Chapter 12: Halloween, HOA

On Saturday, October 31, a Class I gate sat in the tennis court of a Doral homeowners association.

The board was fining it $250 a day.

The Notice of Violation was laminated and stapled to a stake in the grass in front of the oval.

It said the gate was an unapproved structure in the common area.

It gave the owner seven days to remove it, and it said the board president reserved the right to escalate.

The board president stood beside the stake in a Hawaiian shirt with a clipboard.

The HOA had not canceled trick-or-treat, and it had only moved the route.

Kids walked a loop past the clubhouse with their buckets, in costumes, in lines of parents.

Each of them stopped for a long look at the gray oval, as if it might give out full-size candy bars.

I counted a pirate, two princesses, a hot dog and a banana.

The banana was about seven, in a yellow foam suit that covered everything except his face and his sneakers.

Yosi had picked me up at five in the truck, with the electrician and the two gym guys in the back seat.

I had my backpack with me.

In it was the 400-page strategy guide I print for a dungeon game and annotate in three colors of highlighter.

I also had the Taurus, which my aunt had decided I could keep.

The Doral Gate Watch captain had called Yosi after the Milander stream.

Yosi had called me in the voice of a man booking a guest star.

"Everybody watched you do it," he said on the drive. "Now we do it with a crowd."

"We don't do it with a crowd," I said. "The Inside is the HOA's plat. It's rows of houses."

"So?"

"So a rifle round goes through six walls."

He did not answer, and for Yosi that was an improvement.

I had read the guide's chapter on corridors in the van.

Every dungeon in it said the same thing in a different color: never fire down a hallway you cannot see the end of.

Inside an HOA, every street is a hallway.

Not long after we went in, the banana's bucket rolled off the curb and into the oval.

It was a plastic pumpkin with a handle, and it went through the gray light and was gone.

The banana ran after it.

He was seven, he had a bucket full of candy, and he had been told all week not to go near the gate.

For one second the whole street stood still.

Then his father, dressed as a gladiator, screamed and went in after him.

"Sugar," I said, out loud, to nobody.

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