Karen slips his keys out of his fumbling fingers because she can no longer watch him poking randomly at the key-hole. She unlocks his door then follows as he trudges listlessly towards the stairs.

‘You gonna be ok, Halpert?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I should stay for a while, tuck you in?’ She smiles up at his slumped shoulders.

‘I’m ok,’ he says, but then he stops and breathes in as he clings on to the bannister. She can see the sweat breaking out on the back of his neck.

‘You are not ok. Here.’ She moves up alongside him and puts an arm round his waist. ‘Jeez. I always thought you were hot...’ She winks ‘...but you’re burning up here.’

He doesn’t reply.

 ***

‘So how is he?’ Phyllis asks. ‘He didn’t look good at all.’

‘Fact: infectious disease plays a key role in natural selection by weeding out the feeble, and those who are ill-suited to the advancement of the human race. Jim Halpert has been felled by microscopic organisms. Tells you all you need to know.’

Karen ignores him. He’s weird. She peels the lid off her salad.

‘Not great,’ she replies to Phyllis. He’s weak...tired...he’s got a fever. Probably just a virus...flu or something, but Pam’s going to call his sister-in-law. She’s a family doctor. Apparently.’

As she says this, she realises it sounds strange, because they’ve been dating for two months now, and she should probably have known that. They haven’t talked much about personal stuff...even Pam knows more about his family than she does, for God’s sakes, and she’s the person he seems to have the least connection with here.

‘Tell him we were asking for him,’ says Oscar, and there’s general, mumbled agreement. Except for Dwight, who snorts.

‘He looked pretty bad. I should go round and cheer him up after work. Bring him some of the trademark Scott joy and laughter.’

‘I don’t think he’s fit for visitors, Michael. He’s out of it. He barely knows who he is...he’s having totally surreal hallucinations...’

‘Yeah?’ he asks, wide-eyed and attentive as he leans forward, his elbows on his knees.

Should she? It’s not really her story to tell, but she doesn’t think he’d mind—he’s a guy who can laugh at himself. And it’s not too personal—she’ll be leaving that stuff out. The thing is...for once everyone’s listening to her, and opportunities to connect with these people have been extremely thin on the ground. God knows she needs some connection right now. And maybe she does want to embarrass him? Just a little bit?

‘He was totally spooked. Yelling at me that he needed stones to make the eyes...and he was hunting about under the covers to find them—because he had to find them before the ceiling got too low to build a snowman! And then he got distracted by a weird love triangle between that big guy in the warehouse...Roy? And himself and Pam!’ She chuckles.

Nobody else does. Did that come over as bitchy?? She’s pretty sure Pam would have laughed at that—it’s crazy! Not that there’s anything wrong with Pam, as such; she’s just...kinda non-descript? Mousy? Certainly not love triangle with Jim and anybody else material. This probably sounds patronising—and it’s absolutely not meant to be because she has absolutely nothing against her—but she could be a stock photo for Sweet Receptionist Circa 1985. She is, however, normal, which comes at a premium in Scranton branch. And she’s kind. She likes her.

‘Actually...’ Michael looks animated now.

‘Michael,’ Oscar interrupts, with uncharacteristic force. He’s normally pretty restrained—he’s possibly the only other normal person here. ‘I need to check some transactions with you.’

‘I was just...’

‘I need to get the paperwork sent away right now.’ He gets up and nods towards the door, and Michael follows him out of the room.

‘Tragic.’ Creed nods thoughtfully. ‘She called off the wedding to Ronny, but it was already too late. I wrote a blog about it...called it, Jim-eo and Pam-iet - Star-crossed Paper People. Won $500 in a romantic short story competition with it.’ He shakes his head and sighs, throws his paper bag in the trash, and wanders back to his desk.

Karen rolls her eyes. She has suspected since they first met that Creed spends most of his working day high. She doesn’t know what’s up with the rest of them. These people. God.

It’s been two very long, dark winter months now. She’s tried, and they do talk to her. Just. But there’s a background vibe of...wariness? Like she’s going to infect them with her city-girl ways...make them eat olives or something. Whatever it is, there’s certainly no warmth— though she feels them watching her.  Maybe it’s just Scranton. Wouldn’t surprise her.

She feels like a new exhibit. Like when the museum near one of her (many and varied...) childhood homes removed Horace—a huge, stuffed brown bear with a sad smile—from display because they decided taxidermy was inappropriate, and replaced him with a Roman urn. Everyone had grown up with the bear. Nobody was interested in Roman pottery. And for ‘not interested’, read: ‘absolutely hated it, and organised Bring Back Horace protests where people symbolically smashed crockery’, because it had supplanted a beloved dead bear.

But it’s not like she’s actually replaced anyone here...no-one has been shuffled off to the stuffed bear home in the sky to make way for her. So, yeah. It’s probably just Scranton. At least they’re not waiting outside with placards when she gets here in the morning.

Right now would be a good time for her to have a friend here, someone she’d made a connection with apart from Jim. Because then she would have someone to talk to about Jim, and why she’s back at the office and Pam is nursing him on his sick-bed instead.

‘Karen,’ a friend might have told her. ‘It’s okay to be a little bit angry with him. Sick or not.’

‘Karen,’ a friend would have reminded her. ‘He wasn’t compos mentis at the time. Don’t take it personally.’

‘Karen!!,’ this friend would have reassured her. ‘Don’t be feeling hurt or insecure! When he isn’t ill, he’s warm and affectionate. Okay...yeah. So maybe you’ve also said he’s a bit...reserved. And reluctant to commit to anything beyond this Friday. Never fully there with you...But...hey, he should consider himself lucky!’

Because her normally bullet-proof confidence is wobbling just a little. And pride won’t let her talk to the actual three dimensional, living and breathing friends she has in Stamford and from college. Or her sisters. They’d all made it quite clear that they thought she was nuts for coming here in the first place. She can’t tell them because she knows exactly what they’d be thinking.

We told you...

If her mom wasn’t currently on a cruise she couldn’t afford, she would have placed an elegant finger under her daughter’s chin, tipped her face up so she was looking directly at her and said,

‘Stand up tall, Karen. The Filippelli ladies will not be ground down by any fucking...excuse my French...’ And at this point, she would have glanced around with a dramatic, conspiratorial air. ‘...bastard. Or anything else that life throws at us. We are guardians of our own fate and masters of our own Future. Go back out there with a smile on your face and kick ass. Also kick his ass. Literally.’

Chiara Filippelli’s life mission was to raise three emotionally and financially self-sufficient daughters who took no shit, and who would find a Future worthy of them. Her mom’s rousing sermons on The Future has left the word forever capitalized in her head.

An unhelpful truth that they all politely ignored was that, for all her fiery bravado, these golden uplands of their mother’s own Future always ended up tied to her current love interest. And never lasted.

When her mom was newly pregnant with her, her first, she left the philandering father of her baby for some mystery man she still refuses to talk about, and decamped to Berlin with him where he’d soon gotten involved in something shady and disappeared into the ether. Since then, the Filippelli ladies lived through acrimonious alimony battles (three times) and custody battles (twice).

After each relationship meltdown her mom rebuilt their lives (four times), and each time they inevitably crept out of this new life, leaving schools and friends behind, she’d say to her daughters, ‘He’s not our Future, girls. We Filippelli ladies choose our own Futures.’

Growing up, Karen and her sisters had upsized (Matthew Solway III - NYC), downsized (Danny Greenstone – New Jersey), upsized again (Umberto Jackson – NYC again. Mean bastard with a coke habit. Very nice apartment), and briefly relocated to a commune (Connecticut. No idea who the fuck her mom was involved with there. All she can remember is peeling a shit-ton of potatoes and carrots, and an ever-present heavy, sweet smell she now recognises as marijuana.)

She was fine with all that change; she’d learned resilience and gained a bit of edge that had served her well.

Her mom, for all her talk, has stayed soft and gullible and still keeps getting hurt. Ever optimistic—and this might be what she loves most about her mom—it’s never stopped her from trying again, or telling her daughters they were better than their circumstances might suggest. Pushing them to find that perfect Future. She’d taught them to dream and to win.

‘People might see me as a financially embarrassed secretarial temp, but in my head, I know that I should be Kathleen Turner, so that’s how we shall live. Never give people leave to think that we’re beneath them, girls. Aspire to be your heroes.’ They didn’t exactly live Hollywood lives, but no-one would ever have guessed that they were perpetually hard-up.

This mismatch between Filippelli aspiration and cold financial reality is why, when they left a place, they tended to up sticks in the middle of the night. Credit to her mom, though, because each time they fled she made it feel like they were in the midst of their own personalised adventure movie—she’d even assign them parts and a storyline.

For all the disruption of her childhood, Scranton has been the hardest move yet. She’d eventually settled in each of her new childhood homes, and in Stamford, she’d finally made a proper home. She loved her fixed-up apartment overlooking the ocean and what she’d done with it. She had friends to meet up with for drinks or coffee, Friday trips to Ransome’s Bar with her coworkers for cocktails. Fitness classes. A book group. A life.

Here she has swapped all of that for Jim, an orange hotel room overlooking the dumpsters and with a faucet that drips noisily throughout the whole godamn night, a place on three Cross-Fit class waiting lists, and a sad, weird-ass bunch of coworkers managed by a delusional man-child.

It’s her own fault that she hasn’t made any headway in looking for company that isn’t Jim: she’s been so focussed on trying to get their relationship on track, she hasn’t had the headspace to give it attention. It’s just taking longer than she’d hoped.

All in, she feels like an unmoored ship here. Out at sea. Where disinterested and freakish marine life is watching blankly as she flounders. Or maybe she’s being melodramatic.

Realistically, friendship-wise, Pam is her only option in Scranton branch. She’d tried to hang out with Ryan in the breakroom—he seemed cool—but Kelly had appeared like an avenging angel out of thin air, skewered her with a malice-edged sickly smile and simpered, ‘Ryan, baby. Come and make out with me in the stairwell.’ Kelly isn’t an option because she’s Kelly.

When Jim’s feeling better, she’ll ask him what the story is with Pam. She’d like to get to know her better, but she’s still figuring her out. It’s like everyone is looking after her, like something bad has happened to her. So she’d probably be able to empathise.

When she’d got him upstairs earlier, he’d kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed in his work clothes.

‘Hey...you’ll be more comfortable if you get changed, Jim.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, and closed his eyes. She hadn’t known what to do with this monosyllabic version of Jim, or with herself, so she fetched him some Tylenol—she’s pretty sure it does temperature as well as hang-overs—and a cup of water, then perched awkwardly on the side of the bed while he swallowed them and sank back into the pillows.

Eventually it looked like he was sleeping, so she went back downstairs to make herself some coffee. Operating his TV is degree level rocket engineering (that’s her fault...She talked him into spending extra on it because she liked the futuristic shape), but she eventually she got it figured out and was flicking through the channels when she heard him.

‘Where are they?’ He sounded frantic.

She hurried back up the stairs to see him sat up and grabbing at the comforter. His eyes were open and he was staring at her. He looked distraught.

‘I can’t find the stones!!!’

‘What stones...?’ she started to ask, but she was fairly sure he wasn’t hearing her. She was well out of her depth here. She had no idea how to react or what to do.

‘I need to find the stones for the eyes and nose or it’s gonna be too late to fix the snowman!’

He was pulling at the covers then his head was in his hands.

‘The fucking ceiling is too low now...the walls...it’s gonna be too LATE!!!’

He looked so young...it was kinda cute. She smiled. ‘Ok, babe. I think you’re hallucinating.’ She put a hand to his damp forehead, and she could feel the heat even before she touched him. He swiped her hand away and lay down again and closed his eyes.

She watched him sleep for a while. She’s kind of squeamish around sick people, and although she’s great at many things, not a single one of these involves being maternal or nurturing. She can’t really be doing with weakness, or with the messiness of illness. But she really wants to make this relationship work, so...needs must.

She’d taken a deep breath, put aside her basic unsuitability as a nurse and straightened the bedclothes, tucking them in tight just like her mom used to do when she was ill.

His eyes had sprung open and he’d stared at her, alarmed.

‘How did you get in here? Get out!’

‘Jim, it’s me.’ She smiled at him in what she hoped was a reassuring way, but he looked straight through her like he hadn’t heard her.

A ribbon of anxiety was snaking through her. And not for the first time.

‘Where’s Pam? Pam!’ He was staring wildly now, eyes darting here and there. ‘PAM! HIDE!’

‘Jim,’ she said softly. She was worried now...he didn’t look like he even knew her. She put a hand on his arm to placate him, and he pushed it away.

‘Get out now or I’ll call the cops,’ he hissed. ‘PAM!!’ And when she didn’t move, he said it again, but even louder. He was furious, raving, and he hauled himself into a sitting position. When he turned to get out of bed she pushed a fingertip against the wet cotton that was plastered to his chest.

‘Stop there, Halpert. You need to lie down, you’re...’

‘LAST WARNING! Get out or I’m calling the cops. PAM! Lock yourself in the bathroom!’

He lay back against the pillows, trembling, and closed his eyes again. She moved to touch his shoulder, then withdrew her hand. She felt lost.

But he didn’t mean it. He’s ill. He didn’t mean it; he’s ill. He didn’t mean it...she’s pretty sure he didn’t mean it.

When he looked to be sleeping, she went back downstairs, threw herself down on the couch and picked up a newspaper.

She’d never felt entirely comfortable in here, in his apartment—despite the effort she’d put into helping him move in and getting it fixed up—because she’d never been confident that he was entirely comfortable with her being here. Like, they’d get back from the grocery store and he’d say, 'I’ll dump the groceries then we could go grab some pizza. Or whatever you fancy. Then go back to your hotel.’

‘But you’ve just bought a week’s worth of food...’

‘Yeah...but it’s Friday, Karen. We need Friday food.’

Or: ‘Actually, I’m worn out after all that shopping. I am not in the mood for furniture assembly tonight. Hotel?’

‘We could just not assemble furniture...Takeout? Chinese?’

‘But the boxes will be taunting us, Karen. How can we concentrate on cashew chicken when there’s a pile of unopened flat-pack boxes sitting there... glowering at us?’

‘Okay. Hotel.’ And she’d give a theatrical sigh and smile, because she doesn’t want him to think she’s making a fuss. She thinks maybe she hates herself a little at the moment.

And she still hasn’t spent a single night there.

She struggled to focus on a story about a woman in Georgia who had created an extensive subterranean apartment in her garden without building consent, or indeed any of her neighbours’ noticing until their houses started to crack and sink into the ground.

After half an hour or so of trying to get her head round Marilyn Sullivan’s crazy home improvement project—and away from Jim’s subconscious narrative where her role appeared to be ‘hostile invader’—she heard him again.

‘Pam!!’

It stung, but it looked like she had no choice. She called the office.

‘Hey Pam...ah, would you mind coming over to Jim’s place?’

‘Sorry?’ said Pam.

‘Okay...this is a bit out-there, but Jim is kind of delirious and...distressed?’ She sighed. ‘I’m afraid...well, he’s demanding to see you. I can’t get him to calm down. Sorry.’

‘Um...I...’

‘Is there any way you could get out of the office? He needs someone here with him, I think, and apparently that person has to be you. I’m really sorry...I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Oh...sure, Karen. Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out with Michael. I’m sure he won’t mind. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

She should have been relieved, because she really didn’t know what to do about a sick, delirious boyfriend who was threatening to call the cops on her. But does it say something worrying about Jim...about her? About them? That when he’s sick, his subconscious is telling him he needs the office receptionist to look after him? That they’ve been together for two months and she’s apparently a stranger who freaks him out?

It’s just that...well, it’s not the first time she’s felt this creeping anxiety. They haven’t totally meshed yet. Or more accurately, she’s meshed. He’s holding something back. It’ll come, but they’re not there yet.

She knows he thinks she doesn’t realise that he’s stalling: she does. But she studied marketing in college, and she knows the value in message discipline, in not muddying it with detail or confusion, so she ploughs on like everything’s hunky dory between them and they’re headed exactly in the right direction. It’s not denial, just optimism and self-confidence.

Jim has great potential—she and Jim have great potential; he just doesn’t realise it yet. He isn’t the kind of guy she usually likes—he’s too...soft? Lacking focus? She’s more of an Alpha Male kind of girl...but as she’s got to know him, she’s felt more and more that the Future her mom envisaged for her might involve him.

When he arrived at Stamford branch, she was really pissed at him—Assistant Regional Manager should have been her job. However, the anger slipped away as she was drawn in by his easy charm and quick wit—and that hot body he was keeping hidden away under ill-fitting, supermarket office-wear. He’s grown on her since then. A lot.

As well as being really cute and tall and sexy, he’s warm. He might need a bit of re-orientation, but he’s a nice guy. Which is a bit of a contrast to Evan, who she thankfully dumped after they got back from their disastrous Easter ski-trip. Just in time to avoid totally screwing up and moving in with the asshole.

It took a while to win Jim round, but Karen Filippelli is Alpha Woman. In her head, she’s sort of Beyoncé crossed with Meryl Streep (Devil Wears Prada version, but younger, obviously. More human.) If she was a guy she might be Tom Cruise, but taller and less religious. And with better cheekbones. She’s tried to visualise Jim as her Leo DiCaprio, but it doesn’t quite  work. She’s settled on Harrison Ford. His earlier work.

His early coolness just made him all the more interesting. Enigmatic. A challenge.

Slowly, he warmed up. She charmed him into inviting her for drinks after work, then into asking her out for a meal, then bed. Stage one was signed off with an erotic flourish.

Stage two is to make him see what he’s capable of and who he can be when he sets his mind to it. He’s smart, witty—in fact, he’s hilarious—popular and a great salesman, and she knows he’ll go far. She’s been looking for jobs for them in New York; they’ll both be happier there. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a game-plan.

‘My friends will love you! You’ll fit right in. And I know a couple of guys who play basketball—they’ll be able to fix you up.’ He’d said nothing, but neither did he object. So...green light. And to that end, she’s started by rehabilitating his wardrobe.

‘Jim. You’re 27. Out of the office, you dress like a college kid,’ she’d told him. Sometimes it’s just easier to be frank.

‘There’s nothing wrong with casual, and you look good in anything. But you need to get it right...shop in the right places.’ He’d stared at her blankly. Eyebrows raised. ‘Yeah—I’m totally aware that sounds horribly superficial. I know that...and it shouldn’t matter...but it does if you want to fit, Jim.’

He was still silent, but she could see the embryo of a tiny smile, so she persevered. Never quit while you’re ahead. Or even when, maybe, drawing somewhere near level, if viewed from the right angle in good light...

‘You’ll appreciate it when we’re hanging out with my extremely cool college friends in New York, and you no longer look...how to tell you this politely, Jim... Small town?’

He still didn’t object, so she stepped into action. You can’t make an omelette without cracking some eggs, right?

‘Actually, this is a childhood dream fulfilled, Karen,’ he’d sighed as she handed him another pile of jeans to try on. ‘All through high school, Barbie’s Ken was totally in my top three career options. After baseball player, obviously...but definitely way ahead of astronaut,’ he added, with only a tiny hint of sarcasm as she dragged him towards another changing room.

He’s cute. And he’ll soon appreciate that he needs some pants that aren’t at least three cuts out of date, and some shirts that have neither the name of a sports team or an educational establishment on them.

‘Just sharpening you up, Halpert. You look great...you can also look current. I will be your personal style genie, and all you have to do is hand over some of that promotion cash bonanza.’

‘I’m not really bothered....’ Yeah. She can tell. She knows he’s picked the path of least resistance; he doesn’t care. Neither does she. She’ll win.

He wore a new pair of jeans and a black, slim-fitted cashmere sweater out to dinner that evening, and he looked gorgeous. Later, when she was hauling them off him again, in her mind’s eye they were in their condo overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and the lights of Manhattan, their Long Island Teas long forgotten as they hungrily ripped at buttons and zips.

Since then she hasn’t seen a single one of those new items of clothing. But guess what? At least they’ll still look new when he needs them. Soon, hopefully.

And she crosses her fingers, because this relationship is turning her into a superstitious wuss.

Once she’d called Pam, she’d gathered her things. She was going to do the patient handover chat downstairs. She could do without being kicked out of his room again in front of an audience. It hurt when there was no-one else to see it.

What she’d have liked to do was to go home and lick her wounds, but when she brought Jim home, she thought she was going to have to reschedule this afternoon’s client meeting. It’s a big contract and a really fussy guy so it made sense to see it through. She’d done really well to get this far with him, so she needed to shake off this nagging insecurity and get her game face back on.

Because Karen Filippelli has plans to be in senior management by the time she’s 30, which gives her two years. And until she’s dug them out of Scranton this is where she needs to succeed, for better or worse. By the time she’s 35, she intends to have a CEO position—she sees herself at either a tech or a marketing company—and by 40, she thinks they should hope to be setting themselves up for a sparkling future with their own company. A power couple. Then she’ll have the Future her mom spent all those years preparing her for.

So she needs to shake off the negativity and self-doubt that’ve been haunting her since she moved here. She’s overthinking things.

When Jim’s feeling better, she’ll make him a nice dinner, they’ll drink a bit too much wine and he will absolutely crack up when she tells him about his psychedelic love story involving him, Pam, and the warehouse guy, overflowing with a kind of raw emotion she didn’t think he was capable of.

“Grilled cheese and music and swaying IS a proper date and you know it, Beesly...Roy is a moron and he’s only gonna make you unhappy...I can make you happy...Just because it’s been a long time doesn’t make it right!...Yes you can!...I love you and you love me, Pam. Don’t marry Roy...Yeah, I fucking object, Father...Yes, Pam. You can. You absolutely can. You can!!”

By then, she’ll be able to laugh about it.

Right now, the fact that Jim, in his fevered state, is craving the comfort of admin staff he doesn’t even talk to over her just underlines how alone she is in this town.