Saturday was a hot day. Crisp, cool fall days are a rarity in Pasadena. Amanda and Dick and I piled into the car with their costumes in bags so that they could change quickly later, just pulling the outfits over their lightweight regular clothes. Amanda was going to be a mermaid in a satiny, sequined green skirt and a bright green headdress, a sort of tiara with shiny seaweed hanging down to her shoulders. Dick was going to be Spider Man, as were most of his friends; originality did not yet rank high in their scheme of things. I wasn’t going to dress up, but I had a box of small prizes from the toy store for the little fishers; a committee had brought some already, but I didn’t want to run out and have disappointed customers. The treasurer would reimburse me later: she had enough to do running around giving people change and counting the money earned by the day’s end. When I say major fund raiser I mean several thousand dollars collected in just one day. I bought the scrip for admittance to the booths and went to my post at the prize-fishing booth.

After a couple of hours of constant motion in the sun I was pretty tired and was glad to be relieved by one of the other mothers. I showed her where the extra prizes were and set off in search of food and drink and a shady spot if any was to be had. I knew where both Dick and Amanda were since the booths were all on the open playground and nearly everybody present was plainly visible if I looked around. I waited in a longish line for a grape pop and a piece of pizza donated by a neighborhood restaurant; indeed, it was the owner’s wife who had relieved me at the booth. Laura was a practical sort who believed that women owed it to themselves and their husbands to be as glamorous as possible and was so herself, blonde, slim, leggy and dressed to the nines. She was fond of lecturing me about this duty when she was able to catch me.

Pizza in hand, I worked my way through the crowd to a section of tables with benches in the shade of a pergola. There were a few vacant seats near the wall opposite the outer edge. As I began to move in that direction a figure came from behind and made passes at knocking benches over, causing both annoyance and hilarity. No one panicked, even though it appeared to be a werewolf, no one but me. The creature came up to me and tried to grab my piece of pizza from my hand. “No, no, NO!” I shrieked, completely unnerved. Through the holes in the mask, I could see laughing blue eyes.

“Aw, darn,” it guffawed and lurched away. I was panting as if I’d almost been hit by a truck. I must get a grip on myself, I promised silently.

Dick came running up. “That was good, Mom,” he enthused. “You looked really scared!”

“I was,” I replied, out of breath. Fortunately someone had just gotten up near me and I sat down; I didn’t think I could ever have made it to the back row now.

“You know who that was, don’t you?” Dick whispered loudly so that everyone nearby could hear, “Mr. Millsaps! Ian told me before.”

Colin Millsaps was the wolf man? My best friend’s husband was a voyeur? It was impossible. I must be crazy to imagine any such thing for even a moment. I ate my pizza, almost choking on it in the process, and swallowed down my drink. I had another two hours to go on the booth, but then I would get out of the general cleanup after the fair was over. I felt relief as I trudged back to the fishery;no wolfman could impinge on that little world, surely. Or could he?

From "The Watch"
by Sari Mittelbach