"A-a-Gah!" Kelly pulled the ruined sheet out of the typewriter with a shout of frustration.

Languidly buttoning his shirt, Scotty turned. "What has got your nose out of joint, Otis?"

"It's not my nose, but my fingers." Kelly looked up at Scotty with the look normally reserved for Russian double agents or male financial review officers. "This—machine," he stopped fighting with it and shoved it wearily aside, "won't-whenever I strike an uppercase key, it won't work."

"Maybe it's on strike."

"That is strikingly terrible." Kelly turned the sheet of paper over in his hands. It was spattered with ink. "Another report, ruined. The joys of Her Majesty's Secret Service."

"You are not on Her Majesty's Secret Service, Mr. Double-Oh."

"Well, I should be," Kelly grumbled, rising moodily to stare out the window, hands shoved in his pockets. "All the most stunning beauties are in there."

"That's just in the movies, Clyde…"

"No, no," Kelly turned petulantly. "Here's Agent Bond, moving mountains with his bare hands, a Walther PPK in one hand and a bathing beauty in the other, and here we are, wrestling with broken typewriters with—with communist reels, and…"

"Communist reels?" Scotty's eyes smiled indulgently. "I'll bite. Although I shall probably regret this: How can a reel be communist?"

Kelly stared down at the machine, expression neutral. "When it won't do capitals."

"Ah." Scotty nodded sagely, a guru on a mountaintop approving a particularly adept pupil. "Did you lay awake nights waiting for an occasion to use that one?"

"No, no," Kelly said modestly, "it just came to me, in the heat of the moment." He shook his head. "Where was I?"

"You were whining about how we get crummy pay and lousy typewriters."

"Yeah, and—Hold it. In the first place, I was not whining, I was… expressing an opinion."

"I know whining when I see it, and what you were doing was whining."

"I was not—And anyway, I hadn't got to the crummy pay yet. How did you know I was gonna say that?"

Scotty looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "Maybe the other hundred and thirty-six times you did this stand-up routine?"

"I'm glad," Kelly retorted, "that one of us thinks there's something funny about this." Scotty smiled at him, and the corners of his mouth turned up despite himself. He reached out, grabbing his jacket. "I'm hungry. Gonna treat, Mr. Funny Valentine?"

Scotty retrieved his jacket from the hook, slipping it on. "Now why would you expect the guy to treat who makes the same crummy pay as you?"

"I'm the one writing the report, am I not?"

"Ah, so if I were the one performing this task, you would consider it incumbent upon you to treat?"

"Not incumbent," said Kelly thoughtfully, adjusting his tie in the mirror, "but it would certainly be an incentive…"

Scotty held the door open for Kelly. "If I were to accept your offer…" he began once they were out in the corridor.

Kelly held up a hand. "I never actually made an offer."

"You implied it, Mr. Jaggers."

"What if I did?"

"Well," Scotty's shoulder bumped Kelly's as they jockeyed for position by the elevator, "if I were to accept your implied offer," they stepped inside, "what would you add to sweeten the pot, as it were?"

The elevator doors slid shut. Inside, the negotiations continued.