Dodger was not acquainted with Daffy Duck, but stripped of the sarcasm, he thought he might be getting a picture of Sparky.
"There's a big pirate ship, just across the hall," he said.
"You want we should go read in there? Will that help you find your 'motivation'? That's where we'll be shooting this scene."
Oh, yeah? Dodger thought. I thought you dashed it off this morning.
"Could we have just a second?" he asked.
Peppy sat back and looked at the ceiling again.
"Take a second, take a second." He found Dodger again with his eyes. "I'll let you in on a secret. Only reason you're still here is most kids stink at this stuff. We get most of 'em out of here in thirty seconds, am I right? Tell him, Debbie, do I speak the truth here?" Debbie nodded, quickly. "I thought I saw something when you were reading that other crap. Now I'm not so sure. But I'm hardly ever wrong, so you get a second. Hell, two seconds. Find your motivation. Wake me up when you're ready." And he leaned back again.
Dodger closed his eyes and tried to find the key to the scene. "There's always a key," his father had said. "It may be a key to the whole play, or just to a scene. Hitchcock called it a McGuffin."
Well, there was the padlock, wasn't there? Maybe it wasn't a key, but a lock. If Sparky doesn't pick the lock there is no scene, just guys squatting in the dark.
He opened his eyes and looked down. He made his hand hold the lock, shaped his fingers around it, felt the cool metal. How did it look? Well, it was a little rusty. Everything metal on this ship was a little rusty. It was a great big, old-fashioned padlock, round, heavy, with a big keyhole in it. The wards inside would be big clunky things, iron bars meant to be moved by a thick skeleton key, that might be moved by a splinter of wood pried from the deck of a pirate ship.
He saw it in his hand. Felt the weight of it.
Now, how would Sparky pick a lock? He thought of people who squinted at a task like that, who bit down on the tips of their tongues. No way. Not Sparky. He's frowning, but one eyebrow is raised. He knows he can do this. He's confident, it's only going to be a matter of time, and part of his mind is already occupied with what he's going to do when he gets free. Dodger felt his shoulders rising a little, his elbows moving out from his sides. Jimmy Cagney? Just a little bit of that, but without the meanness. One side of his lip curled up. He was going to beat this damn lock, it didn't have a chance.
He started to work.
"Hurry, Sparky! I think I hear the pirates coming!"
That Elwood, Sparky thought. Always jumping at ghosts. Sparky had been listening, and he hadn't heard a thing. He shrugged it away.
"Don't make me nervous." He felt the rusty ward moving, moving just the tiniest bit. But the splinter wasn't very strong, it could break at any moment.
"I think I've..." With a satisfying clink the shackle popped up.
"There! It's open. Come on, guys, pull the chain through the rings. Don't let it rattle! Quietly! Quietly!"
(Dodger stood up in his chair.)
"Now, Basil! Robin! Elwood! You go up through the rear hatch." He gestured to his right. "Elwood, find the powder magazine and try to light a fuse." He watched his men hurry away in the darkness, then turned to the rest of them. "Boots, me and you and the rest will go up front, where the guns are. We're outnumbered, but maybe we can send this old bucket to Davy Jones, even if we have to go down with it!"
(Dodger stepped up onto the conference table and crept away, toward Gideon Peppy.)
Sparky carefully pushed up the hatch cover and looked through the crack. When he saw the sleeping guard he leaped out and popped him one in the jaw, then took his flintlock pistol as he fell. The gang swarmed out behind him.
"Come on, guys, grab a weapon!" said MoeBoots. "Let's go!"
Then the pirates were all over them. Sparky fired his pistol, then threw it in a pirate's face. He grabbed a sword and began slashing right and left, until suddenly there was the evil figure of Bluebeard, his longtime nemesis.
"So, Sparky, you've escaped again! Well, you'll not get away this time." He drew his sword and assumed the en garde position. Sparky stood straight, tossed his head, and saluted the captain with his sword. He laughed, defiantly.
"It's you who'll be walking the plank tonight, me bucko!"
They battled back and forth across the seething deck, slippery with blood. Their steel rang in the night, and flashed in the orange light of the torches. Suddenly there was a cry.
"The fuse is lit! Let's get out of here!"
Sparky, who had been toying with the captain, now lunged forward and thrust his blade through Bluebeard's vile black heart. The pirate fell, mortally wounded. Sparky planted his foot on the beribboned and lacy shirt, pulled his sword free.
"There's an end to your plunder, Captain!" He threw his head back and laughed, triumphantly. "Get the point?" Then he turned to his men, arms held high, and gestured firmly toward the stern.
"Come on, men!" he shouted. "There's no time to waste! Over the side with you, and swim for your lives!"
He pounded down the deck, saw the rail ahead of him, and leaped. He was falling, falling, the black sea below rushing up to meet him, and shit! It was a gray carpet!
Dodger just had time to tuck a little and try to roll, but his head still hit the floor with a loud thump.
He sat up and shook his head. There was a ringing sound in his ears. He visualized a ring of twittering bluebirds circling his head, and wondered if this was the Daffy Duck part. Then he looked up, to see four faces looming over him. Larry spoke first.
"Did you see that? Did you see what he did? Jesus, I thought he was going to run right into you, Mr. Peppy. Did you see that? He just jumped right over him. Right over him! Jesus!"
"The kid's crazy," Curly was saying. "I never saw anything like it."
"Kenneth," Peppy said, an island of calm. "Kid, look at me. Are you okay? Should I get a doctor?"
Dodger shook his head again.
"No, I'm all right."
Peppy took the lollipop out of his mouth and looked at it.
"Damn," he said. "I bit my candy in half."
There didn't seem to be any end to the damn place. After Dodger escaped from the audition, he realized he was still lost. Not only was he lost, but it was getting late. His hopes that his father's audition had gone long were fading rapidly, and every corner he turned seemed to bring him back to a place he'd already seen before. Yet it didn't seem as if he were walking in circles.
When he felt a large hand on his shoulder he almost shouted aloud. He looked up into a narrow, frowning face.
"What's the matter, son?" the man drawled. "You look like you stumbled through a time warp."
You should talk, Dodger thought. They both stopped, and Dodger looked him over. It was a tall man, dressed anachronistically in baggy wool trousers, a gray coat and vest, and a white shirt. The only spot of color about him was a cloth strip knotted around his neck, under his collar. Dodger searched for the word, one he had underlined a few months ago. Necktie. And the shapeless hat perched on his head was a fedora.
He certainly wasn't the only oddly dressed person Dodger had seen in the corridors; this was a motion-picture studio. He'd seen red Indians in buckskins and yellow Chinamen in silk pajamas and black Hottentots in tuxedos. He'd seen green-and-purple extraterrestrials in ancient pressure suits. But they'd all had the look of costumes, somehow. This fellow looked as if he'd just stepped out of a time machine. He looked a little faded, yellowed, like an old photo in an album. He was in color, but it wasn't Technicolor.