Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

-- Dorothy Parker

They had shared "I love you's" over cold Chinese food.

She expertly fished pieces of shrimp from the carton with chopsticks while watching him sloppily stab at noodles with a fork. She loved him most in these unguarded moments, the times when that dark storm cloud wasn't in his eye. What scared her most was that she loved him at all. Loved. She had moved for him, had been intent on starting a new life because of him (hopefully with him). Things had been great in Stamford. They never had a fight and he had always been fun to be around. There was none of this brooding that he seemed to excel in. If she hadn't been so sure about this love thing, she would have walked. She would have broken up with him before it got out of control, before it put her career in jeopardy, but now she was way past that. She was already thinking about introducing him to her parents, which was terrifying. That was Serious-with-a-capital-S. The last guy that met her parents was her date for the senior prom, so this was kind of a shock.

The basketball game went to commercial and he leaned back on the couch, the food carton balancing precariously on his knee.

"Jim," she said quietly. She set the food carton on the coffee table and turned to face him. "I love you."

His eyes widened and his body jerked almost imperceptibly. The carton of Chinese food spilled on the floor. He looked at it and grinned sheepishly. As he stared down at the mess, he replied quietly, "Me too."

It hadn't been the passionate display she had been hoping for, but she was willing to work with it. Maybe it was too early for him to say it back. She could forgive that for now. She knew something was bothering him lately, something he couldn't share with her just yet. She hid her frown by kissing his cheek.

"I'll get paper towel," she said. "You planning to spill anything else or are you good?"

He smirked. "I should be fine for a while. But you have that white carpet in the bedroom that I've been dying to spill red wine on, so... fingers crossed."

She smiled, kissed him again and went into the kitchen.

Jim let out a breath of air and ran his hand through his hair. He was pretty sure he had just told Karen he loved her. He couldn't really be sure. He knew it probably wasn't the sort of reaction she had been hoping for. Normally emotional revelations didn't involve lo mein on the living room rug. Actually, he didn't think they involved lo mein at all. He would have to ask his father about that. The last person he had said "I love you" to (and had them say it back to him) was Susan Waters in college. And she had dumped him the day before graduation because she couldn't see things working after college. They were "going in different directions" she had said. That "different direction" had been four blocks away from Dunder-Mifflin - the hospital where she worked as a nurse.

So now Karen was officially the last person he had (sort of) said "I love you" to. But that didn't make her the last person he actually loved.

He helped her clean the food off the rug and tried not to think any more about love. It was bad enough he thought about it any time he answered a damn telephone.

"Sorry about this," he said as he scooped noodles back into the container.

"Hey, forget it," she replied. "I'll live."

He wondered if he was the only one who had been talking about the botched "I love you" attempt. He watched her carry the mess into the kitchen and tried, honestly tried, to understand why he couldn't just love her back. It would be so much easier if he could just give himself over to her. He didn't want to feel this way anymore. He didn't want to lay awake at night with Karen sleeping beside him and wonder if she was awake in another part of the city. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair, but it was better than alone. Maybe that's what Karen thought, too. Maybe she was just better at throwing herself into the lie.

Karen came back into the room with a glass of white wine and settled back on the couch. She took a small sip and set the glass on the table.

"I thought about red, but you know, you can't be trusted," she said, grinning.

He smiled back but couldn't think of anything to say, so he turned back to the television.

Tonight would have been okay, maybe even one of their overall best in Scranton, if she hadn't said those three little words.

They both knew it, but only one of them was willing to admit it right now.

Interior

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

-- Dorothy Parker

Her reflections frown back at her as she models the dress in the angled mirrors. She can barely hear the salesgirl coo over how the dress looks on her or her mother's soft claps of agreement. She smoothes her hands over the fabric; it's sleek under her fingertips and she feels delicate, like she's wrapped in a cloud that's had the fluff beaten out of it. She tries to focus on the beading as the salesgirl twitters on about it, but all she can do is stare at her own mouth as it twists into that awful frown. She thinks a smile may be buried in her stomach and she thinks about reaching down her throat to pull it out, but she can't bear the thought and she wonders when things got so grim.

"...but we can hem it, of course, unless you'll be wearing high shoes."

She looks down into the salesgirl's chestnut eyes; they are round and slightly watery like a child that's about to cry. Maybe wedding dresses make her emotional, Pam wonders. But if they do, why would she work in a wedding dress shop?

As the salesgirl holds up matching jewelry, Pam can see that the girl isn't wearing a ring. A single girl working in a wedding dress shop might be one of the saddest things she's ever seen. And maybe the salesgirl feels that, too, and maybe that's why she always looks like she might cry. Maybe she's waiting for a throw-away groom to sweep her off her feet, like a comfortable sweater you might find at a second-hand store on a rainy day.

Pam looks at herself in the mirrors again, examines every angle of herself and wonders why it still doesn't feel right. She's supposed to marry Roy. Everyone's expecting her to now - they've set a date. You can't just back a way from a thing like that... can you?

She steps down from the pedestal and puts her back to the mirrors. Before she can utter a syllable, the salesgirl is attacking the zipper of the dress and her mother is at her side, reciting the to-do list like it's God's prayer.

"...and I was thinking some yellow posies in the bouquet, for a bit of - Pam, are you listening?"

She blinks and looks at her mother. She feels cold air on her back and reaches around to close the back of the gown around herself. The bunched fabric feels different in her fist, like a slippery stone that she's eager to throw.

She sees the way her mother looks at her and there's nothing she can do to stop the tears. They fall like lonely, fat soldiers and surrender without regard onto the front of the wedding dress. She buries her face in her mother's shoulder as the burden falls away from her own.

Her mother wraps her arms around her tightly and kisses the top of her head. She asks gently, "What's wrong?"

"I can't marry him," Pam chokes out between sobs. "He isn't... I don't... I can't! I can't."

Her mother just hugs her tighter and whispers in her ear, tells her that it will all be okay.

For the first time all day, the salesgirl's eyes are completely dry. She gathers up the wedding dresses that Pam hasn't tried on yet and begins putting them back on the racks. They'll belong to someone else, someday.

Second Love

"So surely is she mine," you say, and turn
Your quick and steady mind to harder things-
To bills and bonds and talk of what men earn-
And whistle up the stair, of evenings.
And do you see a dream behind my eyes,
Or ask a simple question twice of me-
"Thus women are," you say; for men are wise
And tolerant, in their security.

How shall I count the midnights I have known
When calm you turn to me, nor feel me start,
To find my easy lips upon your own
And know my breast beneath your rhythmic heart.
Your god defer the day I tell you this:
My lad, my lad, it is not you I kiss!

-- Dorothy Parker

They spend Sunday mornings at the kitchen table - she sips tea and sketches, he drinks coffee and complains about the bills. They've done this for as long as she can remember and it's the thing she likes most about their relationship. It's comfortable, like an old wool sweater that's lost most of the itchiness and its shape. But she can get restless. Her eyes flicker briefly to his form and she watches, half-interested, as he scribbles out numbers on a yellow legal pad she stole from work.

When she starts sketching a pair of hands, they're not his. They're the hands of her Monday through Friday man, that best friend who makes her feel comfortable and electrified at the same time. She's only really known the hands next to her, the ones that tug on the sheets and write the checks to the electric company... but she wonders what the hands on her sketchpad would feel like if they came to life, slid up her body and tangled in the mess of her hair. (She thinks that would be the only electric company she would really need.)

"Forget it," he says and drops the pen. "How about some breakfast?"

She's staring at her sketchpad and gently running her index finger over the drawn hands, wondering what it might be like to do this for real.

"Hello? Pam..."

She snaps out of it and looks up at him. "What? Sorry. I was just, uh... sorry. What did you say?"

"I said how about breakfast," he says. He cocks his head and looks at her as if she's a foreign language he's trying to learn. "You've been really weird lately. What's up?"

"Nothing," she answers. "Just thinking about the wedding a lot, I guess, since we set a date and everything."

She starts sketching a pair of lips near the hands. Even though she's never touched them or felt them on her own, she's memorized every curve of them and knows just that one spot that quirks up first before a smile.

She's working on the shading when she realizes that Roy is speaking to her again. Her eyes drift up to his face in an effort to make it seem as though she's been listening the whole time, but she can't force her gaze past his mouth. These are the lips she knows intimately, but they aren't the ones she's sketching.

She feels a bit of guilt rise in her stomach, so she closes her eyes and reaches across the table to give him a quick kiss. These are the lips she knows intimately, but they aren't the ones she's kissing.

She pulls away, then says quietly, "I'm sorry. I wasn't listening."

He shakes his head and mutters playfully, "Women."

Bric-a-Brac

Little things that no one needs --
Little things to joke about --
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.

Lonely folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore -- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little maps of pinkish lands,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plats of linen strands,
Little verses, such as these.

-- Dorothy Parker

They start as bric-a-brac.

They start as nothing more than toys on each other's shelves: just something to pull down and play with when bored.

Somewhere along the line (and neither can pinpoint the exact location), they become something more. They don't know what they become exactly, but they know it's more than toys.

Their pranks are dismissed as petty playtime for work weary minds, but it's in these unguarded "nothing" moments where "everything" starts to take shape.

Co-worker becomes friend becomes best friend becomes something a little more complicated. Oxford can't explain what they are. Dictionary definitions and an author's diction paint an incomplete picture; but it's still a picture he'd hang in his gallery. He would show the picture to her, hand her a brush and say, "Let's finish it together. I can't do this without you."

He thinks that sometimes she might take him up on the offer, but when he gets close she backs away as if he's started playing too rough. He's never sure of all the rules in this game, but he thinks he might be able to win it someday if he's a very lucky boy.

They flirt and they tango (occasionally foxtrot), but mostly they tiptoe. They fill their time together with falsely meaningless passion, taking comfort in the coziness of "just friends" because "just friends" isn't so risky and nobody loses a turn with "just friends." But somehow they always end up scraping elbows or knees, and there isn't a band-aid with a cartoon character on it big enough to cover it all up.

He takes her from the toy shelf permanently and keeps her in the pocket near his heart, and can only hope she's done the same.

When he decides to tell her (Iloveyoujustneededyoutoknow), he knows it violates the rules of the game, but he's willing to skirt the rules to get what he wants. She can cry "Foul!" or toss the game board into the air and scatter the pieces if she wants, but every bit of him shakes with the hope that she won't.

But when she says "I can't" on that balmy evening, he can see her shove him back onto that toy shelf, even though they both know he doesn't belong there any more.

He isn't a toy.

He is a real boy (who just wants to be her man).

(And she wants it, too, but the real world starts swirling all around her... so she just pretends to be a little girl playing with her dolls: "I think we're just drunk.")

After Spanish Proverb

Oh, mercifullest one of all,
Oh, generous as dear,
None lived so lowly, none so small,
Thou couldst withhold thy tear:

How swift, in pure compassion,
How meek in charity,
To offer friendship to the one
Who begged but love of thee!

Oh, gentle word, and sweetest said!
Oh, tender hand, and first
To hold the warm, delicious bread
To lips burned black of thirst.

-- Dorothy Parker

He just needed her to know, and maybe that was the mistake. Would it have killed him to keep his stupid mouth shut? At least then he wouldn't have to slink into the office after everyone else is long gone home so that he can pack up his desk. He could have had a lame little party in the conference room with a cake and an inappropriate speech (and some tears) from Michael. As it stands, the only party he'll be at tonight is one of the pity variety he's throwing for himself and six friends of the longneck sort.

He's already deleted his personal things from the computer, so he begins putting his personal possessions into a creased cardboard box. The desktop is easily taken care of, but when he starts opening desk drawers he feels like he should have brought along a team of archeologists to assist in the dig. He grabs a trash can and starts chucking anything he doesn't recognize into the bin.

Receipts from two years ago, more expired coupons, some dead batteries, and handwritten notes that once made his heart slip into his stomach are tossed away with abandon. He can't afford to care about this stuff anymore, because... what's the point? The past is the past is the past is the past and not his future. He doesn't have a future here.

He opens the last drawer and begins sifting through the papers. It's mostly order forms and other work junk that goes into the garbage without a second thought, but then he stumbles upon a health care form that has dozens of fictitious diseases written on it in a familiar, feminine handwriting. He reads each one over carefully and smiles faintly when he gets to the nanorobot plague. He sets the paper aside, into his "to keep" pile, then gets back to the task at hand.

When he finishes, he shuts the drawer and stretches his arms over his head. He looks into the cardboard box and tries not to think about the dozens of other boxes that are already packed and ready to go in his living room. While he's looking to distract himself from these thoughts, he notices the paper clips and yogurt lid still tangled around the desk lamp. He reaches out and slides his index finger over the paper clip trail but stops short before he touches the yogurt lid.

He gingerly removes the necklace from around the lamp and slips it over his head. It doesn't feel the same as it did that day. He doesn't feel like a winner.

He picks up the health care form and reads the words, but he can't find that laughter again. This is the most he's ever felt of nothing.

He sighs, crumples up the health care form and tosses it in the trash. He looks at the empty reception desk and tries to imagine staring at a temp while he knows she's on her honeymoon, then lifts the necklace from around his neck and dangles it over the trash can for a moment before ultimately deciding to let it drop.

There's no future in paper clips and yogurt lids - not for him, anyway.

He stands up, picks up the cardboard box and makes his way to the door. He stops near the reception desk, unsure of what he wants (or needs) to do. He chews his bottom lip for a moment then sets the cardboard box down on the couch near the door. He steps behind the reception desk and feels like a jester in the queen's court (which is what he's always been, he thinks).

He scribbles on a Post-It note and sticks it to the computer monitor: Keep in touch. - Jim

He knows it's the cheap way out, but she took the easy way out first, so he figures it's a fair fight.

He grabs the cardboard box and leaves the office for what he thinks is the last time.

News Item

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

-- Dorothy Parker

He convinces her to go out for dinner and drinks after work in an attempt to cheer her up. He has to take her hand and lead her through the restaurant to their table, then watches as she blindly grabs for the menu and pushes it so close to her face he's sure she'll put her head right through the thing.

He sighs and snatches the menu away from her.

"I was reading that!" she protests. She tries to reach across the table to grab the menu back from him, but instead only manages to knock over the salt and pepper shakers.

"Settle down there, Mr. Magoo," he says playfully and reaches out to hold her hand. "I wouldn't call what you were doing reading."

"I was reading it," she insists. "I was doing fine. I really think I'm getting over this whole... blindness thing. I don't really need my glasses anymore."

"Okay," he says and nods. He tries to imagine what he looks like as a blurry mass (because he's confident that's all she can see him as). "I will believe that and give you this menu back if you can tell me what restaurant we're at."

She is silent for a long while and he can tell she's trying to discern their location using her other senses - the ones that work properly.

"No fair using context clues," he says. "Will you just put on your glasses, please? For me?"

She sighs and blindly digs through her purse until she finds her glasses. She puts the glasses on and blinks at him from behind the lenses. She pouts and says, "There. Happy?"

"You're beautiful," he tells her, then hands her the menu. "Are you really going to let the people we work with bother you that much about your glasses?"

"No," she says. She sets the menu down. "It's just... I don't know. Hearing it all day and... well, it's like being in high school all over again. Today just brought me back to feeling awkward about myself, I guess. I look ridiculous."

He considers this for a moment then reaches out and gently takes the glasses from her face. He ignores her questions and takes his cell phone from his pocket and takes a picture of himself. He smiles then puts the glasses back on her, gently pushing her hair behind her ears as he does.

"What was that about?" she asks and adjusts the frames so they're sitting straight on her nose.

He turns his phone so that she can see the picture of him. "That's how you look ridiculous in those glasses. You, however, with or without the glasses, look beautiful."

She smiles softly then picks up the menu and begins to read it (really read it).

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

-- Dorothy Parker

She stayed late at the office that night and threw all the jelly beans in the garbage. They hit the bottom of the garbage can with rapid fire clunks and she tried not to let her heart fall in after them.

As she pulled on her coat, the lip gloss she'd bought the night before slipped out of one of the pockets and fell to the floor. She stared at it, remembering the fifteen minutes she had spent in CVS agonizing over what shade to choose because maybe, just maybe, if the shade was right, he'd notice and she'd smile and then things would be okay again.

She kicked the tiny tube under the couch and left the office, flicking the lights off on her way out.

The car ride home was quiet and cold and she tried not to speed, but she was eleven miles over almost the entire way home. Her apartment only served to remind her that she was still alone and he wasn't. She didn't have enough furniture because she had let Roy keep most of it because she was tired of arguing with him over the phone about everything. During their last conversation she told him just where he should put all that furniture and hung up on him. He had the good sense not to call back. Two nights later she went to Wal*Mart and bought some of that furniture that you put together yourself. She drank half a bottle of wine and watched "The Princess Bride" while she screwed together her crappy new furniture and tried not to cry.

She couldn't blame him for not wanting to be alone because she's never wanted that, either. It was never so painfully obvious to her as it was on her first night in her apartment, when she had made enough spaghetti for two people out of habit. She had thrown the leftovers away because she couldn't even look at them without her breath catching in her throat. She slept in a bed that was too big and wandered around like the walking wounded in an apartment that was too small.

She shrugged off her coat and hung it on a hook then dropped her purse on the paint-stained braided rug near the door.

She put the tea kettle on, and when it whistled she tried not to hear all the words in its angry screeches. Each screech parroted back her inability to love him back and the hot steam reminded her of that muggy night, the night she broke two hearts with two words; broke herself with "I," him with "can't." They mixed painfully, like colors on her palette that became muddy and grim.

She moved the kettle to a cool burner so that the whistling would stop and she wouldn't have to hear anymore. The last words trapped in the kettle escaped as wisps of steam and disappeared into the air.

Hours later, when she crawled into bed alone, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and told herself that it hurt because of the tea. She wiped her tears away and told herself it would be okay, even though she wasn't sure of that at all. When she closed her eyes, she could only see them together - not her and him together, but him and her together, which was the worst sort of together of all the togethers.

She stared at the ceiling and tried not to think of all the what-ifs, but they floated through her mind like sinister butterflies. It was useless to wonder now, because she had made her choice and he had moved on. His feelings had changed. She was replaced by someone else - someone with tan skin and shiny hair and a perfect smile who knew what she wanted and did things that were scary and uncomfortable, like move to a new city to be with a man.

Now everything was scary and uncomfortable, like the time when she was twelve and had fallen off her uncle's sailboat into the ocean. She just swirled in the water, trying to decide what was up and what was down while her eyes burned. Her uncle had pulled her out then, but there was no one here to pull her from the uncertainty now. Up and down were nowhere and nobody was going to rescue her this time.

She was falling off the sailboat again and nobody was there, but at least now she knew how to swim a little better.

But Not Forgotten

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image, there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

-- Dorothy Parker

They aren’t dating. At least, he doesn’t think they are. He’s not sure what she thinks because so far they haven’t really ever talked about anything important. They just rib each other about sports scores or sales stats or personal fumbles. They talk about little things, and he likes that because sometimes he forgets what little feels like. The last big thing he did blew up in his face, so little is nice for a change.

They skip out of work early today, slipping out the door before Andy can notice and invite himself along. Neither of them feels like going home, so she drives them to her favorite Japanese place. She says the view sucks, but the donburi is great. He nods even though he’s not sure what that is.

They get a small table near the window (the view does suck) and he loosens his tie while she picks up a menu.

He stares out the window and makes every effort not to think about the woman he isn’t with, but it’s difficult when there’s an unanswered text message from her in the Saved folder on his phone. He didn’t get it until he had sobered up, but even reading it then confused him. His head could never be clear when it came to her. He didn’t reply to the text, just saved it until he could think of a decent reply (if that would ever come).

“Are you okay?”

He realizes he’s probably been staring out the window for too long. He blinks and turns his attention back to her and tries a smile. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About what?” she asks. “You seem... distracted, and weird.”

“Just... a friend,” he answers quietly. He begins pushing his chopsticks around the table with his index finger. “A friend from home.”

“Is he okay?” she asks.

He doesn’t correct her. “I think so. I don’t know. I got a text message that I haven’t replied to yet.”

“Maybe you should call him,” she says. “It sounds like you think it’s important, so why don’t you check with him?”

He looks into her eyes, doesn’t see a trace of another woman in them. He could never confuse the two of them, but they are always together for some reason. He can run miles away, but she’ll always be right next to him. Sometimes he thinks he wakes up to her laugh, but it’s always just the alarm clock or the dull hum of the refrigerator.

“Maybe,” he says. “It’s probably just work stuff anyway.”

“Okay,” she says. He knows she doesn’t believe him but they aren’t close enough yet for her to call him out on this sort of stuff.

“There’s this woman,” he says suddenly. He doesn’t know why he’s saying it, but he figures maybe it’ll help him move forward, so why not? “And I... I guess I miss her.”

“Oh,” is all she says. She closes the menu and looks out the window for a moment, then she turns to him and says, “So, you and her...”

“We were only friends,” he says. It’s technically true, but he knows it’s far from the whole story. “She was my best friend.”

“Maybe you should call her,” she says, and he can tell it hurts her to say it.

He looks into her eyes and still doesn’t see a trace of anyone else in them. He thinks maybe that’s what he needs. He licks his lips and says, “No. It’s... nah.”

He finally opens the menu and stares down at it. “How’s the tempura here?”

“It’s good,” she replies quietly.

“Good,” he murmurs.

She clears her throat. She wants to lighten the mood, so she says, “Is that the only thing you recognize on the menu?”

He looks up at her and grins sheepishly. “You caught me. I’m not a big Japanese food guy.”

“So, going for the old stand-by then?” she asks, smirking.

He thinks about this for a minute, then says, “Yeah... hey, what was that thing you said was good here? Maybe I’ll try that.”

“Donburi.”

“Donburi,” he repeats. He mulls the word over then leans back in his chair. “Yeah, maybe I’ll give that a try.”

After dinner, he doesn’t admit that he didn’t care for the donburi.

Anecdote

So silent I when Love was by
He yawned, and turned away;
But Sorrow clings to my apron-strings,
I have so much to say.

-- Dorothy Parker

She can’t hear what Michael is saying, and truthfully she doesn’t care. She figures it’s something stupid or he’s probably taking more credit for work she did. Today has been a terrible day (it‘s gonna take something big to fix that now). All she wants to do is go home and curl up with “The Princess Bride.”

Where is her Westley?

As she bends down to feel the warmth of the coals, she figures it doesn’t matter. Maybe sometimes Buttercup never finds her Westley… and maybe that’s okay. She doesn’t know what the future holds for her anymore… and maybe that’s okay, too. She thought she knew what her life was going to be like - a husband, a house, a job she hated, maybe kids someday. It didn’t all sound perfect, but she saw some happiness in it. She’s not quite sure what she sees now. She only ever manages to get as far as “tomorrow” and she hardly ever manages to see any happiness in that.

It isn’t just because she loves him. She does, she knows that now, but it’s more than him now. It’s herself and how she’s always been half fulfilled. She’s spent so much time giving in to other people that her glass is only half full. She’s always been half. She’s spent years being half of something; she hasn’t been wholly her own since sophomore year of high school.

She supposes now is as good a time as any to figure out who she is. Maybe this should have happened sooner. Maybe if she had finished college this revelation would have come sooner, but she can’t dwell on that. She’s working on becoming complete… but the trouble is: how will she know when she’s done? How do you know when you’ve figured yourself out?

She’s willing to start taking all the risks. Even if it hurts, she’ll do it for the experience and how it makes her feel inside. She has to know. She has to let them know. She has to let him know. But, most of all, she herself needs to know. She’s on the way to knowing herself. She's finally finding all of the pieces to the puzzle. She’s so scared of putting herself together, but God, isn’t that just so beautiful in itself?

She can feel the coals warming her toes and takes a deep breath. The Pam Beesly that exists on this side of the coal walk is not the same Pam Beesly that will exist on the other side of it.

She thinks “As you wish” before she steps over the hot coals.

*This is only the l'envoi of the poem "Ballade Of A Talked-Off Ear." If you're interested, you can find the complete poem online quite easily.

Ballade Of A Talked-Off Ear

L'ENVOI

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face
Poets alone should kiss and tell.

-- Dorothy Parker

Ryan loves New York. Ryan loves talking about New York.

Kelly learned these lessons the hard way when she agreed to take him back. She expected that he would eventually grow tired of talking about “the City - that’s when you call it when you really know it” and settle back into shutting his mouth and watching television with her.

But he doesn’t. He talks all the way through “Gossip Girl” and “90210” and all the other shows that really matter. He loves talking about how he ate sandwiches at four in the morning and she dies of boredom because, seriously, who cares? She could walk into her kitchen any time of the day and make a sandwich. Sometimes she half-wishes he had choked on one of those sandwiches. That would be a story she’d like to hear more than once. But he never did, so she has to settle for stories of cab rides and meeting C-list celebrities in clubs. He never met Beyonce, so it’s easy for her to tune him out. Sometimes. When he isn’t talking about other women.

“I want us to be honest,” he says the first night they’re ‘officially’ back together. “No secrets, okay? I want to really be able to tell you about the New York experience.”

What he means by “tell you about the New York experience” is “I don’t want you to get mad when I talk about all the girls I hooked up with.”

She figures this out on their second date when she orders red wine at the restaurant and he laughs and starts talking about this blonde he knew who spilled wine on herself and then they made out. All of his stories end with him either making out or having sex. She figures most of the sex stories are lies because she knows him and knows that he has, like, totally no game, but she can believe the making out stories because sometimes every girl makes a two-martini-mistake.

Honesty appears to only be a one-way street because whenever she mentions Darryl in any way, Ryan coughs loudly and tells her to “stop dwelling in the past.” But then something else reminds him of some bimbo he made out with in a cab or in a public bathroom and he goes on another tangent about how New York is “so alive.”

She recognizes that he isn’t really talking to her, so she starts texting friends whenever he’s talking about the city.

Whenever he starts talking about the girls, she texts Darryl and tells him she misses him.

Bohemia

Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!

-- Dorothy Parker

She loves that he thinks Art Brut is just a band.

It’s a funny realization to have when stumbling out of a bar with friends at an obscene hour, but she has it all the same. She smiles and twists the ring on her finger, then reaches into her pocket for her cell phone.

Alex and Paul begin arguing loudly about Kandinsky again and she waves off their attempts to have her pick a side. She fumbles with the buttons on her phone until she finally manages to reach Jim in her contacts list and presses the call button.

“PAM!” Helene screams. She rushes over, her heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk. “I think that… I hate Kandinsky!”

Pam laughs even though she’s not sure why (but she’s pretty sure it’s either the sake or the wine). She intertwines her arm with Helene’s and whispers, “I’m - I’m calling my fi… my Jim.”

“Aww,” Helene says. She bites her lip and it looks like she might cry. “That’s cute. Really cute. You’re a drunk-dialer!”

“Who’s getting drunk dialysis?” Paul yells.

“Nobody!” Pam replies.

“She’s drunk-dialing!” Helene adds.

Alex spreads his arms and exclaims, “Kandinsky was a drunk-dialer!”

“Kandinsky didn’t have a phone!” Paul says. “They weren’t abstract enough for him!”

Pam laughs and remembers she’s made a phone call. She lifts the phone to her ear and says, “Hello? Hello? Jim, are you - are you there? I’m… is this a voicemail? Answer your phone, jerk. Yeah, I called you a jerk. What’re you gonna do about it?”

Paul grabs the phone from her and puts it to his ear. “Hello? Is this Pam’s financier? Sell! No! Buy! I don’t… diversify her stock portfolio! She’s had so many beers!”

Pam grabs the phone back. “You are such a dork! Shots!”

“Okay, so shots is why you’re drunk,” Paul says. “Potatoes, tomatoes.”

“I’m not drunk,” Pam replies, even though she’s sure she is.

Alex laughs and says in a high-pitched voice, “You are such a dork! I’m Pam Beesly!”

“Okay, I do not sound like that,” Pam replies.

Paul tuts. “You can take the girl out of Philly…”

“Scranton,” Pam corrects.

“It’s all Greek to me,” Paul says and shrugs.

“Sorry we can’t all ‘pahk the cah at Hahvad yahd,’” Helene says and sticks out her tongue.

“Are you mimicking me?” Paul asks, pretending to be offended.

“No, she was mocking you,” Alex tells him.

“Ooh, Greek,” Pam says. “Let’s go to that Greek diner!”

“Welcome to five minutes ago,” Helene says with a laugh.

Pam waves that off and says, “Stuffed zucchini flowers. Come on.”

“Actually, that does sound good,” Helene agrees.

“Who eats zucchini at three in the morning?” Alex asks.

Pam and Helene both raise their hands.

“Pam, are you still on the phone?” Helene asks and laughs again.

Pam looks at the phone in her hand and laughs. “Yes!”

She puts the phone to her ear and says, “Hello! Sorry! I don’t… remember why I called, but that’s… something about music? I don’t know. Call me later, okay? I love you!”

She puts the phone back in her pocket without hanging it up.

The next afternoon, she’ll laugh about this with Jim and apologize for the forty-three minutes of silence on his voicemail.

Autumn Valentine

In May my heart was breaking-
Oh, wide the wound, and deep!
And bitter it beat at waking,
And sore it split in sleep.

And when it came November,
I sought my heart, and sighed,
"Poor thing, do you remember?"
"What heart was that?" it cried.

-- Dorothy Parker

They spend the day before Christmas Eve fixing up the new house.

The only furniture they move in is an old mattress she’s had in storage and a kitchen chair he finds in the garage. He drags the mattress into the living room so they’ll have something to sit on while they eat their Chinese take-out. She’s spent the day painting what will eventually become their bedroom, so she’s starving. She digs into some shrimp fried rice but has to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she says and sets the container down. “I can’t eat with it staring at me.”

His mouth is full, so he just looks at her quizzically. She points to the clown painting in the hallway and he almost chokes on his food.

“Just… try not to look at it,” he says, staring down into his container of food. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”

She looks at him and deadpans, “It’s in my dreams.”

He laughs and looks up at her. “I’ll try to do something about it, I promise. Before you know it, it’ll just be… some distant memory.”

She nods and he goes back to eating. Despite her better judgment, she again looks at the clown painting. She thinks about distant memories and can’t wait for it to be one. She can put it in the mental shoebox in the closet of her mind along with all those nights she slept alone and that time she broke their hearts. Those are distant memories. It’s getting harder every day to remember what it felt like then, which isn’t a bad feeling. She never wants to feel so incomplete or heartbroken again, and she has a great suspicion that she never will.

She smiles softly to herself and picks up her food container and begins eating. He stops eating and she throws him a look.

“Well, now it’s staring at me,” he says.

She laughs and shrugs. “Distant memory.”

Faute De Mieux

Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.

-- Dorothy Parker

When Toby takes the painting class, he knows he’s trying too hard.

He gets halfway through a watercolor of some flowers (all the colors begin to bleed) before he mumbles an excuse and leaves the class early. He never goes back. He’s a glutton for punishment, yeah, but he’s not an idiot.

He starts going to a writing workshop because that feels less pathetic. He spends Wednesday evenings fleshing out characters, filling in plot holes, and listening to an angry college freshman’s bad poetry. The first class they all go around the room and say what they want out of the course and he decides to be honest (something he rarely is with himself):

“I’m just here to pass the time.”

He doesn’t mention Costa Rica or work or anything, really. Nobody asks about anything but his novel, anyway. He still thinks it’s farfetched to call what he’s working on “a novel,” but the instructor insists that everyone “think big” about their projects.

Toby isn’t the “think big” type and he knows it. He sketches rough outlines of chapters and does character profiles and is kind of disgusted that the hero of his novel behaves more like Jim than himself (except for the always familiar insecurity and social anxiety). He can’t even be the hero of his own imagination.

He’s thinking about this one night during a break from class while he’s standing at the vending machine, jingling the change in his pocket. While he’s deciding between chips or a candy bar, the angry freshman and her pothead boyfriend turn the corner and stop when they see him.

“Hey, Toby,” the boyfriend says. “Awesome stuff tonight. All that stuff about your main character realizing he’s trapped in a prison of his own design was awesome.”

“Yeah,” the girl agrees. “I can’t wait until you decide what’s holding him back from going for his dreams.”

“Me either,” Toby mumbles.

The boyfriend claps him on the shoulder then they continue walking down the hallway.

He remains in front of the vending machine, static and unmoving - just as he’s always been.

He sighs and returns to the classroom without a snack because, honestly, he just doesn’t see the point anymore.

Little Words

When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.

I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that sets my sorrow down
Feeds at my heart.

There is no mercy in the shifting year,
No beauty wraps me tenderly about.
I turn to little words- so you, my dear,
Can spell them out.

-- Dorothy Parker

“Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a meow; but she would have to be a real meow. He meow all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted…”

She drops the Mad Libs book and her pencil to the floor with a sigh. She realizes now that it’s impossible to play this game with a cat, so she sets Acatus Finch on the floor and settles back on the sofa.

She misses him. She hates to admit it, but she does. It was easier in the beginning before things got too complicated. He was just a distraction, just somebody to have around until she could finally forgive the other man. The other man. That’s what she’s made him now. She’s turned all of them into things they weren’t meant to be.

She hates herself; no matter how many times she says three Hail Marys, she does. She wants to ask someone how you fix a situation like this, but she’s too embarrassed. She’s toyed with the idea of speaking to Pam about it, but she doubts Pam can understand things like these anymore. Just because they both wore engagement rings doesn’t mean they speak the same language.

The ring is sitting on her nightstand next to the Bible. (It’s just another irony she’s come to expect at this point.) He called earlier to say he’s coming later to collect the ring - as soon as he can stop crying. He claimed he’ll sell it on eBay and donate the money to Cornell, but she doubts it. She’s seen the circular crease in his wallet and she suspects it’ll just go right back in there, ready for the next girl who captures his heart for five minutes.

Her mother used to tell her that every woman must carry a burden, and now she’s sure this must be hers.

* This isn't the entire poem, just the last stanza. I'm sure you can find the entire thing online quite easily (I know I did).

Ballade at Thirty-five

Pictures pass me in long review,--
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us -- hence
I loved them until they loved me.

-- Dorothy Parker

She watches him, sneaks glances when she thinks no one will notice. He’s been looking distracted and worried lately, like something is gnawing at him. She’s tried to approach him casually in the break room about it, but he just brushes her concerns away. He’s been brushing her away a lot lately, she’s noticed. Like he’s got a secret and he’s afraid she’ll figure it out just by looking at him. Truth is, she’s got her own secret to worry about.

She thinks she might be in love with him. Before she goes to bed at night, she twists that ring around her finger and wonders. She’s talked to her mom about it - just a little. Her mother reassures her that it’s just cold feet, that she’s just nervous and trying to distract herself.

It doesn’t feel like a distraction.

It feels more like guilt mixed with a love she can’t define because no dictionary ever made has a section for things like this. She wakes up in the middle of the night, grinding her teeth and muttering angry words. She has a lot of dreams where she’s yelling at herself. She never hears the words, so she doesn’t know which parts of her are fighting and which one is winning.

In the mornings, she leaves the dreams on the pillow and goes into work. And it looks like he’s maybe having similar dreams at night, but they never talk about it. They don’t talk about anything serious anymore. They pretend that things like wedding dates and plane tickets don’t exist. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and she hates it and she thinks she loves him and she can’t help it and she doesn’t know what to do. She thinks she should probably forget it because there’s a ring on her finger and it weighs about a million pounds.

The air is warm on the night of Michael’s casino fundraiser and bits of asphalt crunch under her shoes in the parking lot. They’re still not talking about wedding dates and plane tickets, but then he says something that’s so much more important than either of those. He’s saying what she’s been thinking, but... God, is the ring getting heavier? Is it itching? Burning? She twists it around her finger, hoping the irritation will stop, but realizes that no matter how many times she turns that damn ring it’s not going to reverse anything.

She can’t love him. She knows she does, but she can’t. She tells herself it’s just the damn cold feet. She can’t be in love with him. Not now. He’s got the timing all wrong. He waited too long. She waited too long. She could’ve taken this into her own hands, sure, but... there’s that damn ring again. Every time she looks down at her own hands, the hands that have done nothing, she can only see that ring.

She fumbles through the conversation like a drunk through a sobriety test. It’s messy and she’s doing it all wrong. She watches herself fall flat on her face when she forces out, “I can’t.”

She sees how he loves her now and all she knows is that if he loves her, she can’t love him because that isn’t safe. If she only loves him, secretly, where no one knows, everything can still be okay and everything can be the same. But if he loves her, then nothing is safe anymore and nobody is calling ‘Olly olly oxen free.’ There are no take backs in this game and that means there can be no love backs. If she goes out into the open, she’s going to get caught and nothing will be the same - and little Pammy Beesley doesn’t take risks like that.

Mortal Enemy

Let another cross his way-
She's the one will do the weeping!
Little need I fear he'll stray
Since I have his heart in keeping-

Let another hail him dear-
Little chance that he'll forget me!
Only need I curse and fear
Her he loved before he met me.

-- Dorothy Parker

Karen has never worried about men cheating on her. She’s always been secure enough in her relationships to know that just because some drunk girl in a miniskirt pretends to trip into her boyfriend’s arms doesn’t mean that he’ll do anything other than mutter “Whoa, there” and help the girl steady herself. She’s watched some perfectly sane girlfriends become low-level stalkers and isn’t about to travel down that path. She doesn’t worry about things like this, so when she watches Jim awkwardly step away from the girl, all she can do is smirk. For all the smoothness and confidence he can project at times, deep down he’s just a big dork who’d rather spend the night at home in front of the TV.

As it stands now, Karen wouldn’t mind leaving Poor Richard’s to plonk down in front of the idiot box. Tuesdays in Scranton have become a little too routine for her liking. After work, she heads to this dive bar where he co-workers try to make her “one of the family.” Usually she ends up having short conversations with Toby or Phyllis while watching Kelly perform impromptu karaoke using a drink stirrer as a microphone. She used to talk to Pam sometimes, but, after recent events, that feels tainted, like fraternizing with the enemy. She hates to think this way, likes to think she’s more secure than that, but… well, Jim admitted it and now she can’t help but analyze his glances to the reception desk.

She gulps down the remainder of her martini and shakes her head. She’s not going to become that girl - that girl all her guy friends warn each other about, that girl they assure her that she is not.

When Kelly picks up a pink drink umbrella and begins singing into it and Meredith joins in, Karen has to look away. It’s only a matter of time before Andy joins in and does that obnoxious thing where he moves his hand up and down in accordance with the pitch of his voice. She settles for watching Jim at the bar, bobbing his head to music she knows he hates and trying to get the bartender’s attention. Watching him move to the music is almost like watching one of those bobblehead dogs in the back window of a car, but still, it’s pretty adorable. She begins thinking of a clever way to rib him about it when she sees Pam and Oscar walk up to the bar.

Jim’s body tenses so quickly it’s almost as if he can’t control it. He tries not to look down at Pam, who is now standing next to him, her body language as stiff and awkward as his. She ignores him, talks to Oscar, tries to laugh.

Karen’s brow furrows as she watches them interact without even acknowledging each other’s presence. She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen two people be so connected to each other while trying to remain so far apart. She’d like to say it doesn’t bother her, but this isn’t some drunk, lecherous nobody trying to cop a feel. She watches him rub the back of his neck, something he does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable, and it’s only then does she realize what sort of power this woman has over him. He had billed it as just some crush, some feelings for a friend that really meant nothing.

Now she feels like he insulted her intelligence. She’s not stupid or blind. She sees it now, right in front of her, a “nothing” that means a lot of something.

The bartender brings Jim his beer and he hovers near the bar, near her, as if he’s not ready to leave. Karen can’t see his face, but his shoulders are hunched and she bets he’s chewing his lip, contemplating saying or doing something that someone, somewhere is going to regret. Before he has the chance, the bartender brings Oscar and Pam their drinks and they walk away from the bar, away from him. Pam looks relieved and keeps her head down as they pass the table Karen is sitting at.

Jim turns around, watches Pam walk to her seat. His eyes flicker to Karen and he knows he’s been caught. He frowns and stares at the beer bottle in his hand.

Karen drums her fingers on the rim of her empty glass. They’ll have to talk about this.

A/N: I’m taking a small break from the poetry in this chapter and using a Dottie quote for inspiration instead. Man, if I had a time machine I would so go back to the 1920s and drink a martini with that woman. So sassy.

"It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends."

-- Dorothy Parker

She hasn’t lived alone since... well, she’s never lived alone. There’s always been someone else with her, someone to help clean up a mess, someone to remind her about bills, someone to sit in front of the TV with. But those days are over. When she calls off the wedding, she decides it’s prudent to go apartment hunting.

On a Sunday afternoon she falls in love with a tiny apartment that looks like it time-traveled from 1964. The kitchen cabinets are bubblegum pink and the bedroom has a creaky hardwood floor. There is nothing glamorous or special about the place, but she feels a swelling pride when she signs the lease because only her name is on that piece of paper. That day independence is spelled P-A-M B-E-E-S-L-Y.

She throws a low-key housewarming party and her best friends come over, bearing a starter-pack of groceries and a few bottles of wine. She can’t remember the last time she’s had a girl’s night (has she ever had one?). When the night winds down and the girls go home, she stands in the kitchen and curls her toes against the cool tile floor. She leaves the wine glasses on the table to be washed in the morning just because she can. Pam Beesly answers to no one! She tosses a copy of “American Artist” magazine onto the floor, again just because she can. No one’s here to complain about her clutter. No one can complain about tubes of paint left on the kitchen counter or paintbrushes misplaced in the silverware drawer.

If she’s honest, it’s actually a little scary. This makes her accountable, responsible in the fullest way. She’s in complete control of her life.

Theoretically.

She can decide what groceries to buy, what time to get up in the morning, and what to watch on TV at night... but she’s having a tough time turning off emotions. She can control what brand of cereal to buy and what station to tune the car radio to, but she can’t seem to control who she loves.

Distant memories cloud her vision. When she’s alone at night, she thinks about friendship and love confessions and missed chances.

She wishes she could put as much distance between them as he did.

Distance

Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.

-- Dorothy Parker

She used to think that him being hundreds of miles away was the hard part. But she didn't know then what she knows now. It was easy to pretend that distance was the only thing they would have to overcome. Like she hadn’t broken him. It was easier to pretend that way. ‘What ifs’ and ‘could have beens’ were easier to swallow then.

But now everything has boiled down to seven steps.

Seven steps.

She counted.

She had to give him a fax and she stared at the back of his neck for what must have been fifteen minutes before she could work up the courage. Wobbly knees and unsure toes took her toward him. She counted to keep her mind off it.

One. Two.

I think I’m in love with him.

Three. Four.

He hates me.

Five. Six.

I’m sorry.

Seven.

I miss you.

She placed the fax on his desk and he didn’t even look up. Like some meaningless ghost from Before had passed through him. She walked back to her desk, seven more steps, seven more regrets. She watched all day, waited to see if he’d read the fax and maybe touch the place where her hands had been and suddenly remember what it was like to be in love with her.

But the days came and went and he didn’t even touch the paper. He tossed folders and office supplies on top of it, like he was trying to bury her.

She felt buried. She could feel the sandy soil collecting in her lungs, filling up her throat and mouth to keep her from saying anything that he didn't want to (or couldn't) hear. Their love, or whatever it was, was six feet under but he kept piling dirt on top of it anyway, like he wanted to make sure it was really dead.

She wants to tell him that it’s still alive under there, that it lives in her even if he can’t hear the heartbeat. But he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say.

When she gets home from work, she pretends that he’s still away. She pretends that they might still have a chance when he gets back (if he ever gets back).

But it’s going to take more than seven steps for her to reach him.

She doesn’t know if she can count that high.