Chapter Five: Can't go back.
Nellie went into a shopping spree to get rid of her frustration which built up after she spent her entire morning (or something like that, since she woke up really late) in an office, bored as hell, only to ruin her interview, panic and then thinking that she probably would be forced to book a flight to go back to England as soon as possible, where David Brent would probably fire her because she didn't do what he asked her to do. Bummer.
While at Scranton's mall, she saw a musical instruments store and thought: "wouldn't it be great if I could just buy twelve pianos and smash them?" she giggled and continued buying unnecessary stuff and unsuccessfully tried to find a store called "Planet of the Hats".
The Doctor couldn´t let Nellie give up, she had to stay, he had to do something, but while he intended to finish his music sheet and call Kate Lethbridge-Stewart to make her do some arrangements with the Britsh Chamber of Commerce and find a proper job for Nellie in the States, he found out that the TARDIS had opened a portal in the Royal Albert Hall on July 27th, 2008; a Graske showed up and that meant trouble.
Luckily for him, Jo Bennett called Nellie immediately after handing her dogs to Gabe Lewis, talking to Jim Halpert, mocking Dwight Schrute and dealing with his weird attempts of getting the job and dealing with Kelly Kapoor's concern about Gabe Lewis:
-"Hello, Nellie, dear, I need you to come back to Dunder Mifflin for your interview"- she said with her rude voice tone, (a little softer since she estimated Nellie a lot).
-"But I just had my interview!"- ("and ruined it completely", complained Donna in her head) which confused Nellie, who then sighed before answering – "Hello, Jo, I'm fine, thanks for asking, by the way, I didn't see you there and I was expecting that you explained something… anything! to me"
-"Sorry about that, I had to take my dogs for their appointment with the esthetician really early but there was a long line, and I just couldn't leave earlier, they have to be pampered or they get really grumpy. Why don't I make it up to you at lunch?. There´s not any great dog restaurant on Scranton but they'll eat at home, so we can just go and grab a cup of coffee after you get back to Dunder Mifflin and finish the interview"
-"Sure, I'll go there but…"- Nellie was about to ask her how did the interview go, when Jo interrupted her – "Well then, I'll wait for you here at my place and then we'll go for lunch!, someone will take my dogs for lunch for me, just get back there and I'll have someone there to pick you up and bring you here!".
Nellie had just enough time to go back to the hotel, leave her purchases there, fix her makeup and do her hair again (she looked like a mess since she had stopped at Krispy Kreme and eaten a dozen doughnuts while crying) before rushing back to the office and finish her interview.
She was wondering why she would have to come back when she was a mess in the interview. Maybe Jo pulled her strings and she got the job?. She kept thinking about it while she rushed to her hotel room. After a couple of minutes she got there, left her bags on the bed, did her makeup from scratch, did her hair again "Thank god I opted for an easy hairdo this morning" she thought, and rushed back to Dunder Mifflin, which took her a little less this time, since she remembered how to get there.
Jo gave her a warm welcome through the phone when Nellie called: -"Jo?, I just got back to the office, what now?"
-"Hello darling, sorry for making you come back to that piece of hell, go with the receptionist, she'll explain to you what to do next, she's a really sweet kid, maybe a little weird, but just ignore that". And then she hung up. Nellie approached the receptionist and saw her really sad, playing with a sock puppet. What a change from the happy girl she saw in the morning, you know, the one who seemed a lot like super annoying Dawn Tinsley…
-"hello there, uh.. I'm Nellie Bertram, Jo Bennett told me to come back here and talk to you"
-"uh… yes, hello, come here so I can put the microphone in your back and then the guys from the documentary are going to ask you something, just out of the blew, at any given time, right after they've interviewed the other guys"
Erin put the microphone on Nellie´s skirt and then gave her the wire, told her where to see the guys from the documentary, who then put Andy, Nellie and other applicants (Fred, the Finger Lakes guy and Dwight) in a group, and asked a lot of questions about their interview. They told Nellie and some of the others who hadn't been in the documentary before that some things would be edited and that they had to answer as naturally as possible.
When they started asking the other applicants about the job, Donna woke up again inside Nellie's head and answered for her, blocking her fear with her confidence and sass, too fast for Nellie to notice: "This job?, oh yeah, I'll get it, Jo's an old friend, I think… I'm her best friend, She's not my best friend" she added quickly… the sentence "best friend" reminded her of another man, a weird tall man who was often mistaken by her boyfriend… Who was that? Was it Henry, the stage magician?, no he had been his boyfriend, it was someone else, it was…
Thank god someone called Nellie from the parking lot, it was Jo's driver, who told her that if she was ready, he was going to take her to have lunch with Jo. This made Nellie react quickly, replacing Donna with herself again, not allowing her to remember anything else… We all know what would happen if she did…
She took the microphone off and gave it to one of the documentary guys, and jumped into the car, after a little less than an hour, she was at a fancy restaurant with Jo.
-"Hello Nellie!, my girl!, loved your integrity move, Jim Halpert told me you never mentioned the fact that you knew me!"
As always, Jo lead the most of the conversation, they ordered food, wine, had a fantastic meal and then started discussing work.
-"I'm not going to sugar coat this Nellie, it's possible that you don't get the job. Jim told me that you were a little off during the interview… which is really weird, they also told me that you had a lot of ideas, and since I have a little more business vision than those salesmen, spill them out, maybe I could use one or two of them for Sabre" –said Jo gesturing with her fork filled with pasta.
"Well" – Nellie started saying, of course she couldn't repeat the zen office stupid idea or the ridiculous "put some extra cubicles", that had been just her panic talking, it made things so bad that she was embarrassed and then she ran away to the mall. Suddenly, Nellie started remembering her shopping spree, she had seen a lot of retail stores in the mall while shopping… that was possibly the birth of her best idea! – "I was thinking, maybe you could open a chain of retail stores for paper!, like a store I saw here, it's called Staples i think, it sells stationery, but maybe, you could do a store like that, that specializes on paper!"
And of course, Jo loved the idea…
