1

Erasure

 

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;

Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!

Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,

Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.

 

 

She wakes up to an airplane crashing into the middle of her forehead, sprawling blood vessels and droplets of red paint across her barely furnished apartment.

 

Well, that’s what it feels like. She sits up, knocking her head gently against the paper lamp dangling from her ceiling. Frozen blueberries, must get frozen blueberries. Oddly, that had always been her best defense, back in the more collegiate days, for rotten hangovers like this one. Their dark, ripe color inspired her. “Blossoming Blueberry,” was, after all, the name on the label of hair dye that was still lying at the drain of her shower.

 

Walking across the icy hardwood floor, she loosens the scarf from around her neck and nearly trips over the cat, which scampers away in a gray blur. Her refrigerator is empty, save for some leftover takeout from Kang’s (this great little Chinese place down the block), a half-filled bottle of cheap vodka, and a rotten peach. It scares her that she actually reaches for the peach – it IS fruit, she thinks, but maybe that’s still the vodka talking – before thinking better of it. She could just throw it away, but currently she’s a woman on a mission. She has no time for frou frou things like housecleaning or doing the bills. It’s not her style.

 

She’s nearly out the door before she remembers that it’s the middle of October, and so pulls on her fur coat (it’s a bright, cheerful shade of orange, so obviously fake, and she loves that) and manages to make it to the Korean coffee shop and back before exhaustion takes over again. Shrugging her coat back off, she takes the large coffee with the convenient plastic top and retreats to the typhoon of oversized pillows and blankets on the mattress that she considers a bed.

 

The room is a disaster, which she realizes, but she really doesn’t want to move at the moment. She has an opening tomorrow at this refurbished warehouse in Williamsburg, and so she’s going to have to find something decent to throw over herself, and if she wants to locate something suitable beneath the layer of junk in this place, cleaning is going to be essential. Unfortunately.

 

The junk, as it were, is mostly her sketches, mixed in with clothes she’s worn and clothes she’s decided not to wear, receipts, mix tapes with the tape pulled out, her father’s old leatherette suitcase (which she still hasn’t unpacked, even after a month), paintbrushes crusted over with old paint, and a couple of brochures, which she looks at now, for the seventh time this morning, the twentieth time this weekend, and the forty-eighth time since she can remember. She had, at some point, ripped the cover off of it, so all she has now is a teal piece of paper with the words “Lacuna, Inc.” printed across the front in drab, Courier New text.

 

She shrugs, dismissing it, and brings her coffee to her lips. Good thing she’d worn that coat, really. The strap of her homemade tank top that she’d strung together last weekend with ribbon from the dollar store was threatening to snap right off. Perhaps later she’d turn it into a tube top. She likes tube tops, because she doesn’t have to worry about sweating in them.

 

The telephone rings. Her telephone is an old-fashioned one where you have to put your finger in the appropriate number hole and turn in order to dial; she can’t remember where she bought it.

 

The sound is shrill, and she’s cranky when she answers the phone.

 

“May I help you?”

 

“Pam, it’s Amanda.”

 

Her cousin. She hears Amanda’s husband pick up the other phone in the house, which irritates her immensely. “And Ted.”

 

She coughs into her hand to muffle the expletives. “Oh, hi! How are you guys?”

 

“Are you okay? We thought you’d have left by now,” Amanda says, and Pam can hear the reprimand in her voice – annoying.

 

“Left?”

 

“For our friends’ party!” she responds. Pam can hear Ted breathing. He’s okay, she’s okay. They always talked about having kids. God, why would anyone even want to get married? She thinks, totally astounded. Can’t two people just… be together without putting a fucking stamp on everything?

“You there?” Ted calls, distant.

 

“Yes. I remember now, the beach party. I don’t have to wear a swimsuit, I hope.”

 

There’s a pause, and Pam knows her cousin is exchanging a worried glance with her husband. She’s so out of it lately, she can hear them thinking. What is wrong with her? Maybe drugs.

 

“I mean, just kidding.” They never got her jokes.

 

“Are you going to take the train?”

 

“Pam?”

 

They’re talking to you again. “Oh, oh, right, yes, I’ll do that. And then I’ll take a cab, I guess. Can you give me the address?” They gave it to you last week. “Um, again?”

 

She writes it down on the back of an old photograph, because she can’t find paper in this place. The pen she’s using says Dunder Mifflin – whoever that is. She probably picked the pen up – stole it – somewhere. The bus station, the coffee shop, she’s always picking up free stuff. Extra pens, napkins, condiments, tableware. Whatever.

 

“I’ll see you there.”

 

“Oh, and Pam? You might want to dress up a bit …”

 

They realize she’s hung up. Her coffee’s in the trash and she’s nearly out the door before she knocks into something, left on the corner of the kitchen counter. It shatters into pieces, and she stares down at it with disbelief – disbelief that she could be such a klutz.

 

It was a little teapot. What the hell? Where did that come from? She wonders. She could grab a broom from the super, she should really clean it up before she leaves so the cat doesn’t get into it, but for some reason she’s purely transfixed by the pieces of this thing. She doesn’t even drink tea. Who drinks tea? So lame. She must’ve bought it at some point before she moved to New York. She doesn’t remember. Her life before moving to Manhattan was so fucking boring, everything that happened before that day she got on the train is impossible to recall. Those days just aren’t important, she thinks, taking her foot and pushing the shards of teapot into the corner (she then covers it with the quilt so the cat won’t get to it). Clearly I didn't have any taste back then anyway...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two - The Beginning of Things

 

 

 

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

 

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” His shoulders slump, stomach calms, heart steadies. "She's supposed to be right here."

 

“I mean, she’s gone. She quit. Dunder Mifflin hasn’t been the same without her,” says Dwight, lowering his head and pushing his glasses up a bit higher on the bridge of his nose.

 

Jim had been looking forward to this day with a somewhat nauseating mix of terror and glee; in fact, in the brief moment before he walked through the front door of his old place of employment, he realizes he’d been holding his breath. About to see her again. The long brown curls, cascading down across the shoulders of her collared shirt, buttoned up to far beyond a respectable height.

 

“Michael, of course, has thrown himself into the responsibility of replacing her,” Dwight continues, his honor for Michael evident in his voice. “She’s been gone for nearly a month now, and he can’t seem to find anyone he likes for the job.” He peers past Jim to Karen, who is watching their exchange with interest and more than a bit of obvious suspicion. “Perhaps you would like to apply for the job?”

 

Jim turns to look at his new girlfriend, who looks like she’d accidentally swallowed a cherry pit. “Um, no, I’m good, thanks.”

 

“Jim Halpert!” Michael emerges from the depths of his office, and before Jim can stop it, his boss’ arms are wrapped around him. “My buddy! We’re so happy to have you back!”

 

“Yup, ex - static,” says Dwight, spraying a mist of spit on the trio. He looks vaguely threatened by all the attention Jim is getting.

 

“How does it feel to be back in Scranton?” asks Phyllis from her chair.

 

Jim takes a long moment to answer. Slowly, he sits down in his old seat and glances at the spot where Pam should be sitting, smiling – their sweet secret smile – right back at him.

 

“It’s a little weird,” he responds.

The main office line rings, and then is automatically routed to Dwight's desk. Karen is already busy, yapping away on a business call in her well-fitting gray pantsuit. Jim wonders if he’ll ever get used to not seeing her there, behind the front desk. He hates to admit that her presence – or lack of it – can affect him so much, but the truth is that the thought of seeing her again had sent him spiraling backwards through time, to the night when he had laid everything on the line and had it thrown back in his face.

 

He knew she’d loved him, too – he knew that. She’d just been too afraid of change. Or maybe he just hadn’t been worth the major overhaul she’d have to put her life through. If the situation had been reversed, he thinks now, he’d have turned his existence fucking upside-down for the chance to make things work with Pam, even if one day they reached a point where they couldn’t go any further, some sort of roadblock that their pranks and winks couldn’t break down; even if it didn’t last, he would’ve given it all up. Again.

 

* * *

He does like Karen. Sometimes. He likes the way her forehead wrinkles when she’s stressed out, or upset, or when she’s trying really hard to solve the Sunday crossword puzzle. There’s no doubt that she’s a pretty girl. She’s got a career path, and she’s a girl that isn’t hard to figure out.

 

She does pilates. At first, he’d made jokes about it, pretending like he didn’t know what they were, that they were some kind of fattening coffee drink. Hi, welcome to Starbucks. What would you like today, a mocha latte, or a pi-latte? She’d rolled her eyes. He couldn’t really blame her.

 

She goes tanning and the tips of her fingernails are long, and eerily white. He’s not sure why she does these things. Her skin is nice, and he’s heard tanning isn’t good for you. Why does she want to be orange, anyway? Plus, the chunky white nails take a definite toll on her fine motor skills. He has to close the clasps on necklaces, bracelets; put the backs on her earrings; even button the buttons on her collared work shirts. It’s kind of ironic, really – all of these things are attempts to make herself feel more adult – and yet, he has to dress her.

 

He thinks about Pam’s fingers now, as he sits across from Karen in the break room, eating lunch. For no apparent reason, he’d always liked looking at them. He knew when she’d been up late painting or sketching, because even though she showered, there’d sometimes be specks of paint or a faint bluish tint of ink. She kept her nails short because she bit them – a nervous habit, he supposed. He’d never seen her with those funky fake nails. She had worn nail polish once, though – this light shade of pink – on Casino Night. Those nails had once been next to his face – her hand warm on the nape of his neck, as their faces drew close. I just needed you to know. Once.

 

But thinking about that night makes him not want to eat very much, so he pushes the thought away.

 

“So,” Karen was saying, “what do you want to do tonight? Let’s celebrate your first night back at this godawful place.” She smiles, flashing bright white bicuspids. “Want to go out for Thai food?”

 

Inwardly, Jim rolls his eyes. He doesn’t like peanut-flavored meat – and what does she think this is, New York? Scranton doesn’t exactly boast a wide variety of ethnic cuisines. The most ethnic you could really get was Cugino’s. And he really didn’t want to go there.

 

Outwardly, he smiles and nods. “I might stay late, to catch up on some calls.”He’d taken Friday off to unpack, and he wanted to get in some sales calls before the weekend. “Just a little late,” he adds, when he sees the disappointment in her face. “But why don’t you order some in, and I’ll stop by your place to eat after I’m done.”

 

“Okay, sounds great. So, where’s the best Thai place around here?”

 

“Hmm.” He trails off into silence, his mind already wandering. He was trying to be a good boyfriend. Really, he was.

 

“I’ll look it up online,” she says, crumpling up the tin foil her sandwich had been wrapped in. She squeezes his left shoulder as she leaves to return to her desk.

 

He feels a little guilty. After all, this was – if you wanted to count omission of truth as lying – the first time he’d lied to her.

 

He wasn’t staying late to catch up on sales calls. But there was someone (and he couldn’t believe who) that he very much needed to speak to.

 

* * *

 

He’s never been to their place before, but it’s much like he imagined it would be – totally him, with very little of her. The lack of curtains, the couch that looked like it was from the Salvation Army, the empty refrigerator – it was the apartment of a bachelor – in which Pam Beesley had once lived.

 

“What do you want?” Roy snaps as he opens the door. His flannel button-down shirt is open all the way down, revealing the swelling beginnings of a beer gut underneath. He’s got a Miller Lite in one hairy-knuckled hand, and the TV remote in the other.

 

No wonder she left is the first thing to pop into his mind.

 

“Uh, Hi Roy. I … I know this is going to sound weird and maybe a little out of line, but I was wondering if you knew where Pam is.”

 

Phyllis had been the one to tell him about the cancelled wedding, and Pam’s moving out and pretty much falling off the face of the earth. No one had heard from her or seen her – and Jim was worried. What had happened to make her flee this way? And, more importantly, where was she? He had to talk to her, find out if she was all right. Because, above and beyond anything that had happened – or not happened – between them, he was still her friend. He wanted to try to be her friend, anyway.

 

Roy blinks at him, and for a second Jim wonders if the bigger man is going to hit him. Then Roy relents, steps back, draws the door open. “Come in.”

 

Jim does, his messenger bag slapping against his hip, and shuts the door firmly behind him. “Yeah. I – I just got back into town, and I was really surprised that she’d quit. And –“

 

“I guess you found out about her calling off our wedding,” Roy interrupts, taking a swig from his beer. He looks at the bottle with a palpable sadness. “Guess that’s why I’ve been drinking so many of these lately.”

 

Jim takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I – I’m sorry about that, man.”

 

“I deserved it. I mean, I never really listened to her.” He fell silent, but thought and regret still lingered in the air, between both men. Roy opened his mouth, then closed it again.

 

Not knowing what else to say, Jim asks his question again: “I was wondering if you knew where she is.”

 

“I don’t,” Roy says, and suddenly his voice breaks and tears eek from his eyes. “I have no idea where she is. Her mom doesn’t even know, man. She might’ve even told me, given me a hint, but I never listened.” He sinks down on the couch and buries his head in his hands.

 

Jim suddenly feels a headache coming on. He has absolutely no idea what to do. Gingerly, he sits down on the couch next to Roy, then puts a very cautious hand on his shoulder. “I’m really sorry, man. I just – I’m worried about her. I haven’t talked to her, and I just want to make sure that she’s okay.”

 

Roy raises his head and looks at him, eyes reddened with alcohol and emotion. “You love her, right?”

 

Yes. Yes I do. I always have. “No,” he says, shaking his head. You’re lying. You always have. I always have. “Like I said,” I love her. “I” love her “just want to make sure she’s in love with me, too. “okay.” It’s the second lie he’s told today.

 

“Okay,” Roy says. “I believe you.” He reaches for the beer, which is now sitting on the cracked glass coffee table, but Jim gently pushes it out of Roy's reach.

 

“Maybe not the best thing.”

 

Roy stands, stalks to the windows, then peers outside into the darkness. “Of course I’m worried about her too. But she’s made it really clear that she doesn’t want me to be part of her, ya know, life. I’m going to leave her alone.”

 

Hands on his knees, Jim sighs. Although he feels badly for the man, he really didn’t want this conversation to end up a therapy session. After all, Roy had had her – and he’d messed it up, time and time again. But if you’d met Pam when you were both in high school, he wonders, would you have been man enough at such a young age to make things work for seven years? Would you have realized what a wonderful girl/woman you had?

 

“Would it be okay… if I looked around a little bit? You know, for clues as to where she might have gone?” Jim ventures, hoping Roy’s crying bout has passed.

 

He’s still standing by the windows, as if the headlights of Pam’s car might splash across his face at any moment. He waves Jim further into the house without looking at him. “Sure man, whatever.”

 

The bathroom is very clearly a man’s, and there’s no trace of Pam in there. Jim slides open the medicine cabinet, and all that’s in there is a jumbo container of Vaseline, a dozen Dial soaps, and some old towels stained with what looks like car grease. He decides if he finds a pack of condoms he’s going to have to run from the apartment screaming.

 

He crosses the hallway into their bedroom and can’t believe he’s standing in the room where Pam Beesley died a million little deaths, giving up on herself to give herself to Roy. Feeling intensely skeeved out, he reminds himself that he’s looking for some kind of clue as to where she might be.

 

Jim slides open the closet door and pulls on the string to turn on the bare light bulb inside. Looking down, he hopes to see a pair of old Ked sneakers there, but to no avail – just an ancient, slightly stinky pair of Roy’s Pumas. The closet is actually a dump, and the floor of it is mostly covered with worn clothes, socks and underwear. Ew.

 

He thinks about himself seven years ago. What had he been doing when Pam and Roy went on their first date? Had their first kiss? First… stop. Jim Halpert had been a tall and gangly 19-year-old, enjoying having a driver’s license, playing basketball with his friends every afternoon, his hair long enough to give his mother migraines, somewhat afraid of girls. He hadn’t known who he was. Not that he totally knew himself now, really. And Pam … Pam probably hadn’t had a clue about herself, either. Obviously she hadn’t been true to herself, settling for marrying a man who wasn’t good enough for her. She needed to find herself, and maybe that’s what she was looking for now.

 

He’s about to close the closet door when a glimmer of gold in the far corner catches his eye. Kneeling down, he reaches back, grasps the object and holds it up to the light. It looks like an ankle bracelet – must be Pam’s. I remember that. She was wearing that on… that night.

 

Pocketing the bracelet, he stands up again, hoping that Roy isn’t looming behind him like the killer in a horror movie. He’s not, and Jim lets out his breath.

 

A noise from the other side of the room makes him jump. The computer Pam and Roy shared is on – someone’s IM-ing.

 

Feeling like a creep, Jim walks over to the PC and opens the IM window. The username is Cyndi69XXX. It’s inviting Roy to a porn website. I wonder if that’s random or if he’s signed up for a bunch of these, Jim thinks. The thought makes him chuckle and cringe at the same time.

 

Suddenly, a thought occurs to him. Thanks to a Computer Science class he’d taken in college, he knew how to check a computer user’s Recently Visited Sites. Maybe Pam had been using the computer shortly before she’d … disappeared. The horrible idea occurs to Jim for the first time that maybe something really bad had happened to her. Would she really have run off without even telling her mom, who she’d been quite close to, where she was going? Scranton was a safe place, but if she’d gone somewhere else, alone, upset, looking for a way to start a new life, what if she’d met someone dangerous? Like an online predator?

 

Heart racing, Jim scrolls down through their Recently Visited Sites. There are an embarrassing number of Roy’s porn websites, Wikipedia (Pam), recipes from The Food Network (definitely Pam), art classes at the University of Scranton, a fansite for the band Travis … and finally Jim stumbles upon a website he doesn’t recognize – www.eraseme.com.

 

He raises an eyebrow: Now what is this? He clicks on the site, which brings him to a plain black screen with white writing:

 

Have you lost something or someone?

Wow, how’d they know? A chill trickles down Jim’s spine as he clicks “Next.”

 

Has something happened in your past that you’d like to forget?

“Jim … I… I can’t.”

“You’re still going to marry him?”

Yes. Definitely yes, I’d like to not have that particular memory keep coming back to me, Jim thinks, and clicks “Next” again.

 

This time, he sees a flash-enabled website with graphics of people’s faces – people crying, people with their heads in their hands, people fighting with each other.

 

Would you like to forget and start again?

It’s as if this site can read his mind.

"Oh, that'd be nice," he murmurs, clicking once more on the mouse.

 

The screen changes, and now the sad-looking people from the first screen are smiling, sighing in relief, and walking on into the sunset.

 

Then come to Lacuna, Inc.

 

Jim checks out the site, but is unable to find any more details about what Lacuna is or what the organization does for people.

 

Finally, he does find something: an address. It’s in Brooklyn, New York.

 

He wonders if this is where she might have gone – to forget. After all, it doesn’t sound like an altogether horrible idea.

 

He grabs a pen, and since he can’t find any paper he writes the address on his hand. As he walks back into the living room, he tries to look dejected.

 

“Find anything?” Roy asks, still at the window, his arms folded across his chest.

 

“No, man. I’m not really sure what I was looking for, anyway.” He shrugs, keeping his right hand slightly behind his back, so Roy can’t see that there’s something written on it. Just don’t start sweating, or you’ll never be able to read that address, Jim thinks. “I should get going, anyway. I’m meeting my girlfriend for dinner,” he adds, thinking throwing in that extra fact will make him look less suspicious.

 

“Alright, take care man.”

 

When Jim gets back into the privacy of his car he grabs the Pennsylvania map out of his glove compartment and immediately writes down the address of Lacuna, Inc. on the corner, so he’s in no danger of losing it. Thoughts of spring rolls and Pad Thai fade quickly from his mind as he decides not to even go home for clothes and toiletries – he can stop for a toothbrush, drinks and a snack at a Quick-Check or Wawa along the way – and he’ll pick up a fresh shirt at a Gap or something in the morning. He has an idea as to where Pam might be – but the mystery of Lacuna, Inc. is equally exciting – if they really can do what they claim.

 

Karen might be a little upset if he can’t come to dinner, but in the long run she’d be happier if he went. Erasing the past year, year and a half, would erase the pain of not being able to love Pam forever – and then he’d finally be the boyfriend Karen wanted.

 

He’s so entranced by the thought of losing these memories that he doesn’t notice Roy pulling out of the garage behind him, doesn’t realize when Roy’s truck stays slightly behind him on the highway.

 

Jim drives all night, and he can smell New Jersey before he actually gets there. From the Pennsylvania Turnpike he hits the NJ Turnpike, then snakes through the early morning traffic of I-95 until he’s approaching the Lincoln Tunnel on his right. To his left, the sun rises over the monstrous copper and gray New York City skyline. Truthfully, he’s not sure how to get to Brooklyn. He’s a little afraid to take his still-new car through the city, so he takes the ferry from Weehawken. It’s nice, traveling that way – it’s been a long night and he hasn’t slept and he needs coffee and a toothbrush – but the cold, wintry air whips through his hair, slaps his face, turning his cheeks a faint shade of pink. He slips his hands into his pockets, trying to stay warm, and watches the city get bigger.

 

The palpable lack of sleep and food has demolished his senses, made him emotional. He hasn’t been on a boat since the booze cruise. And those seconds of silence, when he longed to tell her everything, to reach across the distance. How his arms had ached, the muscles in his biceps tightening, as he struggled to keep them at his sides.

 

I’m cold. She should get inside. Yeah, okay.

 

He should’ve gone after her, grasped her arm, pulled her back, shielding her from the brutal wind that gusted off the lake that night. He’s not even sure what he should’ve said, really. I love you seemed trite. Don’t marry him, Pam, felt desperate. For some reason, what had really died on his lips that night had been I want to be more. I don’t want to be the only person in America who doesn’t want it to be five o’clock every day so I can leave work and go home. I don’t want to watch you walk out the door at night, knowing that you’re going home to him. He gets to have you, to see you in your pajamas. He gets to watch you fall asleep, and gets to brush his teeth with you every night.

At the same time, he had a feeling that Roy found no special pleasure in any of those simple everyday things. He took her for granted.

 

He lives that unspoken silence over and over, lying in bed some nights, alone. Or not alone. Doesn't matter; he thinks of her, just the same.

 

He’s never been to Brooklyn, and had he been in town for any other reason he might have taken his time, browsed through a used bookstore, popped into one of the many ethnic eateries, or just explored. But this morning he’s on a mission.

 

Too focused, in fact, to notice a familiar face from Scranton several blocks back, steadily following him.

 

According to the address, Lacuna was in an area of Brooklyn known, oddly, as DUMBO – down under the Manhattan/Brooklyn overpass. Jim stops for a bagel and coffee at a nearby deli, and he asks the teenage girl behind the counter what DUMBO means. She explains it with a jaded, wary eye. What a weird city, Jim thinks, cautiously stepping over a homeless person sleeping on a flattened cardboard box on the sidewalk. This isn’t even the bad section. He thinks briefly about breaking off a piece of the bagel and leaving it for the man/woman (it’s impossible to tell), then thinks better of it. Wouldn’t want the food to attract birds. Jim’s heard crazy things about the pigeons in this place.

 

He finally tracks down the address, and he stands in front of the building for a second, blinking in the early morning light. It looks suspiciously like an apartment building. Oh, shit, is it possible that the address is wrong, that the whole thing was a joke? Not real? I mean, who am I kidding? A company that can help you forget your past? Right. Just like in Vanilla Sky.

Gazing up at the dark windows of the building’s second floor, he snorts a little at the absurdity of it all. Most likely a lack of sleep and a ridiculous worry about Pam – who had clearly not cared enough about their friendship to let him know she was fucking alive – had driven him to near-insanity. He shook his head. He should call Karen and explain.

 

Just then, a face, a round white O, appeared in one of the windows. Jim squinted, trying to make out the details, but just as quickly as it had appeared, the face disappeared. A white hand came up and drew the curtain back in a way that convinced Jim that this was, in fact, exactly what he was looking for.

 

He walks to the front door, hugging his black peacoat around him against the cold morning. His hand is literally in mid-air, poised to knock, when the door opens, and a perfectly normal-looking middle-aged man dressed in a sweater vest over a blue button-down answers the door. He looks at Jim quizzically.

 

“Can I help you?” he asks, politely enough. Jim suddenly feels embarrassed.

 

“I, uh … I think I must have the wrong house,” he says, feeling a blush in his cheeks, unable to meet the man’s friendly gaze. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. Sorry to have bothered you.” He steps back, begins to turn to walk away.

 

“Wait a minute, son,” he says, and Jim looks back. “I think I might know what you need.”

 

* * *

 

He can’t believe that this is actually, like, a possible thing. Mierzwiak sits him down in a cluttered room filled with messy bookshelves (with books by people like Proust and Nietzsche and other names Jim can’t pronounce) and musty furniture and tells him he can erase his past.

 

Everything? Jim asks, an eyebrow shooting skyward. Like, do you have to erase years? Your entire past from the day you were born?

No, no, chuckles Mierzwiak, smiling kindly. Mostly, people choose to eliminate parts of their life, like a divorce, the death of a loved one. We get a lot of people who lose pets, actually.

And then what happens? Do you just wake up and the memories are gone?

Yes, Mierzwiak says, scratching his head. Of course, we ask the person to collect any material items that might jog their memory – photographs, stuffed animals, letters, e-mails, etc.

 

Well, that wouldn’t be too hard, Jim thinks, realizing that he doesn’t have anything of Pam’s to remind him of her. Karen had made sure of that. Actually, that was wrong. He did have something, something he kept in his Kmart desk at home. He’d kept one of her sketches, one of Dwight dressed as Captain America, that had really made him laugh. In the corner of the sketch she had drawn Cartoon Jim and Pam, dwarfed by giant Dwight, laughing and pointing.

 

He could have Karen pitch that, of course.

 

So she came here? Pam, Pam Beesley? Do you remember her?

Mierzwiak looks down and to the left, clearly thinking back. When would she have come here?

You’d remember her, Jim says. From Pennsylvania. Quiet, but funny, personable. She’d been engaged and was alone for the first time in a long time. She might have been lonely, scared.

The gray-haired doctor looks at him closely. No doubt he’s thinking I’m the fiancé, Jim suspects.

What does she look like?

Beautiful, Jim blurts, then blushes furiously. You know, uh, long hair. Curly, brown. Big sparkly eyes. She has a couple of freckles on her nose, right here, he says, pointing to the bridge of his own nose. He’s uncomfortable with how well he knows her face. Uh, and she’s from Pennsylvania.

 

I do remember her, the older man says, his eyes lighting up. Pamela!

 

Jim had leaned forward in his chair, anxious to hear what had happened. Had she underwent the memory erase?

 

Funny thing, I don’t remember her saying anything about engaged. That wasn’t why she was here…

 

And then Jim’s world had exploded.

 

She hadn’t come because of Roy, her wedding, one hundred unsent and unusable invitations, one hundred spoiled dinners, and one dress she might never wear.

 

She’d come to erase him.

The doctor was talking to him now. “So, Jim… do you think the procedure is something you’d like to do? I don’t want to rush you, but I have an appointment coming in at ten, so…

Jim bolts out of his seat and walks to the window, which faces the street he came in on. “Is it, uh, a little hot in here?”

 

Dr. Mierzwiak shrugs. “Open it if you need to.”

 

Jim does, and a gust of chilly wind rustles the thin white curtain in front of him. He touches it gingerly with his fingers, feeling torn and frustrated. He pinches the bridge of his nose, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. He couldn’t believe she would want to erase him – their friendship.

 

Oh but it was so much more than that. You know that. She knew that.

 

So she hadn’t felt the same way he had. Hadn’t they still had a strong connection, even just a friendly one? So why …? All their pranks, their inside jokes and winks across the office – and the way he thought he understood her better than anyone – all down the drain?

 

So he’s here now, and he gets to carry the knowledge that Pam had traveled hundreds of miles and spent God only knew how much money to never have to think of him again? She walked around completely unburdened, having no clue in the slightest that there was a tall skinny paper salesman somewhere in the world who thinks about her every day.

 

He knew he'd lay waste to his relationship with Karen – he was sure he'd sabotage it somehow. She was a very cool girlfriend for a variety of reasons – but… it just wouldn’t work. Might as well admit it. The fact that she zapped me – all traces of me – makes me react more strongly than when Karen says “I love you,” and in return, I say “I know.”

“Jim? Any thoughts?”

 

“I, uh… if I tried to find her, do you think she might, maybe, remember me?”

 

Mierzwiak laughs softly. “Jim, people don’t pay me two thousand dollars to almost forget.”

 

“I have to try to make her remember,” he replies, grabbing his coat from the back of his chair. “I have to.”

 

He moves quickly towards the door, down the stairs, and is already outside before the doctor calls to him from the second-story window.

 

“Jim!”

 

Jim looks back, screening his eyes from the sun with the back of his hand. “Yeah, doc?”

 

“She won’t remember.”

 

“I have to try.” Jim’s voice is firm.

 

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

 

Jim turns and walks away without saying a word. “I have to try,” he says again, this time to himself. “Just once.”

 

* * *

 

“I know you know where she is,” the bold young man in the Pittsburgh Steelers baseball cap tells him, clutching the collar of his shirt. “You tell me, now. I have to find her before he does.”

 

“S-Sir,” the old man stammers, immediately backing down, “You are my second visitor about Ms. Beesley today. I take it that is not a coincidence?”

 

The man just stares at him, an icy cold glare.

 

“I am not sure what has become of Pamela. We had a brief conversation before she went under, and as she began to feel woozy, she mentioned that she had always wanted to become an artist.”

 

“A what?” The man looks puzzled, and Mierzwiak realizes that this guy might have been Pamela’s fiancé, but he had no idea what had been going on inside her head. His first guest had seemed to have a great deal more insight on what had made Pamela tick.

 

He lets go of the doctor’s shirt and sighs. “Okay, so how does that help me find her?”

 

Mierzwiak steps into the sunlight streaming through the window, and suddenly he feels older – old. “You might want to hang around some of the artsier neighborhoods, maybe there’s a possibility you’ll run into her.”

 

“Where would those be?”

 

“Oh, well… it’s been awhile since I visited any of the trendier neighborhoods, but I believe Park Slope and Williamsburg are both up-and-coming places for young hipsters and indie types. You could try there.”

 

“Okay.” The man seemed satisfied. “Anything else you remember from talking to her?”

 

Mierzwiak thinks back. He remembers the pretty, young, small-town girl with the curls well. She was the only patient he could remember – except for another young artist, a young man named Joel – who had seemed to change her mind at the last possible second. Of course it had been too late – she was already nearly completely under, and the doctor’s staff had begun pinpointing the particular memories she wanted gone. But she had fought it. She’d signed all the paperwork with a few tears, but no hesitation. Then, after the drugs had kicked in, her eyes had stayed open a crack, and she’d started moving, turning from side to side, as if trying to swim upwards, out of the hypnotic state. “No,” she’d murmured, “I don’t want to do this.”

 

Edna and Walter, the two indie college kids who comprised Mierzwiak’s staff (personally, he suspected that when he left them, nights, they probably did about an hour’s work and then smoked up and had sex) had glanced at him worriedly. Edna asked if they should stop.

 

“Keep going,” he’d said. She was probably involved in the memory they were chasing down. She certainly couldn’t still be in her right mind. She wasn’t talking about the procedure, surely.

 

The last thing she’d said before going completely and utterly under made him wonder, though: “I don’t want to do this thing. I don’t want to forget him. Don’t want to forget Jim. Jim loves me.”

 

“Come on, man,” his gruff visitor was repeating. Suddenly, the young man softened. His voice was pleading. “You don’t understand – I messed things up royally. I ruined something really good, and I want to try and change it. To do that, I really have to find her. Can you remember, was there anything else she said?”

 

Mierzwiak kept a poker face. “Nothing else that would help you.”

 

With that, the young man stormed off, no doubt off to find his ex-beloved somewhere deep in the Brooklyn streets.

 

Personally, he was cheering for the first young man, but Pamela remembering anything about him was, well, scientifically impossible.

 

 

 

 

Her show starts at eight p.m. sharp, and she’s still applying her make-up as the cab screeches to a halt in front of Chelsea Piers at seven-fifty-five. I could’ve lost an eye, she thinks, tossing the silver eye pencil back in her mustard-yellow purse and handing the cabbie a few dollars from the front pocket of her dress.

 

She’d taken the subway from Brooklyn, all the while feeling this odd foggy sense that something, something big, was about to change. At first, while straightening her hair and spritzing perfume on her collarbones and down the small of her back, she suspected nerves about the show. It was her first art show – even though it wasn’t hers, exactly. Actually, my life sounds a whole lot less glamorous after first glance. She’d enrolled in a non-credit painting workshop at Baruch College, which met several times a week, and the school was presenting the best work of their art students. It was kind of a coup, really, considering she wasn’t even an actual art student, and that it was the first course she’d taken.

 

Over the past month, she’d realized that she actually needed to pay her bills (living in Brooklyn was certainly not cheap), so she worked part-time at a Barnes & Noble and was also a receptionist at Baruch, in the Women’s Studies Department. The job wasn’t awful, but a lot of the time female students would come into the office where Pam typed and filed and burst into tears. They’d end up telling Pam about being raped or unexpectedly getting pregnant and needed to talk to a counselor, and Pam would quietly nod and pat them gently on the back until one of the department heads came by and herded the woman into their office. She just wasn’t good with people when they cried. She didn’t know how to handle it; it scared her. In the past, she usually left people alone, gave them their space, time to cool down. She’d always been that way.

 

As the subway sped through the annals of Manhattan, closer and closer towards the art show, she realized that she wasn’t nervous about her painting. It wasn’t as if anyone of importance in the New York art scene was going to be attending the event. There wasn’t any pressure on her to sell her painting. If anything, it was going to be a rare opportunity for her to dress up, have a glass of wine or two, and gaze out at the beautiful Hudson river and the lighted boats drifting past. It’s funny, she thinks, from certain angles, the river actually looks beautiful. You almost forget about how dirty it is…

 

Yes, it’s a chance to relax; so why does she feel all… fluttery? Ever since she moved here, she’s been calm, confident. One might even describe her as… ballsy. The way she insisted on joining the painting class even though the semester had already begun. The way she sent her dragon roll back at Ninja Sushi because it was too spicy. She’d actually got into a heated argument with the guy working the sushi bar.

 

Not now, though.

 

Smoothing down the front of her black cocktail dress (cut just above her knee and with a thin line of bright purple lace across the neckline and the hem), she thinks about the painting that’s going to be on display tonight. She really hadn’t had a plan on what she wanted to create; it had just come, from somewhere, from the center of her. To someone not “into” art, it probably just looks like a giant purple and black blob. It’s like something a little kid draws, that looks like a tornado, and their teacher has to pretend to smile and say, Tell me about your drawing, because they can’t even tell what it is.

 

There was a face behind Pam’s tornado, but she had purposely left it blank. The giant dark blob filled almost the entire canvas and completely overshadowed the face behind the paint. She had painted it in her apartment one rainy night, listening to “Besame Mucho” on some weird oldies station on the radio, and once she had started painting, she didn’t think she had looked up again until two hours later, when, covered in paint and exhausted, she had stood up, knees cracking, to examine what had possessed her so.

 

In truth, the face and the black blur had disturbed her a bit. She doesn’t know what it means. She thought maybe it meant that there was something – or someone – that she felt passionate about, but maybe she hadn’t met them? Yet she had this palpable feeling that a memory in her subconscious hovered right beneath the surface of her mind, never coming close enough for her to identify. It bothered her, and it was bothering her now – that’s why I’m feeling this way, she thought in the subway, and in the cab, and even now, as she walked slowly towards the pier, the cold wind whipping around her, curling insidiously inside her fur coat, which stood brightly against her dark dress.

 

She waves to her professor across the room; he’s schmoozing with some young attractive art student with bangs and a ripped Arcade Fire t-shirt. She suddenly feels overdressed, and she retreats to the wine bar, which is up against the huge glass window, which spans the entire length of the room. There’s a narrow balcony outside, but of course, it’s freezing, so it’s deserted.

 

Perfect, Pam thinks, tipping the mustached man behind the bar and taking her Chardonnay with her. She doesn’t see anyone she knows, yet several snooty-looking artsy types give her strange looks as she pulls the door open with some effort. “Smoke,” she says, puffing at an imaginary cigarette. They nod imperceptibly and go back to their elitist conversation.

 

She doesn’t fit in here.

 

She doesn’t even smoke.

 

She pulls her coat around her tightly, trying to protect herself from the biting night wind. Gulping down the wine helps, warms the flutters in her stomach a little. She doesn’t feel like herself tonight. She feels glad that she washed the remnants of the blue out of her hair, but she’s suddenly uncomfortable in the eye-catching coat and curve-hugging dress and black fishnets. Her hair is up in a high ponytail and then teased up and caught in a sparkly butterfly clip, and suddenly it’s all wrong – it’s wrong. She wants, for no reason she can understand, to just be home, in a button-down and jeans – or even better, in gray sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a bowl of mint-chocolate-chip in her lap.

 

What the hell?

It didn’t make sense. All she’d ever wanted – all she could remember wanting – was to be an artist. And now she was actually on her way. She was living in the city, sipping overpriced and creatively named cocktails, she was around fellow artsy-types – and here she was, in Manhattan, in a beautiful dress, and her painting’s hanging up on the wall – and it was all just wrong.

 

She was lost.

 

“I’ve been thinking... 'is that possibly Pam Beesley?',” came a voice from behind her, and she spun around, her heart exploding in her chest, sending a much-needed burst of warmth into her frosty limbs.

 

“Hello?” Her voice is cautious, questioning. There’s a young man behind her who is conspicuously out of place at this gathering. In fact, she’s not really sure how he actually got in. He’s wearing jeans and there’s a white button-down peeking out from beneath a dark green sweater.

 

“I’ve been standing over there in the corner, trying to decide if it was really you," he adds.

 

It occurs to her then that he doesn’t have a coat, which is crazy.

 

“You don’t have a coat, are you crazy?” she says, placing her wine glass precariously on the railing in front of them.

 

He takes a step closer, and the light from inside allows her to see his face for the first time. He’s got a nice face. That is, he looks like he’s a nice person. He’s got brown eyes that sparkle with humor from underneath dark eyebrows. He’s got a mess of brown hair – it was too much (and almost made him look a little artsy, but the rest of his outfit gave him away), but he was okay. Red lips. And he was looking at her like… like he knew her, somehow.

 

Did she know him?

 

“Are you… Dan?” she asks, smiling back, squinting her eyes in the wind. “Or Paul. Maybe you’re Paul. I know a lot of Pauls.”

 

He sighs, but the smile doesn’t leave his face. “No, not one of your Pauls. We, uh, knew each other a little bit, when you lived in Pennsylvania.” He peers closely at her. “Do you remember me at all?”

 

“Hmm…” She knows she’d lived in Pennsylvania and had worked there as a receptionist at a paper company for several years. She’d had a boyfriend, right? And some friends? She did have a couple of friends at work. She knew she had a crazy, politically incorrect, slacker boss, who managed his employees with bathroom humor and an innate desire to be liked. As Pam’s memory tried to expand to the other people in her old office, things got a little hazy. There was an Asian girl who talked a lot… a blonde… someone with glasses… a sales department… that was it. Nothingness.

 

“Anything?”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, smiling apologetically. “I’m not good with names.”

 

“How about faces?” He’s suddenly standing much too close to her, and although her brain is cloudy, it’s the weirdest thing – her body doesn’t seem freaked out by his nearness. In fact, she suddenly feels a little warm, in spite of the winter.

 

She smiles, shrugging a no.

 

“Okay, well, that’s okay,” he says, although he’s lost his smile. “I liked you, you know. A lot.” He swallows hard; she can see his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat. “Actually, I kind of loved you.”

 

He’s really not my type at all, she thinks, looking out across the river for a moment. I guess that’s okay. “In spite of all that, you seem normal,” she says, looking him up and down. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

 

He makes a goofy face, wiggling his eyebrows and widening his eyes, and she laughs. “That’s about as weird as I get, unfortunately,” he says after a moment. “I make faces, I like to play jokes on people. Occasionally I look in a neighbor’s window, but only by accident, I promise.”

 

She gazes behind her, into the crowded party, the people dressed in trendy black, clustered around tables with candles in the center, having their secret conversations which she would never be part of. He’s kinda cute, actually. And I don’t want to be here right now.

 

“You want to get out of here?” she asks, taking another step closer. If either of them moved, their noses would bump.

 

He’s rubbing his arms, obviously cold. He’s staring right into her eyes as though he’s looking for something inside of her, and the feeling makes her uneasy.

 

“What are you looking for?” she snaps, suddenly annoyed that he’s not drooling all over her shoes, especially after her offer.

 

“I… I’d love to, Pam, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says finally, puffs of steam escaping from his mouth as he speaks. His eyes look sad, torn.

 

“I thought you said you loved me,” she says, insulted. “Way to show it.”

 

She is nothing like the old Pam, Jim thinks, his brain a twisted mess of regret and guilt and sadness and wanting and… wanting. He can’t take advantage of her this way – and, in a way, he doesn’t want her this way. He wants his old Pam back, the one who would’ve blushed to wear a dress like this one, one who would’ve laughed at his jokes – oh, and recognizing him would have been a good start as well.

 

He can’t do this.

 

She’s never going to remember him.

 

Seeing the blank, unfamiliar look in her heavily lacquered eyes is killing him.

 

“Look,” he says finally, because she’s standing there, looking cold and like she’s about to cry, “I’m going to give you my phone number. I’m staying in town for three more days, at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. Think about my face, okay? If you remember me – anything about me – call me. If not, don’t worry about it.”

 

He takes out a notepad from his hotel and scribbles down his cell phone number. He hands it to her, enjoying the warmth as their fingers touch momentarily, and then he’s gone, leaving her standing on the balcony, wondering if this guy was seriously mentally ill or obsessed or what was going on. Maybe she had known him back in Pennsylvania. He certainly looked like he was from Pennsylvania – all preppy and all. And there had been something about his eyes… like he knew her… and considering she didn’t know herself too well these days, there was something tempting about him.

 

The wind blows, and for a brief instant she considers opening her closed fist and letting his phone number fly. He’d rejected her, and that was just not something she forgave easily. But yet… she shoves the paper down deep into her inside coat pocket, zipping the pocket for safe keeping. Who was he? A friend? An old lover? From the way he’d looked at her, the way their bodies had unconsciously seemed to move closer and closer, she guesses the latter.

 

She stands out there for a long time.

 

* * *

 

He’d lost Jim’s trail late yesterday afternoon, on the way to the subway station. Halpert had checked into some half-way decent hotel in the city and then walked several blocks, slightly uphill, to Grand Central Station. Although Roy lifted two or three times a week, his cardio wasn’t great, and halfway to the station the lanky bastard pulled ahead, disappearing into the crowd. Fuck.

 

Retreating into a Cosi café for coffee (black) and a donut (glazed), Roy sits at the front window, munching angrily. He needs to find Pam before Halpert. Now that he knows that Pam had both of them erased (who the fuck knew you could actually do that?), it’s the perfect opportunity for him to redo past mistakes, to start over with her. He hadn’t been the best boyfriend, but this time around, he was going to change that.

 

His truck is parked several blocks away, so he walks there and drives back to DUMBO. What a retarded name for a neighborhood, he thinks. He goes past Mierzwiak’s, scowling at the closed curtain on the second floor, wondering if another poor schmuck is getting the procedure right now, if someone’s right in the middle of obliterating something they had totally fucked up.

 

* * *

 

There is.

 

The two indie college kids are standing over him, reading measurements on machines, hooking him up to something that’s making him sleepy. If he wasn’t still drunk from last night’s solo depressed bar-crawl, he might have fought them, changed his mind, or at least managed to say something.

 

“Subject is approximately twenty-eight years of age, in good physical health,” says the girl, her blonde hair a halo above his face. “Are you okay?”

 

He raises an arm that feels a million miles away and gives her a thumbs-up. He’s not sure he could speak even if he wanted to. “And just to recap, you want to delete all memories of Pam Beesley?”

 

His arm falls back, and for a minute he thinks he sees words floating before his eyes, a picture that he can’t see.

 

Up until last night, he hadn’t thought anything could have been more painful that the night when Pam had rejected his kiss, his love. But when he had seen her – a Pam that was admittedly hot, but nearly unrecognizable – it was like the old Pam was dead and never coming back. She was an entirely different person, and he wasn’t sure if he could love this new person. Then again, what did it matter – neither Pam loved him back.

 

“Yes,” he mumbles, "delete her.”

 

Another figure appears over his bed, holding an ominous-looking, large needle. “Remember what I told you, Jim. This procedure almost always goes smoothly, and the only side-effect you may experience is a mild headache. Oh, and the occasional emerging of repressed memories. Just relax..."

 

Great, Jim has time to think. And under he goes.

 

* * *

 

 

In Park Slope Roy parks near a YMCA and walks, hoping he’ll somehow, in spite of the odds, catch some trace of Pam. Okay, so maybe Halpert had this stupid crush on her. I’m the one who’d dated her for all those years, I’d almost married her for Christ’s sake. If either of us should be able to find her, it should be me. I knew her when she had braces, I was there when she lost her virginity, and I’m the only guy she’s ever been with (and it had better stay that way). I know her best.

 

He passes a bar and considers stopping for a mid-morning beer, then thinks better of it. He’s going to try and be a better guy. A guy who thinks about others, a guy who might burn Pam a CD or tell her a funny joke if she were having a bad day.

 

It’s cold, and Roy’s black puffy winter coat just isn’t getting the job done. By 11:30 he needs to get warm, and he needs another cup of coffee, so he ducks into a nearby bookstore to defrost and regroup.

 

As he walks inside, his breath catches in his throat. Standing behind the coffee counter, wearing a t-shirt ripped up the sides and held together with oversized clothespins, looking tired and a bit hungover, is Pam Beesley – or someone that looks very much like her. Her hair is in braids and – Roy almost has a heart attack – a silver stud shines from the side of her nose.

 

“Oh my God, Pam.”

 

She looks up wearily at him, as if to say not again.

 

“Hi, what can I get for you today?”

 

“Don’t you remember me?”

 

“What the fuck. What is with people asking me that lately?"

 

He grips the sides of the counter in frustration. Even after speaking with the doctor, he can’t believe that she actually doesn’t remember anything about him, about the life they’d had together. “Pam, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you had part of your memory erased.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Sir, are you high?”

 

“Could I just talk to you in like a break room or something for ten minutes?” he pleads, looking around to see if any of the other customers are staring. They’re not – yet. “Please?”

 

“Sir, I just came back from break. Anything you need to say, you say right here.”

 

This is Pam? He thinks in wonder. This creature is… was… Pammy? He can’t believe it. She’s so… aggressive. And she looks different, smells different.

 

“Pam, you had a procedure done so you wouldn’t remember me. But we… we knew each other before. We were in love. We worked together. You were engaged…”

 

She stares down at her ring finger, which is bare. “I was… engaged?” She sounds shocked.

 

“You were engaged,” he repeats, leaning across the counter, staring her down. “You were going to marry this horrible guy who didn’t love you, didn’t understand you. I loved you, but I never said anything, because I didn’t want to make things, you know, complicated. But it all turned out fine, you left the guy and made the right decision, and we were going to be together… and then you disappeared.”

 

“Are you kidding? Is this a joke? Cause it isn’t funny,” she says. Inwardly, Roy smiles. Clearly the story means something to her, even if she doesn’t remember it.

 

“I’m not kidding, Pam. I followed you up here to try and find you, and that’s when I found out about the memory erase.”

 

She’s silent for a painfully long time. Then, she glances around the room and looks back at him, hundreds of questions in her eyes. “I don’t know if I definitely believe you, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick break. There’s a café around the corner, I could get out of here for a little while.”

 

“How about you meet me for dinner instead? I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble,” he adds, reaching across the counter and squeezing her hand. He gets half an uneasy smile in return.

 

“Okay… wait!” she says, as he backs away. “Where are we going? How will I find you?”

 

Oh, duh, you idiot. “Uh, what time do you get off? I’ll come back here and get you.”

 

“At seven.”

 

“I’ll be back here at seven then.”

 

“Okay. Wait!”

 

He turns back, and he is struck again by her drastically different appearance; then he reminds himself that in the dark, she’ll look the same. Unless she has… other things pierced now, he thinks, and has to clear his throat to replace the image with one of kittens, Yankee stats, and hot cocoa with his grandmother.

 

“I feel stupid asking this, but what’s your name?”

 

“Jim,” Roy says, a guilty grin creeping across his face. “Jim Halpert.”

 

 

REVIEWS = LOVE! Your reviews are what keep me going with this series! :)

 

Pam plans to walk the seven blocks from the bookstore to her apartment without stopping, but something in the window of one of the shops she passes catches her eye. She’s had quite a morning, and the anticipation of going to dinner with this mysterious Jim person is fluttering around in her like the early stages of stomach flu.

 

Her shift had ended at six, but for some reason, “seven o’clock” had flown out of her mouth before she’d had time to correct herself. Why’d I do that?, she wondered, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. A woman carrying an expensive-looking art portfolio who has been walking too closely behind her walks directly into her like something from The Three Stooges, her bag softly hitting the back of Pam’s knee.

 

“Hey, watch it,” the woman mutters, annoyed, continuing on her way. Pam barely hears her.

 

She’s wearing her bright orange fur coat, yet when the wind blows it easily finds its way in, shocking the skin that’s exposed beneath her ripped t-shirt. Her too-long blue jeans, which have pen doodle-marks all over the thighs (she bought them downtown a few weekends ago for seven dollars) have been dragging underneath her Converse All-stars, and over time have collected a disgusting amount of city sludge at the bottoms. She’ll have to cut off the dirty parts when she gets home. This was not something to wear on what for some strange reason felt like a … well, a date. After all, he was the man she’d been in love with before she moved to New York.

Oh yeah? Well, then why can’t you remember him? The sarcastic, jaded part of her brain questioned. If he was the love of your life a few months ago then why doesn’t his face look the slightest bit familiar? And he’d said something about my memory just erased…

 

But all that was to wonder about later. She wanted to get home, have a bath, and change, and she’d still need time to get back to the bookstore, where he was meeting her in less than an hour. So why was she wasting time here, standing in front of this store?

 

She looks up, and to her surprise sees herself in the window of The Gap – the antithesis of everything she liked to wear. She actually liked to make fun of the clothes in this store with her art school friends – like, who would wear this stuff? Talk about generic and boring!

 

Her harried reflection, her long hair, her nose stud and especially her nearly fluorescent coat looks entirely out of place; on the other side of the glass are three mannequins, all dressed in jeans of differing lengths, button-down blouses and long, preppy pea coats. I guess it kind of looks nice, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

 

Her eyes catch on a peach-colored button-down shirt, layered underneath one of the coats, and suddenly she wants to buy it. I kind of like that, she thinks, wondering why the hell she would want to dress like such a boring frump when she could swing around the corner and find something one-of-a-kind and funky at the secondhand store on Chandler Ave.

 

Before she can stop herself, though, she’s in the store, and the preppily-dressed salespeople are eying her suspiciously – probably thinking I’m a bag lady in here just trying to get warm, Pam thinks, feeling a bit self-conscious.

 

“Can I help you, miss?” A young man wearing a button-down and sweater vest is breathing down her neck before she’s been in the store for five minutes, and she’s flustered.

 

“Ummm… yes, I’d like to try on one of these shirts,” she says, realizing that the blouse is already in her hands.

 

“Sure thing,” he says, taking the shirt from her and leading her into the dressing room. “Here you go. My name’s Tom if you need a different size,” he adds, and the look he gives to Pam’s oversized coat and then to the size Small blouse shows clearly that he doubts she’ll fit into it. Jerk, she thinks, even though she guesses the kid is cute, even if he is a little preppy. Her type’s usually the bad boy, so it surprises her that she’s a bit attracted.

 

She removes her coat and hangs it on the hook in the dressing room, then carefully lifts the t-shirt over her head, trying not to poke herself with any of the pins she’d used to hold it together. She’d done that more than once with this shirt.

 

Pulling the blouse around her body, over her purple bra, she realizes with wonder that it fits perfectly. Slowly, she pushes each button into its corresponding button hole, stopping at the second from the top. Even with her junky jeans, the blouse looks becoming on her. And she can’t help but feel a strange familiarity (how stupid, she thinks, to have strong feelings about something as ordinary as a blouse), as if she’s worn something like this before. Maybe before, when I was working in that office, I used to have to dress up a little more. She thinks about Jim – or tries to – but nothing comes to her. Perhaps the name sounds familiar? But surely not the face, or any details. The first thing she could remember without that weird blur around the edges was moving into her apartment in Brooklyn. Anyway, if we were so in love, why would I have moved away? And, a bit more unsettling: Why can’t I remember anything?

Briefly, she wonders if she’s going insane, or if the man who came to the bookstore earlier really even existed.

 

“How’s it going in there?” the salesguy calls, jerking Pam from her reverie.

 

She steps back, posing in front of the mirror. She pulls her hair back from her face, blinks back at herself. In a quiet voice, she replies, “I’ll take it.”

* * *

 

His head is pounding. Seems like maybe having those drinks all over Manhattan last night might not have been the best idea after all. Jim wanders the street, mid-afternoon, feeling as though, while he was asleep, someone had cracked open his head, dipped in a spoon, and stirred his brains around like homemade chili. Coffee hadn’t helped, a shower back at the hotel hadn’t helped, and now he wasn’t sure where exactly he was going. So he wandered, looking closely at each building he passed, some brick, most metal and glass.

How do those things stay together without just… falling? He wonders, head tilted all the way back as he peers up at skyscrapers. He thinks about the infrastructure of buildings, what holds them together. It’s not crazy glue, he thinks, laughing a little to himself under his breath, but he feels a little crazy this morning. This isn’t like any hangover he’s had before, and he had quite a few, back at Scranton University, but even those memories are hazy.

 

He’s cold, and he ducks into an alleyway to find immediate relief from the wind. As he does, “Born to Run” blares from his cell phone – an incoming call. “Karen” is flashing across the screen.

Damn. He was going to call her. He hadn’t shown up for dinner the other night, and hadn’t spoken to her since; she was probably pissed, so he steadied himself before answering, preparing himself for a fight.

 

“Hi,” he says, noncommittal.

 

“Jim! Oh, thank God. I’m glad you picked up. Are you okay? What’s going on?” The concern in her voice startled him almost more than anything else had this morning.

 

Too many questions, he thinks. His head is still really hurting, and he leans against the side of a building for support, then presses the hand not holding the phone up against his forehead.

 

“I meant to call you,” he manages, gritting his teeth together. Suddenly the pain in his head is fierce, as though someone’s inside of his brain, knocking their fists against his head, trying to get out.

 

“It’s okay. Where are you?”

 

“I’m in New York.”

 

Karen sounds taken aback. “New York!?… Jim, what are you doing up there? Are you…” She trails off.

 

“What, am I what?”

 

“You’re up there looking for Pam, aren’t you? You think she might have gone there?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Pam.”

 

Who the hell is she talking about?

“Kar, I don’t know who Pam is.”

 

Karen sighs, a long, weary breath. “Do we have a bad connection, Jim?”

 

“No,” Jim says, the pain in his head subsiding a bit. “We’re connected just fine. Look, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing here, to be honest.”

 

“Do you want me to come up there? I will, if you need me. I can tell Michael…well, I don’t know what I’d tell Michael. I’d figure something out.”

 

The idea of Karen being here with him – he likes it. He’s a little disoriented, and he doesn’t know what possessed him to drive here all the way from Scranton at a moment’s notice. If Karen came up, at least he’d know where he was going.

 

“Why don’t you come up here,” he says. “It would be nice to have some company.”

 

He can hear the smile in her voice. “Okay then. I’ll be there in a few hours. Tell me where you’re staying.”

 

* * *

 

He passes her the joint and exhales a jet of smoke from the center of his scraggly beard. “I can’t believe they haven’t caught us yet,” Walter says, leaning back in the chair – Mierzwiak would have a heart attack if he walked in right now, he thinks, chuckling a bit. Edna is lying on the floor on her stomach, her chin resting on her arm. There’s a middle-aged, chubby man on the fold-out cot with about a hundred wires taped to his head and five monitoring devices pin-pointing memories of an ex-wife who had strayed. The man, obviously dreaming, stays still, but his eyelids dance from side to side.

 

She peers over at him from behind thick-rimmed black eyeglasses, ones that she doesn’t really need. “Yeah, we should probably stop,” she says dryly, finishing the bit he calls a joint and stubbing it out in the ashtray on the scratched glass table.

 

“You know,” he says, turning the page in the Proust book he holds on his lap, “I felt kind of bad about these last few.”

 

She takes a deep breath, then rolls onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling. “The guy was hot, in a geeky sort of way.”

 

“Kind of ironic, coming from someone who’d rather write in her Xanga journal on a Saturday night than come out to a party with me.”

 

She doesn’t flinch. “That’s because I’m not the least bit attracted to you, Walt.”

 

“Whatever, you want me.”

 

“Yeah, okay.” She pauses. “I think Mierzwiak is starting to lose it, what do you think?”

 

Walter considers. “Yeah, the old guy isn’t as sharp as he used to be. And he’s making mistakes. Like with the last one, he missed a few things… I told him, and he looked like he wanted to throw me out the window. That’s the last time I point out one of Howie’s mistakes.”

 

“Yeah,” she replies, obviously lost in pot-induced thought. “I can’t believe one of his old employees actually had the hots for him. What was she thinking?”

 

“I have no idea.”

 

“You know, Howie also forgot to record some of the observables with the girl.”

 

“Good thing we’ve got those tapes.”

 

“Yeah, but they’re just audio…. I don’t know. He’s messing up. I feel bad for these people, spending all this money, and then it ends up being a botched job. Old memories aren’t supposed to come back.”

 

Walter shrugs, suddenly feeling the stirrings of mid-day hunger. “They didn’t, before. And they shouldn’t. But…with these last two, it felt like they were fighting it… I don’t know, E. Wanna have sex?”

 

“Not right now.”

 

“Wanna order take-out?”

 

“Yes please.”

 

“Done and done.”

 

* * *

 

She wraps her arms around him when she gets there, and she smells sort of like a new car. Polished and clean, she leads him to her favorite local restaurant – an Asian eatery called Chow’s House. Over noodles and snow peas, she tells him about everything he’s missed at Dunder Mifflin – Dwight brought his pet chinchilla to work, Kelly and Ryan had a fight (and then made up) in the break room, Michael made a memo that “the jeans I’m wearing today make my butt look really good.”

 

“Jim?”

 

He’s quiet. For some reason the jokes, the people he knows there, they all seem distant, vague. It’s just not funny for some reason.

 

“Yeah?” he says, focusing on picking up a piece of red pepper with his chopsticks.

 

“Are you really okay? You seem… not like yourself.”

 

He gives her a small smile. “I’m me, I promise. Who else would I be?”

 

She nods, swiping a strand of hair behind one ear. “Dwight says hi, by the way. He asked me to give these to you… he’s such a weirdo.” She reaches in her coat pocket and comes out with a handful of black jelly beans. One of the beans has a piece of fuzz on it, and Jim picks it off and tosses it aside.

 

“Those look appetizing,” he says, rolling his eyes. For some reason, he feels a weird crunch, a collapse, in the center of his chest when he sees the candies roll onto the table. The feeling is stronger than the one he had when Karen walked into the lobby of his hotel, and he’s not sure what that means.

 

“Jim,” says Karen, growing serious, “Look, I know you don’t want to talk about Pam, but I feel like we need to. It’s like this giant… annoying… curly-haired elephant in the room.”

 

“Karen, I told you… I don’t know why you keep bringing up this ‘Pam’ person.”

 

She blinks at him, looking slightly annoyed. “You can’t just pretend like she doesn’t exist. I know I can’t.”

 

“Karen… I don’t care about Pam… whoever that is. I’m with you, okay? I don’t know what else to say.”

 

They eat in silence for what seems like an eternity, wooden chopsticks scraping against the bottom of plates, the clinking of glasses, with absolutely nothing to say. The dining dead.

 

“I’m really glad I came up here,” she says finally.

 

“Me too,” he says, though he wonders.

 

 

* * *

 

They eat at an Indian restaurant about ten blocks from the bookstore where she works, and before they’ve even arrived he’s reached for her hand, which she gives him hesitantly. She straightens her hair, throws on a Psychedelic Furs t-shirt that she’s ripped at the top to make it open-necked, strands of plastic beads, and a purple skirt, which sort of clashes with her orange coat, but she doesn’t care. Over nan bread, he tells her about their life together, back in Pennsylvania. She’d been engaged to a macho asshole who never listened to what she wanted, and then he came along, hearing what she was saying without really saying it, making her laugh, watching her sleep. They all sound like beautiful words.

 

“That sounds wonderful,” says Pam without really meaning it, suddenly feeling she’s riding in a car driven by someone she doesn’t even know. The bright purple and gold colors of the restaurant, the vibrant twangs of the authentic Indian music playing softly in the background, and the strong spice of her dinner are pleasant, but for some reason she finds herself thinking of that blouse, which she’d hung in the back of her closet, behind her summer dresses, and even behind the garment at the way-back of her closet – her wedding dress – one she couldn’t even remember trying on or buying.

 

For some strange reason, she thinks of the guy who had shown up at her art show. He’d said he had been in love with her, once. Had she loved him back? Or had he been a weirdo, a stalker, or just a friend with a crush?

 

She wonders, for the first time, if perhaps she had dressed differently when she had lived with Jim. If maybe she dressed in button-down shirts and proper work skirts instead of ripped apart vintage concert t-shirts and other people’s jeans. And if she had looked different, maybe she had been different, acted different.

 

“… So then, it was about a month before your wedding to Roy, when I told you that I loved you, that I had to have you. We started making out like crazy, doing it all over the office. It was awesome.” He chuckles, but Pam barely hears it.

 

Every time she blinks, she sees flashes of bluish-purple, iridescent, hair up, curls falling down her back. He must see some remembrance in her eyes, because he asks if it sounds familiar.

 

“I… maybe,” she stammers, feeling a bit scared at the intensity of the memory. All she remembers is a blue, prommy-looking dress, and suddenly all she wants to do is go home and look through the boxes of things she never unpacked, to see if the memory happened, if she actually owns that dress.

 

She takes a drink of water, trying to stop the feelings from sweeping completely over her. It’s as though she’s seeing herself in the dress from behind one of those frosted glass doors – she can see colors, shapes, but can’t seem to put everything together. She can’t see clearly.

 

“And you asked me what we were doing,” Jim continues, “and I said, ‘I’m in love with you.’”

 

Pam grips onto the edge of the table, feeling as if she might faint. She remembers hearing those words, remembers them spoken to her beneath moonlight and with the taillights of departing cars drifting farther into the distance, with a palpable sense of emotion and fear in the air. She remembers feeling afraid and nauseous but not entirely surprised. The words she remembers felt different than the words this man was saying to her now, at this table, in this moment. The words felt real, honest, not rehearsed. What Jim was saying to her now felt contrived, copied, weaker than they had before. It was like someone had made a hundred carbon copies of that memory and now she could barely read the gray smudges that were left.

 

And his voice sounded…wrong.

 

Still, though, she sat and listened and smiled and nodded. He ordered a second bottle of wine, and soon the room was filled with a comfortable haze. She didn’t feel unsafe around Jim, that was for sure. He did feel… familiar, in this weird way, as if she had known him in the past. And maybe he was just nervous.

 

As he explained to her about the mind erase – that she had been scared and wanted to forget about her horrible first fiancé – everything seems to make more sense. I mean, who even knew you could do something like that? How much did I pay for that?

And his name. She couldn’t explain around that. Jim. Just saying the name out loud felt familiar, as if she’d said it – perhaps screamed it – a hundred times.

 

“You seem tired,” Jim says, and she smiles; he notices. “Let’s get you home.”

 

Of course she invites him upstairs – Jim, Jim – and suddenly the lights are all off except for the Chinese lamp over the bed, and her Psychedelic Furs t-shirt is now on top of the lamp and her skin is tingling and he’s hard against her and pressing her hands above her head, and his fingers are everywhere, and then her bed is slamming against the wall, drawing forwards, slamming back. “Pammy,” he moans, and she doesn’t like that one bit. Fiance or not, she doesn’t like that nickname one bit, but she bites her lower lip and closes her eyes and focuses the best she can on the name Jim, trying, trying to remember more about that dress, and what exact shade of blue it had been.

 

She hasn’t been with anyone else since she’s moved to the city, but she doesn’t tell him that. She doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask her if the sex is good, but that’s okay, because she doesn’t like lying.

 

After, he tries to cuddle up behind her, but for some odd reason she inches away, reaches for her t-shirt and wadded up underwear. As she reaches over, she feels his hand on her shoulder blade, a question.

 

“What’s this?” he asks, and his voice is different than it was at dinner, all kind and attentive. It’s lower, a little ominous, and while Pam thought she liked the bad boy thing, she doesn’t like his tone – it sounds angry – maybe even jealous?

 

“What?”

 

“You have a tattoo.”

 

What?

“Very funny,” she says, struggling to pull her underwear on underneath the covers. “I don’t have any tattoos.”

 

“Yeah, you do,” he says, his voice gritty. “You never had this before. I would’ve remembered.”

 

“You’re crazy,” she thinks, pulling on the t-shirt and heading towards the bathroom to check it out. Of course, she could’ve just walked across the room topless, but for some reason she just doesn’t want to.

 

In the bathroom, she turns on the shower, feeling like she needs to wash him off of her. As the room fills with steam, she turns slightly, pulls down the shoulder of her shirt, and stares for nearly five minutes, until Jim knocks on the door and asks if she’s still alive in there. She’s never really looked at herself naked, or spent a lot of time in the nude – just usually sheds her clothes on the floor and jumps in the shower without a second thought. So she’s never noticed this before.

 

Pam Beesley has a tattoo. What the fuck… where did this come from?

 

It looks like it’s in shorthand, but she easily deciphers the message. And it makes her more confused than ever. Without a second thought, she flees the room (leaving the shower on, she’s going to have a great water bill this month), flings open her closet door, and, kneeling down, starts riffling through the two boxes there, marked JUNK in black magic marker.

 

“What are you doing?” Jim calls, still curled up in bed. She doesn’t answer.

 

She rips the tape off the larger box and thrusts her hands into its contents, searching, lifting up art supplies, office supplies, trinkets of all sorts, and…here it is. She finds it at the bottom, and her heart hurts when she sees it crumpled up like a piece of garbage. She brings it over to the bed, trying to smooth out some of the wrinkles.

 

Jim is looking at her – at the dress – worriedly. “Do you remember anything?” he asks. "Getting the tattoo?"

 

“No,” she says absently, wondering why he's so upset. She's running her hands over the smooth, soft surface of the dress, feeling phantom hands, warm on her hips. I’m in love with you… I’m sorry if I misinterpreted our friendship. The voice was at once warm, sad and pleading – and it didn’t sound anything like the voice of the man now sitting straight upright in bed, staring at her. She shook a bit underneath his gaze, now totally confused. According to the writing etched into her body, this was the guy she’d been in love with.

 

The tattoo on her right shoulder read, quite unmistakably: RMBR JM HLPRT.

Chapter 6: Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect

Jim awakes to the sound of raindrops hitting the hotel window next to the bed and the sound of 49th Street traffic sixteen stories below. Turning his head from the window and pulling the pillow over his ears didn’t help, and soon he was poking Karen in the hip with his index finger. If he has to be awake this early, then so does she.

 

“Nnnnn,” she mumbles, swatting his hand away. “Sleeping. No.”

 

He sits up, swinging his feet onto the floor, and rubs a hand across his forehead. Coffee would be a wonderful thing right now. The room is warm, stuffy, and he reaches over and props the window open. A gust of fresh air wafts in, but so does the city noise, and suddenly Karen’s hitting him with the pillow, repeatedly.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I love you,” he says, smacking her on the lips. She makes a face at his morning breath. For some reason, this feels like a whole new day, he thinks, a wide, helpless grin spreading across his face. It feels like a weight has been lifted, a huge, unnamable weight. “Maybe you want to do some shopping today? Hit up Macy’s, buy them out?”

 

Suddenly she is more awake, throwing her hair into a loose ponytail and reaching for her glasses on the nightstand. She only wears them in the evenings when she’s reading or watching TV or in the early mornings before a shower; the rest of the time, she wears contacts. He thinks the glasses are pretty cute, in a dorky way. “Yeah, I think I could be talked into that,” she says, turning away as she changes into a polo shirt.

 

“I’m just going to go for a walk first,” he says, picking his ratty sneakers out of his suitcase. They really were going to have to get back to Scranton soon; he was running out of clean clothes. Maybe he’d buy some new stuff today. It felt like a good day for new clothes. “I’ll stop and get some coffee for us on the way back.”

 

“I’d die for a Krispy Kreme,” Karen says, crossing the room to the dresser and applying some kind of lotion under her eyes.

 

“I can do that,” he says, coming up behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. He can feel her flinch a bit, but he leaves his hands where they are. “Want me to buy one for you?”

 

She rolls her eyes. “You know I can’t eat that kind of thing. I haven’t had a donut in… like, I don’t know, eight years. If you could get me egg whites on a whole wheat bagel, that would be great. Go, Halpert, go.”

 

“Well, I’m getting myself a donut. You stay here and make yourself presentable,” he says with a wave and a smile. She presses her lips together, tight, in response.

 

After he leaves she brushes her teeth, spits, looks in the mirror for a long moment. What the hell happened up here? she wonders. He was never so attentive, affectionate, and had never said the “L” word, not once. Now he was all over her like a lost puppy, and she didn’t like it. It was almost as if he’d done something massively wrong and was trying to make up for it.

 

You’re being an idiot, Fillipelli, she tells herself. All you ever wanted was for Jim to forget about Pam and actually pay attention to YOU, to be a good boyfriend, the kind Mom always says you deserve. Now he’s doing it, so why aren’t you happy?

She still couldn’t look away from the mirror, even though her reflection wasn’t telling her anything.

 

* * *

“Pam!”

 

She’s walking uphill, faster and faster, streams of warm breath puffing out of her nose and mouth, her scarf untangling, her gloves dangling from the sleeves of her jacket.

 

“Pam, wait up! Hold on a minute!”

 

Just keep walking, she tells herself, spotting the Brooklyn Public Library up ahead. If I can just get there, I can lose him somewhere in the shelves. If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.

 

“Leave me alone,” she calls back with all the strength she can muster. “I…” But then she falters, confused, thinking again of the tattoo on her back.

 

“Pam, I’m sorry I got angry,” he says. “I guess I was just… surprised about the… you know, the tattoo. But look… I love you, okay? You’re wonderful and amazing and… last night was just… amazing…”

 

Don’t you know any other adjectives?

“Thanks,” she replies, and suddenly, for some strange reason, her tongue curls up, as if trying to form an R. Hmm, that’s strange, she thinks, then blinks at him. “Look, Jim, I just… I’m pretty confused right now, and even if we were together before, I… I just need to take things a little more slowly, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he says hesitantly, his eyes probing her face, as if to ask, So no more sex?

 

“I need some time alone.”

 

His face looks angry, then shifts. “I understand,” he says simply. “Look, Pam, if you need anything, just call me. I, uh, left my number back at your apartment. On the fridge.”

 

“Okay, thanks.”

 

“Call me later, okay? I’ll take you to dinner.” Her face must be showing something, because he draws back a bit. “Or maybe we could hang out tomorrow, see a Broadway show or something.”

 

“Maybe. Seeya, Jim.”

 

He walks back down the hill, his hands in his coat pockets, and she can’t help but wonder why the hell this feels so wrong. His attention, his desire to be around her every second doesn’t feel like true love – it feels cloying, suffocating, too much.

 

But then why is his name scratched into her back?

 

“I need some coffee,” she says aloud, then realizes that she’s standing in front of a Starbucks. “I also need to stop talking to myself.”

 

Over an overpriced venti soy latte, she sits by the window and watches as the rain moves in from the west and starts to fall. Shit, no umbrella.

 

What an unbelievable day or two it’s been, she thinks, taking off the lid of the coffee and blowing on it. A drop or two runs down her hand, but she doesn’t notice. Around her, tired businessmen and women wait in line, shake off their umbrellas and wellies, and watch the pretty artsy girl in the corner, looking like she’s somewhere else entirely.

 

It’s always been you, Pam. Always.

 

Where did that voice come from? she thinks, jumping in her seat as if she’d been shocked. She closes her eyes, trying to block out the memory that’s threatening to surface at any second.

 

No, I don’t want to remember that… it hurts too much, she has time to think, and then it’s there, it’s there for no reason at all. She’s replaying last night with Jim in her head, and all of a sudden there’s someone else on top of her in the memory, someone who’s got to line himself up differently because if their faces are in the same place, his feet and toes are nearly six inches below hers. He’s significantly taller than her, slimmer, and he moves in all the right places, but he doesn’t seem arrogant about it. There’s something about him that seems nervous, unsure of himself, as though they’ve never been together this way before. His lips are on her neck, their clothes lying in a pile next to the bed. Her hands are on his warm hips, guiding him deliriously close, but over their heads it’s not an Asian lamp but instead a rough white ceiling with faded glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers that don’t work anymore.

 

Oh, but something works, and it’s working better than it did the other night. The hair falling over his face and onto her bare shoulder is lighter and longer than Jim’s, and he’s gentler, the bed’s not knocking into the wall… but now it is, and they both giggle. From downstairs she can hear the sounds of a party – music, laughter, occasionally something breaking.

 

“They’re going to hear us,” she manages, her entire body trembling with laughter. “They’re going to think it’s an earthquake.”

 

“Who are you kidding, Beesley? This is a 9.0.” The voice is different; kinder, easier, honest. And so’s hers.

 

“Shhh. If you stop what you were just doing, you’re in serious trouble, Halpert.”

 

“Duly noted.”

 

She can’t see his face, but suddenly she feels the smile slip off his face, feels the tension in the room grow. He props himself up on the palms of his hands and touches his forehead to hers. “Pam, I’m happy… believe me, I’m happy about this, but… you’re not going to go back, are you? Back to him? Because… I think that might kill me.”

 

“Don’t talk, Jim,” she whispers, smashing her hips up against his, pulling him into her, and he stops talking.

 

She can’t bring the coffee to her lips for fear her shaking hand will spill coffee all down the front of her. Where did that come from? I don’t remember that happening, where it happened, when it did. She strains to think back, to picture the face that matched the body, the quiet voice, the laugh she somehow knew so well.

 

This much was clear: it wasn’t the same guy she’d slept with last night.

 

Pam bolts upright out of her chair and slips back into the rain, her coffee left, forgotten, steam still emanating from the cardboard cup.

 

* * *

 

He’s been gone two hours and she’s ridiculously pissed off. She showered, dried her hair, carefully applied makeup, dressed, cleaned the hotel room, watched The Today Show and Regis and then she starts pacing. Her cell phone rings – it’s her friend Cheryl – but she doesn’t answer it. She’s too angry to talk to anyone right now.

 

When Jim breezes through the door looking like nothing should be wrong, she wants to kick him square in the nuts. He’s holding one coffee and a notebook under his arm and a weird smile on his face.

 

“Where’d you get the coffee, Mexico City?” she hisses, throwing one of his work shoes at him. He ducks, then crosses the room and hands her the coffee.

 

“I know, that took longer than I thought. Here, take the coffee. Karen… I was just walking through Central Park… and I looked up at the skyscrapers and I just felt like … what’s the word?”

 

“Uh, ‘an idiot?’”

 

“No,” he says, not even pausing to joke with her, or even be offended, which displeases her even more. “Here, look at this. I guess I was inspired. I think paper really isn’t my calling after all.”

 

He hands her the notepad, which has some kind of messy sketch on it.

 

“I didn’t know you liked drawing,” she says, and suddenly her voice sounds as though it’s coming from a million miles away. Do I even know this man at all?

 

The drawing – which Karen hated to admit, was actually pretty good – was comprised of a lovely two-story, Georgian-style house with detailed bricks, surrounded by elm trees and shrubbery. And directly above the front door was a beautiful, semi-circle terrace filled with potted plaints and two comfortable-looking chairs.

 

“I was thinking, maybe when we get back to Scranton I could enroll in some architecture classes,” he says, but she can’t stop staring at his drawing. “I mean, they don’t exactly have the best program, but maybe if I took a coupla courses there and did well then I could transfer somewhere else, maybe here. You always say how much you miss the city.”

 

“You have more?” she asks, turning the page.

 

“Yeah, check ‘em out,” he replies, proud.

 

The next one is of a tall, narrow apartment building with an awning and two twirled-looking evergreen trees standing watch on either side of the grand entrance. Very different from his first drawing, yet this was interesting… the penthouse also featured a tiny terrace. In this picture, Jim had added two chairs as well as a miniscule ice container and champagne bottle.

 

“Seems like you’re into terraces,” Karen mutters, and suddenly she doesn’t know what else to say. Really, there is nothing left to say. After last night, she had really started to believe that Jim had forgotten about Pam, and was ready to move on. But she’d seen the tapes, she knew what the drawings meant, and now she wasn’t so sure. Not so sure at all.

 

* * *

 

She goes shopping by herself, saying she needs some time to think. Thinking about the distant look in her eyes, Jim flops back on the bed, flips on some mindless show on the Discovery Channel, and folds his arms behind his head. She’s going to break up with me, he thinks, and the fact that he isn’t more concerned bothers him. Why doesn’t he care more?

 

He orders room service – cheeseburger with fries – and listens to his stomach growling. He hops in the shower, hoping the warm water and sweet-smelling shampoo will wash away his growing sense of uneasiness.

 

As he’s toweling off his hair, his cell phone rings. He sighs, impatient for his food to arrive, and checks his pants pocket to see who’s calling. Oh, this should be good.

“Hello, Dwight.”

 

“Why, if it isn’t Jim Halpert.”

 

“Why do you sound surprised that it’s me? You did call me, didn’t you?”

 

A moment of silence ensues. “Shut up, Jim, I’m trying to be nice.”

 

Jim can hear a stern female voice muttering something in the background. “Angela says hi.”

 

He rolls his eyes. “Hello, Angela.”

 

“We were wondering if you were able to find Pam.”

 

What the hell? Why does everyone keep asking me about this Pam?

“Pam who?”

 

He hears Dwight sigh, a scuffling sound, and then Angela’s high, scratchy voice. “Oh, Jim… good for you. Dwight and I were hoping for the day when you’d finally put that curly-haired minx behind you.”

 

“Um.”

 

“It’s Dwight again. We’ll have to commence this conversation upon your return to Scranton. Michael also says hello, and that he misses you, and also that you have no sick time left after this vacation.”

 

“Thanks, Dwight.”

 

Click.

 

“Seriously…” Jim has time to shake his head before there’s a knock on his door – it’s his food. He pays and tips the busboy and then arranges the tray precariously on his lap when his phone rings again. “If it’s Michael, I swear…”

 

It’s a weird area code, a phone number he doesn’t know. He hesitates for a moment, letting it ring two, three times. Then, finally, his arm shoots out and his hand grabs the phone as if his limbs are no longer attached to his body.

 

“Hello?”

 

“H-hi.” The voice is soft, low, hesitant. “Do you know who this is?”

 

“Um…”

 

“We, uh, kind of met the other day at my art show. You gave me your phone number? I know, I feel so stupid calling you, but I had to.”

 

I don’t remember going to any art show, and why would I give my number out when I have Karen? Then again, this voice sounds so damn familiar to him.

 

“I think we should get together,” the voice says. “I have a lot of questions for you."

 

“I, uh…” I can’t, I have a girlfriend, I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about, I don’t even know your name, all of these things want to come out of his mouth, they should come out of his mouth, but none of them do. “Okay.”

 

“Will you meet me for a drink tonight? Tavern on the Green in Central Park?”

 

He laughs. “I thought for a minute you were going to ask me to meet you at the top of the Empire State Building or something. How Cary Grant of you.”

 

He’s shocked when her giggle on the other end of the line makes him blush a bit, makes him happy he can make her laugh. The conversation feels easier than it should have. She has a nice laugh, he thinks, suddenly a bit nervous about their meeting. And I like making her laugh. Even though she’s a stranger.

Isn’t she?

 

 

Her head’s spinning as she pulls the delicate dress from its smooshed place beneath her college paintset and touches the scissors to its hem. With less than two hours to go until her meeting with the tall mysterious man from the art show, she’s already torn through the entire contents of her closet twice and come up with nothing, and now she’s in the throes of a creative project.

 

If I turn this dress into a skirt, then I can wear it with my new shirt, Pam thinks, eying the peach buttoned-down blouse that’s hanging on the bathroom doorknob. At first she was wary – peach with periwinkle? – but after a few moments of contemplation with her artist’s eye, she decides that the two shades will make a nice contrast, and will go nicely with her silver heels. It’s something new and different – which is what I need right now, she thinks, drawing a line across the dress with a pencil to mark where she needs to cut. Making something new out of something old.

 

The phone in her apartment rings – she realizes she must be the last person in the world to buy a cell phone, but she just doesn’t want to be bothered – and she glances at it, annoyed. Jim has already called three times since this morning, asking if she would like to go for a drink, out to dinner, or perhaps ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. For some reason, the idea of holding his hand, of possibly letting him catch her if she lost her footing, doesn’t appeal to her, and she politely declines each invitation.

 

“That must be him again,” she mutters, scissors poised. The phone finally stops ringing, and suddenly she can’t get herself to cut the fabric. Why is this so hard? she wonders, biting her lower lip. It’s just an old dress. Why should it matter?

 

Before she steps into the bathtub, she lights a few scented candles and puts on an old jazz record in an effort to try and relax. She desperately wants a glass of wine but thinks better of it. This poor guy. After tonight, if he doesn’t think I’m nuts already, I’ll definitely have him convinced. I can’t believe I actually threw myself at him the first time we met.

 

If that really was the first time we met.

The door opens slightly, and the cat weaves its way through the doorway and up to the edge of the tub, purring softly.

 

After her bath, Pam sits in her bathrobe, glaring at herself in the mirror. What are you doing?

 

She reaches for the hairbrush, then stops. You know what? I haven’t done my hair curly in awhile, I think I’ll do tonight. Why not. Instead of steaming up the bathroom with her straightener, Pam puts gel and hairspray in her hair and scrunches it up to create soft waves that fall past her shoulders. Not too bad. I don’t even know why I care. I don’t even know this guy.

After her behavior at the art show, she decides for a more demure look, applying half as much makeup, a bit of eye shadow, mascara and lip gloss. She doesn’t bother with blush, knowing full well that some of the things she’s going to have to talk about with Mr. Art Show tonight are going to do that job for her.

 

After hair and makeup, there’s nothing left to distract her from the task at hand. She picks up the scissors again, moves towards the dress … then hesitates again. You know what, it’s such a pretty dress, it would be kind of a shame to demolish it beyond repair. Hmm… what else could I do?

She ends up topping the dress with a pale yellow cardigan and a large maroon flower pin. She can’t get herself to cut it. Nervous, she grabs a small clutch purse and opens the door.

 

“Wh—Jim, what are you doing here?” she stammers. He’s standing there in a sportcoat, holding a bouquet of flowers in front of him.

 

“Look, I know you told me you were busy, and you’re going out – I get that. I thought maybe I could walk you to wherever you were going.”

 

“I…” she trails off, feeling defeated. She really doesn’t want him around, doesn’t completely trust him, feels something is wrong with this situation. And she needs to talk to… him. Not this guy. “Jim, please, I need some space. I’ll let you walk me, but then you need to back off a little, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he says, still holding the flowers out to her. “These are for you, though.”

 

“Thanks,” she says, stepping quickly back into the apartment and placing them in her fish tank. She’ll move them when she gets back. “Come on, I’m going to be late.”

 

* * *

 

Jim finally leaves her about fifty yards from the restaurant, which is strewn with white lights and evergreen and looks lovely in the fading light. She can’t help but soften a little when they enter the park, but she doesn’t take his arm, which he offers. I’m starting to think that this guy isn’t just some random creep trying to convince me that we were once in love just to get some action, she thinks, watching him steal glances of her as she watches a horse-drawn carriage clomp by. There’s a couple riding in the carriage, a middle-aged man wrapping a blanket around his wife’s shoulders. Whoever this guy is, Pam thinks, even if he’s not who he says he is, he loved me once.

 

“Well, this is me,” she says, gesturing towards the restaurant, which was nestled in the middle of the greenery next to a frozen pond. Tourists shuffled around them – couples holding mittened hands, kids in line for hot chocolate. It was all too much – it would be so romantic, Pam thinks, if only I loved him back. “Thanks for walking me.”

 

“Well, you can call me if you need a ride back – or someone to walk you back to your place,” he says, shrugging. “I could just walk you back to your door, nothing else.”

 

“I appreciate that, Jim,” she says, squeezing his arm lightly. “I do. But I’ll be okay. You go on.”

 

“Have fun,” Roy says, watching her walk towards the restaurant, the lights glinting off of her hair, his fists clenched inside the pockets of his coat. I just can’t believe that this is happening… again. I’m not stupid - she’s meeting Halpert. How is it possible that she’s remembering him?

He decides to grab a cup of coffee at the nearest diner – but he doesn’t go home. He’s going to come back later.

 

* * *

 

As she approaches the restaurant, she can’t help but hope that he’s there already – if he’s late, she’s going to order one too many cocktails and then make a complete ass out of herself (again, she thinks). She runs her hand along the white latticework that lines the garden, trying to get her hands to stop shaking. This is not a big deal. Not a big deal at all, she tries to tell herself.

He is there first. He’s standing right outside the front door so as not to miss her. He doesn’t remember who she is or what she looks like – just that she was some quiet voice on the other end of the telephone – but when he sees her walking up the path with her hair wavy and cascading down the back of her coat and her face glowing and her breath puffing little clouds – my God, he thinks, that’s got to be her. How could I have thought I might miss her walking by?

 

He stuffs his hands deep into the pockets of his black peacoat – partially because his hands are freezing, but also because it’s his favorite defense mechanism when he’s nervous. Even though he doesn’t know who this woman is, he suddenly feels like he should throw his coat on the ground for her to walk across. I should’ve brought flowers, he thinks suddenly. Or a ring.

 

Part of him wants to shake his head at that thought. He’d left Karen in the hotel room – she’d fallen asleep on the bed in the middle of seventeen Macy’s shopping bags – but she wouldn’t mind much. Things don’t feel like they’re going so great in that department, Jim thinks, but he doesn’t even care at the moment, she’s coming closer, close enough to touch him.

 

“Hi,” she says, shy, not meeting his eyes.

 

“Hi,” he says, and it feels like he’s said it to her a hundred times before. He takes a deep breath, tries to figure out why he feels this reaction to a complete stranger, and suddenly he’s talking. Just talking. “You know, before I came here tonight, I made this list,” he says, a helpless grin spreading across his face. “I made this list of reasons why I shouldn’t have agreed to meet you tonight.”

 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Oh? And how’d that go?”

 

“Well, I started out great. I was using Roman numerals. I had some decent reasons in there. Like, ‘I don’t know her,’ ‘I really can’t afford to buy drinks in New York,’ and ‘she likes touristy places like Tavern on the Green.’”

 

“Yet you’re here now,” she says. Is she flirting with me? He wonders, and wonders even more why he’s enjoying it so much. “How did that happen?”

 

“Well, I got up to Roman numeral eight, and then I realized, I don’t know what comes after Roman numeral eight.”

 

She laughs, a light, easy laugh that belies the nervousness she feels. “That’s too bad. I don’t think I know what comes next either.”

 

“Well, it’s cold,” he replies. “Why don’t we step inside and get something to drink. Or eat, if you’re hungry.”

 

“Sure.”

 

They step into the welcoming warmth inside, and sit at the bar, which is nearly deserted. Tall shrubbery obscures the bar from the rest of the restaurant, and soft music plays in the background. Aside from the bar, there are several cushy leather chairs clustered around coffee tables, so Jim suggests they sit there. “This way we don’t have to crane our necks every time we speak,” he jokes.

 

The waiter comes by and she orders a mixed berry martini; he chooses a local beer. Pam looks around nervously, unsure of what to say. When the hell is my drink going to get here, she wonders.

 

“You know, you could take your coat off,” Jim says, unraveling himself from his own coat. “You were the one to call me, so I assume you’re not going to go running from the restaurant screaming, right?”

 

She smiles. “Probably not.” She stands to take her coat off, and he jumps up to help her out of it.

 

“Here, let me…” He still has his hand on the arm of her jacket when suddenly his knees threaten to buckle and he slumps back down in the chair.

 

“Oh,” she says, a line of worry creasing her forehead. She shrugs quickly out of the rest of the coat and tosses it haphazardly on the back of her seat. “You look pale, are you feeling all right?”

 

“He… I…” I have no idea why I just said ‘he.’ You’d better get ahold of yourself, Halpert. Don’t go insane.

 

It’s odd to admit, but the look in her eyes looks familiar. She looks nervous, scared, confused. Those eyes, peering back at him… and that shining dress that’s the color of raindrops… his head feels messed up, like a jigsaw puzzle has just been dumped out on the table in front of him, and now he's got to figure out how to begin putting it together again.

“Your… your dress is just… you look really pretty,” he stammers, his tongue feeling like it’s covered in sawdust. “I’m sorry, I, uh, it’s just been… a weird week.”

 

“You’re telling me,” she says, managing a smile. He really does look pale.

 

The waiter comes by with their drinks, and Pam immediately picks up the garnish, plucks the raspberry and blackberry off the fancy plastic toothpick, and swallows them – followed by half of her cocktail. Jim watches her over the edge of his beer bottle, amused.

 

“So tell me about your weird week,” she says, wincing a bit at the taste of alcohol. It’s a strong drink. She thinks it’s a good way to lead into telling him she didn't remember him before because part of her brain was erased on Monday. “How did it start?”

 

“Hmm… hard to say. I guess it started when I randomly got into my car and drove up here from Scranton.” He shrugs. “I guess I just had itchy feet, you know?”

 

She giggles. “You mean like Athlete’s foot?”

 

He rolls his eyes, but is smiling in spite of himself. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Maybe I needed a vacation from life, ya know?”

 

She almost snorts. “Oh, believe me, I know. I haven’t had the most normal couple of days myself. So what did you do when you got here?”

“Well, I…” She’s charmed to see him blush a bit. “The first night I was here, I went out drinking. I mean drinking like back in college drinking. Sloppy. Which I rarely ever do. I mean, I enjoy a fine local brew now and then,” he says, motioning to his drink. She nods in approval. “But I haven’t been like that in a long time. I guess that’s when I met you, when I was a little out of it. I would’ve remembered you. Anyway, I woke up the next morning not feeling too great, but I had some breakfast, worked my way out of the hangover. And then my girlfriend came up, so she’s been putting up with me the past few days.”

 

Girlfriend. Oh. “Hm, that’s nice of her,” Pam says, reaching for her drink again. “That doesn’t sound too abnormal. Maybe for you Scrantonites that’s big excitement.”

 

She’s challenging him. He laughs. “You know, I guess it doesn’t sound too weird. Maybe it’s not me – maybe it’s everyone else.” Feeling uncomfortable, he changes the subject. “So… what do you do? Why was your week strange?”

 

“I’m an artist,” she replies, “so I guess pretty much everything I do is considered strange by some people. I don’t know… I know you don’t remember meeting me, but meeting you was kind of a trip. And then I had a pretty unique admirer this week.”

 

“I can see why,” Jim says, then wants to bite his tongue. “I mean…”

 

“Thanks,” she says, pausing a moment. “I kinda wish he would leave me alone, though. There’s just too much oddity going on right now. Plus, I bought a shirt at the Gap, which I never do.” She laughs to herself. “So tell me. What’s made your time in New York so… interesting? More than a hangover, I’d think.”

 

“Well… it’s kinda stupid… but my co-workers and my girlfriend keep asking me about this girl Pam, who I know nothing about. At first I thought maybe it was someone I’d met while on my drinking binge… or I thought it was part of a joke. I’ve been known to occasionally prank my co-workers.”

 

She’s quiet.

 

“Yeah, I’m that jerk who only puts out decaf coffee, or who goes in the break room and puts out a cupcake with a big bite out of it to see if anyone will actually eat it.”

 

Still no response. She’s looking at him, but he can’t tell if it’s in disapproval or because of something else.

 

“Umm…”

 

“I’m Pam,” she says, placing her empty glass on the table between them.

 

“What?”

 

“The woman that your friends keep telling you that you know? I think it’s me. That’s actually why…” But he’s looking at her, he’s looking at her with these eyes that stop her from finishing the sentence.

 

“I liked you, you know. A lot. Actually, I kind of loved you.”

But what if I didn’t love him back? What if we’d been together maybe, and then broke up, and it was too painful, and that’s why he erased me? What if he had a really good reason and I’m making him remember all that?

Maybe I should just…

 

“You know… it’s probably just a coincidence,” she finishes, shrugging. “Stranger things have happened, right?”

 

“Yeah… right,” he says, inspecting his shoes. His voice sounds uncertain, distant.

 

“So… why don’t you tell me about some of these great pranks you played on your co-workers. What do you do, anyway?”

 

“Hah, I work at a failing paper company,” he says, sounding a bit more lively. “So I have to do something to keep myself sane.”

 

“Is there anyone cool to at least talk to,” she asks. “A partner in crime, perhaps?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“So when you were little, and people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, you said, ‘I want to clockwatch at a paper company?’”

 

He laughs. “I think what I really want to do is design buildings.”

 

“Really? That’s…really cool.”

 

“That’s not what my girlfriend said,” he replies, rolling his eyes.

 

“No, I think it’s great! What kind of stuff do you want to design? Like… homes, neighborhoods, skyscrapers, multi megaplexes?”

 

“I like houses,” Jim replies, and as she watches he comes to life. “I like the idea that a family with this… great life… would be living in something I made. You know?”

 

“Sure I do.”

 

“And I especially like outdoor stuff… like porches, decks, terraces. Especially terraces, like when they’re on the second floor… so people can just wake up in the morning and then sit outside together, reading or having coffee.”

 

As he speaks, Pam suddenly feels the immediate need to leap across the space between them and just start making out like crazy with him, though she’s not sure why. She wants to just throw caution to the wind and pull his face to hers and attack him with her mouth and hands.

 

Would it be okay if I straddled you right now?

Instead, she smiles and says: “Have we met before? I mean, before my art show.”

 

Jim opens his mouth to speak, unsure of what’s going to come out of his mouth. Before he has a chance, though, the waiter is standing by them again, looking uncertain. “Miss? Someone is asking for you.”

 

“What?”

 

It’s Jim, holding even more flowers. “Pam, I’m sorry to bother you, but…”

 

She stands up, angry, and crosses the room. “I thought I told you to give me some space,” she says, her voice raising. “I don’t know how else to possibly say it!”

 

“Pammy… can I just walk you home,” he begs, trying to take her arm. She yanks it away.

 

“Let… go!”

 

Sitting there, watching their exchange, Jim feels an unexplainable burst of fury. Seeing them together, seeing him push her around, makes him see red. “Hey!” he cries, shooting to his feet. “She said leave her alone, man!”

 

Roy backs up, holding up his hands. If I’m pretending to be Halpert, he wouldn’t get into a fight. I’ve got to back up. “Hey, alright, okay man, calm down. I’m leaving, I’m leaving.” I don’t think… I don’t think Halpert knows who Pam is! He realizes as he leaves, a grin inching across his face. I can’t believe it, he had the mind erase, too! No fucking way! So, even if she remembers him, it doesn’t matter…

“God, I’m sorry,” she manages, trying to collect herself. “In case you didn’t guess, that was my not-so-secret admirer.”

 

“He’s a creep,” Jim replies, still breathing hard. “You could do a lot better than that, Pam.”

 

It’s the first time he’s said her name (that she can remember), and she likes the sound of it. A lot.

 

“I know. I’m sorry, I feel like that ruined the evening. And I…”

 

“Look… my head is killing me,” he replies. He does look awfully pale, Pam realizes. “I wonder if we could call it a night. I’m just… kinda messed up right now.”

 

I wish I understood why the sight of that guy makes me want to go postal, he wants to add, but doesn’t.

 

“Oh,” Pam says, disappointed. “I understand. Could we…”

 

“I, uh, I need to go,” Jim says, throwing his coat back on. “Thank you for inviting me out tonight. I’m sorry things got weird.”

 

“I…”

 

But he’s already walking away, into the darkness, leaving Pam standing there, confused tears gathering in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

He’s only a few blocks from the hotel when his cell phone rings. Oh, who is it now? Jim fishes his phone out of his pocket. It’s Michael.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Jim! How are you? I was just wondering if you had any information on…”

 

“Look,” Jim interrupted, impatient. The cold air was making his head feel better but his heart and stomach weren’t doing too well. He felt torn and confused and, well, a mess. “I’m kind of going through some stuff right now Michael, is there anyone else who might be able to help you get what you need?”

 

“I think the question is, can anyone give you the help you need, my man?” Michael’s serious tone catches Jim off guard, and he stops dead in his tracks on the sidewalk.

 

“What?”

 

“Karen called me a little while ago. She’s really worried about you. And with good reason, it sounds like. She said you’re acting strange – and like you don’t remember who Pam is.”

 

Jim puts a hand to his forehead. “I don’t understand why everyone keeps giving me such a hard time about this Pam. Pam this, Pam that… why can’t I just forget her?”

“So you do remember her,” Michael says, having the smarts to speak quietly after Jim’s outburst. “Or you’re starting to.”

 

“Well, I had a drink with her tonight. It was… weird. I don’t know who she is, but it seems like… she was someone important to me, at least she was once.”

 

Michael clears his throat. “Jim, I… I can’t bear to hear you so miserable. I know you told me I should never, ever say these words to you, but…”

 

“What, Michael? Tell me. You’ve got to tell me.”

 

“Well, it just… doesn’t seem to be working. Again.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well… Jim, do you remember what you did before you came to Dunder Mifflin?”

 

“Do I… what?” Jim almost yells, feeling frantic.

 

“Jim, you… you said you wanted a drastic career change. You were… an intern when you were at the university. At an architecture firm.”

 

“What? I… wha… that’s not right.” Suddenly, Jim’s heart drops in his chest. Could it possibly be? It would certainly explain all the sketches that he’d done in the past few days. But why was he so inspired all of a sudden?

 

“Hi… welcome to Rachford-Barr Architecture. I’m Jim.”

“This young lady and her fiance are building a house. The fiancé isn’t super interested in the details, but she seems to want very specific things. I was wondering if you could work with her to sketch something out…”

Clips of memories begin flooding back, memories that Jim can’t even place in chronological order: sitting and sketching a neat little house…

 

“I have to go, Mom.”…kissing someone who looked very much like Pam in the dark…

 

“If you go back to him, I think I’ll die.”

 

“Really, Jim, you look like you want to say something. You can tell me anything, Jim.”

 

Staring up at stupid glow-in-the-dark stickers and feeling like laughing and crying all at once…

 

… cooking a grilled cheese…

 

… riding a boat with Pam, neither of them speaking, yet so many words left to say. When the hell did all of this stuff happen? He wonders, feeling more unwell and confused than ever.

 

“Jim, you… you should go talk to Mierzwiak. He should be the one telling you all this.”

 

“Who’s this guy? M something?”

 

“He’s a doctor, Jim. He helps people forget… painful things. Or people that have hurt them. I tend to think he’s kind of a quack, but I’ll keep my professional opinions to myself. But really… I don’t want to tell you any more. You should talk to him.”

 

The confusion overtakes the anger, and Jim knows now where he has to go. “Then I will. I want to know exactly how many times I’ve seen Dr. Mierzwiak.”

Author’s Note: Just a little non sequitur about the last chapter: While I am from New Jersey and love New York City, I have never actually been to Tavern on the Green. So, if my description of the inside of the restaurant is not accurate, I apologize! It’s just how I imagine it.

 

These chapters just keep getting longer and longer and for that I apologize! Stay with it! I'm predicting probably one more chapter after this one.

Additional Author’s Note: Chapter title is from the song by Imogen Heap. Also, I think the lyrics of her song “Hide & Seek” represent what our heroes are feeling during this chapter.

 

Chapter Eight: The Dumbing Down of Love

Where are we?
What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just began to fall
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling
Spin me around again and rub my eyes
This can't be happening…

 

 

Back in the hotel room, Jim tears through his messenger bag until he finds what he wants. Karen is asleep in the chair by the television, her head tilted onto her shoulder. She’s going to wake up with a sore neck, he thinks absentmindedly. He’s trying to work as quickly as he can without waking her, but his mind and heart are racing and it’s difficult to not just rip the room apart.

 

Riffling through his bag, Jim finds gum, his MP3 player, a repeat customer card from a bar back in Stamford, a small collection of pens… his sketchpad – one that, until earlier today, had been completely blank. In fact, he’d bought it just a few weeks ago, for no particular reason at all except that perhaps he thought he might need it someday.

 

“You wanted a career change,” Michael had said. “You were an intern at an architecture firm while you were at the university.” Could that possibly have been true? He certainly didn’t remember doing anything productive during college except occasionally attending a political science class here and there. But why would Michael make something like that up – just for kicks? Michael might be a bit of an ass sometimes, but he’d never actually set out to mess with someone’s head. He just wasn’t manipulative that way.

 

Finally, his fingers close around what he’s been looking for. There’s a rip in the bottom left corner of his messenger bag, and it had fallen in between the layers of fabric. He pulls out the wrinkled business card and holds it up to the lamp on the nightstand.

 

Dr. H. G. Mierzwiak, Ph.D

Memory Deletion Specialist

Jim’s eyes fall on the address. Ug, Brooklyn… A glance to the clock tells him that it’s nearly eleven o’clock. Even if he leaves now for the subway, he won’t be in Brooklyn until quarter to twelve. Maybe I should wait until the morning. Maybe my head’ll be clearer then.

 

He looks at Karen for a moment, feeling bad about leaving her so confused. She’s a nice person and I’ve probably been acting kinda crazy the past few days… I’ll have a long talk with her tomorrow.

 

He closes his eyes, suddenly feeling dizzy. He thinks about being in the restaurant with this Pam girl, wonders why her presence, her dress, her smile, all had such an effect on him. And why he was suddenly drawing houses, and thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches and poker chips and 33 seconds of silence (he counted) and why everyone seemed to think he should remember her.

 

“Jim?” Karen stretches her arms over her head, rubs her eyes. “What time is it?”

 

“Not too late,” Jim replies, sorry that he woke her. “Karen, I… some really weird stuff is going on with me. I know this isn’t what you expected when you came up here.”

 

She blinks, groggy. “What?”

 

“I have to run out again,” he says, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll talk in the morning, I promise. You go back to sleep.”

 

She lifts herself out of the chair and goes to the bed, pulls the covers over her head, and doesn’t respond. But he thinks he can hear her crying as he grabs his messenger bag and closes the hotel room door behind him.

 

Once he’s outside, he grabs his cell phone and calls the Brooklyn number that the girl had called him from this morning. God, was that only this morning? This must be the longest day ever.

 

It’s ringing. Please pick up, he thinks, come on.

 

“Hello?” It’s a guy’s voice, gruff and a bit suspicious. Jim immediately places him as Pam’s “admirer,” and knowing that this guy is over at her house makes the muscles in his arms tense.

 

Jim tries for the high road. “Is Pam there, please?” He can almost hear the other guy’s teeth grinding.

 

“Who is that?” he hears in the background, and then Pam’s on the phone.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Pam.”

 

“Hi,” she says, her voice brightening noticeably. “I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again.”

 

I guess that’s why he’s there, huh? Jim wants to say, and he’s surprised by the bitterness in his voice. Why does he care?

 

“Yeah, I… I’m sorry about before. I kinda… freaked out a little. Look, I think I might be able to explain why we’ve both been having such weird weeks.”

 

“Really?” She sounds intrigued. “Care to elaborate?”

 

“Well, I can’t explain, exactly, but I know someone who can.” He feels her hesitating; he imagines she’s worried about the other guy. “Look, I have a car here. I can come get you, that way he won’t be able to follow. Where do you live?”

 

 

* * *

The party had started out small, with Edna and Walter each inviting a few friends. Then, of course, those friends each brought friends, and so on and so forth, and now Edna was offering guests Jell-O shots on Mierzwiak’s mother’s silver tray while Walter, considering Edna a lost cause, was making out with Veronica, Edna’s roommate, in the break room.

 

Mierzwiak actually lived in the apartment directly below the office, but he and the Mrs. had gone out to dinner and then a show in the city and weren’t expected home until very late. Old Dr. M must have done something really bad, Edna had joked, since he never ventured into the city and even more rarely did something with his wife. It was all the better for his staff, though – since he wasn’t around, they could play music as loudly as they wanted to. Edna had hooked her iPod up to Mierzwiak’s speakers – which they usually used for the memory erase procedure – and she had a pretty good mix going, of everything from Silversun Pickups to Plain White T’s.

Still, the night had definitely reached its crescendo, and Edna was getting cranky. All she really wanted to do at this point in the night was send everyone home and get Walter naked on the couch and have some sex before Mierzwiak came back. He actually had an appointment coming in at two a.m., which wasn’t surprising, since most procedures did take place during the night, so the patient would wake up at a normal time and not suspect anything out of the ordinary.

 

“Jell-O shots, anyone?” Edna rounds the couch, and the heel of her clunky shoe catches underneath the furniture, nearly knocking her down. “Uf!” Her glasses go flying across the room, and her friends laugh in unison. “Yeah, thanks guys,” she says, without embarrassment. “Hey, have you guys seen Walter?”

 

Ted and Jake, two of Walter’s dormmates, exchange a knowing glance. “Nope, haven’t seen him,” Ted says finally.

 

“Hmm. Well, how about Veronica?”

 

“Nope, haven’t seen her either.”

 

“Hmmph.” She plops down on the couch in between them and places her chin on her fist.

 

“So… what’s it like working here?” asks Jake, clearly trying to make conversation. “I mean, isn’t it weird to like… erase people’s memories? Walt doesn’t really talk about it.”

 

She shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess. Sometimes it’s kinda sad, like when someone dies or there’s a really bad break-up or whatever, and they just can’t get over it on their own. That’s why I’m going to be single forever. It’s just not worth all that shit.”

 

“Yeah, I guess…”

 

“Once in awhile, old Mierzwiak messes up,” she continues. “He’s starting to lose it in his old age, we think. Like sometimes – and it’s really rare – the procedure doesn’t work.”

 

“What do you mean, doesn’t work? Like, the dude dies?” asks Jake, looking alarmed around a mouthful of Cool Ranch Doritos.

 

“No, but once or twice people have come back and complain that they’ve started to remember again. Sometimes they’re pretty angry.”

 

“What does Mierzwiak do then?”

 

Edna opens her mouth to answer, but she’s interrupted by yet another knock on the door. “Who else could be coming?” she says aloud, eyeing the crowded room and hoping it isn’t more than two or three people. There’s always a chance that the Mierzwiak’s could be home earlier than they’d thought, and while he didn’t mind if they had a few friends over, this was quickly getting out of control.

 

“Where the hell is Walter?” she mutters, smoothing down the front of her skirt as she walks to the door. “Uhhh… how did you… ummm… Dr. M’s not here right now.”

 

Jim looks inside the apartment, a bit confused and wondering if he has the right address. It certainly doesn’t look like a doctor’s office – it looks more like college. “I really need to talk to him,” he says. “We really need to talk to him.” Pam peeks out from behind him. “I think we’re patients of his.”

 

“Are you guys… experiencing side effects?” asks Edna, still not letting them inside. She’s trying to sound professional, but the six Jell-O shots and rum and coke she’s had earlier that evening are making her slur her words. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be talking to each other.”

 

“Is there any way you can get in touch with him?” Pam asks, running a hand through her curly hair. “This is pretty much, like, an emergency.”

 

Edna’s temper slips a notch. “Look, guys, he’s not here and we don’t really want him to be here. We’re having a party, if you can’t tell.” She starts to shut the door, but Jim leans into it, stopping her easily.

“We’re sorry to bother you. And we don’t want to bust up your party. But seriously, we’re dying to talk to him. Will he be back soon?”

 

“Can’t you wait until morning?”

 

Jim and Pam glance at each other, then back at Edna. “I guess not,” she says.

 

“Look, what if we went around the corner and grabbed a cup of coffee and then came back in, say, an hour. Would he be back then?”

 

Edna looks at her watch. They do look sincere, these two. And she guesses they’ve been through a lot to come here in the middle of the night. “I’d say there’s a good chance that he’d be back. He has a patient coming in in a few hours, so he’ll probably show up early to prep.”

 

Pam takes a relieved breath, and Jim smiles at her gratefully. “Thank you,” they both say. “I really appreciate it,” Jim adds. “Now, where can we get a decent cup of coffee around here?”

 

* * *

Jim’s shocked that the diner they find around the corner isn’t filled with drunk kids – in fact, the place is deserted except for a pair of old men reading the paper at the counter. “Was it something we said?” he quips, and Pam smiles.

 

They sit next to the window and then busy themselves with their menus. Pam suddenly feels nervous, but thankfully not as bad as she’d been earlier that night. She can’t help but peek over the top of her grease-stained menu at him; of course, his face is hidden at the moment, but she can see his floppy hair falling across his forehead. Who is this person to me? she can’t help but wonder, for the gazillionth time in the past few days.

 

“So,” he says, finally sliding his menu down on the table between them. “What are you thinking of getting?”

 

“Oh, just a coffee,” she replies, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. “I had a big dinner.” It’s a lie, but the nerves fluttering around her stomach prevent her from eating.

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because I’m going to get pie and French fries, and I’m not known for sharing.”

 

She laughs, and her nerves lessen a little. “That’s just cruel. No, thanks, I’m good with the coffee.”

 

As if on cue, the waitress comes and takes their orders and menus, and then they’re left alone again, blinking at each other in the yellow diner-light. Suddenly, the mini-jukebox resting next to their booth flips on; an oldie, Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” comes on. Jim fidgets a bit in his sweater, pulling the sleeves over his hands, as if he’s cold; Pam, who’s wearing her new button-down shirt and jeans, taps her foot against the leg of the table.

 

“I’m telling you, you’re missing out. Key lime pie is the best,” Jim says with a smirk. “Got to keep up my energy for later.” She snickers, and a blush glows in his cheeks. “Umm, what I meant was… I have no idea what this Mierzwiak guy will tell us, you know? It could be pretty hard.”

 

That’s what she said dances on the tip of Pam’s tongue, and she’s surprised at herself; who knew her humor could be that perverted? She looks over at Jim, who, according to the sparkle in his eye, is thinking the same thing.

 

“You do know that’s my foot, right?” Jim says, and Pam draws her foot back in horror.

 

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I thought it was the table.”

 

“A common mistake. No problem.”

 

She nods for an extra minute, trying to fill the empty space. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, just a little awkward.

 

“So… what do you think… was going on between us?” Pam asks.

 

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Jim says, and she reaches across the table and swats his arm. “Okay, okay, truce! Of course I’ve been thinking about it. I really don’t know, Pam… all I know is that it was something.”

 

The waitress comes by with a plate of hot French fries, and Jim immediately slides the place in front of him and covers them with a massive layer of ketchup, tapping the bottom of the bottle to get every drop out.

 

“Interesting, I would’ve pegged you for the ‘pool and dip’ type.”

 

“Excuse me?” Jim asks, an eyebrow raised in amusement, bottle still poised over his plate.

 

“Well, there’s two approaches to applying ketchup to fries.”

 

“I’m sorry, applying ketchup?”

 

“Shut up,” she says with a smirk. “You know what I mean. You can either pour the ketchup over everything, trying to get it on every fry; or, you can pour a small ‘pool’ of ketchup on one side of the plate and take the dipping approach.”

 

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you,” he says. He holds eye contact with her as he lifts up a fry and pops it into his mouth. “These are the absolute best French fries I think I’ve ever eaten. It’s really a shame that you didn’t want any.”

 

The aroma of the salty fried food is getting to her, but she holds back. She doesn’t want him to win the argument. “I’ll live,” she says. “So… do you remember anything? Things seem to be coming back to me in weird ways… not complete memories, just little scenes, or one sentence. How about you?”

 

He chomps on a fry and wipes his fingers on a napkin, growing serious. “Yeah, same here. Things are coming back at pretty inopportune times, though… my girlfriend probably thinks I’m insane.”

 

Pam takes a deep breath. “If we did actually have our… minds erased… and this isn’t some kind of crazy dream, well then, I’m pretty sure I had feelings for you beforehand, because every time you say the word ‘girlfriend’ I feel like I…”

 

“You what?” asks Jim, looking intently at his fries.

 

“I… I don’t know,” she finishes, laughing a bit. “Reaching for a pint of Haagen-Daas. Telling you that she’s not good enough for you.” She lowers her eyes. Other things.”

 

He inhales breath sharply. “Other things, what might those be?”

 

The waitress comes by with Jim’s pie, which is topped with a cloud of whipped cream. “Here you go,” she says, placing the check underneath the plate. “Want a refill on that coffee?”

 

“Yes, please,” Pam replies, feeling like her tongue’s made of sandpaper – and like she couldn’t possibly be more awake if someone mainlined crack into her system. Her entire body feels like she’s in the middle of an approaching thunderstorm, right down to her toes and the tips of her fingers.

 

The waitress fills Pam’s coffee cup and departs.

 

“Anyway…” Pam says, trying to change the subject before she turns scarlet.

 

Do you remember anything about glow-in-the-dark stickers? Jim wants to ask her, taking a bite of his pie. It’s good, but he can barely taste it. About planning your dream house together, falling asleep on my shoulder?

But he doesn’t say any of those things, because he’s worried he’ll make her feel bad, or weird, if she can’t remember. So instead, he stays silent and eats his pie.

 

“Seems like it’s going to be a long night,” Pam says finally. “I hope Dr. Mierzwiak doesn’t catch those kids having a party.”

 

Smiling, she leans across the table, and for a breathless second he thinks she might kiss him. Instead, though, she reaches forward with her fork and snags a piece of his pie. She does it without even thinking.

 

“So,” he says, “you told me before that you were an artist. Tell me about what kind of stuff you do.”

 

As she talks, he reaches over and hands her a napkin without her asking. He ends up pushing the plate of pie to the middle of the table, and they share the rest. He doesn’t even realize until later that he left her the whipped cream, knowing without her telling him that it’s her favorite part of the pie.

 

* * *

 

When they return an hour later, the party’s over. Edna lets them in, and Pam thinks immediately that the girl looks as though she’s been crying; her glasses are off and mascara and jet-black eyeliner is smeared across her face, which is red and blotchy.

 

“Are you okay?” Pam asks, and the girl shakes her head no, then turns her back on them and walks into the apartment.

 

Mierzwiak is sitting behind his desk, his head in his hands, a huge pile of stuffed file folders in front of him. His other assistant, a young man, is sitting in the corner of the couch, looking guilty.

 

The doctor doesn’t look up and address them, so Pam and Jim stand there for a long moment, unsure of what to do. Jim steps behind her and helps slip her coat off. There’s no way I’m leaving here without answers, he thinks, so we might as well stay awhile.

 

“Thanks,” Pam murmurs, and finally Mierzwiak looks up. He looks tired, worried, and very old.

 

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the couch. The young assistant gets up to make room for them, and starts to walk over to where the girl is, but she leaves the room as he approaches. I wonder what’s going on there, Jim wonders, sitting down next to Pam.

 

When Jim thinks that Mierzwiak can’t possibly remain silent for another second, he finally speaks. He lets out a long sigh.

 

“You both should know just how disappointed I am with this whole… situation,” he says finally, without looking at them. “I’ve been doing this for seven years, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”

 

“Like what?” Jim asks, but Pam flutters a hand at him: Be quiet. She wants to hear what the doctor says.

 

“I just… can’t believe this has happened. Again. I just don’t understand it.” Frustration bleeds into the man’s voice.

 

“So we are patients of yours,” Pam ventures in a small voice.

 

The doctor gets up and paces back and forth by the windows. “Pam,” he says, sounding almost sad, “you have both been patients of mine for a long time.”

 

Her mouth drops open. “Wha… how long, exactly?”

 

“Here,” Mierzwiak says, picking up two of the file folders from his desk and dropping one on Pam’s lap, one in Jim’s.

 

Pam looks gingerly at the side of the folder: it reads Beesley, Pamela, in blue ink. Underneath her name, it reads: 12-15-01. Her heart pounding, she opens the folder, and next to her Jim does the same thing with his own folder.

 

Patient: Pamela Beesley

Date: Dec 15, 2001

Age: 21

Area of Memory Erase: Jim Halpert

Doctor’s Notes: Patient is in good physical health, but emotionally in turmoil…

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” Pam manages. “This was seven years ago.”

 

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, his voice sounding soft and unsteady. “I was still in college. So… does this mean I’ve lost the past seven years of my life?”

 

“No…” Mierzwiak reaches under his desk and comes out with a flask, which he takes a long swig from. “Don’t you understand?”

 

“Understand what?” Jim says, his voice rising. “I’m totally lost.”

 

The doctor shakes his head. “You two have known each other for approximately seven years. Pam, you met him when you were designing your house with your fiancé, Roy.”

 

“Roy?” Pam says, feeling as though she might faint. With just the mention of that name, things make a lot more sense – her admirer… the tattoo…

 

It occurs to her that the man sitting next to her, nervously shaking his knee – the man who she feels this incredibly strong connection to – she’s never even asked his name. How stupid could I be!?

 

Her hand reaches out and stops on his knee, steadying it. He looks over at her gratefully and grabs her hand, which is a little sweaty. He doesn’t care.

 

“You’re Jim, aren’t you?” she whispers, but she doesn’t need to wait for the answer.

 

“Jim, the reason you first came to me back in `01 was because you fell in love with Pam. The two of you had a brief affair – a one-time thing, as you described it, Jim – but then Pam returned to her fiancé. You were brokenhearted, wanting to forget.”

 

Oh my God, I did that to him? Pam thinks, afraid to meet Jim’s eyes, knowing he’s right now remembering more. His hand tenses, as if he wants to pull it away, but she holds tight – refusing to let go.

 

“You’re not… going back to him, are you? Because I think I’d die.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, but she’s not sure if he hears her.

 

“Pam, you felt so guilty about what happened, that you came to see me shortly after Jim did. And Jim, when you graduated college and left your internship, you were hired to work at a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by a…”

 

“Michael Scott,” Jim finishes for him. “I told him where I’d worked before, right? But made him promise to never tell me?”

 

“Yes,” Mierzwiak says, a bit hesitantly. “You’ve already been digging into this, I see.”

 

“A little.”

 

The doctor nods. “So imagine my displeasure when Pam’s fiancé gets a job at the same company, and then soon after, gets her a job. Her desk was feet away from yours, Jim.”

 

“So you keep tabs on your patients after the procedure?” Jim asks.

 

“Well, I want to make sure you don’t regress. It’s part of an ongoing study. Since the technology is so new we’re not sure exactly what happens to our patients and their memories – after three years, five years, ten… So anyway, since the two of you had already… bonded… it was no surprise that you became fast friends. And then, unfortunately, Jim, you fell in love with her again.”

 

In his mind’s eye, Jim sees a flash of purple and blue – the colors from the dress Pam had been wearing earlier in the night. He can almost feel the warmth of her hip against his, the softness of her hair… and the way she had, at first, given in to the kiss… and then pushed him away.

 

“I’m in love with you.”

“I… I can’t.”

This time, Jim does pull his hand away from hers, placing it back on his knee. He remembers, he remembers the pain, the hurt, the bravery it had taken for him to tell her his feelings, and how she’d thrown them back in his face.

 

“And that’s why I went to Stamford, isn’t it?” Jim says, looking straight ahead. “That’s where I met Karen.” The name makes Pam’s stomach twist.

 

Then she remembers. She remembers Jim’s phone call, and feeling so far away. She remembers throwing her wedding dress into the back of her closet and defrosting night after night of her wasted wedding dinners, eating them alone in her new, empty apartment. So that’s when I left Roy for good. Yet I was still all alone. That’s what I must have come to New York, and to Mierzwiak.

 

“So, I suppose that brings you both pretty much up to speed,” the doctor says. “Excuse me, I need to prep for my next appointment now.”

 

Jim’s head is down, defeated. Now I know what she was to me, he thinks sadly. She was someone I always wanted, someone I could never have.

 

Pam bolts out of her seat and storms across the room. “Excuse me! You’ve just… dumped this huge bomb of reality on both of us and now you have to… prep for your next appointment? What are we supposed to do now?”

 

Mierzwiak looks at them both for a long moment. “I’m sorry I had to tell you all of this, but the way things were going I feel like I just saved you both a lot of time and confusion. For some reason the memory erase – the repeated memory erases – just didn’t work. You both would’ve remembered everything eventually.”

 

“I don’t want to hear any more,” Jim says, standing up and grabbing his coat. “I’m leaving.”

 

“Jim, wait,” Pam cries, throwing her coat over her shoulder, grabbing both of the files, and rushing out the door after him. Whatever had happened before, whatever mistakes they had made, she knew now that he was the one she wanted – he had always been right, but she’d just been too blind and afraid to see it. “Please wait!”

 

As the door shuts behind them, Mierzwiak calls to Walter, who’s trying to talk to Edna in the break room.

 

“What are they going to do, anyway?” Walter asks. “Should I schedule another erase?”

 

Mierzwiak contemplates, looking out the window, wondering if Pam will catch Jim in time. “You know what? No. Clearly, for some reason, the procedure just doesn’t seem to work on those two.” He shakes his head. “It’s so sad. The two of them, as patients, have been my biggest disappointments.”

 

* * *

Reviews are better than snuggling with Jim Halpert on a rainy day. Okay, well, they're close.

 

 

 

Her heart’s pounding in her throat as she scans the crowd of people milling around on the sidewalk. What was he wearing? Oh, a black coat. Yeah, nobody in New York has one of those. Then, in the midst of sleepy-eyed early-morning businessmen and women as well as an intrepid runner or two, she spots him, a messy mop of brown hair standing slightly taller than most of the people around him. It’s the hair that does it.

 

Her brain feels clouded with the heavy words that Mierzwiak's just told both of them; in fact, she hasn’t yet had time to process most of it. But when she sees Jim, walking as if he’s being chased by the devil - almost running - all of those facts and figures fade to the background, and the only thing that matters to her is catching him.

 

“Jim,” she calls, quickening her pace, still attempting to hold on to their massive folders, which are bulging with stacks of Mierzwiak’s notes. “Jim! JIM!”

 

He doesn’t look back; instead, his shoulders slide up slightly, and he turns onto a side street. She wonders if he’s ignoring her or if he just doesn’t hear her.

 

She turns the corner, and, realizing that the side street is much quieter and she has a better chance of being heard, she tries again: “Jim!”

 

And then, his pace slows, then stops. She can see his shoulders rise even more, and then slump suddenly, as with a sigh. He shoves his hands in his pockets and turns around to face her.

 

“Hi,” she says, feeling her cheeks burn. “Listen, can you just wait up a second? I know you’re upset… I want to talk.”

 

Another sigh. He’s not talking. Steeling herself, she takes another step forward. Another one. And one last step. She reaches out and touches his forearm with a mittened hand. “What are you thinking?” she asks with a whisper.

 

“I… I don’t even know what to say,” he manages, warm air streaming from his nose and mouth. Pam hadn’t even realized how cold it was outside. Hadn’t even felt it.

 

He looks different. That is, he’s wearing an expression that she hasn’t seen on his face since she’s met him – well, since the last time I met him, she corrects herself. When she remembers them, the first time, when he’d taken her to that college party, when they'd ended up alone in his room - maybe he had looked at her that way.

 

And maybe when he’d stood in front of her, hands in his pockets, just like this, saying those words.

 

I’m in love with you. I just needed you to know. Once.

 

And, looking in his eyes now, she knew that he remembered - that he was only going to say it once.

 

“I’m not sure what people usually say, in situations like this,” Jim was saying. "I don't know, what’s the appropriate response when part of your brain’s been erased?”

 

She tries for a half-smile. “I don’t think they’ve finished the book on that yet.” She pauses. “Do you remember… any of the things that the doctor told us about?”

 

Jim puts his hand to his head, gingerly, as if he’s getting a headache. He is, in a way. “Yes.”

 

“What parts?”

 

His eyes meet hers, tearing them apart. “Come on, Pam.”

 

 

She sighs. “Jim, I'm doing my best not to sound like an afterschool special here, but I never, ever meant to hurt you. I was afraid.”

 

“Of what?” he asks, his tone softening a bit.

 

“I don’t know, everything!” she cries. “Of moving on. Of big cities. Of heights. Of kissing someone for the first time. Of big hairy spiders and Freddy Kruger movies and being alone. What can I say, I made a lot of mistakes. With you, I made a lot.”

 

He suddenly becomes extremely interested in his shoelaces. He won’t look at her for more than a few seconds, as if he’s afraid she’ll burn him. “Oh.”

 

“Like I said, I’m sorry. I know they’re just words. But… things could be different this time.”

 

A gust of wind blows down the street, sending empty Styrofoam containers from McDonald’s and assorted garbage past them. Urban tumbleweed, Pam thinks, for no reason whatsoever. The wind chills her, and she pulls her scarf more tightly around her bare neck. Wish I’d thought to wear a turtleneck instead of a t-shirt, she thinks absently.

 

“Why would this time be different from the rest?” he asks, a bit petulantly.

 

“Well… because we know the truth now. We hurt each other so much that we both actually went through… brain surgery, in a way, to get rid of each other. But it didn’t work, Jim, and I feel like… there’s got to be a reason for that.”

 

He takes a deep breath and looks at her.

 

“I know you only remember the bad stuff right now, how I hurt you. But that’s all in the past now. I don’t know what I was thinking before.”

 

“Pam,” he says, meeting her eyes fully now, “I might be thinking of the bad stuff, but you’re only thinking of the good things about me. I’m not perfect. I wear socks that don’t match. I like to fall asleep watching football. I try, but I can’t cook to save my life. I use people – Karen. And I don’t like my job.”

 

“I know,” she says, tearing up a bit. “I don’t remember everything yet, but I know that you’re… not a superhero or something. But you’re Jim, and that’s all I really care about.”

"And Pam, I wasn't always a good friend. There were times when I wasn't very nice to you. I wasn't there for you. Maybe you don't remember them yet, but you will."

"Jim, I don't care."

It’s snowing, she realizes suddenly, and she steps into the doorway of a nearby apartment building to get out of the wind. He steps into the doorway with her. She grasps the end of her scarf and unravels it from around her neck, holding eye contact with him. Once unwound, she hands the scarf to him. He takes it without a word.

 

“Look,” she says, reaching up and pulling the neckline of her t-shirt down, exposing her shoulderblade and her red bra strap.

 

He looks confused at first; then, his eyes catch on the writing on her skin. His eyes flick over to hers, as if asking permission to touch her. She smiles: yes, and he reaches over and skims his hand across the tattoo in disbelief. His fingertips are so light on her that she’s not quite sure that they're actually there.

 

“Does it hurt?”

 

“No.”

 

“Uh, Pam, they spelled my name wrong.”

 

She gulps out a jagged laugh. “Yeah, I guess I asked them to leave some letters out. Maybe I hoped it would be enough to jog my memory.”

 

“Did it work?” he asks, a smile creeping across his lips.

 

“It helped. Jim…”

 

But he’s looking at her, and it makes her stomach ache and her nerves tingle as if they’re on the end of a stick of dynamite. His hand is warm on her shoulder now, not brushing against her but just there in this comfortable yet restless way. See how easily things are falling back into place again, she thinks, and from the warmth in his eyes she knows he’s thinking the same thing.

 

His hand creeps from her shoulder up to the hollow of her neck, resting there, and his other hand goes to the side of her face, cradling it. Snow is catching in his hair, his coat, looking like dandruff. He leans down like the hero of an old movie and kisses her, bringing his lips to hers, parting them gently but at the same time impatiently, as if it’s been longer than all the years that he’s been waiting. Wanting. Pam kisses back, working her hands through his hair, feeling the wet snow there. Part of her – no small part – wants to just push him up against the wall of this alley and have her way with him. That mental image quickens her pulse.

 

He draws back for a moment, as if to check her reaction. When he sees her eyes closed, a dizzy smile on her upturned face, his smile widens and he kisses her again, pulling his coat around her, bringing her flush against him. She doesn’t seem to mind; her body is warm, soft against his. I can’t believe this is happening, he thinks, his heart pounding hard between them.

 

“Wait,” she says, her cheeks pink. “Let me put these down,” she says, placing their files on the ground.

 

He takes another step closer to the door, and she giggles beneath his mouth, stumbling a bit. The scent of her hair makes him feel drunk. If I only lived in this apartment building, he thinks, taking another step until he has her backed against the wall, snow settling on the sidewalk around them.

 

He pulls back again and she smiles at him: don't stop. Part of his brain is filled with snarky comments and jokes left unsaid, but the rest of his brain is yammering shut up shut up not now, so he decides to go with it. Dimly, he thinks of Karen, feels badly, but that is distant, something he’ll deal with later. Right now she feels so good, this is what he’s always wanted, even when he couldn’t remember it. And okay his pants are suddenly a little tight but who cares -

 

And then, without warning, he thinks of the last time he’d kissed her, her hands resting on his chest, much like they are now.

 

Resting on his sweater – then, pushing him away.

 

Trying to get the image out of his head, he takes Pam’s hands and brings them back behind his head. He knows they’re out in the street and he doesn’t care. He kisses her neck, hears her let out a long, harsh sigh; he moves closer, nudging his knee between her legs, and pulls her t-shirt down, kisses the tattoo. He wanted to do that ever since he first saw it, though he’s not quite sure why.

 

“Jim, I can’t do this.”

 

She’d said it to him then, and suddenly he feels – no, he knows – that at any second, she’s going to say it again. Just like last time, when everything felt right – the way his arms slipped around her like he’d known her forever, the way she’d had to catch her breath after the kiss. Everything had seemed to be falling into place – and then, she’d shattered him like a lightning bolt. His life had never been the same. How could it be? Just when I thought I was over her… AGAIN… she’s back, and I’m back, and feeling the same way once again, as if nothing’s changed. Just one look at this girl and I’m ready to put myself back in front of a firing squad.

 

He pulls back as if stunned, and the smile slips off her face. “Are you okay?” she asks, wounded. “What’s wrong?”

 

He backs away, looking around as if he’s not sure where he is. “I… I can’t do this.”

 

“Jim…please, it’s okay,” she says, trying to get him to smile. “It’s okay.”

 

“No, it’s not. I… I just can’t go through this again. I need to get back to my hotel. We have to check out tomorrow. Me and Karen.” Pam flinches at the mention of her name. “I have to get back to Scranton. Michael’s going to kill me if I miss another day of work.”

 

“Jim…”

 

“Look, Pam, I need to get back to my life, okay?” His tone came out harsher than he’d intended, and tears form in her eyes. “I just can’t go back to before.”

 

“I…”

 

“Pam, I just… those folders… if you can’t remember all of the bad stuff, then all you have to do is read them. Because I definitely remember, and even if you can’t, the truth’s in there.”

 

“I don’t care about that,” she says, trying desperately to think of a way to convince him. A taxicab suddenly stops at the light at the corner, and Jim leaps forward, hailing it before Pam has a chance to speak. “Here,” he says, ushering her into it. Sputtering for words, tears spilling across her lashes, she stumbles to pick up the folders – who even cares about these fucking things, they’re only filled with the things that hurt us. The things that still hurt us. She nearly falls into the backseat of the cab, the leather cold against the backs of her thighs. The light turns green, and the cars in front of the cab start to move.

 

“Jim!” she cries, frantically rolling down the window. He’s standing there, hands in his pockets, squinting a bit, watching her go. She doesn’t know what to say, she wants to scream, scream everything at once, how what they had is too good to give up on, how she loves him, she’s always loved him, and she’s never forgotten him, but the words crowd up in her throat and nothing escapes except a frustrated cry. Not sure what else to do, she grabs the folders, leans out the window and lets Mierzwiak’s files fall as the cab pulls away with a metallic screech. They fly up, back, some fly into the puddles left by melting snow, and still others fly into the alleyway where Jim’s standing.

 

After the cab’s pulled away, he bends over to pick up one of the pages that’s fallen at his feet. He recognizes the writing as his own, and after he reads it, he tucks the paper into his coat pocket. Then he goes home.

 

* * *

 

Pam tosses and turns in a fitful half-sleep until nearly noon with the vague hope that maybe when she wakes up, the old memory erase will have returned, and she won’t remember anything about the night before. Kissing Jim, unable to catch her breath. And then him shoving me into a cab and basically telling me he never wants to see me again.

 

The second her eyes open she remembers everything. She’s too tired to cry – at least, at first. She lies on the mattress on the floor, her makeshift bed, and doesn't move for a few minutes, the morning sunlight streaming through the window and across her face.

Then she decides, for the first time in a long time, that she wants tea with her toast instead of coffee, and she sees pieces of the little teapot that she’d broken a few days ago.

 

And she remembers.

 

* * *

 

“Jim? You want to stop for lunch or something? Jim?” It’s Karen’s voice, calling him. She’s only in the passenger’s seat, but he feels as though she’s a million miles away.

 

“Nah, I’m okay. Are you hungry?” he asks. It’s been snowing steadily now for two hours, with the radio predicting six inches of slush accumulating before dark. The sky’s spitting snow against the windshield of Jim’s car; pretty much an all-around depressing day, he thinks as he drives.

 

“I’m okay,” Karen replies, her hands closing around the 3 Musketeers bar at the bottom of her purse. She hates eating junk food – it makes her feel guilty as well as fat – but this was an emergency. Just one look at his face told her that he was desperate to put as many miles between him and New York as possible, as quickly as possible. “Are you okay?” she asks, concern evident in her voice. “You want me to drive for a little while?”

 

“I’m fine, thanks,” he says. He throws a smile at her without actually looking at her, his knuckles white on the steering while.

 

“Looking forward to being back in Scranton, I guess?”

 

“Yes. Definitely.”

 

They drive in silence, until Karen can’t take it anymore. Her hand shoots out and finds an eerily perky radio DJ that sounds a lot like their co-worker, Kelly.

 

No sooner than her hand has returned to her candy bar, Jim reaches over and turns the radio back to the news channel. “I just kinda want to hear about the weather, if that’s okay.”

 

“Sure.”

 

Something’s… very wrong with him, Karen thinks, nervously throwing a chunk of the chocolate into her mouth. I don’t know what happened on this trip, but he looks like… like he’s seen a ghost. Her lips crease into a single thin line. I think I might know who that ghost is.

 

More silence.

 

“Jim, what are you thinking about?”

 

He shrugs. “Nothing.”

 

They get home about an hour or two later. All in all, they make good time, even with the snow. Yet it seems like an awfully long drive for someone with nothing to think about.

 

* * *

 

One more chapter, folks. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for sticking with it! As always, please review.

 

Chapter Ten: Meet Me at Lake Wallenpaupack

“Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.” –Marcel Proust

 

“This is a pretty cool room,” Pam says, stopping down to look at the books on his bookshelf. Like the rest of the house, it’s clearly inhabited by guys – there are dirty dishes in the sink that look as though some new form of life is growing on them, and there aren’t candles or potpourri in the bathroom – but as she looks around, there’s not even a stray sock. He's cleaned up for me, she realizes.

Glancing at his textbooks and the college sweatshirt draped across the back of his chair, she realizes that she never really had the college experience. She’d taken classes at the county college while still living at home, and she’d taken courses over the summer in order to finish sooner. She’d completed her last semester last spring, while already living with Roy.

Jim sits on the edge of his bed, watching her. “It’s okay.” He shrugs with a nervous smile. He can’t believe she’s actually in his room.

“So you must be pretty freaked out about graduating,” she says, sitting down at his desk. There, on top of the blotter, is a sketch of her new house. Her new house with Roy. “Wow, you’ve been working really hard on this,” she notes, picking up the paper. He’s made significant changes on it since their meeting yesterday – he must have stayed up late last night working, she realizes.

There, sketched in blue colored pencil, is her house – the place she’d dreamt about since she was a little girl. Over the past four weeks, she’d met with Jim at the architectural firm where he interned, describing those dreams to him, down to the last brick. “Is your fiancé, uh, going to be involved in the design process?” he’d asked her, on the first day they’d met. “We’ll start without him,” she’d responded, not meeting his eyes. They’d started – and now they were almost finished – and Roy had never shown up to any meetings, not a single one. Pam never elaborated as to why, and Jim never spoke of it, but she’d catch him looking at her sometimes, and his eyes did plenty of asking.

He’s really talented. Her eyes roam across the page, taking in the grand front door with its semi-circle of stained glass, the bay window in the living room where Pam could imagine sitting one day with her little boy or girl, watching their first snowfall.

It’s cool, babe. Whatever you want. Just stay in the budget we talked about.

Her eyes lift to the second floor, where Jim had carefully sketched a small, circular terrace outside of the master bedroom. But now, here was something new, something she hadn’t noticed before. With infinite detail, he’d drawn several potted plants and two folding chairs, posed to face out, into the distance. And sitting in those chairs, he’d drawn two people. Technically, the people are little more than stick figures – “I’m good at buildings, not people,” he’d said – but she can instantly tell who they are. The woman, sitting on the right, is wearing a dress and a string of pearls, her curly hair half-down, a glass of wine in her hand. Next to her is a man with a mess of hair and a cartoonishly wide tie, his foot propped up on one knee in the relaxed way that had already become so familiar to her.

It’s Jim, and it’s perfect.

She suddenly feels tears burning her eyes, and she blinks them away, embarrassed. She’s holding the paper in her hands, and as she looks down she realizes her hands are trembling, leaving dark smudges on the edges of the page.

“Thank you,” she says, turning to face him. “I love it.”

He tries to play it off with a shrug, but she can see a faint blush tinge his cheeks. “I’m glad you like it. But it’s nothing special, really.”

“But it is special,” she says, taking a step towards him. “You… you really got everything right.”

“Well, I hope… Roy likes it, too. I think we’ll be able to keep everything within budget. The stained glass might go a little over, but…”

She’s reached the bed, and when she sits down, still holding the paper in her hands, he shifts uncomfortably to allow her more room. “I love it,” she repeats, and then feels a lone tear sliding down her cheek. “So I’m not sure why I’m…”

“You’re crying,” he says, reaching over to his nightstand and handing her a tissue. “You must like it, I can really tell,” he adds, trying to make her smile.

“I just… I guess it’s just sort of… overwhelming,” she manages, crumpling the tissue and stuffing it into her pocket.

“What is?”

“Seeing everything you want right in front of you, for the first time.”

Her words hang in the air, heavy.

He raises an eyebrow, as if he’s going to make another one of his trademark goofy faces that she’s gotten to know over the past month. But then his face grows serious, and he reaches across the bed and touches her arm. “Unfortunately, I know what you mean.”

Impulsively, she tops his hand with hers, letting the sketch drift to the floor, and then his mouth is on hers and they’re all fumbling fingers and muffled laughter against skin and the sounds of the party downstairs are faded, gone. His lips are on hers, his hands are on her neck, her back, yet he’s still respectful, and she’s the one who has to finally take his hands and guide them to her breasts. He’s not like Roy, he’s taller, he’s gentler, and he’s more patient, not rushing it – as if he knows this can’t last forever. In fact, she’s the one who’s unbuttoning her blouse and tugging at his belt, pulling him towards her. She knows she’s already wasted enough time.

Yet he kisses her with patience, reaches up and unfastens her barrette, cautiously pulling her hair down, so that it falls over her bare shoulders. He kisses me like he’d be perfectly happy just lying here all night, she thinks absently, knowing that she wants more, needs more – and she’s pleased to discover that he really doesn’t need that much coaxing after all.

“Your bed’s creaky,” she says, kicking her panties off, where they land in a pile next to Jim’s boxers. “They’re going to hear us and think it’s an earthquake.”

He laughs, attempting to muffle his laughter against her shoulder blade, which tickles. “Who are you kidding, Beesley? This is a 9.0.” She likes the way he says her last name, as if they’ve known each other for much longer than a month.

“Shhh. If you stop what you were just doing, you’re in serious trouble, Halpert.”

“Duly noted.”

He props himself up on the palms of his hands and touches his forehead to hers. “Pam, I’m happy… believe me, I’m happy about this, but… you’re not going to go back, are you? Back to him? Because… I think that might kill me.”

She is quiet.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he adds, his voice hoarse. He isn’t sure if she hears him until she answers.

“You won’t lose me,” she replies, her eyes teasing. “You’ll know where to find me. I’ll be in my house.” Giggling, she tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls him closer. “Don’t talk, Jim,” she whispers, begging, her breath sweet in his ear. “Please.” She pulls the quilt over both of their heads, and suddenly it’s even harder to breathe than it was before.

* * *

“So, that’s what we’ll be covering this semester,” the professor finishes, dismissing the first session of Introduction to Architecture.

Jim stuffs his syllabus into his notebook; as he does, a paper falls out, slowly drifting to the floor. He leans down to pick it up, then realizes what it is and sits in his chair as if frozen, while the rest of the class filters out. He hasn’t seen this particular paper for nearly six months – since the day he picked it up off a Brooklyn sidewalk and stuffed it into his back pocket.

It’s the picture he’d drawn, all those years ago, of Pam’s dream house. The paper is a bit wrinkled, the ink faded, but he still recognizes it.

You should be happy, he tells himself.

He should be. On paper, at least.

Hah. Paper. Seems like my whole life revolves around the stuff, he thinks, chuckling, then taking a sip of his coffee. He holds up the drawing, ignoring the pang in the center of his chest, his eyes closing in immediately on the tiny stick figures he’d drawn, so long ago. It was sort of ironic that this was the particular page that had fallen at his feet.

“You’re free to go,” the professor says, startling Jim out of his reverie. Embarrassed, Jim collects his things and shoves them into his messenger bag. “I hope I didn’t scare you with all the work we’ll be doing,” he says.

“Oh, no,” Jim replies, standing and pulling his bag over his head. In truth, three-quarters of the things the class was covering this semester, Jim was already familiar with from his internship; however, the intro class was a prerequisite to higher-level courses, so he would have to take it. “I, well, I was just thinking about this blueprint I’d worked on, a long time ago.” He shrugs. “I was thinking I might start working on it again, finish it up.”

The professor, an older man in his mid-sixties, with thinning gray hair and tortoise-shell glasses, raises an eyebrow. “I take it you’ve had some designing experience?”

“Yes. I’m Jim Halpert,” Jim replies, extending his hand. “I’d actually e-mailed you a few weeks ago, letting you know how glad I am to be here.”

“Ah. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jim. Yes, I remember your email. You’d had the internship. Looks like you’ll have no trouble in this course, and you’ll most likely be the star student in my advanced class next fall.”

“Thanks, Professor. I appreciate that. I’ll see you next week,” he adds, raising a hand as he departs.

* * *

He loosens his tie with one hand as the other jiggles the key in the lock of his apartment. He sighs as he flicks on the lights and tosses his jacket haphazardly on the back of the couch. The apartment is too quiet, and he turns on the TV for company. He changes into a college t-shirt and sweatpants, then finds a carton of leftover Chinese food that a whiff tells him is still good, and reaches for a beer before forcing himself to pull his hand back.

He can’t believe he had zoned out that way on the first day of class. He was definitely excited to be there, and he was appreciative that Michael was letting him leave work early once a week. He likes being on a college campus – even buying his books in the bookstore was enjoyable – yet at the same time, the experience filled him with a strange sadness that that part of his life was over.

His chopsticks are in mid-air when he notices the blinking red light on his answering machine.

“Hi, Jim, it’s Michael. Just wanted to see how your first class was, m’man. It’d better be good, for all of the precious bonding time you’re missing here. Anyway, a couple of us boys are going out tomorrow night – Friiii – dayyyy – and you should come. Let’s find you a fly honey.”

Click. Deleted.

“Hi, this message is for Jim Halpert. This is Walter from Dr. Mierzwiak’s office, calling again. We haven’t heard back from you regarding those missing files…”

Click. Deleted.

It’s kind of funny, Jim thinks, once again finding his spot on the couch, how easy deleting is supposed to be.

Settling into bed, he closes his eyes, pulls the blanket over his head. Was it really so easy to throw the past away, to forget all of the painful memories while holding on to the beautiful ones?

Right before he falls asleep, he sees them, up on a roof, shivering together in the winter darkness – the lights of Scranton spread out around them. He remembers looking over at her face, radiant in the flicker of the barbecue, as they laughed. Remembers in that laughter, a hundred other memories he’d lost until this very moment. Until now, all he could remember were the times when he’d shattered everything she’d worked so carefully to hide. But he’d forgotten all the other things – shooting glances across the office, walking out together at night and wanting to just follow her home – understanding life, and each other, like no one else did. And his last thought before he finally gives in to sleep is: Even if I forgot everything else, why did I ever forget that I wanted that?

* * *

 

He wakes up early, before dawn, unable to sleep. This is strange, because since Karen left, he’d had much less trouble drifting off. He’d lay awake, unable to move, her leg and one of her arms thrown across his body. Without her sleeping form next to him, he didn’t have to worry about waking her up. Not to mention most of the guilt was gone now.

He blinks at the clock: 5:50. He hops into the shower, dresses for work, and gets in his car. He stops for coffee at the Quick Chek on the corner, finds something decent on the radio, and watches Dunder Mifflin in the rearview mirror as it gets farther and farther into the distance.

* * *

She realizes, finally, why she’s here. Standing on the shores of the lake, a suitcase in her hand, she understands why something had strangely compelled her to take this painfully early trip.

The house had never been finished. They had cleared and leveled the land, poured the cement foundation and begun to put up wooden beams when she’d left Roy. And with me not around, he had no desire to live in the house.

Of course, she’d come back to him. She was too terrified not to. And, after her first visit to Mierzwiak’s, when she'd first erased falling for Jim, it wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been. Yet even when they were reconciled, the house was never mentioned again, and they’d lived together in Roy’s gross little apartment since then.

The sun is beginning to peek over the tops of the trees that surround the unfinished house. Pulling her hoodie up over her head, she walks slowly up to the foundation and puts down her suitcase, which is getting heavy. She runs her fingers along the cool cement and thinks about how nice it would’ve been to have lived here. Not with Roy, though.

To her left is a pile of old bricks, which she guesses the builders must have delivered but never got the chance to use. She’d always wanted a brick front – no aluminum siding for Pamela Beesley. She bends down to pick one up, then changes her mind. Now I know where the term “ton of bricks” comes from. Who would’ve thought bricks would be so heavy. She laughs a little to herself.

This is where the bay window would’ve been, she realizes, looking up. If they had finished the house, this is where I might’ve watched the leaves fall, where I would’ve hung Christmas lights. Her eyes drift to where the front door should’ve been, where her carefully designed stained-glass window would’ve gone. And then, inevitably, she looks up to where the terrace Jim had drawn would be. Tears form in her eyes, and she blinks them away, furious at herself for coming here. This was a stupid mistake. What did you think you would do, move in?

“Um, Pam?” There’s a voice from behind her, and she whirls around so fast her knitted cap almost goes flying off her head.

“Jim? What are you doing here?” He’s standing there, oddly, wearing his business suit, his tie askew and his hair messy, a dazed expression on his face.

“I… I’m not sure, really. I just woke up this morning and got in my car and drove here. It’s not that far,” he says, as if that matters. “How… how are you?”

She manages a smile. “I’m all right.”

“I guess you were thinking about this place too,” he says, tilting his head towards the house.

“Yeah, guess I was.”

“It’s a shame, it never really got very far. Never really got a chance.”

“I know the feeling,” Pam replies, looking down. She’s not sure what else to say. She feels like she’s said it all.

“You know,” Jim says finally, looking up at the house, “this area here could really be extended into a two-car garage.”

Pam’s mouth drops open, but nothing comes out at first. “Y-you think so?” she asks, shocked that he’s not running away again.

“Yeah, definitely. And here,” he adds, taking several steps to the left, “maybe there could be a garden.”

“Gardens are good,” she manages. She watches, numb, as he puts his briefcase down and hands her the coffee he’s been holding, which she accepts gratefully, gripping it with both hands.

“You’d be good at keeping one.”

“Thanks.”

“You know, Pam…” his voice falters, and he tugs anxiously at his tie. “I’m sorry about what happened in New York.”

“It’s okay,” she says, still half-expecting him to run off. “You were scared.”

“But you were right. About a lot of things. And I… we clearly can’t erase each other, or even get away from each other,” he says. “I mean, sure, we both screwed up, we both hurt each other, but that’s what people do. If everyone ran around erasing everything that hurt, they might never learn from it, you know?” With every word, the quicker he’s speaking, the closer he’s stepping towards her, and the more rapidly his heart pounds.

“Yes,” she says, her eyes scanning his face, a lone tear spilling over her lashes.

He reaches out and presses his palm to her cold cheek, sending electrical sparks right through her. “But maybe we have learned from it, Pam. I still don’t remember everything, but I remember more of the good things now. I just remember that I loved even the possibility of you.”

She doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at him.

“Look, I know that we tried to figure everything out before, and things just went all wrong… but maybe this time would be different.”

It seems like forever before she answers. “Maybe it would be.”

 

* * *

Three Weeks Later

“Dr. Mierzwiak, your next appointments are here.”

“Thank you, Walter, give me five minutes and you can send them in.”

Sitting next to him on the couch, she looks over hesitantly, crossing one high-heeled foot over the other.

“God, I really hope this works,” she says, paging impatiently through one of the outdated magazines on Mierzwiak’s table.

“Why wouldn’t it?” he asks, pulling his baseball cap down over his eyes. “Believe me, I’ve always thought you were hot. And once this is taken care of… we’ll meet back on the corner and get a cup of coffee. And we’ll take it from there,” he adds, winking at her. When Jim had winked at her, she’d found it strangely irritating, but when he did… it definitely had the opposite effect.

“Okay,” she says, biting her lower lip worriedly. He’s right. They’d found each other attractive from the start, but… outside circumstances prevented anything else from developing. And Jim and Pam were definitely out of the picture now, so there was really no reason for either of them to continue going around all miserable and alone, was there? “You’re right. Let’s do this.”

Walter peeks his head into the waiting room. “Mr. Anderson? Ms. Fillipelli? Dr. Mierzwiak will see you now.”

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He thought he’d remembered everything.

 

His last memory finally comes back in late fall, while he’s burning garlic one rainy evening. He’s perched by the stove, absently stirring the sauce and staring out the window. He’s looking for Pam, who’s spent the last few days at an artists’ convention up in Manhattan, and who’s due back at any moment. They’d talked on the phone daily, but it was the first time they’d been separated for even a night since… well, since they’d decided to make a real go of everything. He misses her, misses the way her body curls against his in sleep, misses the smell of the cinnamon tea she always takes with her to bed on cold nights, misses her green toothbrush standing next to his blue one. She’d moved in so easily. His guy friends had warned him about the insidious tactics of their live-in girlfriends – first, just a hairdryer, a pair of underwear, tampons – next, they were acting like they owned the place. But Jim didn’t mind. It had felt like a natural step. And when she’d come over for his July 4th barbecue, he’d greeted her at the door with a smile and “I think you should move in.”

 

They moved into the house on Lake Wallenpaupack a few weeks ago. And, while they still needed some furniture (we have the most important piece already, Jim thinks with a sly smile), it already felt homey. Pam had been exceptionally gracious – not surprising to Jim – about letting him keep his basketball stuff around, his gym equipment, the hideous turtle lamp from his childhood bedroom. She hadn’t even said anything about his, er, movie collection. Just a raised eyebrow and a smirk, but no words. In response, he’d let her girlify their bathroom with scented candles, framed inspirational quotes, and turquoise towels and shower curtain. He’d insisted that her paintings be hung throughout the house – in the hallway, above the fireplace in the den and in their bedroom.

 

Their bedroom. He still couldn’t believe it – the luck of it. Their styles meshed perfectly in the room – his art supplies mixed with hers, a pile of clean laundry on the foot of the bed, her sneakers fit inside his by the door.

 

The olive oil he’d splashed into the pan is getting hot, but he’s lost in thought, so even the smell of slightly burning garlic doesn’t phase him. He hopes she’s had a good last day in New York. In spite of his missing her, he knew it was good for her. Pam had made some good girlfriends up in Manhattan and a few in Harrisburg, thanks to her artwork. He glances at the corkboard by the phone, smiles at all the colored papers there with her messages that he’d dutifully recorded over the past few days. “Your Mom called Tuesday to say hi.” “Shirley from school called Wednesday night.” “Angela wants you to knit with her and Dwight this weekend. Don’t ask.”

 

He glances across the room at the desk he’d insisted on buying for her. He wanted her to have a place where she could work and be independent – but he’d thought the kitchen would be a good place for it, since, knowing him and his bottomless pit of a stomach, she’d never be too far away. Her final project for art school – a series of charcoal sketches – lies, half-finished, on the desk. A smile crosses his face as he thinks of her receiving her well-earned diploma in December.

 

His work is going well. He’s lucky enough to be able to work from home three days a week. At first, he was doubtful whether or not it would work – would I even change out of my pajamas? he wondered – but he was thankfully able to stay motivated and on track, waking up early, showering, making a full pot of coffee every morning. Pam would wake up about a half-hour later, go running, and be out the door by 10:30 for her art classes.

 

He was almost done with his first year of architecture classes, and Professor DeMarco – who had taught his Intro class – had turned into sort of a mentor for him, taking Jim under his wing and setting him up with a decent-paying internship based at a strong architectural firm in Philly. DeMarco’s brother-in-law, Will, was Jim’s boss – and Jim hoped it would turn into a full-time job eventually. Twice a week, he’d make the drive to Philly, and get feedback from Will on the buildings he’d been sketching. It was a long trip, about two hours, but twice a week – Monday and Friday – wasn’t too bad. Friday nights, he arrived home around, and Pam would be waiting up for him in her pj’s, with dinner and a DVD. My idea of a perfect weekend, Jim thinks, smiling at the expression that he knew would appear on her face when she walked through the door and saw he’d cooked her a nice dinner for a change.

 

Suddenly, the oil from the overheated garlic pan sizzles and flies onto his hand. “Shit,” he mutters, quickly drawing his hand back and shutting off the flame. He runs his hand under the cold faucet water for a minute, then examines his fingers, which do look a little burned. There goes the idea for my own cooking show, he thinks, wondering if he’s making a huge disaster out of this whole dinner thing.

 

And that’s when he remembers. The memory comes back to him all at once, jarring, and it knocks him back against the counter, as if he were suddenly dizzy and needed to steady himself. Sweat starts in his palms and on the back of his neck. I thought I remembered everything, he thinks, looking out at the rain. The last memory had come back to him about mid-way through the summer, when he recalled Pam’s first day at Dunder-Mifflin and their “date” at the Italian restaurant. It was sort of fitting that that would be the last piece of the Jim and Pam puzzle to fall back into place, he thought, since they both thought that was the first time they had met. And he thought that the memory erase was totally gone, reversed, poof! – until now.

 

The only thing was, he couldn’t remember when it had happened.

 

“Oh my God,” he says aloud. He has to go check on something. Now.

 

He’s halfway upstairs when he hears Pam at the front door, her keys jingling in the lock. His heart leaps (his stomach simultaneously dropping) and he rushes back to the stove, trying to salvage the pasta. Which probably now tastes like cement.

“I can’t believe it!” Pam says, dropping her luggage to the floor in mock surprise. “You’re… what is this you’re doing?”

 

“I’m cooking,” he replies, draining the linguine in the sink. “Or trying to.” She stands on tiptoe and kisses him on the cheek. “Hi,” he says, trying in vain to focus on the meal.

 

“I’m in shock. But thank you. That is the nicest surprise I could’ve hoped for.” She crosses the room, hangs up her coat. “What is on the menu for tonight?”

 

“Oh, you have no idea, little lady,” Jim says, shooting a wink across the room. She grins.

 

“I think I might have an inkling.”

 

“How was your drive back? How was the last day? What did they have to say about your painting?”

 

“Well, the drive was long – nobody knows how to drive in this weather – especially in Jersey,” she says, laughing a bit. “The last day was great. We all went around, saying what we’d learned…” She trails off as her eyes stop on the phone messages. “Oh, please tell me you’re kidding about the Angela thing.”

 

“I wish I could. She kept me on the phone for about forty-five minutes. I think she didn’t believe me when I said you weren’t here,” he jokes, pouring the pasta into a serving bowl and covering it with sauce. “I, uh, tried to cook some garlic, but it got a little burned. As did my hand.”

 

“Oh, no,” Pam cries, touching his injured hand. “Is it okay? All this, just to make me dinner. I’m flattered.”

 

He hands her the serving plate, and as their hands touch, she looks up at him admiringly, the steam from the hot food curling between them. “I tried,” he says, shrugging a little in this oddly endearing way. Leaning up, both still holding onto the plate, they kiss. “You’re going to make me drop this…” he says, drawing away just a bit, smirking.

 

“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Pam replies, taking the plate from him and placing it on the kitchen table, which Jim has already set. “I can just hear it now: ‘I slaved over a hot stove all day…’”

 

“Darn right. Here, I made a salad too – I’ll get it – it’s in the fridge. And there’s wine.”

 

Pam’s mouth drops open in feigned shock. “My God! I’m staring to worry that you did something wrong, Jim.”

 

He smiles, nervous that the food is bad. But his nervousness quickly fades as she digs in with abandon, eating the salad and the pasta with his homemade sauce without making a face or laughing at him – not that she would laugh at him, but he just wants it to be good. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. Ever.

 

Over dinner, he tells her about Philly on Monday and meeting the neighbors on the other side of the lake. And how they were going to have to go to the store this weekend to buy Halloween candy. “And a CD of scary music. And costumes. And decorations,” adds Pam. She loves the holiday. She talks excitedly about her art convention, the people she met there, and significantly less excitedly about her weekend date with Angela. “You’ve got to find a way to get me out of this one. Please!”

 

“Here, let me take care of the dishes,” he says. “Why don’t we have dessert and coffee out on the terrace. We can take a quilt or something – it’s getting kinda cold out, isn’t it?”

 

Pam eyes him suspiciously. “Dessert? You made dessert?”

 

He laughs. “No way. I bought it at the store. But the lady there said it was really good.”

 

“I see,” she replies, trying to sneak a peek in the refrigerator.

 

“Ah! Not quite yet. Just sit and relax for a minute,” he says, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll clean up as fast as I can, I promise.”

 

“Okay,” she relents, watching as he cleans up and makes coffee. He hands her the first mug, which she holds in both of her hands. He then takes half a chocolate cake out of the refrigerator and cuts them each a thick wedge. “That looks great.”

 

He follows her out onto the deck, where the air is so chilly they can both see their breath. The lake, which the house overlooks, isn’t frozen yet, but winter is definitely coming. Geese squawk loudly from overhead as they head south. “You know, the strangest thing happened to me on the way home,” she says, taking a bite of the cake. “Oh my God. This is the best thing ever.”

 

“I’m glad you like it.”

 

“Seriously, you did good, Jim. Here’s to a job well done,” she says, clinking her coffee mug to his.

 

“Thanks. Just don’t ask me to sauté garlic, and I think things’ll be fine.” Without thinking, he brushes a crumb of cake from the corner of her mouth. “So… what was that weird thing you remembered on the way home?”

 

She looks at him strangely. “Did I say it was something I remembered? How did you know?”

 

“Well, I… I guess I assumed. Was it a memory?”

 

“It was! It was really strange. I thought we were all done with that, you know?”

 

“I absolutely do.” He licks the icing off the tines of his fork and looks at her thoughtfully. “What was it that you remembered?”

 

“I remembered this… argument that we got into, when we both worked for Michael. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. Jan had come down to talk to the girls, and she’d told me about this internship. Like a graphic design thing that the company would help me pay for.”

 

“I remember that. You really wanted to go after it.”

 

“And you told me to.” She smiles. “Oh my God, I bet I have chocolate stuck in between every single one of my teeth right now.”

 

He laughs, shakes his head. “No, you don’t – you’re adorable. Keep going. Did they offer you an internship in New York or something?”

 

“No…” she trails off. “I guess there’s a distinct possibility, and I was a little nervous about it. If it happened, it might have at this convention. But when that came back to me – that you had encouraged me to pursue it when I was too afraid to – I felt a lot better about everything. It’s the first memory that’s come back to me that way in like, months.”

 

“Pam,” he says, putting his dessert plate down and squeezing her shoulders, “I’m totally behind you in whatever it is you want to do. I hope you know that.”

 

“I do. Thank you.”

 

He hesitates, thinking of his own recalled memory. Now seemed like as good a time as any to talk about it. The sun was going down, tinting the sky all pink and purple – they could hear the lapping of the lake against the shore, and her face looked beautiful and happy in the fading light. Still, his stomach was tense.

 

“I’m – I’m going to grab us a blanket,” he says finally. “You look cold.”

 

“Okay.”

 

He races upstairs, into their bedroom. Pulls his closet door open, sits down in front of it and peers inside. After a moment of searching, it all becomes clear. So it’s true. It did happen. I can’t believe I did this. I can’t imagine what I could’ve possibly been thinking at the time…

 

He’s almost outside before he realizes he forgot the blanket, so he pulls one off the couch and drapes it around Pam’s shoulders. She’s sitting on an old-fashioned bench, and she smiles gratefully for the warmth from both Jim and the blanket as he sits down next to her.

 

“Your coffee cold?”

 

“It’s okay, thanks,” she says, looking at him closely. “Are you okay, Jim? You seem a little… distracted. You can tell me anything, you know.”

 

He takes a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest. He really doesn’t know how she’s going to react to what he’s about to tell her. It’s going to change everything. Because even though their time together has been incredible, he still can’t ignore this deeply rooted fear that she still could leave him at any time. He’s never told her he feels this way, but he does. It’s less and less each day, but it’s still there.

 

“I, uh…. had a memory of my own come back to me today, too. So it’s kinda funny that the same thing happened to you. Hah.” His laughter comes out stifled, nervous.

 

“Really? What was it?”

 

“Well… the annoying thing is, I can’t remember when this happened. But apparently, it did.” His tone is serious, and she begins to look really worried. The thought that he’s upsetting her encourages him onward, and he breathes in and reaches in his coat pocket. When his hand reappears, Pam suddenly feels like she can’t breathe. “I bought this for you. At some point. Before the mind thing. I can’t remember when. I really don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it. I mean, I do know, of course I know, but we never together before… so… and now… it seemed… appropriate…” He trails off. He can’t breathe. Maybe I’m having a stroke.

 

“Jim,” Pam says, her brow furrowed, her eyes low, “it’s a ring.” She says it as though he just revealed to her the ten million dollars he’d stolen from a bank.

 

“I know.” He brushes his hair out of his eyes, and she can see his cheeks are flushed, pink. “Do you… do you want it?”

 

She sucks in breath. A gleeful laugh escapes her, and she takes his face in her hands and draws him in for a kiss. “Are you serious? Of course I do, Jim!”

 

“Oh. Good.” He laughs, feeling relieved. “That had to be the most unromantic proposal ever. I’m so sorry. If you want I can do it again. I can go uncork another bottle of wine or something. Or like, put it in your cake? Maybe that would be better…”

 

“Will you just put it on!?” she cries, the giggles bubbling up from within her like cold champagne. “I’m dying here!”

 

“Okay,” he says begrudgingly, but with a smirk. He gently slips it onto her finger, where it sparkles in the last glimmers of daylight. “Oh – it fits – I’m so glad.”

 

She grins, examining it for a moment, then turning her face back to his. It’s one of the millions of little things he loves about her – the way she doesn’t spend three hours staring at the diamond from every different viewpoint, measuring the carats, or whatever. Truthfully, if he had bought the ring now, he could’ve afforded something bigger – but it was okay. He wishes he could remember when he bought it – but the truth was, he knew it didn’t matter. Even if he hadn’t bought it before, he would’ve now.

 

“I think we should celebrate,” she was saying.

 

“Aren’t we?” he asks, tilting his head towards the cake with a goofy grin.

 

“I meant upstairs.”

 

“Oh,” comes flying out of his mouth involuntarily, and he’s already guiding her into the house by the hand. “We can definitely do that.”

 

* * *

Later, surfacing from beneath the covers, gasping for breath, their limbs still entangled, his mouth still on hers, he laces her arm across his shoulder, feels for the ring resting on her finger.

 

“Are you still afraid that I might leave?” she whispers, and her words jar him out of his lovestruck daze. “Because you shouldn’t be.” She kisses his neck, then nestles her head into the hollow there. With the sun set, the room is now fully dark, so he can’t see anything. All the better, because otherwise she’d be able to see the dampness in his eyes.

 

“Thanks, Pam. I know,” he says, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I think I’m stuck.”

 

“Hey, thanks.”

 

“I meant in your hair,” he says, laughing softly. “But also with you. And you’re stuck with me, Pam Beesley. So don’t you forget it.”

 

“Oh, don’t worry. There’s not going to be any forgetting around here anymore. Just lots of new things to remember.”

 

“I’m counting on it.”

 

She turns, laying her body alongside his, then reaches up to his face and wipes his cheeks with her fingers. As if she knows.

*                                                   *                                             *