Horace the Corgi liked peoplefood.
In fact, Horace the Corgi loved peoplefood. Being a little overweight (not to mention a little gray about the muzzle in these latter years), he wasn't supposed to have it, and Julia had been good about stopping the table feeding after the vet had told her bluntly that her generosity was shortening her housemate's life. That conversation had taken place sixteen months ago; since then Horace had been restricted to Bil-Jac and the occasional dietetic dog treat. The treats resembled Styrofoam packing-poppers, and judging from the reproachful way Horace looked at her before eating them, she guessed they probably tasted like packing-poppers, too. But she stuck to her guns: no more fried chicken skin, no more Cheez Doodles, no more bites of her morning doughnut.
This limited Horace's intake of verboten comestibles, but did not entirely end it; the imposed diet simply reduced him to foraging, which Horace rather enjoyed, returning him as it did to the hunting nature of his foxy forebears. His morning and evening walks were especially rich in culinary delights. It was amazing what people left in the gutters along Main Street and West Street, which formed his usual walkie-walk route.There were french fries, potato chips, discarded peanut butter crackers, the occasional ice cream bar wrapper with some chocolate still adhering to it. Once he came upon an entire Table Talk pie. It was out of its dish and in his stomach before you could say cholesterol.
He didn't succeed in snarking all the goodies he came upon; sometimes Julia saw what he was after and jerked him along on his leash before he could ingest it. But he got a lot, because Julia often walked him with a book or a folded copy of the New York Times in one hand. Being ignored in favor of the Times wasn't always good - whenl he wanted a thorough belly-scratch, for instance - but during walkies, ignorance was bliss. For small yellow Corgis, ignorance meant snacks.
He was being ignored this morning. Julia and the other woman - the one who owned this house, because her smell was all over it, especially in the vicinity of the room where humans went to drop their scat and mark their territory - were talking. Once the other woman cried, and Julia hugged her.
'I'm better, but not all better,' Andrea said. They were in the kitchen. Horace could smell the coffee they were drinking. Cold coffee, not hot. He could also smell pastries. The kind with icing. 'I still want it.' If she was talking about pastries with icing, so did Horace.
'The craving may go on for a long time,' Julia said, 'and that's not even the important part. I salute your courage, Andi, but Rusty was right - cold turkey is foolish and dangerous. You're damn lucky you haven't had a convulsion.'
'For all I know, I have.'Andrea drank some of her coffee. Horace heard the slurp. 'I've been having some damned vivid dreams. One was about a fire. A big one. On Halloween.'
'But you're better.'
'A little. I'm starting to think I can make it. Julia, you're welcome to stay here with me, but I think you could find a better place. The smell - '
'We can do something about the smell. We'll get a battery-powered fan from Burpee's. If room and board is a firm offer - one that includes Horace - I'll take you up on it. No one trying to kick an addiction should have to do it on her own.'
'I don't think there's any other way, hon.'
'You know what I mean. Why did you do it?'
'Because for the first time since I got elected, this town might need me. And because Jim Rennie threatened to withhold my pills if I objected to his plans.'
Horace tuned the rest of this out. He was more interested in a smell wafting to his sensitive nose from the space between the wall and one end of the couch. It was on this couch that Andrea liked to sit in better (if considerably more medicated) days, sometimes watching shows like The Hunted Ones (a clever sequel to Lost) and Dancing with the Stars, sometimes a movie on HBO. On movie nights she often had microwave popcorn. She'd put the bowl on the endtable. Because stoners are rarely neat, there was a scattering of popcorn down there below the table. This was what Horace had smelled.
Leaving the women to their blah, he worked his way under the little table and into the gap. It was a narrow space, but the endtable formed a natural bridge and he was a fairly narrow dog, especially since going on the Corgi version ofWeightWatchers.The first kernels were just beyond theVADER file, lying there in its manila envelope. Horace was actually standing on his mistress's name (printed in the late Brenda Perkins's neat hand) and hoovering up the first bits of a surprisingly rich treasure trove, when Andrea and Julia walked back into the living room.