Turn 10 of 16

Declare the street complete and hold a victory HOA meeting with wine in your house. You 8 decide tomorrow is when you’re going to look at the rest of the neighborhood for violations and force them to convert to the Hoa new standards. You all spend the time complaining about everything expect the win and the other Karen’s.

The street is declared complete by unanimous acclamation, which is to say all eight of them say 'I move we declare the street complete' at the same moment in the same voice, and the motion carries eight to nothing. Karen hosts — her house, her victory — and the eight of them carry their glasses into her living room and arrange themselves around her coffee table in a half-circle of identical bobs. 'To standards,' Daisy offers, raising her glass. 'To standards,' seven voices answer, and they drink in eerie synchrony, pinkies angled the same, sighing in the same key.

The agenda is drafted on a legal pad the mail carrier produces from her yellowed tote. Item one: tomorrow, the rest of the neighborhood. Not the court — the court is done, every house HOA-approved, every adult accountable — but the streets beyond it. Maple Ridge Drive. Birchwood Lane. The whole subdivision, with its overhanging hedges and its unmeasured trash cans and its people who have never once been held accountable for anything.

'There are VIOLATIONS out there,' says the pink linen Karen, who now complains about the very box she dragged out herself, with the fervor of the recently wronged. 'I've HEARD them. I've heard lawnmowers at six in the morning.' 'That's not a violation,' says Mrs. Henderson. 'Six AM is EARLY. Early is when I do my best complaining,' the pink linen Karen snaps, and the table votes to table it.

They complain about everything except the wine, which is declared above criticism, and except each other, who are declared the only people on earth without any. The young people out there. The Loud cars. The mail, the schools, the city council, the squirrels — the squirrels come up twice — and the general decline of everything since whenever it was that things were last decent. Karen listens to her own voice coming out of seven other mouths and finds it the most comforting sound she has ever heard.

The plan is set by unanimous vote: tomorrow morning, nine sharp, all eight of them march out of the cul-de-sac together, lists laminated, sunglasses on, and bring the rest of the neighborhood up to standard. 'Quorum will travel,' Daisy declares, writing it into the minutes. The baby, unbothered, falls asleep against the striped v-neck, and eight glasses are refilled for one last toast to the campaign ahead.