The Mistaken Delivery

by James Swingle

I'm sure you remember all the fuss around the release of the latest Tara Cotter book. The nightly news footage of armored cars delivering copies by the thousands to bookstores. The army of lawyers obtaining injunctions against websites that tried to excerpt even the slightest passage before the
publication date. Well, in all that coverage, there was one story that was never told.

On Thursday evening, two full days before the official release date of Saturday, April 24, I arrived home at my apartment building to find a package for me at the concierge's desk. I retrieved the box and headed up
to my apartment, at that point thinking my copy of 'How to Make Money Selling Civil War Figurines on the Internet' had finally arrived. (That's going to be my ticket out, I tell you.) But no. When I opened the box, the Tara Cotter novel stared up at me. Two days before the release date!

I knew only too well what they did to people who received an early copy. They asked for it back. I had to move quickly. The SWAT team was no doubt
already en route.

I started to push the sofa in front of the door. But it wouldn't fit into the entrance hall. I would need to block the door with something else. Unfortunately, the sofa was now stuck in the entrance to the hallway. I climbed over the sofa to get to the door. How could I block it? How could I protect my prized book? Ah ha! I knew! I made a most formidable barricade in front of the door by piling up all of my girlfriend Megan's shoes. I climbed back over the sofa into the living room. Megan watched me. She sighed. "Have you been reading zombie websites again?"

"No!" I shouted. "This is real life. Tara Cotter."

I stopped to think. What should I do to protect us? I googled "What to do when under siege by a SWAT team" and clicked on a link.

"Quick," I said to Megan. "Cover all the windows."

"With what? I've been after you to get curtains for two months now."

I ran into the kitchen. I had to check our food supplies.

Three ounces of stinky, foot-smelly yuppie cheese. Enough for the evening, but Friday would be doing hard cheese-less time. Two bottles of Pellegrino. We'd have to ration sparkling water. Grass-fed bison for tonight, and I
could do a free-range chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and kalamata olives for Friday evening. Organic eggs and smoked salmon for brunch on Saturday. But no goat cheese! We'd be stretched to the breaking point if the siege
lasted into Saturday morning--a smoked salmon omelette with no goat cheese.

I ran back into the living room. I could hear Megan filling the bathtub. Good thinking. Stockpile water in case of a long siege. I ran into the bathroom to commend her. The tub was filled with bubble bath, and she was just settling in to lounge in the hot, sudsy water.

"Uh, Sweetie?" I said. "I don't think that's quite what they had in mind..."

Before Megan could raise her eyebrow all the way into that too-familiar position, I shut up and returned to the living room.

I would take them all on by myself. Overcome with the spirit of the moment, I ran to the window, threw it open, and yelled out, "You can take my life, but you will never take my copy of the latest Tara Cotter novel!"

Someone yelled out a window below, "You have the Tara Cotter book? Can I borrow it?"

Other windows were thrown open.

"What's going on?"

"Someone has the latest Tara Cotter book."

"Who?"

"I don't know. We have to find out."

"Let's form a mob."

I closed the window. Perhaps yelling out the window had been a poor tactical choice on my part. I positioned myself in the center of the living room--waiting. I listened whenever a siren sounded in the distance, fearing it would be a SWAT team closing in to surround the building and swoop in on me. I listened to the bands of tenants roaming the building with their pitchforks and torches. I listened, straining my every sense to detect the subtlest clue that danger approached. My nerves were raw with the effort, the concentration, the anxious hours of waiting. Megan watched TV.

Somehow, I made it through the night. I was tired, but not defeated. Megan got up, patted me on the head, and walked over to where the Barnes and Nobel box sat on our dining table.

"Uh, Sweetie?" she said. "I think the title of the new Tara Cotter book is 'The Bureaucracy of the Burnt Bird.'"

"Uh, yeah, I guess that's right," I said.

"This is 'Tara Cotter and The Rock by Any Other Name.' Remember, you ordered a replacement for the copy you loaned out?"

"Oh."

The next day, Saturday, April 24, my copy of 'Tara Cotter and The Bureaucracy of the Burnt Bird' arrived. The same day as everyone else's. I still haven't gotten around to reading it. But I will as soon as I finish Neil Gaiman's "American Gods". I still have a couple hundred pages of that to go, and I hate to start a new novel before I've finished the last one.