"Niles, can you believe her?" Fran asked him, chuckling as they both entered the hall by the stairs to go to the kitchen.
"What I can't believe is that you let her walk out the door with your squares," Niles replied as they walked through the dining room and into the kitchen.
"Oh, no, I don't mind her taking the squares with her. She has to take the bus to Yetta's, and then they are heading to my cousin Marsha's for coffee after getting their hair done. She needs all the anxiety relief she can get." He smiled. "I was talking about her idea, to get the newspaper editor to go out with me, so I can flirt with him and get him to help Mr. Sheffield with another play."
"Well, that's a nice thought," Niles commented. "It's very selfless of you to be willing to do that for Mr. Sheffield," he finished.
"Well, it's not all for him." Fran conceded. "If I'm lucky, Mr. Sheffield will get jealous, seeing me with another handsome, rich, powerful man in show business."
"You think that will work?" Niles asked, as he started chopping vegetables for dinner.
"Oh, I hope so. It's not a sure thing, but a girl can dream, right?" Niles smiled. "Not going after my mother, carrying two boxes of chocolates? Now, that's a no brainer! It'd be a death wish to try getting them from her. I'd like to live to see Mr. Sheffield finally-"
"Niles."I'm very busy, so hold all my calls." He said to his trusty butler before looking at Fran, straight faced as could be, as he came into the kitchen grabbing some papers off the counter. He turned his attention to Niles. "The only people I want to hear from is anyone from the production people in Los Angeles." He said, turning back to Fran. "You were saying something, Miss Fine?"
"Uh…"Fran frantically searched her brain for something to say, wondering if he heard her say Mr. Sheffield', and 'finally' in the same sentence. "Um, yeah. I was just saying to Niles, I'd like to see the new Pierce Brosnan movie, it looks really good." She buried herself in the fridge door, hoping he would buy her answer.
Max stopped at the counter to think for a minute, and then headed back towards the dining room door. He paused for a second, and turned back to Fran, who closed the fridge door, thinking she was out of the woods of that fiasco.
"Well, be careful who you're talking to about that. Who knows, this time it could be Steven Spielberg sitting beside you, and with your antics, you could just be giving him the idea for his next greatest blockbuster!" he turned back and pushed through the door and was gone.
Fran plopped herself on the stool at the counter. "Oh, Niles. He seems even more mad than usual this time. What if I can't get myself out of this one?" She opened the sleeve of raw cookie dough and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. "I mean, if I keep messing things up like this, I really don't know if he'll ever come around, and realize he's-"
"Niles!" Max blew back into the kitchen just as fast as he'd left it just a minute before. "I am positively swamped tonight, so I'll be taking my dinner in the study." Once again, he looked at Fran with a stone cold face.
"Yes, sir." Niles responded quickly.
Pushing past the cold she felt from him, Fran piped up. "Mr. Sheffield, you're not going to eat with me and the kids tonight?" she put her spoon down and looked right into his eyes, searching for that glisten in his eyes she'd come to know and love so much. "You can't miss dinner; surely you can take a break to spend time with your kids?" She purposely left herself out of the second sentence, not wanting to rock the boat anymore.
"No, Miss Fine." He looked straight back at her, barely missing a beat. "I have to keep working on this television project, so that I at least have something to keep me going, since what I thought was going to be my next big Broadway deal evaporated into thin air yesterday." He turned and headed right back towards the dining room door.
Fran was trying not to start an argument, but she had had enough of that tone from him. She fell right in step behind him and was on his heels as they entered the dining room. "Okay, I know I screwed up, and I'm sorry," she practically yelled at him from across the table. "But can't you see that I was just trying to help you?!" She stood with her hands on her hips. "I just thought that if I could get Andrew Lloyd Webber's agent to see how much this deal meant to you, he would back off and let you take it."
"Help me?!" he repeated, also more or less yelling. "This is exactly what I am talking about!" he was definitely yelling at this point. You trying to help me with this career-defining deal," he said, leaning on the far side of the table, "is like, well," he trailed off, and then put his head down. "Frankly," he looked at her again. "I don't think there is a comparison."
"Mr. Sheffield, what are you trying to say?" she asked, even though she was starting to be afraid of what he was going to say.
"I'm saying, Miss Fine," he stood up fully and put his hands on his hips also. "That of all the crazy schemes and sideshows you've pulled over the last four years, this one has gone too far." When he finished talking, he just continued to look at her, as stone faced and cold as could be.
Fran dropped her head. She really didn't know what to say. She felt she had disappointed him so much, that she couldn't even look at him. When she finally mustered up the courage to look up, she discovered he was gone. She went back into the kitchen, dropped into a chair at the table and put her head in her hands. There was no glisten in his eyes, just a dark and cold feeling she couldn't shake. "I think I've really done it this time, Niles." She said, almost crying.
