“I think we need to expand our movement to include dogs,” said Kingman now. “Cats can only do so much, but dogs can do some real damage, especially the bigger ones like Rufus.”
Rufus belongs to Tex and Marge’s next-door neighbors the Trappers, and is a sheepdog. Unlike some smaller breeds he’s also very big and very fluffy.
“Now if Rufus were here, he could push over those shelves and crash all of those bottles to the floor,” said Kingman wistfully. “And that would be the end of that.” He was referring to the shelves containing the more expensive alcohol Wilbur had on offer. There was an assortment of wine, ofcourse, with a nice offering of both the Stewart and the Kosinski wines, amicably standing side by side, unlike their vintners, but also the stronger ones, which are called the hard liquor.
“Why do they call these liquors hard, Max?” asked Dooley as we studied the shelves containing an eclectic variety of stock. “They don’t look so hard to me.”
“They’re hard liquor because they’re produced through distillation,” I said. “Usually from grains, fruit or vegetables that have been fermented. Since the resulting beverage has a higher percentage of alcohol they are considered harder than the undistilled variety, like beer, wine and cider, which are fermented, but not distilled, giving them a lower alcohol percentage.”
“And root beer? Is that also a hard liquor?”
“Root beer typically doesn’t contain alcohol.”
“So there you have it!” said Dooley. “Make Wilbur drink root beer from now on. He’llthink it’s beer, but in actual fact it’s absolutely harmless. Problem solved!”
“I doubt whether Wilbur will be fooled so easily,” Kingman muttered as he scanned the rows and rows of alcohol on offer in his store. “The man is clever.”
We glanced over to Kingman’s human, and saw that he was poking his nose, digging deep as if looking to extract a nugget of gold, before finally extracting a big green booger. For a moment he carefully studied the booger, an expression of mild curiosity and childlike wonder on his face, then proceeded to roll the specimen between thumb and forefinger, before flicking it into the candy container, where it found its final resting place between a Jolly Rancher and a Milk Dud.
Okay, so maybe Wilbur wasn’t as clever as Kingman thought.
CHAPTER 33
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Wilbur wasn’t the only person in Hampton Cove that day who was finding it hard to enjoy their favorite pastime. Scarlett and Vesta, chatting pleasantly in the outside dining area of the Star Hotel, had ordered their usual drinks—a cappuccino for Scarlett and a hot chocolate for Vesta, when they found their beverages lacking thatje-ne-sais-quoi. That hard to describe something that makes all the difference.
“We shouldn’t,” said Scarlett. “It would set us back to square one.”
“I know,” said Vesta. “But I wants it, Scarlett. I wants it so bad.”
“Me too,” said Scarlett. “In fact I never wanted anything so bad before the day you convinced me to go to that damn AA club of yours.”
“It’s notmy damn AA club, Scarlett,” said Vesta. “And it’s not a club.”
“I thought as much. It’s not very social and they don’t serve alcohol.”
“That’s because it’s for people who want to stop drinking!”
“All right, all right. Don’t flip your wig. I’m not dissing your club. They look like a fine bunch of people. I just wish they were a little more fun to be around.”
Vesta sighed deeply. She loved her friend, she really did, but sometimes she could have sworn she did it on purpose.“Look, are we doing this or not?”
A big grin appeared on Scarlett’s face. “We’re doing it,” she said.
“I like your thinking, sister. Let’s do it!” They weren’t actually member-members of the AA anyway. More like observers. Like at the United Nations.
So she glanced around, making sure Tex wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity—it wouldn’t do for him to see her swilling down booze after she’d knocked that flask out of his hands yesterday. He’d accuse her of being a hypocrite, and he’d have a point!
She gestured for the waiter, who promptly appeared, and they ordered two large martinis on the rocks. And as they waited impatiently, Scarlett was smacking her lips, which was probably a bad idea as she had just applied about a ton of lip gloss.“God, I wants it too,” said Scarlett. “I mean, here I was all my life thinking I needed a man to make me happy, when all I needed was a stiff drink.”
“Liquor sure is easier to digest than a man,” Vesta agreed wholeheartedly. After her divorce she’d ventured out onto the market for singles, and had managed to snag the attention of a couple of male suitors. Most of them she’d been forced to throw back, though, and the ones she hadn’t hadquickly proven equally unpalatable. Unlike this big martini that nice waiter was now bringing up!