HOA Prints Secret Booklet for Mail Carrier, Narrowly

Quiet Hours at No. 2

The presentation was meant for the lawn at No. 2, which is flat and has a hose. Doris produced the bylaws and ended that.

Bylaw 14(c), written for the sole comfort of a domesticated bear, forbids more than three residents from gathering on the porch side of the lane before noon, and forbids applause louder than a turning page, the morning being her rest.

Brenda lives under the porch at No. 2 and was, at that moment, resting. Lou paced out the distance to the mailbox cluster on the other side and called it a good spot, since Wendell's route starts there anyway. Gus Ferreira, passing with a level, said he could build a lawn on the right side of the lane by Friday. Mags thanked him and moved the party, and struck the word cheering from the program.

The Cat Presents

One question remained: who hands Wendell the booklet. Everyone wanted to. The Caucus wanted it in writing.

Admiral Biscuit, who chairs the Cat-Owners' Caucus and has never attended a meeting awake, slept on the arm of Mags's sofa through the entire debate, one paw over his eyes, as if the proceedings were a bright lamp. Mags, whose Caucus holds that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, said the matter of who presents a gift had been settled by the Ruling of Port Merrow, the Salt Cellar Decision and the Third Cushion Accord, in each of which the household of the cat presented and the household of the dog was thanked for attending.

Pepper, a beagle who is not a cat and has made peace with it, thumped her tail at the word thanked. Doris said she could find no Port Merrow. Mags said that was how old it was. Doris wrote provisional in the Ledger, and Mags got the job, with the Admiral's name on the card. The Admiral had not been consulted. This, Mags said, was the whole point of him.

Mags, who had drafted a Flipping Rota with shifts and a sign-in sheet, stood holding a clipboard with nothing to do.

Twelve Copies by Ten Forty

At ten twenty Lou's recipe had not arrived, because Lou was stirring the soup it described. It came from his phone, spoon in the other hand. The twins' cover arrived from a tablet, supervised, and Doris's page from her laptop. The printer took all three over the wireless connection and made no fuss about it.

The 3001dw prints up to 35 black-and-white pages per minute on one side, and the first page was out in about 6.6 seconds. Mags stood at the tray and watched the speed turn into paper. Because it prints on both sides automatically, nobody had to carry half a stack across the room and feed it back in. Mags, who had drafted a Flipping Rota with shifts and a sign-in sheet, stood holding a clipboard with nothing to do. She called the feeling unfamiliar and asked that it not be repeated.

The tray holds 250 sheets, so the whole run went in on a single loading, and Lou kept stirring.

Ada's cover was the one disappointment. She had drawn a mailbox in nine crayon colors, and the printer, which does black and white only, gave back nine grays. "Prototype," Ada said. Felix said the mailbox now looked retired from mail, and both agreed that suited it.

ORACLE Adds a Day

At ten thirty-eight the neighbors stood at the cluster with booklets behind their backs, like a choir with a grudge. Wendell's truck turned in. The speaker on the HOA bulletin board crackled.

ORACLE, which had greeted Wendell earlier that week as "Winston," announced that it had solved the lane's long trouble with Tuesdays running into Wednesdays by installing a spare day between them.

Nobody on the lane had ever had that trouble. Wendell stood very still, the way a man does when twenty-two years of routes are renamed in front of him. He took out his route book and began working out what the spare day would deliver. It took six minutes. The streetlight at the end of the lane flickered once as he finished, and Mags used the time to staple the last booklet.

Signed for, in Gray

Wendell looked up from the route book at a lane's worth of neighbors, a pot of soup and a stack in gray covers. He reported that the spare day had gone fine and that it had brought mostly catalogs. Then he read the first page standing, which was the Caucus's, and sat on the concrete base of the cluster to read the rest.

Doris, who had read the warranty guide from the box, noted for the record that the hardware carries one year of limited warranty, and that the printer is meant for up to 7 people. The lane is eleven houses. She said that explained why the lane had one printer and a great many people willing to stand beside it.

Mags held out the delivery receipt. "Signed for," said Wendell, "as always." Then, per 14(c), eleven households applauded by turning a page at the same moment, the quietest ovation in the lane's history. Under the porch at No. 2, Brenda did not stir.