~~~~~
Mrs. Lot (Revised)
As Pam slips away from the reception, her train a whisper on the carpet at her heels, she doesn't so much as glance over her shoulder.
The elevator chimes its arrival. She gazes at her reflection in the far, mirrored wall, pressing the button to close the doors with a steady, insisting finger. Pam will never be a bride again and she wants this moment in the carpeted, polished quiet to endure. She brushed off Jim's compliments, but, for the length of an elevator ride, she lets herself see it. Brides and new mothers, she's always heard, are beautiful.
The hallway to the door of the honeymoon suite is deserted. She can hear the sound of television sets and showers behind the heavy doors at her sides.
Pam finds the back stairwell and makes two trips down to their car, placing Jim's bags, then hers, in the trunk. Technically, she could have held everything at once, but she's afraid to take stairs or move through the dark without a free hand now. She has intrusive daydreams about falling, no matter how safe, how free and protected and invincible she feels tonight.
No one sees her until she wants to be seen, breezing back into the reception, making a beeline for her husband, the center of a loose assembly of dark suits and loud laughs. Pam slips among them, caressing his arm to lower his ear to her mouth. His mangled tie is loose and there are about three gin and tonics on his breath.
He isn't the only one capable of organizing an escape.
Alice of Bath was right.
"Let's go," is all she has to say to make him nod.
He bids his goodnights to his brothers, to Michael and Dwight, who all leer at her while she waits to walk away from their assumptions.
When he turns for the elevator, she grabs his hand. "Nope," she corrects, and, again, though he gives her a puzzled look, he says nothing, just follows her out a door marked "Staff Only."
It's a struggle with her dress and her belly, but she gets behind the wheel and slips off her low heels. Jim clumsily sways his knees to one side so she can drop her shoes into the footwell on the passenger side. She's in love with the way he's stealing little looks at her.
She has the route memorized, minutes well spent with her phone in the rosy sitting room attached to the women's restroom. Jim holds her hand and looks out at the Falls as they cross the border.
If Michael Scott knew where you planned to spend your wedding night -
If Pete and Tom Halpert knew -
If your father's girlfriend was younger than you -
If your mother had been no more than twenty feet away from the open bar since 5:30 -
Wouldn't you?
Fast as you could?
They're stopped at customs, asked if they have anything to declare. "No. Nothing," Pam insists, amused at the way the bored, mustached man with the clipboard is trying to stare without staring at their clothes, the hand that always comes to rest on her midsection now.
As her stocking foot presses the gas down, Jim looks around the interior of the car. "Pam," he asks quietly.
"Yeah," she makes a right.
"Why is that box in the backseat wiggling?" It's the only gift she didn't leave in the room the hotel provided. It's the only one with bite marks.
"Because Dwight is a sadist."
He reaches one long arm back, hooks the top of the box with his index finger, and asks, "What should we name them?"
She would take a picture if she didn't have to keep her hands on the wheel.
By shallow rivers, to whose falls...
Their room, smaller than the abandoned honeymoon suite, is waiting. The bed, an unsubtle confection of pale green down and ivory linen, has its sheets turned down. She stops five feet inside the door and takes it in while Jim throws all the locks in a teasing, frantic way. He steps up behind her, sighs, and begins placing light kisses on her exposed neck and shoulders. "Thank you," he says against her skin.
"For?"
"That," he punctuates it with a kiss, "would take all night," more kisses, his hands coming around to encircle her and the baby. "And I'd rather..." he trails off, slipping the strap of her dress off her shoulder. After a moment of stillness, he begins gently feeling the hair gathered at the back of her head, drawing pins out as he finds them. "How many am I looking for here?"
"92." She answers promptly. "Maybe 93."
He chuckles. "Keep count for me, okay?"
The baby gives her a faint, fluttering greeting, and she lays her hands against the sensation, whispers, "Hi."
Jim lets her hair half fall, quick to slip his hands under hers. "Here?" He asks, pressing harder than she is, but still gentle, careful.
"Uh-huh." Some of the baby books say that Jim should be able to feel the baby's movements by now and some say he has another month to wait. He seems determined to disprove those who insist on patience.
"Can you still feel -?" he rests his mouth and nose on her shoulder, looking down at his hands.
"Yeah," she's stopped breathing, hoping that might help. They hold as still as they can for a moment while their child does whatever passes for fun in utero. "Can you feel that?"
"Maybe?"
She leans back into him. "You'd know. No maybe."
Windsor - 381 km
"Do turtles need salt water?" Pam wonders, staring into the bath.
Jim peers over her shoulder. "They look happy." He squeezes her arm. "I put the bowls and the hammer back in the box. As requested."
"I will never have to see them again."
"Never." He struggles against continuing, but not very hard. "We can use the bibs for the baby."
The turtles, still unnamed, lose her attention. "No."
"We do need bibs."
"Not turtle-murdering bibs."
"I'm pretty sure you murder the turtles with the hammer," he mimes an alarming little crack, unknowingly mimicking Dwight's earlier demonstration for the camera crew. "The bibs are for the... the turtle juice."
Her hair is celebrating its waterfall baptism and recent liberation by corkscrewing at random angles, out and away from her collapsing bun. "I thought that's what the bread would be for," she replies quickly, glancing apologetically at the turtles, who swim, ignorant of the fate they dodged.
Shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair
He finds three more pins. She leans back to kiss his mouth as he searches between them for the long zipper on the back of her dress. He's pulled the tab halfway down when he smiles against her lips. "Is it weird -" he starts, then stops.
He keeps dragging that slick little pull until it dead-ends on the curve of her bottom, his fingers spreading to give her a squeeze. "Is what weird?"
"Is it weird that I'm nervous?"
She laughs quietly, shyly. "No," she replies.
"I've never had sex with my wife before," he points out, the word strange-sounding in his mouth still, sliding the other strap off her shoulder. Her dress wilts in a stiff pile that ends halfway up her thighs. "In fact, never with anyone's wife," he adds in a thoughtful tone.
"I've never had sex in Canada before."
She can feel the laugh that he's holding onto. "It's probably totally different."
"All socialist and -" she can't find a way to end it. The way his fingertips are teasing the exposed tops of her breasts while he nuzzles her ear isn't helping.
"Lots of hockey metaphors," he says softly and goosebumps raise on her arms.
"Right," Pam nods. "That's it." He laughs. She drops her head and chuckles at the thrill she gets from the sound of him.
She desired her dust to be mingled with his.
Pam turns in Jim's arms once he's undone the hooks on her bra. He helps her step out of her waterstained dress, her hand in his.
The knot of his tie gives six inches early. Pam runs her index finger down the cut edge. "You are -" she smiles and shows it to him. He takes it from her hand, leaning in for a kiss. He manages to shrug his jacket off and undo three buttons on his shirt before he has to pull away.
"Please get me out of these ridiculous clothes," he begs, "you look like a goddess and I have wanted - this - tonight and -" he lays his hand on her belly.
"I thought you were nervous," she undoes the rest of his buttons as he stands on the toe of one sock, lifting his foot to pull it off.
"I am, I am, but -" he has her face between his hands and she's trying to undo his fly, but she's fumbling with the foreign zipper and her slightly shaky fingers.
He leads her back to the bed and sits on the edge of it, the comforter sinking six inches under his weight. He looks down at his hip. "Wow."
"Where's the actual bed," she wonders.
"We'll find it," He's got her by the hips. "Now come here," she takes a step forward and he runs his tongue over her right nipple. The wet heat arcs through her and he moves to the left. She's holding onto his hair after about three passes and he's pulling down her underwear.
He slides back onto the bed and she follows, sinking more than she expected to. She grabs his shoulder to steady herself. "This is just ridiculous," she complains.
"Would the lady prefer the floor," he asks and she sticks her tongue out at him. "The couch? The shower? The dresser?" She rolls her eyes and he wraps his arms around her back, pulling her down into his lap.
"Hey," he murmurs against her cheek, following the curve of her spine with his palm, supporting her weight as she settles against his chest.
She lifts her head and studies his eyes, familiar and brand-new. "Has the whole day seemed... imaginary to you, too?"
"I keep waiting to wake up at my desk," he's stroking the inside of her thigh, directing his comments to her kneecaps, "um, in 2005."
"Right." Pam manages to wedge her hand between them, at her hip, tracing his hardness with her fingertips. Jim sighs into her hair. "I still," she hesitates, partly because she's fumbling with the opening on his boxers, partly because of what she's about to say, "Sometimes I wake up in the morning and, for just a second, I can't remember who's in the bed with me."
"I could wear a nametag, if that would help," his voice has dropped half an octave under her hand, but he's still reaching for available jokes.
"I'm serious," she says softly, circling him, squeezing gently.
"I know."
The roses in the rose garden which is theirs and theirs only.
She is voracious, desperate for him in a way she has never been before, not even when they were brand new and scared of too much and never enough. It is as if she must insist that he is hers and cannot fail to underscore the point.
At first, he seemed knocked off balance by the abrupt shift from the quiet, chaste way she handled the first months of pregnancy, but he has been fast to find his response, locate himself in the endlessness of her want.
Pam sinks down on him without warning or preamble, the sensation of being penetrated closer to a relief than anything else. He groans his surprise into their kiss and pulls away to hide his face in her neck. This is, she's noticed, his way of concentrating on what's happening between them. He forgets to kiss her sometimes, which is, in itself, sweet. She presses on his chest to lay him back against the pillows. His hips jerk to meet hers and she sinks into her own weight, pinning his pelvis to the bed, which wrings an "Oh my God" from him.
Pam lays down on his chest, breathing in his skin, his sweat and sleepiness. "I love you," she murmurs, her palms spread on his bicep and the bed at his side.
Reader, she married him.
She is drawn out, soft, long, and relaxed against him. He traces gentle lines between her ribs and hip with his left index finger. It almost tickles. She's almost asleep.
"One thing I didn't expect," he comments quietly. She thinks she hums some sort of acknowledgement and he continues. "Wearing a ring feels kinda weird."
She is slow to respond in a flat, sleepy voice. "You looked like you were going to take your own finger off at the reception."
"Yeah," he kisses the side of her breast.
"'S okay," she sighs, "being pregnant feels kinda weird, too." She's aware that this is an odd segue, so she doesn't protest when he laughs at her.
He reaches for the light and pulls the comforter over them. It's quiet for a moment. "Pam?" He asks.
"Yeah?"
"I have no idea what I'm doing." He pauses. "Just so you know."
She sniffs a deep breath, lifts up her head, opens her eyes, and wedges an elbow between herself and the bed.
The ambient light of a thousand tourist traps lets her see him clearly, wide-eyed and beautiful, against the pillow they're sharing.
The baby is kicking again.
They'll re-cross the border tomorrow. They have a plane to catch.
She smiles.
~~~~~
Story Notes:
Much love for my betas, Blanca and Callisto, and for my other, dear, enthusiastic, imaginary friends.
Not mine, of course.
Not mine, of course.
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you for reading. Section headers heartlessly secreted away from the relative safety of the western canon and deposited here. Trace them back if you're bored - there's a pattern and some beautiful writing waiting for you.
Talkative is the author of 15 other stories.
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