Bentley Little - The Association

Barry was on the exact same wavelength. "What gives you the right to come into our house and pry into our private life and tell us what we can and can't do in our own fucking home?" He started out speaking at a normal volume, but by the end of the question he was shouting.

"I'm chairman of the inspection committee," Bill said brightly, walking away from them. He nodded as he stepped out the door. "Good night to you." He closed the door behind him and they heard the lock turn.

"Didn't we have the deadbolt and chain hooked up?" Maureen said, turning toward Barry.

He nodded. "I was thinking the same thing."

"How did they--"

"I don't know."

Every light in the house had been turned on. Downstairs, lights in the hall, bathroom, and Maureen's office were blazing, and the thought that those men had been snooping through her belongings while she was asleep in the next room chilled her to the bone. But she was far more angry than scared, and she remembered a horror movie Barry had forced her to watch in which parents had booby-trapped their house to catch their daughter's murderers, and she wished she could do the same thing here.

Right now, the thought of Bill and his smug little lookalikes speared on some make shift shiv sounded mighty appealing.

Neither of them had bothered to look at the time, but as they went from room to room, checking to make sure nothing was broken or stolen, turning off the lights, she saw by the clock in the kitchen that it was two-thirty.

It was another ten minutes before they were back in bed, and although Barry was snoring almost instantly, it was a long time before she was able to fall asleep.

As early as was polite, she called Liz.

Barry was taking his shower, and she poured herself a cup of coffee while she dialed her friend's number.

The voice that answered halfway through the first ring was wary and suspicious. "Yes?"

"Hello, Liz? It's me, Maureen."

"Maureen." Her name was repeated in a disassociated monotone that raised the hackles on her neck and set off alarm bells in her head.

"Liz? Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine." But the monotone remained, her friend's voice drained of its usual life.

"What happened? What did they do?"

Liz didn't answer.

Maureen spoke quickly before her friend hung up. "It's the association," she said. "That's why I'm calling. They've come down on us for ... for... shit, for our interior decorating. We woke up in the middle of the night and five of those assholes had broken into our house to 'inspect' it. They told us we had to get rid of family photos and personal effects, and we had to rearrange our entire house."

Liz's voice exhibited its first sign of emotion.

Fear.

"The middle of the night?"

"Yes."

"They always come in the middle of the night." Again the monotone.

"What happened to you?" Maureen asked once more. "No. Don't say anything. I understand that you can't talk over the phone. I'll come up--"

"No!" her friend said sharply.

"Liz..."

"Do. Not. Come. To. See. Me." The words were bitten off.

"I know you're--"

"It's not safe."

The old woman's voice was replaced by a dial tone. She'd hung up, and Maureen stared blankly down at the phone for a moment, unsure of what to do. If she called back, Liz probably wouldn't answer--and if she did answer, she'd be angry. She'd been specifically ordered not to go to Liz's house, so that was out of the question.

Tina.

Maureen found the other woman's number and called.

Mike answered the phone, and she asked to speak to his wife. A minute later, Tina was on the line, sounding sleepy. "Hello?"

"This is Maureen. Did I wake you up?"

"Sort of."

"Sorry, but it's kind of an emergency." She explained about their nighttime visitors and about her unsettling call to Liz. "First things first," she said. "What do we do about Liz?"

"What can we do? You know what happened last time. We all tried to help her, but she just shut us out. I'll call her myself later, go up there if she'll let me, and maybe call Audrey and Moira, too. But I'll tell you true, I have a feeling it's going to be the same situation.

There may be nothing we can do. She might have to just work it out herself."

"And if she can't?"

Tina didn't answer.

"What about our situation?"

Tina sighed. "I wondered when they were going to crack down on you."

"You knew about this?"

"I guess."

"Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought maybe you'd squeaked by, maybe they hadn't seen the inside of your house or for some reason didn't want to make you conform. I

didn't want to worry you unnecessarily or draw attention and let them know that you'd escaped them. But... but I guess in the back of my mind I knew it would happen."

"You should have told me about this," Maureen said.

"You're right. I'm sorry." Her voice was wistful. "But it was nice seeing family photos again. And more than one wall of pictures and hangings. And all those collectibles and antiques you have."

"You're still going to see them," Maureen told her. "We're not changing anything."

There was a pause, as if Tina did not know how to respond to that. "But you have to."

"What if we don't?"

Tina's voice grew lower. "The fines will start. And you don't want to get into that cycle. Believe me."

"Then what can we do?"

"There's nothing you can do," Tina said. "It's something we all have to put up with."

"Middle of the night inspections?"

"Well," she admitted, "ours have never been in the middle of the night.

Probably they just wanted to rattle you."

"That's selective enforcement right there, then. They're treating us differently than they treat everyone else."

"I don't know if I'd say that," Tina added quickly. "We've escaped it, but that doesn't mean other people have."

"But you'd stand up for us? You'd tell the truth? You'd sign a statement saying that your inspections have all been at reasonable hours?"

More backpedaling. "Sign a statement? I'd have to talk to Mike about that."

Tina obviously wasn't going to be much help. And if she wasn't brave enough to stand up to the association, Maureen was sure no one else would be. Rather than tempering her anger, the disappointment she felt only fueled it further, and she said a quick goodbye.

She and Barry were in this alone; they'd have to face down the association by themselves.

But that was okay. They didn't need anybody else.

When Barry came out of the shower, she was sitting at the dining room table, staring out the window at the trees, nibbling on a piece of cold toast.

"Did you call Liz?" he asked.

"And Tina."

"And?" he prodded when she didn't elaborate.

She told him about both conversations, about Liz's frightened paranoia and Tina's ineffectual support.

"What do you want to do?" Barry asked. "Do you still want to go back to California?"

"Hell no."

"That's the spirit."

"Fuck 'em," Maureen said, and the words felt good. "We're not going anywhere. We're staying here just long enough to wipe our asses with those damn C, C, and Rs ."

It was another fine.

He had paid none of them yet, but they'd been arriving daily, signed by the association's treasurer--someone named Thompson Hughes. They were all ridiculously inflated, and although he hadn't kept track, the total they owed must be well over three thousand dollars by now. It was ludicrous that they were being penalized in such a way for minor infractions of unreasonable rules, and he'd saved each of the notices for a future court case.

Barry dropped the rest of the mail on the coffee table and tore open the unstamped envelope. This one was levied against them for failure to park both of their vehicles facing in the same direction. For that offense, the association was docking them seven hundred and fifty dollars.