But it seemed that fate did not intend for Jim Halpert to so easily forget Pam Beesly. After an afternoon spent with his nose in the book and a tea beautifully set out by Cook, a series of cards arrived for him in the evening mail. Lord Malone wished to invite him to The Leviathan, which a keen word in his ear from his ever-faithful valet suggested strongly was an establishment closely associated with the more profligate forms of gambling in the city. Phyllis Lapin begged that he should not stand on ceremony and come by her establishment in Russell Square, adding in a lengthy handwritten postscript that she hoped to introduce him to one Robert Vance, the Ice King of London, with whom she had developed a connection, and who was eager to meet a friend from back in her Chester days. Robert, she wrote, had been sorry to miss Jim the previous night, having been downstairs inspecting the ice chests in Colonel Scott’s kitchen when she had found Jim. Even Dwight K. Schrute had sent a formal note stiffly wondering whether the Denbigh holdings on the Welsh Marches came anywhere near the Allscott beet farms in Shropshire. Nestled amongst the other cards from people he barely remembered meeting (who was Creed Bratton?) was a gilt-edged invitation from Colonel Michael Gary Scott desiring his attendance at “the best, most spectacular, most amazing soiree yet thrown” the next night. Jim wondered at this, both at the suddenness of the second party and at his own receiving an invitation to it—though he did express some relief when he learned from the staff that Mark had received an invitation as well, thus reducing the confusion to some degree.

Had he but known it, the degree of his own surprise was but de minimis compared to that of Pamela Morgan Beesly. Pam had awoken in her dowager aunt’s flat on Pimlico Street with a disquieting sense that the world was somehow wrong. She had clung to this notion through her morning toilette, as her hair failed to fall in the way she wanted, her nose felt a little askew (even though she knew there was no chance that her pillow had somehow pushed it aside in the night), and her makeup seemed to develop a mind of its own and deliberately clump. As she came downstairs and gathered the morning post, she found sitting in her hands the confirmation of her unease. The Colonel had sent her a note. This in itself was not unusual; it happened most days, as Colonel Scott seemed to develop most of his ideas over the course of an evening or—more commonly—the period that developed as the night rolled over into the morning, and he invariably sent these ideas along to her by messenger in time for her to find them alongside the morning post. In most cases this simply called for her to visit the Colonel’s apartments in order to talk him down from his most recent brainstorm: to convince him that there was no need to hare off to India for a particular brand of tea because a friend of his had expressed a fleeting desire to taste it, or that his dream-invention of an automated machine for grilling food and removing the fat was perhaps impractical at the present time. But on other occasions, it was more of a burden, as the ideas he had conceived were either sufficiently practical to be undismissable, or even actually good ideas that would simply require a great degree of effort on her part (and almost always, none on his). Worst of all, sometimes the ideas were impractical or unwise but it would turn out that even the most emphatic effort on her part could not dissuade him from putting them into practice in any case. She had a sad sense that this was one of these, for he had written to her:

Dear Miss Beesly,

I have had a most marvelous idea that I cannot wait to put into action. I am certain that, in this case, you will not hesitate to agree with me and begin the preparations at once. You have heard, no doubt, that the Dowager Duchess of Hereford is back in town. She was at the ball last night, but by some unfortunate circumstance we were unable to connect. Perhaps she didn’t hear me call her name—have you found out yet whether she is perhaps going a little deaf in one ear? As this clearly cannot stand, it is my intention to hold another ball tomorrow night so that I can casually meet her again. Be so good as to write up the invitations for the usual set; you know, the sort of people who were there last night. And send round to the caterers again. You know what I like.

Thanks,

You’re the Beesly-kneesly,

Col. Michael Gary Scott

She sighed. This was going to be a long day, and it had only just begun. This idea was horrible, gauche, and likely to expose Colonel Scott to the ridicule of the more elegantly composed set (who would still attend in order to twitter loftily while enjoying the Colonel’s food). In a word, it was Michael. She turned the card over.

P.S. Make sure to invite my new best friend Jimbo! Dwight speaks very archly of him, which I’m sure means he’s a lot of fun!

She tried not to think too carefully about why a day spent planning an entire ball from scratch looked so much less problematic now that she knew she was to invite Jim Halpert.