The painters taped off the windows, put down their dropcloth , hooked up the sprayers, and obliterated the left half of the happy face. After they moved to another section of wall, Barry put down his coffee, took out his white paint and started brushing it on the recently completed area, making a series of X's in a random pattern.
The old man stormed over to him. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
"It's my house," Barry told him. "And I'm painting it."
"You can't--"
"It's my house. I can do anything I damn well please, and if you don't get out of my face, I'm going to kick your fucking ass, strip you naked, and paint you yellow like the coward you are."
He expected the old man to threaten him, to tell him that there were four of them and only one of him. He was even prepared for a fight right then and there should the bald asshole rush him. But the painter turned and walked away, spoke to his coworkers, and a few minutes later the four of them packed up their gear and left.
A victory.
The painters did not return, no others took their place, and there was not even any sign of Neil Campbell and his ubiquitous clipboard. No one called, no notices were left in their mailbox or on their door. The half a happy face and random Xs remained on the wall.
That night they made love, and in the middle of it, the phone rang. He wanted to let it ring, but Maureen insisted that he answer, it might be important, so he reached over to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and pressed the Talk button. "Hello?"
The voice on the line was harsh yet whispery. "Throw her another hump for me!"
Click.
Someone was watching them. They were being monitored. He pulled the sheets over their bodies and looked frantically around the room, searching for a hidden camera.
"What are you doing?" Maureen demanded, squirming uncomfortably beneath him.
He rolled off her. His erection was gone. Still hidden by the blanket, he reached down to the floor for his underwear. He pulled on his briefs and ran over to the television, turning it on.
On BVTV was a video of him and Maureen making love. Maureen was on top, and the camera zoomed in on her buttocks as his hand slid down and into her crack.
"Sons of bitches!" Barry yelled. "Sons of bitches!"
The phone rang again, but this time neither of them answered it.
In the morning their house had been painted black.
The Bonita Vista Homeowners' Association Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions Article V, Security and Control, Section 9, Paragraph A:
The Association and any of its committees or subcommittees has the right to monitor residents on any section of the Community properties or on any jointly owned right of-way in any manner it deems appropriate using any means at its disposal. Residents whose dues are in arrears or who are involved in disputes with the Board may be monitored anywhere at any time including in their private residences.
It was hard writing a speech. He was used to creating dialogue, having two characters express ideas and points of view through conversation, but coming up with a stirring, rabble-rousing address in the real world was quite a bit different from doing so within the boundaries of a fictional universe in which he controlled all of the variables and all of the reactions. He was not and never had been a public speaker, so the fact that he would be performing this himself --and before a hostile audience no less--brought additional pressure.
His first draft clocked in at a whopping fifteen minutes. He pared it down as much as he could, read it to Maureen, and it still came in at twelve.
He would have to be selective, and he would have to be merciless. It was impossible to fit in everything he wanted to say, so he would be able to address only his most important concerns and use the most egregious examples of the association's transgressions.
But he was having a hard time figuring out what those were.
He scrolled down the computer screen, reread his words for the hundredth time.
"Tape!" Maureen called from the living room.
He hurried upstairs. He'd been videotaping BVTV all day and night, fast-forwarding and reviewing the tapes every six hours as they filled up, looking for anything filmed in their house. He had figured out where the camera in the bedroom was from the angle of the shot he'd seen on the television, and he'd torn out that section of wall until he found the device, which he'd immediately smashed. How someone had gotten the camera into that spot was a mystery, and the only thing he could figure was that it had been built into the house during initial construction and had been there ever since.
They'd patched over the hole in the wall as best as two amateurs could, but it still looked like hell and Maureen had hung a framed Georgia O'Keeffe poster over the space to hide the bulging spackle.
So far, they'd seen no indication that any of the other rooms in the house were under surveillance, but he wouldn't put anything past Calhoun and his cronies, and he continued his close monitoring of BVTV.
The day before the association's annual meeting, Barry finally had a speech he was happy with. It still ran long-four minutes instead of three, even speaking fast--but he figured he could keep talking while they told him his time was up and get the last little bit in before he was cut off completely. Celebrities did it on award shows all the time. It was a legitimate tactic.
They went to bed early, both of them exhausted from stress. They made love for the first time since discovering the camera and talked for a while about what they would do and where they would go when they finally escaped Bonita Vista. Gradually, the pauses between their sentences grew longer and their voices slowed as they started to drift off.
He wasn't sure when he finally slipped into sleep, but at some point he was no longer lying in his bed. He was sitting on a hard metal folding chair with all of his neighbors. At a table on a raised stage, Jasper Calhoun and the rest of the be-robed board were gazing imperiously out at the tightly packed crowd.
The president announced in a strong clear tone: "Additions to the C, C, and Rs include a provision declaring that all men may butt fuck Maureen Welch at their convenience, without her permission or the permission of her husband, Barry. All those in favor?"
A sea of hands shot up with Nuremberg precision.
"All those opposed?"
Only Barry's hand was raised.
"Passed!"
He awoke in the morning looking across the pillow into Maureen's open eyes. "Meeting today," she said.
The room was packed. Most of the people he did not recognize, but there were others he did: Mike and Tina; Frank and Audrey; Lou and Stacy; Neil, Chuck, and Terry; individuals from Ray's parties;
homeowners he'd seen at the rally. They were seated on metal folding chairs and there must have been over a hundred of them.
In the front of the room was the board.
In the back were the volunteers.
The layout was remarkably similar to that of his dream, and he experienced an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu as he and Maureen walked into the community center. There should have been voices, should have been talking, the large room should have been filled with the buzz of numerous conversations. But everyone was quiet, each of them glancing through enormous black-bound books that lay in their laps. To the right of the doorway, Barry saw, was a table piled high with dozens of identical volumes.
A man standing next to the table, dressed absurdly in livery, motioned them over. "Please pick up your revised copy of The Bonita Vista Homeowners' Association Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions " he said. "Ratification is the first item on today's agenda."
He handed Barry a book. It weighed a ton and was the! size of the oversized family Bible that his grandmother| used to keep on her dining room table. "We're supposed to read through this entire thing in,|