One thing was for sure, her vacation was over.

Pam mused to herself what it meant that Roy left her in the parking lot without so much as a kiss or an I love you or even a ‘have a good day’. When they woke, all seemed back to normal. There was no mention of the earring or the angry words they'd hurled at each other the night before. From the way he went about his morning, Roy seemed to have forgotten they'd even had a fight and Pam was glad to put it behind them. He even lacked his typical morning sluggishness. His night’s sleep was apparently unhindered and refreshing while hers had been troubled and less so. However, without his usual morning sloth slowing them down, they were out the door ahead of schedule and arrived at Dunder Mifflin quite early.    

But as she walked from the truck to the office, she wondered if he was still harboring a little anger or if today was just another morning. Most often she was the one to initiate any affection as they parted ways for the day but with what happened last night still nagging at her, she didn't.

It was a short walk to the door but she was practiced at pushing down the stuff she didn't want others to see, and by the time she was pulling the handle she'd packed away the bitterness left over from the incident the night before. She couldn't have anyone thinking she had less than a wonderful trip with Roy.

And for the most part it was good, their little getaway. A waste of money and vacation days in light of the upcoming wedding but with some of what she’d been thinking and feeling in the days since they set the date, it was a needed break for them and they did have a lot of fun, skiing and enjoying the amenities of the resort and their luxury hotel room.

Had it not been for the fight last night she wouldn't have to struggle so to paint a smile on her face. Forcing thoughts up to her mind of the good time they had and the romantic nights they shared made it a little easier to keep it there. Thinking about the upcoming wedding also helped.

It was just as she pressed the button to her floor and allowed the elevator doors to close in front of her, that the planted smile turned genuine. She would be seeing Jim today. Just picturing the morning ahead catching up with him was enough to widen the curl of her lips into a grin that reached her eyes.

“Hold that door, Hermione!”

Without hesitation, Pam stuck her hand between the closing steel doors and held them open for a very tired looking Michael. By her best guess, his fatigued look was courtesy of a late night watching Harry Potter movies. He called her Hermione two more times after he joined her inside. A few weeks back he came in calling her Lucy and asking her what she remembered. It had taken her all day to figure out he’d just watched ’50 First Dates’ on Jim’s suggestion the night before.

But a movie marathon alone couldn't explain why he raced out as if she were Voldemort the minute the doors opened. It was when she thought about who else they'd be seeing today that his rushed departure and uncomfortable demeanor made a little more sense.

Though he'd only been a few steps ahead of her, Michael was nowhere to be found when she stepped through the main door to the office. As if he possessed the power of magic just like Harry Potter, he had disappeared.

Walking to her desk, she had the sensation something else was off today. She had only been out a few days but it seemed as if the furniture had been rearranged in the time she was gone. The couch was about a foot closer to the door, the table beside it moved too, and the coat rack was inched nearer to where she sat.

Even her desktop was shuffled around and it made her wonder if they brought in someone to man reception in her absence. And were they perhaps still here, misinformed about her return date since there was a cream puffer coat remarkably similar to the one she had on draped over her chair.

She wasn't sure why but something felt very strange about it being there. For one, having Ryan the temp meant there was no longer a need to call in an external staffer as had been done in the past. She’d given him a primer on her duties Friday before she left so he could be, as Michael had put it, the Receptionator, now available with chest hair and balls. Her job wasn't all that complicated. Ryan seemed competent enough to answer the phone, take messages, deliver faxes and file.  It was curious to think they may have had him replaced by whomever owned the coat covering her seat.

As she looked more at it, she got the sense she'd seen it before. It looked a lot like hers, different in ways only she would discern and yet that wasn't why it seemed familiar. She knew it didn't belong to anyone one else they worked with but maybe its owner had been a visitor to Dunder Mifflin in the past. Oh no, was it Katy’s?  Was she back with Jim, or could she be with Ryan now? She knew Ryan had asked Jim about her a few times after he learned their relationship was over.

Would she jump to his friend so soon? That was a move that even with her own limited dating knowledge, Pam knew was just not done. Besides, would someone like her even be interested in someone like Ryan? Not likely. She could do much better and had when she was seeing Jim. Though Pam never saw them as compatible, she also couldn’t see Katy following up a catch like Jim with Ryan. Unless she was trying to make Jim jealous. That she could see Katy doing.

With a shake of her head she attempted to banish the thoughts of Katy, particularly ones where she would take up with her friend again. But it was a flashback to the boat that made her realize she was obsessing over nothing as she remembered just what the peppy cheerleader type had worn to the cruise. Her winter jacket was a rich brown, and though she told Angela the fur trim on the hood wasn’t real, the wink Pam caught her throwing to Jim said otherwise. Though glad to realize it wasn’t Katy’s, she was back to wondering who it belonged to.

She looked around to see who else might be around to ask. The office seemed empty except for the sound guys and cameraman who were getting things set up in the conference room. While they were always friendly, she still didn’t feel comfortable enough to bother them.

The only other person she knew for a fact was here was Michael, though the version she rode up with seemed very unlike his regular self. Aside from calling her Hermione while he eyed her curiously, he looked like he hadn’t slept at all the night before. She’d never seen Michael with stubble but this morning he had the dark shadow of a beard forming over his chin and upper lip.

It had to be due to the looming visit from Jan that he seemed so out of sorts. Pam still wasn’t sure about exactly what went on between them after following their big client meeting, but whatever had happened, it was impulsive and illicit but not something Jan was proud of or looking to continue. She made that clear by her harsh treatment of him when she returned for his performance review.   

Delusional Michael however was sure this visit was an excuse to see him and the seminar was in a ploy to discuss him, no matter how many times Jan had tried to drill it into his head it was neither.

And yet Pam could understand his nerves with her coming into the office again after their, she shuddered as she thought about it, hookup. Romantic affections, whether acted on or not, had a way of making situations uncomfortable, something she herself got a taste of when Jim revealed his once-upon-a-time crush on her.

She felt somewhat like Michael, having her own apprehension about seeing Jim again after their last interactions before her trip. She’d almost forgotten the awkward state things had been left Friday, now back to the forefront of her mind. She prayed all would be back to normal today and hoped he would be in soon. With the Women in the Workplace seminar Jan beginning at 10:30, there wasn’t a lot of time for catching up beforehand, especially with her own missed work to sort through first and any last-minute preparations Jan was bound to request of her. If she had to wait until the afternoon to know the true state of things with Jim, she might go crazy.

“Hurry up, Jim,” she whispered to herself as she picked up the puffy parka she decided had to be Jan’s. That had to be where she’d seen it before. Jan must be here, probably in the kitchen grabbing a coffee and lecturing Michael about boundaries and how they were not a couple.

But the more she thought about, the more she told herself that there was no way she and Jan wore similar coats and concluded the matching parka was more likely to do with some prank Jim was pulling.

It was rare, him playing pranks on her instead of Dwight and she wasn’t sure how she felt about him plotting one on her now. But if it was what he needed to do to lighten the awkwardness between them, she supposed she was glad to be his victim.

When she moved the additional coat to the rack she noticed it still had tags hanging off the sleeve providing further evidence that it was him. The lengths he went for his pranking craft she was well aware of— arriving hours earlier than anyone else to set up his tricks, investing in multiple packages of Jell-O, practicing accents with her until he was one hundred percent convincing as a variety of foreign emissaries all with the similar mission of stockpiling beets for their countries.

In this case it was buying a duplicate coat so he could play some kind of silly joke on her. She wondered what was in store as she walked to the kitchen to grab her own cup of coffee. Caffeine was sure to be a necessity today, and not just because Jim was up to something she needed to be on her toes for. She was certain she would need plenty of extra energy to babysit Michael, too. Before she got through the door however, the sound of someone scooting around the bullpen turned her around but when she looked back she found herself still alone. Although assuming it was just her nerves making her hear things, she walked the length of the bullpen again to look around for anyone, specifically Michael knowing he was there somewhere, but all she saw were the same crew still in the conference room. If the person she glimpsed in the kitchen wasn’t Michael, and god only knew what he was doing with that old computer, where he had gone remained a mystery. Either way, she would need that coffee to even begin dealing with her tiresome boss again today.

When she returned from the kitchen, which had been vacant with only the scent of brewed beans to indicate anyone else was there before her, one of the two coats from earlier was gone, but hers was now joined by two more. It was all she needed to be certain that Jim had arrived in the minutes she had been gone along with the owners of the two new ones, a heavy-weight, German styled trench and a plain wool overcoat she knew to be Angela’s. Looking around for him, she found only the other two newcomers sitting at their desks.  In response to her greeting to them, each responded politely with a nod and a welcome back but neither asked about her trip before they returned to their task of looking extremely busy and not like they had just arrived together from the same place, which Pam suspected they had. But still there was no sign of Jim. That left the question of where had the other coat gone?

Scanning the office once more for clues but finding none, she returned to her desk and began to rearrange what had been put out of place. Her day was off to a strange start already.

She only just restored the jelly bean dispenser to its home on the ledge when she was greeted by a mass arrival clump consisting of Kevin, Kelly, Oscar and Michael heading up the rear? Had he slipped out to fix himself up? He must have because while gone only ten minutes or so, he seemed to have showered, shaved and changed his shirt and tie. Did he have a secret room somewhere or was this all more of the prank on her that Jim must had been planning the whole time she was away?

“Spamster,” he crooned as he made his way up to her desk.

“Um, Pam plus Spam plus...?”

Okay this was not part of any scheme of Jim’s. This was just normal Michael.

 “Hamster.”

“Right,” she looked past him once more to see if Jim was in the group that was making its way up to the Dunder Mifflin door behind him. Jim, wasn’t there but Jan was and her coat was a long black trench-like thing just as Pam suspected.

“Welcome back! How was your vacation?”

“It was great.”

Which it had been up until last night, but she wasn't about to tell Michael anything about that.

"Um Jan’s here.” Pam pointed to where she was chatting with Phyllis as they walked in.

Michael stepped away from Pam to greet Jan who began barking at him almost immediately.

Turning away to reconfigure her side table back to working condition, she noticed the piles and piles of filing that Ryan had left for her.

The smile she had worn coming in, made brighter when she thought about seeing Jim, was fading fast.

It was clear her first day back was not going to be without its mysteries and aggravations. But just as she began to let out an audible groan, her eyes caught sight of a note sticking out from under her keyboard.  The handwriting she recognized immediately and just like that all seemed right again.

<<<<<<<<<< 

She’d only been in the packed closet about 25 minutes and already her legs were beginning to cramp. And so far, she hadn’t witnessed anything worth being holed up for. Who she thought was Angela, who liked to boast of her punctuality and almost always beat her in to work, in this case turned out to be her other self, and while watching herself pour a cup of coffee was indeed a strange sensation, the act itself was not unusual. Confusing herself for Angela, that was, but she was tired and preoccupied and thought nothing more of it.

It seemed a long wait before Angela did come into the kitchen next, accompanied by Phyllis, both identified by their voices alone.

“I’m looking forward to today.”

“Really, I am not. I can think of a thousand ways to better spend my time than gathered in the conference room gossiping about who knows what.”

“Well, I love girl talk.”

She heard the sound of clicking heels and then door to her right swooshing closed, she could only assume one of the two entered the restroom.

“Of course, you would since it’s what whores love.”

It was clear who remained behind from the whispered words alone.

Angela left the room just as Oscar came in. She only knew it was him because of Angela’s stern reprimand that just because she’d be stuck in a meeting all day, it did not mean he should play the stupid paper triangle game with Kevin while she was not there.

Making out Oscar’s greeting to Phyllis as she came out from the restroom and then hearing both of them leave, she inched open the door a smidge to see if it might be a good chance to exit herself but quickly shut it again as she heard Kelly’s shrill voice ranting about something with the person she came in with.

“It is not.”

Recognizing her own voice, she froze, wondering what had her back so soon to the kitchen. It wasn’t often she needed a second cup of coffee, but then she remembered the new memories of the fight from last night. Although after fixing the Time Turner there had been no new visions of what happened to her other self after she went to bed, she still knew herself well enough to know she had not slept well.  

“It absolutely is. Pam, if there’s one thing I know it’s breakup songs, and You Were Meant for Me is one hundred percent about a broken-up couple.”

The more aware, clear-sighted, time-traveling Pam stuck in the closet sang the verses to her and Roy’s song distinctly in her head. 

Kelly was right. Why had she not picked up on this before?

“I think we should just agree to disagree on this one, Kelly. I’m too tired to argue.”

“Whatever,” Kelly snapped back as her voice faded off towards the door. “But I’m still absolutely, positively, without a doubt right about this.”

After she and Kelly left, it became quiet in the kitchen, eerily so. She assumed it meant the seminar with Jan had begun but it didn’t explain where all the guys were.

Still, she’d had enough of being cramped up in the tiny closet and so took the lull as an opportunity to sneak away to one of the other hiding spots Randall mentioned.

Once more, she cracked the door just a touch when all of a sudden it swung way open. With almost no time to react she did all she could to hide, which was no more than cover her face with her hands and pray the person who caught her didn’t freak completely out when they discovered her.

“Who you hiding from, Patricia?”

Creed saw nothing unusual about her being in the closet and seemed more interested in getting into the box behind her than discovering why.  Still, she hurried past him before he could start asking questions or could notice anything strange about her. Thinking it the safer way out, she took the exit leading into the annex where she was able to slip by Toby into Kelly’s nook, praying she’d been right in her assumption all the women would be in Jan’s meeting.

Kelly to her relief was not there but the space was not empty. There under the desk, hiding, though not very well with his feet were sticking out, was Michael. Without having to even think the name Hermione, she knew which one he was.

Holding her index finger to her lips, she slowly drew back the jacket and found him fast asleep.

Was he trying to get caught by Toby and give him a heart attack?

Actually, she wouldn’t put it past him to try that except she wasn’t sure he was savvy enough to come up with that complex or malicious of a plan to get rid of his nemesis.

However, she was stuck. Waking him would surely cause him to react and attract attention to both of them but she couldn’t leave him here either for Kelly to come back and find him later. Plus, she had planned to somehow make her way back to the bullpen to spy on the day from one of the more spacious and closer to the action, yet clandestine areas Randall had shared with her earlier.

Before she could even decide what her next move was going to be, as if he was conjured by her thoughts, she heard her savior come to the rescue once more.

“Hey Toby, can I get a moment to get a talking head with you.”

“Hey Randall, sure thing. Here?”

“No, let’s head over by the sign in front.”