'They put that gate in to get rid of us.'
Mike shook his head. 'I don't think--'
'Hear me out.' Greg took a deep breath. 'We voted against the association on the last ballot. We knew it was a risk, but I couldn't justify supporting them anymore, and I didn't want... I was tired of just caving in.' There were nods of understanding all around, but Greg must have seen the look of incomprehension on Barry's face. 'You're new,' he said. 'You haven't been through one of their elections. Or one of the farces they call elections.'
'No,' Barry admitted.
'They coincide with the annual meeting on Labor Day weekend. You'll get a ballot, and on it will be the names of the current board members.
Next to each name will be a box that says 'Approve.' And that's it.
There are no other candidates running, there is no space to put in a write-in candidate, there's not even a 'Disapprove' box. So all you can do is ratify the existing board.'
'It's true,' Mike said.
'I don't know why they even waste time on such a charade, but I suspect there's some sort of legal requirement that homeowners' associations hold yearly elections and this is their way of getting around that.
Anyway, I was tired of supporting those assholes. In the past, we just didn't bother to vote. We threw away our ballot. But this time, I
made my own boxes next to the 'Approve' boxes, and I wrote in, 'Impeach.' Needless to say, it did not go over well. I received a threatening letter warning me to cease and desist from making libelous and disparaging remarks about board members. I wrote back that I could find no bylaw forbidding me from saying whatever the hell I wanted about board members, and I pointed out that my attempt to institute a free election was hardly disparaging or libelous.'
'Then they put in the gate,' Wynona said.
Greg nodded. 'Then they put in the gate. Well, not right then. A few months later. But we knew the reason.'
Barry looked over at Maureen, who was frowning. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
'I'm lost.'
Greg glanced around embarrassedly. 'We don't exactly' He sighed.
'Bonita Vista is a little out of our range. We loved this place and we wanted to live here, and with a little creative financing we were able to swing it, but we were always hanging on by a thread. The association knew that. So they decided to just... push us over the edge. They couldn't get us on any of their precious technicalities, they couldn't find a single rule or regulation that we'd broken or even bent, so about six months ago, they decided to turn Bonita Vista into a gated community.' He held up a hand. 'I know they said it was for other reasons, and, who knows, that might have been part of it. I'm sure they did want to prevent vandalism and burglaries and keep out the locals and prevent outsiders from driving on our fair streets, but the timing of it...' He shook his head. 'What they really wanted to do was increase the property values of the homes up here in order to increase property taxes. They knew we couldn't afford an increase, that it would drive us out.
'And now it has.'
'We got our property tax bill from the mortgage company,' Wynona said.
'And we owe nearly a thousand dollars. There's no way in hell we can pay that. We're in debt as it is.'
'Maureen here's an accountant,' Mike offered. 'Maybe she'd be willing to look over your finances, see if there's some way--'
'Sure,' Maureen said quickly. 'I'd be happy to.'
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
