I was parked in my cherry-red convertible outside the Starbucks on Cedar Ridge Drive, engine idling, top down, savoring the seventy-two-degree breeze while Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” drifted through the speakers. The morning had no agenda beyond a vanilla latte and a quiet half hour before I opened the laptop. The oaks along the drive were doing what oaks do in that kind of weather, throwing a broken shade across the windshield, and the leather was warm without being hot. I had the seat back one notch. I had nowhere to be for forty minutes. That is the kind of ordinary peace a person remembers later, because it ended in the space of a single bad decision that was not mine.
Something flickered at the edge of my vision. A navy shape. A clipboard. Before I could fully turn my head, Brenda Kensington, our HOA president, vaulted over my passenger door like a suburban action hero and landed in my leather seat with the swagger of someone who had just claimed a kingdom. The car rocked. My latte sloshed. She did not apologize for the slosh. She arranged herself as if the seat had been held for her.
“Drive me to the community center immediately,” she barked, pointing forward like a field commander rallying troops. “My electric scooter battery died, and my husband took our Tesla to his golf tournament. I have an emergency board meeting in twelve minutes about unauthorized garden gnome placements.” Then she snapped her fingers at me twice. Sharp little cracks in the quiet morning. The snaps were not a joke. She used them the way other people use a car horn, to announce that the world was late.
I stared at her for a solid five seconds. My vanilla latte paused halfway to my mouth. The song kept going, which felt rude of it. “Brenda,” I said slowly, trying to make sense of whatever this was, “you literally just jumped into my car without permission. That’s not how anything works.”