The pitch

You’re being presumptuous she said but she said it in a magnificent way, her head tilted back and her nostrils flaring at the final, dismissive UMPTIOUS. He shivered in something like awe and she left and swept away down the corridor, heels clicking and undergraduates parting before her like a badly-dressed Red Sea. He turned back to his notes:

L has often thrived on sticking a jackboot through the skull of people like me, re: MB incident, truly angry or laughing? Prostration? MUST RESOLVE.

So when her lunch break started he was lying prostrate on the floor of her office, a hopeful daffodil clutched between his hands. He saw the door open, caught the full impact of her joisted cleavage from his floor-level view and shut his eyes tight. Her boot caught against his hip-bone and she skewed, hard, against the marble floor, he heard something crack; and then the wail of a female, deeply hurt, filled the corridor. He stumbled to his feet and started trying to stammer apologies but they tailed miserably off against the wall of noise. Eventually he got to his feet and stumbled off, brushing aside students and still muttering, to have a sandwich and collect his thoughts.