Disclaimer: I own no part of this show or its characters. No infringement is intended upon those who do.
Clinging to a Preserver
Pam wanted to pretend that she was shocked when she and her mother saw Roy’s truck parked just where it was the night before. “He didn’t go to work,” Pam murmured as she stared at the offending vehicle.
“It doesn’t look like it,” her mom answered. “Do you want to try to come back later?”
Pam sighed as she pulled her cell from her purse and displayed the list of unanswered calls from Roy. “I have a feeling he’ll still be here.”
“So, we’re going in,” her mom said with a nod.
“We’re going in,” Pam replied grimly as she pulled on the door handle.
The moment her key turned in the lock, Roy’s voice boomed from the other side of the door. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded as he jerked the door open, yanking the keys from her grip. “What the hell does this mean?” he shouted, holding up the note she had left on his pillow.
Pam took an involuntary step back as her now ex-fiancée loomed over her threateningly, unshaven and reeking of beer.
“Hello, Roy. We’ve come to pack Pam’s things,” Mrs. Beesly said calmly.
Roy instantly backed down as he noticed Pam’s mom standing behind her for the first time. His tone changed in an instant. “Pammy, baby, I’ve been worried sick all night. Where did you go? Why did you leave?” he asked in a more conciliatory tone.
Pam gaped at him for a moment, and then recalled that he didn’t know what she knew; everything that she knew. “I just want to get my things,” she said softly.
“Get your things? Pam, why?” he asked cajolingly.
His patronizing tone struck her like a match; igniting a fire of indignation in her stomach. “Because you have dodged the bullet once and for all, Roy,” she said as she pushed past him into the house they had shared.
“What?” he asked as he immediately turned to follow her.
“This is not how this should be, Roy,” she told him as she jerked the closet door open. She grabbed a handful of hangers from the rod and tossed the clothes onto the unmade bed. “You should want to marry me. You should be so excited to marry me that you wouldn’t want to wait,” she said as she scissored her arms and lifted a larger section of clothes from the rod. She turned to look at him, her eyes blazing, and said, “I should want to marry you, but I don’t. Not anymore.”
“What? Why?” he sputtered as he tried to grab her arm.
“Roy,” Mr. Beesly said, quietly reminding him of her presence.
Roy immediately released his hold on Pam and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand you either,” Pam said looking him in the eye. “Don’t you think that after all this time, I should?”
“Is this about postponing the wedding? We can move it back. We can do it on June 10th if that’s what you really want,” he said desperately.
“It’s not what I want,” Pam said softly, clutching the clothes to her chest.
“Well, then, what?” Roy asked, throwing his arms up in frustration.
“It’s done, Roy. It’s over,” Pam said flatly.
“Over?” he asked, stunned by her pronouncement.
Pam turned to her mother and asked, “Mom, can you get my stuff from the bathroom? There should be a travel bag under the sink.”
Pam and Roy stood frozen in place as her mom ducked into the bathroom and began to sort through the medicine cabinet. Pam turned back to him, still holding the armload of hangers in front of her like a shield. “Roy,” she began in a more gentle tone.
“Pammy, I don’t want this. I don’t want you to go,” he said, desperately fighting against the fierce tide of her new-found determination.
“It’s time, Roy,” she answered firmly.
“Time? Why is it time? Who says it’s time?” he asked, his voice rising.
Pam shot a meaningful glance at the bathroom door and then carefully placed the armload of hangers on top of the others she had tossed to the bed. She turned back to Roy, tears brimming in her eyes as she simply said, “I do.”
****
He was scared. The nervousness knotting his stomach existed on two levels, and right now, they were battling for supremacy. On one level was his fear that Roy had found Pam, and that something bad had happened. On the other, was the more gnawing fear that Roy had found Pam and something good had happened. At least, something they might think was good. It wouldn’t be good for him. It would be bad. Very bad.
The fact that she had called the night before asking him to help her get away from Roy had buoyed him. And he had clung to that buoy all night long, bobbing along on waves of hope that he had dared not ride before. Michael was right, engaged wasn’t married. Engaged, BFD. He held onto that hope all through the night as he hung onto his pillow, wishing it was Pam. As usual.
He had lain awake, his phone clutched in his hand, just in case, but no call had come. He had dressed for work, slurped down a bowl of cereal, and walked to his car, the phone never more than arm’s length from him at all times. When she didn’t call for a ride to work, he reasoned that she may have opted for a cab. When she wasn’t at her desk, he decided that taking a day off was probably a good idea. Why spend an interminable Friday watching the clock tick by, when you had more important things to figure out? When he heard Darryl mention that Roy had called in sick that morning, he forced himself to picture Pam sitting in that bland hotel room. Alone. Please, God, let her be alone. Or, at least, not with him.
He sat as his desk randomly typing nonsensical numbers into a spreadsheet, hoping that he looked busy enough for everyone to leave him alone. Of course, that level of perception didn’t quite reach Michael.
“Jim!” he called as he strolled from his office. “How about lunch today? Pam isn’t here, so you can probably use the company, and I know that I can,” he said as he perched on the corner of Jim’s desk. “Jan won’t call me back,” he murmured.
“I, uh, no, I can’t today,” Jim said as he sat back in his chair, searching desperately for an excuse. “I was going to run some errands at lunch today.”
“Errands?” Michael scoffed. “Why would you run errands today? Tomorrow is Saturday, the perfect day to run those pesky errands,” he said with a smile of disbelief. “Blow it off! We can go to Hooter’s,” he offered enticingly. When Jim still resisted, Michael moved in for the kill. “It’ll be great. Just two guys, hanging out, sharing secrets over a basket of wings…” Jim’s eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up. “My treat,” Michael added with an enticing smile.
Jim sighed and lightly pounded the arm of his chair with the palm of his hand. “Why not?”
“Cool, let’s go,” Michael said as he hopped up.
“Um, it’s only nine forty-five,” Jim said as he turned and looked at the clock.
Michael’s shoulders slumped. “Aw, man, that sucks,” he groaned as he trudged wearily back to his office.
Jim passed another hour, his cell phone perched next to his keyboard, blank and silent. He gave up on the fake numbers and decided to make a couple of sales calls, convinced that once he was on the phone, the cell would ring. It didn’t. When Michael emerged again at eleven, whining about possible starvation, he gave up the fight. He excused himself to the men’s room, casually pocketing the phone as he stood, and made his way into the break room. Once the men’s room door closed behind him, he pulled the phone from his pocket and dialed.
Her voicemail kicked on, and he ran his hand through his hair, rumpling it even more before rubbing the back of his neck. “Hey, it’s me. I just, I wanted to check in and make sure that you were okay. You aren’t missing much here today. Michael is taking me to Hooter’s for lunch, so there’s a highlight,” he said with a wry smile as he lowered his hand from his neck. He raised his head, catching his haggard reflection in the mirror. “Um, let me know that you’re okay, okay? I just, I just need to know. Thanks,” he said quietly and then closed the phone.
A minute later, Jim walked out of the bathroom, crossed the break room and opened the door as he called, “Okay, let’s hit it.”
“Hitting it right now!” Michael answered as he jumped up and followed Jim to the door. “This is gonna be great, huh?”
****
“I liked the other one better,” Pam told her mother.
“I agree.”
Pam glanced at the jumble of her possessions piled in the back seat of her mom’s car. “It’s available now,” she said with a shrug.
“We can look some more if you want,” her mom offered.
Pam shook her head and said, “Let’s go back over there and I’ll fill out the paperwork.”
As they pulled away from the old brick apartment house, Mrs. Beesly shot her daughter a worried glance and asked, “Are you sure about all this?”
Pam chewed the inside of her cheek as she stared unseeingly at the passing streets. “I’m sure,” she said quietly.
“Okay.” Her mother hesitated for a moment, but as they pulled to a stop at a red light she turned to Pam and asked, “And Jim?”
“I can’t think about Jim yet,” Pam answered a little too quickly.
Mrs. Beesly smiled, knowing her daughter well enough to know that even if she thought she couldn’t, Pam was thinking about Jim. “I thought about it last night after you called,” she said quietly. “All I could think about was how unhappy you have sounded when we talk about Roy, but whenever you mention Jim, well, you sound anything but unhappy when you talk about him.”
“Mom, please.”
“I couldn’t say anything before, because you are as stubborn as your father,” she said with an affectionate smile. “You were determined to marry Roy, and as much as I care for Roy, I have to tell you, I was a little nervous about it.”
“Now you tell me?” Pam asked as she turned an incredulous glare on her mother.
“Oh, Pam, you wouldn’t have listened,” she sighed. “You and Roy are just so different, you always have been. I guess that was probably part of the attraction, but can you make that last in a marriage? I don’t know.”
“Yeah, we are different,” Pam conceded.
“And some difference is okay, I mean, you don’t want to marry your twin,” he mother joked lamely as she turned left onto a tree lined street. “But when it comes down to it, you have to want the same things. You have to understand each other’s needs, and want to be the one to fill those needs. You have to want it bad enough to fight for it. You never fought with Roy, Pam, you just gave in.”
“Wow. Thanks, Mom,” Pam muttered as they pulled to a stop in front of an old house that had been converted into apartments.
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, Sweetie. I was just pointing out that you need to be true to you first. You need to be able to stand up and say, ‘This is who I am. This is what I need,’ and not be afraid of someone telling you no. If they tell you no, well then, that person doesn’t really know you or understand you. And if you accept that no, then you lose part of yourself,” she said as she reached over and covered Pam’s fidgeting hands with her own.
“Yeah,” Pam said in a choked voice as she looked down at their hands. “I want that back.”
“You’ll get it. You’ll find that guy who knows you, knows what you need, and wants to give you what you want. He’ll support you and encourage you; he’ll build you up, not knock you down,” she said as she squeezed Pam’s hands. “But first, you have to stand on your own two feet.”
“The light in that apartment was really good,” Pam said as she looked up at the second story of the faded yellow house.
“I noticed that too.”
“And it was big, but not too big.”
“Big enough to have a little area to use as a kind of a studio,” her mom confirmed.
“You think so?”
“Let’s have another look, what do you say?” Mrs. Beesly said as she released Pam’s hands and reached for the door handle.
“I say yes,” Pam answered as she opened the passenger door; her eyes fixed on the front of the house she hoped would feel more like home.
****
It was all he could do to keep from checking his messages. The moment they walked out of Hooter’s he heard the little chime that had been drowned out by the cacophony of noise in the restaurant. He quickly silenced the phone, but dropped it back into his pocket as Michael looked over at him curiously. “Probably my mom,” Jim said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’ll call her back later.”
“It’s nice that you’re close to your mom. My mom and I, well, we’re close, but I’ve always gotten along better with my Nana,” Michael said wistfully.
“I don’t know that my mom and I are close, close,” Jim murmured.
“Pam’s really close to her mom, too,” Michael continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “That’s why I didn’t mind that she called in this morning. I think family is the most important thing in the world. I hope that my kids drop everything when I come to visit them.”
“Pam’s mom?” Jim asked, sitting up a little straighter in his seat.
“Yeah, she came to town unexpectedly, so Pam needed to take the day off,” Michael said as he cast Jim a sidelong glance.
“Oh.”
“They’re probably shopping. That’s what women do on their free days, right?”
“Right,” Jim muttered, knowing that Pam was not a big fan of shopping just for the sake of shopping, and that her mom lived far enough away that an impromptu trip was a stretch. His phone was burning a hole in his pocket, beckoning to him, warm and promising. He could practically feel each flash of the message light; he could almost hear her voice asking for his help, needing him to come to her.
Jim exhaled slowly as they turned into the parking lot and Michael wheeled into his usual spot. “Hey, thanks for lunch,” he managed to say as he opened the door.
“It was fun, huh? We should do that more often,” Michael said enthusiastically as he climbed from the Sebring.
“Yeah, um, I’m just gonna see what she needed,” Jim answered as he pulled his phone from his pocket. “You go on up.”
“Oh, okay, yeah, I’ll go on up,” Michael said, clearly disappointed that their lunchtime camaraderie was ending so soon.
Jim ducked his head, shielding the screen from the pale light of the sun and sighing with relief when he saw a missed call from Pam’s number. He pressed and held the ‘1’ for his voicemail, but his smile faded as he heard her say only, “I’m okay. I can’t talk now, but I’m okay.”
Jim closed his eyes as he closed the phone and shoved it back into his pocket. He wasn’t exactly sure what he thought he would hear, but he had hoped for more than that. His lips pressed into a grim line, he shoved his hands into his coat pockets and headed for the door, ducking his head against the icy wind.
****
Pam sat with her legs crossed in the middle of the living room floor of her new apartment, craning her neck as she gazed at every wall, every corner, and every window. It was hers, all hers. She ran her thumb over the key in her palm and then stared down at the Toyota emblem with a small smile. Her mom had to cosign on the loan with her, but it was hers, just like the apartment.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the hotel?” her mom asked as she stepped from the bedroom.
“No, I want to stay here,” Pam answered.
“Honey, you don’t even have a bed.”
“I’ll get one tomorrow,” she promised.
“I feel just awful, leaving you here like this. Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me?” her mother asked again.
“I’m sure.”
“Well, I inflated that mattress and put the sheets on it, but we really should have washed them first, they feel like cardboard.”
Pam smiled as she unfolded her legs and stood up, still clutching the car key in her hand. “Thank you. For everything, Mom,” she said quietly.
“There’s no need to thank me, Sweetie. I just wish you’d come home for a day or two, let me take care of you, let Daddy spoil you,” she said with a tired smile.
“You’ve done enough. I don’t know what I would have done without you,” Pam said, her throat clogging with tears.
“You would have been just fine,” Mrs. Beesly said as she smoothed her hand over Pam’s cheek. “You’ve always been a lot stronger than you gave yourself credit for.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Pam hugged her mother tightly and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, Mom, I love you.”
“I love you too,” she answered as she hugged Pam tightly. “I just want you to be happy, okay?”
“I’ll try,” Pam murmured in a tear soaked voice.
“You will be happy,” her mother said fiercely.
Pam pulled back, wiping her tears away with her fingertips, and looking around the empty apartment. “I think I will be here.”
Her mother nodded and said, “I wish I didn’t have to get back for this fundraiser tomorrow. I’ll come back up on Sunday, and we can go pick up whatever else you need.”
“You don’t have to, Mom. I can get whatever I need on my own,” Pam said quickly.
Mrs. Beesly smile and kissed her daughter’s damp cheek. “I know you can.”
After seeing her mom to her car, Pam walked slowly the stairs to the empty apartment. She locked the door carefully behind her and then turned out the overhead light in the empty living room. She turned and walked toward the bedroom, pulling her cell phone from her pocket as she closed the door behind her, blocking out the emptiness. She clutched the phone in her palm as she took in the clothes hung neatly in the closet, the small lamp on the floor and the inflatable bed, painstakingly covered in the sheets and comforter she and her mother had chosen at Target that afternoon.
Pam ignored the mish mash of possessions piled haphazardly in the corner as she lowered herself to the mattress, her eyebrows rising as the air bed held firm under her weight. She opened her phone and frowned at the display of missed calls. She scrolled through them quickly, just checking to see if there were any that were not from Roy, and then pressed the buttons to clear the log. She picked up the book she had tossed into the shopping cart and switched on the lamp, adding a little extra light as she snuggled down onto her pillows and tried to immerse herself in the pages.
Pam made it about an hour. She turned to the start of a new chapter, read the first line, and suddenly realized that she had absolutely no idea what this book was about. Sitting up, she tossed it aside and reached for her phone again. She hesitated for a moment, her thumb hovering over a speed dial key she had set long ago, but used far too infrequently.
****
The beer bottle was cold between his thighs. The cold seeped through his pants, effectively chilling his skin and cooling his jets. He stared disinterestedly at the basketball game that played on the television, purposefully averting his gaze from the phone that sat silent beside him. Jim drained the bottle of beer in three gulps, and then scowled at it as if willing it to magically refill. With a grunt, he pried himself from the couch and carried the bottle to the kitchen, dropping it into the can atop the other he had placed there a short time before. He yanked the refrigerator door open, and this time, grabbed two. He twisted the cap from one, and tossed it in the direction of the trash can, snorting at himself as he missed from close range, and had to bend to retrieve it.
And then his phone rang.
He carried the beers in one hand and the stray cap in the other as he made his way back to the couch and peered cautiously down at the phone. His heart leapt when he saw her number. Jim promptly dropped the bottle cap onto the couch cushion as he snatched up the phone. “Hello?” he said, wincing at the breathless sound of his own voice.
“Are you busy?” Pam asked cautiously.
“No, uh, not at all,” he assured her as he circled the end of the couch and dropped down onto the cushion, wincing as the fluted edge of the bottle cap bit him in the butt. He shifted away from it, placing his beers on the coffee table as he asked, “How are you?”
“The question is, where am I,” she corrected with a sly smile.
“Where? Um, well, you rejected Paris and Rome,” he said slowly. “Tokyo?” he guessed.
“Close. I’m on Poplar Street,” she told him.
“That was my next guess, since it too is in the far-east,” Jim said with a sage nod. “What are you doing on Poplar Street? Or can you not divulge that information?”
“I’m in my new apartment,” she answered as she flopped back onto the air bed, her giddy smile turned into a scowl when she bounced like a quarter on it.
“Wow. New apartment,” Jim said slowly as a smile curved the corners of his lips.
“Yes, and parked right out front is my new car,” she reported.
“Wow. New apartment, new car… Which bank did you knock over, Beesly?” he teased.
Pam sobered a bit and said, “Uh, Pennstar.”
“You really robbed a bank?” he asked in an impressed tone.
“I closed out the savings account I had for the wedding,” she answered quietly.
“Oh.” Jim sucked in a sharp breath and then murmured, “Pam, I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” she whispered.
Jim blinked, taken aback by her blunt question. “I’m, uh, sorry that you are sad.”
“But are you sorry?” she pressed. “Are you sorry that you told me?”
Jim let his head fall back against the cushion and stared up at the ceiling. “No,” he said at last.
Pam nodded and said, “I’m going to need some time to think.”
“I get it,” he answered.
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Pam nodded and took a deep breath, battling back the emotion his simple words stirred in her. “I’m going shopping tomorrow. I have nothing,” she confessed with a self-conscious laugh.
“Oh, boy, shopping,” Jim muttered good-naturedly, warmed by the sound of her laugh.
“I know, but at least it’s for stuff I need,” Pam commiserated. “I plan on cleaning Target out tomorrow.”
“Well, they had it coming,” he said with a nod.
“That’s how I see it.”
There was a pause, another stretch of silence that hung between them like an ocean. But this time the waters didn’t look quite so cold and forbidding. This time, he could hear her soft breathing, steady and sure. This time, she knew without a doubt that he was there if she needed him.
“If you need help with anything…” he said, breaking the spell.
“You’ll be the first person I call,” she told him.
“Well, congratulations on your new place. And the car. What kind of car?” he asked.
“A Toyota Yaris,” she answered.
“Toyota’s are always a good choice,” he said with s smile.
“I thought so.”
“Have fun shopping tomorrow.”
Pam smirked and said, “Yeah, it’ll be tons of fun.”
“You know, most women like shopping,” he pointed out.
Pam smiled. “And most men don’t know a damn thing about women. Goodnight, Jim.”
“Goodnight, Pam,” he said quietly, and closed the phone.
Jim sat up and reached for the bottles of beer on the coffee table. He took a sip from the open one, and then rolled to his feet, carrying the lucky victim back to its brethren in the fridge.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you all for your fantastic feedback on this story. It is very much appreciated.
