There is a category of audacity that transcends ordinary entitlement.
Ordinary entitlement is someone who parks in your space and acts put out when you ask them to move. Ordinary entitlement is someone who uses your shared fence as a trellis without asking. Ordinary entitlement is the minor daily friction of people who have slightly miscalibrated their sense of where their rights end and other people’s begin.
What I am describing is something beyond that category.
My name is Rachel Pemberton. I am forty-seven years old. I am an accountant by profession and a methodical person by disposition, which means I keep records the way some people breathe. Not because I am thinking about it, but because not keeping records is a condition I am incapable of sustaining.
I bought my house at 15 Cloverfield Road fifteen years ago. Three years after I moved in, I had an in-ground concrete pool installed—twenty-two feet by forty-four feet, with a tile border at the waterline and concrete coping around the edge.
The Pool's Vital Statistics:
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Installer: Aqua Design Solutions
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Maintenance: Weekly professional service
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Value: Significant financial cost, but immeasurable quality-of-life return.