“Jim”

“Yeah?”

“Wait two and a half minutes until after I leave, and then follow me to the Conference Room.”

Jim looked thoughtfully at his own reflection in Dwight’s glasses, which sat nearly an equal distance away from his eyes, as they did their wearer’s.

“Why?”

“I’ll explain in the Conference Room.”

“Right, but why don’t you just explain it now, so, you know, we don’t have to do….that.” Jim shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

But the truth was that his words were anything but careless. He knew that it was completely cowardly to not want to have to walk past Karen at her desk on his way to the Conference Room, but that didn’t stop him from feeling uneasy just thinking about it.

Honestly, he just wanted to avoid the situation for a little longer, to put off this minute what could be dealt with in the next one. To try to find five minutes of peace, even if it was created by distance, and wrapped in silence.

“Jim….you cannot have a conference next to the doors to the bathroom. Does that make sense? Especially when there is a Conference Room twenty-eight paces away.” Dwight said exasperatedly, his eyes widened further through the magnification of his glasses.

Jim nodded, slid his hands into his pockets, and took a step backward so that he could look through the door into the office. He saw that Pam wasn’t at her desk, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t in the bathroom either.

He had left an excited Andy alone in the break room, promising only a quick pause to the game, and had decided to look around casually for her. The way that she had left so suddenly, and right after they had shared that moment, or whatever it was, couldn’t have been a coincidence.

What it meant, if anything, he had no idea, but he still had an extraordinarily strong urge to see if she was okay, and to make sure that he hadn’t destroyed what little progress they had seemed to make today. Her presence, her smile, and her laugh played in his mind like a seemingly forgotten song whose lyrics are suddenly remembered after its first notes are heard again. The comfort and intoxicating warmth it sent through him spurred him onward now.

“So then you agree?” Dwight’s blunt words broke him from his thoughts.

“Wha-Dwight, what is this about?” He asked. His voice suddenly sounded strained and weary to his own ears, again.

“Not here, Jim. There are people listening.”

“The cameras are gone, and who would listen anyway?”

“Exactly.” Dwight nodded solemnly in agreement to what Jim assumed was the imaginary re-affirmation of his own paranoia. It was then that he knew there wasn’t anyway to escape this, whether by prank or by logical argument.

Especially not by logical argument.

“Okay, fine, two and a half minutes, Dwight.”

“Good. One hundred fifty seconds. Count—

--That, or…half of five minutes.” He offered, as straight-faced as he possibly could.

Dwight’s forehead folded itself in puzzlement at his words. “That makes no sense. Just…..count off in your head.”

Without another word, Dwight turned and walked through the door back into the main office.

--

--

One hundred and forty-eight seconds later, with both bottled water and a newly unwrapped Twix in hand, Jim pushed his way into the main office and sucked in a bracing breath.

Upon entering the room, Jim noticed that the carnival of activity that had previously been playing in the office had died down considerably. Ryan and Kelly were no longer playing any game; in fact they were nowhere to be found. Creed was asleep again, and Stanley was at the water cooler next to him.

Phyllis, however, remained unchanged and was still listening to music without headphones on, though instead of Debbie Gibson, Jim recognized Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.”

Angela was still out shopping for decorations for the Martin Luther King Jr. party, which Jim knew from experience would require her to find black streamers, black balloons, and sweet potatoes somewhere in Scranton. So…even with her experience it would take a little while, probably.

Also, he saw now for certain that Pam was nowhere to be found, not at her desk, or by the fax machine… but that her coat was still on the rack next to the desk.

And then, as he continued to survey the room, there was Karen. She hadn’t looked up at the sound of the door opening, and his presence in the office. Instead, her concentration remained fixed on her computer monitor, with the occasional frustrated look over at Phyllis and the click-clacking of keys from underneath her agile fingers serving as a challenge to the music.

He quietly took long strides towards the Conference Room, deciding in step on the first one that he wouldn’t be the one to initiate conversation with her. It wasn’t because of Pam, he told himself repeatedly, but rather the way that Karen had talked to him during their fight, and the way that she always tried to make him something that she wanted him to be, and not what he wanted to be, or what he wanted to want to be.

However, with those thoughts came others, and he felt the burden of guilt spread heavily across his shoulders. He remembered his words during the fight as well, and his accusation that he hadn’t asked her to change anything about herself….

But she had moved to Scranton.

On several occasions he had tried to bring up the subject with her, always painfully innocuously, like during the middle of a lazy Lost marathon, or while making dinner.

Why exactly had she moved to Scranton?

Every time she had assured him that it was because of the job, and that their relationship had grown out of that. He tried to believe her, but there remained within him a nagging doubt, because, really, why would someone so talented and driven move to Scranton to work at Dunder-Mifflin?

Of course, it was then that he also asked himself…

Why would anybody want to change their life for him?

His hand was achingly close to the handle to the Conference Room door when he heard her say his name softly. Even though his back was turned to her, it felt like he was under a Medusa’s gaze, and he slowly turned around.

“Yes?” He asked, the tone of his voice emotionless, and trying desperately to remain steady.

Jim watched as her features faltered slightly, how the sharp shadows of her face gave way, and that the steeliness he had accorded to her gaze was an aberration.

“What, uh, what are you doing?” She asked, her voice far lighter then it had been before. He recognized from experience what it meant, that it was a conciliatory tone and an open-door to apologies and making up for their fight.

He stared at her for a moment, then turned his head to look through the blinds at an impatient Dwight, before returning to her eyes. “I’m meeting with Dwight in the Conference Room.”

“Oh?” Her left eyebrow arched slightly, and a small grin pulled at her lips.

Jim sighed to himself. He didn’t want to do this, not right now, and not today. He knew that he should want to make up with his girlfriend for any number of reasons, but as he watched her sit there, her smile and tone strikingly transparent to him in their fakeness, he realized he just didn’t want to.

And he knew that it made him a bad boyfriend. The fact that she was trying and he wasn’t. But this time, for the second time today, he had the energy to not just cave in with apologies and promises. To not gloss over their problems and differences with a thin veneer of temporary sorrys, and later, soft touches. It was that strength that ran through him as he replied.

“Yeah. We’re going to talk RISK strategy….I think.”

This time when she spoke, her voice was undercut by a frustration and disappointment he knew well. “Oh, so you’re still playing?”

“Yeah….” He said the word slowly, almost releasing it like a long breath into the air.

She nodded her head and stared off into the distance for a moment before her vision flickered back to him. “Okay.”

He waited for her to continue, to condemn him or to act like it was suddenly okay for him to be wasting the precious seconds and minutes of a lifeless Friday before a three-day weekend playing board games, but she didn’t. She just stared at him. After a few seconds of silence, he filled the void between them.

“Okay.”

With that, he turned and walked into the Conference Room.

--

--

“What took you so long?”

Jim paused after closing the door, and looked at Dwight on the opposite side of the room, sitting at the end of the table. “Why are you sitting all the way over there?”

“We’re men, we should sit at the heads of the table. Like Michael whenever we have a meeting.”

He thought about mentioning that Dwight didn’t sit at the other end of the table during those meetings, but decided against it and took his seat in the chair Michael usually sat in and stared across the room at Dwight.

“Tell me, Jim, what do you know about the Treaty of Tordesillas?” Dwight asked, while he laced his fingers together, and squinted his eyes into near-slits.

“Of Tordesillas? Hmmm…” Jim searched through his mind for a moment, of the history factoids and random knowledge he had been using all game long, but nothing clicked. “I don’t know that much about it.”

“I know. In—

--Wait. Why did you ask me if you knew I didn’t know?” Jim interrupted.

Dwight frowned, but continued. “To demonstrate that I knew it and you didn’t. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of diplomatic history. For example, do you know what the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is?”

Jim rubbed his temple with his middle and index fingers, as he looked at the barely contained grin on Dwight’s face. “Uh, no, I don’t.”

“Exactly. Anyway, as I was saying, the Treaty of Tordesillas was an agreement reached between Spain and Portugal in 1494, which divided the New World in half between them.”

“Right?….” Jim let the single word linger between them, hoping it might push Dwight to get to the point.

“I propose a similar agreement between us.”

Jim smiled inwardly, and found himself wishing for a camera to look at, or..…someone to share the moment with. The thought created an idea in his mind that he tucked away.

“But…you already control North and South America, Dwight.”

“Obviously, Jim. I’m talking about dividing the entire world up between the two of us, and after their successful conquests, then declaring war on one another.”

“How….is this not a non-aggression pact, like the one you said Andy and I couldn’t have?”

Dwight shook his head slowly. “Jim…Jim…Jim-Jim-Jim….

“Yes, Dwight?”

“This isn’t a non-aggression pact, this is an understanding that aggression will be delayed until after Andy is eliminated from the game.

Jim grinned a little, unable to contain the idiotic enjoyment he still got from these conversations. “That really sounds a lot like a non-aggression pact, Dwight. I mean, if we can’t attack each other.”

Dwight took off his glasses slowly, and rubbed his eyes until they were splotched with a red rawness. When he finally spoke, the words came out forcefully, almost in a hiss…. like steam from a teapot, Jim thought. “This game is a test of wills between the two of us. Andy is a distraction, and his ridiculous luck and Greenland stronghold are destroying the integrity of that test.”

“True….true….” Jim leaned back in his chair, and gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling long enough to make sure that Dwight would be antsy. “But, the last time we had an alliance, you betrayed me Dwight. So…I mean, how do I know I can trust you?”

As he said the words the memory attached to them flooded back through him. Of his hand in Pam’s, of her laugh and smile so wonderfully close to his own, and then Roy’s hand on him, of him pushing her away, and the camera there to capture everything.

He had relived that moment, those feelings, hundreds of times, almost torturing himself with their acute painfulness in the past. Every time they ran through him, he felt the hopelessness of the situation, of the desperate wondering of what she saw in Roy that she couldn’t see in him.

But this time it was different, more like a dull ache. It was if it were a bruise that still colored him, but was slowly vanishing, so that it wouldn’t blemish him anymore.

“Jim, that was a completely different situation. Because…” Dwight paused for a moment, the whir of his thoughts almost audible in the room. “….it…this is a board game, and not the future of Dunder-Mifflin.”

Jim nodded, as if that explanation made any sense at all.

“So…do you want to form a Tordesillian pact with me?”

Jim affixed his most serious face, the one that he had previously used in a situation like this, and decided to go for the idea that he had a moment ago, when the thought of someone to share all this with had come to him.

“I have conditions.”

“State them.” Dwight answered, without a flinch or blink.

“One. I want you to buy me a candy of my choice from the vending machine—

“You already have a Twix.” Dwight interrupted.

“They’re not for me, because two, I want a uh…..RISK advisor.” He smiled inwardly at his own definition.

“A RISK advisor?”

Jim nodded and then spoke urgently. “Yes, look Dwight if we’re going to pull off a global aggression-delayed pact, then I’m going to need, uh, military coordination. ‘Cause, you know, I’m not that smart.”

Just as he expected, Dwight nodded in agreement. “That’s true. Fair enough Jim, I accept your terms of candy and a military advisor….who will be?”

Jim fought it, but he couldn’t stop the sliver of a smile that cut across his face. He knew that this idea was risky, that it could blow up in his face easily, or that maybe it was just a terrible idea.....but he said it anyway.

“Pam.”

“A woman? No, Jim, that’s—

--Those are my terms, Dwight.”

Dwight’s fingers tapped impatiently on the table, the sound resonating throughout the room, punctuating the silence between them.

“Then, I will require a military advisor as well—

--Not Michael.” Jim quickly interrupted.

“No, that would be…unfair. I will have to choose a woman like you have.”

“Dwight, you’re a Grand Inquisitor, why do you need an advisor?”

Once again, there was a hesitation from Dwight, before he continued. “Because…Jim, it…evens things out….and it would look suspicious otherwise….and you know that I’m a Grandchampion!”

Jim recoiled slightly in confusion. “It would look less suspicious if we both suddenly had women helping us?”

“Jim! Just….okay?” Dwight puffed out, his words coming in between exasperated looks.

“Alright, so who—

--Angela.” Dwight said, a little loudly.

“Um…alright, but she’s not here, you know that right?” Jim questioned. Why Dwight would want Angela, who had already seemed pretty upset about the fact they were playing a game, or really having any fun at all, to be his RISK advisor….or why he would even admit to wanting or needing one….was bizarre.

Though, he supposed, if Dwight wanted someone as serious and bent on the destruction of others….

“Irrelevant. She’ll return soon, and then she will be my advisor. Now, do you want to form an alliance?”

“Absolutely, I do.”