Full Moon City

I Was a Middle-Age Werewolf by Ron Goulart

Sometimes bad luck just seems to gang up on you.

Take my situation on this past June 13. Things were lousy even before I turned into a shaggy grey wolf-man for the first time.

And I’m not even talking about the fact that I was two payments behind on the mortgage of my house here on the fringes of Beverly Hills. Back in the 1920s the silent-movie lover Orlando Busino lived in this sprawling Moorish-style mansion and romanced some of the loveliest actresses of the silver screen within these very walls. In the 1960s, the immensely, and briefly, popular rock group the Ivy League Jug Band staged excessive orgies here on a fairly regular basis. Obviously the roof didn’t leak back then, nor did the pipes produce ominous keening noises in the midnight hours.

Also, I’m not alluding to my former wife, Mandy, whom you’ve no doubt heard of. She’s a bestselling author of diet books under the name of Mandine Osterwald Higby. Such titles as The Junk Food Diet and To Hell With Nutrition have been on every bestseller list in the land for endless months. Rumors in the publishing trade were that Mandy was working on a memoir to be entitled I Married an Asshole. My attorney charged me $500 to tell me she had a perfect right to do that.

I am, by the way, Tim Higby. I’m forty-one, eleven pounds overweight, and three inches too short. I make my living writing television comedies. I’m very fond of plaid shirts and was wearing one on that fateful night along with a venerable pair of khakis.

My most successful sitcom was Uncle Fred Is a Pain in the Butt, which ran from 2001 to 2003. Since then I haven’t had another hit. Finally, four months ago, I was hired as a writer on Nose Job. That’s the one about the wacky Hollywood plastic surgeon. It began plummeting in the ratings just after the first script I’d had a hand in aired. The show handler and the producers decided they need somebody younger to save Nose Job from extinction and, Lord knows, there are untold numbers of writers younger than I am in Greater Los Angeles.

So on the morning of June 13 I got an e-mail informing me I was no longer on the writing team. I’d been in the middle of writing a very funny script dealing with how this wacky Hollywood plastic surgeon misplaced the left ear of a patient.

As the day waned I was sitting in my living room, scene of many a seduction and many an orgy before my time of residence, and brooding over the fact that in addition to having to pay Mandy an enormous alimony each and every month, I was now going to be vilified in I Married an Asshole.

The cell phone, which I’d been able to keep up the payments on, played the opening notes of Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule With Nellie.”

I scratched at a sudden itch in my right palm, then picked it up. “Yeah?”

“Turn on the Gossip Channel.”

“Why, Hersh?”

It was Bernie Hersh, one of my few close friends and, even at the advanced age of forty-seven, still a very successful television writer. “Just do, old buddy. On my way out.” The call ended.

Putting down the phone, I scratched my hand yet again, and then grabbed up the remote to bring the Gossip Channel into view. There on the screen was my daughter, whose agent had christened her Mutiny Skylark last year, and then sold her to the Will Destry Channel to star in Posy Pickwick: Rock & Roll Detective.

Beth, her real first name, was sitting on a purple sofa, hands folded in her lap and looking contrite. Well, as contrite as you can look while wearing a very low-cut yellow tank top and very minimal shorts. “It seems to me,” she was saying to the stunning blonde interviewer, “that the executives at Destry, really wonderful people for the most part, Pam, have been excessive in this instance.”

“They’ve just dumped you from Posy Pickwick, which, as of this week, is the top-rated YA show in the world.”

“Except in Brazil,” said my redheaded daughter, crossing her legs. “I do believe, in all modesty, Pam, and not to detract from the wonderful contribution of the entire Posy team and all the wonderful kids who act on my show with me, that this nearly universal international success is pretty much due to me.”

“Sure thing, Mutiny. But the statement that Will Destry, Jr., released to the media just hours ago, states that you’re being severed from the show for ‘conduct unbecoming of a teenager and knocking over Charlie Chicken.’ ”

My daughter sighed. “I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit, you know, that I’m a little wild at times,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. “I’m still not sure how I managed to drive my new SUV into that wonderful statue of Will Destry’s most famous animated cartoon character. It makes me, you know, really sad, Pam.”

My left side was commencing to itch. I scratched it.

“You also drove your Jaguar into the front window of the New Trocadero on the Strip last month, Mutiny,” reminded Pam.

Beth held up her hand. “Let’s get our facts straight, Pam,” she said as she recrossed her legs. “I drove my Mercedes through the Troc window to avoid hitting a sweet little old lady tourist who’d fallen down in the crosswalk. My Jaguar I was using when I drove over Harlan Ellison’s foot in the parking lot of Mexicali Rose’s Hot Tamale Café, which was a very popular hangout for three weeks last March.”

I realized I was still holding the remote. Setting it down on the coffee table, I scratched my right hand with my left and then my left with my right. “What have I got now? Some rare skin disease?”

“Excuse my being so personal,” said Pam, leaning a bit forward. “But don’t you feel it’s time to stop your madcap ways, Mutiny?”

My enormously successful-until today-daughter began to sob quietly. Wiggling on the purple sofa, she tugged a petite pink hanky from a slit pocket of her crimson shorts. She dabbed at her eyes, sniffling. “As you and the majority of my wonderful fans around the world know, Pam, I’m the product of a broken home. I just know that if my parents got together again, it would work wonders for my overall deportment.”

“Wonderful.” I snatched up the remote to thumb the off button. Beth vanished.

The itch was spreading. I scratched at my right side, my left knee, my left buttock, and, as best I could, my upper back. “Jesus, maybe I’ve contracted some strange, highly dangerous Asian plague from eating Chinese imports.”

When I stood up, I felt extremely woozy. When I sat down again my entire skeleton didn’t feel right. I started to perspire, and as I wiped my itching palm across my forehead, I began to experience severe stomach cramps.

Apparently another symptom of this malady that was attacking me was drowsiness. I was getting very sleepy. As twilight began to close in outside, my eyelids fell shut. My attempt to open my eyes again failed, and in less than a minute, I fell deeply asleep.

Two things awakened me. One was the door chimes playing the first few bars of “ ’RoundMidnight”and the other was a loud animal howling.

“Nova Botsford,” I recalled.

Nova is the Associate Producer of that very successful new sitcom, Dump Truck. That’s the one about the wacky Hollywood garbage man. A handsome woman of forty-five or thereabouts, she’s been described by those who’ve worked with her as impossible, tyrannical, sadistic, offensive, and meanminded. For some reason, though, Nova and I have always gotten along, and when she heard I’d been tossed off Nose Job, she phoned to tell me she was dropping by that night to talk to me. I figured maybe she could get me on the Dump Truck writing staff. I’d already made a few notes on some pretty funny garbage gags.

My legs were still a bit wobbly, but the itching had subsided. Maybe I’d suffered from a speeded-up version of some kind of one-day flu.

En route to the front door, I stopped at a wall mirror to check my appearance.

“Holy Christ,” I observed, “haven’t I undergone enough crap for one day?”

Apparently not. Looking back at me from the mirror was a furry-faced wolf-man. I knew it was me because of the plaid shirt.

“No wonder I was itchy.” The fur had been starting to emerge just before I passed out.

Unbuttoning a couple of buttons of my shirt, I determined that my chest was covered with grey fur, too. So were my legs, I found after bending to pull up a trouser leg.

The door chimes sounded again, then Nova started knocking forcibly on the oaken door. “Tim, yoo-hoo. Are you in there, darling? I haven’t all the time in the world to commiserate with you.”

“Damn, I’ve become a horror movie cliché and on top of that I’m contemplating seeking employment from a woman who likes to shout yoo-hoo.”

It then occurred to me that I was maybe only the victim of some sort of elaborate practical joke. I was drugged somehow and then worked on by a makeup man.

But, alas, several vigorous tugs at the newly-arrived fur on my chest convinced me that it was, unfortunately, real. Whatever I was the victim of, it wasn’t practical jokers.

Nova whapped more profoundly on the door.

I started for the doorway, noticing that walking with hairy feet inside my loafers made me wobble some.

Putting my fur-rimmed eye to the spy hole, I gazed out into the night. The overhead light above my mosaic tile porch showed a very annoyed Nova Botsford standing out there. “Timmy?”

A cranky woman like her certainly would never hire a wolf-man to work on her show. I couldn’t see her face-to-face, or anybody else for that matter, until I was over this. Whatever this was.

When I cleared my throat, it produced an unsettling snarling sound. “Nova,” I called in a raspy, growly voice, “I’ve got bad news for you.”

“We already talked about your getting the heave-ho from Nose Job, remember?”

“No, this is different bad news.”

“You mean about your scrawny brat of a daughter being canned by Destry? I knew that two days ago, dear. Now, for Pete’s sake, let me in.”

“No, no, this is brand-new bad news,” I explained. “I’m suffering from that new bug.”

“Which bug?”

“The one that’s going around. Just arrived from Asia Minor, I think. Extremely contagious, so you really can’t come in.”

“That’s awful. You poor guy,” she said. “But I can’t afford to get the trots just now, otherwise I’d come right in to make you a cup of tea or something else to indicate I care.”

“No, nope, don’t think of it. Dump Truck can’t function if you’re under the weather, Nova.”

“Exactly, I have to put my health first,” she said through my door. “Oh, by the way, I thought I heard some kind of hound yowling in there. Did you get a dog?”

“That must’ve been me,” I realized.

“What’s that, Tim?”

“Neighbors have a pet wolf.”

“A pet what?”

“Wolfhound. Russian wolfhound.”

“Well, dear, you’d better get back to bed and take care of whatever the hell it is you’ve got,” she said. “Good night, Timmy.”

As her Porsche went roaring away into the night, I realized, “Damn, I was so preoccupied with being a wolf-man, I forgot to ask her about a job.”

I walked lopsidedly back to the hall mirror for another look.

I was still covered with fur.

Returning to my living room, I figured I’d sit calmly down and try to decide what exactly to do about this latest catastrophe.

But then I suddenly realized that I wanted to go hunting.

Yanking off my shoes, I went loping into the kitchen. Howling once, I slipped out the back door, ran across the back lawn crouched low, and headed for the dark woodlands that stretched away behind the house.

Mostly I chased rabbits and, I’m pretty sure, the calico cat who belongs to the art director who lives two mansions down from me. I also went after some night birds, one of which might’ve been an owl.

Fortunately, I didn’t catch anything and my interest in hunting waned after about half an hour. I was wheezing some as I headed for home. Probably from the exertion. “Jesus, I hope I’m not allergic to my own fur. Or maybe it’s wolf dander that’s causing the wheeze.”

Back in my living room, I decided to call Bernie Hersh. I really needed somebody I trusted to take a look at me and confirm that I wasn’t simply hallucinating. I only had to push one button on my phone with my clumsy fur-covered finger and say, “Hersh,” to get the phone to dial his number.

“You’ve reached the residence of Bernard Hersh, one of America ’s most respected wordsmiths. Unfortunately, I’m home at the moment and have to answer the damn phone myself.”

“It’s Tim, Hersh. I have a serious-”

“I can e-mail you a list of rehab centers, therapists, priests, rabbis, and others who can deal with your nitwit daughter,” he said. “I also know a guy who can put her in a sack and convey her to the jungles of Guatemala.”

“This isn’t about Beth, it’s-”

“Whoever might she be? I’m alluding to your daughter, Mutiny Skylark, who was booted out by-”

“Listen,” I cut in, “I’ve got a more pressing problem.”

“Well, I might be able to help you find a new job, but-”

“You knew I was fired from Nose Job?”

“Everybody from Santa Rosa to Tijuana knows you were fired from the show. Let’s have lunch tomorrow and-”

“Could you drop over here?”

“To pick you up tomorrow?”

“Tonight. Right now. Immediately.”

“Are you ailing? Your voice does sound like you’re in the throes of bronchitis or-”

“I need a reliable witness.”

Hersh said, “Fifteen minutes,” and ended the call.

“Did they move Halloween up a few months?” inquired Hersh as he crossed the threshold.

“I am a wolf-man, right? You can see that? I mean, I’m not simply suffering from hallucinations or delusions?”

“You look like a wolf, for sure, old buddy,” he assured me as he shut my heavy front door. “Why have you made yourself up like that?”

“It’s not makeup.” I led him into the living room. “I just… suddenly changed.” And, sitting uneasily down in a redwood and leather chair, I told him what had happened.

Hersh wandered over to a window to gaze up at the starry sky. “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny, the fact that I’ve been transformed into a loathsome-”

“No, the fact that there’s only a half-moon tonight.”

“Hey, you’re right.” I tried to snap my fingers but discovered you can’t do that with hairy fingers. “Traditionally werewolves only change during a full moon.”

“Having scripted not only The Werewolf Hunter but True Yarns from the Graveyard and the unjustly short-lived soaper Haunted Hospital, I’ve become something of an expert on occult and supernatural stuff.” He seated himself on the sofa. “In my opinion, this is unusual behavior for a werewolf.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “this isn’t anything supernatural at all. It could be a very nasty allergic reaction to something I ate.”

Narrowing his left eye, my friend looked directly at me. “You really think so?”

My furry shoulders sank. “No,” I admitted. “Now, wolf-men change back into human form comes the dawn, don’t they?”

“Traditional wolf-men, yeah.”

My nose started to itch, but when I tried to scratch it, it wasn’t where it usually was. At the end of my furry snout it was and of a rubbery texture. “Let’s get to why I’m in this current state.”

“Have you been bitten by a werewolf of late?”

“C’mon, Hersh. Until I turned into one, I never actually believed that werewolves existed.”

“Well, according to occult experts, there are only so many ways you can make a sudden transition like this,” said Hersh. “If you haven’t had any direct contact with a werewolf, then I’d guess that someone either put a spell on you or slipped you a potion.”

“Would that work?”

“You are sitting there covered with fur from head to toe. Something did it.”

“A magic potion, an evil spell. Who’d do anything like that to me?”

“Besides your erstwhile wife, you mean?”

Shaking my head, I raised my hairy hand to tick off my fingers. When I saw my wolf-man hand up close, I abandoned the notion. “Firstly, Mandy knows that most wolves don’t earn enough money to pay much in the way of alimony,” I explained. “Secondly, it’s too late to change the title of I Married an Asshole to I Married a Werewolf.”

“Possibly,” Hersh conceded.

“Third, and most important. She doesn’t know diddly about black magic and sorcery.”

“This is LA, Tim. There are more witches, warlocks, and sorcerers hereabouts than any other spot on Earth, except maybe San Francisco,” he told me. “Take this guy Vincent X. Shandu, who’s the hottest mystic going. Calls himself a necromancer and charges a thousand bucks an hour. Or Professor Estling, who-”

“Who the hell would pay a grand to turn me into a shaggy beast?”

“Some warlocks charge less. We’ll have to find out who did the job.”

“How?”

“When I was writing Vampire Cops for HBO, we had an occult detective as a consultant,” Hersh said. “Name’s Fletcher Boggs. I’ll call the guy tomorrow and try to set up an appointment for you to-”

“What’ll he charge?”

“A lot less than a thou.”

“Okay,” I said after about half a minute. “Talk to Boggs. Does he make house calls? I don’t want to venture out in the world looking like this. Even with dark glasses and a hat-”

“Case like yours, he’ll come here.” He stood, moving toward the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow, soon as I find out anything.” He stopped just short of the doorway. “Or would you like to spend tonight at our place? Dottie is very understanding about-”

“Not that understanding,” I said as I followed him to the door. “I’ll be okay here by myself. And I really do appreciate your help.”

Hersh took hold of the brass doorknob. “Do you mind if we don’t shake hands?”

It had been, to put it mildly, a trying day. After attempting to pace back and forth across the living room, a process that usually helps me clarify my thinking, I decided to go up to bed. Pacing on furry feet, I found, didn’t aid my thinking at all.

I usually sleep in a pajama top. That night, my first as a wolf-man, the idea of taking off my clothes didn’t appeal to me. Nor did the idea of brushing my teeth.

I’d sleep in my plaid shirt and khakis. Stretched out atop the bedspread, I propped up three fat pillows and picked up the book I’d been reading from the bedside table. It was that bestselling self-help book, Trample ’Em Underfoot: The Route to Success.

Trouble was, it made me uneasy to look at my currently furry hands holding the damn book. Tossing it to the floor, I grabbed up the TV remote. After a couple of tries I was able to poke the on button with sufficient force to get the big set looming at the foot of the bed to come to life.

“Now some exclusive KMA-TV footage of the so-called Wolf-Man of Westwood,” said the handsome, though aging, news co-anchor. “Pretty interesting stuff isn’t it, Camilla?”

“Wolf-man?” I sat up.

The camera pulled back to include the stunning raven-haired Camilla Cardy. “It sure is, Will. And we want to thank viewer Wally Needham for donating this sensational footage that he was lucky enough to capture with his cell phone.”

“As we reported an hour ago on KMA’s All Night All News,”said Will Noonan in his deep, handsome voice, “the alleged wolf-man was first spotted earlier this evening prowling the side streets of Westwood Village. Thus far police have found no trace of him.”

“Because of the proximity to the UCLA campus,” added Camilla, “early reports suggested that this was nothing more than a college prank.”

“Now that KMA has obtained exclusive pictures of this strange creature, however, we can confidently state that this is not a hoax or prank. Later in this hour we’ll be talking to Professor Marshall Terping of the USC Zoology Department as to the true nature of this phenomenon.”

Camilla said, “Let’s take a look at this exclusive two-minute footage.”

I leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

A very jiggly, long shot of the front of a Fanny’s Undies lingerie shop appeared. Coming out of the darkened store was a shaggy wolf-man. In his arms he clutched a tangled bundle of what looked to be lacy panties, half-slips, and frilly nightgowns. Clutched in his sharp teeth, dangling by one strap, was a white uplift bra.

The guy with the cell phone apparently got up the nerve to move closer at this point.

Dropping his collection of underwear, staring straight at the camera, and spitting out the bra, the wolf-man snarled at Wally Needham. Then he went loping away along the night street. In the distance a siren sounded, somewhere nearer a woman screamed. The film ceased.

The wolf-man had been wearing a plaid shirt.

Turning off the set, I dropped off the bed. “But that’s not my plaid shirt,” I told myself, starting to pace. “The shirt I’m wearing is the MacMurdie tartan. That wasn’t.”

Or was it?

I’d only seen his shirt up close for about half a minute and the color of the amateur footage was bad.

“No, that wasn’t me. I know damn well I haven’t been anywhere near Westwood,” I told myself. After I’d morphed into a wolf-man, I’d chased rabbits. As far as I could remember. Besides, it would’ve taken quite a bit of time for me to get down there on foot. And I couldn’t drive my six-year-old Volvo with furry feet.

But that meant there were two wolf-men, both fond of plaid shirts. A strange coincidence. But, no, that wasn’t me.

“I don’t have a lingerie fetish, either.”

My pacing slowed. All at once I felt very drowsy again. Not bothering to climb back onto the bed, I curled up on the floor and drifted into sleep.

• • •

I was awakened by an immense thunking sound from outside, followed by a harsh metallic snapping and an assortment of birds cawing and cackling along with an anguished flapping of many wings.

“Someone’s attacking the birdbath!” I exclaimed, popping up off the carpet.

As I started to run toward the bedroom door, I chanced to notice my feet. They were no longer furry. I stopped, held both hands up to my face. “Back to normal,” I said, chuckling.

Ducking into the bathroom, hesitating a few seconds, I took a look in the mirror over the sink. I was no longer a wolf-man.

From out on my front lawn came more loud, angry bird sounds.

Barefooted, I hurried to the stairs. I was only halfway down when my oaken front door was unlocked and flung open.

“Popsy?” called my daughter.

“Beth, you can call yourself Mutiny Skylark, you can even call yourself Carmen Miranda,” I said as I continued my descent, “but, damn it, don’t call me Popsy.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt that had END OF THE WORLD TOURlettered across the front, my daughter entered the house.

I inquired, “What, pray tell, just occurred on the lawn?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing much.”

“What’s the condition of the birdbath?”

“Well, it sort of fell over.”

“What caused that, Beth?”

“I accidentally drove into it with my Porsche.”

“You seem to make a habit of driving into things.”

She shut the door with a backward push of one foot. “I do, yeah. It’s like you and your plaid shirts.”

“Want a cup of herb tea?” I headed for the kitchen.

“Don’t you have anything with caffeine in it?” she asked. “No, never mind. I know you don’t.” She followed me along the hall into the big white and yellow kitchen.

I took a half gallon of vanilla soy milk out of the yellow refrigerator, poured about a cup into my blender, peeled and cut up a banana, and tossed that in along with a spoonful of honey.

“Ugh,” commented Beth as I pushed the Blend button.

After the machine had roared for about a minute, I turned it off and poured myself a glass and sat down at the raw-wood table. “You’re really going to have to do something about your driving, kid.”

She sat opposite me. “If you’d been around to teach me to drive, I’d-”

“What’s going to happen with Destry?”

“I’ve got two of my agents, one of my attorneys, and a manager over talking to them.”

“Maybe you ought to toss in a couple of personal trainers.” I took a sip of my banana smoothie.

She rested an elbow on the table edge, studying me for a few silent seconds. “Can I ask you something, Dad?”

“Sure.”

“How do you feel about Mom?”

“How did the residents of London feel about the Black Plague?”

“You aren’t fond of her?”

“Not so you’d notice, no.” I set down my glass. “What prompts this question?”

Beth leaned back in her chair. “You haven’t felt differently lately?”

“As a matter of fact, I sure as hell have. But it has nothing to do with your mother,” I told her. “Just last night I… never mind.” I decided not to confide in Beth about my wolf interlude. She still lived with Mandy and I didn’t want my former spouse to know what’d happened to me.

“You felt something last night?”

“Did you come here expecting to find me changed? You dropped in only two days ago, Beth, and your visits aren’t usually that frequent.”

“Well,” she said, sighing in a disappointed way, “I was expecting you’d be more favorably inclined toward Mom.”

“Why would I totally lose my powers of reason and assume an attitude like that? Why would I feel anything but fear and trembling about the woman who’s going to immortalize me in a book entitled I Married an Asshole?”

My red-haired daughter took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Really effective sorcery and black magic is expensive,” she began. “But, heck, I can afford it. Some friends of mine introduced me to a very effective sorcerer named Vincent X. Shandu and he-”

“I’ve heard of the guy. What the hell did you hire him to do?”

“Well, to bring you and Mom back together,” she answered quietly. “So I’d have a real family again and wouldn’t bang up so many cars and-”

“How was he going to do that?” I got up and stood looking down at my daughter, considerably pissed off.

“Well, with a magic potion. Guaranteed to be effective or your money back,” she replied. “He took the recipe from a forbidden eighteenth-century magic book by an infamous black magician named Count Monstrodamus. He showed me his copy, the rare first edition. The one that’s rumored to be bound in human skin and-”

“Have you already slipped me this damn potion?”

“Two days ago,” she admitted. “I stirred it into your smoothie while you were pitting cherries to put on your bowl of granola.”

I sat, slumped some. “Ask for your money back, hon,” I advised. “I still can’t abide your mother.”

“It didn’t work?”

“Oh, it was very effective but what it did was turn me into a werewolf.”

She shot to her feet. “Shit, that jerk screwed up.”

“That he did,” I agreed. “Could you, do you think, contact this guy and have him whip up an antidote to whatever it was you actually slipped to me? Otherwise, come nightfall, the odds are I’m going to turn into a wolf-man yet again.”

“Gee, I don’t think I can do that right away, Dad,” she answered apologetically. “See, I called him yesterday to ask why the potion was taking so long to affect you and all I got was his answering tape. Vincent is out of town.”

“So where the hell did he go?”

“Into the desert to meditate.”

“Which desert?”

She, sadly, shook her head. “He didn’t say.” Beth left her chair to come around and, tentatively, hug me. “I’m truly sorry you’re a werewolf, Dad. That wasn’t-trust me-my intention at all.”

“Now we’ll go get your car off the lawn and see if we can repair the birdbath.” She stepped back and I stood.

“It’s probably beyond repair.”

“Well,” I said, “let’s hope I’m not.”

The day was fading, slowly thus far, but fading nonetheless. I looked again at my watch. Almost 6:20 p.m. It was my impression that I was already commencing to itch a bit, which might be a prelude to another unwanted transformation. I unstrapped the watch and dropped it into my trouser pocket. Should I again turn into a wolf-man, I wouldn’t be able to see the dial through all that grey fur.

Hersh had called at midday to tell me Fletcher Boggs, the occult investigator, had a sudden emergency case that had come up. Something involving poltergeists out in Malibu. Therefore, he wouldn’t be able to consult with me until seven. And not at my place but at his home.

I was lifting my watch out of my pocket for another look when the door chimes played Monk. Sprinting down the hall, I yanked the door open. “Damn, Hersh, night is fast approaching and-”

“Relax, it’s barely dusk.” Turning, he started down my front steps. “Let’s get going.”

I was feeling increasingly itchy. As I slid into the passenger seat and buckled myself in, I asked, “Where exactly does Boggs live?”

My friend started his BMW. “Not far from here.”

“And the town is?”

“Westwood.”

I stiffened in my seat. “Westwood?”

“He has a cottage near UCLA.”

“But Westwood Village is where that other wolf-man hangs out,” I reminded him. “The police are trying to catch him. Christ, Hersh, if I turn into a werewolf before we reach Boggs, the cops may nab me as the Wolf-Man of Westwood.”

“All you’ll have to do is tell them you’re really the Wolf-Man of Beverly Hills.”

“I’m serious,” I told him, my voice a bit froggy. “They’ll start shooting at me with silver bullets; villagers will pursue me brandishing blazing torches.”

“Don’t fret. We’ll reach the cottage long before nightfall.”

“Night is already falling.”

“Can you stop kvetching for a while?” He turned on the car radio. “I want to catch the news on KMA-FM. They’re supposed to mention my new show on-”

“… just in. The notorious Wolf-man of Westwood has surfaced again tonight. Just ten minutes ago he broke into a Venus’ Boudoir lingerie shop and made off with an armload of frilly undies. Police expect to run him to ground soon. LAPD is sending over its special Occult SWAT team to-”

“Great,” I observed as we entered Westwood Village. “Now a bunch of expert marksmen armed with high-powered rifles chock-full of silver bullets will be taking shots at me.”

Hersh said, “You’re not a wolf-man yet.” He glanced over at me. “Oops.”

I reached up a hand. It was furry. I touched my face with it. My face was furry. This time the transition from man to wolf had been swift. I hadn’t even dozed off.

From about a few blocks away came the sound of sirens.

“Duck down,” advised Hersh. “Keep out of sight.”

I hunkered down on the floorboards with my knees near my chin and my furry arms circling my legs. The streetlights had just come on outside and every time we passed one the interior of the BMW was illuminated.

“Potential trouble up ahead. Stay down there; don’t howl or make any noise.”

“What sort of potential trouble?”

“People on the corner we’re coming to, looking over the street and the sidewalks, about a dozen or more. Got digital cameras, cell phones. One guy’s got a baseball bat,” he explained quietly.

Just then Thelonious Monk began playing loudly in my pocket.

“Shut that damn phone off.” Hersh halted at the corner stop sign.

More progressive piano came forth before I could tug out my cell phone and, very softly, answer it. “What?”

Hersh drove on, eyeing the world outside uneasily. “We’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Keep a low profile, and a quiet one.”

“I’m scrunched up as far as I can scrunch, Hersh.”

“There’s something I have to confess, Dad,” came the voice of my daughter.

“Which of your damn cars did you smash into what?”

“No, no, this is about your current dilemma.”

“We already talked about that, kid, and just at the moment I-”

“This is about why you turned into a werewolf, Dad. Did that happen again tonight, by the way?”

“It did. We can have a nice long chat about that at a later-”

“See, I did order that werewolf potion.”

“Why in the hell did-”

The BMW suddenly went over something on the street we’d turned onto. Felt like part of a wooden box or something like that. The car bounced and I was thrown against the side of my improvised cubbyhole. I was suddenly visited by a very painful cramp.

“Hold on, Beth. I’ve got a cramp and I have to stretch my leg for a second.”

I eased painfully up off the floorboards to try to straighten out my leg.

Simultaneously the car passed a light post and a bunch of college kids who were emerging from a Burger Oasis. They got a very brief glimpse of me before I hunkered back down.

“Oh, God,” screamed a coed. “It’s him!”

“It’s the Wolf-Man!”

“Call the cops on your cell, Julie!”

Hersh gunned the motor and went bouncing along the night street. He skidded around a corner, drove down an alley to the next street over, slowed, and entered a darker, quieter, less frequented street. “I don’t think they got my license number.”

My leg still hurt, and my heart was beating at an unfamiliar rate. “Tell me about the potion, Beth,” I said into the phone.

“Are you okay? What was all that noise?”

“Villagers spotted me, but we eluded them. None of them had flaming torches.”

“Well, listen, Dad. I meant the werewolf gunk for Bryson Kranbuhl.”

“Your mother’s literary agent? The despicable oaf who suggested she write I Married an Asshole?”

“That Bryson Kranbuhl, yes. He’s also been trying to sell the memoir as a TV serial. He’s convinced that it can be the next Survivor,”she continued. “I ordered the potion for him. I was hoping it would distract him and also inspire Mom to evict the guy. She, you know, isn’t much of an animal lover. Bryson’s been pretty much living with us since early this year.”

“You’re saying you got the two philters mixed up and gave me his potion?”

“No, Dad, I’m saying that imbecile Vincent X. Shandu screwed up and sold me two doses of werewolf potion and none of love potion,” she explained. “I’m going to drive down to Palm Springs, since there’s a lot of desert around there and maybe I can find him and-”

“No, nope. Don’t drive anywhere,” I cautioned her. “I think we have another way to work a cure. So you wait until-”

“We’re there,” announced Hersh, braking the car on what felt like a gravel driveway.

“Stay where you are until I contact you,” I told my daughter. “Bye.”

“Information from your nitwit offspring?” Hersh came around to my side of the BMW, opened the door, and helped me get myself off the floor.

“Yeah, now I know who the Wolf-Man of Westwood is,” I replied as I emerged.

Fletcher Boggs was circling the straight-back chair I was sitting uncomfortably upon. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about sixty, tanned and with an impressive head of white hair. “Vincent X. Shandu is second-rate,” he observed, halting in front of me and scrutinizing my face. “You’re not much of a werewolf.”

“Sufficient enough for me.”

“You’re not even an authentic wolf,” the big occult investigator said, stepping back. “You aren’t four-legged, you don’t have a bushy tail; except for two canines, your teeth aren’t even especially lupine.”

Hersh had settled onto a low tan sofa across the cottage parlor. “Be that as it may, Fletcher, can you reverse the effect of the potion?”

Boggs frowned at him. “A defrocked veterinarian could do that.” He returned his attention to me. “Tell me what your daughter told you about this stuff she fed you. By the way, is she going to get back on Posy Pickwick?”

“Negotiations are under way,” I told him. “About the potion. Beth told me Shandu took it from a book of magic by a fellow named Count Monstrodamus, who flourished in the eighteenth century.”

“Actually he flourished through several centuries,” said the occult investigator. “The Count wasn’t immortal, but he hung on for almost three hundred years. Sounds like Vince was borrowing from a copy of The Vile and Unholy Spells, Potions and Incantations of the Infamous, Black-Souled Magus, the Notorious Count Monstrodamus, Late of Vienna. Any idea which edition?”

“The first. The one that’s supposed to be bound in human skin.”

Boggs shook his head. “Bullshit. It’s only goat skin,” he said. “But the first edition version of the werewolf potion is slightly different from the one in later editions.”

Hersh asked, “You have a copy?”

“Too expensive.” He crossed to the PC that rested on a tile-topped, iron-legged table against the wall. “I’ve modified my computer so it can access just about every forbidden sorcery book known to man.”

“Who put that stuff on the Net?” I asked him.

“Various adepts.” He seated himself at the computer. “I’ll take a look at the Count’s formula, then look up a surefire antidote. Did I mention my fee?”

“Not as yet.”

“Since you’re a buddy of Bernie’s, I’ll give you the discount. It’ll run you, soon as you’re satisfied with the cure, six hundred ninety-five bucks.”

“I can afford that,” I assured him.

I put on a fresh plaid shirt, buttoned several buttons and stepped into the john to observe my image.

I was my normal everyday self, as I had been since late last night when I’d swallowed the six ounces of Fletcher Boggs’s antidote to the werewolf potion my madcap daughter had slipped into my morning smoothie. Considering what I was paying, I expected he’d serve me out of something more upscale than an old peanut butter jar.

The important thing, though, was that the stuff cured my lycanthropy in a matter of minutes. Outside of severe nausea, heart palpitations, double vision, and cramps for about a half hour, there were no side effects to speak of. Since last night I hadn’t turned into a wolf-man again. And I noticed this morning that I didn’t even need to shave. Hopefully I was cured.

I’d been in the kitchen less than a minute, when I heard a rattling crash out on the front half acre. That was followed by a large splash.

Setting the half gallon of vanilla soy milk that I’d just fetched out of the refrigerator down next to the blender, I ran outside.

Beth, wearing a bright yellow singlet, crimson cycling pants, and a silver cycling helmet, was stepping gingerly out of the fishpond. This was a few feet from where the birdbath once had stood.

A black ten-speed bike was partially submerged among the lily pads and agitated goldfish.

“Have you run out of cars, child?” I inquired, bending and hefting the bicycle out of the greenish water.

“I made a vow not to drive a car of any kind for six months.”

“In church?”

“In the Will Destry offices,” my daughter explained. “Part of the deal everybody worked up to put me back on Posy Pickwick: Rock & Roll Detective.”

“So you’re gainfully employed again.” I laid the dripping bike out on the lawn.

“I’m going to hire a chauffeur tomorrow, but today I used one of my bicycles to ride over to visit you.”

“As I told you last night, I am no longer a werewolf. If all goes well, I never shall be again.”

Beth said, “I’ve got some great news for you.”

“Such as?”

“Mom has thrown Bryson out and fired him as her literary agent.”

“Oh, so? What prompted that?”

My pretty red-haired daughter sat down on the stone bench beside the fishpond. “Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the police caught the Wolf-Man of Westwood last night.”

“I thought that might happen.”

“Bright and early this morning they looked into the cell they popped him in last night,” she continued. “There was Bryson Kranbuhl. He told the cops who he was, but he didn’t have any ID on him. They let him call Mom and she came down to Westwood to identify that jerk and bail him out.”

“Sounds like an act of deep affection to me.”

She shook her head. “Once she knew he was the Wolf-Man, she realized why Westwood was where he was always spotted,” she said. “Mom had suspected that Bryson had a tootsie in Westwood and had been spending some afternoons and evenings with her. She also thought his impulse to swipe women’s underwear was tacky. So he’s out.”

“What about I Married an Asshole?”

“She’s shelved that for now while she rethinks the project,” my daughter informed me. “So, Dad, this is a perfect time for you to get back together. Don’t you think so?”

Crossing, I sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Probably not.”

She looked sad. “Couldn’t you at least drop by and have dinner with us some night?”

After a moment I answered, “That might be possible.”

Beth smiled and clapped her hands together. “Neat. Then my efforts haven’t been in vain.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” I said.