The Chanukah party was a good idea, she decided, even if it took the whole day for her to clean up the house and make it habitable even for the pitiful number of adult friends she had invited over. Fortunately, she had the entire day, because Jan had apparently heard about the Chanuchrismakkah debacle and decided that Michael needed “a day off to figure out what the hell he was doing,” which (in typical Michael fashion) led to him closing the entire branch for the day because “if I’m not there, what’s the point?”
Honestly, they probably could have gotten a lot more done without Michael there, but Pam was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she took the day off and spent it turning the house she shared with Roy from a pigsty to…well, not a palace, which would have been pleasantly alliterative, but at least a place that she could be unembarrassed by in front of her friends.
She wondered how much elbow grease Jim had put into his and Mark’s apartment earlier in the year—and then forcibly suppressed any further thoughts about Jim until, when the clock hit seven and the party hour was upon her, he knocked on the door.
Of course he was the first one there, and of course he came bearing Tupperware. “Hey, I had a little bit of time today,” he grinned and she felt an answering smile on her own face “and I figured that since there was a Chanukah party there might be latkes, and since there might be latkes you might like some of the” he gestured towards the Tupperware lid “Famous Halpert Applesauce.” She could hear the capital letters. It was cute.
No, it was nice. Funny even. Not cute. Definitely not cute.
“Thanks.” She turned and bonked her head against the doorframe. “Oh no, I forgot to make the latke batter.” She’d been so busy cleaning the house she’d spaced on the food.
“Hmm…well, I’ve been told that I’m no good with anything in the kitchen that can burn anyone, but I have heard rumors that latkes require grated potatoes, and I’m very good with a grater.” Jim twinkled at her—how did his face do that, she wondered—and it was with real regret that she had to convey the fact that she had a food processor that could grate the potatoes in about two minutes.
She couldn’t tell if he looked disappointed, but she felt disappointed, so she added “I could use some help stirring the batter, though, if you don’t mind?”
Apparently he did not mind.
She did have to physically put her hand across Penny’s mouth when she came in five minutes later and saw Jim in the kitchen mixing latke batter, however, so perhaps that was not actually the best idea she’d ever had.
And then she had to do it again when Izzy came in five minutes after that.
Her other high school friends hadn’t been available on one night’s notice, which she supposed was fair—even though they were friends from way back, and she’d been dating Roy then, they’d drifted apart a bit as she and Roy had started spending more and more time with his buddies.
She just hadn’t noticed how much.
So it was a cozy party, or it would have been if Penny and Izzy hadn’t kept waggling their dang eyebrows at her every time Jim’s back was turned. It wasn’t like that between them, no matter what Penny, or Izzy, or Phyllis thought. Jim was her best friend! She was engaged to Roy!
Roy, who wasn’t here, and whom she hadn’t heard from since he left her at the office with no way to get home.
Feeling a bit guilty about the fact that she also hadn’t actually tried to contact him in the interim, she fired off a basic “how’s Santa Monica” text to him while waiting for the first batch of latkes to come off the stove.
Then she was distracted by the need to immediately eat the latkes while they retained their warm fluffy goodness—the Halpert Family Applesauce came very much in handy, and it was absolutely delicious—and then by a rousing game of dreidel (a concept she would have said was oxymoronic if she hadn’t had the experience of watching Izzy physically tumble to the ground in agony after another Shin while Jim cackled at the Gimel he rolled immediately after and Izzy asked if he wanted to take this outside), and then by…well, just by having her friends around her, she supposed.
She’d dug out their hanukkiah from the closet—she would feel vindicated that Roy ought to have remembered she was Jewish just from that if she thought he ever bothered to put anything away in the closet—and (in her own minor version of the Chanukah miracle itself) managed to find the right number of candles as well. They taught Jim the blessings, and even though it wasn’t the first night Pam tacked on an extra shehecheyanu anyway, because she did feel blessed to have this little group together for the first time.
Then it was time for presents. One thing she had remembered to do with her day out—when she was buying cleaning supplies, because they were out of pretty much everything up to and including paper towels—was to get some party favors, and she passed around little bags of gelt with as much pomp and circumstance as if they were real gold. To her surprise, her friends had brought her presents as well: Penny and Izzy had clearly collaborated on a sketchbook and watercolor pens, while Jim had a lovely little sampler of loose-leaf tea.
She didn’t know quite why she was so disappointed that he seemed not to have remembered that she didn’t have a teapot that could take loose leaf, but well, it was the thought that counted anyway, right? At least he remembered she liked tea; Roy had given her coffee last year for Christmas, because “we always have a pot on, don’t we Pammy?” despite the fact that he was the one who insisted on making coffee at home.
Speaking of Roy…
It was fortunately after her friends had all gone—even Jim, who had tried to offer to stay for the washing up until Penny had revealed that she had actually already filled the dishwasher and started the cycle while he and Izzy were playing their ‘rubber match’ of dreidel—that her phone started to buzz.
“PAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammy!” It was three hours earlier in Santa Monica, making it barely 6:30, but Roy was clearly already drunk. “You’re missing out! You’d love it here!”
