The woman in the hot-pink pantsuit pointed at the wreckage of my car and laughed like she'd just won the lottery.
"Look at that! Finally, somebody cleaned up this neighborhood!"
Behind her, a massive yellow recovery truck sat on the curb outside my house. Inside its enormous steel container lay what remained of a metallic-blue 1967 American muscle car, its roof folded into the passenger compartment, its doors twisted around the chassis, and its once-beautiful front grille crushed beneath a tangle of chrome and broken glass.
The vehicle looked as though it had been dropped from the roof of a twenty-story building.
Six neighbors stood across the street with their phones raised. A woman near the sidewalk covered her mouth in horror, while a teenage boy stared at the truck with an expression suggesting he couldn't believe what he'd just witnessed.
The HOA president was enjoying every second.
She was fifty-six, with shoulder-length blonde hair styled into expensive waves and a fitted hot-pink designer pantsuit that looked almost absurdly cheerful beside the destroyed vehicle. Her gold earrings flashed in the afternoon sunlight, and a black leather folder bearing the association's emblem rested beneath her arm.
She took two steps toward me.
"Well? Aren't you going to thank me?"
I didn't answer.
I was thirty-eight years old, six feet two, with a muscular build, short faded black hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. I wore a black leather jacket over a fitted black shirt, dark jeans, and the silver wristwatch my father had given me on my thirtieth birthday.
I had a paper coffee cup in my left hand.
My right hand was slowly closing into a fist.
The HOA president noticed.
Her smile widened.
"Oh, don't start acting tough now. I warned you about that ugly heap of junk. You had thirty days to get it out of my neighborhood."
I looked past her toward the truck.
The car's distinctive round headlights were still visible beneath the twisted hood. The left headlight had survived almost intact, staring out from the wreckage like the eye of something that had been struck down but not entirely erased.
I recognized the handmade chrome trim above it.
I had polished that trim with my father when I was fourteen.
The president stepped closer and shoved the corner of her black leather folder against my chest.
"Here's your final compliance notice. No more rusty garbage in your driveway. Understand?"
A few neighbors gasped.
I looked down at the folder.
Then at her face.