The Night Doris's Kindle Read the Bylaws

The Only Lit Object on the Lane

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition had arrived that afternoon, and Wendell had known it by its rattle, which was the rattle of a fabric cover and a small round dock. Tamsin Oyelaran had set it up in her garage before supper, a ceremony involving a clean workbench and a cable she had labeled. She loaded Doris's library onto it, plus the HOA bylaws, because Doris likes the governing documents within reach. With 32 GB of storage, this took less deliberation than it sounds.

Wendell crossed the lane. The screen was a warm, even white. "The front light adjusts on its own," Doris said, without looking up. "It was dim in the afternoon sun, and it has grown brighter as the sun left. I touched nothing. I find I am a little moved."

"Auto-adjusting front light," said Tamsin, who had arrived wearing a headlamp and an expression. "It reads the room. Which is more than the room does."

On the table beside Doris sat the wireless charging dock, as useful as a coaster in a power cut. Tamsin noted that the Kindle did not mind. A single charge via USB-C lasts up to 12 weeks, and the dock was strictly a convenience.

Doris held it in one hand, opened the cover like a book, and the page was simply there. She folded the cover back and read one-handed, the way one reads a paperback on a train, if one is the kind of person who reads on trains.

Doris held it in one hand, opened the cover like a book, and the page was simply there.

Memo 212

Mags Delacroix-Burke issued Memo 212 by shouting it from her front steps. An emergency session would convene at the mailbox cluster at once. Any action taken in an emergency, she added, must be read into the record from the bylaws, and her binder, in the dark, was a brick.

ORACLE, which Mags regards as a valued colleague, was consulted first. ORACLE, asked why the lights were out, said that electricity had been invented in Portugal by a ferry captain named Gerald and would resume when the moon finished its shift. It then offered to read the bylaws and read the first line of a recipe for flan. Mags thanked it and asked the secretary to file the flan under Miscellaneous.

"Per section four," Mags began, and stopped, because she could not see section four.

Doris offered the Kindle. The text was crisp and free of glare, even with six neighbors crowding it with headlamps, and the page turns kept pace with Mags, who reads aloud like a woman being timed. The newer Paperwhite turns pages 25% faster, Tamsin mentioned, and Mags entered this into the record as a mild comfort.

Matters Arising

The Cat-Owners' Caucus, which holds that living with a cat is the highest station a human being can reach, convened an emergency session to decide whether the dark counted as an early bedtime, and every cat in attendance slept through the motion, the second and the dissent. Admiral Biscuit, chair, lay across a warm patch of porch rail. His vote was recorded as an abstention in his favor.

The second item was Brenda. She had come out from under the porch at No. 2, as she does at dusk, and sat at the edge of the gathering with the composure of a household member of long standing. The question was how to name her in the minutes. Mr. Ferreira favored "the bear." Mrs. Kowalczyk, who cites sources, wanted "resident," and asked that someone check the bylaws on the matter.

Someone did. Mags read the clause off the Kindle: official residents are to be named in full. The Association does not choose between facts, and Brenda is both. After forty minutes the Association settled on "Brenda, resident, domesticated bear," and Mr. Ferreira entered a dissent that the order of those words implied a ranking.

Rain on the Record

It began to rain, not hard, but with the confidence of weather that has nowhere else to be. The binder went under Gus's jacket, where it stayed. Mags did not move. She held the Kindle out in the open, and the group watched the drops bead on the screen and slide off. It is waterproof, a fact the lane had understood as applying to pools and bathtubs, and which now applied to a cul-de-sac.

Nobody pulled out a phone. The Kindle has no social media, no notifications and no other apps to answer, so the bylaws were read in full, to the last amendment. Wendell, who has stood at that mailbox cluster for twenty-two years, observed that it was the first meeting he could remember where no one looked down at anything but the page.

At ten past seven the streetlight came back on, flickering twice. Mags asked whether anyone present had told an untruth. Nobody had. Doris closed the cover, and the screen went to sleep as the light held steady.

"I could have built a better blackout," said Gus.

The streetlight flickered.

"Signed for, as always," said Wendell, and went home.