My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

He knows he promised. That she had begged (wrong choice), she had ordered him to restrain himself. To please not use it as his desktop wallpaper. So, instead, he finds his finger going practically (nearly) numb from the number of times he has closed and opened, closed (click) and opened (click). His fingers drum a few inches from the phone, itching to reach for the numbers he has mimed so many times over the past few months. He has already crossed out today on the calendar. Still four days until he can see her again and trace her tan lines with his busy fingers. His shoulders flinch as Pam buzzes in a call. Corporate. He takes a breath, running the word “nonchalant” through his head about a half a dozen times before pressing the button. Her voice washes over him like the Jamaican sun and his fingers find their way back to the mouse, refreshing the image again. Her eyes are closed, her lips in an almost smile, her skin dark against the white bed sheets. He had taken it one morning, the sun stealing through the blinds, framing the edges of her face. And she had been angry, but hadn’t asked him to erase it. She asks him if he is even listening and he nods, forgetting that she can’t see him, lost in the glow of the monitor. Seeing her as he always has, and always will. Until the day (of course) when she will finally (and inevitably) come to her senses.  But he decides not to think about that day (not right now at least).

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

It’s not that she is doing it wrong. It’s just that the goddamn thing won’t turn over. She flips the key again. Sputter. Silence. The snow is building up again on the windshield as she hears his knuckle against the glass and rolls the window down without thinking (cursing her own impatience a little as the snow spills into her lap). He asks if she is alright. If she needs a jump. To be honest, she isn’t quite sure what she needs. He opens the door for her to step out and takes her place, turning the key again, and again. And on the third attempt it growls to life, jolting the frame a little. They both laugh , she tells him that he is her lucky charm (but not in a creepy leprechaun way). He asks if she needs anything (anything?) else before closing the door for her and she can see him waiting, making sure that she pulls out before walking to his own car (she wonders if maybe she should have waited to see that his will start as well). The next day, she remembers to thank him with a Chai Latte. He smiles and reminds her that Human Resources is his job, and that it is just all a day’s work really.

And she goes back to spend all her day’s work watching the back of someone else’s head, while he hopes that she never checks his trash bin (not that she ever would).

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

It had been everything. That building. Those people (with four--now five-- exceptions). And here he stands. A bobblehead in each hand is all there is to show for his loyalty and dedication. The snow is cold on his nose and his glasses are fogged, but he has always been (if nothing else) a survivor. He undoes his favorite tie (the brown one with the blue crisscrossing stripes) and slips it beneath the wiper blade of the Sebring. Michael had always liked it, he knows. And (later that evening) he’ll put his feet up on the coffee table (the one that Mose whittled from a log), and he’ll have his arm around her as they watch the episode commentaries for the second season of Lost (and she won’t complain because its just been that kind of a day), and she’ll raise her eyebrows at him when he likens her to Kate (she’ll call her a murderer and a slut, but she won’t exactly disagree).

But (for now) he’ll wipe his windshield free from snow, slip in his Braveheart soundtrack, and let the bagpipes sing him home. Because he would do it again, a thousand times over, for her.

All of life is a foreign country.

It had taken a phone call, a round-trip ticket, and a therapist named Dr. Perry to get her here, yet here she is. His breath on the receiver sounds erratic, his voice purposefully detached. If she could see him she could predict the way his eyes would be begging not to be discovered by her. The way that they would scream “Please please please don’t let me screw this thing up.” She has never had someone look at her in quite that way before, and certainly not Gould (although she finds it a bit ridiculous that she now refers to a man she spent so many years with only by his last name). His voice sputters and she asks him again if something is wrong. There is a long silence before he says Dwight’s name and then it floods over the telephone wires. Dwight. New York. Quit. Box of…something. It is nearly three a.m. when she hangs up the phone, having successfully listened (not judged) and comforted and calmed. In the bathroom mirror she finds herself smiling. It’s a nice feeling, realizing that (even now) she can still surprise herself.

Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.

Yes. The one word she can hear. The only word amidst a string of promises that ever made any real sense. Picking at the cuticle of her left thumb, she can feel his eyes on her, not daring a glance until he is back to watching letters form on his computer screen. She thinks of the shoebox in her backseat. The one with the fading blue toothbrush, the quarter-used RightGuard deodorant, the bottle of hairspray that he always claims to use only in case of a bed-head emergency, yet is somehow already half empty. The movie had almost been tossed in, but (if she were going as far to return gifts) he might feel obliged to do the same. And then they would simply be right back at the start of it.

Her client list feels sparse after returning the fifteen that Dwight had provided, but she clicks through it anyway. The muscles in her shoulders tense as he walks past her desk, the air stirring just enough for her to catch his scent as he disappears into the break room. Stealing a glance at reception, she catches Pam’s eyes catching the break room door swing on its hinges. Her eyes find hers and she doesn’t look away (as much as she may want to) until their gaze is splintered by the (again) swinging door. When he sits down again he is holding a can of grape soda and she realizes that she has never seen him drinking that before. She thinks that maybe she can see Pam smiling.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

She has always liked turquoise, and Bobby had insisted that the bridesmaids wear whatever made her happiest, whatever the cost. Maybe she will ask Pam, she had been thinking about it, but she knows that she probably won’t. They aren’t close outside of work, and she is not under the same delusions as Michael. They aren’t a big happy family. They just work together. She knows that. Angela’s invitation hasn’t been sent yet, because their personalities together are (well)… explosive. Just like with Dwight. And Dwight plus Angela plus her wedding day might spell disaster. Is it true that they can’t be called bridesmaids if the women are already married? The turquoise fabric is silk against her fingertips and she knows her sister and cousins will just love it, but then again, they don’t have the understated beauty of an artsy receptionist-type. Bobby asks her if she is sure that these are the ones she wants, and she knows that they are. The pale pink will go well with Pam’s coloring, and she knows that she is going to end up asking her to wear one anyway.


The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I was in a dream.

She isn’t big on using the internet, except for at work. But Jake is away for the weekend (with his father) and she had gotten a few e-mail “hits” as they call them. In the beginning she hadn’t signed up, really, to find anyone, but she just, well, did it anyway. Two divorces and two kids mean that that part of her life isn’t really there anymore, and she is okay with that. And she knew signing up that if anyone ever contacted her, all she had to do was not write back. But then that invitation (with its ‘guest plus one’ line on it) had come in the mail.

And he has a friendly sounding name (not like Craig or David) and his arm is there to steady her when her heel catches on a stone. He is nice and he holds the door for her. She orders water with lemon, and he makes her laugh anyway.

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.
This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

His friends are loud and blowing smoke in the kitchen so that the whole place looks like some sort of surreal foggy 80’s movie dream sequence. Dan deals to his right and calls Texas Hold’em. Pushing plastic chips across the table is a welcomed distraction and someone hands him another beer. They’re great guys, sure, but the type that may never leave Scranton. The type that watch ‘the Patriot’ for its historical accuracy (or, actually, just to see someone impaled by a flagpole). Steve laughs that they should put in ‘Showgirls,’ but he reminds him that they watched it two weeks ago. Overall consensus rules, however, and within minutes that chick from Saved by the Bell’s tits are dancing across the screen. Someone asks how his “hot girlfriend” is doing (not as an impromptu segue as you might think, not with this crowd) and he shrugs and raises the stakes. He’s a little tipsy when he calls Pam and she is obviously sleeping, but answers anyway. His words stumble along and all he can think to ask is whether he should go to work early tomorrow and get Andy’s cell phone from the ceiling. She offers to join him and for some reason he discourages her from it and apologizes for waking her. He sits on the end of his bed naked and thinking of somewhere they could wear those sombreros again. Somewhere like Mexico.

Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars.

He hasn’t seen her in years, but she is the same as he remembers. The only thing he has ever really remembered clearly. So clearly that he always has just assumed his memory betrayed him. That it was just another one of those… things. But her eyes still reflect the moon, and the amber in her hair has been slowly replaced with silver. And, yes, she is only here now to say goodbye to the man she had always loved over him, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t remember. He invites her to the soup kitchen (it is a Thursday after all) and she shakes her head no. She invites him to the wake and he declines. Their eyes meet a last time as she holds both of his hands and thanks him for coming, and he (whether real or imagined) drifts to sleep underneath the stars.

A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

To top it all off, the Eagles aren’t going to the Super Bowl. Darryl said he wanted him to come over, but he had said that a lot the past few months, and his girlfriend doesn’t seem to like having him around as much as he has been. Darryl said to blow her off, but he figures maybe its little things like that that can make a woman up and leave you. He sips on his beer, flipping the channels, free to watch whatever he wants and yet lost in the choices. Drinking alone is new to him, but he likes having a drink or two after work. She used to be there, so it didn’t used to be drinking alone (even if she usually wasn’t drinking). There is still are dark smudge on the carpet where he dropped the can last weekend. He had almost called her to ask what he should do. His toes rubs against the stain and he steps into the shower before the water even has a chance to warm. Pam had always insisted that he shower before bed and he seems to only really follow that now. The water is hot against his skin and he braces his arm against the dripping tile, leaving his right hand free to dream of sand and sun and Mexico.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

His feet are propped on the only non-pink, non-faux-fur-lined pillow she owns, his textbook resting on his knees, and she is debating with him (with herself really) about the proper antonym to the word “awesome.” Partially absorbed in a marathon of artificial reality (Real World, Laguna Beach, The Hills… the list seems almost endless in its absurdity), she asks him which girls he thinks are the prettiest on the show. He answers only by reminding her that those girls are still in high school (and, of course, Lauren). The pillow hits him on the shoulder as she laughs and wonders aloud (to him he supposes) why none of the males in these shows are ever any good looking at all, and yet think that they are just so… great. When really they are lucky as hell to have girls like that (though he reminds her that the girls are dumb as fence posts) fawning over them. He closes his book and pulls her over to him, clicking the screen off. Her lips are soft and familiar and her pajama set (the one with the multi-colored popsicles all over it) makes him smile. Pulling away, she decides that the only thing she can come up with is “not awesome” and he laughs (and not in that self-important way that he reserves for his coworkers either).

Evening coming -
the office girl
Unloosing her scarf.

She doesn’t even mind staying late that night, waiting on Michael to initial a few measly papers, telling Pam, not to worry, that she can head home. That she can get the papers sent out for her. Pam had looked at her strangely, but accepted the offer—not before noticing who else was staying behind. When she leaves they share a soda in the (now quiet) break room, waiting. A smile grows on his face when she tells him that Pam knows (about everything) and, when Michael is finally finished and gone, he holds her gloved hand and tells her that he will send the papers. That he will meet her back at her apartment. The tears surface again (papers, forms, deadlines and deliveries becoming all too familiar) and he pulls her into his overcoat, telling her not to worry and that everything has worked out fine. She knows that he is right, and he knows that (even so) she still can’t help but feel responsible.