The HOA Interview

I pulled into the cul-de-sac at six fifteen, right when the light goes gold and everything looks better than it is. Willow Bend. Four houses around a circle of pavement you could mow in ten minutes. Every lawn the same green, every mailbox the same black. The kind of place where the biggest scandal is someone's hedge creeping over a property line.

Except there was smoke rolling off a grill at the end house, and strings of fairy lights zigzagging from the garage to the back fence like the whole yard had dressed up for something.

"Just an interview," I told the rearview mirror. "A committee interview. You're forty-two years old, Joshua, act like it."

Here's the setup, so nobody's confused later. I'm Joshua, forty-two, never married, and I plan weddings for a living, which sounds more romantic than it is. Mostly it means I know fourteen kinds of chair covers and exactly how long a best man's toast can run before people start checking their phones. Six months ago I matched online with a woman named Christy. We'd been talking ever since. Flirting, technically. Nothing ever happened because she lived forty minutes away and I'm a coward with a calendar.

Tonight was supposed to be our first meeting. Except she'd framed it, in her last message, as also being an interview. Her neighborhood association needed a social events coordinator, and I was, her words, "overqualified and underfed."

So. Interview. With fairy lights. Sure.

I walked around the side of the house and there she was at the grill, tongs in one hand, and she was exactly what her photos promised and then some. Thirty-eight, dark hair pulled back, sundress, the kind of confident posture you can't fake.

"There he is," she said. "Joshua. Six months of talking and you actually exist."

"You're taller than your pictures," I said, which was stupid, because she wasn't. She was maybe five four.

"You're exactly as nervous as your messages," she said, and stuck out her hand. I shook it. She held on a beat longer than a handshake requires. "Come on. Two more people you should meet."

The backyard had a table set for four and two people already in it. A woman with sandy hair and a wine glass, mid-thirties, grinning like she'd been waiting for a show. And a big easygoing guy in a landscaping company polo, drinking an IPA like this was any Thursday.

"Joshua, this is Shana, my neighbor and partner in crime. And Duane, who does everything on this street including, apparently, my grilling, because I keep burning things."

"You keep standing here talking instead of flipping," Duane said, not getting up. "I'm a bystander."

"Joshua plans weddings," Christy announced, handing me a beer she'd apparently already decided I wanted.

"That's the interview?" Shana said. "Where do I apply?"

"You're on a committee already," Christy said.

"I'd like a better committee."

I laughed, and it came out real, which surprised me. "How did you two meet?" I asked Christy, because I'd never actually asked, and because asking a question was easier than standing there being looked at.

"The association. Five years ago, Duane and I were the only two who showed up to discuss the retention pond," she said.

"Romantic," I said.

"Nothing says romance like drainage," Duane agreed.

Shana leaned her elbows on the table. "So Joshua. Christy talks about you. A lot. In specific terms."

"Shana," Christy said, in a tone that was about ten percent warning and ninety percent encouragement.

"What? It's true. She'll read me a message at eleven at night and go 'he's funny, he's actually funny.'"

"I contain multitudes," I said.

"And he's modest," Shana told Duane.

We ate. Corn, chips, a pasta salad Shana claimed responsibility for and Christy claimed to have improved, while the burgers, according to Duane, were "a few minutes out," which was a standing lie. The talk stayed small for a while. Where I lived, forty minutes away, how long I'd been planning weddings, eleven years, whether Duane's crew could get a lawn ready for a hundred guests in a weekend, absolutely, for a price, and we'd settle that number before anything else got discussed, he said, which I appreciated, because I've been burned by vague vendors.

Then Christy sat back with her wine and said, "Okay. Interview portion."

"I have a resume somewhere," I said.

"You have eleven years of running events for strangers on the most stressful day of their lives. That's the resume." She ticked things off on her fingers. "The association does four events a year. Spring fling, Fourth of July, the fall potluck, and a holiday lights thing that Duane wins every year because he rigs it."

"I do not rig it," Duane said.

"You absolutely rig it," Shana and Christy said together.

"I need someone who can actually run them," Christy went on. "Someone organized, calm, good with difficult people. Someone who knows how to make an evening feel special." She paused, and that pause had weight to it. "Someone experienced with intimate gatherings."

"That's one way to describe a wedding," I said.

"One way," she said, smiling. "Though I was thinking of your other skills."

"Which other skills?" I asked, and I heard my own voice drop a little, because we both knew which skills. Six months of messages don't stay about chair covers. Ours hadn't.

Shana was watching us like a tennis match. Duane was studying his beer with the calm of a man who'd been told the plot in advance.

"The fall potluck," Christy said, "is exactly the kind of event people remember. Good food, good company, string lights." She nodded up at her own fairy lights. "You set a mood. I've read your event checklists, Joshua. You think about lighting. You think about how people feel in a room."

"It's a job," I said. "You make people feel something for one night and then you tear it all down and go home."

"And does that ever make you want to stay?" Shana asked. Just like that. No hedging, just the question sitting on the table between the pasta salad and the corn.

"Shana," Christy said again, and laughed this time.

"What? We're interviewing him. It's a follow-up question."

I looked at Christy. She looked back, and the online version of her, the one who sent me messages I reread at two in the morning, was standing right there behind the HOA president version, arms crossed, amused.

"Sometimes," I admitted. "You spend all year building one perfect evening for other people. You start wondering what your own would look like."

"And what would it look like?" Christy asked.

"Smaller," I said. "Fewer chairs."

"See, that's a good answer," Shana said, pointing at me with her wine glass. "Duane, did you hear that? Fewer chairs."

"I heard it. Solid answer," Duane said. "For the potluck I'd still budget for tables though. People bring a lot of casseroles."

Christy laughed and topped off my beer without asking, which I decided was a good sign, or possibly a warning. The sun had gone down behind the fence and the fairy lights had taken over, and the yard looked, I had to admit, exactly like something I would have designed. Warm pockets of light, dark edges, everyone just close enough together.

"So," she said. "The committee position. Any initial thoughts?"

"I'd want to see the budget," I said, because I'm a professional.

Duane raised his bottle. "Finally, someone on this street with sense."

"And the other thing," Christy said, and her voice was lighter than the look on her face. "The other reason I asked you here tonight, the real one, the one Shana's been teasing me about for a month." She turned her glass slowly on the table. "Do you want to hear it now, or should we finish the interview first?"

Shana made a small sound into her wine, delighted, barely contained.

"I've waited six months," I said. "I can wait twenty more minutes."

"God, he's polite," Shana said. "Christy, keep this one."

Christy smiled at me over the rim of her glass. "Then let's talk about the potluck," she said, "and a few other events we don't advertise to the general membership."

Duane got up quietly and went to check the grill that didn't need checking, and Christy pulled her chair around the corner of the table, closer to mine, and began, very reasonably, to explain the association's more private calendar.

"Events we don't advertise," I repeated. "Is that official HOA language?"

"We have a newsletter," Christy said. "Nobody reads it, so technically nothing is official language."

"Everyone reads the newsletter," Duane said from the grill. "They read it to complain about it."

"That's different," Shana said.

Christy leaned in, forearms on the table, and told me about the private calendar. Two words into it I understood it was mostly a joke they were building, a fake category of events, and three words after that I understood it was not a joke at all. The third thing on the list was called the Equinox Dinner and it had, as far as I could tell, no budget, no guest list, and no rules.

"The Equinox Dinner," I said. "Which is when?"

"When everyone's free," Shana said.

"That's not a date."

"It's a flexible date," Duane said, coming back with tongs and no food.

Christy was close enough now that I could smell whatever she was wearing, something warm, and I was aware of my own knee about four inches from hers under the table. Six months of typing at each other and neither of us had touched the other once. You'd think the anticipation would wear out. It does not wear out. It compounds, like interest.

Then her phone buzzed on the table and she glanced at it and made a face.

"Oh no," she said.

"What?"

"Mrs. Graves two doors down. Her son locked himself out. Again." She started to stand. "I have to go let him into the common area, it takes ten minutes, the lock code is on a clipboard I hid from myself."

"Stay," Shana said, putting a hand on Christy's arm. "I know where the clipboard is. I'll handle it." She was up before Christy could argue, barefoot on the concrete patio, and she paused at the gate long enough to say, "Duane, get the man another chair. If Mrs. Graves's boy comes back here he's going to want to sit too."

"She will not bring him back here," Duane said.

"She might. He's chatty."

And she was gone. Which left three of us, and one of us allegedly checking a grill with nothing on it.

Duane paused, his gaze meeting mine for a moment, then walked over to the garage and came back with two folding chairs, set one down next to me and one next to his own spot, and sat back down.

"You said fewer chairs," he said. "Ignore that. This is a different event."

"What event is this?"

"The one after the interview," he said, and drank his IPA like that answered anything.

Christy laughed, low, and reached over and straightened my napkin, which did not need straightening. Her fingers brushed the back of my hand doing it, just barely, and stayed half a second longer than the napkin required.

"Joshua," she said. "Can I ask you something? And you can not answer, that's a real option, I mean it."

"Ask."

She turned her glass again. She had a habit of turning that glass and I already knew I'd remember it.

"You've done hundreds of weddings. Hundreds of tables, hundreds of toasts, hundreds of couples. Have you ever been part of a group that shared a different kind of welcome?"

I knew what she meant. I will be honest about how fast I knew, which is immediately, because we'd had six months of late night messages and one of them, back in month two, had used almost those exact words, and I had thought about it for a week afterward.

"Define welcome," I said, buying time like an amateur.

"You know what I'm defining."

"Then yeah," I said. "I know what you're asking. No. I haven't. I've stood at the back of a lot of parties watching other people have the kind of night people don't post about."

"And did you want to?"

"Every single time," I said. My heart was loud enough that I was sure Duane could hear it over the nonexistent grill. "You plan the fantasy for a living. At some point you want to attend one."

"Okay," she said, softly, like I'd passed something.

Duane stood up. "I'm going to see if Shana needs the clipboard code," he said, which was the most polite exit I've ever witnessed, and he went through the gate and left us alone in a yard full of fairy lights.

Christy moved her chair around the corner, one more foot.

"Nothing happens tonight unless you want it to," she said. "I mean that. And the committee job and this other thing are two separate invitations. The job is yours or not on your checklists and your budget sense, and it has nothing to do with whatever happens in this yard. You can say no to either one and keep the other. You drove forty minutes for a committee interview and a burger. If that's all this is, that's all this is, and we still like you, and the potluck still needs running."

"What if that's not all this is?"

"Then I'd like to hear you say it," she said. "Out loud. Because I've been reading it in a chat window for six months and I'm tired of the chat window."

I looked at her. Dark hair pulled back, sundress, five foot four of neighborhood association president who had just told me the real agenda, and my mouth was dry in a way beer doesn't fix.

"I came here tonight," I said, "half for the interview and half hoping the messages meant what I thought they meant."

"And what did you think they meant?"

"I thought they meant you were inviting me somewhere."

"I am," she said. "Somewhere is this yard, tonight, with two