November 6. New York.
After five hours of talking to Jim over the phone, Pam was glad that she had purchased the world's smallest Bluetooth. Not only did it make the workday fly by (which she drastically needed), but talking to Jim again forced her to reconnect with him in a way that had been sorely missing from her life since she left for New York months ago.
She was startled by a voice calling out, "Pam Beesley." She was mid-sentence with Jim when he came in and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Not that she was going to let him see that.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Not to mention, 'how did you find me here' - but she wasn't going to mention that.
"Who's that?" came Jim's tiny voice inside her ear. And it felt to her like the good angel on her shoulder, making his reappearance and grounding her in a long forgotten morality. Of course, the person at the heart of the subject matter and past indiscretions suddenly appearing in the room might have had something to do with that.
"It's Alex," she said, inconspicuously (she hoped).
Alex's brow furrowed in slight confusion. "It's... Pam..." he paused for a bit just inside the door before he recollected his thoughts. "Uh...I came to kidnap you. There's free wine AND cheese at the Chuck Close retrospective. Let's go." And the devil on her other shoulder, the one who'd been there all summer, really wanted to go, too.
Jim once again proved why she never should have invited him into the Finer Things Club and why she should listen to Oscar and Toby more often. "Ah... that's going to be great. Who's Chuck Close?"
"Oh, I love Chuck Close and his photorealistic paintings," she said, trying to be as non-weird as possible while carrying on two conversations. "But I have to work."
Alex started to look really nervous and Pam got the feeling that this conversation was going to be about something other than Chuck Close and free food and that's why she found it difficult to meet his eyes. "Uh... hooo... well, actually there's something else I'd like to talk to you about," he admitted. "Can we go somewhere else to talk about it?"
With a hesitation only noticeable if one was looking for it, Pam replied, "Okay." She got ready to turn off her earpiece.
Alex's tone wasn't lost on Jim either. "That's it. I want to talk to that guy. Put me in his ear." But she didn't answer him and walked instead in silence to a nearby conference room with Alex.
"Um-" he started, anxiously.
"What's up?"
"I wanna take a big leap and I wanna tell you that I think you should not move back to Scranton."
"Wow." 'Wow' was what she said but 'Not again' was what she was thinking.
"I'm going to make a bigger leap here. He is into you." And Pam really had to bite her lip to keep from saying "no shit." She could tell that Jim was finding this sooo funny. But it wasn't, and the butterflies in her stomach were telling her so. If it all came out now - like it did during a certain similar conversation two years ago... she didn't know what she was going to do. If she turned off the phone, then Jim would think that there was something going on. But if she didn't turn off the phone, and Alex talked about what she thought he was going to talk about... fuck, that would be so much worse.
"Why did you come to New York in the first place?" he asked her, obviously still irritated that she had turned down Eric's offer. Alex inadvertently left her with an out so innocuous that she could have kissed him if that hadn't been what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
'Focus on work, Beesley', her brain screamed at her. "Because they have a great design program," she said, not letting any of those other emotions reach her face. Which was a challenge. And a half. "And I wanted to see if I was any good at it. And I wanted to work on my art, too."
But of course, Alex wasn't that dim or straightforward. He kept pressing with increased vigor. And it scared her just how much it got to her. "Right. And that's why I think you should stay here. Because- it's- you, you- really you just got here. You know, and you can't do New York in three months. You know, it has everything. It ha- all the opportunity is here. All the whole art scene is in New York. You know, It would be nuts to go back to Scranton without getting to fully experience it." He wasn't talking exclusively about art. At all.
"Jim's in Scranton," she said, hoping to diffuse this - whatever this was.
"I know. But. All I'm saying is, if there's even a teeny tiny part of you that really wants to be an artist, then I think you should stay here, because you don't want to wake up in fifty years and look back and wonder what could have been. And that is the end of my speech. I planned it all. Anyway. I will see you tomorrow."
She could do nothing but mumble the same, "I'll see you tomorrow," back at him as he left. Slowly, she exited the conference room and stumbled out, spying the camera guy's feet as she stared at the floor. She felt like she was going to cry or scream or punch walls or all three. Instead she hurried to the ladies room where the cameras wouldn't follow her. To be alone. To think. When she heard Dwight in her ear, talking about the earpiece, she just turned it off. Then she yanked it out of her ear and threw it against the bathroom mirror. Fuck it.
After all, no one plans a speech about art careers.
----
December. Scranton.
Jim comes in from a client meeting in the afternoon and sets this little box on the reception desk in front of her. "What's this?" Pam asks from behind the massive pile of unsigned Michael paperwork.
"I know you're a little frustrated, Pam. I can tell. This wasn't what you had in mind, was it? In retrospect, this whole house thing was kinda stupid. Actually, in forespect it was kinda stupid." Pam nods. Her feelings on the subject are well documented. "So I got you... this gift."
He taps the box and she opens it slowly, her jaw dropping at the sparkly earrings inside. They're very pretty, colorful, and fancy - maybe a little too fancy. She holds one against her ear and tries to imagine what Jim sees right now. Probably a poor mismatch of frumpy girl in frumpy clothes with glitter coming from the side of her head. She can't think of a reason to wear them, Lord knows that occasions for dressing up are impossible to come by in this town, but they are beautiful in a flamboyant kind of way.
"One of my clients is a jewelry store," Jim explains. "Don't worry, we can afford it."
She's not the flamboyant kind. "Is this the same place you got my ring?" she asks, dreaming of costume balls, gala openings, and nights on the town that will never happen.
"No. I got that at a good jewelry store."
Author's Chapter Notes:
Dialogue from Customer Survey by Lester Lewis, transcribed in painstaking detail by me.
