He slowed his.
Clearly, he intended to reach the spot the same time she did, and though she definitely didn't want to meet up with him, she also didn't want to show any fear.
Her grip tightened on the racket.
They reached the fence at the same time, and she ignored him as she pulled her ball from the chain link and dropped it into her can.
Blondie dropped to his knees to pick up his ball.
"Aren't you from California?" he asked. Smiling, he licked his lips suggestively and looked at her crotch.
Maureen felt violated, and she wanted nothing more than to take off the top of his scalp with her racket, but she pulled away in as dignified a manner as she could muster.
"Go to hell," she said coldly.
Both of the boys laughed, but neither tried to stop her as she walked back across the court to the exit.
She checked out the license plate of the Mustang and committed the numbers to memory. She'd call Chuck Shea when she got home, sic the association on those assholes. Or on their parents. Someone needed to take responsibility, and at this moment she didn't care who. If Chuck thought it best to fine the kids' dads or double their dues or kick them out of Bonita Vista entirely, well, they had her permission.
But on her way back up the hill, she saw something that made her change her mind.
Or rather someone.
He was standing across the culvert to her right, in front of a low wooden house with too few windows. She had not noticed the house before, so unobtrusive was it and so far back was it set, but she noticed it now because of the man. He was at least six-foot-five, with a shock of white Lome Greene hair that seemed incongruous atop his unlined baby face. But it was the crutches that drew her attention.
That and his missing leg. For he stood there watching her, supported by the tallest metal crutches she had ever seen, crutches that glinted in the sun and shined in her eyes. The long left leg of his tan pants was filled out with his remaining limb, but the empty right pant leg dangled there, swaying gently in the air, rather than being pinned up or cut off.
Maureen tried to smile, gave a wave and an anonymous, pleasant "Hi,"
but the man swung away and hobbled back toward the house more quickly than she would have thought possible. There was fear in his flight, a fear that she had glimpsed on his face in the brief second before he turned away, and she looked immediately behind her to make sure there wasn't an approaching bear or murderous criminal, but of course there was not. She was the only one on the road, and she watched him hop up the gravel driveway and disappear into the house.
A moment later, she saw his face at one of the small windows staring at her and scowling.
Despite his obvious fear, something about the man seemed threatening to her, and she hurried on up the road. Again she thought of the association, of telling them that this weirdo had been bothering her, trying to scare her, but she stopped herself. Where was this going to end? Was she going to run crying to the association every time life wasn't perfect, every time she encountered a minor inconvenience or saw something slightly out of the ordinary?
She had changed her mind about calling Chuck, and it took her a moment to realize why.
She didn't want to be beholden to the homeowners' association.
That was a strange way to think. She and Barry paid dues, and she had every right to expect that they be provided services for those dues.
And the association had helped her out with that lunaticDekeMeldrum and had not asked for anything in return. But the feeling remained that by asking for help she would be calling in a favor, a favor that would be expected to be repaid at some time in the future.
As much as she tried to deny it, as much as she refused to admit it, she seemed to have bought into Ray's and Barry's paranoid mind-set. Of course, the fact that nearly everyone at the Dysons’ party had had association horror stories lent their paranoia a certain amount of credence, but it was not logical arguments or recitations of actual events that swayed her, it was her own nebulous feeling that... that if she called on the association for help, she would owe them.
What if, she wondered (and here she was really edging into Barry and Ray territory), those two teenagers at the tennis courts had been sent over specifically to harass her, in the hopes that she would call the homeowners' association and thus be indebted to them?
That was ridiculous, but although her other thoughts were almost as ridiculous, she did not discount them, and she hurried up the last section of hill, feeling better only after she was safely back inside the house with the door shut and locked behind her.
Ray spent the morning sanding and re-staining the deck. It probably didn't need to be painted for another year, but he liked to keep on top of things, liked to have the house looking good. Besides, he knew it drove the homeowners' association crazy that they couldn't cite him for neglect.
Although they'd no doubt find something to jump on his ass about. They always did.
He took a shower afterward, scrubbing his arms with Ajax in an effort to get the redwood stain off his skin. He was reaching around, trying to clean off his elbow, when the shower door was pulled open.
He let out a startled cry.
Six men stood in his bathroom, staring at him.
It was not Neil and Chuck and Terry this time, not the underlings or the toadies, not the newcomers. It was the board. The old men who ruled and ran the association. They stood close together in the confined space, faces partially obscured by shower steam, draped in the absurdly decorated judicial robes that they used when presiding over meetings.
Ray shut off the water. "Get the hell out of my house," he ordered.
The steam was clearing, he could see their faces.
The treasurer looked at his shriveled, dangling genitals. "You call yourself a man?"
Ray's heart was thumping hard enough to burst, and he was filled with a deep consuming terror unlike anything he had ever known. He had never seen any of these men up close before--not this close, at least--and they were older than he'd thought, their skin wrinkled and almost translucent, like ancient parchment.
There was also ... something else about them. Something strange and undefinable that he could not quite place but that frightened him to the bone.
The president stepped forward. He was not snickering, and there was no smile on his face, only righteous anger. "Neil warned you, told you to behave." His voice was quiet but growing stronger, tone and volume steadily mounting. "I thought he and his committee made it abundantly clear that we would not put up with any more of your shit!" One knuckled fist hit the side wall, causing Liz's perfume bottles to shake on their shelf.
The other men were nodding assent.
Ray wanted to step calmly out of the shower stall, dry himself with a towel, and put on his bathrobe as they lectured him. But they were all pressing closer, and he knew that would not be possible. His heart rate accelerated, and though he tried to respond, tried to say something, his mouth would not cooperate and all it did was cough.
The treasurer casually picked up Liz's can of hairspray. There was nothing casual going on here, though, and Ray steeled himself to be sprayed in the face, in the eyes.
Instead, the old man cocked his arm back and threw the metal can as hard as he could at Ray's midsection. The bottom rim connected solidly with Ray's stomach, drawing blood and a gasp of pain. The can clattered to the floor of the shower stall.
"I thought everything was made clear," the president said. "I thought you understood."
This was it, Ray knew. There was no way they could expect to get away with this sort of harassment, no way they could think that he would not turn them in to the authorities. They could not expect to shut him up after invading his house like this.