I was told Isabella became a regular as soon as she was old enough to legally sit at the bar. She wasn't there for the booze. She was there to try to pick up the young construction workers who came in for lunch or their after-work beers. She was cute enough, but her goth appearance and abrasive personality worked against her. Lupin accused her of being a vampire. She in turn accused him with his scruffy beard of being a werewolf. Considering the natural hostility between these two supposedly mythical species and the way Isabella and Lupin were always at odds with each other, I was not willing to contradict their accusations. They never missed an opportunity to annoy each other even on the day the bear walked into the bar.

A bear, a werewolf, and a vampire walk into a bar. Sounds like a bad joke, but it really wasn't that funny when the bear walked in. It was an abnormally hot day so we had the door propped open to help cool the place off. Here in the mountains, we rarely need air conditioning even in August. The bear just came sauntering in on all fours as if it were no big deal. For him, I suppose it wasn't. The bear paused in the doorway and began looking around just like every other customer does looking for a seat.

For most of the occupants of the bar, it was a rather big deal. There were a lot of gasps and a few chuckles and most everyone just froze in place. They say if you don't bother them or come between them and food, bears won't bother you. I've never wanted to test this hypothesis, but there was currently a lot of food behind me in the kitchen and a big black bear in front of me who definitely looked like he had dining and dashing on his mind. As proprietor of the bar, I felt it was incumbent upon me to do something other than get out of the bear's way.

Fortunately for me, before I could move Lupin grabbed a bottle of hot sauce from the bar, hopped off his bar stool and confronted the bear. Lupin stood tall right in front of the bear and growled. This brought more gasps from the customers and a responding growl from the bear. Lupin splashed hot sauce in the bear's face and open maw. The bear shook his head clearly upset and confused. He turned to leave giving Lupin one last glance as if to say how rude, that wasn't necessary and headed down the strip mall apparently to find a more hospitable establishment.

Whereas most of the bar's occupants were thanking and praising Lupin for his quick actions, Isabella just glared at him and said, "You know you are not supposed to feed the bears, don't you?"

To head off the banter between them, I asked Lupin, "I'm curious about that growl. What exactly did you say to that bear?"

Still glaring at Isabella, he answered, "It was a female and I told her this bar already had its quota of skanks. She took one look at the vampire, realized I was right and left."

"Hot sauce?" Roy questioned Lupin's choice of condiments. Roy is one of the aforementioned young construction workers. In fact, he was currently "dating" Isabella as well as being friends with Lupin. I suspect he too was trying to head off a fight between them. "Weren't you afraid you'd just antagonize the bear?"

"It was a mild sauce. He might develop a taste for it. Did you know I used to be a taste tester for a hot sauce company?" Lupin said going along with Roy's attempt to change the subject.

I could sense we were about to get another Lupin tall tale; so, I set a fresh beer in front of him.

"I was one of the first people to taste Carolina Reaper sauce. It was developed from a hybrid cross of the Habanero and ghost pepper. Reaper is the hottest pepper on the market now, but there were hotter ones in development. The problem was the hotter ones kept eating through the plastic tubing of the processing equipment. They gave it to me to try anyway. They were going to call it the Lupin Reaper. I don't think they expected me to survive. I did and in fact, it cured my colon cancer. Last I heard they were going to try and sell it to a pharmaceutical company. But, I suspect it only works on folks whose innards are already pickled."

"Or werewolves," Isabella added.

"If you only knew," Lupin concluded and let out a very disquieting howl.