His mother sits at a wooden table with three bowls perched atop. It’s a scene reminiscent of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Betsy Halpert a temporary Goldilocks, as she stirs and chews on warm oatmeal from her bowl, leaving the other two to cool unattended. The fairy tale cuts short when Jim’s presence manifests itself, his whistle gracing the room before he enters. His hair is unruly without a hat, a white vest is revealed beneath his unbuttoned shirt. 

He kisses her cheek as he takes the seat next to her, finding the bowl to be a perfect size for him. “G’mornin’,” he says around a mouthful of oatmeal. She points her finger at him, warning him of his table manners. He finishes chewing before he speaks again. “How was your night?”

“It was nice. I suspect I’m not alone in having a pleasant evening?” 

His eyebrows furrow in question, again he finishes chewing before answering. “Why? Did Pete return slewed?” 

“I wasn’t awake, but probably.” She pauses her own breakfast eating, studying her son's face. “You’re in a good mood.” She notes the twitch of his top lip, threatening to rise into a smirk. 

“It’s just good to have gone out again,” he says simply, focussing his attention on blowing on the spoon of steaming oats before his mouth.

“Is that what it is?” He nods. She continues to watch him, not convinced with the story and predicting something lying beneath. 

“I saw Michael,” he changes the subject, or offering an alibi to the previous evening.

“Oh, is that why you didn’t come home with your brother?”

“Janet left him,” he offered with sympathetic eyes and a shrug. She opens her mouth to reply but Pete bursts through the doorway and sits at the table.

Pete lets out an approving grunt as he eats his oatmeal, a well needed source of energy for a hungry cowboy.

“James tells me you all had a good night,” Betsy directs to Pete. Jim cuts daggers into his near empty bowl, wishing his brother would not say a word.

“It was great to see him up and out,” Pete replies, Jim rewarding him with a light kick in the shin. “He’s been ever so uptight as of late.”

Jim sends Betsy a pleading eye. “Pete, stop trying to get a rise out of him,” she warns.

“I’m sure we got more of a rise out of him last night,” Pete mumbles as he takes a spoonful of oatmeal.

Jim pushes the chair back with a sigh, he collects his bowl and announces that he is going to continue getting ready.

With Jim out of earshot, Betsy pushes Pete for information.

“So, what did you folks get up to last night?” she presses.

“Tom and I took Jim to the saloon.”

“And?” Pete’s face falls into a guilty expression. “Pete. What did you do?”

“It was Tom’s idea,” he protests. Betsy sighs. “You know when he gets an idea he just rolls with it,” he rushes out.

“Oh Pete,” she says in a breath. “You know he’s vulnerable. You’ve taken advantage of him.”

“It was Tom.”

“You and Tom have taken advantage of him.” Pete sighs, sitting cowardly in the seat opposite his mother. “What happened?” she questions in a stern voice.

“Tom paid for a soiled dove,” he mutters, almost inaudible. Betsy understands but requests him to repeat. “Tom and I helped James meet a girl,” he says almost proudly.

“Did this girl happen to take your money and lead your brother to the back room?”

“Tom’s money,” he reminds her.

“I’m not impressed. You are not to support those wretched schemes. Do you know the extent of the way those women are treated? And you have paid into that.” She stands taking the bowls away. “Shame on you, Pete Halpert.”

—

She’d sent him away with a kiss on his cheek. He’d rejected any form of intimacy that surpassed the emotional kind. He hadn’t wanted to pay for his pleasure, especially from her. As suspected, his heart had jumped when her lips brushed his cheek, and a delicate whisper of ‘goodnight’ had ghosted his jaw and neck as she stepped down from her tiptoes. “How dare you,” he’d replied. A mock disapproval of her overruling the boundaries he had set. She’d taken the joke, laughed at it even, but missed the subtext that lingered beneath the words. 

How dare she let him fold, his hand overturned to reveal what he had concealed for weeks. His perfected poker face and nonchalant reply to concerned friends. His hard exterior crumbled underneath her touch. Yet still, he didn’t find it in himself to mind.

His mother had questioned him as he left home this evening. He mumbled out words she was familiar with and hoped she didn’t worry. He faintly remembers crafting a story of “Kevin, wild dogs, and helping.” He was aware of the liability he had become since the death of his father, and he is constantly reminded of the way others have dealt with the unfortunate situation. His brothers and mother had also lost, and they too have to carry around the emptiness that seems to latch onto a different vital organ each day, just like him. He was unable to move on, he struggled to wipe dry dirt from his hands and continue surviving. He was merely existing recently, until the prior evening that is. When he could feel the very essence of surviving - pain. 

His grandmother would often care for him as a child. She was old and frail and so watched from the porch, elbows carefully placed on the wooden rail as to dodge splinters and rust. When a Halpert child fell she would bellow their name across the yard and usher them inside the shack to treat their wounds. Her husband, Jim’s grandfather, had fallen from a horse and received a nasty gash. He passed, his wife suspected from the untreated wound, causing her to learn, create, and discuss herbal remedies. Jim remembers her speaking to him softly as she poured a liquid into the wound. He was always unsure of the substance, but when Gerald Halpert, Jim’s father, would return home from his endeavours, Jim would note the similarities in the aroma of his father’s breath and his scuffed knees. She would whisper the importance of cleaning wounds, and whilst it may hurt, it’s a sting that is evident of survival and recovery. 

It’s the kind of sting he had been craving since leaving the saloon late in the night. 

—

He enters the saloon, his hat perched atop his floppy hair and a bandana covering the tip of his nose, mouth, and jaw - he figured that if he is going to spend his money and an extortionate amount of time with a prostitute he should hide his identity.His mother would kill him. 

He sees her. Her back is to the entrance, the same white dress she wore the night before flows over her legs and torso, he can almost see the way his hands held onto her those several hours ago. He also notices the wide set man stumbling his way over to her, Jim swerves in about out of drunken men, his boots sticking to drying liquor on the floorboards. He grabs her arm gently, the other man noting that she is now occupied, he grunts and walks away in search of another girl.

He loosens his grip, realising his covered identity, while thankfully is enough to be unrecognisable,he forgets she isn’t in on the plan. He leans in, the fabric over his nose tickling her ear, “Beesly,” she relaxes at his voice. “We ought to get out of here before news spreads and gets back to your misses.”

With that, he follows her up the staircase that is becoming increasingly familiar, the woman who has been sitting on his mind all night and all day. The truth is, even with her hand in his and standing in front of him, he’s still thinking about her. He makes room to remind himself to live in the present. To not waste money, as his brothers kept reminding him last night. He is paying for this privilege afterall. 

In the safety of the bedroom, Jim pulls down his bandana and lets it sit around his neck. Pam frees him from his hat, his hair damp from the short walk in Austin summer heat. She gently places it on her honey curls, grinning from ear to ear. 

“What brings you here, cowboy?” he asks in an overly dramatic southern accent.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” she bats her lashes, teasing him in a light tone.

“I’m your hero, minus the steed. I give Scamp the nights off.”

“Mr Halpert, what makes you think I need saving?”

He shakes his head, a small smile present. “Well, Miss Beesly, you’re right.” He reaches out and hovers his index finger over the skin that peeks over her cheek bone. “I think I’m the one who needs saving,” he says, laughing softly in his admission. Her eyes soften, eyelids sinking with empathy. He notes her sodden look, admitting internally that he has dampened the mood that was light and breezy just moments ago. 

From the back pocket of his trousers he retrieves a pack of cards, and money from the breast pocket of his shirt. He reveals both as if a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. He pays her what is due, an hour in her company for a forgivable price. 

Jim sits cross legged on the mattress, Pam sitting opposite him in the same position. He sits at the bottom of the bed, her towards the pillows. Five cards are messily pilled face up in the small space between them. Jim holds the rest of the pack in his hands, his index finger running up and down the side of the cards as he waits for her to decide. 

“Higher,” she says, but corrects herself instantly. “No… lower!” She buries her face in her hand, peering out between her fingers as she watches him dramatically overturn the deck's top card.

He places the card on the pile with a sigh. “You’re strangely good at this,” he admires. Her giggle fills the small bedroom, the walls suffocating the sound as it keeps their private moment between them. 

He waits for her to make her next decision, watching her face and the way her eyes reveal the gears that turn behind them. She stops flicking between thoughts, he sees, and challenges his gaze. He recognises this as an internal attempt at seeking courage, he feels that the words she holds down with her tongue and lips have more at stake than the card game. 

“Tell me about your father,” she speaks softly, she is hesitant and understanding of the painful request.

“He was a good man,” he begins, as if reciting a eulogy. He speaks delicately, holding his fathers legacy like water in his hands. “My mother is a strong woman, and he let her be. I know that is unheard of, and I am possibly remembering wrong, but he cared for my mother. I will always remember that about him.” He looks at the cards in his hands and thinks of the simplicity of its outcomes, the fifty-fifty decisions, similar to the choice he had five weeks ago - rise up to the occasion and be the man Gerald always was, or sink down, stricken by the loss. “I think he would be disappointed in how I have handled, or rather not handled, his death. And I don’t think he would be thrilled that I am paying for your time, pleasure or no pleasure, whilst my mother is home alone feeling the absence of her late husband.”

She places a hand on his knee, her thumb drawing light circles over the seam of the denim. “Jim, your father would be so proud of you.” 

He shakes his head, he doesn’t mean to undermine her, but he thinks she is incorrect. “I am not the man he taught me to be.”

“Jim Halpert,” she says, almost scolding him. “I have been in your company for not even two hours and I find myself in awe of you. So believe me when I say your father would be proud.” She lifts his head with her hand on his cheek. “I meet many men, I witness their actions in public and in private. In both, you are dignified and kind. Your father would be proud.”

He tilts his head in her hands, his lips touching the skin of her palm that runs down to her wrist. He doesn’t peck her skin, as much as he wants to. He will not pay to take advantage of her body. He predicts that kissing her intimately would create a thrill for himself, and he has promised himself he will not take advantage of that. Because he has paid she will not turn him away. If he kisses her he wants her to have the choice to turn him down. So he lets his lips rest on her skin. 

“What do you do when you are alone?” he whispers against her palm. 

“I draw.”

He sits back, eyebrows shooting up in excitement. “Can I see your art?”

“It’s not art.”

“Pamela Beesly,” he mocks her previous scolding in a good natured way. “You exceed my expectations time and time again. I can guarantee that you’re an artist and,” he shys away from pushing her too far. “If it’s okay with you, I would love to see your work.” She smiles and nods her head.

There’s a clocktower not far from the saloon and he hears its bells echo through the thin glass. He remembers hearing them as he walked inside to find Pam. He understands that his time with her is just a few minutes from playing on loop inside his brain until this time tomorrow. 

“Tomorrow,” he says.

“I’m not working tomorrow.”

“Even better,” he says with a smile.

She lies back on the bed, her head elevated on the pillow, she looks at him with a smile. 

“I’m going to take you out,” he says, touching her ankle lightly as she stretches out her legs. It reminds him of the night before. When in a similar position, he had concluded, in his head, that she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. 

When a cat exposes its stomach, it is not inviting you in. It’s trusting that you won’t become a danger to its life. It is confident that you will leave it alone. But Pamela Beesly is a woman, and he finds her aura the most inviting. He crawls up the bed, as if a wild animal waiting to pounce, and hovers over her, hands pressed either side of her head. 

She watches him closely, their eyes playing a game of cat and mouse as they travel from eyes to lips to cheeks. And when Jim’s eyes find her eyes looking at his lips, he figures his rule making a foolish thing. But, he’s a man of his word. 

He clears his throat before speaking. “Well, I guess my time is up then.” 

“I guess it is.”

He nods.

“But technically” she begins. “If we both agree that your time is up. Right now, you are not a paying customer.” 

“Huh, is that so?”

She nods.

“Then I guess that makes the rules,” he thinks for a second. “Obsolete.”

She nods her head and watches his lips as he leans in.