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Author's Chapter Notes:

These characters are not my own.  They belong to their very talented creators.  No copyright infringment intended.

 Spoilers for The Merger.

            When Jim walked into the office, he could feel his headache getting worse.  He’d just spent two hours meeting with a potential new customer, the owner of a start-up party planning company, who had expected him to be able to match paper colors to party themes with the same ease as those machines that paint stores use to mix wall colors to match the background flowers in someone’s drapes.  He was pretty sure that he’d closed the deal, but the conversation had strained his sanity.

 

            He took a quick stock of his co-workers.  Michael was trying to bond with his employees again, sitting in Jim’s chair and rolling back and forth between Andy and Dwight’s desks, telling jokes or stories as he went, while the two of them competed for the number three spot by laughing uproariously.  Ryan had shrunk down in his seat, as if he were trying to disappear behind his computer.  Angela, on the other hand, was sitting as rigidly as possible in her chair, obviously hoping to intimidate Michael into good behavior by virtue of her work ethic.  Phyllis and Stanley weren’t at their desks; lunch outside the office, he supposed.  And Pam and Karen were also missing.  They’d probably found excuses to get outside the range of Michael’s jokes, too.  A nice solo lunch in the break room would be good.

 

            Jim dropped his messenger bag and jacket at his desk, waved and gave a weak smile and thumbs up in response to Michael’s booming “Hey, Number Two, how’d ya do?”, grabbed his lunch and ducked quickly into the break room.  He stopped abruptly when he saw Karen and Pam, laughing together, heads bent over a sketchbook. 

 

            “Hey,” he said awkwardly.  The two of them looked up quickly.  Karen’s smile got wider, while Pam’s faded.  It held steady at polite, however, so Jim felt brave enough to go on.  “What’s up?  You look like you’re planning something that the Number Two guy in the office should know about.”

 

            “Pulling rank, Halpert?”  Karen teased.  “Relax.  No girl power pranks being planned here.  Pam’s just showing me her drawings for her class tonight.”

 

            “Oh, yeah?”  Jim looked from Karen’s warm smile to Pam’s strained one.  “Sounds interesting.  I was just going to grab a soda for lunch.  So. . .”

 

            “Oh, no.  We need your opinion on this last drawing.”  Karen looked at Pam, inviting her to join the teasing.

 

            “Uh, sure.  That would be good.  The more the merrier, right?”  Pam said awkwardly.

 

            Jim caught the disinvitation in Pam’s voice, but he figured the easiest way to extricate himself would be to look at the drawing quickly and move on.  He walked over and set his lunch bag on the table.  “Okay, what am I looking at?”

 

            “The fox.  What do you think?” 

 

            “I think it looks like a fox.  Nice job, Pam.”

 

            “Yes, but does it look familiar?”  Karen said, grinning widely.  Jim couldn’t imagine the payoff.

 

            “Can’t say that I know a lot of foxes.  So, no on the familiar.  Is it a famous fox?  Am I going to be embarrassed that I didn’t recognize it?”

 

            “It’s you.  Can’t you tell?”  Jim looked from the grinning Karen to Pam, who was beginning to look amused as well.

 

            “Ummm . . .  no.  Don’t really see the resemblance.  But, uh, thanks for thinking of me when you think of fox.  I haven’t heard that word since junior high, but I seem to remember that it was a compliment.”

 

            “Not that kind of fox,” Karen corrected.  “A sly fox.  You know.  A trickster, like in Bre'r Rabbit.  We started with a weasel, but that had some bad connotations, so . . . .”

 

            Jim looked at Pam, who first stared steadily on the sketchpad and then, as she felt his eyes on her, raised a slightly guilty face to him and gave a small shrug of apology.  Karen continued, not noticing the exchange.  “Pam has been filling me in on your history as the office prankster.  Gaydar?  Putting Dwight’s things in the vending machine?  Nickels in the phone handset?  You must have been the person who put Andy’s stapler in Jell-O, right?”

 

            “Okay, you caught me.”  Jim smiled, raising his hands in mock surrender.  “Just don’t tell him, okay?  I think he’s still mad.  I’m afraid he may take out a hit on me or something.   So someone want to explain why my sly fox self part of Pam’s artwork?”

 

            Karen looked at Pam, who hesitated and then explained the assignment.  Within minutes, Jim had pulled up a chair and the three of them were debating the finer points of the various farm animals that were being considered for Michael.

 

            “No, a bull would just make him overconfident,” Jim said.  “I don’t think he’d catch the reference to the bull. . . puckey.  There’s got to be a better animal for him.  What about a jackass?”

 

            “Yeah, been there.  We thought it was too obvious.”  Karen rolled her eyes at Pam, making her laugh again. 

 

            Unreal, Jim thought.  I’m sitting at a table with Karen and Pam, making jokes.  He saw Pam cast a quick glance at him and realized that she must be thinking the same thing.  She caught his eye then and gave him a small, but genuine smile.  He could feel his stomach lurch and his heart begin to beat a little faster.  Even though he knew that he shouldn’t care, he wanted to make her smile even more, see if a real smile from Pam could still give him that familiar warm, happy feeling from his toes to the top of his head.  He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned back in his chair.

 

            “I’ve got it.  A horse.”

 

            “A stallion?”  Pam asked skeptically.  “Jim, that’s going to go to his head just as much as a bull.  Besides exactly what about Michael says ‘stallion’ to you?”

 

            “Ah, that’s the good part.  Not a stallion.  A gelding.”  Jim nodded knowingly, obviously impressed with his own ingenuity.  “See, the gelding doesn’t know it’s not a stallion, even though the rest of us do.  His whole goal is trying to be a stud and we all know it will never happen in a million years.”

 

            Karen and Pam exchanged a look and then both of them burst out laughing.   Jim exhaled.  Yup, it was still there.  Warm from the tip of his toes to the top of his head.  And a bonus, he reminded himself, for making Karen laugh, too.

 

            “Mean, Halpert.  Definitely mean.  But good.”  Pam turned her attention to her sketch book and quickly drew a rough outline of a stallion/gelding.  “And, if Michael is a gelding/stallion, that means that we can make Andy and Dwight mules.  You know, wannabe stallions.”

 

            “You can tell them that they’re the workhorses of the office.  That should make Dwight happy.”  Jim looked at the drawings that Pam had already done.  “These are really great, Pam.  Now you just need some good stories.”

 

            “Hey,” Karen interrupted.  “I think we’ve missed a few people.”  She looked pointedly at Jim and Pam.

 

            “Oh, yeah,” Pam said, sheepishly.  “We need you.  Let me think.”

 

            “How about a sweet little lamb?” Jim joked, reaching over to pat her head.  Karen made a face and jokingly batted his hand away.

 

            “No,” Pam said, trying hard to ignore the flirting and stay focused on the assignment.  It wouldn’t help anyone to get snitty now.  “You don’t actually remind me of a farm animal, Karen.”

 

            “Which is a good thing,” Karen interrupted. 

 

            Pam smiled, but otherwise ignored the comment and continued to think.  “What about . . . a mink?”

 

            “Huh. A little animal that gets made into fur coats?  I’m not sure I like where this is going.  What about me says mink?”  Karen asked.

 

            Pam blushed a little.  She didn’t want to tell Karen that her first thought had been “minx” and she’d moved on from there.  It wasn’t fair really.  Karen wasn’t doing anything wrong, just dating a great, otherwise unattached guy.  She tried another tack.  “It’s just . . . sleek and shiny and . . . a little exotic.  Even if its dad wasn’t a G.I.”  Karen and Jim both laughed at that and Pam realized that Karen had filled him in on that little Michael-ism.  “And you don’t really belong to this office yet.  So I was thinking something that’s not necessarily part of the farm, something wild.  Like Jim’s fox, really.  I promise there are no fur coats in your character’s future, but I can totally do something else, if you don’t want to be a mink.”

 

            “What, I don’t get a choice about being a fox?”  Jim asked, pretending to be insulted.

 

            “No.”  Pam and Karen said at the same time, then looked at each other and laughed again. 

 

            “A mink is good.  I can see me as a mink.  Thanks.”  Karen glanced at her watch.  “Wow.  We’ve been here a while.  I’d better get back to work.”

 

            “Oh, me, too.”  Pam started gathering her things.

 

            “Do you mind showing me some of the novel once you get it going?”  Karen asked.  “I’d really like to see what this office looks like as a farm.”

 

            “Sure,” Pam replied.  “We have to turn in one chapter a week between now and the end of class.  It would be great to get a second opinion on the story line before I turn it in.  I’ve done drawings for stories before, but I’ve never written one.  I’m not really sure where to start.”

 

            Jim watched Karen and Pam walk to the door together.  Karen turned and winked at him before leaving the break room with Pam.  He nodded in return, still feeling a little bewildered.  Karen and Pam talking and laughing together.  Even talking and laughing with him.  He never would have guessed that they would be friends, that they could all be friends.  But that was good, right?

 


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