Friday

By Friday morning, Jim had gained a whole new perspective on the Pam situation. Oh sure, it had seemed all dramatic and romantic, yesterday afternoon, like that moment in West Side Story when Tony and Maria first saw each other across the dance floor. But in reality, she was just a girl waving a bottle of Advil, for heaven’s sake. So, let’s face facts here, Jim thought, as he got into his frozen car, and turned on the heater and defroster full blast. I have a crush on a co-worker. Big deal. No need to stop the presses. He had been there before. Miss Alvarez, his Middle School Spanish teacher. For two years he had mooned over her, getting perfect grades in Spanish, but to no avail. That summer before High School, she had married the gym teacher, Mr. Henderson, who, ironically, was also the High School basketball coach. So for the next four years, he got to see Mrs. Henderson at all of his games, looking lovely as ever, but the magic was gone.

So, he knew what would happen here. He’d moon over Pam for a few months, then she would marry Roy, and that would be the end of it...she would become merely Mrs. Anderson waving from the bleachers. End of story. Hey...her name would be Pamela Anderson…that was pretty funny. See...he could even laugh about it.

And they really seemed to be becoming friends, which was a good thing. He really didn’t have much in common with the other sales reps, Stanley and Phyllis, though he liked them. And he and Dwight weren’t even from the same planet. He would have liked to get to know Toby better, but Toby seemed to have a lot of problems of his own right now, and always seemed distracted. The accounting crew had their own little clique, though he sometimes hung out with Kevin, even if Kevin’s mind ran on one, rather disturbing, track. And as for the mysterious Creed and Devon, in "Quality Control," way in the back of the room...nobody even knew what it was they did all day. So, he was really glad to have a friend in the office.

Plus office romances were a terrible idea, anyway. Look at Tom and Catherine...that had train wreck written all over it. What would happen to Tom, when Catherine moved on to her next conquest, and he still had to work there every day? No thanks.

But the best news of all was that he was free, for the first time in ages. No girlfriend to worry about, no need to think about anybody but himself right now. He had spoken to Donna briefly last night, and they had both decided that things were better this way, and that they both were coping just fine. He had spent the rest of the evening packing up his bedroom, the room in which he had grown up. It had been a good distraction, and he had enjoyed sorting through the memorabilia of his 24 years on earth. He had especially gotten a kick out of cleaning out his various secret stashes of things no good Catholic boy was supposed to have, and which every good Catholic boy he knew, had in abundance. Like the Playboy magazines under the mattress. Miss February 1997...how could he have forgotten her? And the pack of cigarettes from when he was fifteen and thought he would take up smoking. Luckily, his sister’s boyfriend, Ted, who planned to go to medical school, had scared the hell out of him, with grisly stories and photos, and nipped that habit in the bud. He unearthed a couple of ancient condoms, so well hidden, he had totally forgotten about them. No drugs...even if he had been a user, he never would have brought anything like that into his parent’s home. But at least now he didn’t have to worry about his mom cleaning out his room after he was gone, and going into retroactive shock, though he was sorry to throw out Miss February, now that he had rediscovered her.

Jim was so lost in thought that he arrived at work pretty much on autopilot. But here he was. Okay...no problem. Friends is the name of the game.

Until he walked into the office and saw Pam sitting there, her eyes red and swollen and looking even gloomier than she had the day she arrived. She smiled at him, and said hi, but it was a sad smile and a sad "hi."

"Hey, what’s up? Is everything okay? Did Michael say something? He can be a real ass sometimes."

"No, no. It’s nothing like that. Michael’s not even in yet. It’s really nothing, " she added flatly.

"You sure? I could meet you in the breakroom at 10:00 if you need to talk…"

"No. It’s personal, " she snapped.

"Okay." Rebuffed, Jim went and sat down at his desk. He already had a couple of messages. Apparently, everybody was going to want to make up for slacking off yesterday. Good. Work was good. He started returning his phone calls.

By ten o’clock he had already made a couple of sales, and needed a break. He got up and went into the breakroom for a cup of coffee. A couple of minutes later, Pam came in. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the little table. Jim, who had been about to bring his coffee back to his desk, sat down also.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey. Sorry I was so rude, before."

"No problem. I was being nosy. As you can see," he pointed to his rather large nose, " I pretty much can’t help it."

Pam just sighed, "I had a fight with Roy on my way into work this morning. I just don’t understand him sometimes. He knows that we are trying to save money, for the wedding and to get into an apartment. All the ones we’ve looked at require first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit. That’s a lot of money right up front. So what does he tell me this morning? That he wants to buy one of those new DVD Players. I haven’t even gotten my first paycheck yet, and he wants to spend it on that. It’s not like we don’t already have a perfectly good VCR."

"Wow. My brother in law has one of those, but then again, he’s a doctor. Can’t you just say no?"

"I do...I did…but then I end up being the bad guy, the wet blanket who doesn’t want to do anything fun, and I hate being that person."

"Well, Pam, I’m afraid I’m not much of an expert on relationships...as you might have noticed, I’m single."

"Oh that’s okay. I wasn’t really expecting advice. I just needed to vent."

"Well, vent away."

"Thanks, I feel better already. I’m sure we’ll work it out…we always do. So, today’s the big day, huh?"

"What day is that?"

"Dwight’s phone," she whispered.

"Oh…that!" he had actually forgotten all about that for the moment, "Yeah. By the way, great idea, calling him like that yesterday."

"Well, his phone hadn’t been ringing, and you said he needed to get used to it."

"Well, it’s ringing today. Which reminds me...I’d better get back. See you at lunch?"

"Sure. Same time, same place."

By lunchtime, Pam was back to her usual cheerful self. In fact she seemed a little giddy, and almost flirtatious. Of course, thought Jim, here I am determined to keep this whole thing on a strictly platonic level and she goes and gets all flirty. It really wasn’t quite fair. It was pretty hard to resist, however.

At one point, while they were eating, Dwight swooped in and glared at them dramatically, and then swooped out again. They both started to laugh. "What was that all about?" Jim started to say, while Pam attempted, "What is his problem?" at the same time, but all they managed to do was say, "What…" in unison.

"Jinx, " sang out Pam.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what? Don’t you know Jinx?"

Jim shrugged, "No…not that I know of."

Pam looked flabbergasted; "Didn’t you grow up in Pennsylvania? Didn’t you go to Girl Scout camp?"

"Aha...now there’s the problem. I did grow up in Pennsylvania, but I did not, oddly enough, go to Girl Scout camp."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. If there had been any Girl Scouts at my camp, I definitely would have noticed them."

"So you never learned to play Jinx."

"Nope. At my camp, all we did was put nasty things in each other’s bunks and try to induce bed wetting by sticking guys’ hands in warm water as they slept. But I don’t remember anything called Jinx. What is it?"

"Well, if two people happen to say the same thing at the same time, like we both just now said ‘what,’ the first person to call out ‘Jinx,’ wins."

"Okay. What do they win?"

"Well, according to the rules of South Williamsport Girl Scout Troop 107, the loser cannot speak until she or he buys the winner a coke."

"Ah." Jim considered, "You know Beesly…I’ve known you for five whole days, and it’s just now hit me…you’re a total dork."

Pam sniffed, and made a very sad face, "So…does that mean you’re not going to play?"

"Oh, I’m going to play. I’m definitely going to play. My own dork creds go way back."

"Then shhh."

"What?"

"Shhh…no talking."

Jim made a pantomime of zipping his lips and silently got up and bought a coke from the coke machine and gave it to Pam. He looked at her questioningly.

"It’s okay...you can talk now."

"Are you sure…I don’t want to be attacked by hordes of angry Girl Scouts."

"Positive."

"You know…that is probably the lamest game ever."

"Oh, I know. That’s why I like it."

"Okay. Fair enough. But you also know that the only reason that you actually won this time was because I didn’t know we were playing. But from now on, watch out…you’d better start saving your allowance, is all I’m gonna say."

"You are on, Halpert! Uh oh...it’s after one. We’d better get back."

Jim went smiling back to his desk. What a crazy girl…what a delightful, crazy girl. Did Roy have any inking at all as to what he had?

It was a busy afternoon, and Dwight’s phone rang often enough that Jim was confident that his plan would work. At around 3:00, Pam got up and with such an effort to be casual that it made Jim laugh, walked into the breakroom. She didn’t have long to wait. At 3:05, Dwight got up to go to the bathroom. As soon as he was out of sight, Jim quickly emptied all of the nickels out of the headset and into the zip lock bag he had brought, which he quickly hid in his bottom desk drawer. He was glad that Pam had elected to play decoy, since it took a bit longer to get the nickels out, than it had taken to put them in one by one. But soon all was back to normal, and Jim was innocently processing an order. But where were Dwight and Pam?

Eventually, Pam came back, followed by Dwight. Pam made a face at Jim. Dwight leaned over and told Jim, "Pamela claims to have read the Goblet of Fire, but she couldn’t even answer a few simple questions."

"Are they going to be on the Final?" Jim asked.

Dwight sneered, and went back to his computer. Jim turned and looked at Pam. All they could do now was wait for Dwight’s phone to ring. The shrill sound of the phone made Jim jump, but it turned out to be his own phone. Jim got off the line as soon as he could, afraid to be caught in the middle of something when "it" happened. He looked at Pam and she looked at him, wide eyed.

Finally…Dwight’s phone rang. As he picked up the suddenly much lighter receiver, it came up with such force that it whacked him right in the cheekbone. His reaction was instantaneous. He slammed the receiver down, no doubt to the consternation of whoever was on the other end, and leapt out of his seat howling in pain and outrage. Everybody, all over the office, turned around to see what was going on, and Michael came running out of his office.

"Dwight…what the hell are you doing?" he yelled.

Dwight turned and pointed to Jim. "You did this!" he said in a loud hiss, "I don’t know how you did it, but you did it!"

"Did what?" Jim asked innocently.

"What happened, Dwight?" yelled Michael, " For God’s sake…you sound like you’ve been murdered!"

"I hit myself in the face with my phone!"

Jim shot a look at Pam who was doubled over with laughter. It was all he could do to keep a straight face, himself.

"Well, don’t DO that! God...what an idiot!" Michael stalked back into his office.

Everybody in the office was used to Dwight’s histrionics, especially in the last year, so since he didn’t seem in danger of imminent death, they went back to what they were doing. Dwight, however, was not finished by any means. He stalked over to Pam’s desk, where she sat wiping her eyes and trying to look sympathetic. Poor guy…he did actually have a mark on his cheek.

"You." Dwight announced, pointing at Pam, accusingly.

"Me?" squeaked Pam, looking at Jim for help.

"Finally…I have a witness, who isn’t one of those nitwit temps! You were sitting here all day. You must have seen him. What did he do to my phone?"

"N-nothing. I was here all day and I didn’t see him touch your phone once."

Dwight stared at her, intently; "Hmmm…I can see that you are telling the truth. What about yesterday?"

"Wasn’t your phone okay yesterday?" Pam asked

"Yes. Okay…strike that question. Hmmm…He must have been sneakier than I thought. He has fooled us both! I will get to the bottom of this!"

Dwight’s phone rang again, startling Pam and Jim as well as Dwight. Dwight turned on his heel, and crouching down low, approached his desk as though confronting a nest of rattlesnakes. Steeling himself, he reached boldly out and snatched up the receiver, and when it failed to attack him this time, he sat down and began speaking to his customer, as though nothing had happened.

Jim looked at Pam and gave her an ok sign, for her good work. He was extremely impressed at how she had kept her cool under questioning and had even managed not to lie. A few minutes later, he decided to reward himself for a job well done…with a few jellybeans. "So...was I right?" he asked.

"You were right. It was a work of art. More Salvador Dali than Renoir, however."

"Oh, I don’t know. I thought I detected a hint of Picasso, as well. So may I proceed?"

"Only if you let me help."

"I can always use a good accomplice. And you were excellent under pressure, I might add. What were you and Dwight talking about in the breakroom all that time?"

"World cup Quidditch."

"Figures. Later, Beesly." He went back to his seat.

At 5:00, Roy came upstairs to collect Pam, apparently trying to make up for this morning. "Hey babe," he said, "What’s happenin’? How was work today?"

"Pam shrugged, "You know…same old grind. Actually, my first week wasn’t too bad."

"See…I told you this job would be okay." He escorted Pam out the door. Interesting, thought Jim, that she hadn’t mentioned Dwight’s telephonic adventure. Maybe she’ll tell him about it later.

Jim put on his coat and went out into the cold night. It had been quite a week. For some reason he was reminded of a line from an old movie, one in which the hero did not, for once, get the girl at the end. Instead he got something much better, in a way. "Pam Beesly, " he said out loud in his best Humphrey Bogart voice, "this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."