I was up really late — having trouble sleeping, I clenched my jaw tight and waded through tired, bulky email inboxes. A half an hour in, I noticed an unread message. Something had come in from the design site. The message read:

E-commerce site with simple bold colorful graphics and quick response time.

Looking for help with graphics for children’s book cover and few pics for book.

Harmless enough. Wrote back and forth to set-up a meeting. She let me know that the “business owner” and “children’s author” was actually her boyfriend and that they’d like to meet on the wealthy outskirts of town at his house.

I sensed danger. A dread came over me as the meeting drew nearer and I convinced another member of my design team to come along. He almost backed out — feeling the same vibe on the way. We drove through the pitch black empty streets of rural suburbia looking for our turn.

Ding-dong and we were inside. Dale answered the door in his flannel pajama pants and long sleeve cotton shirt — the first two buttons laid unused and his chest hair sprouted forth.

“Welcome,” he lisped desperately.

“This is Linda!”

“We’ve spoken,” she smiled warmly — her eyes glowed with a vapid, but kind, obedient madness. Blonde hair reached her shoulders.

Small children, perhaps 6 and 9 years of age, sat on the couch facing a large television. They turned and smiled. We smiled back and they waved shyly.

“Cute kids,” I said. Dale rolled his eyes and led us into the kitchen. Linda smiled and followed. The kids scampered in behind us.

“Get out of here,” said Dale. “We’re trying to work. Do what I told you. You can watch TV just don’t put your feet on the couch or eat food.”

“You can sit here.” pointed Dale. “And you can sit there.” We sat down and he brought out a stack of papers.

My back was tense. I wriggled in my seat. They offered water. I looked at my friend, Reggie — he was sipping his Yoohoo. His eyes shrugged.

“I’ve written this great little adventure story for kids.” he said. “The main character is a little dog that really puts his owners in place. He just won’t behave! He thinks he’s in charge! Can you imagine? A dog in charge!”

He was overcome with laughter. Linda joined in nervously. Reggie and I grinned from ear to ear with anxiety.

“The real reason we need you is to promote this book with a line of merchandise. This book is going to be so huge — we’re gonna have doggie shirts, doggie beds, collars, and individualized slogan brands. I’ve already trademarked them through my lawyer. I have 30 domain names in all. It’s hard to stop these cyber quatters. I have 24,000 email accounts to give out for new users. Do you think that will be enough?

He said we’d better get down to business, which relaxed me a bit. I’ve never been one for small talk. He told us we weren’t the only ones bidding on this job. Said he’d done his research and waded through his stack of papers. He pulled out quotes from other design companies in town. He showed us his cut and paste mock-up of the ideal dog website.

We told him we could do a nice job without the overhead of larger companies. “We use open-source software and keep the prices low,” I said. They were very pleased and conversation shifted to other pleasantries such as coffee, hockey, Linda’s children, and movies.

“Well, I like what I’m hearing, but I never make a decision without sleeping on it.”

The kids tip-toed back into the room.

“WHAT DID I TELL YOU? Linda, please do something with these kids.”

We shook hands and headed back out into the night. It was 10:00 — we’d been there for three hours.

I drove us back into town. We wondered aloud about the children’s author who hated children, the strange sexual vibes, and the sudden emergence of a full-blown dog product ring of websites.

True to his word, the call came the next day. We had the job. Lucky us. We were up with a running start. Dale called me excitedly every day with questions about webhosting. I patiently waited for hours on the phone while he spoke to me on one phone and register.com on the other.

He had accepted our lowball offer. The idea was to start and finish the site quickly. Yet one site led to another — design changes were demanded — we complied. We worked long hard hours. My whole family was sick one week. Perfect timing: the phone rang — it was Dale.

“We need to meet.”

“I’m sick. Can it wait a few days?”

“No. We won’t catch it. And there’s the deadline. We need to meet the deadline.”

“Deadline? Oh, is the book out now?”

“No.”

So, I headed the 25 minutes back out to Whitebredsville and sat at the kitchen table for the third time.

“SEE THIS? WHY DOESN’T THE SITE LOOK LIKE MY DRAWING?”

“Well…”

“You are just stringing us along here. Do you have the skills? I thought Reggie had all this experience… How much is this going to end up costing me?”

“First, you’ve insulted my character. I’d like to be finished with this job just as much as you. Second, you keep changing your idea of what the site will be — adding to it, subtracting, calling for wholesale redesigns of parts. Our rates are incredibly reasonable.”

“All I want is for it to look like this.” His eyes bulged and his breathing grew rapid as he pointed to his cut and paste mock-up.

“Just two weeks ago you told me to make it look like Petsmart’s website here at the top,” I pointed.

He shook his head. “Linda, do you remember that?” She shook her head half-heartedly and frowned.

I was cornered. The perjuring witness would not budge.

The cold medicine had worked to my advantage. My normal distaste for conflict mediation was sedated somewhat by the high grade decongestant. We agreed to split the last 10 hours — chalking it up to miscommunication. I would now report to Linda and refer to her for design tasks.

Things got better. Our email rapport was excellent. I finished everything on their new list of complaints. Linda noted that the site was “nearly there.”

The next day I was barred from access to the site. A message popped up in simple html:

“Coming Soon” and months of work went up in flames.

My emails went unreturned for a week. The children’s author truly was a child at heart.