So she'd decided to meet the association halfway.
"Elizabeth?" Calhoun prodded.
"I'd like to talk," she said.
The president chuckled. "I knew you'd come around."
"I don't want to be on the board," she insisted. "I just want to--"
"Talk," he said. "I know. Why don't you open up your door and let me in. We'll discuss the best way to handle this situation." Open her door? Liz hurried out of the kitchen and into the entryway, where she looked through the peephole. He was on the porch! Standing on the welcome mat, talking to her on his cell phone.
Don't let him in, a voice inside her said, and the voice spoke in Ray's dulcet tones.
But she could not endure any more of this. She was not as strong as Ray had been, and alone, without his unflagging self-confidence and dogged determination, she could not stand up to their harassment.
Don't... Taking a deep breath, she unlocked and opened the door.
The president stepped inside, smiling, and she shivered as he touched her shoulder. "It'll be all right now," he told her. "Everything's all right. Everything will be fine."
"I guess we weren't invited."
Barry and Maureen stood in the darkened guest bedroom, staring out the open window. The cool breeze, a preview of approaching autumn, carried with it the sound of revelers. Through the trees, a concentration of lights at the community center created an irregular dome of illumination in the moonless night sky.
They'd seen cars driving down earlier. And people walking. He knew from previous flyers that the community center would be having its grand unveiling this week, but they'd never been told a specific date and had received no invitation to the gala.
Other people obviously had.
He moved over to the east window and looked out. He saw more lights than usual twinkling through the pine branches: people had left their porch lights on while they'd gone down to see the new center, "It looks like almost everyone went," he said.
"You can't tell that by looking out the window."
"Call it a hunch."
"I doubt if Liz went," Maureen offered helpfully. He snorted. "Yeah, that makes me feel better."
"Come on. Do you honestly think they're all going to turn into rabid association supporters just because they went to a party? Most of them probably only showed up for the free food and drink. "
"Maybe."
"What's that mean?"
"You know damn well what it means." He turned to face her, seeing only an impressionistic version of her features in the darkness. "They get their way, the association. I don't know if it's ... it's magic or...
I don't know what it is. But these people are on their side! Look at the sheriff. Look at everyone who showed up to head off that rally! We were there under duress, but most of our beloved neighbors were there on their own, happily brandishing their weapons and longing for a fight."
"Then maybe it's a good thing we're ostracized. Maybe they'd convert us, too."
"No," he said firmly. "That could never happen."
"And the same goes for other people. Not all of them, maybe. But some of them. Mike and Tina. A few of the others we met."
He remembered the party at Ray's when Greg Davidson had announced his intention to leave Bonita Vista and everyone had gathered around swapping anti-association stories. "Maybe," he said. "Hopefully." He moved next to her, and they stood at the window, staring into the darkness, listening to the party.
"Labor Day's only a week away," Maureen said softly.
"I know."
"Are we going to go to the meeting?"
"Of course. This is our chance to make everything public. According to the rules, each homeowner gets three minutes to say whatever they want. I'm going to write a speech, and I'm going to suggest amendments, and by the end of it, at the very least, we'll find out who stands where. I'm taking those bastards to task, and we'll see who's with me or against me."
"You? What about me?"
"Us," he amended.
"No, I mean what about me? Do I get to speak, too?"
He was surprised. "Do you want to?"
"No. But is it three minutes for me and three minutes for you, or three minutes total? If we can stretch our time out to six, I'll take up where you leave off and keep talking."
"It's three minutes per lot."
"Then the floor's all yours."
"I have to start working on this now, time myself, try to cram in as much as I can. The annual meeting is the one time a year they even make the pretext that this is a democracy. It's our only shot. We've got to make it count."
A lone skyrocket exploded in the air above the community center, purple sparkles falling down on the trees. A loud cheer went up.
"What do you think will happen?" Maureen asked.
Barry was silent for a moment. "I don't know," he said finally. "I
don't know."
The painters returned in the morning. This time, Barry and Maureen were both in the driveway before the men had emerged from their truck.
"What do you think you're doing here?" Maureen demanded as the painters got out of the cab and walked around to the rear of the vehicle.
They ignored her.
"You just painted our house a week ago."
The three younger men pulled out their tarp and started spreading it on the driveway.
Barry walked up to the old man. "Let me guess," he said. "This color is no longer acceptable. They want you to paint it a different shade."
The painter pulled a roll of masking tape from the bed of the truck.
"Yep."
"Have you done this before? Painted the same house over and over again until the owners go bankrupt?"
He paused for a moment, as if hesitant to answer, then nodded his head. "Yep." He pushed past Barry and started taping up the nearest window.
They left before the painting started, closing up the house and driving out to the lake, where they spent the day hiking and picnicking and pretending that they were a normal couple having a normal day. When they arrived home late in the afternoon, the painters were gone, but their tarp remained draped over bushes on the south side of the house and only half of the building was completed.
"I guess they're coming back tomorrow," Maureen said.
Barry nodded.
They'd slept with the windows closed last time and that hadn't worked, so this time they left the windows open and the fan on, but the smell of paint still permeated everything, and they both awoke in the morning with headaches.
The job took two days. The painters were clearly being more thorough than before, which made Barry think that this sequence had been thoroughly planned in advance. This would turn out to be a more expensive job, he was sure, and while a part of him wanted to physically throw the painters off his property and burn then- truck, he knew they were only following orders and would merely be replaced by someone else.
He thought of another idea, though, and he talked to Maureen, told her of his plan. To his surprise, she agreed.
They waited until the painters were done. After they left, he and Maureen took the white interior latex left over from their remodeling and painted a gigantic happy face on the wall of the house facing the street. On the north wall of the house, they painted a frowning face.
The next day, the workers were back. This time, they were not merely uncommunicative, they were openly hostile. When Barry met them in the driveway, drinking his morning coffee and offering them a hearty hello, they gave him dirty looks and muttered obscenities. "Who does he think he is?" one of the younger painters asked another.
"Stupid fuck," the old man muttered..
His plan had worked. He and Maureen had thrown a monkey-wrench into the association's schedule, had reset the agenda on their terms.