A/N: This chapter's way short, but I just liked the ending so much that I couldn't make myself add onto it. I do know what happens in the next chap, though, so hopefully soon.

The afternoon got a little more hectic than anyone had planned for. Five o'clock found Logan and Barek at their desks, eyeing the closed door of Deakins's office, while Goren and Eames were stuck in rush-hour traffic, both silently cursing Jane Grosse for rescheduling their interview on such short notice. In too much of a hurry to stop and consider their transportation choices when they left, they'd just grabbed a car and gone when Jane called just after two to reschedule for later in the afternoon, at her apartment.

"I can't believe this," Alex groaned. "The light's green, jackass!" she yelled a second later at the driver in front of them. "That means go!" She knew the only person who could hear her rants in the closed car was her partner, but it still made her feel better to yell.

Bobby, knowing her temper too well to take his chances, swallowed the laugh that almost escaped him. "We'll get there. Why don't you call in, tell them we're going to be late for the update meeting?" He nudged her phone toward her on the dashboard.

Alex snorted and pushed it back. "I'm the one trying to maneuver us through this disaster they call a street. You want us called in, you do the calling."

"Ok, fine." He put hers back where it had been and pulled his off his belt. "They probably already started without us."

"Their loss," she said shortly, not taking her eyes off the road, where traffic had begun to move for a second before a taxi stopped, blocking two lanes, to pick up a woman in a fur coat. "That mink's not going to look nearly as nice after I get done with you, sweetheart!" she growled at the culprit. "How'd you like it shoved up your ass?"

Next to her, Goren choked on his laugh this time, with the result that what Mike Logan heard when he answered the phone in the MCS squad room was a shouted, "ass!" followed by the sound of someone being strangled. Putting his hand over the receiver, he turned to Barek and told her calmly, "Either we've got a really creative crank caller, or Goren and Eames are checking in. I'm putting it on speaker."

". . . want to see you do the goddamn driving, if you're going to bitch about how I do it!" Alex was shouting when Logan put the receiver back in its cradle and leaned back to listen.

"Would you please just stop impugning the other drivers' ancestors long enough for me to make this one call?" Bobby's voice shot back.

"Go, Goren!" Barek whispered, shaking a triumphant fist at the near-empty squad room.

Logan just rolled his eyes and moved closer to the phone. "Too late, Goren. We heard her."

Bobby sighed. "Sorry. She hates traffic jams."

"Is there anyone who likes them?" Barek asked sarcastically as she rolled her chair closer to Logan and his phone.

He didn't respond to that remark, and they heard muffled voices for a few seconds before Goren's voice returned to the phone full-force. "We're calling to tell you that unless some, uh, traffic magic happens very soon, we're going to be seriously late for the update we promised you guys and Deakins."

"Traffic magic?" Eames's voice said in the background. "Is that like dance magic?"

"It's fine, Goren," Barek spoke up before the two caged detectives could get into a discussion of what traffic magic meant and whether it involved muppets. "Deakins got mysteriously busy after I delivered the interview transcripts and explained how Logan typed them, so he's not in the equation for tonight."

"Oh, ok. So wh- wait, why would you delivering transcripts make him mysteriously busy?" A short pause. "Never mind. Eames says she'll tell me later. What I was going to say was, how are we going to work this now?"

Logan and Barek both looked up from the phone, waiting for the other to suggest something first, which resulted in a staring contest. "Oh, fine!" Barek grumbled after ten seconds of silence. "I owe you dinner, Eames. Why don't we all have another brainstorming session over dinner, this time at my apartment?"

"Not spaghetti again," Logan groaned loudly.

"Would you prefer, say, vegetarian lasagna?" Barek asked sweetly.

"Uh . . . I changed my mind, spaghetti's fine."

"Exactly. But that's not what I was thinking, anyway. Goren, how much pizza will you two consume if we order pizza?"

Muffled voices mixed with the sound of a hundred horns blowing in the street came through the phone for a second. "Depends on how hungry we end up being. Probably a pie and a half would be more than enough."

"You're going to eat a whole damn pie, alone?" Logan asked skeptically.

"No, Alex is," Bobby replied as if wondering what the big deal was.

Complete silence from Logan and Barek as they both stared at the phone, then each other. "Are you kidding me?" Barek finally said.

"No. Look, can we just get this set up? She's getting antsy and I need both hands to . . ."

"Uh, right. Sure. Can you guys make it to my place between six and seven? Oh, speaking of which, do you need directions?"

"We have a roster in the glove compartment. Is your address current?"

"Yep."

The sound of paper crinkling as Goren consulted the document in question, placing her address on his mental map of Manhattan. "Yeah, we can get there. Probably closer to seven, though, so you might want to hold off on ordering the pizza."

"Tell them to grab the file folder off my desk!" Alex shouted in the background.

"You guys hear that?" asked Bobby.

"Yeah," Logan replied. "Barek just went to get . . . yeah, she got it. No problem."

"Ok, good. That everything?" Even without being able to see him, Logan and Barek could tell that Goren was getting impatient.

"Should be, yeah. We'll call you back if we think of anything else," Barek said.

"Great. See you then," he said quickly. Then, fading out as he pulled the phone away from his mouth to close it, they heard it: "Damnit Alex, keep your hands to yourself!"

The few people left in the MCS squad room all looked up and stared a second later at the spectacle in front of them. Detectives Logan and Barek, both sitting at Logan's desk, were howling with uncontrollable laughter. As they watched, Barek tumbled out of her chair on one particularly energetic giggle.

"Damn, why I don't I get a hot female partner to laugh like that with?" Hutchinson muttered jokingly to the man standing next to him. "Noooo, I get stuck with the old fart who whaps me on the head with his folders when he thinks I've done something wrong."

The other man just looked at him for a second, that whacked him on the head with the file folder he'd been holding.