Pam gets up and goes to work in the morning because she doesn't really know what else to do, and Jan did say two weeks. Roy goes too, silent and dark-eyed, knuckles white around the steering wheel.

Upstairs everyone looks like variations of living death. Phyllis's eyes are still red and Kevin's not wearing a tie and Dwight looks like he didn't sleep at all. Ryan looks strangely cheerful.

Pam turns on her computer and keeps her head down and tries to think about what to do. What to do what to do. She goes to monster.com and looks at exactly three job listings before she's so depressed she has to close the browser. When she looks up, Jim's there.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," she says.

"So how are you enjoying the weirdest week of the century thus far?" he asks and her laugh surprises her, short and forceful.

"Well, um," she says. "I..."

"Hey," he says. "Do you wanna get out of here?"

"What?" she says, startled.

"I don't know about you, but I plan on taking some very long lunches this week," he says. She looks at her computer clock.

"It's 10:00!"

He looks at her.

"So, yeah," she finishes, and switches the phone to voicemail.

Jim's car is still clean, still smells good. There are no Cup o' Noodles in the backseat, so she goes through his glove compartment.

"Oh my God," he says, turning out of the parking lot. "You have absolutely no respect for privacy, do you?"

"Bite me," she says, and when she looks up, he looks strange, but only for a second. She piles the contents of his glove compartment on her lap to see it all better. The car manual, insurance papers, a flashlight; boring. Three Taco Bell napkins and a bent straw in its wrapper, which she tucks in the door compartment. A pad of paper with directions scribbled in it, a sealed, unmarked Hallmark envelope and two CDs missing their cases: The Velvet Underground and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. She piles it all back in and clicks the compartment shut with her knee.

"Make any thrilling discoveries?" he asks.

"In your car?" she says. "Not likely."

He makes a show of clutching his heart.

"Pam!" he says. "I lead the exotic, high adventure life of a paper salesman. How can you think that's boring?" Then he stops like he realizes what he said. "Or, well, I guess soon I get to live the exotic, high adventure life of the unemployed."

"Where are we going?" she asks, like he didn't say anything. He's taking a left and she only vaguely knows where they are.

He shrugs.

"Not a clue."

"Cool," she says, and leans her head on the window. After a while, she leans over and turns the radio on. It's playing that one bad day song from American Idol and she turns it up, giving Jim a look that dares him to make a comment, but halfway through, the irony gets to be too much and she changes the station.

"Hey, are you hungry?" he says after a while.

"I don't know, am I?" she says.

"Burgers?" he asks.

"Ooh, yes, yes," she says, and he grins and puts on his blinker.

They both get burgers and milkshakes and by the time they get back to the office it's almost 1 and Pam feels so much better she's able to make it through the rest of the day of pointed glares from Angela, doubtlessly intended for Roy.

**

By the next day, people from corporate have descended on the office to supervise the dismantling of an entire business. There's a whole schedule of which managers will be coming in from different branches to take over various segments of the sales base. Dwight scoffs.

"Yeah, right, like people in Scranton are gonna want to order their paper from Albany." For once Pam agrees with him.

At lunch Kelly comes up and slumps tragically across Pam's counter.

"Ohmigod, Pam," she says. "This is totally crazy. Can you even believe it? Like, last night I was watching My Super Sweet 16, but I couldn't even pay attention because I kept thinking about this. You know?"

"Um," Pam says.

"And I sit back there by Toby and I mean everyone is coming back there to bitch at him and they're all yelling and crying and it's just super stressful."

"Oh man, poor Toby," says Pam.

"Yeah," Kelly says. "So what are you going to do??"

Pam looks down at her desk.

"Um, I don't know yet," she says.

"Yeah, me neither," says Kelly. "At least you have Roy to help out with bills and stuff."

Pam looks up at her.

"Oh," says Kelly. "Right."

**

Roy's quieter and quieter in the evenings. Apparently Lonny and Madge have already started looking for work and the job market is bad and they're having trouble explaining why they're out of a job in the first place.

"Darryl says we should all put down his phone number for a reference," Roy says during a Pepsi commercial. "Bypass those corporate assholes."

"Mmhmm," says Pam, looking at the TV Guide.

"Too bad you can't do that," he says and she looks up, feels suddenly present in her body, in this situation again.

"No," she says, and after a moment he reaches over and rests his hand on her foot without looking at her while he changes the channel.

**

After a little while it gets easier. The clock radio goes off at 6:45 and Pam stumbles out of bed and thinks that soon she won't have to do this anymore. She puts on her same boring work clothes and thinks about not having to wear them every day. She pushes the elevator button and counts down in her head, how many more times she'll have to do this. She tries really hard not to count how many weeks it is till rent is due.

**

On the weekend they go over to Roy's brother's house.

"Aunt Pam!" says Caitlin and flings herself at Pam's legs as soon as they're inside.

"Hey there!" says Pam and Roy grabs Caitlin from behind and flings her over his shoulder while she screams and kicks.

"Watch out, Roy," says Pam loudly. "In a few years she'll be big enough to do that to you."

"Is that true?" says Roy. He sets Caitlin down on the floor. "How tall are you now?" Caitlin presses her hand to the top of her own head, then holds it out to show him. "Holy cow," says Roy, and Pam smiles.

Everyone knows about the firings, of course, but they avoid talking about it while they eat. It's just barely warm enough to barbecue, so that's what they do. Pam eats her chicken and watches the kids run around, thinks about what it would be like to have a yard like this, a house like this.

"Hey, Pammy," says Kenny, like only people who've known her since she was fifteen do. "Toss me a Coke?"

Pam lobs him one underhand from the cooler beside her and he catches it easily.

It's only afterward, when she's helping Lisa wash the dishes that it comes up.

"So what are you two going to do?" Lisa says, with no preamble.

Pam shrugs, and concentrates on drying the fork in her hand.

"We're still trying to figure it out. Everything happened so fast."

"Yeah," says Lisa. "I don't know what we'd do if even one of us got laid off. The mortgage and the kids and everything." She's quiet for a minute, spraying down the sink. "What about the wedding?"

Pam looks up at her, then away again.

"I don't know," she says.