ONBOARDING / 02 / THE INVITATION
internal documentation from Product Classification: an unlisted address, one guest, no host named
May Season Studio Archives
by Gintare O.
preceding file: Onboarding / 01 / The Smell
She opened it Sunday afternoon.
She had left the card face down on the notebook all morning. She had made a second cup of coffee. She had cleaned the counter. She had put a load of laundry in and then, standing at the machine listening to it fill, had realized she was avoiding a folded piece of paper on her kitchen table, which was ridiculous.
She sat back down. She picked up the card.
The paper was heavier than it should have been for its size. It bent stiffly when she opened it. It did not want to fold flat.
Inside, in the same oxblood ink, in the same handwriting, was an address on Route 53, a Friday date, and the time 6:00 PM. Above them, one line.
You are cordially invited.
That was all. No name of a host. No RSVP. No return card. No dress code. No mention of what the event was.
She read it three times. She was checking, mostly, to see if anything on it changed. Nothing did.
The address was a stretch of Route 53 she had driven a hundred times. She could not picture what was there. She could picture the stretch itself, the frontage road, the two-story office buildings set back behind trees, the storage yards behind chain link, but she could not put a building at that number.
She held the card up to the window. She had seen people do this in movies. She did not know what she was looking for. She was looking for a watermark, maybe, or a logo pressed into the paper. There was neither.
She refolded the card. She set it back on top of the notebook.
She thought about calling her sister and then did not. Her sister would want a beginning and an end and a reasonable question at the end of it, and Genny did not have any of those. What she had was a piece of stationery she could not account for and a workplace where you learned not to account for things.
She put the card in the inside zipper pocket of her bag, which she never used. She zipped it closed. She left the bag by the door.
Monday came in normally.
She had been half expecting it not to. Some part of her, going to bed Sunday night, had thought Monday might be different in some small way, that the card would announce itself before she was ready, that there would be a follow up on her doorstep or a voicemail from a number she did not know. There was neither. Her alarm went off. She made coffee. She drove to work. She parked in her usual spot.
She checked the inside zipper pocket in the elevator, quickly, without looking at what she was doing. The card was there. She let go of it.
She waited until Blake was refilling his water bottle.
