Hallelujah (Karen): She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.  

She invites him back to her apartment after a spontaneous night of drinking. It’s too soon; she knows it, like she knows her own name. There is no question that he’s not over Pam. He can’t even say her name aloud yet, but Karen takes him home anyway, because she’s falling for him and she’s drunk (drunk enough to temporarily forget her own name and his fucked up state). She tells herself she won’t ask anything of him but this, even though it will hurt to think about when she sobers up, when she turns to face him in the daylight and sees that look on his face that he gets sometimes, like he’s done something wrong just by smiling at her, without actually being guilty of anything.

He surprises her though, wakes her with a kiss as the sun comes up, regardless of her hangover breath and the eyeliner smudged under her eyes. She can’t think of a sweeter taste than his morning-after pasty mouth on hers as he whispers hello. When he pulls back and smiles, she slips her hand down his belly, eager to keep a good thing going. Her breath hitches when he traps her hand against his hipbone and his face turns serious. Her stomach plummets when she sees he has something to say.

He lifts her wayward hand almost to his lips, pauses just shy, and stares at the palm of her hand, eyes following the spidery lines, like he’s searching for something he’s lost. “I don’t want to lead you on.”

She snatches her hand away from him. “You haven’t, Jim. I knew exactly what I was getting into.” She grips his chin between her thumb and index finger, lifts his eyes to meet hers. “I don’t mind.”

He lets his fingers drift down her shoulder. “I like you, Karen. A lot.” He sighs and touches her cheek briefly before pulling his hand back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She reaches for him, slides closer beneath the sheets with a wry smile. “Is it weird that I don’t care?”

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While Jan is in the office, speaking to them about the merger, all Karen can do is watch Jim’s shoulders, the way his head subtly shifts as he considers each possibility. He sits with his back to her, so she can’t see his face, but she can easily imagine its expression, sad and retrospective, thinking about Pam. She tries to tell herself that it doesn’t bother her, tries to tell herself that she knew all along that she was second best, the consolation prize, the distraction, but somehow it doesn’t ease the pain in her stomach. She glances at the bag of chips on her in box that he bought her earlier and half hopes that she will be among the downsized staff so she won’t have to witness him struggling to not look up at the reception desk.

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Karen follows him to Scranton, although she knows better. Of course she knows better. She’s not stupid. She’s attractive, smart, a real catch, according to her mother. Too bad she’s in love with a man who loves someone else. She can’t keep from staring at his hands as he packs up his desk in Stamford, carelessly throwing everything into a banker box, like he’s done this before and is tired, so tired of leaving. She remembers those hands on her body, remembers all the good times they’ve had together, in between Pam. That’s how she thinks of their relationship now. In Between Pam.

That night, as she’s packing up the last of her apartment, Jim turns up at her door with few words and plenty of kisses. He touches her like it’s the last time and she tries not to cry, somehow manages not to ask if they’re over, now that Pam is going to be back in his life. When he pushes her back on the bare mattress in her empty bedroom, he whispers that he loves her and that he’s sorry. As she comes, she thinks that maybe this is better than nothing at all.

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Karen arrives on Monday before Jim does, suffers Michael’s attentions on her own, with only the sympathetic looks of a scrawny dark haired guy who sits outside Michael’s office as back up. A heavy balding man in a grey suit looks her over when he thinks she’s not paying attention and announces, under his breath, “Nice.” With great effort, she does not make eye contact with the woman sitting nervously behind reception, only glances at her out of the corner of her eye as she takes her own spot next to a bored looking man introduced as Stanley and a friendly, sweet woman named Phyllis. Pam is… plainer than she expected. Not that she’s unattractive, even Karen can admit that, but considering the depth of Jim’s devotion, she expected someone a bit more… awe-inspiring. Ultimately, though, Karen’s not allowing herself to be jealous, because she knew. She knew.

Jim is late for work, and she knows him well enough by now to suspect that it was on purpose, that he spent a few extras minutes at Dunkin’ Donuts, maybe stood downstairs for a while, taking stock, before he re-entered Dunder Mifflin again. He breezes past the reception desk with a forcedly calm “Hi, Pam”, offering Karen at rueful smile across the room. He stands next to the small, dark-haired guy for a minute, adrift, and then takes a seat at the empty desk next to him without taking off his coat or bag. He stares hard at his computer screen, as if he could just disappear inside it. Pam gazes at his back, not even pretending to answer the ringing phone.

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At first, he still comes by. He had suggested, one night while they were still in Stamford, that they share a place in Scranton. She was torn between elation that he had basically suggested they move in together and the sinking feeling that she would just have to move her stuff again when it all fell apart. Karen was the one to say no, and she gives him credit for looking at least a tiny bit disappointed. Her compromise is a cup on the edge of her white porcelain sink containing his spare toothbrush, a drawer and a gap in her closet to hang a work suit. He uses them all.  He tries, he really does, and it makes her love him all the more. And hate him a little, too, because he’s such a gentleman about the whole situation, even though she sees him glance up every time the phone rings at reception. He brings her flowers on the weekends and Herr’s chips at the office and makes her CDs for her car and doesn’t breathe a word about them to Pam.

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It’s funny, she thinks, that it is something so small that makes her bring an end to her and Jim. She’s at her desk, surreptitiously playing Call of Duty on her computer, alone, when she sees him go for one jellybean too many. She sighs and lets her hands drop from the keyboard, allowing her soldier to be ruthlessly gunned down. It’s almost five anyway, so she shuts off her screen and grabs her purse. Her coat is hanging on the rack next to Pam, a sort of self-torture she inflicts on herself every morning, fresh out of bed with Jim, and as she lifts it off the hook, she pauses in front of a confused  Pam and tells her not to fuck it up.

Jim, of course, is at her door by five-thirty, wondering if she’s okay, his eyes, those eyes she could never resist, filled with worry. She doesn’t let him past the porch, just hands him a banker box, maybe the same one he used to pack up his desk in Stamford, full of his stuff, minus one gray unwashed t-shirt that she has hidden under her pillow for when she wakes up in the night missing him.

“Just don’t fuck it up” she says, instead of good-bye.