Having the luxury of borrowed time, her special pencils and the inspiration provided from the prior day’s trip to the city, she had been sure she would be compelled to sketch, but the motivation didn’t seem to be coming to her.

Visions in her head were slippery, dancing around then escaping before she could grab hold of any of them, at least for long enough to set them to the blank paper in front of her.

What seemed to be chasing off her muse were thoughts of Roy, and the ways he’d been disappointing her the past few years.

Ironically, it was absence, the very thing said to make the heart grow fonder, that was forcing her discontent up to the surface. Was it just another of the irregularities in her parallel existence that instead of feeling the pain of missing him, what she felt was the dull ache of being let down by his actions and inaction in her life with him?

When it came to the things she enjoyed in her everyday life, the old adage similarly didn't apply. It was hard to miss what you loved to do, when you had completely forgotten what it felt like to experience the joy of doing them.

But now, what she'd tasted again over the last few days was not sitting right in her system. Even just the little nibble of doing things she loved was an overindulgence she couldn't digest properly after years of being starved.

But could she put that all on Roy? Sure, he was typically the one to choose the way they spent their time, but that was only because she didn't speak up and insist that she was there too.

She long ago ceded her agency for the sake of their relationship. There were the rare instances where the ghost of an inner tiger would claw her way out to growl for her own desires, but even after the loudest roar, her stripes could still not change. Because her standing up usually led to a fight or a chit owed to him, to keep the relationship in a good place, she was often the one to back down.  It was just less volatile to go along with the Roy plan but did that make it his fault that she lost part of herself in the process?

Much as she tried to ignore the sour feel in her belly, push away the dark clouding her brain and picture instead the masterful works she saw yesterday, she kept coming back to her dissolution with the man she was supposed to marry, but more so a disappointment in herself.

She closed her eyes and tried to go back to the museum. Gabby, she was aware when she made it, would offer no resistance to her suggestion and yet she hadn't been prepared to take the lead through the halls of the Met. It was that feeling when she did, in choosing where to go and what to see, that she felt as vibrant as the avant-garde paintings on the walls of their first stop after lunch. Works of art she discovered to be quite stunning in their own way, all the more for the sense of power they seemed to conjure up in her.

If she could envision those works again, she might be able to chase away what was gnawing at her today. But they wouldn't come, nor would the classic masterpieces of Monet, Renoir and Seurat they still found time to see yesterday.

Wisps of what they saw flashed like holograms behind her eyes, the more familiar impressionistic canvases lingering just a bit longer inside her lids, but after their visit to the more experimental wings of the museum, seemed somewhat muted and even mundane. But even with her appreciation of and desire for the new, she wasn’t yet ready to give up her love for what was her first inspiration.

The harder she tried to hold the beauty in her head, the more she kept drifting to other days and other places, both in her real past and in this more recent one that she still wasn't sure was authentic. Where the artwork danced in and out, there was one vision that loitered longer than anything else, the episode from the boat when she heard Jim confess his feelings for her.

A week now she’d had to consider the scene that lived rent-free in her head from the moment she'd came upon it.

“… have a big thing for Pam, so...”

“Yeah. She's really funny, and she's warm. And she's just…”

In her rare situation, that was forced upon her by Michael and even to a small degree, by Jim himself, she had, depending on how she viewed it, a curse or a gift, she never would have had otherwise—being able to contemplate exactly what she herself felt about the declaration that came directly from his own lips.

What scared her was how she was certain by now, whatever it was between them, was not one-sided and that for the first time she was not sure she could continue to ignore her growing love for the man that was not her fiancé.

Though she hadn't been able to decipher all that was said as he stood on the deck with their boss, deep down she knew it wasn't over, what he claimed was a crush from long ago. When seven days earlier, what she heard made her weak and dizzy and unable to focus, after she regained her equilibrium, she found herself flattered, validated, and for the fraction of the second she allowed herself to feel so, happier than she’d been in a while, perhaps even more than both times she lived through Roy choosing a date for her to be married.

The curse of it was how short-lived that happiness was, replaced almost instantly by unease and disquiet as she knew she couldn’t or wouldn’t leave Roy. Had he said it earlier that same night, confessed to her instead of Michael on the original night of the trip, she wasn't even certain her reaction would be any different, only more difficult for her because she would surely have to hurt him in the process. But her commitment to Roy, the promise she didn't know how to go back on, made her feel like she had no choice even though her own heart felt torn.

It pained her to imagine what the aftermath of her response might have been; the ways in which their friendship would mutate after she rejected him. How could it not with the truth of his love out there and her essentially telling him she didn't want it, even if that was a lie.

It would for sure weaken the bond that kept them linked to one another and to Dunder Mifflin. She knew she would stay as long as Roy worked downstairs, but Jim, who knew where he might go if their relationship became strained and how much she would miss him if he left.

But he hadn't said it to her and that meant, despite what she heard, she could keep things as they were, not risk what she had with either of them. 

Except now, because of the Time Turner, things were different. The week that passed for her without Roy or Jim in it granted her something she wouldn’t have had if she’d had to return to work the next day—time.

Time to adjust, time to reflect, to compare and look inside herself and gather strength to possibly do what she might never have considered before.

Time, it was a glorious thing and something she learned was pliable, if only with the little bit of magic she had always been suspicious was out there. Not the magic of witchcraft and sorcery like in Harry Potter, but of the unseen forces and signs the universe put out to be found. But if she were to trust in what was happening to her, she had to accept more kinds of magic did exist or at least the sort that bent time and hurdled her to this place where she could fully contemplate it.

And she had more of it, another week to come to a decision, the biggest of her life, which is why she forced Jim out of her head too, wanting to savor what was left of her freedom from having to make any big decisions besides what she was going to sketch while she waited for Michael to come around today.

But even after she succeeded in banishing both the men in her life from her head, she still was not able to invoke the beauty they saw or a cityscape or memory of her view of Central Park. She knew she wanted to leave a gift of her art behind for her host, so she went over to the computer in the room and tried to find what Gabby had described, an image of her idol with his white couch as his backdrop.

Finding the iconic photo Gabby spoke of yesterday easily on the Internet, and having a static vision to inspire her, she finally was able to sketch. Using delicate strokes, she began to depict the legend with his Fender guitar and the white couch that in truth looked nothing like the one in the living space outside her temporary room but was nonetheless the reason it was there.  However even as she penciled in features of Elvis’ pompadour-styled dark hair, she was noticing how the profile seemed to look a lot like someone else, someone she still couldn’t quite get out of her head.

He looked different with his hair full and lush, yet groomed and slicked back to sit high above his forehead, but no less dashing. What she saw in the photograph, Elvis’ pensive gaze on the strings, was currently replaced by the look of longing he wore as they stood by the rail on the boat.

Realizing her drawing no longer resembled the star Gabby had once been obsessed over, she pushed it away, before reaching for it again to crumple it up to a ball and toss in the wastebasket under the desk.

She would need to start over, draw something else, but it wouldn't be now. A glance at her watch reminded her how malleable time was, how what felt like minutes had been over an hour and Michael would soon be there to pick her up for the day's activity.

Today, the plan was to go ice skating. On their morning call where he bemoaned to her how bored and lonely he had been when she took off with Randall’s wife, he also reminded her of the promise he could choose what they would do together that day. It wasn't quite what Pam had said, but thinking ice skating could be fun and definitely less risky than any other ideas he might dream up if she vetoed it, she agreed to go.

She only hoped she wouldn't be too tired later to get back to the drawing. With little else she could present Gabby to show her appreciation for opening her home and taking her along to New York, she wanted to at least leave the small token before she would depart from their home Friday night. Of course, her intention was to return with a more substantial gift for each of them once she was reunited with her wallet and credit cards. For Randall, she planned to buy a bottle of the Scotch she saw him pour himself every night and for Gabby, she would look for something with cherubs seeing how fascinated she seemed to be with them.  But an intention couldn’t be gift wrapped, and while neither could her art since she had no extra money to purchase the paper, at least it could be presented as she said goodbye.

It was hard to imagine she’d been with them almost a week. In some ways it seemed longer, the connection she felt with the cameraman and his wife had grown quite close in the last few days. In other ways it felt like she just got there and was almost sad to be leaving. But with her and Roy taking off on their mini vacation tomorrow from work, she needn’t take advantage of their hospitality any longer, not when her own house would be uninhabited until mid-next week. She would likely need to come back to the Stewarts again once she and Roy returned, so leaving them to their privacy for the upcoming days seemed like the proper thing to do.

What was also appropriate with her soon to be empty house, was opening it up to Michael. She was mostly dreading having him stay with her, but after all he’d done for her all week, driving her around and picking up the tab for lunch and groceries, she didn’t feel she had much of a choice and owed him as much. She had the room after all, and the inflatable mattress, plus the office had to be uncomfortable after so many nights. But just like Gabby, she would have to set some ground rules, and this time keep a much closer watch on him. At least she didn't have TiVo, so she was safe there.

The ice rink was nearly empty for the Thursday afternoon session but it turns out it wasn’t everyone else there she had to worry about knocking her off her unsteady skates. It took three laps whipping past her at full speed and one, inch-from-her-feet, hockey stop that unsettled her enough she almost fell over, but still did drench her legs with a flurry of wet snow shavings, before he realized how tenuous her balance was on the ice. But once he saw how shaky she was, he stopped his showboating long enough to teach her how to glide on her skates. Under his tutelage she was able to find her footing and actually began to enjoy herself, managing to forget all the other worries that had been skating through her mind before the outing.

She almost considered it when he suggested they come again tomorrow, but in the end decided she wanted to get spend a little more time alone with Gabby. Besides, she was about to get all the Michael she could handle, so she felt it best to get a little separation from him until he descended upon her and her home.

On the way home from the rink, he broke the good news that he would not be coming to stay with her at her house.

“I’ve booked a trip to Sandals, Grenada. Not only is it all-inclusive, but I learned there’s no better way to learn a language than to immerse yourself somewhere it’s spoken. So, when I get back, I’ll be well rested, well-fed and fluent in Spanish.”

It was almost a good idea and would certainly keep him out of trouble, even if his bronzed skin might be hard to explain next Friday.  She was however, somewhat certain Spanish was not the native language or even spoken much at all on the Caribbean Island, and was about to tell him, when he broke out in laughter.

“I’m just joking. I wouldn’t go off on another trip without my new travel companion. But we should consider this place for our next excursion. Did I mention it’s all-inclusive?”

There was zero chance she would ever go to Sandals with him, but she kept that to herself, not wanting to get into the many reasons why it was never going to happen.

"Michael, this trip was more than enough travel for us this year. And I'm already using all my vacation days with going away next week and then my wedding and honeymoon."

"I guess," he said, his voice becoming sadder as quiet filled the car after her rejection. If this was his reaction to what was an absurd invitation, it got her thinking again how drastic the effect could be from being turned down.

Not surprised at the power his gloominess had over her, she heard herself make the offer again to at least come stay with her for the few days, immediately realizing how as usual she was self-sacrificing her own good fortune to make someone else happy.

"It's tempting. Normally, I'd love to spend an evening or two at Casa Anderson… see what I did there, but truth is I'm quite enjoying myself staying at the office. There's a lot to discover in our little home away from home."

Cheery once again, he began to tell her about his evenings at Dunder Mifflin and the explorations of the spaces he was discouraged from visiting during working hours and those he was unaware even existed.

The warehouse, he said was like an amusement park, especially without Darryl there to tell him what he could and couldn’t touch. Pam had to wonder what kind of messes her fiancé and the rest of the crew were finding when they got in each morning and how long it would take before they reported the curious break-ins where nothing was stolen but things were strangely out of place or, knowing Michael, potentially broken.

He discovered how nice the woman’s bathroom was, remarking however how he didn’t appreciate the thing written about him on the wall. He had taken to sleeping on the cozy couch in the potpourri-scented room. Pam made a mental note to have it steamed cleaned next week and in fact have the whole place sanitized once she learned how he was thrilled at the convenience of knowing he could wake in the middle of the night and already be in the bathroom when he had to go.

But it was the large closet space below their floor that he said was his greatest finding. In it was an old, rusty and exposed, but working shower. Between the kitchen, the ladies’ room that became his temporary bedroom, the warehouse playground and the means to wash up, he had all the luxuries of home, but with none of the rules set upon him when he was a guest in someone else’s place. 

He was most excited about the space with the shower. With no doors separating it from the rest of the room, he learned during his combined morning shower and singing sessions, what an acoustically-perfect sound chamber the closet was. The lyric baritone when channeling his inner Elvis reverberated seemingly forever off the walls and even his falsetto had a pleasing echo as it bounced back to his ears.

When next he tested the audio quality in the room from out the small boom box he borrowed from the warehouse, he discovered how harmoniously the bass frequencies and treble tones combined, rivaling the acoustical renown of Tinks.

Excitedly, he shared his plans with Pam. How he would contact Billy Merchant again, this time to inquire about renting the space in order to convert it to a dance hall and lounge, a place for Dunder Mifflin employees to go blow off steam during a tough day. With much more capacity than in the conference room and no table to remove before each disco session, he asserted it was going to be awesome. She could only imagine all the extra work converting a closet to a discotheque would entail for her in the future.

However, in the present she was grateful he preferred to spend his nights at the office and focus on plan café disco since it meant he wouldn’t be coming back to stay with her.

««««

The last dinner with the Stewarts was lovely. While she was off ice skating with Michael, Gabby had prepared one of her favorite meals, and Randall came home with a pie for dessert. The couple was obviously still too new in town to know no place had pies like the Glider Diner, but she happily enjoyed her slice anyway and made a mental note to work a tip about the diner into a future conversation with Gabby.

Or maybe all she had to do was bring it up at the office. Randall apparently had picked up his share of tidbits about everyone who worked there via the day-to-day conversations that happened between the more amusing antics the crew he was part of was hired to capture on camera. It had to be how he knew about her love for pierogies prepared with caramelized onions like her mom used to make, and how salmon was a treat she didn’t get to have often since Roy wasn’t a fan of fish. Naturally, he’d shared what he’d learned with his wife in order for her to have planned the perfect meal to end her week with them.

The next day, following a lunch on her own since Gabby had some errands to run before her afternoon tutoring sessions, Pam got back to her drawing. This time she scrapped all attempts at sketching Elvis, as the Elvis that lived in her head had Michael’s voice and Jim’s face. Instead, she did her best to retrieve in her mind a vision of the sculpture her host admired so much at the museum and managed to produce what she felt was a precise outline of what she’d remembered.

Proud of the sleeping cupid she drew, she added depth and detail with shades of mossy green blended with highlights of deep blue and signed her name in the corner when complete. She knew it wasn’t much of a gift but somehow, she knew Gabby would love it. Tucking the drawing into her sketch book, she planned to give it to Gabby just before she left.

When she was done, she thoroughly straightened the room she’d been sleeping in that week, folding up the sheets and towels and piling them on the pull-out which she folded back up to a couch once more. There was really nothing more to do but wait until Gabby got back and then Michael came around to chauffeur her home, so she went to grab the library book she’d finished from her packed bag and start it again. Now with the foresight gained having competed it through to the end, her perspective would be different and so too would the read. But it was that kind of story, where with each read, she knew she’d see something new, maybe even a clue to help her with her own time travel situation.

The book had shifted to the bottom of the duffle, so she burrowed through the clothes and assorted other items to feel around for it when she felt something prick her finger. It took a moment for her to register what could have caused the almost painless stab and didn’t believe her eyes when she saw the glint of the tiny gemstone there at the bottom of the bag.

It was the sapphire earring she’d lost years ago, sister to the one that remained lonely in its original velvet box, buried deep in her dresser drawer.

The pair, which they had been when Roy gave them to her as the first birthday present after they got engaged, had only been together for a few months before their inadvertent separation. Finding the mate and remembering the gift had Pam feeling regretful of her complaint to Gabby that Roy had never surprised her with anything romantic. Even though they were given for an occasion, a birthday from years ago, and as she later found out, had been suggested by her own mother (not a big revelation, Roy coming up with something blue to wear at the wedding was absolutely not an original idea from his head), they were still one of the most thoughtful presents he’d even given her.

She remembered how devastated she was when she lost one and how scared she was to tell him. 

Because she’d been wearing the little blue studs so often, she was sure he would notice when they fell out of the regular rotation of adornments for her ears.

She searched high and low for weeks, determined to find the lost gemstone before she would have to tell him it was gone, changing routines and clothes to keep it secret until it turned up. She would wait until he left the room to put on her jewelry in the morning. The berry blue cardigan she bought to match the earrings got switched out for her older pink one. She kept her hair loose in the morning to hide her ears, not pulling her curls back into the clip until she was up at her reception desk.

It never turned up.

But Roy never noticed either.

She’d been terrified of the conversation when he asked why she never wore them anymore but it never happened. Not once in almost three years did he ever ask about or suggest she wear the gift he gave her. And since he didn’t ask, she never told him about the loss.

Funny thing was, Jim had noticed. Not so much about the earrings but he asked her why she stopped wearing the vivid blue sweater, the one he said looked really good on her. Their friendship was still new at that time, and that’s why she became so embarrassed when she broke into tears telling him about the lost earring. But there was no judgement from Jim, only a shoulder to cry on and an offer to help her look for it, even though she was sure by then it was long gone.

She knew sooner or later she would have to tell Roy she would not be wearing the something blue he gave her to their wedding. She only hoped when the time came, he would be as calm and understanding as Jim had been.

To be fair, there was no real cause for Jim to become upset. The gift was not from him and he wasn’t her fiancé. The symbolic stones absent from her ears had no deeper meaning to him like they should to Roy. But still she somehow felt she wouldn’t have been as afraid to tell him if had been the one to give her them, if he were to be the man who would be waiting at the end of the aisle when the lucky blue that competed the saying was not his gifted earrings but a periwinkle handkerchief or sky-colored bra under her gown instead. Somehow, she knew he would only be upset for her and not at her as she feared Roy would be when he eventually found out. It was the first time she ever let her mind wander to think about him in Roy’s place and just as quickly, she pushed the idea out of her head.

After the months, then a full year passed and still no date was planned, she began to think it was in a small way her own fault, that the stones held some power and losing one was what was keeping her wedding in a state of limbo.

It was only her mother’s dismissing the notion that convinced her one had nothing to do with the other and their time would come soon enough.

After a while, she stopped worrying about the missing ‘something blue’ but from time to time the idea crossed her mind she’d be married by now if she hadn’t been so careless, consuming her with guilt when it did.

It wasn’t the only thought that sometimes filled her head and riddled her belly with an ulcer of remorse every time.

More and more she remembered that vision she once had where Jim was the groom waiting at the end of her veiled walk down the aisle.

Every time it appeared to her, she would just as quickly banish it, send it off to the oblivion where the lost blue earring must also have gone.

Until this week.

This week, something had changed.

It wasn’t just that she was not in her home with Roy or that she didn’t miss him as much as she felt she should.

It wasn’t just what she heard Jim say on the boat or that he was the person she felt the ache of missing as she went about her days.

It wasn’t the comparison of her romance to that of Gabby’s, a charming fairy tale that sounded too idyllic to be true.

It was all of it and more, the combination of everything contributing to a revelation that slowly grew as the days ticked by. Maybe she was realizing she didn’t truly want to marry Roy and through this experience she could find the courage to call it off.

But she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the extraordinary circumstance giving her pause. That she wasn’t real and therefore neither were her feelings. Being stuck in what felt like a movie plot, made her think she couldn’t trust her state of mind; that everything would change again when she woke up from the fantastical dream or when lightning struck the clock tower and the film approached its conclusion.

As she headed into her last week, and back to the home she lived in with Roy, she hoped she would find more of an answer. Despite his physical absence, she imagined being in their space would help the feelings of doubt go away, and bring back the absolute delight she’d been feeling before she came back in time.

That bliss, that elation they’d be getting married, tangible in her mind before her trip, ever since had begun to fade like the McFly family in the photo Marty had during his time travels.

Until, just like Sleeping Beauty, a prick of her finger spun everything around.

Only this was a very different fairy tale. One where she had already been trapped under a three-year curse that at long last seemed to be lifting.

And now that the missing earring was back in her possession, she had reason to believe all the disenchantment she'd been having about Roy and her marriage to him, would soon float away too.

The sapphire she held between her fingers felt full of the magic she had always believed in. Its timely arrival was no doubt a blue beacon, a sign from above pointing her back to the love she had with Roy, and directing her to once again bury any feelings she imagined she could have for Jim.

And so back into the vault they went.

The reunited stones, once back in her ears, could again be amulets of her love for Roy and a reminder of how things once were and how they could be again, now that the wedding was happening in five short months.

And she couldn’t wait to get home and put them both on.