Stella P.-A. didn’t just fix fountain pens; she coaxed them back to life, breath by careful breath. Her fingers, stained perpetually with indigo and sepia, danced over a shattered section of a vintage Montblanc 149. The air in her tiny workshop, tucked away on the ninety-ninth street corner of an old district, smelled faintly of ebonite dust and aged ink. Today, though, a different scent hung heavy: the faint, metallic tang of frustration. A client, impatient and demanding, had called for the ninth time that morning, insisting on “pristine, flawless, by 5:09 PM sharp.” Stella sighed, a wisp of a sound that barely stirred the dust motes dancing in the singular shaft of light piercing the gloom. She’d just made a tiny, almost imperceptible mistake on the last cap she’d polished, a microscopic scratch near the clip. Nothing major, certainly not visible to the untrained eye, but it was there, a nagging whisper in her professional conscience. It reminded me, vaguely, of an email I’d sent yesterday – important document, perfectly drafted, but the attachment? Vanished into the ether. A small oversight, yet it felt disproportionately large in the moment.

That’s the core of it, isn’t it? The sheer, unadulterated frustration with anything less than perfection, with the process that inevitably involves snags, delays, and outright errors. We live in a world that demands instant, pristine results. Buy something online,

The clipboard appeared in his periphery first. A ghost of laminated particleboard, hovering just over the chip rail. Then came the soft, insistent tap of a pen against its surface-a sound like a woodpecker trying to find purchase on steel.

“Seventy-seven,” a voice said, low and devoid of any discernible emotion. It was Rick, the floor manager. Rick, whose entire posture seemed to have been molded by years of leaning over felt tables, delivering numerical verdicts.

Leo didn’t break his rhythm. He continued the story he was telling, something about a fishing trip and a pelican that had more personality than most of his relatives. The table, a mix of tourists and a couple of regulars, laughed. A woman from Ohio pushed another $47 forward. The man next to her, who had been nursing the same stack for nearly an hour, finally bought in for another $237. The drink orders were flowing. The energy was perfect. It was a golden table, the kind that makes a casino’s heart beat. Leo slid the cards from the shoe, his movements fluid, economical, but never, ever rushed.

“Leo. Seventy-seven hands per hour. We talked about this,” Rick repeated, his voice now a little closer to Leo’s ear. “The house minimum is ninety-seven. You’re down twenty-seven percent.”