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It’s a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday night. Or as good as it ever gets in the lounge in this day and age. Trader Vics isn’t the hot spot it was twenty years ago; drink umbrellas and pineapple juice can only keep the attention of the public for so many months before boredom sets in. And people are sticking closer and closer to home nowadays. With those werewolf attacks you can’t be too careful.
Predictable, isn’t it? The second we find out werewolves walk among us everyone flips out and starts freaking about mutilations. “Oh no, the werewolf ate my baby!” Hey. last time I checked Manson wasn’t a werewolf, man, but whatever makes you feel comfy. Humans would always be humans; they would always react badly to the new, the weird. Change happens slowly, in little drops, but it’s starting to get a little bit easier now. Queen Elizabeth had tossed out an olive branch; Reagan met with Lon Cheney and said he was a ‘true American’ (yeah, don't ask me, man).
And I suppose every human has to do his part to smooth down relations between the species. Just to keep those social wheels greased up.
I’ve seen this guy around before. They say he’s from Mayfair, where he may or may not have ripped the head off of a bobby before returning to America. He insists the British political system was speciesist, that they can’t prove he’d been within ten minutes of that man, but they had his dental impressions on file anyway. It’s easy to mistake one werewolf bite for another without science to back something up – it’s nothing like a human’s fingerprints or even a claw mark. We’re all trapped by our biology, ain’t we? And wouldn’t we do anything to escape it?
We talk about what people talk about every day; how much the Dodgers suck, how heavy smog is getting lately. Where we work and why. The movies we’ve seen, the music we’ve bought. I admit I’m a little tongue-tied, maybe, just a little tiny bit. That guy has style. Out-of –sight style, wearing orange silk shirts and bell-bottomed pants, ties and clips pressed with flints of steel. He’s got a panama hat too, and shoes with brass buckles that gleam in the bright overhead lighting.
When I ask him who his tailor is, he describes this really tall, groovy-looking Englishman with far-out sideburns and miles of silk in his hand. Doesn’t take American clients, of course; those are strictly for plebs like Halston to play with. He holds his drink in a hairy palm and winks. “Don’t ask me about Kent. That wasn’t me – just my evil twin running wild.” His other hand brushes my thigh, light as you please.
Now me, I’m one of your regular, meat-and-potatoes kind of guys. I’ve never thought of going fur before, not even when Tom Selleck admitted he was one of the Men of The Night. But this guy – man he’s got charisma to spare. And pointy, sharp teeth that could probably go through my jugular in one bite.
“Have another drink,” he says, giving me a little grin. “Go on, it won’t hurt you none.”
That remains to be seen.
He puts some George Jones on the Jukebox and he dances around, waiting for his Paradise Rice and his Tropical Kebab Platter. I’m waiting for…fuck, the drink’s getting to me already. Maybe nothing. Yeah. I’m just waiting on him.
Doesn’t mean I’m gonna dance around like a chicken with its head cut off for him, tho. I’ve got dignity, man, even if I’ve got the hots for some internationally-known fancy ass werewolf.
Shit, did I think that? Yeah, I did. Just not out loud.
“You should got to the Spaceland Discotheque,” he says, bouncing back up to the bar, happy but his fur dripping with sweat. "Everyone who’s anyone hangs out there. And you’d look stunning in a polo shirt and a pair of designer boot-cuts.”
“Me in designer jeans?” I scoff.
“Hey buddy, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”
If I lived through trying it, that is. I swallow hard and swish the ice about in my little tiki glass. “So do you have a place nearby?”
He lifts his shoulders. “I’ve been staying at the Shangri-La. They’re quite accepting over there.”
I know it well enough. A little motel outside the city. They thought they found some guy’s head floating in the septic system awhile back, turns out it was just a mannequin.
We wait until after dinner to leave. The walk is short and we need to work out the heaviness of the meal (turns out restaurant food can make a werewolf feel a little logy too). But he slips me in the back and takes me to room twelve, unlocking the door and strutting inside.
His pad is surprisingly goofy and surprisingly personal for a motel room. The shag carpet’s a few inches deep, bright yellow, and there are eggshell chairs and ceiling lights that look suspiciously like bones. He hustles to his record player and puts Sylvester McCoy on before mixing me a drink, and I sink into the thick chenille sofa.
Told you. This is one classy werewolf.
He sits down beside me. More jiggling. More eloquent, coy posing. “You know, I think we knew each other in a past life,” he says, playing with the shiny fob of my knock-off Rolex. Like, what a cheesy line man. Y’know what it’s like, right? But it's hot somehow, in a way. I find myself leaning into his furry, warm body and reaching to loop my arms around his neck.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You were a knight and I was the dragon. And man, I wouldn’t mind if you stabbed me, if you catch my drift!”
We almost meet at the lips this way, snout to mouth. Suntan lotion and Brylcreem stuff my nostrils as I lean in for the kiss, Clark Gable style, Hollywood hero, prowling and sophisticated; leering and commanding. Teeth flash and I wonder who’s really in control as I fall into his hairy arms.
Neither of us are. Neither of us. And I’ll blame it on the pina coladas later.