It takes Karen two days to decide she’s prettier than Pam. Better with make-up, too. She spends longer than she’ll admit squinting at her bathroom mirror every morning, fussing with the little pots and brushes that spill across the counter. When she walks into the office with a lilt in her hips, all high heels and power suits, men notice her. Karen would like to think she’s a feminist, but she’s a realist too, and it’s a man’s world. Little, sideways smiles and accidental brushes of her hands have gotten her where she is. After all, she’s a saleswoman, and she knows just what she’s selling.
She knows she’s prettier, but when she saunters in every morning, carefully careless, Jim’s eyes are never on her.
She didn’t expect to care, but then she’d never expected herself to follow a man two states away. Not that there had been much to leave: half-formed relationships she’d been too afraid or bored to continue, and her tiny, minimal apartment. She’d left the walls blank and beige; whereas other people would have put up paintings, she’d brought home someone new each night to fill the empty spaces. In truth, she’d been looking for a way out for a while, an escape route that would take her far, far away.
Karen’s only been in Scranton seventeen days before she knows that she hasn’t escaped anything. She resorts to low blouses to get her way with Michael and it’s easy, so easy. She was number three in a week. Andy may have an inexhaustible ability to suck up, but she’s got what he’ll never have: cleavage. She and Jim soon begin to spend their nights in each others’ apartments; after the first night she realizes it’s been a while for him so she pulls out every trick she knows, and he groans her name louder each time. But the sex is just as meaningless; Jim’s nice, he pretends, but afterwards, when he’s running his fingers along her hipbone, his eyes are always somewhere else.
It only took her twelve days to notice that Jim’s eyes are always on Pam. He doesn’t face her but he’s always turning, making excuses to get up, leaning against her desk. Their conversations are, at first, strained and awkward, but every so often she’ll see their eyes connect and they’re laughter will turn genuine, no longer nervously catching in their throats.
Twenty-two days and Karen notices that Pam is beautiful. It isn’t something you see right away; sure, she’s cute and she’s got this shy prettiness that you notice. Still, watching her lean over her sketchbook with a little frown of concentration, white fingers smudged with charcoal, Karen realizes she’s beautiful. She starts to watch Pam at her desk, answering calls with a note of boredom in her voice that has steadily receded as she and Jim become less cautious with each other, less afraid of rupturing the camaraderie that they seem to have rebuilt. Sometimes she sits with Pam at lunch and they discover that their birthdays are two days apart, that they both revered Cyndi Lauper as teenagers, that they share a secret love of late night Sex and the City marathons.
Thirty-one days and she is always watching Jim with one eye and Pam with the other. By now she’s heard the whole story from Kelly over long lunches; it has been explained through comparisons to Brangelina and Tomkat that she only half understands. Karen is envious of the romance of it; no one has ever waited four years for her, she’s never let them. She wouldn’t admit it, but secretly she wonders if it would have made a difference if she had let them; she may be beautiful but she’s cold, all angles. She is angry with Jim for a few days but the charm in his smile disarms her, sweeps her up in his jokes and stories. The ache in her chest takes the form of jealousy of Pam. She notices the way Pam styles her hair, the way she purses her lips when she’s concentrating, the curve of her neck when she’s staring at the back of Jim’s head. Karen takes Pam shopping one weekend, reasoning that she has no friends in Scranton. Besides, she keeps her enemies close.. It’s busy and they share a changing room; they end up trying on their clothes and then each other’s and then just confiding in each other until the teenage salesclerk kicks them out with a leer. Back against the sticky plastic, Pam mutters hurriedly that she wishes she had boobs like Karen’s, and then in the next breath confesses she’s not used to having girlfriends. Karen says nothing, only smiles slowly, knowingly, fixing her eyes on Pam’s and then dropping them meaningfully to the other woman’s chest. When she sees Pam’s neck flush and her gaze drop, Karen convinces herself that the warmth in her stomach is smugness.
It is thirty-nine days of Michael’s jokes before she realizes the line between wanting to be Pam and just plain wanting Pam has disappeared, or maybe it never existed. Sure, Karen kissed some girls in college, her fingers fumbling clumsily along the edges of lacey bras for the benefit of a few cute boys. Eventually she’d begun to kiss girls without any boys watching, finding she liked the combination of sticky lip gloss and soft skin under her fingers, liked being on top even. But she’d never expected that she’d want Pam and Jim at once, want him pressed up against her back, hands on her hips, while she held Pam. That morning she’d discovered them kissing in the women’s bathroom; Jim pressed against the counter with Pam’s hand gripping his bicep, surprisingly aggressive. She’d made a hasty exit, hoping they mistook her flush from embarrassment. When Pam and Jim return to their desks, she feels two sets of eyes following her movements.
Forty-four days and it is the night of the office Christmas party; it is as good as Jim promised. It is held at Jim’s, which she believes may be an attempt to keep the members of the party planning committee from murdering each other after Michael’s attempts at intervention fall flat. Karen had been assigned to decorations, all of which are declared whorish by Angela, and she is grateful when Jim takes over the responsibility of planning. Oscar brings Gil and Michael tries to kiss him to show his acceptance; Phyllis and Bob Vance are discovered in Jim’s home office using the desk for something other than paperwork; Andy maneuvers Angela under mistletoe only to have her sniff and pronounce that she disapproves of pagan traditions, a sentiment which Dwight strongly echoes, looking unnaturally pleased.
Karen drinks enough to be bold, or at least bolder, and by the early hours of the morning she’s in bed between Jim and Pam, sweaty and sated. It was easy, too easy; seduction has always come naturally to her. Still, when she wakes up in the morning, she is alone, with only the strains of shy laughter from the kitchen for company.
