Johnny slammed the door to his El Camino so hard that the alarm went off in the dingy Caprice that had just narrowly escaped Johnny's front bumper and bad attitude. Two or three dogs seemed to start barking in unison, the closest mongrel yelping and quickly bounding out of the warpath as Johnny crossed the busy intersection, leaving angry horns, waving fists and screeching tires in his wake, along with more than one or two choice epithets. Down the way in each direction, lookers-on peered curiously while locals who knew better quickened their pace, or buried themselves further behind their phones and coffees. Even the old afternoon regulars at the deli looked on with dismay at the disturbance, but merely shook their heads and carried on.
Johnny continued his way through the tiny, packed parking lot to the mini mall. He just barely intercepts a mother hurriedly pushing her baby carriage through the lot, who quickly whips it around the nearest corner and takes the wailing cry of her child along with it. Looking like a giraffe crossing a herd of wildebeests, Johnny headed straight as a yard line for Powel's. A second later, Johnny had entered the modest establishment, slamming the door shut behind him. The once-sturdy commercial door made a definitive crunching and buckling sound of metal and laminated glass giving up for the last time. One side of the large billboard in the window that said "Eugene Powel Attorney At Law" had fallen from its hanging with a thud. Immediately, the door blinds blinked shut, and the "Yes We're OPEN" sign in the door was flipped to "Sorry We're CLOSED" by an unseen hand from inside.
If Betty the receptionist had ever intercepted an unannounced visit from Johnny, she wasn't doing so today. Scarcely looking up from the phone in her hand as Johnny burst in, she quickly slipped her handbag over her shoulder, got up from her desk and slipped through the door into the break room, shutting the door behind her in one swift, fluid motion. Johnny simply stared, momentarily distracted as the water cooler burped a pocket of air after a muted thud behind the closed door told him she had left through the only other door in the office.
Eugene Powel had barely heard the earthquake enter the front door when he looked up from his game of computer klondike and happened to glance out the back window to see Betty scurrying to her hatchback (still texting), get into her car and peel out of the parking lot.
"Oh for..."
Just then, Powel's office door whipped open with such force that no loose piece of paper was left on his desk and his tie had blown up and back over his shoulder. Powel, gradually opening his eyes and looking down towards his own crotch, started patting down his now coffee-soaked trousers, suddenly very thankful that Betty had never once maintained a hot pot of coffee in all her months working for him at the office.
"Powel, we got things we need to talk about!", thundered Johnny from the doorway.
Betty, Powel thought to himself, was fired. This time, for good.