Normally when Walter came home from the gym, he’d clean up and change for the studio. But they didn’t have anything to film for the day, which meant it was pointless to get dressed as if he were going to be filmed. He simply traded his gym clothes for a clean pair of jeans and a bright yellow Hawaiian print shirt, and spent enough time in front of the mirror to straighten his glasses and to see that his hair was not even trying to sit right. Detouring only to fetch his coffee from the kitchen, Walter made his way downstairs to put his shoes on as he headed out to the car. Once he was out of the winding maze that was the West Hills, it was a theoretical straight shot down Burnside. But traffic was… traffic. It was never not traffic. It was always going to be traffic, slowing him down and getting his his way. Walter simply connected his phone to his car’s stereo and drowned everything out with Parov Stelar. It didn’t make the drive go any faster, but it almost made it more bearable.

At the studio, he parked in his spot, remembering at the very last moment that he was driving a rental. If he slammed his door into Ron’s car, like he did every time the local anchor parked over the line, he’d be on the hook for any damage to the rental. Walter wanted his own space more than anything, but the KARP building was currently the best-equipped in town for what he needed, and the thought of living in LA was almost depressing. Walter sighed, ready to put up with local news as he carefully got out of the car, making sure nothing got damaged in the process.

Instead of heading straight to his dressing room, he had a more pressing matter to deal with. He walked up to the front desk at reception and leaned over it, putting on his best menacingly impassive face. He stayed like this until the slim jackrabbit on the other side finally looked up to see him looming over her.

“You stood me up,” he said plainly, watching Penny run his words through her mind a few times. One of her ears twitched every so often, as if counting each train of thought she explored.

Penny shook her head, confused. “No I didn’t,” she said.

“You stood me up,” Walter repeated with a little more force.

“No, we were…” She stopped short as a wave of realization washed over her face. She looked up at Walter with wide, shocked eyes and almost choked. “I didn’t come in on Monday. I’ve been a day off all week,” she said.

“And you stood me up,” Walter repeated for emphasis.

Penny was laughing now, while the middle-aged chipmunk next to her shot them both a scandalized look. The look Walter shot her in return told her in no unclear terms to mind her own business.

“We can go tonight if you’re not busy,” Penny offered, still laughing.

Walter grumbled and leaned further over her desk. He tore the top page of her daily calendar off, balled it up, and threw it at Penny before heading off to his dressing room. He could hear the women whispering harshly at one another, or perhaps more accurately, the new woman whispering harshly at Penny as he headed down the hall and away from both of them.

On his way back to his dressing room, Walter stopped by HR, to actually do part of his actual job, and get the information on the two new hires that had come in that week. HR was a small cordoned section in the shared bullpen consisting of a single large desk behind tall cubical walls. The otter behind the desk looked bored and tired, and was creating some sort of modern art sculpture out of a paper cup and every ballpoint pen in the building. The new hire folders had been on her desk all week, where Walter had been ignoring them all week.

“When do these people start?” he asked, looking over the information. He hadn’t interviewed either of them, and had no idea what to expect when they got to the studio.

“Monday,” the bored HR otter said. “And the network’s called again. They’ve stopped asking and started demanding.”

“I don’t want to deal with no fucking interns,” Walter snapped.

“They’re pulling your funding.”

Walter dropped the new hire folders back onto her desk. “Then what the hell was the point of this?” he muttered, walking away as he flapped a paw at the stack of papers. Two untrained, untested people on set was going to be bad enough. Now he had to deal with interns as well. Interns sucked. They hated being there, and nobody wanted them there, and it was just a terrible experience for everybody. Walter would have rather kept getting by understaffed. It wasn’t like Billy ever complained about pulling triple duty as a camera operator, show runner, and personal assistant.

Actually, he did. A lot. But Walter chose to ignore it because he knew Billy wasn’t going anywhere else.

By the time Walter got back to his dressing room, he was already trying to figure out how he could leave. His dressing room wasn’t a proper dressing room. It was barely an office, but the network put him at the KARP building, and he needed his own area to be able to run his show. There wasn’t a single window in the entire building, making the cream-painted room feel like a cave. Or maybe a prison cell. Walter had managed to fix that with vintage marquee frames over old movie posters he’d found at the mall. A threadbare sofa took up half the room, while Walter’s flat pack desk took up the other half. With about five feet of space between them, it was a cramped, awful little hellhole, but it was his, and KARP couldn’t touch it. He twisted his way behind the desk, getting comfortable as he finalized the script for the next day’s shoot. It was mostly solid, but he wanted to make sure every question possible made it on. The interview was going to be the toughest part of the whole shoot on Friday, and he wanted nothing left to chance.