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She wonders, if she were to draw a map of the places life has taken her on this Dunder Mifflin 8½ by 11" Multipurpose 30% recycled white paper, would she be happy with how it's all turned out. With the decisions she's made. With the decisions that were forced on her. With how, despite all her best efforts, she keeps ending up in the place she least wants to be.
Stamford wasn't really a choice. After college, she had sent out her résumé to a million different places but had to settle for a sales job in a state she didn't even really like. Moving from New York to Connecticut was painful, but mostly it was her fault. Maybe she should have listened to her dad when he said accounting was a much less competitive field than marketing. Maybe she should have joined more clubs, done more extracurricular activities. Maybe she should have enjoyed her college years a little less.
In any case, the plan was to put in her time at Stamford and eventually transfer to corporate. Of course, nothing in her life works out that neatly.
This is how this whole stupid mess starts. Three years ago, Josh announced that the sales department would have to stay late to do order form consolidation. As soon as the office emptied, Andy pulled out a bottle of whiskey from his bottom desk drawer, and Karen – being new and wanting to fit in – agreed. The next morning, she woke up on her couch, fully dressed and wondering how she got home when her car was still at work. Never again, she promised herself as she blindly searched for some aspirin.
Fast forward to now, when a very tall, very cute, very drunk paper salesman rides his bike into a bush.
It sounds like there should be a punch line, but there's really not.
Even while kissing him she knows it's a mistake. He can barely stand and tastes like nail polish remover or whatever rotgut Andy brought in. This isn't the type of first kiss you tell your grandchildren about, but the confused, drunken type where level of interest is questionable and nothing but awkwardness ever comes out of it. She has to wonder how much of this is her taking advantage of Jim and how much is his actually wanting this. Karen's the first to pull away and Jim blinks at her blearily from the foot of his bed. She lets herself out.
She expects the next day to be extremely uncomfortable, but Jim is his usual friendly self.
"So, do you have any plans for tonight?" he asks with a smile that suddenly makes moving to Scranton seem like a good idea.
Moving to Scranton was a bad idea. Moving anywhere where the only person you know is your boyfriend is always a bad idea. It makes her dependent on Jim in a way she's not used to, so she's grateful when she starts getting along with Pam. It's nice. It's the first time in a long time she's had a real girlfriend.
But as the months go by, she's starting to realize that Pam has this unassuming way of making Karen feel guilty about dating her own boyfriend. She's not sure how she manages it, but it's really beginning to get on her nerves.
For their sixth month anniversary, Karen gets Jim a briefcase. An expensive, leather briefcase. He smirks and raises an eyebrow at her over the restaurant table.
"I just thought you needed something a little more grown-up. For when, I don't know, Jan comes by or something," she finds herself defending her choice of gift. He hasn't said thank you yet.
"Do I need to be impressing Jan?" he asks. Jim has this way of making everything into a joke with just one look, and that's beginning to piss her off too.
"Maybe. I don't know. What could it hurt." Her words are coming out angrier, while he just keeps getting calmer. "I thought we were on the same page about this. Why did you accept Michael's number two spot then?"
"To mess with Dwight?" He puts the briefcase and wrapping paper down on the floor. "Seriously, Karen, I can't be defined as a paper salesman for the rest of my life."
She doesn't point out that she's a paper salesman – saleswoman, salesperson, whatever – too. "It's just a job. You don't have to be defined by what you do."
He gives her that look again. "What are you defined by then?"
The people I love, she wants to say. You. But she knows he would resent her for that.
She ends up back in New York.
Jim offers to pay for the extra night at the hotel, in the middle of breaking up with her, as if this gallant gesture makes up for anything. She tells him to shove his credit card up his ass. "I don't want your fucking money, you dickwad. Just get out."
She's being ungraceful. She's being undignified. She's being all the things her mother would lecture her about. Jim leaves without saying anything else and Karen can just imagine him, getting into his car and driving back to Scranton to declare his intentions to Pam. He'd have that big fat stupid grin on his face that he gets whenever he sees her, which Karen would like to say he used to save for her, but that's not true at all. He never smiled at her like that.
She has to find another way of getting home, she just realizes.
Fuck.
The next morning she wakes up to her ringing cell phone, and a part of her hopes that it's Jim. Whether to try and get back together with him or for another chance to call him an asshole, she doesn't know. It's David Wallace, though.
He offers her another – albeit lower – position at corporate and Karen accepts without really hearing what it is. She agrees to drinks at the Plaza – to go over the details, David says – and it's not until her third scotch does she realize that David's hand on her thigh means something. She looks at him expectantly.
He tries to give her excuses about how his wife doesn't understand him, but Karen calls him on his bullshit.
"Shut up, David. I've met your wife and she's great." Karen sets her drink down on the table and stares him straight in the eyes. "What exactly do you want from me?"
He draws his hand away and leans back in his chair, smiling mirthlessly. He won't meet her eyes. If he's angered or amused by her boldness, she can't tell and more importantly, doesn't care. She's tired of mind games and mixed signals and half-truths. She would like, just for once, a straight answer.
David finally looks at her. "I want to have sex with you."
"Because?"
"I like your ass."
Karen finishes the last of her scotch. "Let's get a room."
Sleeping with David feels like her first real adult relationship. She had considered Jim that, but realizes now that she didn't do much with him that she hadn't done with her college boyfriends. Pubs and frat parties and video games. David pulls her dress pants off her hips and it vaguely occurs to her that she's not wearing any underwear. She didn't have any clean ones when getting dressed this morning, since she hadn't foreseen being left in New York while packing two days ago.
She finds out that sex with David is nothing like sex with Jim, for which she's overwhelmingly grateful. It's cold and distant, and never once does he say her name. Karen doesn't mind. If she's going to be made to feel like the other woman, at least this time it's with her knowledge.
David slides his hands over her bare ass and Karen chucks his glasses across the room. He makes a disapproving noise, which she silences by kissing him hard. She likes the control she has over the situation. She likes knowing exactly where she stands with David, who'll go back to treating her like any other employee, maybe even a little meaner now that she knows exactly what he looks like when he's coming.
"This can never happen again," David says afterwards.
Karen laughs. "I can promise that."