Disclaimer: none of these characters belong to me; they belong to Shoot the Moon Enterprises and Warner Bros to whom I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to take them out for a spin and bit of light humour.
That's a pretty Mickey Mouse reason
"The difference is, I lie for a reason!"
"But you'll admit you do lie? And you do it so well"
"Well, thank you so much. However, when I lie, I lie for national security and to protect mother and the boys and because my work is need-to-know. You're just asking me to lie to get you out of having to go to work! You sound exactly like Philip pretending to be sick to get out of a math test!"
"But A-man-da! It's the Superbowl! My Broncos are in the Superbowl!"
"So you want me to call Billy and tell him some cockamamie story so that you can weasel out of helping at Station One all weekend?"
"Well, yes, but only because if I call him, he'll see right through any excuse, but if you call him, he probably won't question it because you're so honest and even if he does, you can do that confuse-em-to-death thing you do so well and he'll crumble in the face of it."
"So you want me to abuse my hard-earned reputation and use Billy's faith in my innate honesty to make it easier for you to sneak out of town tomorrow and go to California for a stupid boys' weekend at the Superbowl?"
"Yes"
"And why exactly would I do this for you?"
"Would it make a difference if I said the boys coming on this trip were Philip and Jamie?"
"WHAT?"
"When I said it was a boys weekend, I meant our boys"
"How on earth did you get three tickets to the Superbowl?"
"Jack Sanderson over at CIA is a really terrible poker player"
"Fine, what am I telling Billy?"
"Tell him the boys gave me something really contagious. He's a dad, he'll believe that. And Amanda? Actually I got four tickets."
"You have four tickets to the Superbowl?"
"Yes, and I've already packed a bag for you and our plane leaves tomorrow morning and we have an extra day booked to take the boys to Disneyland so make sure you tell Billy it's something that would keep us both off work until Wednesday"
"Lee!"
"Yes, Amanda?"
"If I call Billy, you have to call Principal McDonald and tell her some lie to get the boys out of school."
"Deal"