Life With A Werewolf

New Business Ventures Part 1

          Crash doesn’t do restaurant reviews or ratings. In fact, he doesn’t eat out all that much. He’d prefer to just catch it, he says. Or to just have something here. So, him asking me if I’d like to go out for barbecue was a bit strange. What was stranger was when he told me “Bring your pistol.”

          “So, this isn’t something you’d like the rest of the gang in on,” I was strapping my shoulder holster on when I spoke.

          Crash shook his head, still in human form. His beard had been trimmed up for this, making it look like a dark chin strap across his chin. “No, I’d rather they stay home. With you next to me, they should play nice. But we’ll see.”

          “So, myth owned, then.”

          “Yes,” Crash shrugged. “Rougarou.”

          “Rou ragu?”

          “No, Rougarou. Louisiana. Cajun country shape shifters. They’re weregators kinda, but the locals attribute their legend to us werewolves.”

          “So, a shapeshifting gator. Like Elouise.”

          Crash slipped on a jacket as he spoke. “Like, her. Come on. We got a booth to grab.”

          I followed him out the door and took his cue to wear a jacket. We were taking his Cadillac, and he never drives that thing with the top up. At least the weather was cooperating. It may have been cold, but it also was sunny, which gave us that nice paradox of a beautiful sky with a few fluffy clouds to go with our almost subzero temperatures.

          Crash never seems to feel this sort of weather, but he wears the jacket like a perfunctory type of thing. Everyone expects him to be cold and wear a jacket so he wears one. I have seen him shiver, but that was usually from pain, not the cold. But what would you expect from someone who will run through the snowy woods at night ‘in the fur’, so to speak.

          The trip was to the next town over, which was thankfully short. We took backroads the entire way, Crash letting the V-8 sing out a little bit, revving the engine up as if he was mentally preparing himself for something. His unnatural quiet shifted my demeanor, and by the time we pulled up to the shack, I was glad to have my pistol with the silver rounds in it.

          It was the kind of rundown shack on the edge of town that everyone local knows is trouble. A converted hay barn of sorts that they had purchased from a big box hardware store like a Lowe’s or Home Depot, the interior left little to be desired. The flooring was finished though, the tables were old, and the walls had insulation and cheapest paneling they could get away with. In the back outside was a smoker, and you could smell the sweet scents of meat and fat sweating long hours over hot coals.

          When we arrived, there was a few people there, but quite a number of tables were empty. It could have been the odd hour we arrived at, the dead zone between lunch and dinner, or it could have been the place just hadn’t caught on yet. Behind the gravel parking lot was more trees that perhaps would one day be bustling businesses, but chances are, would just be more trees for years to come.

          We took a table near the door, sat and waited. It was a counter service type place, with an old-fashioned eighties style register on it near the back by the smoker. Green LEDs stared out the number 0.00 at me, as if attempting to beckon me to make a sale. Two beautiful women were working the counter, with someone else outside working the smoker. I couldn’t see him but could occasionally hear a gruff Cajun voice mention about serving this or that up.

          The wait didn’t last for long. The door opened, and a very gruff and disappointed Elouise came, twisted a chair around, and sat down over it, glaring at Crash from across the table. “I’m here,” she growled. “I suppose this is the thanks I get for doing my civic duty.”

          Crash arched an eyebrow. “No, this is the thanks you get for holding back information.”

          “I told everything I know,” she snarled.

          Crash tapped his nose and smirked. “I can smell when you’re lying, you know.”

          I watched as one of the women from behind the counter walked towards the table. Elouise growled deep in her throat as the woman approached. “Elouise, as I live and breathe, how are you sugah,” the woman said. “Why, I thought you said, ‘I’ll never step foot inside your hellhole again.’ That’s what I remember hearing. Yet hear you are.”

          “Hello Marissa,” Elouise snarled. “Still pretending you’re a blonde, I see.” It was a pretty bad dye job. You could see her brunette roots. Her eyebrows were still brunette. It looked as if she dyed her hair blonde to look like she dyed her hair blonde.

          “Blondes have more fun. I keep telling Tarissa that, but she keeps dying her hair brunette. You know how sisters are.”

          Elouise rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything.

          “Meet my friends. This here’s Jason,” she said nodding towards me. “And that’s Crash,” she said.

          Marissa looked towards me, “You’re the blogger,” she said, then smiled at Crash, “and you’re the cop,” Marissa threw her hands up, ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t chew, I give up,” she said, then chuckled. “Why’d you bring the popo here, Ellie, you trying to blame us for something? The meth was your idea not ours, and it’s why we had to leave Louisiana in the first place.”

          “I was younger. Dumber,” Elouise said. “I don’t do that stuff no more. I’m clean.”

          Marissa looked from Elouise back to Crash. Annoyance began to break through her pleasant ‘how do ya do’ smile. “And I run a respectable establishment. Go ahead dog, sniff around. You won’t find nuthin.”

          Crash laughed. “You gators are all the same. You look at me and think that I can’t possibly, oh, I don’t know, smell the human blood from the blood stain you bleached out then tried to refinish. Two people, I do believe. Man? Woman, I think? Now, if I shifted and took a big whiff, I’d find out more, but, I mean, why bother? Who needs to scare all these good people here?”

          Hands on her hip, a glare in her eye, Marissa said “Well, that’s the sorta stuff I’d like to see a warrant for, isn’t it?” It came out all jumbled together, with the words ‘isn’t it’ sounding more like ‘idn’t it’. “Order something, or get out.”

          “I thought this was a counter service,” I leaned on my fists, resting my elbows on the table. She glared at me like she wanted to bite my head off, looked at Crash, then stomped back to her counter and glared at me from the other side of it.

          “How much you want to bet they’ll spit in our food,” I asked Crash.

          He smirked. “You wouldn’t get that lucky. Rougarou spit has been known to have healing properties.”

          “You’re kidding,” I said.

          “Spit in my old neighbor’s stew in Louisiana all the time. Helped her with her arthritis,” Elouise said. There wasn’t a hint of a smirk on her face.

          “You’re kidding,” I said to her.

          “Am I,” she replied, arching an eyebrow.

          “Are we,” Crash said arching his own.

          It was right about then that my brain betrayed me. Images of the cook in full gator form began to run through my head. In my head, I could see him spit into a to-go box full of BBQ, then put the dish into the window so both waitresses also in gator form of course, could spit into the dish. In the scene in my mind, Marissa smiled sweetly as she placed the dish on the counter. “That’s a half pound of pulled pork, extra saliva, sugah. Anything else,” she asked, grinning. The elderly woman reached in and grabbed a big handful and took a bite, saying “no deary, that’s perfect,” between bites.

          Both began to laugh at my full body shiver as I tried to shake the thoughts from my brain. “Alright, I’m out of here,” I grumbled, “let’s go to Micky D’s.” Their laughter followed me out the door.

          Most of the trip back was made in silence. I didn’t bother asking Crash why he even invited me. I think I know. His office probably doesn’t have a lot of humans in it. But he needed a human near him for this. That exchange between the wait staff, Elouise and Crash was particularly icy. I didn’t have a lot to say or do there. Normally it’s me ramping up the tension with some stupid flex or threat. But this time Crash was the one talking.

          So, it’s like he wanted me there as a check. To keep them or himself calm. That exchange with Elouise and Marissa too, that was something else. If I hadn’t had been there, would they have started fighting? What does Elouise have to do with them? Obviously, there is some history there.

          I have no idea what’s going on, but I can tell when things are getting out of hand. This time, I can honestly say I have nothing to do with it. But if I’m going to start going on jobs with Crash like this, I hope I’ll at least start getting paid for it. I could use the money.