Sandy answers the phone at Type for You. She walks into Jean's office and tells her that Lionel is on the phone. Jean says she's "out."

On the other end, Lionel is frustrated. He hangs up. The bells rings. It's Alistair with his back to him, on the telephone. Alistair is always in a rush (Hi, Li, gotta fly), always very chipper, always trying to do several things at once. He has a short attention span.

He tells Lionel that the revisions were good, but the book was still not quite right. It's not bad -- "It's there, but it's not THERE". It needs something, Alistair says. He tries to find the right word. "Burning?" suggests Lionel. Maybe so, but Alistair is a bit gentler: "humanizing" is what he settles on. The characters have to be fleshed out so they're more like people. Alistair tries to impress upon him that there's more at stake here than the book. If it's successful there could be screen rights involved. He said it should take Lionel only about a week to make those changes and it will pay off in the long run. Lionel agrees to revise again.

As he's leaving, Alistair says he has bit of personal business he wants to clear up. He wants to know if he would be "stepping on any toes" if he pursued Jean ("I fancy her like crazy.") Lionel says it's none of his business -- it's a "freeish" country. "Remember," Alistair tells him as he leaves, "Push, push and humanize." Lionel stops briefly at the mirror, admiring himself and wondering who might play him in the movie.

Jean is at the office just concluding a phone conversation - she asks the person on the other end to send the contract over to her so she can sign it immediately. She's thrilled and almost leaping in her chair. Sandy and Judith enter her office with a very large basket of flowers. Jean says that they've just gotten the premises in Brompton Road for the branch office she hopes to open. They tell her the flowers have just come for her. Yes, she sees: "green stalks with color bits." She's not at all excited about them. My first thought was that they came from Lionel -- maybe that was Jean's also, but she says they probably came from a satisfied client. She tells Judy that they wanted to thank her and figured flowers were an appropriate gift for a woman. Judy wants to know what she would have preferred instead -- a box of cigars, maybe.

Judy sits at her desk which is in the same office as Jean's. (Sandy sits just outside their office in the reception area). Judy suggests that maybe they're from Lionel. Jean insists they are not. Judy tells her they were in love -- "that was 38 years ago, can't have taken that long to arrive." Jean is still stinging from the fiasco in Norwich. Judith thinks perhaps he's apologizing, but Jean suggests that if he chooses to spend the night with a "loud-mouthed overblown bit of stuff" that's entirely his business. Jean bets a lunch that this is a business thank you. Then she does what she should have done from the beginning: she looks at the card. They're from Alistair. This takes them both by surprise.

"Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety" reads Alistair's card. He obviously labored over what to say. A business thank you, eh? Jean tells Judith to take the flowers. "I'm not Cleopatra" she says. But she tells Jean that Lionel thinks she's Cleopatra -- "you practically vamped him" in Norwich.

Judy is giving her the business -- she knows that Jean just came on to Alistair because Lionel showed up at the lecture with his "local bit of stuff" and she wanted to use Alistair to make him jealous. Jean is sort of pleased with herself -- it was a bit of a boost. Here she was ready to get a tight perm and just give up and here's an attractive young man sending her flowers. Jean suggests that Judith likes Alistair herself. Judith says he's okay, but says it in such a way that it is clear that she's interested.

The telephone rings. It's Alistair. Jean hears Judith mention his name and smiles, rising from her chair and extending her hand towards the receiver, but Judith tells him that Jean isn't in -- she's at the chiropodist's for her weekly visit to get her corns seen to. Jean sits back down, somewhat horrified.

Lionel arrives back at the hotel. The desk clerk, of course, recognizes him. Lionel assures him this visit won't be long. He wants a room and an area in which to work. The desk clerk offers him the "junior suite", but Lionel declines. "You missed me, didn't you?" says Lionel. "Terribly," the man answers, with a straight face.

Lionel walks into the secretarial agency carrying a tiny bunch of flowers. Sandy tells him that Jean is out, but he insists on waiting for her. On the table next to him is the HUGE bouquet that Alistair sent. Sandy makes sure he knows they were sent by Alistair.

Jean walks in. He hands her the flowers, saying he couldn't "find an inkwell" to put them in. She tells him they're sweet. They walk into her office. He asks her how the nightcap in Norwich went. She tells him it was rather flattering. She asks him about his "overnight accommodations." He says that he was flung out of Denise's house. Jean snickers. Lionel doesn't understand how Jean could be flattered by the attentions of a 12 year old boy. Jean protests that Alistair is quite attractive. Lionel is trying very hard to repair matters: "I didn't know you were coming to Norwich, you see?" He wants to know why she came. To hear his lecture. Would it have been any different, she wants to know, had he known she was coming?

LIONEL: I only knew Denise on and off, you know."
JEAN: You could have phrased it more delicately."

Jean discusses it with Sandy and she agrees to work for Lionel because she likes him. Jean is not sure she understands why, but Sandy reminds her that she was once in love with him and he's really a likeable fellow. Jean realizes that Judith has been gossiping. She says she really didn't go out with Lionel long enough to know whether or not she really liked him.

Lionel and Sandy are working at the hotel. In his attempt to humanize Colonel Austin, who he previously described as "tall", he decides to add "with a mustache." Sandy tries to help him see that he isn't doing a very good job of fixing up his descriptions. He's getting frustrated and Sandy's very patient with him. He's not sure it's all worth it. "Think of it as polishing a diamond," she tells him. He wants to leave it all for a bit.

She reminds him that he's paying for her time, but he doesn't seem to care. She offers him a mint, which he refuses and and then she asks him what Jean was like when they knew each other earlier. His eyes tell the whole story. He looks almost as though he's in another world, remembering what Jean was like: "There was a warmth about her, although she had a temper..." he began. He went on to describe her almost poetically. Suddenly, he smiled -- "I remember once..." and just as suddenly he became the cranky Lionel we've been seeing all along. "And she was short." Sandy points out that this description was a lot more literary than his description of Mrs. Austin as a "blob". He insists it's because he and Jean shared different experiences.

He wants to get back to work, but he's getting restless and he takes all the notes and flings them up into air scattering the pages all over the floor. Just then Jean walks in to ask how everything going. It doesn't take her long to figure out that things aren't just humming along. He tells Jean she doesn't have to stay. She tells him she can't anyway - she has lunch date. The problem, Sandy says, is that Lionel has difficulty in humanizing people. She adds that he did describe someone beautifully and that the someone was her. Jean and Lionel look at one another. He's somewhat embarrassed. Jean is picking up some of the papers and Lionel gets down on the floor to do the same. Lionel doesn't think he's up to the task of humanizing the characters. Sandy suggests that Jean help him, but she says she doesn't know anything about humanizing either. Her suggestion is that Lionel ask Alistair to help, but Lionel feels that would make him look like a fool. Jean leaves for her lunch date but tells Lionel that if he comes around to her house "tonight about eightish" she will try to help him. He'll be there.

He tells Sandy he wants to go to lunch and she said she doesn't have lunch with clients. He tells her think of him not as a client, but as a sinking ship. She'll go. He struggles to get up and asks if it would be okay to have lunch on the floor because he's stiffened up.

Later that night at Jean's house, the bell rings and a very dressed up Judith opens the door for Lionel. He comments to Jean about how quickly Judith opened the door without even looking to see who it was. This leads to a discussion of body language and he says that these days it's impossible to sit comfortably without making it a sexual invitation or a rebuff. He sits down and crosses one leg over another. She stares at him and says "what's that?" He says it's gratitude. Which reminds him -- he pulls a tiny box of candy from behind his manuscript and then sees there's already a huge box on the coffee table. No need, he says, to tell him that those were from Alistair. She confirms it and agrees the whole thing was "getting silly." Lionel feels that she encouraged it, though. She asks if he has eaten. He tried a club sandwich at the hotel, but it tasted as though it were made during the blitz. She offers to make him dinner. He should have brought some wine, he says, but he speculates that she already has a couple of cases from Alistair. "Only a couple," Jean tells him and walks towards the kitchen.

Lionel is looking at the two boxes of candy as Judith walks in the room. She tells him she thinks the box is "garish" anyway. She's primping a bit and asks Lionel if she looks okay. She's getting ready to leave and she's dressed in a low cut, tight fitting black dress. Her hair is piled up on her head, away from her face. Looks like a big date. He answers that she looks very good indeed. She doesn't like her body, she says. He consoles her by suggesting that he's never met any woman who liked her body. "I do, for what it's worth."

Judith looks at the box of candy and comments on how huge it is. Jean'll never be able to eat all that. Lionel says Alistair "should be sending them to you." Judith looks hurt and Lionel feels he's been indelicate. She tells him that when Jean is in the room "I might as well be wallpaper to Alistair -- plain wallpaper." Lionel says he doesn't understand what's so appealing about Alistair -- he thinks of him as a little twerp who can't even speak English well. Judith offers some adjectives: good-looking, clever, funny, successful, well-off. Lionel accuses her of going for the obvious.

He asks her where she's going. Out to dinner with a crowd -- always an odd-number to include her, she says. She says she's twice-divorced, living with her mother, not a threat. Lionel tells her that if that's what the women in the crowd think, then they must be blind. Judith is very flattered. He says it's not like him to praise someone -- he must be mellowing. She tell's him she has to go and he says "go on then, be a threat." She seems to be looking at Lionel in a new light. She leaves and Jean comes in with Lionel's dinner.

Later that night they are sitting on the couch discussing Lionel's book. She says he's sulking because he can't accept constructive criticism -- she said the book came across as "a handbook for growing coffee beans and a guide to Kenya". Jean tells him it's called My Life in Kenya and he should explain who the "me" is in "my". He should drop a veil or two. He informs her that he is not a belly dancer.

She brings up his wife as an example -- he meets her, he marries her, he lives with her and he divorces her. "It's all so colorless." He tells her that's how it was, and he's surprised that she brings it up because all she did was flip through the book. He doesn't know that she's read the whole thing before. I suspect she's also a bit curious about his wife, but that isn't mentioned at all. She's frustrated and asks if he wants her to help him or not. Lionel tells her they should watch television instead. He begins to describe his ex-wife. Aside from being tall, she was the only girl for miles. He drove thirty miles every Sunday to see her and his rear-end ached every trip. They'd go for a walk and have tea and finally he married her to save the travelling. Jean said it sounded like "pretty steamy stuff".

He looked at her and said "you should be in the first chapter." She reminds him she was never in Africa. Yes, but if she was talking about steam, he tells her that the two of them could have powered a locomotive. She gives him a very long look. She asks why he got a divorce and he said that the area became more socialized. There was a lot of emigration. New roads. Jean wondered aloud "someone found her willowy?" No, he said, he found someone rounded. He claimed he wasn't a saint.

He asked why she married. She said it was not to save her bum from hurting as he did. She loved her husband. Suddenly she said she wondered what happened to that letter, referring to the one Lionel had sent from Korea. It was a physical pain, not hearing from him. He said it was worse for him. She told him to stop making a competition out of it. If only you had gotten that letter, he thinks. "If only I had gotten that letter..." she echoes. She wondered during those days whether or not he was killed. He was kicked by a mule once. She said he told her that story and he is annoyed that already he is beginning to repeat himself. She already knows to correct him -- the fact is that he was nearly kicked by the mule. He tells her the mule struck a glancing blow and left a scar on his cheek. She leans over to look for it. She sees nothing. She leans closer and puts her hand on his cheek. He holds her wrist and they look at one another. "That's nice," he says. "It's yesterday," she responds. As they sit there touching, Judith comes back into the house. They withdraw.

Judith comes up to Lionel and kisses him on the cheek. "I WAS a threat," she tells him and leaves. Jean wants to know what she meant by that and she runs out into the hallway and asks Judith, who is on the way upstairs. She said it was just something Lionel had said when they were talking earlier about Alistair. Alistair was all glitz -- she was over him now. Lionel made her feel better about herself in two minutes than Alistair could in two years. When Jean attributes this to the wisdom of the ancients, Judith responds by saying that Lionel wasn't old and that, in fact, she thought he was gorgeous. We all know where she's going with this. Evidentally Jean does too.

Jean returns to the living room. He wants to know if everything's alright. "Everything's fine, (long pause) gorgeous," is her answer. He's bewildered.