"Damon Gant, you blithering ninny!"
Gant winched a smile onto his face and turned the page of his epic-length salary report -- he was too used to the door slamming open to flinch anymore.
"Ahh, Deedee, is it that time of week already," he mused aloud. Carry the two, adjust the tax bracket. "Wonderful to see you. Have you been swimming lately?"
"Don't you give me that load of rubbish!"
He looked over his spectacles to the wrath-pinched face of Wendy Oldbag, who was poised over his desk and huffing like an asthmatic rhinoceros. Truly, his workdays held no greater joy.
"Delinquents!" she snarled, "Hooligans! Whippersnappers!"
He stared. A particularly gruesome vein began to throb in Wendy's forehead. He stared some more for good measure.
"What about them?"
Slamming a raisin-like fist on the polished oak of his desk, she snapped, "You know gosh darned well what! It's those kids sneaking into the studio! What in blue blazes are your men doing, leaving a woman of my age to chase whippersnappers all day?! So help me if my heart gives out, you'd have some trouble on your hands! Extra police presence, pah, I've never seen such a pitiful excuse for an improvement in all my life!"
"Extra presence...?" Gant leaned back in his chair, and tugged his hair to watch it spring. "I don't recall agreeing to that, I'm afraid."
"I didn't think you would! Of all the nerve, turning a blind eye to sneaky little trespassers while a woman as lovely as myself gets run ragged day in and day out! And it's not as though the management isn't grumbling, if I lose my job because of your department's incompetence--"
"Now really, there's no need for this," Gant growled. He paused -- smiling again, benevolent as warm morning -- and he added, "I'm sure we can make some arrangement that suits your needs as well as mine, right Deedee?"
Wendy scowled harder. "No deals, you snake! I want a battalion standing at attention around the studio! Yesterday!"
Opening a desk drawer, leafing through a rainbow of files, he replied, "No, no, I'm really quite sure we can work something out. Ahh, here." Gant put a form on the desktop, and pinned it with a gloved finger. "This request for a restraining order was filed yesterday. I couldn't help but notice the familiar name."
She read-- the huffing stopped. The scowl slowly, slowly faded. And, lifting a wizened hand to her mouth, Wendy murmured, "Why, of all the ungrateful ..."
"Yes, there's really nothing pleasant about these orders." Gant smiled broader anyway.
"That's-- He couldn't ...!"
"Two hundred feet away at all times and no contact by any means, yes, that's what it says. Quite an obstacle." He took back the sheet and folded his hands over it, canting his head to smirk at her. "On the other hand, mistakes do happen. I'm only human, you see. There's nothing to say I couldn't ... misplace it."
She tightened again, shoulders bunching, glaring poisonous hate. "So that's your game! Well then, spit it out! What could you want from such a poor, mistreated dame?"
He stared. Wendy ground her teeth until he could nearly hear the scrape. He stared some more because he could.
"Ho ho!" Gant clapped a few loud beats, and beamed, "Deedee, my dear, I never want to see your face in my office again! Ever!"
"This is an outrage, you overstuffed scumbucket, don't you have an ounce of shame in you?! Nobody does nowadays, all a bunch of surly good-for-nothing little--" She shook with the pent fury of a thousand shrieking harpies, and tightened fists. "Fine, then! Good riddance!"
Wendy stormed out, slamming the door -- it was a blessed sound this time. The restraining order was folded into neat eighths and slid into Gant's breast pocket before he returned to his calculations. Prosecutor Worthy would simply have to understand.