I try to be a pal by pointing out that Tom himself always takes ample care, prior to the moment of his decapitation, to appear genuinely terrified. Also, re the lightning-burst-thunderclap spate of total darkness that allows him to switch the headless “After” Animatron in for himself on the chopping block before he hops down the DisaHole: does he not always endeavor to do that quickly, so the switch will go unnoticed by our Visitors? Maybe, I suggest, he is more like Ann than he wishes to acknowledge! Isn’t his quick hopping analogous to Ann’s continually practicing her accent, i.e., a form of admirable professionalism?

“I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t practice hopping into the DisaHole when we’re on Break,” he says.

“I get that,” I say, listening and agreeing being a proven path to friendship. “That sounds frustrating.”

“But she just goes on and on,” he says. “ ‘Guv’n’r’ this, ‘guv’n’r’ that. And why? For what?”

“Wants to do a good job?” I say. “For her Visitors?”

“Of whom there never are any?” he says, crossly.

Then there is this rather big silence.

“Not that I’m saying there never are any,” he says.

“I know you’re not saying that, Tom,” I say.

“I should probably just shut up,” he says.

“Probably,” I say.

Jeez, I think, Tom, Mr. Frame, you have really put me in a bad spot!

Rules are rules, friends are friends. But now rules and friends urge differing courses of action upon me, and which shall I choose?

I take a long thinking-walk along our fake creek, pondering, and see several false ducks there, belly up, being serviced by Todd Sharpe. When Todd gets something right, a quack can be heard, or at least part of one.

Gosh! I am usually all about Team. When my back went out last year, did I discontinue squatting and stand up straight, which would have felt good? No, I squatted on, using a broken-off broom as a brace. Once, filling in as Screaming Doomed Cleric, though I had strep, I screamed for eight straight hours, even providing all six Optional Dread Whoops.

Yet I continue pacing the free-flowing creek, going back and forth from one wall where the creek ends in a painting of itself flowing off into eternity to the other, until finally Todd has every last duck up and running, except for one too broke to ever quack again, which Todd bears away under one of his arms.

Just then, from near Bowling, I hear both hue and cry.