Rebecca pulled into her usual parking space and put the car in park and yawned. The fir trees in front of her were thick and their limbs were growing into and around one another and they blocked the sun from being on her car in the hottest part of the day. Also, it was right across from the door to the office building where she worked. Both things were good. 

She wore a pair of black pants, well-fit to her body, and a white button down shirt that laid the same. Tucked in, no belt, and with the weather still warm she carried her black leather jacket over her arm. Her black boots were old and well kept. Her dark black hair barely touched her shoulders and her face was pale and her eyes were blue behind her sunglasses. 

Nicole got to the door before Rebecca did, holding it open for her. Nicole sat across the room, working in accounting, though Rebecca never saw her working. She was mostly flirting with the cute guy that sat behind him, back-to-back. She loved to fiddle with his desk drawers while he worked. Rebecca was pretty sure the guy didn’t like it, but she hadn’t learned his name in his five or six months on the job, so she couldn’t really say it mattered that much to her. 

The office building was five floors and she worked on the fourth, and when she had started working here six years ago she had taken her lunches on the picnic table outside by the parking lot. She’d sit and eat her fast food and look up towards the dark glass of her office and floor and wonder if they were watching her, down there all alone. A building built like a cylinder, easily twenty or thirty years old. Tile floors, with fake-ornate rugs placed strategically to give it personality, and the walls that weird gold-brown-red that invoked wealth but to most just looked cheap. 

The elevator bank was two-pronged and gold-doored and by the time Rebecca got there with Nicole they both were open and available –– miraculous –– and Rebecca tried to let Nicole choose one before her so that she could take another. But it took too long and the elevators began to close and as luck would have it both she and Nicole chose the same one. 

“Ms. Nichols wrote back. Said she isn’t interested in us doing her violations next year,” Nicole said, yawning. She was tall and thin with tanned-brown skin and bright blonde hair tied into a ponytail. She wore a gray pencil skirt and a gray blouse and gray heels, an outfit Rebecca had seen her in day in, and day out. 

“Did you talk to Ian? He’s handling all violations for the upcoming year,” Rebecca said, starting at the funhouse mirror-finish of the elevator doors. 

“He is? I thought you were doing both again.” 

“Not with the merger. Too much for one person to handle if they already have other responsibilities.” 

Rebecca felt Nicole’s eyes on her, and though Rebecca didn’t glance over, she was sure Nicole was giving her a knowing look. Maintenance was simple email management –– stay on top of communication –– and you’ve got it under your thumb. Call and email contractors, send out work orders to said contractors, deal with aggravating homeowner calls. Nothing complicated. She could and did do maintenance and violations without much difficulty. They just didn’t want to pay her for the extra work –– rather her sit on her ass and do nothing for half the day then pay her what she should’ve been paid. 

But she wasn’t interested in commiserating with Nicole about that. Nicole was in accounts, and they never did anything, and she wasn’t interested in making friends with anyone at the office anyway, least of all a borderline sex pest and 4:59 PM knock-offer. 

The elevator bank was in the middle of the floor, with two long hallways running lengthwise of the floor and two perpendicular short hallways completing the rectangle. Gray and blue carpet covered the whole fourth floor lobby. A small wooden table, with a green-granite insert, sat as pedestal for a fake and faded leafy-green plant. They both took a left out of the elevator. 

At the long left hallway, Rebecca took a right, a short right, to the unmarked door on the left side of the hallway, right across from the bathrooms. Nicole, to Rebecca’s surprise, turned left, and headed for their new offices –– where all the employees who’d survived the merge of the smaller HOA management company still worked. 

Her office, the main office, where the main company worked, was dark and quiet –– lit only by the hum of computers and the copiers along the bay-window back wall. Mare gray-blue carpet, this time under the feet of cheap rolling chairs and sorta-white cubicles. Three cubicles to her right –– Joanna against the wall, and Lisa next to her, and then across from Joanne was Rebecca’s. Accounts on the left, four cubicles, pressed back to back to back to back. More cubicles along the back, full at six or eight, depending on the day, and what temps they managed to convince to come back. 

Rebecca sat down at her cubicle. She had left her computer on from the night before, and it booted up easily, and the clock read 7:56 AM. Her first responsibility was to check her inbox –– again, this was all email management –– and she found the usual cadre of forty things to look over. She sorted them by HOMEOWNER and CONTRACTOR and WORK ORDER and INVOICE, briefly opening and scanning and labeling. By the time the last employee trickled in at 8:20 AM, she had all emails sorted and ready to be actually taken care of. 

“Where are you going for lunch?” Joanne asked, at 12:16 PM, looking above her cubicle and catching Rebecca’s eye. Joanna was a few years older than Rebecca’s 28, and she had been at the company twice as long as Rebecca had, and they had bonded as well as you can when one party is only interested in being seatmates. 

“I ordered in with everyone else. Figured I’d just eat at my desk,” Rebecca said.

“Since you’re so busy,” Joanne said. Rebecca smirked. 

“Since I’m so busy, yeah,” Rebecca said. 

Her inbox was done and finished and contractors had been contacted and homeowners sent form letters, as they were instructed, and as was company policy. She would have only intermittent work to do the rest of the day, until the mail came, and she sorted it, because the person who had sorted it last time had moved onto a better job, and that woman hadn’t been hired to sort mail and instead just did it because she, too, had too little to do, and Rebecca had said she’d do it so she would have something to do, and only later realized her mistake. 

“You see the email from Mr. Alonso,” Joanne said. 

“Yeah,” Rebecca said, and she had, but she didn’t read it. The subject line had been an endless list of RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: and she just sent him the form reply telling him that they were looking into it. More repairs that he wanted done, and more repairs that his HOA board would tell them to deny, because they said it wasn’t their problem.

“Says the mold has gotten so bad he can only sleep in one room in his house,” Joanne continued, explaining it anyway, knowing that Rebecca had almost certainly not read it. “Says he’s threatening legal action.” 

“He always threatens legal action and never does it.” 

“Says he’s serious this time.”

Rebecca snorted. She wished upon wishes that the homeowners would come to understand that their company only managed the HOAs, and were still subject to the approval of the boards, which was made up of people in their neighborhood, and that they should go after them and stop blowing up her shitty, half-time-not-work phone. They weren’t allowed to give out names or addresses or emails or phone numbers unless the HOA board members specifically allowed for it, and they never did, because who wants to be bitched at 24/7 for shit that’s never gonna change? 

“New girl coming in today,” said Nicole, flitting by Rebecca’s desk, arm full of papers for the copier.

“What department?” Joanne said.

“Customer service.” 

“Ooh,” Joanne said. “How long do you think this one will stay?” 

“Three months, if only so she can be disappointed when she doesn’t get a raise,” Rebecca said. 

“She’ll ask to get transferred to accounts,” Nicole said.

“Yeah, no shit,” Rebecca said. Nicole frowned and ended the conversation and left Rebecca and Joanne alone.

“You’re too mean to her,” Joanne said. 

“She’s weird and bad at her job,” Rebecca said.

“You think that about everyone in accounts.”

“Ian and Sarah are fine. They do good work.” 

“Nobody here does good work.” 

Rebecca frowned. 

“I do good work,” Rebecca said. Joanne raised her eyebrows. 

“Nobody here does good work,” Joanne said.

The New Girl was named Lauren and she was short and stocky and her eyebrows were brown and her hair was red and always over her right shoulder. She wore a pair of tight khaki pants and a button up white shirt that was open at the neck and the collar was popped. She was led around the office by the director, Hunter Yukon. He was tall with brown hair and sometimes he wore glasses in the office and his pants were a little too tight for his broad shouldered and chicken-finger-bellied frame. Rebecca thought she was very cute. The guys in the office would be thrilled to have the opportunity to turn off another female colleague. 

They scrinched a fourth cubicle from some secret inventory and pushed next to Rebecca and the Joanne-Lisa-Rebecca threesome became a foursome, and Rebecca had a next door neighbor for the first time since she started working at Northwall HOA Management. She sat down with a legal pad in hand, notes written in focused, clear handwriting, and yawned. 

“Lauren,” Lauren said, sticking out her right hand, across her body, and Rebecca shook it.

“Rebecca,” Rebecca said. 

They set her up a computer and misted her with office supplies and then, finally, a headset to take those angry calls that the department coordinators didn’t want to field (that is to say, all of them), and she settled into her seat like a cartoon bear settles in to eat a jar of honey. Rebecca had never worked in the customer service department of Northwall, but she’d seen enough of them come and go to know that they didn’t have to start doing phone calls (as opposed to online chats) until two weeks on the job.

“Hello,” Lauren said, phone light blinking, headset resting like a crown, “this is Laruen with Northwall Management. How can I help you today?” 

Michael was asleep on the couch when she got home. She worked an eight-to-five, and he worked a five-to-three, and rare was the time when he was up to greet her. She didn’t mind –– not because she didn’t want him to say hello, but because she loved the way he looked when he slept. Tall, and broad shouldered, hair swooped over to the side like a 90s Leo DiCaprio, and a permanent five o’clock shadow highlighting the cut of his jaw. He had changed out of the polo and jeans he wore to work (his official title was Project Manager, but he was really a “I don’t want to take these meetings, you take these fucking meetings” for a small construction company) and was in a big Philly Fusion authentic jersey and a pair of jogging shorts that came halfway down his thighs.

She closed the front door as quietly as possible. It squeaked, no matter how much they sprayed it down, and only with extreme caution and precision did it close without a complaint. It was white and metal and it needed painting but neither of them had the energy to do so –– a story told in sequence by the walls that needed painting and the floors that needed waxing and the gutters that needed uncluttered. A simple house, one story ranch, in a nice neighborhood, inherited from an aunt because they definitely couldn’t afford to live here otherwise. She liked the way it made them look, living here. It made her feel safe. 

Despite her hard work, the door did cry out, and Michael woke up. He yawned, and smiled as he saw her, and he reached out his arms and stretched like a baby released from a swaddle. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes. 

“Hey you,” he said.

“Hey you,” she said. 

He patted the couch next to him and she sat down and they kissed, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder. 

“Tough day at work?” Michael asked, a question some common he might as well have not said it.

“Just boring,” Rebecca said, her echo matching his. “You?”

“Still at that food sauce place. Working on those stairs up to the top floor.” 

“Still? I thought you guys finished that last week.” 

“We did,” he said. “They decided they wanted to make some changes.” 

He listed out the changes, and she listened, and she enjoyed hearing him talk about it. There was something intensely cathartic about hearing him talk about doing something he loved –– even more so to hear him complain about it. Complaining about something you still love and want to do really meant something to her and she could listen to him all night.

“Anyway,” he said, blushing a little, embarrassed at how long he’d been talking. “Anything interesting happen on your side of things?” 

She opened her mouth to say no, but then she thought of Lauren, and the way she had hopped on the phone the second she was able. 

“There’s a new girl at work,” Rebecca said. 

He spun her around in a circle, slow-dancing in their bedroom, their hands pressed together soft and deep, and his right hand firmly on her hip. She looked up to him, the top of her head barely up to his chin, and the way his chest stretched from side to side, and she tried to pull him closer but he kept her at dancing distance. 

“No,” he said softly, waltzing them around the room, light on his feet, and she light on hers, and she was growing frustrated in a way that she liked. 

“Yes,” she said softly, just as they passed the antique dresser on their front wall, also inherited, too heavy to move, a thing the next homeowners would inherit, too. She pushed him against the wall, her foot digging into the carpet floor, and he not resisting. 

“I just wanted a dance,” he said, eyes widening in mock shock, lips slightly agape, and his hand on hers tightening so much she wanted to cry out, and his hand on her hip sliding around the back and into the waistband of her pants.

“Like I give a fuck,” she said, and she kissed him, and her tongue slid into his mouth, and she pulled free of his painful gasp and returned the favor, burying her fingers in his hair, and pulling him with force to the bed. 

Big moments echo out, rippling through time and space. 

During dinner, his hand sliding onto her thigh, and between her legs, and she had already changed into shorts herself, and then beneath the fabric, and she was naked underneath, and he knew that before he had proof. Up from dinner, mostly finished, into the bedroom, and he took her to dance, “like I give a fuck”, and then onto the bed and her hand pulling at his hair and his face in a grimace and then, first his fingers on her clitoris and then his cock quickly sliding inside her, and then they came together, a common occurrence, an outcome they both fought for together, proving a point. 

The original idea, his hand on her thigh, brokering smaller moments, like the dance. His decision to feel her, wet and under the table and under her shorts. Go further back, all the way to when he had asked her out in the little college bar, both too old to be there, both too horny to stay away. Big moments, echoing out in time and space. Him asking and her saying yes –– his hand on her thigh and her pulling his hair. Big moments making little moments, which build into big moments again. 

When it was over, they lay facing one another. He wiped sweat from her eyebrow with his thumb, just before it dropped into her eye.

“Thank you,” she said. 

“You’re welcome,” he said. 

Rebecca pulled into her usual spot, just as Lauren pulled in next to her. Lauren waved at Rebecca with a big smile, and Rebecca waved back with a smile of her own. They got out of the car together, and to Rebecca’s surprise, she waited for Lauren to get all of her stuff out of her car before she headed for the door.

“Day two,” Lauren said cheerfully, in a red and green plaid skirt and dark gray turtleneck top. Her red hair was so bright against the gray of her top. 

“Day two,” Rebecca repeated. 

“Got any tips for me? Is day two different from day one?” 

“Nope. Every day is pretty much the same.” 

Lauren made a noise, and raised a metal thermos to her lips, and drank from it. She closed her eyes and sighed, enjoying her drink, and when she opened her eyes to find Rebecca looking at her, she laughed.

“Just water, I promise,” Lauren said, and held the door open for Rebecca, and the two went inside. 

“Have you ever heard of a Javier Alonso?” Lauren said, once that were in the elevator together. Someone from the third floor was in there with them and Rebecca held her tongue.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, “he’s… a frequent caller to the office. Wants some repairs done.” 

“He says the mold is so bad he can’t sleep but in one rom of his house.” 

“Yeah. That’s what he said yesterday. Did he call back again?” 

“Yesterday afternoon, right before my shift ended. Guy was almost crying.” 

The third floor dinged and the third floor person got off and Rebecca and Laruen were alone again.

“That guy,” Rebecca said, sighing. “He never stops calling. Never.” 

“Are we doing anything for him?” Lauren said. She sounded concerned, and when Rebecca caught her eye, she looked concerned, too. 

“His HOA has denied him service. We’re not in control. They are.” 

“There has to be something we can do.” 

Rebecca opened her mouth to say more, but the elevator came to a stop on the floor floor, and the doors slid open. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Rebecca said.

“Seriously?” Lauren said. 

“Seriously.” 

Rebecca opened the unmarked door to their office, and held it for Lauren, and they both went inside. 

Lauren grabbed her keys from her desk and stood and stretched. She blinked a lot, and she yawned. 

“Wanna buy me lunch?” she said to Rebecca. 

“I usually eat in,” Rebecca said.

“Have you ordered yet?” 

“No.” 

“Then I’ll buy you lunch. Look at that. A reversal of fortune. Come on.” 

They walked out to the parking lot together, to where their cars were parked side-by-side. Rebecca started to get into her own car, but Laurn waved her over to hers without a word, and Rebecca, to her surprise, got inside. 

“Buying you lunch, and saving you gas. Best coworker ever,” Lauren said. 

Her car was a black four door sedan, and clean as could be. No water spots on the plastic cup holders and no dust on the dashboard, invisible in the dark and performing in the light. The floor mats were clean and fashionably worn –– a platonic ideal of a car with miles and miles behind and miles and miles to go. 

“Nice,” Rebecca said, unsure what to say, and unsure of that, too.

“What? The car?” Lauren said.

“Yeah. Clean. Well taken care of.” 

“Thanks! I’m single and without cable so I have to find something to do.” 

Rebecca looked over at Lauren, who drove with right hand in her lap, palm upturned, gripping the wheel with the barest whisper of fingertips. Her left  arm was balanced on the windowsill, and her hand rested on her hair, and her fingers in her hair, too. 

They left the parking lot the back way, away from the usual path to the usual lunch spots, and back towards the suburbs where Rebecca lived. Rebecca had, once upon a time, eaten lunch back this way. Sometimes she’d meet up with her boyfriend, taking a late lunch, and they’d sit at the house or at one of the local sushi places. She couldn’t remember the last time she done that, though. She thought back, trying to remember the last lunch she’d taken out of the office, period –– she searched her mind and came up with the spring and she couldn’t believe that to be true, because that was almost seven months ago. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” Lauren said. 

“Last time I went out for lunch,” Rebecca said truthfully, again surprising herself.

“Been a while?” 

“Been a while.” 

They took a left at a four way intersection, sliding onto a  two lane road going both ways. No longer going directly towards Rebecca’s house, but parallel to it. Rebecca never went this way, never had any reason to do so. She had always had anxiety about those sorts of things, being in places she didn’t quite know, but she felt none of that with Lauren.

“Do you dye your hair?” Rebecca said, blurting it out, and not meaning to.

“Yes,” Lauren said. “Is it obvious?” 

“No,” Rebecca said, and it wasn’t. “I just used to dye mine. Not that color, but… close to that color, I guess.” 

Lauren looked over at her and smiled and then looked back at the road. 

“When’d you stop?” Lauren asked. 

“I guess… five and half a years ago? Maybe a little more,” Rebecca said.

“What made you wanna go back to black?” 

“I don’t remember, really. Just… “ 

Rebecca trailed off. She looked out the window, and tapped on it with her fingernails. She felt uncomfortable, but not because she was somewhere she didn’t know. Or maybe it was that, or adjacent to that. A familiar place that had become unfamiliar, and that she had to squint to recognize. 

“So, Mr. Alonso,” Lauren said. 

“Work talk?” Rebecca said, an automated response.

“Sorry.” 

They stopped at a little sidestep asian place that served cheap noodles and served drinks in tiny styrofoam cups. A brick facade was erected haphazardly over a stained-stucco outerwall –– case-closed evidence of gentrification’s steady march. The two of them of sat in weirdly comfortable plastic chairs, the little feet broken off the bottom, so when they leaned forward to blow the heat off their egg drop soup, they rocked like a boat in calm waves. 

“You ever eaten here before?” Lauren said. 

“No. You?” Rebecca said.

“Yeah. Used to live just down the street. Awesome apartment. My boyfriend and I.” 

“Where do y’all live now?” 

“Oh, ex-boyfriend. Sorry. He lives in Scottsdale because he’s a lunatic and I live over by the dog park.” 

“What did you do before you took the job at Northwall?” 

Lauren had the cup of soup to her lips, and paused before taking a drink. She raised her eyebrows and set down the cup gently.

“What?” Rebecca said.

“Don’t laugh,” Lauren said.

“I won’t laugh.” 

Lauren picked up her soup and took a much longer drink before she put it down again. She was silent for a while, and Rebecca was nervous. 

“I… was a sex worker,” Lauren said.

“Oh?” Rebecca said, voice a half-octave too high. 

“Yeah. I took nudes and did custom vids and sold them online. Always wore a mask. Hair was a different color. Don’t worry, you haven’t seen them. And if you have, you wouldn’t know it was me.” 

Lauren laughed, as she did often, but this one was nervous, unlike the rest. 

“I shouldn’t have told you that,” Lauren said, pushing the soup around the table. “Should’ve kept that one in the drafts, as they say.”

“What made you quit?” 

“The ex,” Lauren said, and she went back to eating her food. 

“So,” Lauren said, when they were back in the car, “what’s up with Mr. Alonso?”

“Work talk?” Rebecca said, shifting her gaze from the windshield to out the passenger window.

“I told you about my sex work. You can tell me about my new work.” 

“I didn’t realize we were trading.” 

“Neither did I, but I might as well take advantage of you being uncomfortable.” 

Rebecca looked over at Lauren who had a smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Brief synopsis,” Rebecca began. 

“Javier Neal Alonso is a resident of Quail River Communities. He is fifty-six years old, and he lived in the same house that he bought on loan at nineteen. Quail River Communities had been one of the nicest neighborhoods in the area, growing to an enormous size, before the economy took a turn and it lost much of its property value. Now, the Quail River Communities HOA Board had little money to spend, and the repairs that Mr. Alonso wants are too expensive.”

“I looked up the neighborhood on Google Maps,” Lauren said. “It isn’t that big.” 

“What do you mean?” Rebecca said, confused.

“You said that Quail River was enormous. It’s not. It’s one little section. Like, maybe fifteen houses.”

Rebecca took out her phone, typed Quail River Comm into the search bar, and pressed enter. Anxiety rose in her stomach as it loaded, and as the page flashed up, she locked her phone. She put it between her legs. 

“Page won’t load” Rebecca said. “I’ll look back at the office.” 

“There are other houses around it,” Lauren said. “I think it was once part of a bigger neighborhood, but isn’t now.” 

Rebecca didn’t respond. This all seemed familiar somehow, and she didn’t like how that made her feel.

“Looking at the size of their dues, and what he wants done, they should be able to afford it. Even the mold stuff, which obviously is pretty bad, could be worked out in a few visitors from a decent contractor.” 

Rebeca didn’t respond. She wondered why this all felt like deja vu. She wondered if she was going crazy. She wondered if by wondering she was going crazy after one sorta-abnormal probably-nothing event was crazy. 

Lauren looked over at her.

“You still with us?” 

Rebecca pretended to come out of a daze. She smiled as absentmindedly as she could muster.

“Sorry,” Rebecca said. “I was thinking about my boyfriend.” 

Lauren smiled, and looked back at the road. Rebecca put her arm up on the passenger windowsill, and laid her forearm on the warm glass, and tapped at it with her knuckles. 

Rebecca left work early, saying her stomach hurt, which wasn’t a total lie. But she couldn’t shake the familiarity of the conversation she’d had with Lauren. It was on the tip of her tongue, and she felt like if she went for a run and got exhausted and someone jumped out from behind a bush and yelled at her to just say what she was thinking, she’d be able to just say what she was thinking. 

But she went home instead. She hated running, but she hadn’t always. She hated hated the sweat and the burn that came with it. When she got home she saw her husband on the couch, and he was awake, and that seemed like a sign. She climbed on top of him, wordless, and found the sweat and heat she was looking for.

When it was over, and she was truly tired, and the sun was still mostly out, she burrowed her face into his chest. 

“You okay?” Michael said softly, stroking her hair.

“Did we ever talk about a Mr. Alonso?” Rebecca said.

“Who?” he said. She took her face out of his chest and rolled onto her side, facing him.

“Mr. Alonso. He’s a homeowner. Did we ever talk about him together?” she said.

Michael shook his head. 

“Did I ever mention talking to someone about him to you?” 

“Not that I can remember.” 

She felt that anxiety rise, the same one as before, and before it could overtake her she kissed him again, and slid her hand down his stomach to his waist to his groin, and she squeezed so hard he jumped, and she bit his lip as she moved her hand back and forth. He rolled onto his back, but she didn’t him, so only his shoulders and upper back were on the bed, and his stomach and cock still faced her. 

“Baby,” he said, straining. “That hurts.” 

She squeezed tighter, and he arched his back, and then rolled over suddenly, and was on top of her. She didn’t let go.

“Let go,” he said, breathy, angry. 

“Fuck you,” she said, and he wrapped a hand around her throat, and squeezed.

“Let go,” he said again. She didn’t, and he squeezed, and she saw stars, and finally let go. 

With one motion, he opened her legs, and slid inside of her. Before she could catch her breath, he pulled out of her completely, and she whimpered. 

“Fuck you,” he said, and did it again. 

Rebecca got to work the same time she always did, but when she walked in, Lauren’s stuff was already on her desk. Joanna was halfway-deep into her second coffee, and she yawned as Rebecca sat down.

“Early bird,” Joanna said, nodding to Lauren’s stuff.

“First week. Making a good impression,” Rebecca said. “Was she here when you got here?” 

Joanna nodded. Her phone rang, and she picked it up, and Rebecca looked over at Lauren’s stuff. Then, voices rose, and she heard a door, and those voices spilled out into the office.

“This is bullshit,” Lauren said, around the corner.

“I’m not gonna tell you again, Ms. Georgia. Pack your things and go.” 

Lauren came around the corner, face red, a little sweaty, hair messed up. Their boss, Mr. Gregory, came with her. He was mostly bald and wore a button-down shirt and khaki pants almost every day. His glasses were small and pressed too tight to his head. He looked the same as he always did.

“What’s going on?” Rebecca said, before she could stop herself.

“Ms. Georgia has decided that she no longer wants to work here,” Mr. Gregory said calmly, hands folded at the waist, standing like the best man at his best friend’s third wedding. 

“That’s the fucking least of it,” Lauren said, nearly spitting. She snatched her stuff off her desk. She looked over at Rebecca. 

“What?” Rebecca said. 

“Six years,” Lauren said, and before Rebecca could reply, Lauren was gone. 

“What happened?” Joanna said, gripping her coffee cup so tight and for so long her fingers were white. 

“She wanted to discuss a homeowner and their situation. It escalated. We decided that it would be better if she no longer worked here,” Mr. Gregory said. 

“What homeowner?” Rebecca said. 

“Better to let it go,” Mr. Gregory said, and went back to his office. 

When he had disappeared from view, and his office door had been gently shut behind him, Joanna walked around and sat next to Rebecca, at Lauren’s newly vacated desk.

“Who do you think it was?” Joanna said. Rebecca looked at her, expecting to see the usual gossip etched in her face. But she didn’t. 

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, lying through her teeth. 

She came home again, and she fucked her boyfriend again, longer than the night before, which had been longer than the night before that. She didn’t get out of bed the rest of the day, and her husband brought her dinner in, and they watched TV together, and after a time, she felt the color returning to her cheeks.

When he was asleep, she got out of bed, and went into the living room. She grabbed her laptop and sat on the couch, back straight, like she was at work, a true professional, this was work, not play, and so she didn’t slouch. Rules adopted when she had first started working there. Before she had done other stuff and she hadn’t been a professional about it –– she hadn’t just done her job –– and she was determined to never fall into that again.

She searched Quail River Communities, and their HOA page was the first result. She clicked the link and an older website popped up on screen. The front page of a series of houses next to a vast, sprawling lake, and Rebecca frowned. There was no lake at Quail River. None of the houses they managed had anything to do with lakes or water. She searched more, digging into the FAQ and CONTACT US and ABOUT pages, and on the ABOUT page was a question about being sewer repairs.

“We expect,” the FAQ said, “that the repairs to the sewer line will be fully complete in about two years, in January 2007.” 

A fifteen year old website. Rebecca knew the address for Mr. Alonso by heart and she pulled up an internet map and looked him up. She zoomed in, onto the street, and saw the Quail River neighborhood entrance sign. It was worn, in need of repair and paint in equal measure, and yet they had never let them know. The map truck didn’t go into the neighborhood, so she couldn’t see in it, but she could tell just from the outside that the houses were falling apart. 

She followed the map truck down the street. Strip malls with restaurants and shops lined the way. The sidewalks were relatively clean, and the grass and tree medians were well-maintained, and beyond that, the parking lots were clean and well-paved. Boutique shops and boutique restaurants, hibachi places and cupcake places and small mom & pop diners, and even from the truck she could see plenty of people coming and going.

Rebecca took the map truck in a big circle. She expected it drive by more and more business –– restaurants and clothing stores and auto shops, maybe –– but there wasn’t. There was more neighborhood, much more neighborhood, stretching on and on and on, and there was a golf course, too. She followed the map truck all the way back to the front of Quail River. There was no way, in Rebecca’s mind, that Quail River didn’t directly connect with those other houses. 

She circled back around, looking for a neighborhood sign, and found it: Porchlight Grove. She typed the name into the browser and it came up with their own HOA page. A fancy one, recently updated, well-mainted, with a robust FAQ page. Golf course memberships to Porchlight Country Club, membership to three separate pools –– a wealthy place, almost comically so. All those high-end businesses, and this high-end neighborhood, and there, smack in the middle of all it, was a falling-down Quail River Communities. 

Michael came out of the bedroom, and she heard the door, and she shut the laptop guilty, but she didn’t really know why. He put a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay, lover?” he said sleepily.

“Yeah,” she said, standing up quickly, his hand sliding off her shoulder. “Just a little restless.” 

She took another sick day, staying home from. She didn’t tell Michael (him being up and out of the house before she woke up), and she didn’t really understand why. This all felt familiar, or, was supposed to feel familiar –– like a slant rhyme, like worm and swarm, like it was something she’d known in a different way. But she buried that down for now. 

Rebecca wore a pair of old, ratty jeans, with white paint-spots on the front, and a worn t shirt. She pulled her hair into a messy ponytail, and brushed her teeth quickly, and left. She drove her car over to Quail River Communities, and into the neighborhood itself. She had looked for views of the neighborhood, and found aerial satellite shots, but something about it didn’t sit right still. She wanted to see for herself. 

Turning into Quail River was like crossing over into a children’s drawing. The road and businesses were nice and well-maintained, and there was no blending into the literal brokenness of Quail River. Potholes, from the very start. Patchy yards, yellow and brown in equal measure, and lumpy with bad grading.The houses were mostly vinyl siding –– cheap, cheap, cheap –– and stained and falling apart. Windows were cracked, or dirty. This was every house on this street. Every single house. 

Mr. Alonso was six houses in, on the right. His house was the second of two designs –– either one story ranch, or a narrow two-story split-level –– and unlike the rest of the community, was well-maintained. A good yard, without bald spots. Vinyl, clean as a whistle. Windows in good shape. Rebecca idled her car at the curb. 

His car, an old silver truck, clean and without nicks, sat at the end of a recently pressure-washed driveway. Nothing new, nothing broken. It was in good shape. The only good house in good shape she could see. But she knew, too, that it was all exterior looks. She knew the inside was occupied by mold, and god knows what else. She knew that it was only getting worse. He was the only person on the block trying to make the best of a situation that they had no recourse in fixing. She wasn’t sure how that made her feel. 

The front door was composed of an outer glass door, and a brown interior wooden door, and she saw the front door begin to open, and she sped away quickly. She looked in her rearview mirror, and saw Mr. Alonso step outside. She had never seen him before, for obvious reasons, and even as she drove away she couldn’t help be struck by the fact that he was just a regular man. Average height, average build, average hair for his age. All of those calls, and emails, and threatened lawsuits, and he looked like an average man. 

She hit a pothole and her car jumped and twisted and she almost ran into a mailbox. She put the car in park and took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw Mr. Alonso was approaching, and she wanted to throw the car in reverse and escape, but she was too close to the mailbox, and he was too close to the back of her car. 

He came to her driver side window, and knocked, and she rolled it down.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” he said. A soft, low voice. She almost didn’t recognize it, since he was almost always yelling. He wore a polo and old basketball shorts and flip flops on his feet. She forced a smile on her face.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “Just wasn’t paying attention.” 

He frowned a little, and narrowed his eyes. 

“You sound awful familiar,” he said. 

“Do I?” she said.

He looked at her for another moment, and then smiled gently, and took a step back.

“I apologize,” Mr. Alonso said. “That was a weird thing to say. I’m glad you’re okay. Have a good one.” 

“You too,” Rebeca said, and he walked away. 

She let him get back to his driveway before she put her car in reverse, and pulled away from the mailbox. She desperately wanted to leave, to go home, to call Michael, but there was one more thing she had to check, and it wouldn’t take long.

Rebecca steered her car to the back of Quail River Communities, and turned left (you could only turn left). She followed that road all the way to the end of it, and that end was a triple-thick brick wall that stretched from across the road itself, across empty and unbuilt-upon parcels of land, blocking anybody from the nearby houses from walking or driving through. Rebecca could see over the wall, and behind the wall were large, wide pine-and-oak trees, and through those she caught the glimpse of a corner of a house. A nice house. The neighborhood that surrounded Quail River. The one that they’d sealed off with a brick wall. 

When she got back home, she took a long shower, and pretended everything was fine. Michael picked up dinner from their favorite Thai place, and when he returned she was still soaking in the growing-cold water. She heard him knock a few times, and she let out a noise to make sure he knew she was okay, but otherwise she didn’t want to move. The water grew colder, and thus she stayed beneath it.

There were warm, fresh-out-the-dryer clothes for her on their bed, and she put them on as slow as she could. She could hear him moving out there, in the living room, having heard her moving about back here. She could hear the clink of the microwave, and the hum as it spun their Thai dinner into edibility, and she could hear the clink of the plates and silverware as he carefully laid them out on their kitchen table. She could hear all of these things, and know all of these things, because she had heard them and seen them and experienced them a thousand, thousand times, and you don’t need to see something for the thousand and first time to know exactly what you’re looking at. 

She sat down quietly, and he smiled upon seeing her, and she smiled weakly in return. He spooned out some pad see yew onto her plate, and the rest onto his, and uncapped the soy sauce and slid it over to her. She poured a little over her food, and set it back on the table. 

“You wanna talk about today?” he said casually.

“I took another sick day,” she said, thinking of lying but unable to do so.

“I know. I tracked your phone. According to your GPS you were in some neighborhood called Quail River.”

“Didn’t trust me?” she said, eager for a fight. 

“Of course I do,” he said. “But I was worried. Whatever reason you went there, it clearly upset you to do so. So, do you want to talk about it?” 

She took a bite of pad see yew. It didn’t taste like anything to her. 

“I went through our emails and texts,” he said, when she didn’t respond. “I was looking for any mention of a Mr. Alonso.” 

She took another bite, and it still tasted like nothing at all.

“Turns out, we did discuss it. About six months after you started working at Northwall. You weren’t very happy with the way they were treating him. You said that they were just… leaving the neighborhood out to dry. You said you were gonna go to your boss, and–” 

“Stop,” she said. She remembered now. She put down her fork.

“No more work talk,” she said. 

“Honey–”

“No!” she yelled out. She clenched her fists together, like a child, but she refrained from slamming them on the table, because she was an adult. I am an adult, she thought. An adult. I shouldn’t be yelling.

“Maybe we should find another job,” her husband said, after a long silence. 

“I make that decision,” she said, regretting her words. But her husband just nodded, took her reaction for what it was, and that kindness made her angrier. 

“Whatever,” she said, spitting the words out. She folded her arms across her chest. After a moment, her husband went back to eating. 

She imagined herself a hero, walking into work, and quitting on the spot. She imagined herself a crusader, leaking the company’s misdeeds to the press, highlighting the actions of the wider neighborhood, strangling the vine they disliked. She imagined herself finding Lauren, knocking on her door, maybe in the rain, maybe sun-kissed, hair-tousled, begging or asking for help, or forgiveness. 

She imagined herself as someone who made a fuss about what she’d seen, and about what had been done. 

But when she woke up in the morning, her husband long since out of bed and headed to work, that fire and passion had faded, replaced with the reality she’d lived every day. There was nothing she could do to help Mr. Alonso, because his board didn’t want to help, and her company didn’t either. That was why Lauren had quit, because it’s one thing to deal with hopeless bullshit as a sideshow –– as a man selling boiled peanuts on the side of a lonely road –– and another to work the peanut stand yourself. 

When she got to work, she wrote out her resignation by hand –– a few short sentences, no two week notice, just direct deposit my last check as always (she didn’t know why she was telling them that) –– and then she hugged Joanne quickly, and she was gone with a plastic Target bag full of the two personal items she’d decorated her desk with. 

Her car was parked away from her usual spot, even though it was empty when she arrived and empty now. It was in the front row, closer to the building, but under direct sunlight. For the first time in six years, she had to leave the car door open to let the heat out. She sat in the driver’s seat, letting the car hum, and the heat escape, and the air conditioner turned from hot to cold. As she closed her door, a car pulled into her usual spot, and parked.