HIS OWN PETARD

Mickey’s lifelong project, The Compendium of Typographical Errors, was done. He had labored on it for eleven years, that was by his count, though his girlfriend said it was more like fourteen. “I date it by when you promised me you would think about getting married,” she said. He laughed but was it a laughing matter? Even Beth’s sister called her “Long-Suffering Sally” or sometimes “Sad Cinderella.” It didn’t matter now. He was done. The manuscript was delivered. He could turn his mind to other matters. Well, he almost could. He had turned in the manuscript at 4:08 p.m. on a Tuesday, careful not to pick a more conspicuous time, an 8 a.m. Monday sharp, a 5 p.m. Friday pre-weekend weather balloon. He hadn’t heard back from his editor on Tuesday, which was to be expected. He’d probably get a note on Wednesday. But then Wednesday was noon, then afternoon, then gone. That was fine, to be expected too. His editor, a slightly stooped but still impressive lighthouse of patrician eminence named Benedict Crowninshield, was nothing if not deliberate. He might take a full minute to lift a cup of tea. And he was fairly fond of driving out to his place on the Cape for long walks he called “air baths.” But then it was Thursday and then Friday. The silence increased in volume.  Mickey thought about calling. But a call was a mistake. B.C. (a nickname Crowninshield had devised himself, and which he enforced vigorously) was not to be bothered during an air bath, and even less while reviewing a manuscript. Mickey spent the weekend rethinking everything. Had he been right to dive into this project? Error was a part of humanity, and typographical error part of literate humanity. For a time spelling had not been regularized, and then it was left to typesetters, and then to individual typists. Fleets had been launched on the backs of slips of the key. Men had been condemned to hang or rescued from certain death. Wars had been started, romances ended, entire economies upended. Single errant letters sometimes meant everything. So of course someone should go through all the important printed works of the millennium,  collecting and annotating mistakes, and why shouldn’t that someone be him? By Sunday night he had talked himself back into faint hope. And then, Monday morning, 8 a.m., there it was, an email from B.C. He opened it, hands trembling. “I hate your manuscript,” it said. Mickey’s entire body went cold as a floe. He began to scratch along his jawline uncontrollably. Beth found him there thirty minutes later. He held like he had not moved though his jaw was nearly bleeding. She looked over his shoulder. “Ha,” she said. “Funny guy. ‘I have your manuscript.’ I can’t wait to see what he thinks of it. Then we can start planning the wedding.” Mickey allowed a dead breath to leave his lungs, flinched as a new one came in, shifted, shocked, sure that he had wet himself.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas