The Hippodrome's business offices were to the right side of the main lobby, accessible through a brown wood-paneled door with a frosted-glass window and a sign in gold paint below the window, which read (not very imaginatively) "BUSINESS OFFICE." Piercing opened the door, the little bell on it jingling as he did so, and stepped into the familiar surroundings of his main office: a large room with desks, a couple of type-writing machines, and file cabinets lining the walls.

"Hello, Mr. Piercing," said the cute, compact little ivory-colored unicorn sitting at one of the type-writers. Her intelligent brown eyes peeped out at him from under her curly reddish-blonde mane. She had a worried look on her somewhat plump, wide-muzzled face.

"Hi, Goldie," replied Piercing. "So what's the problem?"

Golden Quill had been Piercing's secretary for the last five years, and his office manager for the last two of these. She was cool-headed and smart as a whip, and if she looked worried, there was a reason.

"She's in your office," Goldie simply said.

"Who is?"

"Some mare, name of Scarlet Sheaf. Says Gleisner Pfenning sent her over." Goldie leaned in, said in a low tone. "I don't trust her. She looks on the make. I've got Fleeter watching her."

Piercing wrinkled his brow, considered the possibilities. One thing struck him as odd about the situation.

"Why is she in my office instead of in the waiting area right here?" he asked Goldie.

"She just came in, asked which office was yours, and then barged right in. I'm thinking of calling up some of the hooves to get rid of her, but I wasn't sure whether or not she was some ... friend of yours."

Piercing's mind automatically supplied numerous synonyms for the unflattering concept Goldie was avoiding saying instead of "friend." He sighed. They were all quite possibly true of this particular mare, because he in fact did not know her, and the likely reasons for a strange mare to behave so forwardly toward a stallion with money and a useful position in the business did not encourage him as being benign.

There was one other thing wrong with the picture.

"You let her in just because she wanted in?" he asked Goldie. This did not match his image of Goldie, who though small was strong-willed and not exactly shy about expressing her opposition to courses of action with which she disagreed.

"I ... well ..."

Piercing fixed a very direct look upon her.

"Yow!" Goldie said, blinking and turning away. "Ok, boss, it was Fleeter. I was away for a minute and I had him cover front desk." She blinked repeatedly and then looked at him reproachfully. "You really ought not to do that to your friends," she scolded.

"Sorry, Goldie," Piercing apologized. "I just knew you wouldn't have let yourself be pushed around by some stray chippie. Thanks for the heads-up." He flashed her a dazzling smile.

"Ah, g'wan," Goldie said, smiling back and flipping him a hoof..

Ready for anything, the master of the Hippodrome Theatre prepared to confront whatever terrifying creature had ensconced herself in his office.

Piercing opened the door on an interesting tableau.

Fleeter Hooves, his office assistant, was tangled up on the floor with a very young and very attractive earth pony mare with the brightest red mane and tail he'd ever seen. over a fairly normal-looking light amber coat. That and the red sheaf of wheat emblazoned on her flank would have made her identity as Scarlet Sheaf obvious even if she weren't the only mare in the room.

For a moment, a mildly-shocked Piercing wondered if Fleeter's young-stallion sexual frustrations had somehow collided with some sort of hormonal surge or poorly-thought-out-plan on Scarlet's part, leading them to (incompetently) attempt sexual congress right on his office carpet. Then the pile of scattered pens and paper clips around them, coupled with the presence of several such items in their hooves, made it obvious what had actually happened. Fleeter had simply been clumsy, and Scarlet was helping him clean up the consequences.

Piercing sighed, and smiled down at them.

"I can explain, Mr. Piercing," stammered Fleeter, his normally blue-furred cheeks turning almost as red as Scarlet's hair. "See I was getting Scarlet a cup of water, and then I sort of spilled it, and I was trying to mop it up when ..."

Scarlet, for her part, coolly got up. Smiling at Piercing with slightly-parted lips, she revealed a set of excellent teeth. She batted her long eyelashes at Piercing and seated herself on his red velvet couch.

"It doesn't matter, Fleeter," said Piercing. "You can clean that up later."

Fleeter got up, bumped into Piercing, apologized, and started walking toward the door.

Scarlet leaned back on the couch, draping herself artfully. She winked at Piercing, and parted her lips again, licking them slightly with a delicate tongue.

"On second thought, Fleeter," decided Piercing, "perhaps it would be good if you told Goldie to get me the files on pre-purchased tickets for the Celebration by seating zone, and bring them in here."

Scarlet looked noticeably disappointed, and straightened herself into a more normal posture.

Piercing stepped over to the couch and regarded the young mare. Despite her rather-obvious behavior, she seemed a very young mare -- Piercing would have estimated 17 or 18. He smiled at her in what he hoped was an avuncular fashion and said, "So, Miss Scarlet?"

"Yes," she replied, in what seemed an attempt to sound simultaneously seductive and aristocratic, and missing at both marks, "Scarlet Sheaf. I'm quite thrilled to meetcha." The ineptly-done upper-class accent changed to typical Balmarish elided consonants at the end of the sentence.

They shook hooves. Her hoof did a sort of pulsing massage to his, and she tried to extend the contact a bit too long -- Piercing could feel her hooves' suction persisting even as he pulled his hoof away. Despite the absurd forwardness of her actions, Piercing found this physical contact slightly arousing, and he judged it better to sit back behind his own desk. He was glad that Scarlet knew that Goldie was coming in, and unless she had some very incorrect ideas about his relationship with his office manager, this meant Scarlet wouldn't try anything too embarrassingly overt right now.

"I'm Piercing Gaze," he said calmly, "the co-owner and manager of this theatre, as I'm sure you're already aware. So what brings you to my office this fine afternoon?" He was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

"Oh, Piercing," she said in a rush, "I've always wanted to be an actress! Shine on the stage, have my name up in lights. I'm very talented and I want to be in your show!"

Sure enough. Why couldn't life be a bit more surprising? He remembered a year ago when another aspirant had interviewed at the last moment for his Summer Sun Celebration, and dazzled him with her talents instead of trying to smother him with her admittedly-attractive physical charms. And she'd succeeded, too ... he was still dazzled.

Ah well. They couldn't all be Trixies. Actually, he was pretty sure that there was only one ever made of that model.

He sighed.

"All right, Miss Scarlet," he asked her. "What can you do?"

She started to get up from the couch, walk over to his seated form ...

"On the stage, I mean," he amended.

She looked shocked for a moment, then realized that he wasn't asking her to literally perform an indecent act in public.

"Oh," she said, collecting her composure. "Well ... I can dance really well ... I can sing ... I've been in school plays and got the lead part once ..."

Peircing Gaze examined her narrowly. She seemed to be honest about this, at least.

"You told me Gleisner Pfenning sent you?" He knew Gleisner well -- a penny-ante promoter who sometimes rented out stages to produce shows of dubious quality, and had a sort of side business farming out his more talented performers as a theatrical agent. Gleisner's reputation was not evil, but neither was it entirely savory. In particular, he sometimes had a nasty sense of humor.

"Yes," she said. "He said that you were his good friend and that he could get me into your show," Scarlet admitted, looking a bit uncomfortable. "He told me that all I had to do was ... be nice to you." She blushed a bit.

Piercing revised his estimate of her age down a year or two.

"And were you ... nice to him?" he asked.

Her face went completely red, and she looked at her hooves. She said nothing.

"Enough," Piercing said. He didn't want to torture the poor filly by making her tell him the whole sordid story.

Goldie knocked on the door, a bit more loudly than was absolutely necessary.

"Wait a moment, Goldie, please," he called out.

He turned back to Scarlet.

"Listen to me," he told her, fixing her with his gaze. She looked up, of course -- everypony did when Piercing did what he was doing now. "Listen very well, because I am being completely honest with you.

"You may have talent. You may not have talent. But when somepony in the business asks you to 'be nice to them' that way, just turn around and walk out that door. Because if you have talent, then you can get yourself noticed by somepony else for what you can do on stage, not on a casting couch. And if you don't have talent, then all that's going to come out of being nice to jerks is that you are going to get used, again and again and again, until whatever fire you had within you that made you want to be special on stage is burned out.

"Do you understand me?"

She swallowed hard and nodded. Her eyes were moist.

He hadn't hypnotized her. He knew how to do that, but only with her consent and careful preparation. What his gaze and voice did was to command attention, and sometimes let him see a little into another pony's character. He could even use it on a whole audience in the proper setting -- this was one reason he had been a successful showstallion. It was a minor magical talent, but a very useful one in his profession.

"Now go home and practice your act," he told her. "Bring anything special you need to show it on Wednesday."

"Wednesday?" she asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "That's when we do auditions. Wednesday, 3 o'clock -- better show up an hour early, so that you have time to get prepared."

She looked at him in utter disbelief.

"What?" he asked. "I didn't say I was rejecting you for the show. I haven't even seen what you can do yet -- and I don't have time for it right now. You get a chance -- just like anypony else."

She squealed, ran over to him and hugged him. He felt a little bit uncomfortable being hugged by this much attractive female flesh, especially given what he had just told her.

"Oh, thank you!" she said. "Thank you thank you thank you!"

Piercing revised his estimate of her age down by another year.

"Eh, hon," he said, "I haven't really done anything for you yet. Just giving you a chance to audition, that's all. The rest is up to you."

"Thank you anyway," she said, planting a kiss on his cheek and then trotting happily off toward the door. She shot him a look over her shoulder.

"You know," she said, "You are a very nice and handsome stallion." She winked at him.

He chuckled. "Ah, get outta here fer now. See you Wednesday."

She made her exit.

Goldie's head peeked around the doorframe, looking suspiciously in and then out at the departing Scarlet. She walked in, holding a file of papers in her mouth. She went over to him, put the file down in front of him. He opened them, looked through them. He saw that there'd been a rash of last-minute cancellations in a section sold to the military.

"What happened there?" he asked Goldie, indicating the cancellations.

"Oh, that?" Goldie asked. "Some sort of last-minute military and naval maneuvers. Whole fleet and garrison's mobilized." She snorted. "Betcha they're not happy about having to miss out on the Summer Sun Celebration."

"You'd win that bet," he said. "Eh, I hope that we can fill those seats. Probably will -- there's always turnaways on a night like this."

"Yes," said Goldie. "So -- ?"

"So what?" asked Piercing.

"So what happened with Little Miss Flirty?" she asked him.

Piercing drew himself up in what he hoped was a properly pompous manner and said: "Miss Golden, that question is not precisely within the normal purview of an office manager to her employer, and ..."

She shouldered him. "Come on, boss!" she said. "Give!"

Piercing laughed.

"Oh, that?" he said. "The usual. She wanted to be in the show, thought that she could fling her theoretical virtue at my hooves and have me trample all over it as the road to stardom."

"And you weren't tempted?" she asked him skeptically.

"You know me," he said. "I don't mix my business with pleasure. Too dangerous. And if I made a mistress out of one of my performers and favored her over the others, that would make the kind of resentments that could rip the whole troupe apart.

"Anyway, she was just a kid. Maybe a bit of an unwise kid, but nowhere near as grown-up as she was pretending to be. I'd never take advantage of somepony like that. You know me better than that."

"Yeah," Goldie said, looking at him fondly. "I do. But there's one thing you should fix before you go out to face the rest of the staff."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Your cheek." She pulled out a kerchief and rubbed his aforementioned body part vigorously, showed it to him.

Scarlet lipstick.

"Heh," he said with a sheepish grin. "She kissed me.".

"Yeah." said Goldie. "You probably deserved it, too."

He looked down at the carpet, saw the spilled pens and paper clips.

"Oh, get Fleeter back in here to clean this up now, please?" he asked.

"Sure thing, Boss," Goldie said, trotting out with just the most subtle swish of her reddish-blonde tail. "Gotta keep things looking professional."

The door closed, and for a moment Piercing was alone with his thoughts

Yep, he agreed. Professional.

Even if it's sometimes lonely.

Author's Notes:

While researching the issue, I found to my surprise that the 19th century age of consent in Maryland was 10. It's 16 today. So if I'm going by the Maryland analogy, Scarlet Sheaf is probably not jail bait.

Though it would still be a bad idea for Piercing to accept Scarlet's sexual offer, for all the reasons he mentioned to Goldie.