The Association

by Bentley Little

  Maureen wasn't sure how she felt about seeing Tina again. At the annual meeting, she'd been right there with the crowd, part of it, putting the lie to everything she'd ever said regarding the association. And Tina hadn't said a thing when she and Barry had been ejected from the building.

  Still, she was here, being friendly, making overtures, and it was clear that she was ready to stand by Liz in her hour of need. That should count for something.

  Maybe she'd just been caught up in the moment.

  Maureen nodded hello. "Have you seen Liz yet?"

  "I thought we could all go in together."

  "Kind of scary, isn't it?"

  "It was a surprise when she called," Tina admitted. "And she sounded perfectly normal, like she's back to her old self again."

  "I thought so, too."

  "She seemed okay at the meeting, too, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her and she disappeared right afterward ..." Tina trailed off, obviously feeling awkward. She cleared her throat and smiled a greeting at Lupe and Danna. "Hello."

  "I'm sorry. Where are my manners?" Maureen introduced her friends.

  "Tina, this is Lupe Mullens and Danna Carlin, our friends from California. And this is Tina Stew art."

  There were greetings all around, and Maureen was about to suggest that they go in and see Liz when their hostess came out herself to meet them. It was a surprise to see Liz out of doors after hiding so long in the house, but it was a welcome surprise, and Maureen impulsively rushed over and threw her arms around the other woman, hugging her tightly. "I'm glad you're back," she whispered.

  Liz laughed. "I didn't go that far."

  Introductions were repeated.

  "Let's go inside before we melt," Liz said. "I've made some Red Zinger iced tea. Or there's wine if anyone is so inclined." She paused. "I'm a little off wine myself at the moment."

  Maureen's surprise must have shown on her face.

  "I'll tell you all about it when we get inside."

  The interior of the house looked exactly the same as it always had.

  Maureen wasn't sure what she'd expected, but ordinarily after the death of a spouse mementos were hidden or highlighted, objects and photos with special meaning either put away so as not to cause pain or moved to places of respect in order to honor the deceased. There'd been no need for that here.

  Liz poured iced tea for all of them, and she did indeed tell them why she was not drinking wine these days. She described the hell into which she'd descended, dealing with the anguish of her husband's unexpected death and then with the escalating harassment of the homeowners' association that kept her from working through her grief in any sort of natural way. She'd get drunk to numb the pain, to shut out not only the memories of Ray's gruesome demise but the voices and noises she heard at night, and it was only in the past few days that she'd been able to pull herself out of despair.

  The rest of them were silent after that, and Maureen reached over and grabbed her friend's hand, squeezing tightly.

  Liz looked from Tina to Maureen. "You two have been great. Audrey and Moira, too. I know I didn't act like it, but it meant a lot to me each time you stopped by or called, and knowing you were there for me helped give me the strength to climb out of that hole I'd dug myself into."

  Danna looked embarrassed, but Lupe was smiling sympathetically.

  Liz wiped her tearing eyes. "Enough of this self-pity," she said.

  "Catch me up on gossip and current events. I want to know what's going on out there."

  Tina was full of news about which neighbor was feuding with whom, about men and women who'd lost or changed jobs, about a new house that was being built over on Fir Street, but as it always did, the talk naturally shifted back again to the association, and it was Tina who brought up Bonita Vista's ever-deteriorating relationship with the town of Corban . Maureen was surprised when the other woman placed the blame squarely on the board, and she couldn't help recalling Tina at the annual meeting, her hand enthusiastically shooting into the air to support Jasper Calhoun's edicts and approve the revised C, C, and Rs .

  Actions spoke louder than words, as the saying went, and while Tina might speak out against the association with them here in private, she was not divorced from it, not separate from it, she was a part of it.

  And she supported its actions.

  Maybe this was all part of some plot, Maureen reasoned, maybe the only reason Tina was here was to spy, to listen to what they said and report back on it. Hell, maybe she was even wearing a wire.

  Or maybe the association's hidden cameras were recording all this for posterity.

  Maureen knew she was being as paranoid as she'd accused Barry and Ray of being, but she knew also that her feelings were totally justified.

  Liz grimaced. "Pretty soon, we'll be cut off from the town entirely.

  What then? Is the association planning to open its own grocery store and gas station, build a power plant?"

  "They're ambitious," Tina said. "I'll give them that. But I don't think they'd go that far."

  "But what do they hope to gain by angering the town?"

  It was a question Maureen had been wondering herself, and it was one for which none of them seemed to have an answer.

  There was a significant pause in the conversation.

  Maureen broke the silence. "Speaking of the association," she said, "wasn't there a gay couple at one of your parties? I think one of the guys was named Pat?"

  Liz nodded soberly. "Wayne and Pat. They're gone."

  "That's what I was wondering about. We were going through the C, C, and Rs last night and saw an anti gay rule and an anti-living-together rule."

  "Yes."

  "Gone?" Maureen said, the word finally sinking in.

  "They disappeared. I'm sure their house is untouched and all of their clothes are in the closets, but... they're gone." Her voice dropped, as though she were afraid of being overheard. "It happens around here."

  Maureen thought of all the empty houses in Bonita Vista, the ones she'd assumed were vacation homes with absentee owners. In her mind, she saw fully stocked refrigerators filled with rotting food, place settings at dining room tables covered with dust, and suddenly their calm, quiet neighborhood no longer seemed so benign.

  "As for not allowing couples to live together, that's resulted in more than one enforced marriage."

  "You're kidding."

  Both Liz and Tina shook their heads.

  "It's true," Tina said. "Jeannie and Skylar Wells moved here from Phoenix where they'd been living together forever. They got a little nudge from the association, and the next day--the next day--they went down to the justice of the peace and got hitched."

  "A 'nudge'?" Maureen said.

  Liz looked at her. "They won't talk about it."

  Lupe cleared her throat. "I want to know about this anti minority rule. How strictly is that enforced? I'm Hispanic." She smiled. "As I'm sure you can tell. Say I wanted to retire up here."

  "You want the truth?" Liz asked.

  "Of course."

  "There's no way I would buy a home in Bonita Vista if I were you.

  Discrimination is illegal and, who knows, maybe if someone took them to court over that provision, it'd be struck down." She leaned forward in her chair. "But no one has."

  The statement had an ominous ring to it, and Maureen felt an unwanted shiver tickle her spine. Her mouth felt dry, and she sipped her iced tea. "You mean this place wasn't always all white? There've been minority homeowners in the past?"

  "There was a single man, white man, had a place up here, over on Blue Spruce Circle. A vacation home. He came maybe every other summer, stayed for two weeks or so. Usually to paint his house, clear brush, comply with whatever warning the association sent to him. One year he showed up with his new wife, a Vietnamese woman. Two days later, he'd cleared out, and a week after that, the house went up for sale. We never saw him again."

  "What do you think they did?" Lupe asked. "Threaten him with a fine
or something?"

  "More than that, I'm sure. But what it was specifically I can't say."

  "And that's it?" Maureen asked. "There's never been another nonwhite person up here?"

  "That rule keeps them out. They don't buy here. And in case you haven't noticed, Utah is not exactly a hotbed of diversity to begin with."

  Everyone laughed, everyone except Liz, who grew even more serious. "The thing is," she said, addressing Lupe, "they've used that rule on guests as well as residents. I don't want to scare you or anything--"

  "I don't scare easily," Lupe insisted.

  "--but apparently in their minds, this provision applies to visitors.

  Some friends of ours—the Marottas ," she said to Maureen. "I think you met them at one of our parties--had a brother or cousin or something who'd married a black woman. They all came up for Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, and the wife was found naked and crying the next morning in the ditch in front of the Marottas ' house, half frozen in the snow. I don't know exactly what happened, but Tony and Julia still won't talk about it. They refuse. And they've never had Thanksgiving here again."

  "They try anything with me and Jeremy, they're going to be sorry they were ever born." Lupe's voice was firm, her expression set.

  "That's a good attitude," Liz said, nodding. "But I'm not sure attitude is enough. Not with the association."

  Twenty minutes later, Maureen, Lupe, and Danna were walking back home.

  Though they had a lot to talk about, the mood was considerably more somber than it had been on the way over, and the optimism Maureen had felt knowing that Liz had stood up to Jasper Calhoun and was once again her normal, feisty self had completely dissipated, replaced with a demoralized resignation that left her feeling empty and cold.

  Liz stood next to Tina in the darkened community center feeling guilty and deeply ashamed. On the monitor facing Jasper Calhoun and the board ran a replay of their afternoon meeting with Maureen and her California friends.

  "You did good," Calhoun commended them. "You are assets to Bonita Vista, both of you."

  "Thank you," Tina said, obviously pleased.

  Liz said nothing.

  "Elizabeth?" Calhoun prompted.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  She was glad that the room was dark and the board could not see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  And she was glad that Ray was dead and had never lived to see this day.

  Barry had been looking through the revised C, C, and Rs , following Jeremy's lead. He'd perused them before, of course. Several times since the meeting. Looking for loopholes.

  But now they were different.

  He'd been trying to reconcile that for over an hour. He pored over regulations he didn't remember, unsuccessfully attempting to convince himself that his memory was going, or that he had too much on his mind, or that a person could not remember every single paragraph in a document this size, but he knew that those excuses were just that--excuses.

  The C, C, and Rs had changed.

  That was impossible, though. It meant that either someone had been sneaking into his house and replacing his old book with revisions, or that the pages were revising themselves, new rules magically appearing on formerly blank space.

  Neither option was believable, neither was possible.

  But, tellingly, he did not reject either one.

  The ELP record they'd been listening to ended, and Chuck hurried outside to his car. "Hold on a minute," he said. He'd brought along a cache of new CDs, among them a Tom Waits album that Barry had read about but not yet heard, and he returned a few moments later, tossing a dark jewel case into Barry's lap.

  "All right."

  "There was a guy out front," Chuck reported. "Tall, skinny, wimp-looking sucker with a clipboard, writing notes. He walked away when he saw me, pretended he wasn't spying on us."

  "Neil Campbell," Barry said, picking up the CD. "Association lackey."

  "They know we're here," Jeremy said dryly.

  Dylan grinned. "Good." He opened the door, stuck out his head. "We're kicking ass and taking names, motherfuckers !"

  "That was mature," Barry told him, but secretly he was pleased. It felt good to have allies, people from the outside world who could say and do whatever they wanted with impunity.

  They'd already watched Chuck's video of the neighborhood twice, looking for anything that appeared to be a gross violation of the association rules, but in his examination of the C, C, and Rs , he'd found nothing, and he shut off the television as he walked over to the stereo.

  Switching the tuner from Phono to CD, he popped in the Tom Waits and cranked up the volume, smiling as he heard the singer's familiar baritone growl.

  He turned back toward the others. "Why are we sitting in the house?"

  he asked. "Let's go upstairs, sit out on the deck and plan our strategy there. Mo and I bought this place for the view, why don't we take advantage of it?"

  "Yeah. Right. Sounds like a party." Dylan yawned, stretched. "So where's this bridle trail where the freak hangs out?"

  "Stumpy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Follow me." Barry led the way up the steps and across the open space adjacent to the dining room. He opened the sliding glass door and walked onto the deck. "Around that area," he said, pointing. "You take the road to the first street on the right, then walk down a bit. The trailhead's on the right. It's pretty well marked."

  Dylan nodded, grinned. "I think I'll go for a walk."

  Barry hesitated, not sure how to articulate what he was thinking. "It's not... fun," he said. "Stumpy--uh, Kenny-is..." He sighed. "Well, he's spooky, to be honest with you."

  "You think I'm a pussy?"

  Barry had to smile. "Always."

  Dylan laughed. "Don't worry, bud."

  "I'm serious, Dyl . It may sound interesting and neat while you're up here, but when you're down there by yourself in the woods, all alone, and you hear Stumpy-Kenny--coming toward you through the bushes, it's creepy."

  "Cool."

  "Take Jeremy with you. Or Chuck."

  "Hell no. And you can't come either." He patted Barry's shoulder.

  "Don't worry. I brought a change of underwear in case I brown my shorts."

  Dylan walked back inside to put on his hiking shoes, and Barry leaned on the rail, looking out over the trees, listening to the music. The glass door slid open, and Chuck and Jeremy came onto the deck.

  "Good CD," Barry said.

  Chuck nodded.

  Downstairs, the front door slammed. A moment later, they saw Dylan on the road, heading down the hill. They each yelled obscenities at him and received the finger in return.

  "You think Pussy Boy's hiding in the bushes and writing this down on his clipboard?" Chuck asked, grinning.

  Barry laughed, nodded. "I'm sure I'll get a full report and a recommendation to attend a language etiquette course."

  "Recommendation?" Jeremy said, eyebrow raised.

  "Order," Barry amended. "Hell, I already got a warning about my music being too loud." He snorted. "And I was listening to Joni Mitchell."

  "Joni Mitchell?" Chuck laughed. "They're going to love Tom Waits."

  "Don't worry. I'll hear about it."

  The women returned soon after--Barry could tell because the music was suddenly turned off--and he, Jeremy, and Chuck went back inside, where Maureen filled him in on what she'd learned from Liz and Tina. "They're like a law unto themselves here," she said. "They're judge, jury, and executioner."

  Jeremy nodded solemnly. "They seem to think they're a mini government and that they have all the rights and powers that entails. I don't care how many courts have upheld homeowners' associations'

  restrictions, that does not allow them to assault and harass people."

  "Or kill people," Barry said.

  "That goes without saying. What I'm thinking we should do is put together a chronology of events, lodge a criminal complaint with the local authorities--"

  "A lot of goo
d that will do."

  "Let me finish. Then we go up the chain all the way to federal law enforcement. Justice Department. File discrimination complaints.

  Simultaneously, we hit them with a civil suit, a class action on behalf of all current and former homeowners who have been psychologically intimidated or physically threatened."

  Lupe was nodding, and Barry had to admit that it made a kind of sense.

  "We'll attack these assholes from all sides, and I'll be throwing so many briefs at them they won't know what hit them." He held up the copy of the C, C, and Rs that he'd brought in with him. "But we need to map out a specific sequence and strategy. This Kenny Tolkin who got his arms and legs chopped off. You think we could get him out of here, show the FBI or whatever law enforcement agency we approach what's been done to him?"

  Barry nodded grimly. "If worse came to worst, the four of us could track him down, pick him up, and put him in a car."

  "He wouldn't come voluntarily?"

  "I don't think he'd understand. His ... something's happened to his mind as well. Shock I suppose. And he can't communicate because he has no tongue. It's ... I don't know of any other way to do it."

  "We can't just kidnap him."

  "I have my palmcorder Chuck said. "We'll tape him."

  Jeremy nodded. "Not a bad idea. And this is exactly what we have to do over the next few days. Figure out everything the association's done and find a concrete way to document it, plan out both our criminal and civil cases against them."

  Barry looked over at Maureen and saw in her face the same hope he felt himself. In addition to being more than a little paranoid, Jeremy was obsessive and thorough; good qualities in both a lawyer and an adversary.

  Lupe headed toward the bathroom. "A lot of iced tea," she explained.

  "Yes it was," Danna agreed. She went downstairs to the other bathroom.

  "Can we use your computer?" Barry asked Maureen.