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.