“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.