Of course she has the page for Schrute Farms open when Jim finally makes his way out from the counter with their drinks.
“Woah, Pam, taking a trip to Beet City?” He winks and puts down the drinks. “One coffee, no beets, one balsamic fig steamer.” He puts down what looks like a shot glass. “One coffee with b beet juice, just in case you wonder what you were missing, courtesy of the gentleman in the corner.” He nods over towards the far corner of the coffeeshop, where Dwight has grumpily started piling random objects on a table and assembling…something. “Oh, and I just wanted you to know—we have a special today on Jello. If anyone wants any.”
“No, thank you…Jim.” Izzy makes his name sound lascivious and waggles her eyebrows and Pam wants to die. “I think my friend here might be interested in ordering something else off menu, though, if you know what I mean.”
Pam has now shifted from wanting to die to being pretty sure she has died, and this is hell, and her only saving grace is that apparently Izzy has also died and gone to hell, which she deserves because she is a betraying traitor. Her face is bright red—she can’t see it, but she can feel the burning in her hands as she hides in them—and she can’t even imagine having the guts to look at Jim right now, not even to apologize. He has to be looking at her; he has to know what Izzy is talking about. She’s going to have to move somewhere like Australia just to get away from the embarrassment, and the worst part is that no one has said anything and the moment is just hanging there, taunting her.
Jim takes a breath—she can hear it, like she’s attuned to the range of his voice so much that even a small intake of breath goes straight to her ears—and she can’t even imagine what he must be thinking right now other than that she and Izzy are crazy stalkers who need to be run out of the coffeeshop post-haste for his own safety. Does The Comedy Roasters stock tar and feathers somewhere in the back? It seems like the sort of thing Michael would have bought even though he’s apparently forgotten basic items like tea, and she doesn’t doubt that somewhere here there is a rail for them to be run out on too. It’s awful. She’s going to lose this one place that has felt like a bastion of…of…not of sanity, per se (not with Dwight as a regular) but of normalcy, the one place where she could not even be Pammie Beesly, formerly engaged to Roy Anderson, college dropout, but just “Pam,” cool graphics designer—or graphics designer anyway—who drinks steamers in interesting flavors.
And also she’s going to have to stop seeing Jim every day, and that’s worse.
“I know. I’m sorry.” She cringes. Of course Jim is sorry. He’s sorry for her. He’s taking pity on her. He’s heard what Izzy is so obviously saying and he’s trying to do his best to let her down gently. She doesn’t want to be let down gently, because it’s only when she’s being let down gently that she lets herself realize that she’s actually built this up more in her head than she’d let herself be aware of before, and being let down gently is just being lowered a couple of feet gently before being released above a twenty-story chasm that she’s dug for herself, because she really really likes Jim. Like, more than she’d thought. A lot more than she thought. No, more than that. Ugh. This is the worst.
“I keep trying to get Michael to put the steamers on the menu, but you should hear the jokes he makes about it.” Wait, is Jim talking about actual off-menu ordering? “And don’t get me started on the tea.” There’s a creaking sound that might be Jim pulling up a chair, or the ceiling falling down, but not even that would make her look up so she doesn’t know, and then he continues. “I’ve been trying to get that on the menu for weeks, and it goes in one ear and out the other. I’m Jim, by the way. You obviously knew that, but I figured I ought to introduce myself, seeing as you’re friends with my favorite customer.”
She’s his favorite? Or is that just something he says to all the regulars. Well, besides Dwight, because if he said that to Dwight he’d probably get pepper-sprayed in the face while the beet farmer yelled something about false flag operations.
“Izzy.” Izzy is definitely laughing, and Pam kicks her under the table. “Pam and I used to get coffee all the time, but…”
In an instant, Pam weighs the embarrassment she has already felt from Izzy insinuating things in front of Jim and the desire it has inspired to continue to play ostrich with the table against the possibility of her insinuating more things and makes a decision. She looks up, kicks Izzy under the table again and interrupts her. “But then dear Izzy suddenly had places to be, didn’t she?” She smiles sweetly at her friend and gives her best version of her mother’s “not here, not now” face (as learned from years of watching her mother argue with her father without words, especially about Roy). “Like she does right now.”
Izzy rolls her eyes. “Except they were cancelled today, weren’t they, Pam.” She kicks back. “And I’m so glad, because I got to come here and see what’s had our Pam so excited.”
“Yes, it’s a lovely coffeeshop, isn’t it?” Jim smiles in a way that makes Pam think he’s deliberately ignoring Izzy’s pointed comment. “I’ll be sure to tell Michael you said that. Michael’s the owner, by the way.” He stands up then and nods to them both. “And also my boss, and he’d be extremely annoyed at me for sitting so long when there’s coffee to be made! Nice to meet you Izzy. Good to see you, Pam. Hope the balsamic fig isn’t too disgusting.”
And then he practically flees back behind the counter.
Pam is a little confused—if there’s one thing she know about Michael, it’s that he’d be ecstatic to see Jim talking to customers, since he has a whole shtick about how ya gotta hustle in the coffee game—but grateful that he’s now out of Izzy’s conversational range. She takes a sip of the balsamic fig steamer
And yes, Jim is right: it’s absolutely disgusting.
