association form ordering them to trim and/or replace all dead Manzanita bushes on their property or face a stiff fine of up to five hundred dollars for each day the problem was not rectified.
Something snapped within him.
'Fuck!' he yelled. 'Fuck! Fuck!' He tore up the notice, ripping the sheet into ever-smaller pieces. They were the ones who put in those dead manzanitas ! They had purposely replaced Maureen's plants with sick and dying bushes and now they were blaming the two of them for the manzanitas' unacceptable condition, using it as a pretense for imposing even more unwarranted fines. 'Fuck!'
'Barry?'
He must have been yelling louder than he thought, because Maureen was on the porch steps looking worriedly in his direction.
'They're fining us for the dead manzanitas !' he shouted. 'Those fuckers ripped out our plants and charged us for it, replaced them with dead bushes, and charged us for it, now they're fining us five hundred fucking dollars a day!'
She walked over to him, took his hands. 'Don't worry.
We're getting out. We don't have to put up with this lunacy anymore.'
'No, we're not.'
'We're not what?'
'Getting out. Doris said they have some type of lien on our house. We can't sell it or rent it out or do anything with it until we pay off the money we supposedly owe the association.'
Maureen paled. 'You're kidding.'
'No. We're stuck here until we pay the fines. Unless we want to just bail and take a loss on this place, leave it here and let the fines pile up.'
'We can't afford that. I mean, we could afford it-barely--but it would be financially irresponsible and self destructive.' The accountant in her had kicked in. 'The fines would pile up. And all of this would go on our credit record.'
'I'm not paying them a dime,' he said.
'I know how you feel, but--'
'I would have!' he shouted, in case someone was listening in. 'But I'll be damned if I'll let those monkey dicks pull this kind of stunt.'
'Then what are we going to do?'
'Nothing. We're staying right here and we're not paying a fucking dime. Let the fines accumulate!' he yelled. 'We don't care!'
'What if they try to collect?' Her voice lowered. 'What if they send volunteers?'
'Bring 'em on!' Barry shouted out as loud as he could. 'You hear me, assholes? Bring 'emon!'
The next morning, the manzanita bushes were gone, replaced with an assortment of thorny, rough-looking shrubs. A notification form stated that the deteriorated condition of their property was unacceptable and that voluntary entreaties had been ignored at this address in the past, so the association had taken upon itself the job of bringing the yard up to code. A bill for both the plants and the labor would be sent to them within two working days.
His anger had faded, and in its place was a familiar sense of hopelessness. He'd been seesawing between those emotions far too often lately, and he had no rational explanation for it. Was it this place doing it to him? He could not dismiss the possibility. He recalled a theory he'd once read about the Superstition Mountains in Arizona.
Prospectors looking for the Lost Dutchman invariably went crazy searching for the mythical mine, becoming paranoid and murderous.
According to this hypothesis, the mountains were magnetic and it affected the brains of anyone who stayed within their borders for too long. Maybe something like that was happening here.
Maybe not.
Days passed, and Barry felt as though they were not only under siege but isolated and completely alone. Neighbors waved to them on the street when they walked; Mike and Tina came over with a list of all the anti- association people they could remember from Ray's parties and stayed for dinner; they played a pickup game of tennis with another couple they met on the court. But everything seemed false and superficial. He and Maureen were putting on public faces that masked the real feelings underneath, and he had the sneaking suspicion that everyone else was doing the same.
Maureen at least was keeping busy, doing work for her California clients, but he himself was lost. Although he'd made token efforts, he had not yet started writing again. Not even a short story. Each time he broke out his pen and notebook and sat down to write, he drew a blank.
Maybe he could sue the association for loss of wages due to pain and suffering.
A week after his trip to the real estate office, they were eating lunch on the deck and the painters showed up. He didn't know who they were at first, assumed they were some type of inspector sent by the association to snoop around their yard. He intended to ignore their existence the same way he ignored the endless stream of fines and notices, but when the four men unrolled a massive plastic dropcloth on the driveway, quickly pulled paint guns out of the back of the truck, turned on a compressor, and started spraying the front of the house, he threw down his sandwich. 'That's it!' He pulled open the sliding glass door and ran downstairs and outside. 'What the hell are you doing?' he demanded. 'This is my house!'
The three men painting the windowless section of the front wall with a coat of brown ignored him completely. But the oldest man, a bald fellow applying masking tape to the windows, looked over as he approached. 'We've been hired to repaint this residence,' he said.
'The work order's in my truck. You want to see it?'
'I don't give a damn about your work order!' Barry yelled. 'This is my house and I don't want it painted! Now you stop where you are and make that section the same color it was!'
'Can't do it, Mac.' The old man continued taping up the window. 'I
got a work order from your homeowners' association. You got a beef, take it up with them. But the way I understand it is they asked you to change the color and conform, you wouldn't do it, so they called us.'
'I don't believe this shit!'
'I'm sorry,' the old man said. 'But, like I said, you gotta take it up with them. They're the ones paying the bill.' He gave Barry a sympathetic look. 'That's why I wouldn't live in no neighborhood with a homeowners' association.'
Who were these men? Were they from Corban ? They had to be. After his experience at the coffee shop, and especially after the rally, he'd assumed that the townspeople were of one mind and were all antagonistic toward Bonita Vista. But he realized that there was a whole class of workers whose livings were intertwined with the gated community and whose livelihoods depended on it.
Economics made strange bedfellows.
Again, he thought that everyone Bonita Vista touched was somehow corrupted.
'I don't want my house painted,' Barry said, and this time it sounded more like a plea than a demand.
'Sorry,' the old man said again. 'Nothing I can do. I got my work order.'
They slept that night with all of the windows closed, but the house still smelled like paint.
The next day, they received a Request for Reimbursement from the homeowners' association for the amount owed the painters: five thousand dollars.
He was sitting on the deck, staring drunkenly at the sunset, when Maureen quietly slid open the door and sat down next to him. In her hand was a stack of pink association forms and a computer printout.
'I've been adding up all of our fines and charges,' she said.
'And?'
'It's almost a hundred thousand dollars.'
He practically spit out his beer. 'What?'
'I know. I couldn't believe it either. But it's over twenty five thousand for the initial landscaping--'
'Twenty-five--'
'Let me finish.' She ran down a list of overcharged services and exorbitant fines.
