"He's watching me," she said to herself as she rummaged around her vehicle. Why couldn't she find those damn cigarettes? Her purse had only yielded an empty box of Virginia Slims, some Altoids, and a bottle of Tylenol. She popped two Tylenol capsules and turned to the glove compartment. All she found was the registration for her car, a pamphlet on how to change a flat tire, and a napkin from Chili's, on which was written the contact information for the Lackawanna County offices. Frustrated, she pulled out her keys and floored it to the nearest 7-11.
He could blackmail her for this. But if he reported her to corporate for leaving in the middle of the meeting and driving off for a petty reason, he'd also have to explain why she was in such a mental state to begin with. He couldn't bring up their relationship to corporate again; it had almost ruined Jan's career the last time. Even he knew better than that, having climbed the company ranks himself. This was a strictly personal affair; so of course, he needed to inform the entire office. "Everyone in the conference room, now."
Jim sat in front of the camera. "Jan made me come back here, the receptionist won't speak to me, leaving me to look to Dwight for regular conversation, and now I may not even get to transfer because my boss is more concerned with getting some. Life is great."
"Pam, move it, I need you as much as I need everyone else. You've built a happy relationship and gotten jiggy with it and can tell me how to do the same," Michael pressured. She was sitting at her desk, refusing to yield as the rest of the employees filed into the conference room.
"Michael, I can't. I…I…I have a headache. I don't think I could handle a group environment." Especially not one that included a certain, scruffy-haired salesman.
"Come on Pam! You sound like you want to leave our family. We've already seen enough of that. Besides, it's your job to take notes at ANY office meeting, including this one."
She shoved her wedding paperwork behind some old expense reports for safekeeping and hesitantly shuffled into the conference room.
"Now, as you all know, I am in the middle of a complicated scheme of relationships. A love triangle, you may call it. And I need to win back one endpoint of this triangle."
"A vertex," Stanley quipped.
"Exactly. I need to inVERt the TEXture of this relationship. I am going to place the suggestion box on the table, and I want everyone to give me their best romantic advice in the next five minutes."
Dwight walked out of the conference room and sat at his computer. He clicked through a few files and selected a portion of a page to print.
"I have been waiting for Michael to ask me for advice for years. I have a whole list of situations prepared with responses to each of them. For a love triangle, construct a comparison chart based on factors such as salary, not that Michael needs any financial help, offspring, medical records, fertility, physiology, strength in matters of physical labor, bladder capacity, and appreciation for the brilliant person that Michael is," he read in his latest talking head.
"Okay, all advice in! Let's see what your minds have to offer. There will be a bonus mystery gift for whoever has the best advice. Can I get a drum roll please?" Only Dwight pounded on the table. "The first piece of advice, stop living such a sinful lifestyle and choose. No good, who came up with that piece of crap?"
Angela looked downward, and Dwight slipped his hand under the table to comfort her. Pam glanced quickly over at Jim, hoping to point it out to him, but looked away immediately. How pathetic of her was it to forget that things weren't like the old days anymore?
"Next we have get them to strip down and mud wrestle. Leave the loser in the mud. Sexy, but no."
Kevin launched into his trademark grin. "Mud wrestling is hot."
"Get the job done so she can go back to New York, proving to her you understand the boundaries of your relationship. Come on people! Give up on love, eenie meenie miney moe, follow office relationships protocol. Does anyone realize how serious this is? This is worse than downsizing."
The cameraman filmed Creed. "Eenie meenie miney moe is one of the greatest decision making processes ever. I use it all the time to determine whether product quality passes or fails. It does my job for me."
"This is the last suggestion in the box. Show her you care. Aww, how sweet. Who wrote this?" Oscar raised his hand. "You're a genius. It's like you have a special knowledge of relationships, like those guys on Queer Eye or something." Oscar buried his head in his hands. "I'll have the bonus to you at the end of the day. Everyone thank Oscar for actually understanding the situation. You can all get back to work, and not a word about this to Jan."
Michael strode back into his office and pulled out a pad of paper. He divided it into two columns: likes and dislikes. Under likes he had written smoking, firing people, and Michael Scott. Under dislikes he had divorce, casino night, and tortilla chips, which he'd discovered that she especially hated after ordering them as an appetizer at Chili's. So much of his knowledge of her was based on obvious attributes, the kind that he could never approach.
He was busy trying to figure out the best way to prove to here that tortilla chips were actually quite tasty when her car screeched back into the parking lot. She must've sped to get back there so quickly. When she climbed out of the vehicle, her hair was disheveled and her stockings had a large gash in them from her ankle to her knee. She was a wreck, sitting on the hood of her car with a cigarette in her hand.
Michael was shocked by what he saw. He couldn't be the reason behind her transformation from radiant businesswoman to haggard mess. He knew he had annoyed her, but surely all of this wasn't his fault. There had to be something else he could blame.
Unlike how Michael saw her, Jan felt as though a weight had been lifted from her. She may have been in a tattered disarray, but she could think again. She knew exactly how she would act when she went back inside, keeping the conversation on subjects related to Jim's transfer and ignoring anything Michael did otherwise. For the first time that day she felt like she was going to make it through another day at Scranton.
Meanwhile, Michael continued to contemplate. Suddenly he saw it, flickering by her hand, the ruinous substance. "Her kryptonite," he said to himself.
"Michael, did you want to discuss Superman? The new movie comes out shortly. I'm camping out in front of the theater on opening night, do you want to come?" Leave it to Dwight to hone in on any conversation involving comic book characters.
"No Dwight. Go away. This is a deeply personal matter."
"Is she still out there, smoking? Smoking kills. I don't know why you'd ever date a smoker. It's so bad for any future offspring. There was once a smoker in the Schrute family, Mose's sister Trudy. We threw her off the beet truck after making a shipment and have never seen her again. Those smoker's lungs could never handle the walk back."
"Exactly."