Bloody-Minded Rules Lawyers
NYC Title 24 §4-03
Admiral Biscuit
Offbeat carefully backed her carriage into its underground parking spot and then turned around and unfastened the shafts from her harness. Once they dropped to the ground, she could turn further and release the latches on her singletree.
She made sure that the brakes were set before leaving it, and walked across the hard concrete to the elevator bank. The elevator was a luxury she hadn't known she’d want when she moved in. She was young and fit: stairs had seemed like a perfectly good way to get up to her floor—but a day of work on the streets of the city wore her out. Too many stops and starts, and the pavement was hard on her legs.
She covered a yawn just as the elevator doors slid open, then stepped inside, carefully selecting her floor button. The buttons were in tightly-packed ranks, and it was easy to hit several of them by accident.
The elevator was busy at the end of the day, and a few neighbors got on during her ascent, mostly arriving on the ground floor and packing themselves in to what they considered a comfortable degree. Humans usually didn’t like being close enough to touch if they could avoid it, something that had always struck her as strange—sometimes in the morning when everybody was going to work, the elevator would get called to a floor, but the potential passenger would see that there were already five or six aboard and choose to wait for the next one rather than squeeze in.
When the bell dinged for her floor, she stepped between the riders and out the door, finally getting her hooves on carpet. The slight give was refreshing—not as good as grass, but better than cement and tile.
She lived halfway down on the west side of the building. She slid her key out from its pouch on her harness, pushed it into the lock, and twisted the key with her mouth while pawing at the handle with a hoof. Human doors were not pony friendly, and she’d been negotiating with building management to put a contact plate on her door like the hotels had. She’d even pay for it, but thus far they’d simply stated that the doors were not to be modified in any way.
Whatever. She pushed the door open and let it shut behind her as she reached for the time-clock on the wall. She grabbed the time card with her mouth, slid it into the machine, and stamped the time and date on her card. The machine, at least, was semi hoof-friendly, even if it was stupid that she had to have it.
As usual, Offbeat resisted the alluring pull of her couch. It wasn’t time to stretch out and relax yet, even if she wanted to. She pushed the door shut behind her, twisted the lock, and then stepped into the so-called foyer.
Getting her tack off was easy enough. Sometimes people asked her how she put it on and took it off again, if she had anyone to help her, and she told them that it was easy with practice. A few buckles had to be unfastened, and then she could just slide it off her head in one piece. Maybe humans hadn’t been so clever when they’d designed harnesses for their equines.
She checked the cheek strap to make sure that her license medallion was still securely in place. The law required her to wear a halter with her license number on it which was a stupid regulation. It didn’t require how she wore it, so it was zip-tied to the top of her saddle band. Nobody made halters for ponies anyway, not on Earth and not back in Equestria.
Her coat closet had a peg she’d attached for hanging up her harness. She hooked her breastband over it, then worked the straps in position, making sure they weren’t tangled up.
That task done, she headed to the bathroom to wash off the day’s sweat and grime.
•••
Before she’d done any more than shake herself off, she walked to the kitchen—dripping water the whole way—and started nose-booping out a food order on her DoorDash app. New York City had a dizzying array of food from the hundreds of cultures on Earth, and if that wasn’t enough there were fusion restaurants that mixed cuisines. She was fairly certain that she could live in this apartment for the rest of her life and never have the same dinner twice if she so chose. Today felt like an Italian day, so she ordered wild mushroom risotto from Maison Harlem, and then went back to the bathroom. If she’d timed her order right, it would arrive right about when she was finished grooming.
The knock on her apartment door came sooner than expected, and a minute later she had food on her kitchen table. Instead of eating it right away, she decided to finish brushing her tail first, and then eat.
A few minutes later, she was just settling in for dinner when there was another knock at her door. Did I get the wrong order? Offbeat lifted the lid on her food. It looked and smelled like mushroom risotto.
“Coming.” She hopped out of her chair and headed down the little hallway to her front door.
It wasn't DoorDash again, it wasn’t UPS or Amazon or a Jehovah’s Witness; it wasn’t the building super coming to inform her that a contact pad would be allowed on her door after all, or a neighbor coming to invite her to a party. Instead, it was a code enforcement officer with a permanent frown etched into his face.
“I’m Inspector McDonagh from the New York City Department of Health. Are you—” He looked down at his paperwork and the frown got deeper. “Offbeat? Offbeat Offbeat? Miss?”
“Yeah, I’m Offbeat. Just one, but your form didn’t let me only put a name into one box.”
“I see,” he said with a tone suggesting what he thought about people—or ponies—who didn’t fill out forms correctly. Even if that form couldn’t be filled out correctly. What was she supposed to do, list her name as Beat, Off? That was no good. “And you run a carriage horse business.”
“Yes.”
“Your record doesn’t indicate where the animal is stabled,” he said. “That information is required.”
She rolled her eyes. This was another stupid thing in all the requirements, like her having to have a halter with her medallion on it, or being required to take five weeks of vacation every year. Or to retire when she was twenty-six—that was a problem she was going to have to sort out next year. For right now, it was one battle at a time.
“Right here, this address.”
“This is an apartment building.”
“Yes.”
“That is not an appropriate place to stable an equine. Even if it isn’t in violation of the building’s lease—which I’m sure it is—it is a clear violation.”
Offbeat sighed. “Me, I’m the equine, and I live here.” She pointed her hoof at herself, and then at the number on the door of her apartment.
He looked at her, then his paperwork, then back at her again. “This is most unusual.”
“Why? What part of it is unusual?”
His mouth dropped open as he attempted to formulate an answer. City code had of course never considered that the carriage horse ‘owner’ and the carriage horse would be the same entity; it wasn’t like Mr. Ed was going to trot down to the licensing department and get a license to pull carriages.
Except that was exactly what had happened, a neat little end run around the paperwork, a tree that owned itself situation.
Exactly what he hated.
“Right, then, we’ll just get on with making sure you and your—you are in full compliance. Do you have veterinary papers and vaccination records for the—for yourself?”
She nodded. Having to see a human vet had been an unusual experience. There had been similar confusion when she’d scheduled her appointment, and she’d learned that implying that there was a separate equine who needed to be examined made things go quicker on the phone, at least until the office had gotten used to her.
The receptionist and she had conspired to not warn the actual vet, who took one step into the holding stall where she had to wait and then noped right back out of it. After that, they’d got along great.
Offbeat grabbed the paperwork out of her file folder and spread it out on the kitchen table.
“You mind if I eat my dinner while you’re looking through it?”
Inspector McDonagh very much minded, but he couldn’t think of a single objection he could make. It was rude, but that wasn’t against the law. Instead, he just snapped open his reading glasses and started examining her paperwork.
She’d been thorough; she had her time cards, complete records from the vet and invoices for all her shoeings; she also had a separate set of medical records from an actual Pony doctor. Which counted for nothing as far as the city was concerned.
She was still eating her dinner when he finished looking through her paperwork. He shoved it back into its folder, pulled his reading glasses down, and turned his focus back to her. “Hoof brand?”
Offbeat stretched her left foreleg out for his examination. She’d always favored hot-shoeing for a better fit, so the brand hadn’t been that weird. Well, not until the human who’d done it started making it awkward, asking her several times if she was really, really sure she wanted an identification number branded into her hoof.
In actual fact, she didn’t, but the law was the law and she couldn’t legally operate without it.
“I see.” It of course matched the record, and if he’d checked the harness hanging in the closet, he’d have seen that the number on her medallion matched as well. “Very well, now I need to inspect the ‘stables.’”
While ponies didn’t really do air quotes for obvious reasons, Offbeat knew them when she saw them.
“Fine.” She snapped the lid on what was left of her wild mushroom risotto. She’d just have to finish her dinner later. Or save it for tomorrow and finish off the night with an ice cream sundae instead.
Equestria had its share of bull-headed bureaucrats, bloody-minded rules lawyers, and they wouldn’t go away until they were satisfied. As much as she didn’t want him poking his nose all around her apartment—especially since she hadn’t tidied up, since she didn’t know he was coming—she really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Not if she wanted to keep her job.
He was already poking around her kitchen, and before she could protest, he opened her fridge.
It was largely empty. A half-empty container of milk, two blocks of cheese, a growler of Tenement beer from Torch & Crown . . . her shopping day was later in the week.
Inspector McDonagh examined the beer, holding it away from himself as if it were poison, before putting it back in the fridge. His eyes roved over the counter, the tube of Quaker Oats—a good quick breakfast which could be cooked or eaten raw—and various other kitchen goods. She didn’t have much; she always ate lunch out and usually ordered dinners delivered.
“And you have sanitary facilities?”
Offbeat nodded, and opened her bathroom door. It had been a surprise to discover that every apartment she’d looked at had its own bathroom with a shower. Most apartments in Manehattan didn’t, instead offering a shared facility on each floor.
He took in the cluster of shampoos and conditioners, the scattered curry brushes and mane combs and hair ties, the tail extension she sometimes wore when she wanted to look really fancy for a night out on the town. The damp towels draped over the towel rod and the wrinkled bathmat on the floor, the lingering scent of her soap still hanging over the bathroom.
Without asking for permission, he stepped into the bathroom and took the showerhead off the wall. It had a hose attached to it so she could, in theory, remove it from its clip. She’d tried that once and the convenience it had added to her bathing had been offset by the difficulty of removing it and putting it back up—it was sized for standing humans, not a pony.
He left the bathroom without turning out the lights and then cast a cursory glance at her living room before turning his attention to her bedroom.
Offbeat hadn’t appreciated the irony of the apartment company saving space—and being trendy—by using hanging barn doors as bedroom doors. She liked how big they made her apartment feel when they were open, and never really gave a thought to their pastoral origins.
This was also where she ran into her first real difficulty.
She saw his eyes light up at the moment he laid eyes on her bedroom, and she knew it wasn’t because of the half-read Tamora Pierce novel on her bed stand. Functionaries like him read legal codes for fun, not novels.
“There’s no bedding,” he said. “Title 24 Section 4-03 (f) requires bedding be changed at least once daily, and be at least three inches thick.”
“It’s too hot for three inches of bedding,” Offbeat protested. “Even a blanket is kind of excessive, don’t you think? Unless I run the air conditioner really cold and that’s a waste of electricity. Maybe in the wintertime.”
“It’s customary to use hay or straw, although—”
“Hay or straw? Do you have any idea how itchy that is?” She narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “What did you say, title 24?”
“Section 4-03 (f).”
“I’m gonna google that.”
“Go right ahead, it won’t change the regulation.”
Offbeat trotted back to the dining room table and picked up her cell phone. It had taken her a while to figure out its robot assistant, but once she had, it had proved its value. “Okay, Google,” she began. A moment later, she had a PDF of the relevant law. “Doesn’t say that it has to be straw or hay,” she protested.
“No, nor did I. It’s customary—”
“And it doesn’t say that the bedding has to be on the floor, either. My bed is more than three inches thick from the frame to the top of the mattress, isn’t it?”
“The mattress doesn’t count as bedding.”
“Who says?” She scrolled the screen up. “There’s nothing about that in the definition.”
HIs face started to redden. “It’s common parlance; even if you’re trying to stretch the intent of the law to include a bed. Horses don’t use beds, they lay down on the floor of their stall.”
“I’m not a horse, buddy.” She flicked her tail and then reached under her bed. Humans made all sorts of clever containers that fit in odd spaces, such as the otherwise empty space under her bed. It was a perfect place to store all of her bed linens and blankets. “But fine, if you insist the mattress doesn’t count.” She pulled off the lid and threw her comforter over the bed. “There, that should be three inches.”
“It’s not even close.”
“You’re not counting the memory foam pad that’s under the bottom sheet,” she protested. “That’s not the mattress, that’s on top of it.”
“Uh-huh. And you change it daily?” He looked at the storage container, which didn’t include extra memory foam pads.
“Who changes their bedding daily? If I had a fever, maybe then.”
“That’s a violation,” he said. “And I also don’t feel you have sufficient nutritional foods available to you, which is a violation of Section 4-04 (b).”
“I was literally eating dinner when you showed up.”
“Yes, we’ve had a hard time inspecting since nobody ever seems to be home during normal business hours.”
Offbeat let out an exasperated sigh. “That’s because I’m working during normal business hours.”
“Normally, a stable has employees constantly available during the day.”
“I’m available to myself whenever I’m home,” she said. “If I wake up in the middle of the night I can make myself available to me if I should happen to need something.”
“Mm-hm.” He took out a pen and a notepad. “I’m not going to fine you for the 4-04 (b) at this time, since your medical records seem to indicate that you’re in good health and an appropriate weight for an equine of your size, however, I will recommend a fine for the 4-03 (f) violation. That will arrive in the mail and must be paid in fourteen business days; you can dispute the charges with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.”
“How much is the penalty?”
“Usually twenty-five dollars for the first violation, but it can be more.”
“Fine.” Offbeat snorted. “Are we done?”
“For now.” Inspector McDonagh placed his hand on the doorknob. “Since you’ve been found in violation, there will be a followup inspection to make certain you’re in full compliance.”
•••
As soon as the door closed, Offbeat started angrily shoving her comforter back into its storage box. A lack of nutritious food—New York City offered anything she could want, delivered to her door, at all hours of the day and night. And he didn’t have any idea what counted as nutritious food anyway; was she supposed to go to a feed store and buy herself a sack of horse feed and eat that? When there was so much to choose from?
Maybe she would, just so she’d have it for next time. She could lean it up in the kitchen, over in the corner she never really used.
The bedding was a tougher nut to crack. Buying enough bedding so that she could change it every day was absurd. There was no way that Inspector McDonagh changed his bedsheets every day. Nobody did.
She sighed. That was a problem she was going to have to solve if she wanted to keep her license. Maybe she could rent herself an approved stable—that was something she could talk to some of the other carriage horse owners about. Did the law say that she had to actually use it, or did it just have to be available to her?
Offbeat put her leftover risotto in the fridge and grabbed her apartment key off its peg. She’d figure out a solution to the problem, but now wasn’t the time for that. Now was the time for an ice cream sundae, and there was a Baskin-Robbins just a couple blocks away. She could sit and nurse a Banana Royale sundae and think about ways to bend the law to her advantage.
Author's Note
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