up her skirt, a good sign that while maybe not completely over their argument she was not holding firm onto it either.

                                *******************************************

“Let me see it, let me see it.”

Before they even sat down Beth was at the table, her excitement palpable, her smile baring teeth back to her molars.

Neither Jim nor Pam were surprised at her reaction but they both wondered how she already knew. It was their first dinner back as an engaged couple and it wasn’t like Jim had announced it to the hostess when he called to reserve.

“Oh Pam, it’s a beautiful ring.”

Beth looked up from the ring and back to Jim. “You did well. Wished you would have done it here but I’m just so happy for you, I don’t care I missed out.”

“Thanks, Beth. But how did you know?” Pam asked curiously.

“Well, I had the pleasure of serving an interesting couple, the Vance’s. They were quite affectionate with each other as they sat down. Naturally, I asked them if any special occasion had brought them in, and she, the wife, said it was no occasion but they’d been meaning to come here for a while. They mentioned the sweet couple in her office that also loved to come here. I’m not quite sure how I did, but I knew it had to be you two.”

Pam recalled it was Phyllis she had recommended Christopher’s to ages ago. Back when she was with Roy and still waiting to be brought here herself by someone other than her father.

That was also when Jim heard her suggestion, wanting so much to be the one to take her to the place she had raved about to their officemate. For years he waited by silently, never forgetting the exchange in the breakroom, finally getting the chance to retrieve the information from his Pam vault and take her to their now favorite place for their first date and even though it was slightly pricier and took longer to travel to, many more dates after that.

Phyllis sure had waited a long time to try out Pam’s suggestion. Pam thought it strange too that Phyllis hadn’t mentioned she’d come at last, especially since she had met Beth when she did.

“Let me tell you, I’m glad they mentioned knowing you too, because in the middle of the meal I came back to check on them and they were both gone from their seats. And they were gone for quite a while. It almost made me think they dashed and dined, but I thought there was no way they’d do something like that after telling me they knew you.”

“When was this?” Pam asked.

“It was a while ago now. You were still away in New York and since then I’ve been waiting for you to come back in. So, tell me all the details.”

A smile to match Beth’s spread across Pam’s cheeks as she told of the impromptu meeting, the rain and how romantic it was when Jim, out of the blue got down on bended knee, truly surprising her when she thought he no longer could.

“This calls for a celebration.”

Beth left them with menus that after their many visits they no longer needed, returning five minutes later with two glasses, the amber liquid inside effervescent with bubbles still rising to form a delicate ring of foam around the rim.

“Courtesy of the Vance’s,” she said as she placed the flutes down.

“What? How.”

Pam looked left and right searching the room for the other couple.

“They’re not here. But after our conversation they set it up to bring these to you when you came back.”

How nice of them, Pam reflected silently, feeling a little guilty about the not-so-nice thoughts she’d had about Phyllis when she sided with team new copier instead of team new chairs a few weeks back.

“How did it come up we’d gotten engaged?”

It was Jim who asked. Pam hadn’t needed to. Pam had no trouble picturing Phyllis and Beth hitting it off and it was no wonder the conversation got as detailed as it did. They were a lot alike, both henlike in their love of girl talk but not in a mean way, at least not Beth. Phyllis could be a little catty.

Oops, here she was disparaging Phyllis in her mind again.

She also knew how observant Phyllis always was. As far back as Pam could recall, she was onto the something brewing between her and Jim. Phyllis was likely the first to know when Jim began planning. She had been the one in charge of the party when he first wanted to ask.  

Pam assumed once the gab-fest began there would have been no stopping it. Phyllis was a gossip and it didn’t much matter with who she shared her confidences, even a waitress she just met.

“I can’t exactly remember because she had a lot to say. She told me how anyone with eyes could see you two were meant to be together but for years you both tried to deny it. She said you,” she looked at Jim, “would try to distract yourself with others but when you met Pam, nobody else ever had a chance.”

Beth turned her head again to face Pam, “And your guy, had no clue what he had or how you were slipping away day by day.”

Beth continued on telling them all she learned from their office friend, and next thing they knew, they were listening to Phyllis only the words were coming of the mouth of their waitress.

“They’re as done as this steak. They had been since the day Jim started. Just like us.”

Back in her own voice Beth added, “then she made this weird smile at Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. Yeah, I’m even calling him that, since it’s not only how he introduced himself but also what he signed on the credit card receipt.”

When Beth left them alone, it was Jim who spoke first.

“You know that’s true, I lost control of my heart the moment I saw you.”

“Me too, Jim. Me too. I just took a little longer to figure it out.”

“But that thing she said, the thing about you slipping away, it’s what I think about whenever I think about you talking to Alex. Even though I know that can’t happen to us I just…”

Jim shifted his gaze to her flute of champagne, a delicate few bubbles were still floating up to the surface.

“I just can’t seem to help what goes on in my brain when I think about anyone trying to get in between us. It’s not about trusting you, it’s about me and my own insecurities. I just get irrational. And that Alex, well there’s no way he doesn’t have a thing for you.”

“I’m well aware, Jim.”

“So, he’s told you, he’s into you?”

“Not exactly, but I’d seen it before.”

She paused, as she tried to find the right words to assure him that she was as done as Phyllis’  meal the evening she met Beth.

“But I’ve let him know in no uncertain terms that I am 100% in love with you and that’s not going to change ever.”

Jim nodded in understanding but Pam could still see on his face he wasn’t quite convinced.

She almost could see why he wouldn’t be. She was engaged before and yet while she still wore the ring Roy gave her, she fell in love with Jim.  Even though she knew this was it for her, that there was no possibility that she’d ever love anyone like she loved the man sitting across from her, she remembered feeling that kind of jealousy when he’d been with Karen.

She thought about how she would feel if he had stayed in touch with her, how insecure she would be if he still felt the need to talk to her. But there was a difference here and she had to make him try to see why she didn’t want to cut Alex off from her life.

“Jim, you know how when you try to talk to me about disabled lists and box scores, and I nod as if I have a clue but you know I’ve no idea what you are saying. Like when you start your griping at how long the guy was in the paint and I think you’re talking about all the tattoos on him.”

Jim laughed at the memory, the comment she made while watching a basketball game with his friends that had her mortified when he explained why Mark and Doug couldn’t stop laughing.

“Oh Beesly, you were so adorable.”

She smiled shyly, remembering her embarrassment when she learned what it meant.

“That’s when you have Mark, or your brothers or even Kevin to go to get your sports talk on.”

He nodded. Football was about the only sport that Pam could talk with him about and even then, she was not who he went to when he needed to discuss who he should put on his roster for the fantasy teams he played on.

“Well, I don’t have many friends in the creative world, particularly ones that I shared the experience of being at Pratt with or that I even know who live outside of Scranton. Alex is one of the few friends who I can talk to about things like texture and white space and what we appreciate in other works. Things you may try to understand but I don’t expect you to get in quite the same way.”

The olive of his eyes seemed to brighten a touch, emerging, she hoped, from the connection she painted for him and not from the bitter emotion that had brought about the fight last night.

“But just like you and Kevin don’t go to romantic dinners or cuddle while the sun sets or cook pancakes together on a lazy Sunday morning, Alex and I don’t either and never will. I promise, you are the only one I want to do any of those things with for the rest of forever.”

And corny as she knew it was, she grabbed up her silverware and held it out towards him.

“James Halpert, you can stick a thousand forks in me because I am completely and utterly done.”

                                                 *******************************************

In their rush to return home, they skipped dessert and the moonlight walk on the bridge they’d been looking forward to for months. Instead, they picked up where they’d left off the night before, going at it in the parking lot and then in the car and at every stop light on the way.

When they arrived back at the new home they now shared, they barely made it inside when he pushed her against the wall in another passionate kiss, this one way surpassing the combined heat of all those on the way back and on the path that led to the front door.

With a thud she hit the wall but it wasn’t the sound of her body against it that abruptly halted the fervent embrace. It was the din that rang in both their ears as the ugly clown, finally and quite dramatically, came crashing down from the wall at last.