The morning had turned into something very odd with Professor Scott. The man suggested that James carry with him a small black notebook and mark off each time he felt like he was in a comedy and each time he felt like he was in a tragedy. Now James was standing outside the small art supply store just past 12:00 pm wondering if he should already be making a check under Tragedy.

He was standing out side watching Pam through the front window and couldn’t summon his feet to move.

Pam was wearing a pink tank top today but still covered with the same paint splattered smock. She was carrying a plate of cookies over to the reading nook and setting them carefully on the glass coffee table. Even from this perspective James could tell they were homemade. He began to wonder if she made them herself and wondered what they would taste like against his tongue.

Today he was wearing, however, a blue dress shirt without a tie and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The shirt was tucked into a simple pair of khaki pants. He was on vacation after all.

His right hand was clutching his briefcase as he shoved the left, still clutching the black book, into his pants pocket. He took a deep inhalation of breath then slowly walked towards the front entrance.

Pam looked up from behind the register and gave James a small smile in acknowledgement. James smiled back at her with a bigger and goofier grin that he’d anticipated. She just shook her head and turned back to the customer who was trying to pay for their oil paint.

He carefully set his briefcase down and pulled out a small pencil he had in his right pocket then removed the black book. He made a straight line below the section marked Tragedy.

He pushed the pencil and book back into his pocket and started walking down the first aisle of art supplies. He felt completely out of place. He didn’t paint, he didn’t draw, he didn’t even read about painting or drawing.

He was clutching a small blue box in his hand of oil pastels, and reading the back cover of it trying to figure out what exactly made these ‘oil pastels’ when he felt a tap on his back shoulder. He dropped the box from his grip and bent down to grab it.

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you. Here, I’ll take those.” Pam reached her hand out for the small box that James was seemingly having trouble to handle. “Have you ever used these before?” She tilted the box in front of her.

“Oh no. I don’t paint or actually do anything creative, I kind of feel like I’ve stepped into a third dimension here.” His eyes wandered down the rest of the aisle filled with questionable items, a slim smile crossing his mouth.

“That’s too bad. We have classes you know, if you thought you’d ever be interested. Naw, you’re probably not interested, you’re just here on business right?” She set the box back on the shelf and slapped the side of his arm. “Ok, well let’s get to business.” She turned back from him and headed towards a wooden door that had a clear “Employees Only” sign glued on it.

Pam forcefully pushed through the door stepping into a cluttered back room. James watched her carefully as she took a right walking through another door. He followed suit and found himself in a messy office. She slumped down into the chair behind the desk and he gently sat in the plastic chair against the wall.

12 different sizes of pencils were strewn across her desk.

****

“What are we doing here? I don’t even think we’re supposed to be in here.” Angela was leaning against a white wall gripping her elbows tightly with her hands. She took in a deep swallow as a doctor was leading a gurney down the loud corridor yelling out instructions at the following nurses.

“Well you told me I needed visual stimulation.” Jan was still wearing the same baggy blue and white striped shirt she had been wearing the day before but had now thrown a coat over it.

“Yeah, I meant a museum or something.”

“I don’t need a museum, I need the infirm.” She turned her head looking for someone she could speak to, someone who worked at the hospital.

Angela delicately whispered to herself, “You are the infirm.”

“Excuse me, nurse?” Jan stepped up to a husky nurse holding a clipboard against her chest.

“Yes ma’am. Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, well you see I would like to know where the dieing people are located. These people are all well and good but they won’t be dieing. They’ll be recovering…from their injuries and I really need to see the one’s that won’t be getting better.”

The nurse had a look across her face as if Jan had just slapped her. “What? I’m sorry who are you? Why are you in here?” She motioned her hands towards the hallway.

“Oh, right…you see I’m a novelist, and I’m on research. I’m trying to kill my main character and I can’t quite find the right way to accomplish that so I was looking for inspiration.”

“Oook. I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

“Right, ok, thank you.” Jan turned away from the shaken nurse, and huffed out a loud gust of air. “Next!”

Angela hugged her right arm around her body and her left hand was twisting a gold chain around her neck carrying a thin cross on it. She inhaled sharply as she followed Jan out the door under the dark cloudy sky.

It looked like rain.

****

45 minutes later Angela was shivering underneath a large black umbrella, sorry she’d been right.

She was sitting next to Jan who herself was not under the umbrella and was getting soaked to the bone.

Angela could tell Jan was having another one of her ‘moments’.

“Ok, so what are we doing here?”

“Do you even need to ask? I’m waiting for an accident, possibly one where the vehicle careens off the road and breaks through that barrier there, on that bridge and plummets down into that river.”

“Is that how you see James dieing?”

“No, not particularly. But this weather can cause crazier things to occur.”

“Ok”

They both continued to sit there in silence watching the cars cautiously pass across the bridge.

They never saw an accident that day or even a flat tire.

****

“Ok, so let me get this straight…You used to have a particular piece of paper…”

“Purple.”

“Ok, purple paper, that looked recycled…”

“Sort of recycled, you know like a whole bunch of little bits of paper put together.”

“Ok, and you’ve had some requests for this, but since you stopped stocking it you don’t really have the stock number or anything easily attainable to find this information?” James had been sitting in this small office now for about an hour and the petite artist was beginning to drive him nuts.

He was also having the same effect on the woman but was unaware.

“Ok, look I have some old order forms that I had faxed to you guys like awhile ago I can go get them and you can go through them. I made a list of the papers I’d like to restock up and what they look like. Some of them I was able to find the numbers on because they’re still on our shelves but, I’m trying to branch out into the scrap-booking world and I’ve just got some weird handwritten requests on some of them.” Pam stood up from her desk and pushed the chair back a little causing a slight scrape along the floor.

“Ok, well that’s a start.”

Two minutes and thirty-two seconds later Pam appeared carrying a box filled with little sheets of paper mixed all together.

“Is this how you keep these filed?” James stared at the overflowing box, his mouth had dropped open.

“No, actually I’m quite fastidious. I just wanted to mess with you.” She made a small wink and plopped the box down onto her desk causing a small wave of air to rush across James’ arm. She turned flipping her hair across her back and left him, alone.

“Greeaaat.” James stood from his very uncomfortable plastic chair and slunk down into the ever squeaking desk chair. He reached into the box and pulled out a handful of small pieces of paper trying to separate them into similar piles.

After 3 hours, 43 minutes and 17 seconds James had every piece of paper carefully stacked across the now impeccable desk. Along with a list of paper products that should correspond with the stacked papers.

He lifted his arm and looked at the time on his wristwatch it was almost 5 o’clock and he knew the store would be closing soon.

He carefully wrapped up all the papers and stuck them deep into his briefcase. He stood up and grabbed the small black notebook off of the desk flipping it to the page with many slash marks across it. The side with the Comedy column had only a couple slashes and the side with the Tragedy column had an impressive many more slashes. He closed the book and slid it down into his pocket.

When James stepped out cautiously into the warehouse he smelled the sweet aroma of cookies. They smelled delicious.

He carefully opened the ‘Employees Only’ door and walked back into the small art store.

Pam was standing at the front register closing up, with a plate of cookies in front of her. Two individual milk containers were resting beside the platter.

“So…I think I’m all set.” He couldn’t help but stare at her, even though there were moments he had wanted to strangle her earlier she was too beautiful not to stare.

“Oh ok, here do you want a cookie?” She lifted up the plate.

“Oh, naw, I’m not really a cookie guy.” He had placed his briefcase at his feet and was now waving his hands in front of him.

She walked over towards him and gestured towards the sitting nook. “Oh right. Come on now, everyone likes cookies, especially some made by the famous Pam Beesly.” She winked at his smiling face.

“Beesly? Beesly? I don’t know any famous cookie bakers named Beesly?” He enjoyed teasing her, a little bit.

She smacked his arm a little too hard and ended up rubbing the shirt where her hand had just whacked.

Pam gripped her fingers around the firm surprisingly muscular arm and pulled him over to the couch.

“Sit.” She pushed him down and placed the cookies on the coffee table sitting in front of him. She turned her back and walked over to grab the milks still sitting on the register counter. “Here, milk and cookies.”

“Oh no, seriously it’s alright.”

“Please, I insist. It’s been a rough day and I haven’t really helped with that. Eat it. It’s soft, still warm actually.”

She lifted a cookie up to his face, offering it to his watering mouth.

James reached and grabbed the chocolate chip cookie in his hand and placed it delicately on his tongue. Taking a small bite out of the cookie his eyes were staring back at Pam. She was leaning over on her knees watching him with a large smile on her face.

“Good?”

“Yes, very. Thanks for forcing me to eat it.”

“Welcome” She tapped the milk bottle a couple times with the palm of her hand over the table towards James.

He smiled at her warmly, the corner of his mouth lifting up and his head tilting at her.

After a couple sips of milk and a couple more cookies James stood up in front of Pam, he had run out of things to say and felt the comfort between them dissipating.

“I should…go.”

“Oh, ok, let me give you a box for these.”

“No, no you don’t have to do that.”

“Come on I want to.” She ran her hands over the front of her smock and took a small box out from behind the register counter. Pam lifted the lid and creased the sides open, delicately placing some tissue paper into the box then lightly putting a cookie at a time in the box.

“No, please. We’re not supposed to accept gifts actually, corporate policy.”

“Well what was that…?” She pointed towards the couch.

“Oh, right I shouldn’t even have had that. I’m sorry.”

Pam’s eyes fell onto the box and she slowly closed the lid down.

“How about I pay you for them?”

“What!? No, no please don’t… I think you should go.”

She turned her back and leaned up against the counter.

“Wait… you made those, just for me, didn’t you?”

She didn’t respond and he pulled out the small black book that was stabbing his thigh deep in his pocket.

Another tragedy mark

“This may sound ridiculous to you but…I think I’m in a tragedy.” His warm fingers grabbed the cold metal door handle. As he stepped through, the tinkle of the bell was the last sound he heard.