Richard Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross

[topoftheboard]

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?

Comments

[woocha]

I AM a dog!

[topoftheboard]

All right.

All right, he hadn't expected that. What, they got talking (he wasn't sure if it was talking exactly, but it wasn't really worth thinking about right now, as point was he could hear it) dogs just sort of... wandering around? Christ. Okay. If he was going to play along, might as well keep at it.

"Then I guess we'll have to strike that question. Tell me about... What the hell do dogs like, bones? Tell me about bones."

[woocha]

I do like bones! Jasper promised me a unicorn one! I keep them buried someplace secret! I also like reading!

[topoftheboard]

"Unicorn bone. Sounds like quite the find."

He was talking to a dog. He was still talking to the dog. Well, what the hell, you couldn't not talk to the dog. Never knew what an angry dog might do. A dog starts bark, you throw it a hunk of meat, or something. A dog talks, you talk back, and maybe it won't piss all over your leg.

"And I've got to say, I've never met a dog that could read before."

Feel pretty fucking strange, talking to a dog.

[chance_silvey]

Dr. Chance Silvey, lately recovered from another bout of trilobite trance, looked a little bleary today. Not at the top of her game.

She read the application, a faint line creasing her brow as she read.

When she had finished, she looked up at the new arrival.

"Let me guess. You've got a bridge you want to sell us?"

[topoftheboard]

If she hadn't spoken up, Ricky wouldn't have noticed her. Or he told himself as much. Hell, she wasn't that much to look at, and ten to one this broad didn't know what actual humor was. He'd seen her type around, mostly keeping a choke-hold on the guys he sold property to. The wives who raised hell and brought up all the clamoring arguments that made their husbands lose start re-thinking, made them back out. Give in.

"Can't say I've ever sold a bridge before. Last I heard, there wasn't much money in bridges." He shrugged, watching her. "Though if it came up and any of you fine individuals happened to desire a bridge, you'd better believe I'd find one."

[chance_silvey]

"As long as the bridge actually exists and is for sale ..." She didn't look too convinced that either of those things would be true, in such a case. "I ought to tell you, though, you'd have better luck doing business in North Korea. Most students here have no money and live off the charity of the school, and the professors aren't flush with cash either." Not that professors ever were, as a rule. Anywhere.

[topoftheboard]

"Well, that's a crime and a shame." Okay, it was useful to know, maybe. If this woman was telling the truth, which he wasn't sure of. "Guess I'll just have to call this a vacation. A well-deserved rest." He smirked, laughed. "I don't suppose you've got anything to drink around here, in any case? or do I have to go to North Korea for that, too?"

[igorofmalaria]

Igor attends the sorting out of a vague sense of duty. He skims through the questionaire, only pausing after reading Ravenclaw's question.

"Have you ever heard of a paperwork monster? That's quite an idea, you know. Might be worth looking into"

Yeah, he's fixated, the little weirdo.

[topoftheboard]

All right. it ain't a talking dog and it ain't a bristly-looking broad, but this is one strange-looking son of a bitch. And then there's the question. If it'd have come from anyone else, you could probably just blow it aside, but coming from this guy, whoever he was... whatever he was...

"Yeah, yeah, I-" Yeah, no. That isn't going to work. "Are you shitting me, or are you serious about this?"

[igorofmalaria]

"Oh. It sounded unlikely, but I thought you might have been serious. I've done some work in creating new biological lifeforms." He shrugged, which looked odd.

[topoftheboard]

"You caught me: I was bullshitting that one." Right, and the fucking creepy thing got creepier still. Creating...? You've got to be fucking kidding me. And maybe it was a joke. Or some story told by a guy (creature?) who wasn't all there.

Given the way things had been going so far, however, Roma wasn't entirely certain he could trust that.

"So what, exactly, do you mean by that? 'Creating new biological lifeforms.' Pardon me if I am being ignorant, bjut it isn't something I run into every day." Or ever.

[lemondrop_party]

(( Ooh, what a lovely app! Welcome :) And rest assured, IC abrasiveness is taken as purely IC. ))

If Roma had thought this to be a bunch of fruits, one might shudder to contemplate how his opinion might alter upon meeting the Lord High Fruit of Fruitland himself. All right, so no one had ever conferred such a title upon Albus Dumbledore officially, but come on ... Supreme Mugwump? Pretty much the same thing.

Here he came, the most fabulous geriatric wizard in all Britain, togged out in his purple robes and his high-heeled buckled boots, ready to welcome Hogwarts' newest arrival. "Welcome," he caroled, beaming in that grandfatherly way of his, like an emaciated Father Christmas. "Welcome, young man, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! How was your journey?"

[topoftheboard]

((Good to know-gracias, aheh. And, thank you, the 'Lord High Fruit of Fruitland' has made for some major snerking. XD))

Oh God. Oh Christ. Somebody fire the fucking confetti cannons, already, strike up the band and start the parade.

Okay. Okay, so he stared for a moment. Just a moment. Just a moment, but for that moment he couldn't say a fucking thing and damned if he could even think a fucking thing, because... because what the hell else can you do when some like that marches (swishes? Christ) over?

"What the hell."

So, not the most tactful answer. He had been trying to go for tactful. He usually could and usually did. But some situations, it was asking too much. He'd have to get this one through his system before he could even think about speaking to it. Him. The... The complete fucking fruit. God. God damn.

[lemondrop_party]

In no wise daunted, Dumbledore merely said, "It does take some getting used to, I'm afraid. Please do not be alarmed. Whether you have been alive or dead, this is not hell; far from it! This is a haven for all wizards."

Reassuring, no?

"I am Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of this school, and a professor emeritus," he continued. "I would give you my card, but I seem to have left all my chocolate frogs in my other robes," this said while patting the pockets of these robes in search of the elusive sweets.

[topoftheboard]

Of all the fucked-up things in this room, Roma was pretty well convinced he was currently facing the worst. A dragon was supposed to be fucking intimidating. Not that this... guy was intimidating. Christ, no. Just beyond all words. Beyond all definition, and beyond words. You couldn't even call this guy fruit, flamingly fabulous, whatever term you could come up with; this was something else altogether.

And it was still taking Roma some time to catch up with whatever the hell was coming out of his mouth. Words of some sort, probably. Nonsense words, most likely. Talking fruit about wizards (oh, God, please say he had not suddenly died and ended up in Hell or some place with a bunch of fucking wizards... he wasn't even going to entertain that delusion, because that would be madness itself) and this school and -

Chocolate frogs?

What in the hell were- And why was this guy messing around with his pockets? Roma had nearly stopped staring, but now he was back at it again.

Could you believe this guy? Could you fucking believe it

[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.

[topoftheboard]

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

[topoftheboard]

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.