Chapter 5 : It was the second time she had stopped and it was the second time Dana noticed, and later, at home, at 1:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee she did not need, she would think about the two stops differently. The first one, in the middle of the f
Dana told the room about the filing. She said it plainly, because she had been told the day she filed that plainness was important: the open seat on the Sierra Vista Estates board had been advertised in April. The deadline was August 1. She had filed on July 1 at 11:40 a.m. at the management office, and Kayla Ortiz had been the one at the counter, and Kayla had stamped it and given her a photocopy.
"Kayla," Marcus said.
"I processed it, sir," Kayla said. "I can give you the file number."
Marcus wrote it down.
That was the whole moment. That was all it took: a file number in a spiral notebook. There was no shouting, no one stood up, no one slammed a hand on a table. The air conditioning ran. The blinds moved. Out in the parking lot a car door shut and a dog started barking somewhere in the direction of the mailboxes.
Patricia Vance stood at the head of the table with her clipboard and her binder and her gold hoops and her reading glasses on their chain, and she did not say anything, and that is the part the room remembered.
She had been talking for twenty minutes. She had a sentence ready for everything. It was 6:56 p.m., and Pat Vance had run out of sentences, and the room watched her run out.
Dana thought, absurdly, of the summer block party three years ago, when Pat had stood at the community grill with a spatula and cooked a hundred hot dogs in ninety minutes and knew every single kid's name. She thought about how Pat had made her laugh once at a mailbox. She thought about the way you can know one part of a person for twelve years and never once see the rest of it, and the rest of it is right there under the part you know, and it takes a Tuesday and a binder and a pink slip to get it to show up.
"I think we should close the violation item," Marcus said, "and open a different one."
"On what grounds," Pat said.
"On the grounds that the association issued a violation against a homeowner's property, dated July 26, from a ledger line initialed P.V., on a day that homeowner was documented three states away, and I am no longer satisfied that the entry is accurate." He closed the binder. "Clerk, mark the fine as disputed pending review. Do not process the suspension."
"The suspension is automatic under — "
"It's automatic under section nine twenty-nine C, and section nine twenty-nine C is automatic only if the violation is upheld," Marcus said. "This board has not upheld it."
The room made a sound. It wasn't applause. It was the sound a room makes when everybody breathes in at the same time.
Dana's hands were still flat on the laminate and her heart was going hard and she was not looking at Pat, because looking at Pat right now would be a mistake, and she kept her eyes on the pink slip and the sign-in sheet side by side on the table and thought: it's not done. It's not done, it's just held, and holding is not losing, and next Tuesday is next Tuesday.
"Motion to close the violation item," Marcus said.
"Second," said the front row, all three of them at once, which was a thing that had never happened at any meeting of any board in the state of Arizona as far as anyone there knew.
"All in favor."
"Aye."
"Opposed."
Pat did not vote. She stood there with her hand on the binder and her mouth closed.
"Motion carries," Marcus said. "Clerk, next item."
"There's no next item, sir," Kayla said.
Marcus Bell looked at the agenda and then at the clock and then at the room, at the front row, at the fourth row with the phone down, at the empty chair at the end of the table where board members sat, and he said, "Then I'm going to do something a little unusual, and anybody who wants to leave can leave."
Nobody left.
"Kayla," he said. "I want the six-month ledger pulled into a document. Every line with an issuing initial in the last column. Every line with an address. Every attached photo. I want it printed out and I want a copy put in the association's safe-deposit box at the branch on Baseline, and I want a second copy in your car when you leave here tonight."
"Sir."
"And I want the assignment rotation for violation issuance for the last twelve months, which is not a public record, put in a sealed envelope, and I want that envelope in the same box, and I want the branch receipt printed with tonight's date."
"Sir," Kayla said, "that's a board authorization."
"It is," Marcus said. "I'm the chair. Make a motion, Pat."
Pat did not make a motion.
"I'll make it," said the front row.
"Second," said the front row.
"All in favor."
"Aye."
"Opposed."
"Pat."
Patricia Vance turned and walked out of the clubhouse hearing room, and the door closed behind her with a soft, expensive sound, and the room sat there for about ten seconds in a silence that had a shape to it, and then someone in the back row laughed.
Dana gathered her papers. She put the pink slip with her mother's sign-in sheet and folded them together and slid them back into the shoulder bag, and she stood up, and only then did she look at the table.
The chair at the end was empty. It had Patricia Vance's clipboard on it.
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All 8 chapters
- 1At 6:22 p.m., before a single homeowner sat down, Marcus Bell uncapped a black ballpoint and printed DANA WHITMORE on the top line of the meeting minutes, under the heading VIOLATION HEARING — 6:30 P.M. He wrote slowly. He had been a civi
- 2He said it out loud because he was running a meeting and that was his job, and he said it slowly because he was a civics teacher and when you read something aloud, you slow down.
- 3Kayla Ortiz went to the side counter and came back with the second binder, the fat one, the one nobody ever asked for.
- 4"I want to say something for the record," Pat said.
- 5It was the second time she had stopped and it was the second time Dana noticed, and later, at home, at 1:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee she did not need, she would think about the two stops differently. The first one, in the middle of the f
- 6On Wednesday, Dana worked. She had forty-one claims in the queue and a payer that had changed its modifier rules on the fifteenth, and she sat at her kitchen table with headphones on and did all forty-one of them, correctly, which is the
- 7She thought about it all weekend.
- 8By 6:40 there were no chairs left against the back wall and people were standing along the trophy case, and someone had dragged in two of the picnic tables from the pavilion, and Kayla Ortiz was running the laptop and the sign-in sheet an
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