December. Scranton.
Pam fills in the green for the forest background, applying careful brushstrokes along the edges of the nearest trees with her cracked and freezing fingers. It's hard - damned hard - to paint when you can't feel your fingertips. There's no control, no finesse, no fire. No insulation.
Dammit, this is looking terrible. She'd done better in high school, she's sure of it. But the high school had heat and better lighting and she hadn't just gotten blue paint all over her favorite jacket which would never have happened if it wasn't so friggin' cold in here. And her mind keeps wandering to different things. Angry and distracting things. A few remorseful things. And these things have nothing to do with painting the Central Park Conservatory Garden. Which is why it looks more like the greenhouse shed at Home Depot.
In frustration, she stows the paints away and goes inside the house. Then she goes back into the garage, moves the easel out of the way, opens the door, moves the car in, closes the door, then goes inside the house. Then washes her hands. Shit. And now there's paint inside the car and Jim's going to be upset so she goes back to the garage with some nail polish remover and a roll of paper towels and wipes most of it out of the steering wheel. Some of it is in the cloth. That's not going to come out.
"Hey," says Jim when she stumbles through the living room.
"I'm going upstairs to take a shower and then I'm going to bed," she replies.
He laughs. "It's nine-thirty, Pam."
She barely manages a "meh," before making it to the bathroom and turning on the taps.
----
October 31. New York.
Since last Friday she had been very glad that she could immerse herself in assignments and work. The long hours at the grindstone sufficiently prevented her from having to think about what she had done. And why she had done it. And what she was going to do about it. Absolutely it would be better to figure it out now before any more damage was done, but no, Pam was perfectly fine with the idea of never thinking about it again. Better to prevent humiliation that way (as much as possible at least). Of course, her last eight hours of mortification were due to a completely different mistake, but one which was thankfully coming to an end.
Having stepped back onto campus, Pam felt instantly relieved to see so many students wearing Halloween costumes. She had never been more glad to see Batman, four naughty nurses, and Strong Bad in her entire life. And there went the Joker. She wondered if he'd see Batman and they'd get into a fight. It was a really great Joker costume, though the guy wearing it was a little too big to be a perfect double. Wait a minute.
"Alex?" she yelled out with a hint of trepidation. She hadn't really spoken with him at all, not really, since they had sex.
The Joker turned his head to find the source of the sound and spotted her - eventually - in the rapidly dimming twilight. He made his evil way toward Pam and, taking her by surprise, swept her up in his arms. Batman made no attempt to rescue her.
"Pam, I almost didn't recognize you," Alex said excitedly, as he took in her costume. "I was looking for this, um, hot woman and you - all I could find was a short little mustachioed man. Zig heil, Führer Beesley." He released her to give a miniature Nazi salute.
"I'm not Hitler. I'm Charlie Chaplin," she complained, doffing her hat and doing the funny walk.
Alex rubbed his chin in deep thought. "Are you sure? Because I had you pegged for Hitler a long time ago."
"Pfft. As if," she pouted. "I can't be Hitler. Hitler never even made it to art school. Meanwhile, I'm doing quite well, thankyouverymuch, so I don't have any reason to sit in beer halls starting putsches. But what about you? That's a kick-ass costume, Alex. It's like you are Heath Ledger. Except chubbier and more alive," she winced at her own insensitivity.
"Thanks, I think," he sputtered. "The sad part is that I already owned all these clothes."
Pam nodded. "Scary." She just felt weird around him now that they had slept together. She'd barely talked to him at all in the last week out of equal parts of confusion, fear, shame, and yearning. It was the last of those that had troubled her the most. No, not troubled: frightened. She was in love, engaged, devoted to Jim, and absolutely happy except for the seeds of doubt that had been sown in her mind.
"Hey, uh... I have my night class right now, so I gotta run," said Alex, unnecessarily pointing over his shoulder to the buildings behind him. "After my class, if you want, we can go grab dinner. I know a place that makes excellent shoe," he suggested optimistically.
She laughed, but shook her head. "Thanks, but I'm tired and hungry, so I'm just going to head back to my room, eat my leftovers, and go to sleep. But I'll see you tomorrow, 'kay?" It wasn't a lie. She was tired and hungry... but last week she would have waited. Pam watched Alex depart for a moment, thinking that he was missing a little bit of swagger in his walk. Or maybe she was just imagining things.
Back in her dorm room, she was finally able to shed the costume that had caused her so much trouble at work, peeling off the stuffy jacket and pants, letting her hair down and changing into comfy sweats. Cold Chinese take out wasn't the absolute greatest thing to eat, but she was hungry and far too lazy to go through the trouble of getting real food. She just wanted to eat, brush her teeth, then curl into bed and not think.
Knock, knock.
So of course she wouldn't be able to do that. "Come in," she said reluctantly.
Eric opened the door and got a good look at her. "Whoa Pam. Somewhat of a 5 o'clock shadow you got there."
Pam's hand flew to the mustache which she had still neglected to remove. 50/50 says that if Eric hadn't pointed it out to her, she would have showed up to class tomorrow with it still there. "Yeah, yeah, it's left over from my costume."
"Heil Hitler."
"Dammit, I'm Charlie Chaplin," she muttered. But she was too tired to bother arguing about it again.
"I have a business proposition for you, Adolf," he said, finding continual amusement in her 'stache. "My pops has a bunch of friends who, independently, are in need of some good graphic design work for their various companies. Websites, logos, event programs, advertising, that sort of thing. And since he's ashamed of me being a poor artist and never contributing anything positive to society, he's giving me a loan to startup my very own graphic design studio. The snag is that I'm not very good at it. So I'm talking to a bunch of my friends to see if they'd want to go halfsies or quartersies with me."
Pam was at that moment very glad that her parents were much more accepting of her desire to be an artist - but also envious of any monetary support. Only after ruefully contemplating her dire financial situation did it occur to her what exactly it was that Eric was proposing. "Huh?" was her ever so eloquent reply.
"When I first saw your stuff, I thought you were bland and untalented - no offense," Eric explained, offensively. "But I've seen your work since then and it's gotten very impressive. And I know you're kicking ass and taking names in your graphic design courses, while I can't make heads or tails out of the software. So that's why I want you on board. What do you say?"
"Well, I'm... I'm flattered," Pam stammered, "but I'm going back to Scranton at the end of the term. I'm getting married and I have my job and family and I can't just move here."
"Newark," Eric corrected, 'sweetening' the deal. "Think about it, Pam. At least this way you don't have to go through any tedious job interviews since you've got favoritism on your side."
Pam was thinking about it. She didn't like her chances of being able to drag Jim up here. But how often do opportunities like this just fall into place? "Who else have you talked to about this?"
"Just you and Alex," he said, and things instantly became a lot more complicated. "I might talk to Kay if you have to leave us for Pennsylvania."
"Um... I'll get back to you on that..." Pam waffled. "When do you need to know?"
"Whenever. I'm pretty lazy. It's not like it's the first thing you should be worrying about. The Jewish Defense League is the first thing you should be worrying about."
Great. Like she didn't need any more to worry about.
----
December. Scranton.
"Hey, why didn't you just paint over the clown?"
Grrrrrrrrr...
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