A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter Six

“You look like a bag of shit!”

     I couldn’t help but smile at Mack.  Being greeted in such a way -- as fodder for ridicule -- immediately told me that I wasn’t in his bad books.

     Mack had a wry smile on his face as he looked up at me, his thin lips pressed tightly together beneath an even thinner dark moustache that looked more like it was drawn on than grown.  I’d always thought that with his thick brush-cut, dark around the ears, but blending into a soft grey at the top, he’d look better in a fuller, thicker moustache.  But I kept telling myself that would make him look more like the comic-book version of J. Jonah Jamieson from the Spider-Man comic books.

     I felt a huge knot of tension suddenly release in my shoulders and I let the glorious smells of various breakfast foods being cooked in the open-kitchen restaurant wash over me.  

     “What did you do?” Mack said, still sitting at the table and grinning at me as I approached.  “Sleep on the street last night?”

       “G’morning Mack.  So, can we order food now?”

     But he wasn’t finished.  “You decide to roll naked in a garbage dumpster on 34th street before meeting me this morning?”

     “Mack, I’m a little peckish this morning.”

     “What, you couldn’t find something good to eat in the dumpster?  Man, but you artistic types -- you never cease to surprise me with the way you dress out in public.”  He clasped his hands together while I sat, revealing that he was finished with his fun and ready to get down to business.  “I already ordered for both of us.  They’re cooking it now.”

     Of course he would have.  He’d never expect one of his clients to be late, or this was the last meeting he’d have with them.  Smiling again, I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.

     “Promise me something,” Mack said.

     I nodded.  “Sure,”

     “Promise me you’ve got something else to wear for tonight’s spot on Letterman.”

     I just looked at him.

     “You heard me, didn’t you?”

     I nodded again.

     “I got the call last night.  They’d had another writer scheduled to appear on the show.  One of those self-help guru types, Andy Robinson, I think.  It was a last minute cancellation.  So, a phone call or two later and voila, Michael Andrews is on.

     “I’d been trying to get you on the show for promotion of the upcoming short fiction collection.  The timing couldn’t be better.”

     My last novel, Print of the Predator had been released about 4 months ago, but a collection of my previously published short fiction was due out in a few weeks time.  Mack and my publisher had been pushing me for the past couple of years to release something to keep my fans sated between the standard annual spring releases of my novels (and something to bring them in a substantial amount of cash).  A popular trend with many popular authors -- authors much more popular than I -- was the release of a novella length work around Christmas time.  But I didn’t want to do that to my fans.  It seemed like an obvious money grab, taking a single long short story and charging full price for it.

     Sure, I’m glad that I’m making enough money with my writing to keep me comfortably supported -- oh, who am I kidding, I’m well more than comfortably supported -- but I’ve never done this for the money.  It’s all about telling stories and having people read them.  I was thus eager to see the reaction to a collection of the more morbid writings of my early years -- stories that had originally appeared in small press magazines years before my name became known throughout the mystery field.