O’Flannigan’s practically shuts down for them.

Part of the setback of being on a pretty popular reality T.V. show is that it’s hard to go places and get plastered if everyone is staring at you all the time, so some day someone had sweet talked John O’Flannigan himself, who’s actual last name is like Roberts or Boulder or something, and got him somehow to agree that if somebody called ahead, he would limit the number of patrons in the bar and he would seal off the back so that the cast could enjoy themselves like normal people.

Toby is always calling ahead, and so everyone is always at O’Flannigan’s. She thinks John Roberts or Boulder or O’Flannigan or whatever his name is would probably be pissed except for the fact that they all basically spend their entire pay check drinking his beer. She pulls off her sunglasses and leans against the bar with a warm and convincing kind of smile.

“John, how are you?” she asks sweetly and he levels his gaze at her and puts down the glass he’s washing to hold out his hand. She places her purse in it and blows him a kiss as he sets it on the back of the bar so that nobody will touch it and so that she doesn’t have to worry about it the entire time she's there. “What would I do without you, John, seriously?” she wonders and he rolls his eyes.

“Hang your purse on the back of a chair like every other girl in here?” he guesses and she chuckles, heading to the back corner where Kelly, Ryan, Roy and Toby are already organizing pitchers and pizza.  Well, Kelly, Ryan, and Roy are organizing pizza...Toby is on his phone.  Predictably.

“Pam Beesly, who the hell invited you?” Roy wonders, feigning irritation and pouring himself a Sam Adams. She smiles.

“Hi,” she offers simply, and with that she leans down and kisses his cheek and he smiles at her and she actually doesn’t mind that most of the time she has to pretend to be his fiancé. At the moment she probably doesn’t mind because she knows she has seven days ahead of her of not pretending to be his fiancé, but she honestly does like him and she honestly is secretly hoping the writers don’t have the two of them break up so they can phase him out of the show. Then she’d be left with Jim and, gee, wouldn’t that be thrilling.

“So listen, you know Deb in costumes?” Kelly asks, and Pam glances at her as she sits down, not sure whether Kelly is really talking to her or not.

“Yeah, Deb, sure,” Ryan responds, biting into his pizza and scooting his chair a little closer to the table because Pam is sure he doesn’t want to drip any cheese on his Burberry golf shirt. Ryan is independently wealthy and sometimes Pam glares at him when she really doesn’t mean to.

“Oh my god I got into a huge fight with her today,” Kelly informs them. “She wants me to start wearing olive green and like orange and stuff and dressing super conservative again like I used to before the show actually got good and people started like watching and caring and everything.”

Pam glances at Roy and rolls her eyes and Kelly doesn’t notice.

Kelly had originally been cast as a conservative kind of ambitious small town career woman, but had become the person on the reality show who was basically unable to keep her actual attributes to herself, and whose real personality ended up being more interesting to the viewers and writers anyway. Basically her overly excited, superlative and exclamation point heavy ‘character’ is real.

And how unfortunate, Pam thinks to herself.

“Shoot me in the face,” Ryan mutters in response, and Pam and Roy laugh quietly at his dry reply. “Where’s Jim?” he wonders, and Pam sighs because sometimes Ryan is pathetic in his hero worship.

“I don’t know,” Roy answers, “Pam?” he turns to her and Ryan and Kelly both laugh around mouths full of beer and pizza, “Where’s Jim?” he asks, barely able to keep his own laughter inside because the contempt she harbors for Jim has become a kind of cast-wide joke. She glares at him and bites back a smile.

“Probably looking in the mirror and listing all of the things that he loves about his own reflection,” she answers, shifting to sit cross-legged on the wide-seated wooden chair beneath her. Ignoring the mocking laughter and the wide smiles of the other three, she reaches out in front of her and knocks at the empty spot in front of Toby. “Hey, Alexander Graham Bell, get off your damn phone and be part of the group,” she requests loudly. He grimaces at her and waves her off so that she turns to Roy and holds out her hands in bewilderment. “Who is he always talking to?” she wonders and he shrugs.

“He never even says anything except ‘uh huh’ and 'ok' so I’m guessing it’s either his very talkative mother, or his agent,” he answers, squinting in thought and handing her an overly foamy glass of beer.

“Thank you,” she mutters. “So, I hear Toby has herpes,” she proclaims, her head tilted a little bit toward him so that her voice will carry over the din of clinking plates and old-school rock piping in through the mounted speakers. Roy shakes his head, amused. “And I heard he used to be in Cats on Broadway," she adds, "playing Skimbleshanks the railway cat. Great reviews for that one,” she says, glancing at Toby and lifting her eyebrows at the death stare he’s giving her. “And also,” she tells Roy, “I hear he loves Grey Poupon mustard, like he puts it on everything and can’t get enough.”

“Hey, sorry, I have to go,” Toby suddenly mumbles into his phone and Pam’s hands shoot up into the air in victory as Roy claps for her and looks genuinely impressed. Toby tosses his phone toward her on the table and shakes his head, disappointed. “That was cruel,” he tells her. “You know I love French’s,” and she laughs so hard her stomach hurts.

Eventually she excuses herself and heads into the ladies room beacuse when she works she drinks countless bottles of water all day long until at the end of the day she feels like she might explode.

When she comes out, Jim is standing at the end of the bar next to a 5 foot blonde with practically no fat or muscle or body at all and Pam frowns in annoyance, wishing she were better at ignoring things. He glances at her as she rounds the corner and bends down to whisper something in the girl’s ear, which Pam assumes is I'll come back for you or Don’t move from this spot or something equally as stupid, and he meets her about halfway to their cast's table.

“Sunshine, god how I’ve missed you,” he tells her, slinging his arm around her shoulders and peering down at her beneath the brim of his hat. She presses her lips together and nods. “How could I ever survive without your hostility and angry feminist comebacks?” he asks, bending down low like he had with the girl at the bar. She shoves an elbow into his ribs to get him to back off.

“I think you and your right hand would manage just fine,” she tells him. He presses a hand to his chest like she’s shot him in the heart and she laughs a little because really it’s funny. “Does Susan Lucci know that you do this?” she wonders, jerking a thumb back toward the girl he’d left and strategically weaving her way through the wooden tables and chairs. He tilts his head at her.

“Susan Lucci?” he wonders and she grins to herself while her back is turned to him, erasing it once she turns around and he can see her face.

“As the World Turns…what’s her name?” she asks innocently and he nods at her, squinting one eye and tipping his mouth a little, like he’s straining to hear something or pretending to have a stroke.

“Her name is Dawn, like the dish soap,” he reminds her, his tone clearly indicating that he knows that she knows that.

“Oh right, dish soap,” she breathes, returning to her seat at the table and quirking her eyebrows at Roy. “I found Don Juan sexing it up at the bar,” she tells him. He nods and doesn’t say anything and she takes a deep breath because sometimes she worries that she’s a minion or a pawn or really obvious in how much Jim actually affects her and her stupid twisting stomach.

“Jim, hey!” Ryan calls out and Pam rolls her eyes at the paper plates in front of her.

“Hey, man, how’s it goin?” Jim answers, sliding into the seat next to her and leaning down again so he can whisper in her ear. “Don’t hurt yourself with the hostility, it isn’t my fault that people love me,” he murmurs, the rumble of his voice making her lift her shoulder to her ear in discomfort.

“I’m not hostile,” she responds, crinkling her nose and leaning away from him angrily. He lifts his shoulder in half of a shrug and nods, smiling primly.

“I can tell,” he responds, turning away and toward the door as Toby calls out: Michael Scott is in the house! and all the men start barking because apparently that’s their thing. Michael laughs and holds up his hands like he’s trying to quiet them, and Kelly and Pam glance at each other and shake their heads.

“The party has arrived,” Jim yells, shaking Michael’s hand and then clapping like they’re all at a sporting event or something.

“Quiet down in the back!” John shouts at them, and the barking peters out because none of them want to be banned from O’Flannigan’s.

“Stay cool, ma babies,” Michael croons, sitting down next to Toby who hands him a beer. “We’re drinking already? It’s 3 in the afternoon,” he glances down at his watch while taking a sip of the Sam Adams and swallowing full mouthed in a guy kind of way.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere, Mike,” Jim responds, getting up to reach over Pam’s head and grab his own glass of beer from Ryan, who is more than willing to pour it for him and probably wax his car or pick up his dry cleaning. “Hey, Pam, what’re you doing tomorrow? Wanna hang out?” he wonders loudly for comedic effect and Pam pretends to think while grabbing a second piece of pizza to set beside her uneaten first one.

“Uh I was actually planning on never seeing you again,” she tells him and a chorus of ooo’s and ouch’s rings out across the table. Jim chuckles and nods, turning his chair so that it’s backwards and straddling it, wrapping his arms around the back, his knee bumping up against Pam’s thigh, much to her chagrin. She thinks she should probably go home and shower. She thinks she’ll have to call Graham tonight and hook up with him.

“Too bad,” Jim responds, “cause your contract kind of makes that impossible.” She nods solemnly because she’s realized that a thousand times before. She couldn’t get rid of Jim Halpert if she wanted to.

And she does want to.

Really. She does.

She sucks down the last of her beer and gestures to Toby to refill it. Jim stands up, restless, and moves to head back toward the front of the bar where five foot no-body girl is still probably waiting for him with baited breath.

“Uh oh,” he’s saying, pointing down at her and picking up his own beer, “Mom’s getting drunk.”

She sighs and she rolls her eyes and she turns to Kelly because anything is better than watching him pick up another number one fan.