"No," I said. "It doesn't."
He studied my face and seemed to notice that I was not joking. Then he glanced toward Patricia's house next door, and I watched the first trace of uncertainty pass through him. The golf cart engine was running. He had both hands on the wheel, and the small remote rested in his palm.
"You might want to talk to her," he said.
"I intend to. But first I'd like to know whether you were told this was an association-owned building."
"That's what Trish said." He frowned. "I never had any reason to think different."
There is a moment in almost every dispute when someone tells you something that will matter later and has no idea he has done it. Dale had just told me that Patricia was not merely using my garage without permission. She had represented it to the neighbors as property owned by someone other than the people whose names were on the deed.
"All right," I said. "Please don't open this garage again without my permission. We'll sort out the cart separately."
Dale looked embarrassed, but not offended. "Sure. Sorry about the misunderstanding."
He pressed the remote, lowered the door between us, and drove away at a sensible speed. I stood on my front walk listening to the electric motor shut off behind a door that I owned but that a man across the street could open more easily than I could. As he passed the colonial, Dale waved toward the porch. The curtain moved, although no one came out.
The problem was no longer whether somebody had forgotten to remove a few things before closing. The problem was that an entire neighborhood had been taught to treat my property as a convenience. I had just met one of the students, and he did not seem remotely wicked.
I went to Dale's house the next morning with two mugs of coffee.
One was an act of hospitality. The other was a useful way to give him something to hold while I asked questions that might make him uncomfortable. His ranch-style house stood directly across from mine, with a flagpole near the sidewalk and two ceramic geese on the front stoop dressed in matching seasonal scarves. He came out before I reached the mailbox, wiping his hands on a dish towel, and looked pleasantly surprised to see me.
"You didn't need to bring coffee," he said.
"I know. I wanted to ask you something about the garage. Thought we might start again. I'm Thomas Hale."
"Dale Mercer." He accepted the mug. "I figured you had questions."
We stood beneath the narrow shade cast by his porch roof. I asked him how long the garage had been used for storage, how he got his remote, and whether anyone had ever shown him an association deed or written agreement. He answered every question with the earnest deliberation of a man who would rather admit ignorance than manufacture knowledge. I came to like him before we finished talking, which made what he told me harder to hear.