emunotemo: thanks for the review! glad you liked it )
i feel bad that i haven't updated this story in like, an eternity ( and i apologize right now, and i hope since this one's kinda long, it'll make up for it? possibly? hopefully?
Michael pulls out of the parking lot with Dwight in the shotgun seat, staring nervously out the window. It creeps Michael out a little bit to see Dwight so…un Dwight-ish.
"It's like he's in love with the thing," Michael explains to us, shrugging a little. "I mean, hey, I'm all up for the whole 'love whoever you want' thing, but I think Dwight's gotten a little to excessive. But I dunno, I mean, whatever. Just don't sue me, okay? Okay."
Jim walks casually up to Pam's desk and plops the key down behind her "receptionist" nameplate thing. She looks up at him, and he taps the palms of his hands nonchalantly on her desk, making a nice little rhythm that he has quite the knack for creating.
Pam likes it. She won't tell him that he's a beatmaster genius, but she thinks so. She believes the Jim would kick Roy's ass in a beatmaster tournament, if there ever was such a thing.
"What?" Pam asks the camera. "There could be a competition for it! What channel? Well, it could be on that G4 channel, or whatever it's called, with all the Ninja Warrior people running around!"
"I'm kinda thirsty," he says, "and I forgot my wallet in my car." He pauses and glances at Stanley, who has just gotten up to go make some copies. Jim waits until Stanley is back at his desk before continuing.
"Being the lazy guy that I am, I was wondering if you'd be willing to make a contribution to the Help-Quench-Jim-Halpert's-Thirst Fund?"
"I…'d love to," Pam answers, getting up slowly and shoving her wheely chair back. "How much do you need?" she asks as the two walk towards the break room together.
"That's twenty-two times Jim's gone to Pam's desk this week," Angela informs us, checking off another box on her Pam-Pong scoreboard that she keeps hidden in her desk drawer, with pictures of her cats and overly mature babies that Oscar and Kevin refuse to let her pin up.
Pam closes the door softly behind her, and even though she takes a pretty good amount of care to close it, it still makes that weird rickety noise that some old doors would make in an outdated school. Y'know what I mean?
"Boppin' Bob's?" Pam asks, exasperatedly falling into a chair.
"I need my drink money, Beesley," Jim insists, holding his hand out, grinning. "Gotta make sure nobody suspects anything."
"I don't have enough for a soda," Pam tells him, reaching into her pockets and pulling out two quarters.
"That's fine," Jim answers, grabbing the coins and shoving them quickly into the machine. He pauses, and the machine waits for him to insert another quarter. Jim turns to Pam and shrugs, smacking his forehead incessantly, amazed at his stupidity for not bringing enough change.
"Jim, c'mon, stop!" Pam tells him, covering her mouth with her hand. "I really don't think anyone's suspicious."
"Pam watches Ninja Warrior?" Jim asks, awestruck. He chuckles a little. "Wow. I mean, wow. I don't even watch that."
"How did you come up with Boppin' Bob's?" Pam wants to know.
"I found it on Creed's desk," Jim answers simply, shrugging.
"No you didn't!" Pam yelps, shoving him as he takes a seat across from her. "You're such a liar!"
Jim grins. "Seriously, though, it's a real place."
"Dwight, um, so, where are those Terminator sunglasses you had earlier?" Michael asks, turning to the camera and grinning a little. "Those mad cool lenses? Those stunnah shades?"
"Gone," Dwight answers stiffly. "My brother took them." He pauses melodramatically. "And he never gave them back."
"Oh. Well, okay, then. You should get 'em back, Mr. Schrute. Maybe they'll make you feel better. Make you feel ill, y'know what I'm sayin'…" Michael pauses, trying to come up with the right word, "…home-piece?"
"The correct term is 'homeslice'," Dwight says to the camera sternly, his face still drained of color. "Of course, if Michael wants to call me 'home-piece,' then I'll gladly go by that name, because Michael Scott can call you whatever he wants. However, if any of you go out and say to someone, 'What's poppin', my home-piece?' I would feel bad that I didn't warn you. So don't blame me if you get beat up. I warned you fully."
"I know how to talk to the kids," Michael proudly informs us. "I'm a real smooth-talker, y'know. You don't really have the chance to see it in the office, but in the outside world, I'm just a beast!
"Kids tell me stuff they don't even tell their parents. Y'know why? Because I understand them, that's why. And they understand me. So it all works out in the end."
Michael and Dwight finally pull up into the parking lot of Boppin' Bob's, and they see Boppin' Bob himself just getting ready to close up shop. Dwight gasps and shoots out of the car as if he was a little firework going off.
"Mr. Bob!" he yells, running frantically across the parking lot, waving his arms over his head. "Wait one second! Wait!"
"Sorry, dude, we're closed," Bob tells Dwight solemnly.
Bob doesn't look anything like Dwight or Michael expected. He's actually around seventeen, with that bushy brown hair that a lot of guys lean towards these days. He doesn't look like a Boppin' Bob at all, and yet he reacts to the name. Weird.
"I thought it was really weird," Michael pitches in.
"Can you just let us go in for a few seconds? We know exactly what we're lookin' for, home-piece," Michael pleads, spitting out some mad slang at Bob.
"Home-piece?" the kid repeats, obviously confused. He glances at the camera a little awkwardly.
Dwight moves his frame into the camera shot, blocking Bob's view of it. "Do you have a bobblehead that looks like me? Like a mini me?"
"Like in Austin Powers?" Bob asks hesitantly.
"No. As in, he looks just like me, only smaller, in bobblehead form," Dwight rephrases slowly, as if he's talking to a five-year-old.
Bob stands there for a few seconds, thinking it over, glancing at Dwight every so often.
"Actually…" he begins, "we did have one that looked a lot like you, now that you mention it."
"Well, boy, we'd like to buy it off of you right here, right now," Dwight informs him.
"Ahhh," Bob sighs, waving his hand absentmindedly in the air. "Well, a guy just came in at around twelve this afternoon and bought it off us for fifteen bucks."
"A guy bought Dwight for fifteen bucks?" Michael repeats, a little stunned.
"Personally," Michael scoffs, "I'd only pay around seven-fifty for Dwight, and that's pushing the envelope."
Bob nods, trying to act solemnly.
"What'd this guy look like?" Dwight demands.
The kid pauses again, thinking over the way the earlier buyer looked. "He was kinda tall," he starts, his eyes staring up at the sky. "He had one of those shoulder bags, um, a messenger bag. And he had that type of brown hair, like the kind I have, y'know?...but maybe it was a little bit longer.
"He bought it fast," Bob continues, "'cause he said he had to get back. He was on his lunch break, I guess."
"Halpert!" Dwight yelped angrily. "Damn it!" With that, he lunged towards Michael's passenger car door. "Michael!" he shouts. "Can you hurry, please? We need to get back before Jim leaves!"
"It's five ten, Dwight," Michael tells him. "Jim's long gone." He glances at the camera and smirks. "Unless of course, he's a nerdy suck-up who wants to stay extra hours to try and…well…suck up."
"Jim's too lazy for that," Dwight says sadly. His lips pursed, he declares, "First thing tomorrow morning, Halpert is going down!"
"My name is Isaac," the kid tells the camera. "Not Bob."