I took the yellow sedan around to the back. I backed up slowly, checking the mirrors, until the front bumper sat half an inch from the rear bumper of the luxury car. I put it in park. I cut the engine. I locked the doors. We had sandwiched her. There was less than an inch of clearance on either end. Because of the length of her car and the way she had nosed it against our apron, there was no angle for her to turn the wheels and creep out. She was held in place by two vehicles the city recognized. Neither of our cars blocked the garage opening. Neither sat in the driveway. They occupied the public curb immediately in front of and behind the space she had chosen. They were registered. They were insured. They were parked according to the ordinance I had read until the print blurred.
I walked up to our door and checked the doorbell camera. It had a clear view of the street, the trapped sedan, the garage door, the two older cars. I set the motion alerts to my phone. We went back inside, took the suitcases we had already packed, and called the ride to the airport. Our driver arrived. We loaded the trunk. We drove away into the dark, leaving a legal arrangement behind us and a woman who had not yet come outside to meet it.
At the departure gate, my phone buzzed. I opened the feed. Karen walked out of the center with two board members. They were laughing about something on a paper agenda. Then she looked toward the garage and stopped so abruptly the man beside her almost stepped on her heel. She stared at the teal minivan. She stared at the peeling yellow roof. She walked the length of her own car. You could see, even on a doorbell camera, the moment the measurements arrived in her head. She tried the driver’s door of the yellow sedan. Locked. She tried the minivan. Locked. She kicked the yellow tire, which the camera recorded and which the tire did not seem to mind. She stomped up our walk and pounded on the door for two solid minutes. She demanded that we come out and move our cars. She used the word trash. She used the word sabotage. She did not use the word ordinance.
When nobody answered, she peered through the front window. The house was dark. The suitcases were gone. Eventually she pulled out her phone. I knew who she was calling. We had called him ourselves, once, and learned the limit of his contract.
About twenty minutes later the same tow truck arrived. The driver got out. He looked at the sandwich of cars. Karen gestured at the minivan and the yellow sedan, and even without sound I could read the order in her hands. Tow them. Now. The driver shook his head. He pointed at the street. He pointed at the plates. He walked the gaps and did not get his chains. My wife and I watched with the volume up just enough to catch pieces. Public municipal street. Not association property. Not blocking a driveway. Not blocking a garage opening. The cars blocking nothing that the code forbade. Towing them without police authorization would be taking vehicles he had no right to take. He got back in his truck. He drove away. Karen remained on the sidewalk with her phone lowered and her expensive car exactly where her habit had parked it.