Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Reach for the Sky
It was a small, insidious voice that refused to be quiet.
You know this will end badly.
The call came early in the morning from Dr. Smyth.
You're incompetent.
Billy was missing, and she needed to run the department until he was found.
Remember when you were in charge of the tennis club in sixth grade? This will go just as badly.
She was briefed, according to whatever Dr. Smyth himself knew (or, most likely, cared to share with her), but it wasn't enough.
No one will listen to you. They only listen to Billy.
She knew there were protocols and procedures for when the boss was missing.
You know you'll mess this up.
She knew what she was doing.
What if you forget something, though? What if you make a mistake, though? What if it's your leadership that brings the agency down?
She got to the agency early, but the door to the vault where the procedural documents were kept was finicky, and the documents themselves were in folders that seemed to want to leap from her shaking hands. She took the whole stack up to Billy's office, still wrestling with those stupid file folders that wouldn't stay in a neat pile.
You can't even carry folders right.
Amanda was coming down the hall, looking like she had been there for a while, when Francine finally lost her battle with the folders. She was just outside the bullpen doors, so close to her objective, when her hand slipped and the files cascaded to the floor.
She let out a yelp of frustration, and Amanda immediately went into mothering mode. Only the weak needed mothering, and Francine bristled.
"Here you go Francine; let me give you a hand." She knelt down and started shoving papers haphazardly into the closest folder.
"No, no, Amanda, please! That's classified information!" Her voice sounded shrill even to her own ears.
"Francine, I'm not looking at it!" Amanda replied, looking surprised and a little upset.
"Amanda," she sighed.
Don't admit defeat.
"I am in charge of departmental administration while Billy is out," she decided to say, walking into the bullpen with Amanda at her heels. "Are you here on assignment?"
"Yeah, well, Mr. Melrose is going to give me my — where is Mr. Melrose?" She never finished sentences.
"That is on a need to know basis," she snapped.
"I need to know," Amanda said, but she didn't. She really didn't.
Come down hard. Enforce your authority at the beginning or it'll be harder to later on.
"Well I don't need to tell you," she replied. "Why he encourages this spy fantasy of yours, I really will never fathom. Look, Amanda, why don't you...uh... just check out because we don't need any superfluous bodies around here now."
She walked away, with the thoughts coming thick and fast, crowding her brain and digging at her mind.
Look at her. She has no idea how hard you've had to work your whole life. Now she's where you should be, investigating with Lee and hobnobbing with the highest of society, and you're stuck in a job you can't do well. You should have never become Billy's assistant. You're not good at it. You'll never be good at it.
The other agents were milling around in the bullpen, looking like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Maybe if she didn't tell them, no one would notice. Maybe if she didn't tell them, everyone would just carry on as if Billy were just out at the dentist or sick with the flu. Maybe if she didn't tell them, they wouldn't realize that she was the one that had been left in charge, temporarily or (please, God, no) permanently.
She took a lap of the bullpen, approaching Billy's office with a growing sense of foreboding gathering in her stomach. The sharp bite of extra saliva and a bit of bile rose in her throat.
One of the computer guys, no doubt trying to cheer her up, told her to smile more. "You look like a thundercloud, Frannie." So she snapped at him, professional words in an ugly tone. She redoubled her pace on the way to Billy's office.
Amanda and Lee were already there, like bad pennies that kept appearing or small toddlers who were always underfoot. Lee was lounging on Billy's desk. Amanda was sitting in a chair, looking up at him.
Come down hard. They'll never respect your authority if you don't.
"What are you doing in here?" How in the world did they have time to lounge around when she was running around like a chicken with its head cut off!? "This is not a lounge. This is my office now."
Way to go, Francine. Now they know something's up.
"Oh, well, we're studying for my test, Francine," said Amanda.
"No test today," she said, throwing down her folder and picking up the phone.
"No test today?" Amanda repeated.
"Mr. Melrose is out with the flu," she said. She tried to make it sound casual. But her eyes felt wild.
Lee and Amanda shared A Look. It made Francine nervous. What if they knew the truth — that Billy was missing?
Motormouth Manda started up. "The flu...ooohh. Eeeew. That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that." She got up and followed Lee to the door, still talking. "I'm glad there's no test though. I mean, you know, everybody hates to take a test." Lee was trying to get her out the door, but she was still going. "Well, you know, you know how to drive but you hate to take your driver's test. Don't ya? I do. Bye!"
Lee almost pushed her out the door under the guise of brushing something off her blouse. It was such an Amanda thing to do — brush something off someone's shirt. She hadn't thought she'd live to see the day when Lee started mothering.
"Bye," Francine said, her smile probably a grimace by now. She wished she could recruit help, but the manuals were very clear: involve as few people as possible unless there has been a security or intelligence breach. In that case, initiate Operation Possum without delay.
She sighed, then dialed a phone number.
How she wished this day had gone the way she had planned it out to be.
She ran into Amanda hours later.
See? She didn't listen when you told her to clear out. She listens to Billy. She doesn't listen to you. No one listens to you. No one will ever listen to you.
"You're back?"
"Just passing through, Francine," Amanda replied without turning.
"So I've always thought," she said, and realized she said it out loud. "Listen, have you seen Lee? I haven't seen him all morning."
"Francine," said Amanda, bringing out the overdramatic hand motions. "I can honestly say that at this moment I do not know precisely where Lee is." She stopped and turned to face Francine.
"Amanda," she said.
"Honestly."
"Amanda."
"Honestly."
Her irritation got the better of her. "Listen to me. I have debriefed seven of the KGB's top men, all right? The cleverest liars on the face of this earth. I can tell when somebody is speaking the truth from a mile away."
If asking doesn't work, try intimidation.
"Francine," Amanda said patiently, "do I look like a clever liar?"
What was she supposed to say to that? Yes? No? She didn't look like a clever liar, after all.
"Then you should be able to tell I'm telling the truth," Amanda said firmly, and walked off.
Oh, this is a nightmare.
If Francine had thought that the whole thing was a nightmare before, it was nothing to what was happening now.
Requisitions.
Paperwork.
Time off requests.
More paperwork.
Coffee paperwork? Why did Billy have to fill out and approve coffee paperwork?
More, and more, and more, and more paperwork.
Computer allotments.
A helicopter request.
She didn't even have time to look for Billy.
Billy was back. Thank God.
She wasn't cut out for sole responsibility. Maybe someday. But it seemed over-ambitious for now.
Complaints and issues had started rolling in as soon as she walked in. She had a stack of files to go through, and almost everything she had filled out or done seemed to have been done wrong.
"Well, Francine," Lee said, coming to stand beside her.
"Hi," she said, a bit subdued, trying to ignore the fact that he was laughing at her.
"I'll bet you're glad that Billy's back, huh? You don't have to hold down the fort all by yourself."
"I think I sabotaged the fort," she said, and the smile dropped from his face.
"What?" he asked, at the same time Amanda leaned in.
"What's the matter?" she exclaimed.
It was strangely heartwarming that they were so shocked that things had gone badly. They, at least, thought more highly of her than that.
"The requisition for employee coffee beans accidentally got typed on an Agency transfer form."
They made sympathetic noises.
"The computer allotment accidentally got filed with the Agency expense accounts, giving Johnson a forty-thousand dollar reimbursement check."
More sympathetic noises.
"Uh, well, Francine, don't worry," said Amanda earnestly, and Lee smiled a little as he watched her. "Just explain to Mr. Melrose; I'm sure he'll understand."
"Yeah," Lee agreed, shrugging a little. "You know Billy."
The roar cut through the hum and babble of the bullpen like a hot knife through butter.
"Desmond!" Billy stood at the door to his office, looking murderous. "My office, on the double!"
She was in for it, now. She took the files back from Amanda, glanced at Lee, and excused herself to face her doom.
She was almost at Billy's office when he added the final nail to the coffin where her career would be residing until further notice.
"I leave this place for ten minutes and all hell breaks loose!"
He wasn't wrong.