It continued long past the moment many of them began to wonder just what it was they were clapping about.
Toward the end of that day, Sparky broke another tradition by summoning Curly, the chief of the studio legal staff, and the chief accountant to his office. They found themselves in a comfortable and cluttered environment, a bit shabby since nothing had been replaced in many years, but clean, since Sparky didn't care if the cleaning staff entered so long as he wasn't present. They had strict instructions never to move anything. Dust, sweep, and get out was the rule. John Valentine had vanished after his presentation, off on mysterious projects of his own. He wouldn't have bothered with a meeting like this one, anyway, since it was strictly about money. Valentine let others handle such matters.
"So how much is the new theater going to cost us?" Sparky said.
The accountant, a handsome Latin-lover type who Sparky thought looked like a lawyer, and who was proud of his Indian and Arab heritage, was named Yasser Dhatsma-Bhebey. He shuffled through a stack of papers and drawings, shaking his head slowly.
"Spa... Kenneth, it's hard to say. One man in costing-out reckons there are five different projects here." He shuffled more papers. "Another figures it's at least six, maybe seven. Each of them has several variations."
"Give me a low end and a high end."
"All right. The basic one here, buying an empty theater—and I think there are two available in King City right now—would be about twelve million. Probably a bit more if we have to buy one that's still operating. And then there's this one." He held up the rendering of the theatrical palace in the park, and blew out his cheeks. "Cubic prices being what they are, we'd be looking at upward of eighty, ninety million. Now, I've got someone exploring the possibility of working a deal with the city government for an existing park—"
"Father doesn't like working with governments," Sparky said, firmly. "Forget that one, anyway. He gets carried away, but he'd hate it when it was done. Concentrate on an old place, I don't care if it's empty or not. Pay whatever you have to. The older and grander, the better. I'll sell him on it."
"S... Kenneth," Curly began, then looked guilty. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it, Curly. I've been called Skenneth, Spakenneth, and Sparky-sorry-I-meant-Kenneth today more than I've been called Sparky or Kenneth." He looked at all of them. "We're just family here. I don't mind if you still call me Sparky."
Debbie Corlet—who had been called Curly so long she usually thought of her real name just once a month, when she signed her paycheck—had been Sparky's closet confidante since Polly's retirement ten years earlier. She was the only one at the studio who knew just how much influence John Valentine had been on the fortunes of Thimble Theater with his biweekly two-billion-mile communiques, full of chatty news she knew to be mostly lies, and helpful suggestions that seldom made it out of this office, much less to a full meeting. In the early days, when they were considering various ideas for a corporate logo, Valentine had suggested using a character from the old Popeye cartoons. Since they were all in the public domain, Sparky had settled on Wimpy taking a bite out of a hamburger. Other than that, Curly couldn't recall Sparky ever taking his father's advice, though he read each letter faithfully.
"Father is not a businessman," he would tell her, before handing her the printouts to be neatly stamped APPROVED, KV and carefully filed in a secret location. She had a staff of six hard at work at that moment, going over the last year's messages, comparing them with reality, and manufacturing paperwork to make it appear that something had actually been done about Valentine's suggestions on the remote chance he would actually look into them. Curly, who vividly remembered John Valentine from his brief, nightmarish stint with the studio, knew the man would never give it another thought.
"Sparky," she said. "I was wondering about maybe morphing the Sparky character. It wouldn't be hard, or expensive, and you'd still pull down your full salary for each episode. Do you think that would appeal to your father?"
Sparky smiled. "Normally, yes. Anything that smacks of putting one over on the producer would usually be an easy sell. Even when we are the producers. But not morphing. He would never allow his image, or mine, to be used that way. He's suspicious of anything computer-generated, and most of all, anything that lessens the opportunities for flesh-and-blood actors to be seen.
"I know that," she said, "but I've never understood it. Ninety percent of the Gang are morphed."
"Over morphing suits," Sparky pointed out. "Never completely generated."
"So what? As for getting his face seen, I know he's played parts where it was impossible to recognize his face."
"That's makeup. He doesn't mind that. Forget it, Curly. This is one we can't win." He leaned back in his chair. "And understand this, all of you. It's not one I want to win. Maybe you're thinking my father pressured me into this decision. He didn't. I'd been thinking about it, but I'm not sure I'd ever have had the guts to do it. I'm not as decisive as he is. But believe me, it's time to put Sparky to rest. Character, and series."
"It's still making great ratings, and returns," the accountant pointed out.
"I know it. But I'm not. Personally speaking, it's time, it's past time, for me to move on to something else. It's time for me to stretch myself. And as for hiring a stand-in and morphing my face onto him... you know, I'd feel just shitty about that. I think I'd be jealous. And besides, look how long our replacement Peppy lasted, way back when."
Curly didn't bother to point out that reviving a character who had blown his brains out in front of the television cameras had never been Sparky's brightest idea. She realized it was something Sparky had needed to do, to establish his final victory, and final control, of the man. The revived Peppy Show had lasted three months, and never found an audience.
"Oswald," Sparky said. "Tell me, bottom line, how much this Neptune trouble is going to cost me."
Oswald Abugado, chief legal council to Thimble Theater, was a small, bald man whose bookish demeanor always put Sparky in mind of an accountant. Yasser and Oswald, he thought, had been given the wrong job descriptions by fate's central casting office. To distinguish them, Sparky always used an old mnemonic trick his father had taught him: he mentally placed a white barrister's wig on Oswald, and an inky pen behind Yasser's ear. Abugado was a slave, who probably chose to be as small and meek and bald as he was, and who always wore his studded leather collar. Sometimes his mistress brought him to work at the end of a chain. But he was submissive only to his mistress. In court, he was known as the Piranha: a little fucker with a lot of teeth.
His papers were laid out neatly in front of him, on one corner of Sparky's pool-table-size desk. He shuffled through them.
"I can't give you a hard figure yet," Abugado said. "I've got agents exploring the judge in the Oberoni Bond matter; he seems bribable, but he may be expensive. Let's see now, the assault cases... Houghton has settled for L$300,000, and Myers hasn't said no to the same amount. Plaintiff Kowalski is still refusing to deal, which is understandable, I suppose, considering that Mr. Valentine deprived Kowalski of livelihood, marital consortium, and the use of his legs for six months—"
"But Kowalski's a Holy Healer," Sparky said. "If he'd accepted standard treatment, he'd be—"