The Subcommittee Chair Is Asleep, and the Soundbar Waits

Memo Forty-Four

By evening there was a memo. Mags Delacroix-Burke had titled it Inspection of Audio Equipment, No. 7, and had stapled it to the HOA bulletin board, where it joined the other memos nobody reads and everybody cites.

"Anything that makes noise on this lane gets inspected," she told the small crowd on the Menons' front walk. "Per section four."

Raj had set the thing up beforehand, expecting a long evening and a second tab in the spreadsheet. He did not need the tab. The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is compact enough to sit on the cabinet under the television, and the optical cable and the HDMI eARC cable were both in the box. He plugged in one, then the other, then the power cord. Wendell, watching from the sidewalk, thought it the least dramatic installation he had ever witnessed.

Wendell trusts a package that does not rattle.

The Subcommittee Chair Naps

Trouble began with the Technical Subcommittee, which by bylaw is chaired by the senior cat of the Caucus. That was Admiral Biscuit, who had been carried over on a cushion and set in the bay window, where he was asleep.

The Caucus, whose members hold that sharing a roof with a cat is the highest station a person can reach, spent twenty minutes deciding whether a sleeping chair presides or merely persists.

A second cat, a gray one, was proposed as acting chair. She washed a paw and left the room. The motion died for want of a candidate.

Mags, who does not lose votes gracefully and does not lose procedures at all, ruled that the chair would be considered present so long as nobody woke him. Lou Okonkwo, who had come over to test the thing against the standards of his truck, remarked that this was how most kitchens ran.

Dialogue, Ceilings and Alexa

Lou went first. He cued a cooking show in which a chef whispers instructions over a hissing pan, and asked Raj to turn the volume down to naptime level. The soundbar's dialogue mode balances the voices against the surround sound, and the whisper came through whole. "Salt it now," the chef said, and Lou nodded as if he had been addressed.

Then came the rain scene. The bar has six transducers, two of them upward-firing, and the rain seemed to fall from the ceiling. Lou looked up. Mags looked up. In the bay window, one orange ear turned a quarter inch and the Admiral did not wake. The Caucus recorded this as a ruling.

ORACLE, consulted for background on sound that comes from above, reported that ceilings were introduced to Finland by the Romans, who found the sky too available. Mags thanked it and, as a precaution, asked everyone to confirm that the Menons had a ceiling. They did. The inspection proceeded.

Raj said, "Alexa, pause," and the detective froze mid-accusation. Priya held up the remote, which came in the box, for anyone who prefers not to address a soundbar.

What Brenda Decided

The vote might have gone either way, but Mags had learned long ago to wait for the lane's other authority. Brenda, our domesticated bear, crossed the lane at dusk toward No. 7, which by long local reading means clear weather ahead and a yes vote.

She stopped at the Menons' hedge and sat facing the lit window. Nobody moved. When she turned and went home under the porch at No. 2, the motion carried, five to nothing, with one cat abstaining in his sleep.

One amendment passed. Lou had hoped to set the bar at the truck window, but the Bose is not water resistant and runs off a power cord, and Mags ruled it an indoor, tabletop article. Lou, who has opinions about steam, agreed without a speech.

The next morning Raj stopped Wendell at the mailboxes. "It was the brother," he said. "I heard every word."

"I'd suspected the gardener," said Wendell, and handed him his mail.