Greg smiled painfully. "Thanks for the offer, but no. We know when we're licked, and we're not about to get ourselves in deeper just out of spite. The game's over. They've won. And we're going to turn tail and run as far away from Bonita as humanly possible."
"But your job ..." Mike said.
"I'm quitting. We're selling the house and starting anew in Arizona.
My brother lives in Phoenix and thinks he can get me a job at Motorola." He looked out the window. "I was born in Corban ," he said.
"So was Wy . And ever since I was a teenager, all I wanted was to be able to afford a house in Bonita Vista. It seemed like a paradise to me, and I thought if I ever got in here I'd be happy, things'd be perfect. But it's been a hellhole." He turned to face the gathered guests. "You guys've all been great. But most of the people here ..." He shook his head.
Ray emerged from one of the back rooms. He'd been MIA for the past hour, and Barry wasn't sure how much he'd heard, but he'd obviously heard some of it. Just as obviously, he'd had a little too much to drink. "Fuck the association," he said, walking into the center of the room. "Those bastards can kiss my ass!"
There were echoes of support: "Yeah!" "You tell "em!" "Damn straight."
"You're not going anywhere," he told theDavidsons . "We'll all chip in and pay your property tax. Hell, I'll pay the whole damn thing myself if I have to!" He put a boozy arm around Greg's shoulder. "We can't let those bastards win."
Both Greg and Wynona were shaking their heads. "I can't let you do that," Greg said firmly. "Besides, we've made up our minds. We're leaving. We're through with this place."
But Ray was on a roll. "Civil disobedience. That's what we need here.
If we all rebelled, if we all refused to follow orders and go along with their dictates, there's nothing they could do about it."
"There's more of them than there are of us," Mike pointed out.
"Then we'll kick their asses! I threw one of those pecker heads off my lot last month, and he went running home to Momma. They're cowards!
I'm telling you, we get a group of men together, men who have something between their legs, and when one of us gets a notice or an ultimatum, we all march over to the board members' houses and beat the living shit out of them!"
"Yeah!" Frank said.
The rally went on from there.
Despite the Davidsons ' depressing story, Barry walked home at midnight feeling pumped up. The ideas Ray and his increasingly drunk guests came up with for thwarting the homeowners' association were outlandish and ridiculous, but the spirit was there, and that made him feel good.
Such sustained and unanimous hatred of the homeowners' association gave him hope.
It had been over a week since he and Maureen had made love, but they made up for it that night in a marathon session that brought to mind the early days of their marriage. By the time he finally settled down to sleep, he was dead tired, and in his dreams Neil Campbell arrived at his garage sale with his prissy mouth and his clipboard, and Barry beat the tar out of him.
Maureen awoke with nothing to do.
It was not something to which she was accustomed, and while she'd known that this was bound to happen, she was still not entirely sure how to deal with it. She was not a workaholic, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she was not a slacker either, and while Barry could easily sit around all day staring into space and contemplating his navel, she was not wired for sloth, did not know how to enjoy huge blocks of free time. She was used to having a job, a regular job with regular hours, and even her weekends and vacation days had always been planned out, her leisure time structured.
But as of yet there wasn't enough work here to keep her occupied on a full-time basis. She'd known that and she'd told herself to stretch things out, but she wasn't wired for procrastination either, and, as always, she'd done the best job she could in the quickest time possible. The fiscal yea rend was coming up for most of her California clients, and two weeks from now she'd be so busy that she wouldn't have time for sleep ... but for now she had nothing to do. Even her gardening was all caught up. She'd watered and weeded yesterday, trimmed dead flowers and fed the plants, so unless she wanted to start repainting the house, she was out of luck.
Kicking off the sheet and sitting up, Maureen looked down at her still-flat stomach. She and Barry had often discussed having children, and she couldn't help thinking that a baby would provide her with plenty of work to fill up these empty hours.
But she felt guilty for even speculating about having a child for such a selfish reason. It was as bad as those accountants --and she knew quite a few of them--who planned their children's birth dates in order to get the maximum tax credits.
She sighed. At least when Barry had been home, she'd had someone to talk with. But with him at his office, she was alone and on her own.
Maybe she'd go down and meet him for lunch, she thought. That might be fun.
And on the way back she could stop over and see Liz. Or drop in on Tina Stewart, who'd been asking her to come by and see the new roses she'd planted.
Maureen hopped out of bed, feeling better. There were things to do, she was not entirely at loose ends, and the gloom that had threatened to engulf her only a few moments before disappeared completely, replaced with a more familiar and welcome feeling of energized purpose.
As she ate breakfast and listened to Howard Stern, whose show they got on a powerful and remarkably clear radio station out of Las Vegas, she decided to start her morning with a little exercise. It was a weekday, the tennis courts were no doubt empty, and she thought she'd hit a few balls, practice her serve, start using this free time wisely and get into shape. Afterward, she'd take a shower, then pack a lunch and surprise Barry down at his office. Maybe they'd even go on a picnic.
Maureen changed out of the jeans she'd put on and slipped into a pair of shorts. She grabbed her racket and a can of balls from the closet and jogged down the hill to the tennis courts.
As she'd known, as she'd hoped, there was no one playing she had the courts to herself, and she picked the left court, the one nearest the trees, standing in alternate corners and hitting balls into the opposite squares. Serving was the weakest part of her game, and although she and Barry were pretty evenly matched, if she could tighten up her serve, that might tilt the balance in her favor.
A red Mustang roared down the street, sliding to a late braking stop in the small gravel parking space adjacent to the tennis courts.
Beat-heavy music thumped from behind dark tinted windows, and a moment later two teenage boys hopped out of the vehicle, rackets in hand. One was blond, one had black hair, both were scruffy, and Maureen saw them and then looked immediately away, not wanting to make eye contact. She wanted to practice on her own, without interference, and she kept hitting balls, ignoring the newcomers.
But that soon grew hard to do.
The boys had brought several cans of balls with them, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that they merely hit the same ball lightly back and forth, not playing a real game, not even putting effort into a decent volley. They seemed more interested in their conversation, a disgustingly graphic and obviously exaggerated account of their sexual exploits that grew louder and louder with the telling.
Part of her wanted to tell them to either quiet down or take it somewhere else, but they looked like the kind of kids who'd talk back, and the last thing she wanted was to start a verbal volley with these punks and have to stand there and argue with them for the next twenty minutes. It was easier to just let it slide and try to ignore them.
As if reading her mind, they took the volume up another notch.
"She had one of those skanky pussies, man. Smelled like she'd been shitting out of that hole, if you know what I mean."
"Been there, done that."
"I ate her anyway, though. Just held my breath and chowed down for Old Glory."
There was a harsh laugh of recognition in response, and Maureen picked up one of her bal
ls and casually glanced over at the next court. She was nonplussed to see that both of the teenagers were staring at her.
"I hear tell those bitches from California have twats of gold," the blond kid said. "Taste like honey."
He smiled in a way that made her feel as though she needed to take a shower, and Maureen looked quickly away. She glanced up at the security camera, grateful that it was there. She wanted to pack up her stuff and leave, but she didn't want those punks to think they were driving her off, that she was afraid of them, so she finished picking up her balls and moved to the next corner on her rotation, continuing to practice her serve. One ball went into the net and she walked forward to retrieve it.
A tennis ball flew over from the next court, smacked her square in the back.
She straightened up. "Hey!" she called out angrily. "Watch where you're hitting!"
The dark-haired boy laughed harshly, and the thought occurred to her that it had not been an accident.
She turned away, and two balls came whizzing over. One sped past her head close enough that she felt the breeze, and the other hit the back of her bare right calf with a loud slap. The pain was tremendous, she was sure there'd be a welt, and, furious, she picked up the ball and swung her racket, hitting the ball over the fence and into the trees.
She walked purposefully over to where their other ball lay, intending to swat that over the fence as well, but two more balls came at her, each of them hitting her hard in the buttocks.
She'd had enough. She was leaving. And if either of those two shits tried to stop her or harass her in any way, she was going to take her racket and smash it across his smirkyface. She grabbed her can from where she'd placed it by the fence and began picking up balls. Hers were easy to identify: dull old-fashioned grayish white as opposed to their fluorescent yellow-green.
The last one was caught in the chain-link fence near the border of the two courts, an attempted serve that had gone wild. Below it was one of their balls, and as she walked over, she saw that the blond kid was coming over to get his ball as well. She slowed her pace.
He slowed his.
Clearly, he intended to reach the spot the same time she did, and though she definitely didn't want to meet up with him, she also didn't want to show any fear.
Her grip tightened on the racket.
They reached the fence at the same time, and she ignored him as she pulled her ball from the chain link and dropped it into her can.
Blondie dropped to his knees to pick up his ball.
"Aren't you from California?" he asked. Smiling, he licked his lips suggestively and looked at her crotch.
Maureen felt violated, and she wanted nothing more than to take off the top of his scalp with her racket, but she pulled away in as dignified a manner as she could muster.
"Go to hell," she said coldly.
Both of the boys laughed, but neither tried to stop her as she walked back across the court to the exit.
She checked out the license plate of the Mustang and committed the numbers to memory. She'd call Chuck Shea when she got home, sic the association on those assholes. Or on their parents. Someone needed to take responsibility, and at this moment she didn't care who. If Chuck thought it best to fine the kids' dads or double their dues or kick them out of Bonita Vista entirely, well, they had her permission.
But on her way back up the hill, she saw something that made her change her mind.
Or rather someone.
He was standing across the culvert to her right, in front of a low wooden house with too few windows. She had not noticed the house before, so unobtrusive was it and so far back was it set, but she noticed it now because of the man. He was at least six-foot-five, with a shock of white Lome Greene hair that seemed incongruous atop his unlined baby face. But it was the crutches that drew her attention.
That and his missing leg. For he stood there watching her, supported by the tallest metal crutches she had ever seen, crutches that glinted in the sun and shined in her eyes. The long left leg of his tan pants was filled out with his remaining limb, but the empty right pant leg dangled there, swaying gently in the air, rather than being pinned up or cut off.
Maureen tried to smile, gave a wave and an anonymous, pleasant "Hi,"
but the man swung away and hobbled back toward the house more quickly than she would have thought possible. There was fear in his flight, a fear that she had glimpsed on his face in the brief second before he turned away, and she looked immediately behind her to make sure there wasn't an approaching bear or murderous criminal, but of course there was not. She was the only one on the road, and she watched him hop up the gravel driveway and disappear into the house.
A moment later, she saw his face at one of the small windows staring at her and scowling.
Despite his obvious fear, something about the man seemed threatening to her, and she hurried on up the road. Again she thought of the association, of telling them that this weirdo had been bothering her, trying to scare her, but she stopped herself. Where was this going to end? Was she going to run crying to the association every time life wasn't perfect, every time she encountered a minor inconvenience or saw something slightly out of the ordinary?
She had changed her mind about calling Chuck, and it took her a moment to realize why.
She didn't want to be beholden to the homeowners' association.
That was a strange way to think. She and Barry paid dues, and she had every right to expect that they be provided services for those dues.
And the association had helped her out with that lunaticDekeMeldrum and had not asked for anything in return. But the feeling remained that by asking for help she would be calling in a favor, a favor that would be expected to be repaid at some time in the future.
As much as she tried to deny it, as much as she refused to admit it, she seemed to have bought into Ray's and Barry's paranoid mind-set. Of course, the fact that nearly everyone at the Dysons’ party had had association horror stories lent their paranoia a certain amount of credence, but it was not logical arguments or recitations of actual events that swayed her, it was her own nebulous feeling that... that if she called on the association for help, she would owe them.
What if, she wondered (and here she was really edging into Barry and Ray territory), those two teenagers at the tennis courts had been sent over specifically to harass her, in the hopes that she would call the homeowners' association and thus be indebted to them?
That was ridiculous, but although her other thoughts were almost as ridiculous, she did not discount them, and she hurried up the last section of hill, feeling better only after she was safely back inside the house with the door shut and locked behind her.
Ray spent the morning sanding and re-staining the deck. It probably didn't need to be painted for another year, but he liked to keep on top of things, liked to have the house looking good. Besides, he knew it drove the homeowners' association crazy that they couldn't cite him for neglect.
Although they'd no doubt find something to jump on his ass about. They always did.
He took a shower afterward, scrubbing his arms with Ajax in an effort to get the redwood stain off his skin. He was reaching around, trying to clean off his elbow, when the shower door was pulled open.
He let out a startled cry.
Six men stood in his bathroom, staring at him.
It was not Neil and Chuck and Terry this time, not the underlings or the toadies, not the newcomers. It was the board. The old men who ruled and ran the association. They stood close together in the confined space, faces partially obscured by shower steam, draped in the absurdly decorated judicial robes that they used when presiding over meetings.
Ray shut off the water. "Get the hell out of my house," he ordered.
The steam was clearing, he could see their faces.
The treasurer looked at his shriveled, dangling genitals. "You call yourself a man?"
Ray's heart was thumping hard enough to burst, and he was filled with a deep cons
uming terror unlike anything he had ever known. He had never seen any of these men up close before--not this close, at least--and they were older than he'd thought, their skin wrinkled and almost translucent, like ancient parchment.
There was also ... something else about them. Something strange and undefinable that he could not quite place but that frightened him to the bone.
The president stepped forward. He was not snickering, and there was no smile on his face, only righteous anger. "Neil warned you, told you to behave." His voice was quiet but growing stronger, tone and volume steadily mounting. "I thought he and his committee made it abundantly clear that we would not put up with any more of your shit!" One knuckled fist hit the side wall, causing Liz's perfume bottles to shake on their shelf.
The other men were nodding assent.
Ray wanted to step calmly out of the shower stall, dry himself with a towel, and put on his bathrobe as they lectured him. But they were all pressing closer, and he knew that would not be possible. His heart rate accelerated, and though he tried to respond, tried to say something, his mouth would not cooperate and all it did was cough.
The treasurer casually picked up Liz's can of hairspray. There was nothing casual going on here, though, and Ray steeled himself to be sprayed in the face, in the eyes.
Instead, the old man cocked his arm back and threw the metal can as hard as he could at Ray's midsection. The bottom rim connected solidly with Ray's stomach, drawing blood and a gasp of pain. The can clattered to the floor of the shower stall.
"I thought everything was made clear," the president said. "I thought you understood."
This was it, Ray knew. There was no way they could expect to get away with this sort of harassment, no way they could think that he would not turn them in to the authorities. They could not expect to shut him up after invading his house like this.
Not unless they planned to kill him.
And that's exactly what the feeling in his gut told him was about to happen.
The Association Page 13