Club Himeros

Club Himeros

The black velvet box sat open on the coffee table for three days, its contents aggressively visible and loudly obvious and annoyingly impossible to ignore. 

At least a dozen times, Lindy sat on the couch to deal with the box—put the lid back on, perhaps, and then find a better home for it in the apartment.  She had a half-dozen nooks and cupboards and closets and shelves in which to store a box this size.  There was no reason it couldn’t be relocated in one of them.

But storing the box would have meant she’d arrived at a decision regarding its contents, and that was something she had thus far failed to do.

It arrived at her doorstep on Tuesday atop a pile of regular mail, the problem being that it had not
been
mailed, clearly.  It had no postage and no evidence anyone had attached an address to it at any time, which suggested a hand-delivery, and not by anybody working for the postal service.  It was also not sealed in any real sense; the lid was held in place by a red satin ribbon.  And there was no external card indicating either an intended recipient or a well-wishing sender.

Before even opening it, then, Lindy had a lot of questions.

Lindy had taken the box inside and pulled open the loose knot in the satin ribbon, taken off the lid, and carefully examined what was inside.  Then she went out into the hall and down a flight, and knocked on the door of Mrs. Bell, the exceedingly nosy elderly landlord of the three-story row house, and also the person who took the mail from the vestibule up to the top two floors every day after the mailman dropped it off.

It was possible to get past Mrs. Bell without her knowing, because Mrs. Bell was at that age where she was convinced the world had stopped speaking loudly enough to be heard, rather than that she’d begun to lose her hearing.  But most afternoons she appeared to have little else to do aside from monitor the front door, which didn’t lock reliably.

“There was a package?” Mrs. Bell said, when asked.  “I didn’t see anything like that, dear.  Are you sure?”

Rather than elaborate on what had been delivered, Lindy just thanked her and never-minded her way back up the stairs again, and the mystery of the velvet box deepened. 

By Wednesday morning Lindy decided she didn’t care about the box any more, and resolutely ignored it as she left the apartment for her job at the bank.  But pretending it wasn’t there failed to eradicate it from her mind, and she spent the entire day wondering the sorts of things one wonders when receiving an anonymous package:
who sent it?  Was it really meant for her?  What should she
do
about it?

She didn’t even realize how preoccupied she was until she called a customer—whose name was Dr. Marks—Dr. Mask.

That night she had a long argument with herself over the card that had come in the box.

After the lid came off, the first thing to be found inside was a square card in a square envelope, both made of the kind of paper that was measured in thickness and had its own name.

LINDY

YOU ARE INVITED

This was the legend on the envelope.  Inside was an address to a place she’d never been before, in a part of the city she’d never visited, on a street she hadn’t heard of.  The words were on raised script in an exotic font.  Seeing her name was the first indication she had that this wasn’t simply a delivery error on someone’s part, even though after reading it she was still mostly convinced it was for a different Lindy.

SATURDAY

MIDNIGHT

She was okay with a party this late.  Any day now, she was sure she would wake up and be a real adult, the kind that thought Midnight parties were impossibly burdensome events requiring significant advance notice, extra protein and caffeine.  But so far that hadn’t happened, so the college girl she still felt like saw the start time and thought,
sure, why not?

And it was definitely an invitation to a party, albeit one thrown by an unknown someone.  When first reading the invitation she thought this might have been something else.  Michael, maybe, setting up something romantic and weird.  But Michael wasn’t weird or particularly romantic.  He was also probably not creative enough to concoct such an elaborate thing.

COME ALONE

Even if it wasn’t Michael, it was someone who knew them both pretty well.

Lindy’s love life was currently more complicated than it had been since her freshman year.  That was the year she and Michael became a couple, which they had remained up until about three weeks ago, when they became something else.

It was complicated because she wasn’t sure what that something else was.  It
seemed
as if they’d broken up, and certainly since that night three weeks ago they’d only spoken a few times, briefly, mainly regarding the location of objects whose ownership between them was in open dispute.

They hadn’t formally broken up, in the sense that those words were ever spoken.  But that may have been because they’d been together for so long neither knew how to define themselves as anything other than one half of an “and” statement.  All of their friends were friends with Michael
and
Lindy.  All of their stuff was Michael
and
Lindy’s.  Their apartment was Michael
and
Lindy’s, even when Michael temporarily moved out, which was surely a strong indication that they were no longer “and” anything.  They had become “or”.

Possibly.  It was also possible they were
taking a break to
work out some things
, which is what they told the mutual friends who were close enough to observe that Lindy was the only one living in Michael and Lindy’s.

She didn’t know if the break was permanent or temporary, and if it meant seeing other people or not.  She also didn’t know if Michael knew the answer to either question.

Whoever sent the invitation knew enough about Lindy’s love life to tell her not to bring someone, and that might have been more than Lindy knew herself.

SECRET!  TELL NOBODY

This was the next line in the invitation, and it was the one she was arguing with herself about, because what she really wanted to do was call a couple of friends to see if they’d gotten an invitation as well. 

Tina, for instance.  This sounded like exactly the sort of thing she would be down for.  But she couldn’t bring Tina—assuming Lindy even went, which was really doubtful—because Lindy was told to “come alone”, and couldn’t ask Tina if she was also invited because Lindy wasn’t allowed to tell anybody.

She argued with herself about this for most of Wednesday night. 
How would they know
was a strong argument in favor of calling one of her friends, especially since she didn’t even know who “they” were.  And what would the punishment be for telling, exactly?

By the end of the night she either won or lost the argument, depending on which side of herself she was rooting for: she didn’t call Tina, or Meg, or anyone else.  Despite a powerful curiosity, there was a sense that if she made the call she’d ruin the whole thing.  The mystery would become something mundane.

That only left the rest of the message—and the package’s remaining contents—to deal with, along with the question of whether or not to go.

The final part of the invitation was the most alarming and also the most intriguing:

MANDATORY ATTIRE ENCLOSED

(ALL OTHER CLOTHING OPTIONAL)

Beneath the envelope and under a layer of white paper taffeta was a mask.  At first she thought it was one of the cheap costume-store types, a sort of Lone-Ranger thing, just enough to cover the area around the eyes.  But this was of a higher quality, and when she held it up in front of her face it seemed—a little alarmingly—like something sized for her.  It was also not black like a Ranger mask, but burgundy red, and made of soft leather.  The ties for it were ribbons instead of string.  And if she had put it on—she did not, because doing so seemed like a decision unto itself—it would cover her entire face from the tip of the nose on up. 

Beneath the mask was a choker, also made of leather and also burgundy.  It had a gold loop hanging from it, which didn’t seem to serve much purpose other than as a decoration. 

Mandatory
, the note said. 

She didn’t like chokers.  They never seemed to fit right, and as aware as she was that nobody was judging her based on the circumference of her neck, the idea of something being tight because she had a
fat
neck was enough to make her uncomfortable with the idea.

It won’t fit
, she thought. 
It won’t fit and then I won’t be able to go, and then oh well, decision made.
  Yet when she held it up the choker—like the mask—seemed to be sized just for her.  She didn’t lock the clasp, though, so she couldn’t be sure.

She mistook the next items in the box for something else.  They were velvet gloves, but had been arranged in such a way to give the appearance of being there only to make the choker look like it was resting on a pillow.  These she did try on immediately, because while she’d never felt an urge to wear a costume mask and didn’t like wearing chokers, elegant evening gloves were the kind of thing she couldn’t resist.

They went all the way up to the elbow, and fit very nicely.  She ended up keeping them on for the rest of the evening, and began planning wardrobes that would give her an excuse to wear them all the time, along with a list of places where evening gloves would make sense.  She couldn’t think of any that didn’t involve also spending a tremendous lot of money or finding someone to spend that money on her, but that was okay.

Lindy nearly missed the last item in the box, so caught up was she with the gloves.  It was a bit of lace and nylon, the same deep burgundy as the rest of the package: a pair of G-string thong panties, barely large enough to cover the front and not even trying to cover anywhere else.

“
Mandatory
,” she repeated, examining the underwear in the light.  “
All other clothing optional
.  What the hell kind of party is this?”

*   *   *

By Friday night, Lindy had succeeded in putting the box back together and finding a place for it in the apartment—the back of her half of the closet—but that didn’t mean she’d come to any kind of decision.  It meant company was coming.

The company was named Vivi.  Her full first name was Vivian, but preferred Vivi or V over the much more common Viv, which she adamantly declined to respond to under any circumstances.  If someone were ever to shout, “Look out, Viv!” she would be too busy ignoring the name to look for what she was being warned about.  Lindy was pretty sure this was how Vivi was going to die.

V arrived bearing Chinese food and red wine for their “girls’ night in”, which was a thing they used to do more regularly in college.  A lot had changed since: the wine was much better quality, the food was no longer pizza, and the evening was less likely to end with them sharing a joint.

“So, how are you
doing
?” Vivi asked her, some two hours into the evening.  The question was explicitly about Michael.  No elaboration was necessary.

“I’m holding up okay,” Lindy said, which may have been the truth.

They were sitting at the dining room table, which was covered in white cardboard food containers and open duck sauce vats, one empty wine bottle and another half-empty one.  Lindy felt full, buzzed, and completely updated on every bit of gossip V knew regarding all of their mutual acquaintances and a number of people Lindy had never even met.