"I laminate all critical documents."
"There's a subsection on 'acceptable mulch colors.'"
"Brown, dark brown, and cedar red. Black mulch is permissible with board approval."
I look up from the sheet. Way up. The sun sits directly behind his head, turning him into a green-skinned eclipse. "Is rubber mulch addressed?"
Something twitches near his left tusk.
"Page two."
I flip it over. There is, in fact, a page two. Also laminated. Also color-coded. With a small map of the neighborhood that includes property line measurements down to the quarter inch.
"Flynn."
"Danger."
"Flynn Danger. Did you make this yourself?"
"The original ordinances were a single unformatted page. Insufficient." He says this the way a surgeon might describe a rusty scalpel. "I reorganized, cross-referenced with county code, and added the color system for quick reference. Every household on the block has a copy."
Behind me, Reginald the fern hisses at a passing butterfly. Barbara the succulent smacks it. The sunflowers crane their golden heads over the truck to stare at Flynn with expressions of open fascination.
His gaze travels past me. Over the hostile plants on the walkway. The overturned bistro chair I didn't fix. The rose-consumed mailbox. The grass that reaches my shins. The moonvine, now free of the side mirror and questing hungrily toward his fence.
His grip on the edging shears tightens until the handle creaks.
"Item seven. Grass height shall not exceed three inches."
I look at my lawn. My beautiful, ridiculous, knee-high lawn.
"What's the penalty?"
"First offense, written warning. Second offense, fifty-dollar fine. Third offense, the neighborhood board intervenes directly."
"And by 'neighborhood board,' you mean..."
"Me. I'm the Compliance Committee"
"The whole committee?"
"The previous members retired."
"All of them?"
"Simultaneously."
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. Because if I laugh right now, directly into the face of this enormous, color-coding, plastic-covered, shear-wielding Orc who constitutes an entire neighborhood governance body by himself, I will never recover the diplomatic ground.
The moonvine reaches the fence. One tendril curls over the top rail, stretching toward Flynn's perfect lawn with the slow, deliberate intent of a creature that has found its next victim.
He sees it.
I see him see it.
"I'll read the packet," I say brightly.
"You have seventy-two hours to address the grass."
