On the third day...

Trouble with the printer. Naturally.

It felt just like when I went to pick up my wedding ring. The jeweler measured the ring, and the finger I'd be wearing it on, and assured me that when I came back in two weeks, the one would fit the other perfectly. I returned, and he triumphantly handed me back...a ring that hadn't been altered at all.

When I left the PDF file with the printer, he asked me several salient questions, some of which I even knew the answer to. "How long will it take to print?" I asked at last in my turn.

"Three days," he said. "Three business days," he corrected himself. It was a Thursday.

"So I can pick it up on Monday?"

"Correct."

"Should I call first, or...?"

"Just come."

That felt weird to me. It felt too magical. I was dropping off a tiny little disk that fit so easily in my purse that I had to keep checking to be sure it was actually there; and in three (sort of) days, I'd be coming back for enough copies of a print magazine to fill up my car trunk.

And that not-calling part felt...odd. No calling to confirm the order, or to be sure that there hadn't been any problems? Why not?

I should have gone with my gut feeling, of course. But I was already embarrassed about having to have so many of his basic questions explained to me in humiliating detail and simplicity. I didn't want to come across as more of an idiot, and an interfering one at that.

And this was the only place I'd been able to find that didn't have a minimum order of a thousand copies. They could make me as many or as few as I needed, and at a decent price. I didn't want to risk annoying them and having to start searching for another miracle worker.

So I waited. Quietly. Without calling; and, with a degree of self-control rare for me, without telling everyone I knew that the magazine was coming back from the printer on Monday and wasn't that just the greatest thing ever?

On Monday, quietly, I went back to the printer. The man I'd spoken to last time wasn't there. "I'm here to pick up an order," I said.

The man looked harassed and uneasy. I hate seeing my own expression in that kind of mirror. I had dibs on nervous; he was supposed to take brisk, efficient, and all-knowing.

"What kind of an order?"

"A magazine." A certain note of pride there, subdued by the fact that, look around as much as I could, I saw no sign of any stacks and stacks of neatly-bound paper that could be my order.

"A galley proof, or the order?"

"The order."

Now, look. I've worked with editors and publishers before. I know what galley proofs are. I've seen them. But no one here had said anything about them. If they had, I'd have been ready for there to be a hitch, an extra step, a pause between file and completed product.

He sighed, took my name and the name of my magazine, and looked at pretty much everything in the shop. It took a while. He also spoke to someone else who worked there.

Part of what I'd liked about this printer was that it was obviously a family operation. That meant, I hoped, that everyone would know all about any given order.

All that this man was able to find out, however, was that there had been some kind of problem with mine. With the file, to be exact.

"Why didn't they call me?" I asked. Damn it, they could have called days ago. This could have been sorted out.

He looked even more stressed, which I appreciated. I'm not a sadist; like everyone else, I just want to be able to pretend that what's important to me is important to everyone around me. And he was getting paid to give at least the impression that he cared.

He explained that whoever was taking care of my order wasn't here right now, but would be back in a couple of hours, and would call me.

I more than made up for my previous taciturnity by calling them at every possible opportunity. Well, technically, it wasn't me calling. I know nothing about computers or files. If the printer gave me more detail about why what I'd given them wasn't working, all I could do was cry, which I do rarely but well. I bow to no one when it comes to hitching and sobbing. Instead, I had the technical expert call.

He called that night, and the next morning, and later that morning, and then in the afternoon. Every time the story was the same: the person dealing with my order wasn't in, but would be very soon, and would really really call.

An hour after my tech man had called them and heard that he could expect a call in three hours or so, I got a call from the printer. They had printed a sample copy, and needed me to come and confirm that it was all right before they completed the order.

I would have canceled my own wedding, funeral, or emergency appendectomy at that point to get the ball rolling; but my son had a bowling date, and canceling that would mean not only winning the Baddest Mommy Ever award (which I've already received numerous times, and am really not looking to find more wall space for) but depositing several thousand dollars into son's therapy account. So I told them I'd be by as soon as I could, and went to watch my son aim at pins, miss them, get depressed, get angry at me for not having taught him how to bowl better or sooner, and repeat the process for two whole games before he guilt-tripped me into ponying up some cash for use in the video-game room that every bowling alley is apparently legally required to have on the premises.

Finally, finally, I was allowed go and see the first issue of my magazine, which I now firmly believed would never exist except in my mind. I wondered how many of my subscribers had my home address, and if they'd try to purchase torches and stakes in my trendy urban neighborhood or wisely stock up at home before heading over to do unspeakable but completely justified things to the editor who'd promised them a product. Only the ones who'd sent checks had any idea of my locale; and I hadn't cashed those yet, so maybe I'd be able to calm their issuers a bit before they did more than burn a representative sampling of my building down.

It should have been exciting to see that first copy, but it wasn't. Partly because so many things had gone wrong that it had quite taken the wind out of my sails; partly because I'd spent so much time proofing printouts of these very pages that it wasn't as if seeing them was some kind of miracle, but only felt like yet another trial run; mostly, though, because I was tensely trying to remember what kind of flaws I was supposed to look for before I gave the printers the go-ahead. There was a certain spread of pages that were supposed to fall exactly in the middle, so that the reader could pop them out like a mini-mag without disrupting the rest of the pages. They seemed fine. I said so.

"Do I have to wait another three days?" I asked.

"No."

"How long?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" I looked at him to see if there was any chance at all that he was kidding. Didn't seem to be. "Tomorrow," I added for good measure. "I can pick up all the copies tomorrow."

"Correct."

"What time?"

"This time tomorrow."

Which was about four o'clock. On Halloween.

"Should I call?"

"Just come."