The next Wednesday threw them all into turmoil, when Michael revealed, under great duress, that the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin was closing. Stamford would absorb a few of them and the rest would have to search for new jobs.
Neither mourning nor celebrating like her coworkers, Danica gave thought to what she would do after Dunder-Mifflin: a subject that had gone neglected for some time. Would she find another job in Scranton? Go back to Alaska with Tanya? The latter was more likely, so Danica shoved those concerns away, when Kelly came from her break sobbing.
Ryan had not broken up with her, Kelly insisted. She refused to call it that. But they had had a talk about how he would be working at one place and she would be working somewhere else and they should probably go their separate ways. Some references to Romeo and Juliet got thrown into Kelly's muddled explanation.
Ryan lounges in the camera room. This is the most relaxed he has been for almost two weeks. "This worked out for me. Michael's going to give me a great recommendation."
He doesn't say everything he's thinking. About how when hearing that Dunder-Mifflin was closing it was like a great weight on his chest has been released. The problems that have plagued him, that have robbed him of sleep and free time and sanity, no longer mattered.
That is all he needs. Distance from Dunder-Mifflin. Distance from Kelly and her crazy parents. Distance from Danica. He could focus on business school, get a better job, and forget about those dreams of red-eyed people and birds drinking blood.
Kelly talked and cried incessantly, leaving Danica to field the calls from clients about rumors they heard. Danica told them what she had been instructed to tell them: that Corporate has made no confirmations regarding the closing of any of Dunder-Mifflin's offices. She was the one that picked up Alec's call.
"Gita told me about Dunder Mifflin closing," he stated. "Is that true?"
"I can't talk about it over the phone," Danica said, grateful to rely on her professionalism.
"Does that mean yes?"
"No."
He sighed. "Are you going to insist on playing your corporate game for this?"
"Yes." Gita might have to answer to Alec's Volturi orders, but Danica could disobey this. "I'm just exercising caution," she retorted. "As you would prefer me to abide by that quality."
"You only abide by that quality when it suits you," Alec grumbled. "Would you like me to take you to lunch?"
"Are you kidding?"
"We'll have sufficient cover to go out."
He meant hunting, Danica translated. "I should be working." She lowered the microphone on her headset and asked Kelly. "Can you take over while I go to lunch?"
She expected Kelly to burst out sobbing, as she had every time anyone addressed her since her talk with Ryan. Instead, Kelly leaned back, to listen more closely to their conversation. "Is that your hot cousin? Go. I'll cover the phones."
Danica was too late to clasp her hand over the microphone; Alec must have heard the "hot cousin" remark.
"You have no more excuses, Danica," he warned her.
"Oh, fine." Danica tried to sound put out.
"I'll meet you outside." Then the dial tone sounded.
Danica marched from her desk to the window. Dark clouds assembled over the sky. Thorin the newbie's doing. At least this meant she and Alec would not be alone.
"I'll be back in an hour," she told Kelly and Toby. Toby commented that there was no need to hurry back.
Michael and Dwight left around the same time as Danica. They were planning on driving to New York and confronting David Wallace about putting these good people out of work. More power to them.
Alec and Thorin waited by the gate. Both of them wore contacts. Thorin immediately stooped over when she approached. "She's not Volturi," Alec barked, a less than chivalrous barb at Danica's station in the vampire hierarchy
The boy stood. Although biologically he was a couple of years older than Alec or Jane, he twitched and swallowed excessively, like Danica had seen Jasper do when he was around humans. Though apparently he made prodigious strides in mastering his talent, his thirst was still overpowering him.
"Hi, Thorin," she greeted civilly.
"You're American?" Thorin asked. Hope lilted in his voice. Like me, he could have finished, if Alec allowed him.
"I've been here long enough," Danica said.
Thorin's attention wavered when he saw Michael and Dwight at Michael's Sebring. Alec announced, "Let's go eat. We'll go the woods."
It appeared that Thorin had absorbed the Volturi's prejudices about animal blood, because he balked at the idea of hunting elk. Alec silenced his complaints. "You are a host," he admonished. "And as a host, you will have to concede to the guest's demands with no mind to how much they might displease you."
Danica crouched when the elk came into sight. She pretended not to hear Alec's instructions.
"See any good ones?" Alec asked. Suddenly he was close to her.
Danica pointed toward the right end of the herd. "One there. And at that end. You can have the frisky one."
Alec spotted the elk that bucked its head. "He would present the most challenge," he said, almost approving.
"He has no family," Danica stated. Her hands bit into the bark of the branch she peered over, leaving nude welts.
"After you."
Danica vaulted over the tree branch. She ran full speed at the herd and snatched the elk she had picked for herself. Thorin followed suit, matching her moves exactly for his catch. Alec caught the frisky elk. All of this happened before the rest of the herd realized the absences within them.
The vampires drank their fill. Thorin drank quickly, then kicked at the body in frustration. Danica gathered some of the leftover blood in a full bottle of water.
Alec asked what she was going to do now that she was out of a job. Danica admitted she did not know.
"You'll probably go back to Alaska," Alec commented. The way he intoned it sounded much more like an order.
"I don't know," Danica said, neutrally.
She waited for him to pursue the subject more, but he ceased his inquiry. They buried their elk corpses and left.
As Ryan had some free time coming up, he stopped at the library for a couple of books. His job search should not take too much effort: he already had his resume and several versions of cover letters prepared and he already had several job sites bookmarked. He might not get instant results, but once he finished his business degree and procured Michael's recommendation, he would have many more options than he did before Dunder Mifflin.
He picked up the latest Chuck Palahniuk book, then wandered over to the nonfiction area, browsing for a biography. He stopped at the history shelves when the word Bosnia popped out at him.
He recalled that Danica was connected to Bosnia somehow. She was born there or something. That was irrelevant to his life now; since he split with Kelly, he would not see Danica anymore when the branch shut down.
He added that book to the pile. And everything else on the Bosnian War. Black clouds had gathered in the sky when he returned.
He was crossing back to the office building and paging through Misha Glenny's The Fall of Yugoslavia, when Danica's emo-goth cousin startled him.
"Where is my brother?" she asked. Even without those red-eyed contacts, she bore a disturbing aura, like a porcelain doll possessed by evil.
"I haven't seen him," Ryan said.
Jane narrowed her eyes when she spotted the book that had captured his attention. She lunged forward and snatched it from his hands.
She turned the book over so the cover faced her, caressing the letters with her long fingers.
"Where did you get this book?" she snapped at him.
"Uh, the library?"
The girl's mouth twisted into a cruel frown. "Do you think me an idiot?" she asked. The softcover book crumpled in her grip. She let it fall to the damp ground.
Then, with a swirl of her black outfit, she turned and marched out of the parking lot.
"And then he said that since we would be getting different jobs, probably in different places, that we should start seeing other people," Kelly explained. "He said he didn't want to hold me back."
"How terrible," Tanya murmured.
"Life is so unfair," Kelly wailed. "Ryan is my destiny. We were supposed to be together forever. And now we can't, just because some stupid CEO doesn't think this branch is making enough money or something. It is so typical of Corporate to put money ahead of true love."
"I guess they didn't think of this," Tanya said. She was not going to be the one to tell Kelly that Ryan did not have to break up with her. And that shoddy excuse about not wanting to hold her back. It sounded like he did not want her holding him back.
But then it has been clear to Tanya that Ryan was looking for an exit from their relationship since Diwali.
Ryan entered, stumbling to a halt when he saw Tanya in Danica's chair. "You, too?" he said gracelessly.
"Oh, Ryan!" A fresh round of tears spilled down Kelly's cheeks. She pressed a damp tissue over her face.
"Nice to see you too." Tanya retorted.
"Sorry." Ryan said. "I just ran into another one of her cousins. The emo-goth."
"Jane?" Tanya guessed. Her fists clenched to her sides as she rose from the chair. "What did she want?"
"Looking for Alec," Ryan said, doubtfully.
"Alec took Danica to lunch." Kelly's words were muffled under her tissues. She tilted her head back, her mascara-ringed eyes meeting Ryan's.
"Oh great," Tanya groaned. She could imagine Jane's furious reaction to this.
"Have I met Jane?" Kelly, subdued in her misery, asked.
Tanya shook her head. "She's a total bitch. I hope she doesn't cause any more trouble."
"Is it a Simovic family tradition to converge together every time one of you loses a job?" Ryan commented, bewildered, but the girls' jabber drowned him out.
Ryan gave up and went back to his desk.
Jan strode in late in the afternoon. After the emo-goth's peculiar attention to his book, Ryan felt too self-conscious to read it at work, so he passed the time by flinging his now useless business cards, one by one.
"Where's Michael?" Jan asked, after she glanced in the branch manager's office, only to find it empty.
"He's not here." Pam answered helpfully. "I don't know where he is."
"We-" Jan paced back to the office, then surveyed the room. Nobody was attending to their work. Like Ryan, they were all waiting out their last day.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"We know the branch is closing," Phyllis sulkily informed her. "Michael told us."
"Oh, God." Jan's murmur suggested she was not wholly surprised. She dropped her briefcase to the floor and announced, "You know what, everybody, I'm sure there is a better way to do this, but I've driven something like four hundred miles today and I'm completely exhausted. So I'm just going to tell you. Your branch is not closing. Stamford is closing. For the time being, your jobs are safe."
Tanya darted back from the door, where she had eavesdropped on the main room. "Jan just said Scranton's not closing."
Kelly, startled, swiped her mascara wand against her cheek. The mascara dropped to the floor as she sprang up. "Ohmigod!" she shrieked. "Ohmigod."
She grasped at Tanya's arms and jumped up and down with joy. Tanya jumped too, though she had no need to worry about keeping her job.
Danica uncrossed her legs and swiveled her chair out. "So what happened?" she wanted to know.
"Stamford is closing," Tanya said. "Not Scranton. Michael must have gotten it wrong. And some of the Stamford people will be moving here."
The last fact had no significance to Kelly, but Danica caught the silent message. Jim may be coming back to Scranton. Alice was right.
"This is so awesome!" Kelly shrilled. Then she took off, presumably in search of Ryan.
Toby fished for an aspirin and swallowed it.
Pam was in an unusually chatty mood. "I guess some new people should be coming from Stamford," she commented to Ryan. "Should be fun. New blood."
Ryan watched as Pam dangled the tea bag in her cup. The brown-red liquid furled out.
"Is Jim coming back?" he asked, in an effort to distract himself from the tea.
"I haven't thought about it." Pam said. "I don't know."
"I just don't want it to be weird, you know," Ryan confided. "I mean I took his old job and his old desk . . ."
"Yeah, that might be weird," Pam quickly agreed.
Very encouraging, Ryan thought. He was finding Perky Pam to be a disturbing person. He pushed away from the counter and walked over to the refrigerator.
"Overall, though we still have our jobs, so good news, right?" Pam chirped.
Ryan bent over to pick up a water bottle. He summoned a lie. "Oh, yeah tota-"
"Aaaaah!"
Kelly threw herself against him. Ryan barely dodged tearing his arm off with the refrigerator door.
"I'm so happy we don't have to break up, Ryan!" Kelly shrieked between the noisy kisses she planted on his mouth. "This is the best day of my life!"