I hung up the phone and sat very still for a while. Ranger watched me from his bed by the window. Then I got up, and I went to the folder by the front door, and I started making copies. It took me the better part of the afternoon. When I was done, I had a stack of paper an inch thick, and I put it in a big envelope, and I drove it to the post office myself, because I did not trust myself to just drop it in the mailbox. On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store. I walked in with Ranger at my side, and the fluorescent lights buzzed, and for the first time in weeks, I walked straight through them without stopping, because I was too angry to be afraid. Anger, I was learning, was its own kind of medicine. The trick was aiming it at the right target.
The retaliation started almost immediately, exactly the way Priya had said it would. Three days after I mailed the complaint, I got a third letter from the association. This one said that an inspection had revealed additional violations at my property. My patio furniture, it said, was not in compliance with the approved color palette. The welcome mat outside my front door was an unapproved modification. A wind chime that Marisol had given me as a housewarming gift was a noise violation. Each violation carried its own fine. Each fine was fifty dollars a day. My daily total was now two hundred dollars. Six thousand dollars a month. I stood in my living room and laughed, because there was nothing else to do. Ranger tilted his head at me like he was worried I had finally lost it. Maybe I had. Maybe losing it was the point.
I called Priya. She said, "Document it. Photograph everything. Write down the date and time you received each letter." She said the timing was important. Three days after the complaint. A judge would notice that. I did what she said. I photographed the patio furniture, which was a perfectly ordinary set of chairs in a perfectly ordinary shade of brown. I photographed the welcome mat, which said WELCOME in big friendly letters. I photographed the wind chime. I put the photos in the folder. The folder was getting thick.
Then came the board meeting. The first Thursday of the month arrived, and this time I went. The clubhouse was a low stucco building next to the pool, with a meeting room that smelled like chlorine and old carpet. There were maybe thirty people there, sitting in folding chairs, and at the front, behind a long table, sat the board. Vanessa Aldridge was in the middle. She was a woman in her late sixties with silver hair cut in a sharp bob and the kind of posture that suggested she had never slouched in her life. To her left sat a man I later learned was the treasurer, Howard Lindqvist. To her right was the secretary, a nervous-looking woman named Carol Deng who never spoke. There were two empty chairs. Marisol had told me those belonged to the members who had resigned.
The meeting started with the pledge of allegiance and the approval of the minutes. Then Vanessa opened the floor to homeowner comments. I stood up. My knee ached. Ranger stood up with me and leaned against my leg, the way he does when I'm nervous. I introduced myself. I said I was the owner of unit 114 on Mesquite Drive. I said I had a service dog, and that I had submitted two reasonable accommodation requests with full medical documentation, and that both had been denied without explanation. I said that the Fair Housing Act required the association to accommodate assistance animals. I said I was asking the board, on the record, to reconsider.
The room went very quiet. Vanessa looked at me for a long moment. Then she smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Mr. Reeves," she said, "this board does not take legal advice from homeowners. Section 4.2 is clear. Your animal exceeds the weight limit. The board's decision is final." Someone in the back of the room started to clap, slow and sarcastic, and a man I did not know stood up and said, "If we let him keep that monster, next thing you know everybody's got a pit bull." A woman near the front said, "My granddaughter is allergic to dogs. What about her rights?" I tried to answer. I tried to explain, calmly, that a service dog is not a pet, that the law is clear, that I had documentation. Vanessa cut me off. "Your time is up, Mr. Reeves," she said. "We will not be discussing this further."