Richard Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross

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Well. Wasn't this interesting? A real fun fest.

Ricky Roma took stock of the room, no hurry but not missing anything, not if he could help it. Not looking anything beyond self-assured. Hell, he knew what he was about. And you never let your guard down. Especially not with a group like this. What in - What in the hell was this nutjob operation?

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[dungbombsrule]

"Well, it's obvious you care a lot about cheese if you get so beside yourself over it," Ron explained. "And shooting the shite, person-to-person, sounds like the worst kind of fun a bloke could have."

Ron was not sold.

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You know, he almost preferred the freaks to kids.

"It isn't cheese. It's the little details we allow to run our lives." He waved a hand dismissively. "You're a kid. You'll figure it out sooner or later." And if he didn't, hell. That was his loss.

"You want something else, though... What do kids even like these days?" No sense beating around the bush, here. And kids got impatient with that sort of thing, didn't they? Mike's kids did, anyway. Those kids liked, what, toy guns or something, but then they didn't hang around some fucking magic school.

[dungbombsrule]

"I'm not a kid," Ron exclaimed with great outrage and offense. "I'm the school's ...damn flying instructor! I'm practically a professor!" Yes, Ron may look and behave a bit younger than his nineteen years of age. So he had a stage where Tyler Durden was very much a Bad Influence and he reveled in the youthful rebellion of saying swears and smoking without coughing sometimes. But he was young and stupid, then. Now Ron was very much on the mature, adult side of nineteen. He no longer had a puppet for a hand, a fourteen year old robot for a girlfriend, and he was often called Mister Weasley, something which he was pretty sure a bunch of his brothers hadn't managed, yet.

"Just because I don't have those lines on my forehead when I raise my eyebrows as much as the other fellow doesn't mean I'm a kid. You just... you just look old, so. But if you're letting details about cheese run your life, you got more worries than just that

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That almost got him. Very nearly got him. Kids could do that, almost easier than Moss. Because kids didn't have the goddamn sense to keep their mouths to themselves.

Nineteen. A kid, is a kid, is a kid. He doesn't know whether Mike's are that old. He doesn't know how old any of Mike's are, but what the hell. A kid is a kid, and so on and so forth.

"Okay, what? You want me to buy you a beer, then?" He shrugs. "Settle down. You don't want to be mistaken for a kid, don't act like one. I'm telling you, that's the sort of tantrum-throwing shit kids pull. Well. kids and Moss, but that's close enough."

He paused a moment before added, "And when you swear like that? Doesn't help. Sounds like you're using the naughty words while your mother's back is turned. Just a helpful hint." Can he help it if the kid sounds young? "But you want one, I'll buy you a beer. A couple, if you're feeling adventurous."

Had the kid said something about flying? Sure. Of course he had. Damned magic school.

[dungbombsrule]

Ron opened his mouth to answer, actually, a butterbeer would be all right with him if Roma wanted to apologize, but then he figured that the stranger was probably being sarcastic. So Ron shut his mouth and continued in a different vein.

"Yeah. I probably shouldn't have raised my voice like that," he responded in hopefully a mature attitude. The young man still appeared a bit miffed, but he just shrugged his shoulders. "And who is this Moss you keep talking about? I'm guessing it's a person, not the... well, vegetation."

Yes, Ron could be scientific if he'd like! Though really he chose that nicely broad word because he couldn't figure out if moss was a fungus or a bush or what.

"And curse like what? I just said 'damn'. That pause before it was for gall. I was pausing to get a hold on my gall. But no, I probably wouldn't say that word in front of my mother, either. Would you?"

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"You kidding? My mother throws a fit. 'That language! I will NOT have that language in my house, Ricky!' Not that that stops me. You'd think I'd learn, number of time's she's smacked me with that fucking ladle..." He shakes his head, rolls his eyes. Mothers. What the hell could you do? "What I'm saying is it doesn't sound natural coming from a kid like you. But that is only my opinion."

The kid was trying, anyway. It was kind of amusing, and a whole lot less irritating, in any case. "Nah, Moss might have the brains of some sort of vegetation, but what he is is a class-A, head-up-the-ass dick. Can't keep himself under control; I swear to God you glance at that guy, he explodes. Which is fine. Makes for free entertainment when there's nothing else to do. Tell him you fucked his wife, watch him try turn five shades of purple and try to tear the office apart."

[dungbombsrule]

Ron nodded in sympathy. "Right. We'd be lucky if a fit is all Mum threw. Well, I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, and she doesn't smack us with stuff... but I'm not a kid because I sometimes find her a bit scary. That and she can do that mum guilt like no other." But after hearing himself be referred to as a 'kid' once again, the young man sighed in exasperation and rested his long fingers against the upper bones of his nose. "Fine. Fine," he said in a somewhat irritated tone. He unscrewed his eyes and put his hand back down. "I look like a kid to you; well, you look like life stomped you in the face a coupla times to me. Now can we just stop commenting on it

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He shrugged. "My mother used to make a habit of chucking frying pans. I long ago reached the conclusion that she is - that all mothers are - out of her fucking mind."

Roma almost laughed. Okay, okay. Couple more points to the kid. He didn't get any points for wit, but spirit counted for something. "Hey, if you're going to insist... I make no promises. However, if kid won't suit you and you aren't big on 'asshole' or 'jagoff,' you might want to give me something to call you."

"Look, I'll tell you straight off, you start talking about dark lords and robot aliens, I stop giving a fuck. Force of habit." That wasn't quite fair in this situation, though, so he considered for a moment. "That is, I don't have a clue on god's green earth what you're talking about, so if you're going to speak about that, you might want to think about explaining yourself."

Wait. Wait. Didn't get his wife...? Moss's wife? Oh. Oh, that was good. That was very good. Roma smirked. "You kidding me? I wouldn't touch his wife if you paid me... It would almost,