A twist of the knob, and the water from the shower tap slowed to a trickle. Jim stepped out and grabbed a towel, drying himself off before returning to his bedroom and putting on the outfit he had laid out the day before.
It was already past noon, but Jim didn't feel lazy; it was Sunday, and his roommate Mark usually woke up even later than he did. For all the drawbacks that came with having a roommate, Jim always thought it was a plus when they made him look like a go-getter in comparison. Not to mention he was comfortable around Mark. They had been roommates for a while, and although he had to get a new apartment when he transferred to Stamford, Mark had been more than happy to ditch the horrible replacement roommate he had gotten in Jim's absence and bring him back in.
“Okay, Jim,” he told himself as he sat down by his computer, “time to put the pedal to the metal.”
He turned the computer on and loaded up his web browser, intending to do a little job hunting. It had been a week since he gave Michael and Toby his two week's notice, but he was a little embarrassed by the fact that he really hadn't done much in the way of searching. The decision to get a new job had been impulsive, but he thought it was the right one, and he was going to stick to it. To hell with people saying he was wishy-washy and passive. He tried to make himself focus as he loaded up a few job hunting sites – some local, some not so local – and perused their listings. Maybe later in the day he'd go to the store and pick up a Scranton newspaper, along with a snack refill.
“Sports, sports... sports writing, where are you...”
Jim had a nagging feeling that he was wasting his time. Online job hunting sites never seemed very useful to him, and he knew sports writing was a fairly specific job. He was keeping an open mind about pretty much anything he came across, even if sports writing was the thing that he had been fixated on for a while. Unfortunately, all the jobs seemed random and uninteresting to him. He remembered reading a magazine article that claimed the vast majority of job positions were found through a person's friends and relatives, anyway. Too bad he was a bit of a loner.
Pages of bad positions passed by the screen: low paying, far above or below his qualifications, even less interesting than selling reams of paper while working for a psychotic boss. Jim managed to exhaust himself within minutes. He closed the browser and left his computer to go downstairs. Maybe he'd try it again later. Job hunting just wasn't a morning activity, he told himself. Or an early afternoon activity, to be more accurate.
“Hey, Mark,” he said, finding his roommate sitting on the couch in the living room while he watched television. “You're up early. I mean, early for you.”
“Yeah, I dunno what happened. Not enough partying last night, I guess.”
“Right,” chuckled Jim. He remembered last night; it had been uneventful even as far as most of his Saturdays went. Mark was more of a social butterfly than he was, but he had stayed in last night. Jim had been half-expecting Karen to call him or maybe stop by for a surprise visit, but for some reason he hadn't heard from her. “So,” he asked as he stared at the television, “what are you watching?”
“No idea. Some kind of cooking show.”
Jim felt his stomach rumble at the sight of ham flung onto a scorching hot skillet. “Maybe I should go out for lunch,” he wondered.
“Good idea,” said Mark. “You could bring something back for me.”
“Hmm. I would have to get in the car and drive somewhere.”
“Yeah, but that's no big deal.”
Jim rolled his eyes at his roommate's self-interested attempts to get him to go out. He decided he wasn't into a lunch run; instead, he sat down on the couch and joined his roommate as they watched the cooking show. He'd get up and look through the refrigerator in a moment, but for now he felt like vegetating a little.
Mark glanced over at him during a commercial break. “So, you been thinking about what kind of job you're going to get?”
Jim shook his head. “Not as much as I should be,” he said.
“What's Karen think about it?”
“I guess she thinks I'm being a little impulsive. Which is weird, because she tells me I'm too lazy sometimes. Paraphrased, anyway. It's like, hey, make up your mind, Karen!”
Mark looked askance at Jim as his joking comment trailed off awkwardly..
“Maybe she just wants you to stay at your job at Dunder Mifflin. I mean, are you looking for a local job, or are you going to end up moving?”
Jim scratched his head. The cooking show was back on, but Mark seemed to be interested in Jim's job search, even though Jim had been hoping to ignore that for a while and get back to it later. Truth be told, he hadn't thought that far ahead, even though Karen had brought it up a couple of times. Sometimes he felt like if he planned too much, he'd just be giving himself openings to talk himself out of another decision. He would end up holding himself back and give up making a decision about his life. He had done it before. After all, he'd been a paper salesman for years, despite having no interest whatsoever in selling paper.
“I don't really know what we'll do,” said Jim. “I mean, I guess I understand where Karen is coming from, but she's still pretty new to Dunder Mifflin. I think she'd understand how I feel if she had to be around some of those people for another few years.”
“What, and got the full Dwight experience?” asked Mark.
“Exactly.”
Jim smiled as Mark's attention was absorbed in the cooking show again, where the chef had just caused a burst of flame to shoot out of a skillet he was flipping. Mark's attention was easily absorbed. Their conversation was over, but thanks to his roommate's questioning, Jim was back to thinking about his job situation. Not to mention his girlfriend situation. He really hadn't expected Karen to be so skeptical about his decision to quit, especially since he knew she had a much stronger distaste for Michael and Dwight than he did. She had even been ambivalent towards the idea of Jim getting another local job, even though that would make things easier for their relationship.
Sometimes the ladies were just hard to figure out, Jim decided. That had to be it.
.....
“Come on Michael! Step it up a bit!”
Michael grunted and shifted his grip on the shopping bags as he tried to keep up with Jan. Spendings hours traipsing through New York on a shopping spree was not his idea of a perfect Sunday, but Jan had called him that morning to drive out from Scranton and spend some time with her. He had expected some sweet lovemaking – and, to be sure, there had been a little of that going on when he arrived at Jan's apartment, although she seemed to be getting a little bit scarier in bed. But Michael didn't want to dwell on that too much. It was sex, after all. Just having it was a good thing. At least that was the impression he had gotten from everything he read and saw on television.
After their somewhat unsettling romp in the sack, Michael was now discovering that Jan had called him over to spend time with her mainly to act as her shopping bag carrier and drive her around to various stores. He was starting to feel a bit like a chauffeur. But then, it was a small price to pay for the love of a woman like Jan. The two of them walked outside through an outdoor shopping complex as Jan inspected the storefront windows.
“Oooh, look at that!” said Jan. “Candles!”
Jan stopped abruptly in front of a store that looked like it was devoted mainly to candles, although a few other knick-knacks were displayed here and there in the displays behind the front windows. Michael followed her inside. The store was packed wall-to-wall with candles of various colors, shapes, and sizes. He didn't know why people needed so many different kinds of candles when everybody used electricity anyway. Even when there was a power outage you just used a flashlight. He had noticed a lot of candles in Jan's apartment, though.
“Why do you like these so much?” he asked.
“They smell good. Lighting up a bunch of candles and taking a bubble bath is a great way to relax – you should try it sometime, Michael. I've even been thinking about making my own candle company some day, when I have the time.”
“Really? Do candles sell?”
“We're in a candle store.”
“Oh, right.”
Jan began to peruse the shelves, and Michael had just set the shopping bags down to rest his arms when his girlfriend shoved a large purple candle in his face. “Smell it!” she commanded.
Michael took a sniff. Grapes. Or maybe lavender. Smelling candles seemed even more pointless than actually buying them in the first place, as far as he was concerned. Jan replaced the purple candle, grabbing others from time to time and forcing Michael to smell them as they moved through the store. Although it had taken him a moment to take in his candle-laden surroundings, candles had been the last thing on Michael's mind lately.
“Jan,” he said, “what do you think I should do about Jim quitting?”
Jan gave Michael a look of surprise in mid-sniff before returning a lime green candle to its place on the shelf.
“Jim's quitting? Why?”
“I blamed him for making me late to the client meeting with John Schneider and losing him as a customer when I was talking to David Wallace about it. Jim thinks it was like, I don't know – wrong or something.”
“Why did you blame Jim?”
“You told me to!”
“What? I don't remember telling you to do any such thing.”
Michael was forced to reconsider his accusation; he realized he couldn't remember exactly what Jan had said to him over the phone that day. “Well, you told me not to let David know about our relationship,” he said. “And I couldn't blame myself.”
“Why not? It was technically your fault.”
“It was your fault, Jan! You told me to come over to my condo so we could have sex!”
Michael's voice became shrill and indignant, rising an octave or two as he finished his sentence. Several nearby customers looked over at the two of them. Jan noticed the glances and shushed Michael angrily, leading him to a more secluded corner of the store.
“You didn't have to come to your condo,” said Jan, “and don't pretend you didn't enjoy it! Okay, so maybe I wasn't listening to you when you said you had to meet a client, but I was just in the mood. Sue me!”
“You could just tell David it was your fault.”
“And get myself in trouble? Look, Michael, I'm already on thin ice with David. He's got this grudge against me for some reason. Showing up late and smoking on the job, stupid nitpicky things like that. Maybe you should have blamed Dwight if you didn't want to get in trouble.”
“Jim would have told David what really happened. I needed Dwight to back me up.”
Jan shook her head. Michael could be surprisingly cunning when he was backed into a corner. His accusations had put her on the defensive, and Jan had to admit that she had been at least partially responsible for getting Michael into this situation.
A pang of guilt shot through her as she thought about Jim quitting thanks to being used as Michael's scapegoat. She wouldn't have minded Dwight quitting, as he was incredibly creepy, but she had nothing against Jim. And he was a good salesman, to boot. She briefly considered telling David what had actually happened – or maybe there was some way to get Michael off the hook without revealing her own indiscretions – but she couldn't think of anything, and quite frankly, she didn't want to risk getting in any trouble. Sometimes you had to be a little vicious in order to look for yourself. If Jim wanted to quit, that was his choice to make. Maybe she'd suggest that he apply for a position in Utica. Their lackluster regional manager was going to be fired soon anyway.
“Look,” she told Micheal as she chose a few favorites candles and motioned for him to follow her to the registers, “whatever you do, just make sure you don't tell David what actually happened, otherwise we might both be out of a job. Got it?”
Michael nodded faintly. “I got it,” he mumbled.
Jan finished paying for the candles, giving the cashier a cursory smile as the credit card went through. Michael collected the bag and added it to the rest of the collection he was already carrying around as he left the store with Jan, who began looking around for her next target like a bloodhound sniffing after its prey. As he followed behind her, Michael was left thinking about the situation he had gotten himself into with Jim – or, at least, the situation that Jan had pushed him into.
He felt guilty about Jim's decision to quit, and he knew it wasn't Jim's fault. Over the last week he had been thinking about what the office would be like if Jim was gone. Not only was Jim a good salesman, but he was Michael's best friend. Other than maybe Todd Packer. But Todd was usually on the road, drunk, missing, or some combination of the three. Michael got to see Jim every day at work. He got to trade jokes with him, share the occasional relationship advice like he did that time when Jim told him about his crush on Pam. They were confidantes. They shared secrets. Not to mention that if Jim was gone, Pam would be a lot less interesting; for some reason, she seemed to get more talkative as her proximity to him increased.
Michael wasn't sure what he was expecting from Jan by talking to her about his predicament. He liked his girlfriend, but she did seem a little self-interested sometimes. A little too corporate, maybe. Michael was always a maverick, and it was hard to understand Jan's self-interest. As a regional manager, Michael had to think about his family – his work family.
Even in terms of their relationship, she acted a little cold and distant sometimes. He wanted them to be more public, but Jan seemed to want to keep their relationship under wraps. She told him that she had talked about it with her therapist, but she was still hesitant. Jan gave a lot of reasons: disclosure forms they would need to sign, work complications, whatever that meant. Emotional readiness. Michael usually got confused when she talked about that kind of stuff.
Maybe Jan wasn't the best person to ask. Maybe he just needed to ask himself. He had about a week before Jim left, and an apology didn't seem like it was enough to his friend. If he wanted Jim to stay on the Dunder Mifflin team, he'd have to do more. Michael had been thinking about it all weekend, and something about his unsatisfying conversation with Jan had pushed him even further towards the conclusion brewing in his mind. He would definitely have to do something, and fast. Michael Scott would make things right.
.....
The sun was already down, and Karen stood in front of Jim's apartment door as she gathered her jacket around herself. She was hesitant to knock, even though her boyfriend was expecting her. She hadn't seem Jim yet that weekend, but she had been thinking about him. Thinking about the two of them. She wasn't really looking forward to the rest of the evening. Nor was she looking forward to work the next day. But she still had to do what needed to be done. She took a few more moments to gather her resolve, standing in the chilly air, before she finally reached out and knocked sharply on the door. Jim answered.
“Hey!”
“Hey Jim!”
“Come on in. Glad you called, I haven't seen you at all this weekend.”
“I know,” said Karen as she followed him in. Jim led her into the living room, where the television was already on; Karen was not surprised, as Jim often seemed to enjoy staying in and watching television more than going out. She looked around for Mark, but did not see him.
“Is your roommate here?”
“No, he's out for the evening. Wanna watch some TV? I could order a pizza or something.”
Karen hesitated before deciding it was best to get right to the point.
“I actually called you because I wanted to talk to you.”
“Yeah?”
Karen nodded and sat down on the couch. Jim, apparently catching a tone in her voice that was more serious than usual, sat down beside her and waited for her to elaborate.
“Jim, I think we need to break up.”
There. She said it.
The words settled like a dead weight in the room, and while Karen could not gauge Jim's reaction, she felt a sense of relief almost as soon as she had said it. It was the product of a lot of thinking, a lot of worrying and beating herself up over the last week – and particularly the last couple of days – but she knew it was the right decision.
“Why?” Jim finally asked.
“Because we're not going to work out, Jim.”
“Why not?”
Karen couldn't help but smile at the naïve sound of her boyfriend's question. And yet she got the feeling that he didn't really disagree with her, even if he might try to convince himself he did. She had also been unwilling to accept her conclusion at first, but now that she had, it seemed obvious. So obvious that she mentally kicked herself for not coming to it much sooner.
“Look, I know you like me, but you love someone else.”
Jim sputtered for a moment. “What? Who would-”
“Come on, we both know who I'm talking about. You told me you still had feelings for her, and I should have just listened to you, but instead I thought there was some way I could talk you out of it. I thought I could just change your mind if I said the right things, but there wasn't anything I could say. I was trying to hold onto something that was doomed from the beginning.”
Jim rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Karen was trying not to make everything an awkward mess, but he was obviously uncomfortable. Not that she wasn't. She was trying to rip off the bandaid as quickly as possible.
“Karen,” said Jim, “I know I said I had feelings for Pam, but I seriously thought things were working out for us. I mean, why are you deciding just now that you want to break up with me?”
“It's this whole quitting thing. The way you came to the conclusion all of a sudden that you needed to leave Dunder Mifflin, even though you've worked here for years and put up with Michael and Dwight's crap until now. I know what Michael did was wrong, but I kept feeling like quitting so abruptly was a little weird considering the kinds of stories you've already told me about Michael that didn't make you quit in the past. And you could fight this instead, but it doesn't seem like you've done much of that.”
“It's kind of hard,” said Jim, feeling defensive. “It's Michael and Dwight's word against mine.”
Karen felt train of thought going off the rails for a moment. Jim had a point, and in the end it just came down to David Wallace believing him over Michael and Dwight, but it still seemed like Jim could press the issue somehow. She wondered if it was just the fact that it felt so wrong to give in, to let Michael walk on him. Despite the complicated situation, she couldn't shake the feeling that Jim's passive nature was getting the better of him. But even more than that, Karen felt like he was using the whole incident as an excuse to quit, because there was a bigger issue behind all of it.
“From what I've seen,” she said, “you haven't made any real attempt to think about a new job, or anything. About what you want to do instead. It's almost like you're quitting to make some kind of point. So I kept asking myself, what's making Jim quit all of a sudden? If he's making a point, Michael's not going to get it, because he doesn't get anything. So what's his motivation? Is it really just because he doesn't want to deal with Michael anymore?”
“I'm right here,” said Jim with a grin. “You don't have to talk about me in the third person.”
“Listen to me, Jim. I'm being serious here.”
Karen knew her boyfriend could get a little cheeky when he wanted to defuse awkward situations. Sometimes it was cute, but she didn't want to be interrupted at the moment.
“Sorry,” said Jim, falling silent.
“Anyway, I figured it out. It's the same reason you quit the Scranton branch in the first place and got yourself transferred to Stamford. You wanted to be away from Pam that time, and you're doing the same thing now. She looks like she's getting back together with Roy, and you don't want to go through that whole thing over again. And you didn't know how to deal with me because you're so avoidant, so you just decide to quit and expect things between us to work out somehow.”
Jim frowned, but his lack of response told Karen all she needed to know.
“It's obvious when you look at her, you know. I try to ignore it, but it's obvious. I got jealous about it, I got angry at Pam, I felt insecure as hell – you know I almost tore down fliers for her art show?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That's why I kept insisting that I wanted to go out that night, because I didn't want you to go to that show and see her. Not that it was that hard to convince you. I mean, there you go, that's another example – from everything I've seen and heard, you and Pam were friends before you transferred to Stamford, and you had to really like her if you ended up switching branches right before she was supposed to marry Roy. And yet you don't go to the art show that she was talking about all day at the office? Why would you avoid that? Even I knew that was important to her from the way she was talking about it.”
Jim shrugged helplessly.
“Because you're avoiding her, Jim. Because you thought going would make it obvious to me. And it should have, but I guess I didn't want to let you go. I really do like you, Jim, even though I'm mad at you for convincing me to come here as your little safety net without telling me you were still hung up over somebody here. You know it's not fun when my boyfriend is the only person I know here, and he's got it bad for another girl.”
Karen folded her arms together as her little rant came to an end. Jim had been staring at some random focal point in the apartment halfway between her and the television, listening to what she said but too uncomfortable to directly address her. He looked like he was about to say something, but then faltered. Finally he spoke up.
“Sorry.”
Karen wasn't sure what he was apologizing for. Maybe for putting her in the situation she was in. Maybe he was just admitting she was right. She had seen enough of Jim and Pam, heard enough about them from others in the office, to know that both of them could be fairly dense when it came to how they felt. Apparently they had been dancing around each other for years.
“Whatever,” she said. “I can understand why you wanted me to come here with you. But I just can't keep trying to live a lie for the both of us. You need to wake up and smell the roses, Jim.”
“Even if I liked Pam, she's with Roy.”
Karen rolled her eyes.
“She's probably back with Roy for the same reason that you're with me. Were with me, anyway.”
Their conversation faded into the air as the two of them sat quietly on the couch, listening but not really listening to the television's chatter. Karen felt surprisingly good as she sat beside her now ex-boyfriend. She knew the feeling wouldn't last; the next week would probably be horrible, and she might even start crying as soon as she got back to her apartment. But for the moment at least, she was just relieved to have gotten her feelings out and told Jim what she had been trying not to acknowledge for a long time. It was out in the open. Finished.
Karen regretted coming to Scranton with Jim. She knew it had been a bad decision. And yet, she did like Jim. He had that kind of effortless dorky charm that – combined with his good looks – cut right through her initial defenses. He was hard not to like, even if Karen knew that their personalities clashed in some ways. Jim was a laid back guy, and while she enjoyed his sense of humor, she got the feeling that being with him long enough would have brought some of their clashing personality traits to a head. And he didn't take his job as seriously as she did.
More than all that, however, there was a wrench in their relationship that she'd never be able to overcome.
She wasn't Pam.
