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“And now we’re back, Maxie baby,” said Brutus, giving me a reassuring pat on the back. “So any little problem you got, just bring it to papa Brutus, and I’ll give you the benefit of my experience.”

“Gee, thanks, Brutus. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” And you know what? I actually meant it, too. Brutus might be something of a minor bully sometimes, and Harriet a busybody, but they’re also my dear friends, and I’d missed them.

“So what’s going to happen to the sex maniac now?” asked Dooley.

“What sex maniac?” asked Brutus. “What else did we miss?”

“A sex maniac kept following us around, and threatened to post a video on his YouTube channel,” Dooley explained. “Of Odelia talking to us. But Scarlett talked him out of it. She threatened to go to his mother and tell her what he was up to. And the sex maniac was so afraid that his mom wouldfind out that he deleted all of his videos.”

“His sex videos?”

“His videos of Odelia talking to me and Max,” said Dooley. “Though there could have been sex videos in there, too, of course,” he said with a questioning look in my direction.

“No sex videos,” I said curtly.

“No sex videos,” Dooley said. “I felt pity for him, though, because his sex maniac buddy is dead now, so he’s going to have to find himself another sex maniac buddy.”

“I’m sure he’ll manage, Dooley,” I said.

“Are you really?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t get it,” said Brutus.

“Me, neither,” said Harriet.

“What’s all this about a sex maniac?”

I heaved a deep sigh.“Okay, so here is what happened,” I said, and settled in to explain to Brutus and Harriet everything that had transpired in the days they spent going to the dogs.

“So you see?” said Dooley, who’d taken turns with me telling the story, “we need to find Frank Beaver a new buddy, or else he’ll be in trouble.” He turned to me. “You still haven’t explained to me what a sex maniac is, though, Max.”

“Well, Dooley,” I began, but stopped when Brutus placed a paw on my shoulder.

“Please let me, Max,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.” He cleared his throat. “Now, Dooley, a sex maniac is a person who’s addicted to sex—that much is obvious, right?”

“Duh,” said Dooley, excited that finally he was about to discover the big secret.

“And we all know what sex is, don’t we?”

“We do?” he asked.

Brutus blinked.“Sex is when two people… get together to make babies.”

“Okay,” said Dooley, nodding seriously.

“So when a man meets a woman, and they like each other—I mean, when they feel that spark—”

“What spark?” asked my friend, taking this all in.

“Well…the spark, you know. When they kiss.”

“They kiss? And then they feel a spark? You mean like an electric spark?”

“Well… yes.”

“Okay, so they kiss, and there’s a spark, and then what?”

“Well, that’s what humans call sex.”

“They do?!”

“Absolutely.”

“So… a kiss, a spark and…”

Brutus swallowed.“Okay, so a man kisses a woman he likes, or a woman kisses a man she likes, or a man kisses a man or a woman kisses a woman, as the case may be, or let’s just say they kiss each other and they feel that spark… then before long, and only if they both agree, the stork comes flying over, and….Well, I think you can guess the rest.”

“Babies!”

“Babies.”

“And so a sex maniac…”

Brutus was starting to look a little desperate. I had the impression he regretted having taken on this task.“Well, so a sex maniac is a person who just keeps kissing person after person after person after person, one after the other, but…”

“No spark?”

“No spark.”

“So no stork?”

“No stork.”

“So… no babies?”

“Exactly! You got it, Dooley.”

“Poor sex maniacs. They must be really desperate.”

“It’s not a lot of fun being a sex maniac,” Brutus agreed.

Suddenly Dooley’s eyes turned to Scarlett and he frowned. “So… do you think Scarlett is a sex maniac?”

“Um…” said Brutus, and gave me a look of mild despair.

“Sometimes, Dooley,” I told my friend, “a woman has to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds the one frog that she knows she likes. And when I say frog, I mean person, of course. That’s just how it is. We don’t call such a person a sex maniac. We call them—”

“Discerning,” Gran chimed in with a grin.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re talking about me?” asked Scarlett.

“Just your imagination, darling,” said Gran, and took a bite from her sausage.

“So how many ‘frogs’ does Scarlett have to kiss before she finds the one?” asked Dooley.

“A lot,” I said. “Like, a whole lot.”

“It’s going to take her a long time.”

“Yeah, sometimes it does take a long time, but Scarlett isn’t giving up hope that one day she will find the right person. The person she’s going to experience that spark with.”

“Scarlett, please don’t give up!” Dooley now yelled. “The right frog is out there!”

“What is he saying?” asked Scarlett.

“Nothing,” said Gran. “He’s just hungry.”

“Hungry for frogs!” Dooley yelled.

“Cats,” said Gran with a shrug. “You know what they’re like. Always wanting to eat.”

“You know, one day I would like to be able to talk to them,” said Scarlett. “I have a feeling they’d be able to tell me a lot of interesting things.”