The Typo

'What are you doing up there?' my wife asks. Actually, she's shouting, so I can hear her from where I'm standing on the edge of the roof.
I detect a hint of surprise in her voice, probably because I don't usually go up on the roof, and never whilst holding a ream of paper. I can tell she's confused.

I can't answer because I'm hyperventilating and my throat is sore from the hour-long primal scream I emitted when I spotted my mistake: the sentence fragment in the middle of the synopsis that marks me out as a bozo to the six agents I've just sent my manuscript to. Now I won't ever know if the rejections I've received so far are due to my actual story or the typo on the first page of the synopsis.

Everything I've heard about the submission process indicates that agents are looking for any excuse to reject a submission. I can be safely sure that four years of redrafting, mood swings and imaginary conversations with people who exist only in my head have come to squat, all because of a rudimentary mistake in a document I've read hundreds of times and which should be free of mistakes.

I'm running out of agents. These six were the special ones, the ones I'd set aside because the law of averages dictates that the first several dozen would reject my manuscript. I'd made all my mistakes with the other ones, trying to coordinate that magic triumverate of cover letter, synopsis and sample pages, tailoring each submission to the particular whim of the respective agent. I had it bang on - the manuscript is as good as I can get it, the cover letter is snappy and informative, and the synopsis is succinct. All except the sentence in paragraph six, which reads, 'Philpot’s quest is dogged by two shadowy Air Force figures from who are out to steal his secrets and implicate him in an espionage ring.'

Why has this happened? I don't know. I suppose I should blame myself, but at the moment it feels better to assume the universe is conspiring against me. The cat has joined me on the roof and is rubbing itself against my feet. 

'What are you doing up there?' my wife repeats.

'You're home early,' I finally manage to stammer, holding out my manuscript for her to see. Pages 35 -37 flutter free as I fish around in my pocket for a tissue. The cat paws at them as they blow past. 

Five years of my erratic behaviour has hardened my wife to my idiosyncracies. As ever, she knows just how to make things right again: 'When you're finished up there,' she says, propping the ladder back against the house from where I'd kicked it away, 'you can go pick your son up from school.'