September 15, 2005
Week 20 - Impossible Dreams 7
Episode 5
Powell steps into Rantz's office. Shari Kern sits at the desk, sorting through a large stack of papers.
"Oh..." Powell says. "Um... I was looking for Rantz... Is, uh.... is he around?"
"His majesty Rantz is out of the office, at a meeting with a list broker," Shari says. "He left me here to clean up this mess."
"Oh... He, uh... told me to stop by and tell him about my... my adventures last night..."
"Adventures?" She looks at him. "You had adventures?"
"Um... working on the Coyote Man story..."
"Oh, that's right. Pretending to be Robin."
"Not Robin... Pan Boy..."
Shari snorts. "You want to talk about adventures, Pan Boy? How 'bout my adventures?" She waves at several large cartons by her feet. "You see these boxes? Each one is filled with old circulation reports. There are ten more just like them in the storage room. There's, like, five years worth of this crap!"
"Uh..."
"Do you think anyone has ever sorted them in any way?" She shakes her head. "No, they have not... Do you think anyone has ever seen any need to sort them?" She shakes her head again. "No, they have not. But suddenly, that organizational genius and businessman supreme, Rantz, has decided that they have to be grouped together by date and by direct mail campaign. But does it occur to him to do this himself?"
"Uh..."
Once more, she shakes her head. "No, it does not. Instead, he orders me to drop everything else I'm doing and work through this garbage!"
"I'm... I'm sorry."
"That's fine. 'You're sorry.' That'll help me a lot." She pulls up another pile of reports from one of the cartons. "Why don't you just run back to Long Island and play dress up with your friends, okay, Aqualad? Some of us have real work to do."
Powell opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it. He nods and leaves.
Shari shakes her head again and returns to sorting papers.