Turn 13 of 16

Split into two committees to cover both sides of the street at once. Another one finds a problem a few miuntes later. She knocks on the door and the yelling starts. She yells back as she turns into a 51 year old Karen. Her outfit is a white blazer, purple top, black capris, open toed sandals. Sunglasses cover her eyes and the name tag forms on the left breast.

The street is split by unanimous acclamation, and the column divides at number 17 like a river around a stone. Karen leads one committee down the even numbers; Daisy leads the other down the odd. Ten sandals become a double rhythm, and for a moment Birchwood Lane holds two identical parades at once.

It takes six minutes. Then a voice rises from the odd side, the shared brassy register at full brass, and Karen hears her own complaint being conducted without her. She crosses the street to find the Karen in the black blazer planted before number 23, list extended like a writ. 'That mailbox is TWELVE degrees off vertical. TWELVE. We measured.' 'The wreath is out of season,' says the pink-striped Karen. 'The doormat says WELCOME and the welcome is not sincere,' says the mail carrier, and the blazer Karen bangs on the door, four official knocks.

A man of thirty answers, phone in hand, already recording. 'There are TEN of you. I'm calling the police—' 'The police approve of vertical mailboxes,' says the blazer Karen. 'Do YOU approve of vertical mailboxes?' 'Do I— are you INSANE? It's SUNDAY, I'm not doing this, get off my lawn—' He yells it louder, and the yell is the key, the fatal brassy key.

Mid-sentence the change takes him. His frame thickens into the sturdy build of a fifty-one-year-old woman, lines carving themselves around a mouth still shouting. His skin pales to warm white; his hair lightens and swings into the blunt jaw-length bob, the eleventh copy. The hoodie re-knits into a white blazer over a purple top, his jeans run down into black capris, his sneakers flatten into open-toed sandals, and sunglasses rise onto his face. On the left breast of the blazer, letters surface: KAREN — HOA.

'—and ANOTHER thing,' she says, 'my mailbox is a DISGRACE and I will be filing against MYSELF.' Karen stands at the edge of eleven identical women and the arithmetic is no longer a tap. It is a hammer. Eleven complaints. Eleven converts. Every single one. The thought arrives fully formed for the first time: this does not happen to other people. This is coming from somewhere. From someone. And eleven sunglasses turn, briefly, toward her.