Two days later, on a Thursday afternoon, I was on the back porch sealing a section of the gate hinge when I heard a car door slam in my driveway. Two doors, actually. One sharp, one hesitant.
I came around the side of the house and saw Janine Whitmore walking up my front path with a man I did not recognize. Late forties, khakis, polo shirt one size too tight, a folder in his hand, and a look on his face like he had not slept well. Janine was already three steps ahead of him. She always was.
She did not knock. She rang the doorbell three times in a row, the way people do when they want you to know they are angry before you even open the door. I came up the porch steps behind her instead.
“Can I help you?”
She turned, and for half a second I saw it, that flicker of recalibration on her face when she realized she did not have the high ground of a doorway. She covered it quickly.
“Mr. Callaway,” she said, reading from a printed page, “as president of the Maple Crest Homeowners Association, I am hereby serving you with formal notice of violation.”
“My last name isn’t Callaway.”
A pause. The man behind her, Brent, I would learn his name later, winced.
“Then perhaps,” Janine said, recovering, “you can clarify it for the record.”
“I’d rather not.”
She moved on, because the only direction Janine Whitmore knew how to move was forward. She unfolded the printed page and read it aloud in the cadence of a woman reading a courtroom verdict.
“Notice of violation. Unauthorized obstruction of community access. The Maple Crest Homeowners Association, acting under the authority of its declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, hereby cites the owner of the property at 4218 County Road 14 for the unauthorized installation of a barrier obstructing established community access. Fines shall accrue at the rate of $250 per day beginning Monday. Failure to cure within thirty days shall result in the filing of a lien against the subject property in accordance with state law.”
She held the paper out to me.
I did not take it.
“Which page of your CC&Rs lists my parcel?”
She blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your declaration of covenants. Which page lists my parcel? What’s the lot and block? When was it annexed?”
The silence on my front porch was the kind of silence that has a pulse.
“It’s the spirit of the document, sir.”
“That’s not a page number.”
Brent, behind her, had stopped looking at me and was now looking at the porch railing. His jaw was tight. He had, I would later learn, spent twenty minutes that morning trying to find my parcel number in the HOA’s plat book, and he had not found it because it was not there, and he had not been brave enough to say so to Janine.
“Sir,” Janine said, switching tactics, “I am not going to debate the technicalities of homeowner law on a porch. The notice is served. You have until Monday.”
“Leave it on the table.”
“Excuse me?”
“The notice. Leave it on the table. I’ll respond in writing.”