Mr. Fox and Rabbit - Part 18

“The hot ones are going to Rabbit?”
Rabbit smiled fixedly and very slowly and purposefully turned to face Dr. Bear. “I am sorry… did you say something?”
“I did.” Mumbled Dr. Bear.
“You ATE the hat?”
“Yes.”
“Oh well. Let us get the hell out of here.”
The animals piled into Perfectly Frank’s Suzuki Samurai and set out at 2:23AM.
“Why are we setting out at 2:23AM?” asked Dr. Bear, nervous for no reason he could really nail down.
“Well, most stories have people setting out at dawn, or dusk, or at noon,” grumbled Rabbit. He revved the engine and began the fruitless search for a non top 40 radio station.
“What’s wrong with those times?”
Mr. Fox grinned. “They are highly unrealistic. Most of the time people leave during none of those times.”
“Well, people do leave at dusk quite a bit.”
“What is dusk?”
Like a scepter, Rabbit raised a decrepit, rolled up copy of the July 1992 issue of Penthouse. He intoned in a deep, sonorous voice: “Depending on the time zone, it is sometime between 4 and 8PM.”
“In Hungary, it is closer to 4.”
“I know. Those bastards really insisted on being in the EUROPEAN time zone. That frigging time zone is something like 2562 miles wide. Insane!”
Dr. Bear and Mr. Fox nodded sagely. They spoke in unison, bobbing their vastly disproportionate heads. “We AGREE, Rabbit.”
“And...” Rabbit trailed off, staring straight ahead, looking bored to death. “Never you mind.”
“What does any of this have to do with Commander Vimes?” asked one of the animals.
“Nada,” answered Rabbit, annoyed. “It is a mystery – thus, enter Commander Vimes! Solve the discrepancy!”
“This has the stench of copyright infringement.” Muttered Dr. Bear.
“Does it? I thought it was the cheese enchilada I had for dinner,” Rabbit grinned maniacally. “In any event, I stored up some good aged Scotch for Commander Vimes. Tasty, fantastic, out of your mind juicy, aged, golden, flavorful booze. It is so tasty it defies description.”
“Well… Fabulous. I thought Commander Vimes was a recovering alcoholic.”
Rabbit’s grin could have frozen methane. “Yes…?”
“So why are you tempting him?” Dr. Bear produced a copy of Feet of Clay and thumbed through it until he had come to the relevant passage. “In any event, it says here that he had been tempted and he actually dumped the stuff on the carpet rather than give in.”
“To temptation.”
“Right. To temptation.”
Dr. Bear nervously looked for a cup. This was obviously the prelude to toasting. It sounded like a toast. Why was there nothing to toast with? There was the edge of hysteria to his voice when he finally spoke up. “Ok, ok… Are we toasting? Also, is the car moving? Have we seen anything new? Do we need to get gas? What the hell is happening?”
“We would only need gas if there was a need to get gas in the story. It would be a sort of a break in the story.”
“I agree,” said Mr. Fox in the form of a sibilant hiss and a sinuous hip movement.
“Well, we DO need to intro Commander Vimes,” said Rabbit and pulled the car over into a gas station owned by Valero. He pointed at the sign with his paw. “Valero is primarily a west coast refiner of petroleum. The company mostly uses sweet crude from Iraq. It is tasty crude, light, easy to turn into juicy GAS!”
Commander Vimes briskly walked from the gas station convenience store to Rabbit. “I am Commander Vimes of the City Watch,” he said with just a trace of irritation in his voice. “What the fuck are you?”