Bentley Little - The Association

Calhoun pointed toward the rear of the room. "I'd like to introduce Paul Henri, our sergeant at arms!"

A huge cheer went up.

"Paul? Will you please escort Mr. Welch from the meeting?"

The liveried man from the back table strode up, pushed past Liz and Maureen, and grabbed Barry's arm. Barry tried to pull away, but the sergeant's grip was surprisingly strong. Fingers dug painfully into his muscles, and he felt himself being dragged out to the main aisle.

"This is against the rules!" Barry yelled. "You can't shut me up just because you disagree with me! I refuse to be silenced!

The C, C, and Rs don't allow this!"

"The amended ones do," Calhoun said calmly.

There was laughter all around.

Barry tried to punch the sergeant at arms, tried to pry the vice like grip from his forearm, but the man was unbelievably strong, and he was pulled toward the exit.

"Let's hear it for Paul Henri!" the president called.

The audience joined him in a chant: "Hiphip hurray! Hiphip hurray!"

Barry was shoved outside, the door slamming shut behind him. He turned around, pounding on the door, demanding to be let in, but to no avail.

Looking up at the windowless building, he tried to hear what was going on inside, but the community center was soundproof.

What was going on in there now? Almost everything of importance had been decided and only ten minutes had passed. What were they going to do for the next two hours?

He wasn't able to find out because a moment after his eviction, Maureen was forced out of the meeting as well.

"Jeremy?"

"Dude!"

Barry switched the phone to his other ear, looked grimly over at Maureen. "We're, uh, having a little problem here."

"The same one we talked about?"

"Yeah." He felt better already. Jeremy was automatically being circumspect, not mentioning anything directly in case the phone was bugged. His Mend might be paranoid and overcautious, but sometimes that was a good thing. He smiled reassuringly at Maureen. "Remember you offered to ... to come out here if I needed some help?"

"I'm there, dude. We all are. When do you want us?"

It was as if a great responsibility had just been taken from him. As a writer, as someone who sat by himself in a room all day and typed, he was by nature and necessity something of a loner, an individualist who preferred to handle problems on his own, who saw himself as a solitary warrior against stupidity, hypocrisy, and all of the usual abstract ideals that writers loved so well, a staunch defender of truth, justice, and the American way. He had never been a team player, had never liked committees or collectives. He would rather deal with adversity on his own. But sometimes, he had to admit, it was nice to be part of a group.

Sometimes it was necessary.

He told Jeremy the situation without spelling things out, promising details later, and his Mend said that he'd gather Dylan and Chuck and that the three of them would be on the road as soon as humanly possible.

Sure enough, he and Maureen were eating breakfast the next morning when the phone rang. It was the guard at the gate. "Mr. Welch?" the guard said in an unctuous, disapproving voice. "I have detained the occupants of two vehicles at the gate who claim to be friends of yours--"

"They are," Barry told him. "Let them in."

"I have a Mister Jeremy--"

"I know who they are, and I told you, let them in."

"This is highly irregular at this--"

"You are the guard," Barry interrupted, his voice equally disapproving, anger just below the surface. "You work for us. Now do your job and obey me."

He pressed the Talk button on the phone, cutting off the conversation, smiling as he put it down on the kitchen table. "They're here," he told Maureen.

Several minutes later there came the shave-and a-haircut honks of two distinctly different car horns. Barry shoved the last forkful of hash browns in his mouth, hurried downstairs, and found his friends getting out of their cars and stretching.

"Long night!" Jeremy called out. "We've been driving since yesterday afternoon!"

Dylan emerged from the Saturn's back seat. "With a short stop off in Vegas."

Maureen had followed him downstairs, and she grinned when she saw that Jeremy and Chuck had brought their wives. She greeted both Lupe and Danna with warm, grateful hugs.

Lupe glanced around at the house, the yard, the trees. "It doesn't look like hell," she said.

"Seems like a beautiful place," Danna agreed.

"Looks can be deceiving." Maureen led them into the house. "As I'm sure you've heard before."

Dylan had come stag, hitching a ride with Jeremy and Lupe, and he walked over to the mailbox and back, stretching his legs. "Things have changed a bit since last I was here. Who was that dick wad guarding the castle?"

Barry smiled. "You like that? That's the famous gate I told you about. And he's our personal twenty-four hour-a day guard, making sure that the great unwashed don't try to drive down our streets and look at our homes."

Jeremy walked up. "Things are getting bad, huh?"

"You don't know the half of it."

Barry spent the next half hour describing the situation to them in detail, from the moment he returned from his California trip and saw the board president force the Jimmy driver off the road to the surreal annual meeting and his ceremonious expulsion. More than once, Maureen called for them to come inside, get something to drink, but as sexist as it was, he felt more comfortable talking outside here, away from the wives, and he laid things out in a blunter, more honest way than he would have if the women were present.

Chuck shook his head. "What the hell have you gotten yourself into?"

"This is kind of cool in a way." Dylan looked sheepish as all eyes turned disapprovingly toward him. "Well, not cool maybe, but..." His voice trailed off.

"Trust me," Barry said. "It's not 'cool' at all if you have to live here."

"But do you have to?" Chuck asked. "Can't you just move back?"

"We wanted to," he admitted.

"So what's the problem?"

He explained about the fines and the frozen assets and the very real possibility of bankruptcy. "Besides," he said, "I can't let those bastards think they ran me off. I can't let them win."

"They won't win," Jeremy told him. "We're here."

Dylan grinned "All right!" he said, pumping a fist into the air.

"Time to kick some ass!"

They went inside finally, joining the women, and talk turned to other things, personal things: work, families, lives. Both Barry and Maureen found that they were hungry for news of the outside world, happy to lose themselves in the minutiae of their friends' existence, to receive updates on the southern California lifestyle they'd given up and left behind. All seven of them crammed into the Suburban, and Barry took them on a tour of Bonita Vista and then the town of Corban , including his teapot museum office. They had a greasy and unsatisfying lunch at Dairy King--Chuck had suggested the coffee shop, but Barry vetoed that idea, reminding them why--then did a little touristy sightseeing, taking in nearby Pinetop Lake and walking off a few calories with a short hike along the lake's nature trail.

They returned home between two and three, the hottest part of the day, and continued to catch up on gossip, moving from the living room to the upper deck and then back into the living room when the sun started to go down and the bugs came out.

Lupe suggested that they go get a pizza, but Barry said dryly that they weren't really leaving the house after dark these days, and Maureen said that she'd planned on making tacos.

"That's even better," Lupe said.

Maureen cut tomatoes and onions, while Lupe shredded the lettuce. Danna grated cheese. Maureen sent everyone out of the kitchen while she cooked the meat and fried the tortillas, and then it was time to eat.