Turn 8 of 16

You don’t mind the names being the same as the meeting goes all night and you all fall asleep in there. In the morning, all 7 of you walk out of the house the same way over to look for stuff to complain about. You notice how there’s 7 houses that all look the same and are Hoa approved. You like that as the Karen with the pink and white striped v-neck finds something to complain about. You all join

Karen doesn't mind the names. It's efficient, she decides into her third glass, watching seven identical name tags glint under the kitchen light. A neighborhood where everyone is accountable is a neighborhood where everyone has the same name. The meeting runs until midnight, then past it, motions passed on the hedge, the mail, the bike, the general decline of everything, and one by one the seven of them fall asleep at the table, heads down on folded arms, seven bobs fanned across the wood like a pattern.

Morning arrives gray and grievance-friendly. They rise as one, adjust sunglasses as one, and file out of number 14 in single file down the walk, sandals slapping in unison, totes over shoulders, lists laminated and ready. The street looks different in the early light, and Karen sees why: seven houses, side by side down the curve of the court, all the same pale siding, all the same trim, all the same tidy shrubs. HOA approved. Approved. She feels a warm glow of professional satisfaction, the kind other people presumably get from sunsets.

'It's the best block on the street,' Daisy says. 'Because we did it.'

'Because I FILED,' says the mail carrier, and they all nod, because both things are true.

Then the Karen in the pink-and-white striped v-neck stops dead at the curb, baby on hip, and points her laminated list at the far end of the court like a drawn sword. 'Look at THAT,' she says.

They look. At the very end of the cul-de-sac, outside the last house, sits a garbage can. Wheelie bin, green, standard issue. The lid is open by perhaps four inches, and a single flattened cardboard box leans against it, protruding over the sidewalk line.

'Trash. Out past the rim. A box ON THE SIDEWALK,' she announces, voice climbing into the shared brassy register. 'On a SUNDAY morning. Who approved this? Whose bin is that? Because I will knock on every door on this street until someone is held accountable.'

'I'll get the tape measure,' says Mrs. Henderson.

'I'll take minutes,' says the mail carrier, already producing paper.

And all seven of them, one body in seven lavender and yellow and green and striped parts, march down the center of Maple Ridge Court toward the bin, lists out, sunglasses flat against the morning, ready to file.