Glenn Wheelan stepped back out of the way as the water came hissing up across the quiet night beach. He rolled his pants cuffs a turn higher and looked back at Karen Wylie. "And the whole thing is worse. Teachers, you know, look forward to vacations as much as kids. More. But I was almost afraid to come back here." Karen's cigarette glowed red in the darkness. "But San Miguel is much brighter and cleaner. They even have a theater that shows nothing but foreign movies. And three laundromats. Now the place is building up, Glenn."
"Because of a bunch of oddballs who're tired of all the lunatic outfits in Los Angeles." Wheelan moved to the girl's side. "Why, even in Pasadena people talk about San Miguel."
Karen caught his hand and led him up the beach away from the water. "Well, every town is noted for something. Like one's the lettuce capital and another's the wine center. It certainly doesn't hurt San Miguel to be known."
Wheelan turned from the glare that the city's lights made against the faintly overcast sky. "Ever since I was a kid I've hated cats. They make me feel crawly all over. Like persimmons do."
"Persimmons don't do any such thing," Karen said, tossing her cigarette at the foam below.
"So I come back to my old home town. Unpack my bags and walk into my aunt's homey kitchen, and she springs it on me."
"What?"
"She's one of them now, too. It's not bad enough a bunch of retired dentists from Omaha go along with Balderstone. My aunt now! I'll have a hell of a time forcing down second helpings. I get this crawly feeling."
"You're as touchy as Pavlov's dog. Everything makes you crawly."
"Well, look, Karen. You've been up at Cal most of the year. Doesn't the place seem odder to you?" Wheelan stepped next to a driftwood log. "Doesn't it bother you?"
Karen sat down on the log and put her elbows on her knees. "I told you, Glenn. San Miguel looks newer and cleaner. Why, even the slums look better. I think they've painted them."
"The only time we ever had a cat, when I was eleven, it made me sneeze. My aunt made me give it away. I wanted to drown it in a gunny sack but she talked me out of it."
"Oh, you couldn't have. You're too tender and kindly." She held her hand out and motioned him down beside her.
Wheelan sat, feeling the sand seep in over the sides of his loafers. "Maybe I'll talk to Neff. There should be a law against this kind of thing."
"Chief Neff? I doubt if he'll do anything."
"Why?"
"Because he's so active on our Civic Public Relations Committee. And he owns a couple of motels."
Wheelan absently put his hand on Karen's shoulder. "Now, somebody must be against this. Maybe Dr. Watchers. He was even against free paper towels in the public johns."
"He passed away," Karen said, moving Wheelan's arm around her with her shoulders.
"I could write to the governor," Wheelan said, noticing Karen's soft dark hair fluttering faintly over the tip of his nose. "There must be a law against lycanthropy."
Karen shook her head. "No. They checked on it. There is in one of the New England states. The dunking stool is the penalty, I think."
"Why?" he said in a loud voice.
"Why dunking?"
"No," Wheelan said, blowing her hair out of his face. "Why do people want to turn into cats anyway? My God, it must feel crawly."
"Well, you know what Mr. Balderstone says."
"He's a quack."
"Perhaps. But nevertheless he perfected a method for turning people into cats and back. And that's more than a lot of people have done. He can't be all quack." Karen relaxed and snuggled back against Wheelan.
"Who the hell else would want to discover something like that? You might just as well invent an economical method of canning persimmons." Wheelan shuddered. "Cats."
Karen closed her eyes. "Anyway, he says it's a great tension-reliever. People get out of themselves. Forget their troubles. Aggressions. That's very important in times like these when everyone is worrying about blowing up unexpectedly."
Wheelan tightened his arm around her. "Damn. When I think of all those people going out to the old fairgrounds and turning into cats and yowling around it...."
"Makes you crawly?"
Wheelan turned her head up and kissed her.
Karen's tongue shot under his and back and she pulled away. "You take everything too seriously. Mr. Balderstone has a way of helping people relax. So what? What's that Latin thing about disputandum and all?"
"Yeah, but a whole town. My town and yours! And it's given over to turning people into cats."
"My town and yours! You sound like Chief Neff." She kissed him on the cheek. "Hey. Last summer we didn't spend all this time debating."
Wheelan smiled quickly. "I'm maturing. Once you pass twenty-six you get wisdom. You'll see."
"I say if they want to be cats let them. It's very good therapy. And Lord knows we need it."
"It's not right."
Karen sighed. "What was that comic strip when we were kids, about the cat and the mouse? Cicero's Cat?"
"Krazy Kat?"
She nodded. "You're like that mouse. Always have to go around throwing bricks at the cats. And it always got him in trouble. Ignatz. That was his name, Ignatz Mouse. That's who you are."
"Very profound insight." Wheelan ran his hand down her back, touching each of the white buttons on her sweater. "I'm still going to do something about it."
Though she was facing away Wheelan could feel her smile. "Glenn?" she said.
He undid the first small button. "Yeah?"
"I went out there last week. And it is quite relaxing. I've felt much happier this week."
Wheelan got to the second button before he realized what she had said. "Karen, you're kidding!"
"No. So you see, it's nothing so terrible."
Wheelan stood up. "Damn it. Damn it!"
Karen rose, reaching behind her to rebutton her sweater. "You're being pretty intolerant."
"Damn it, the whole town!" He backed away, his feet sinking deep in the cold sand.
Karen shrugged. "Don't take it so big." She looked up at him hopefully. "Well, you'll at least drive me home?"
Belatedly, Wheelan said, "Sure. Come on." Near his car he said quietly, "Now I'm really going to get them."
It wasn't until the next Wednesday that Wheelan had his leaflets ready to hand out. The local printers had, one way and another, refused the job. He'd had to have them done in Santa Monica.
The two cub scouts he'd hired to help him had both come down with something late Tuesday. Wheelan stationed himself on Chambers Drive near the two largest tourist motels early on the clear June morning.
He had handed out five of his anti-lycanthropy leaflets when Chief Harold Neff drove up on his official motorcycle. Wheelan spotted him a block away by his gold-painted crash helmet. It was the only one on the force.
"Hi, there, Glenn," said Neff, after he'd parked the cycle in a red zone. "What are you up to?"
Wheelan frowned at the chief's broad, tanned face. "I'm agitating, Hal."
Neff rubbed his jaw. "Without a permit, though?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
The chief nodded. "You'll have to stop. You can't hand out those things without a permit."
Wheelan tucked his box of leaflets up under his arm. "Who do I see about a permit?"
"Me, Glenn." Chief Neff flipped off his helmet and stroked his crewcut, looking down the street. "Let's go down to the Blue Oasis and have a beer and talk."
"Can you drink while on duty?"
"Beer." He took Wheelan's arm.
"What about your motorcycle?"
"Won't come to any harm."
In one of the Blue Oasis's dark leather booths Neff said, "Don't you like the way the old town's blossoming, Glenn?"
"Cats make me feel crawly," Wheelan said, pushing his schooner back and forth in front of him.
"Why, even the slums are a sight to see. And San Miguel's getting to be a well-liked spot. Like Capistrano and Disneyland. Being well-liked is good for a town's civic pride." The chief grinned at Wheelan.
"I think there's something basically wrong with people turning into cats." Wheelan made up his mind not to drink the beer.
"There might be something wrong in it if people did it out of spite or for mischief, Glenn. But I think most competent authorities will agree that Mr. Balderstone's method has a real, honest-to-gosh therapeutic value." He looked straight at Wheelan. "There's a lot of nervous tension these days, Glenn. Even teaching in Pasadena you must have seen that."
"Well, Hal, I'll admit that. I just don't think Balderstone's approach is any solution."
Neff laughed. "There's not really much solution to anything." He leaned back into the shadows in the booth corner. "You're as interested in our town as anybody, aren't you, Glenn? Growing up here, playing in the Little League, attending Grover Cleveland High."
"Sure. That's why I hate to see it taken over by some crackpot cult."
"You're entitled to your opinions. Just don't hand them out in the form of leaflets."
"About that permit?"
"Well, Glenn, you know how tangled in red tape any government gets. It'll take time. Even with me putting the spurs to everybody. Uh, you're leaving the first part of September?"
"Yeah, when school opens." Wheelan pushed his glass away and slid out of the booth. "It'll take until early September to get the permit, huh?"
"No. With me seeing to it you should have it by the end of August." He stood and shook hands. Something about shaking hands with Chief Neff unsettled Wheelan. Trying not to show it, he walked with Neff out into the light.
Wheelan was squatting, studying the bottom shelves of his aunt's refrigerator. He looked into an opened tin of smoked oysters, then decided against making a sandwich. He opened a can of beer and sat down at the white-topped table. This was the night his aunt went out to Balderstone's. Wheelan shivered. They even had special buses running out there.
The doorbell rang, or rather chimed a tune that had been a favorite of his aunt's during prohibition. Karen Wylie was standing on the front porch in a big tan coat. "Hi," she said. "Busy?"
"Pretty much."
She glanced at his hand. "Can I have a beer?"
Wheelan moved back so she could enter.
After he'd taken her coat and brought her a beer Karen said, "What are you up to now?"
"Well, I sent letters to both our local papers, but they haven't been printed. I suppose you know about my trying to hand out leaflets last week. Then I tried to rent a soundtruck, but Neff says I need a permit for that, too." He sat down on his aunt's chintz-covered sofa. "Now I'm doing a mail campaign."
"Why don't you give up?" Karen watched him with an anxious expression. "What good are you doing?"
"I think that every citizen has a right to act as he chooses. I mean, when an evil exists it's the individual's right to try to combat it."
"With leaflets?"
"In any way he can," Wheelan said.
She smiled. "You just look silly. And you'll annoy people. Really, Glenn, what's wrong with all this? You're just judging others by your own standards. All this talk about good and evil."
"I don't think people should turn into cats. If they have to, I don't think our town should encourage them." He clenched his fists. "Why, they've got signs on the road now, telling how far it is to Balderstone's temple, or whatever he calls it."
"There's certainly nothing unethical in advertising, Glenn. You're not that narrow-minded."
Wheelan finished his beer and bent the can in half. He was angry enough to do it with one hand. "Let's forget it. How've you been?"
"Wonderful." She touched one hand to her temple. "Very relaxed."
"Which is your night in the temple?"
Karen frowned. "Oh, I've only dropped out a couple of times."
Rubbing his hands slowly together, Wheelan said, "I'm trying to start an anti-cat league, Karen. Would you join?"
Karen laughed and stood up. "How many members have you got?"
"I just started mailing yesterday."
"But so far?"
"None." He picked Karen's coat off the chair he draped it on. "Thanks for dropping in."
Getting into her coat Karen said, "Take it easy, Glenn, will you?"
"I have to do what I think is right."
Karen was smiling as he held the door open for her.
It was a foggy night, two nights after Wheelan had picketed the fairgrounds and been run off by Chief Neff. Wheelan had decided to walk down toward the beach after dinner. His aunt wasn't speaking to him. Nor was she cooking for him. He got a hamburger at a drive-in across the road from the long narrow San Miguel beach; then wandered through the fog toward the last sidewalk before the sand.
He heard a car slow behind him, then saw the nose of a Ford convertible slide out of the thickening mist. Eventually he saw Karen, her dark hair in a thin scarf, smiling at him from behind the wheel. "You mad?" she called.
Wheelan finished the hamburger and wiped his hands on his pocket handkerchief. "More or less."
"Want to come along for a drive?"
He came up to the passenger side of the front seat. "Why don't you put the top down?"
"I like the way the fog feels. Come on." She stretched across the front seat and opened the door.
"Someplace in particular?" He caught the door as it swung out.
"Well, yes. Somebody wants to see you."
"Oh?" He got in. "You playing messenger ............