failed to j maintain, and that we are discharging three gallons more effluent than is allowable for a domestic residence with two I people.'
Her face paled as she read. 'My God.' She looked at him. 'You think they have a camera in there?'
'It's possible--and I'm going to get some wallpaper and cover over every square inch of the wall and ceiling just in case--but that maxipad/tampon thing is not something that you could find out with a camera. Someone's been snooping, someone's been in the house.'
'But when? We've been home all the time.'
'While we were sleeping,' he said, and the thought of it curdled his blood. Bill and his inspectors were one thing. As invasive and intrusive as that had been, at least they'd been open about it, at least they had made their presence known. But the idea of people breaking into their home and sneaking around in the dark, checking on Maureen's feminine hygiene products and God knew what else, made his skin crawl. Who were they? And how many of them? The scenario conjured by his writer's imagination had Kenny and the most disfigured volunteers creeping, crawling, and limping silently through the rooms of the house, peeking at and examining their most intimate items:
fingering his condoms, sniffing Maureen's dirty panties.
And the scary thing was that he was probably not that far off the mark.
He did indeed put wallpaper over the walls and ceiling, founding off the corners so there would be no cracks or gaps through which miniature devices could peer. They had several rolls left over from their initial renovation, and it occurred to him that perhaps he should re-wallpaper the entire house--or at least those rooms where they'd painted rather than papered the walls--but the thought was intimidating, He recalled how much work they'd done that first month, and he didn't want to go through that again unless he absolutely had to. Besides, there was no indication that any other rooms were under surveillance.
Maybe they needed to watch BVTV more often.
As he should have expected, the next day they received a notice alerting them that they had made unauthorized changes to a room's appearance without getting approval from the interior design committee.
They were required to both pay an eight-hundred-and-twenty-dollar fine and remove the wallpaper.
'Fuck that,' he said.
'I wonder how the people before us survived,' Maureen said. 'This place was like a bat cave when we bought it. They must have broken at least as many decorating rules as we have.'
'Maybe they didn't survive.'
She looked at him quizzically.
'Did you notice on all those papers we signed when we bought this place that it said Jordan and Sara Gardner Trust! I wondered about that at the time. I assume it meant that the owners were dead and their relatives were selling off the house.'
'Probably to pay the fines.'
They spent the afternoon at Mike and Tina's. Liz was still avoiding contact with everyone, hiding reclusively in her house, keeping her door locked and her drapes drawn, and they were all worried for her, though none of them had any ideas of how to help. Maureen had sent her a long letter through the mail, trying to appeal to the old woman's logical side and assuring her that she had a lot of allies and didn't have to face anything alone, no matter what it was, but no one was even sure if Liz was collecting her mail these days.
'I'll tell you one thing,' Mike said. 'This wouldn't have happened if Ray was still here.'
'A lot of things wouldn't have happened if Ray was still here,'
Barry agreed.
Indeed, Ray's death seemed to have been the catalyst for| much of what had occurred since. He had been a sort of un-official opposition leader, the only person with enough influence and gravitas to counteract the association's monopolization, and once he was out of the way, once that domino had fallen, everything else had started to come undone.
Barry wanted to get the names of the people who had attended the Dysons' parties, all of Ray's anti- association acquaintances. 'We can put together a petition,' he said, 'try to get a recall.'
'First of all,' Mike told him, 'there are no recalls. It's disallowed.
There's no such thing here. Secondly, the annual meeting is coming up on Labor Day weekend. That's when they vote for officers, make amendments to the C, C, and Rs , conduct all that sort of association business. It's when they allow us mortals to see the man behind the curtain.'
'So that's our big chance.'
'Yeah.'
'If I can talk to enough people, get them to propose, second, and vote for a number of different initiatives, we can institute some of our own reforms.'
'In theory.'
'You don't think it's possible?'
'Let's just say I've been to these meetings before. I know how they go.'
'Is it true that on the ballot you can only approve the existing board, there's no other choices?'
'Oh yeah.'
'You also have to bring your federal income tax forms to the meeting,'
Tina said. 'The ones from last year. That's when we turn them in.'
Maureen frowned. 'Why is that?'
'It's required,' Mike said. 'As crazy as it sounds, the courts have upheld this. It's perfectly legal. I would've thought it was an invasion of privacy, but an association can require full financial disclosure from any homeowner who belongs to it. And of course our association does.'
Maureen turned toward Barry. 'That's how they learned about the precariousness of the Davidsons ' finances, why they knew that an increase in property taxes would force them to move.'
Mike nodded. 'Yep.'
'About Greg Davidson ...' Barry said.
'What?'
'At Ray's party, he said they were going to sell their house and move.
His brother or someone had found him a job in Arizona.'
'Yeah.'
'But they didn't move. I saw Greg. He's one of the volunteers. I
don't know what happened to Wynona, but Greg was helping to dig the pool and he was at the gate the night of the rally.'
Mike and Tina exchanged a look. Barry caught it, but he didn't know what it meant, and suddenly he wasn't sure if he should say any more.
He thought about Frank and Audrey Open my box --and realized that he really didn't know Mike and Tina any better. His gut said they were okay, and they seemed to have all the right ideas, but in Bonita Vista you could never tell.
Maureen seemed to have caught the same vibe. 'You don't want to talk about the volunteers.'
'It's not that,' Tina said. 'It's just...' She looked over at her husband.
'We didn't find out about them for a long time ourselves,' Mike offered. 'And, you're right. They're not something that people talk about. Everyone knows they're there, and they help clear the roads after big storms and| stuff, but we like to pretend like we don't know anything! about them.'
Barry shook his head. 'I don't understand why you--'
'I volunteered for a week myself.'
They were stunned, silent. If Mike had said he'd murdered his first wife and met Tina after his release from prison, it could not have been more shocking, and Barry marveled at how sinister such a mundane concept had become in this wacked -out world.
'I truly did volunteer,' Mike said. 'I was fined a hundred dollars for violating Article Eight, going outside in the morning to pick up my newspaper while wearing a bathrobe. You're not supposed to appear outside the house wearing a robe. We could've paid the fine, but our refrigerator was going, we'd been saving up for a new one, and
