“How did you know the first chord?” Sherry asked.
I shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me,” I finally admitted. “The start of that song was just a chord. I just knew instinctively that it was a C-major seventh. I know that sort of the same way you can tell that the color of your shirt is pink.”
Sherry corrected me. “It’s mauve.”
I stopped in the hallway and stared at Sherry. She looked at me confused, and then she suddenly understood what I was talking about. We both laughed for about a minute. Luckily, we were just outside the lunchroom.
There wasn’t anybody in the food service line, so we managed to get our food. I just got a juice and a small bag of chips. Sherry got a slice of pizza.
Kristen looked at the two of us and smiled. “I take it everything went all right.”
Sherry blushed and said, “Yes.”
“So, what gossip did I miss?” I asked, changing the subject.
Kristen picked Merry and me up for the party at five. We were going to be part of Kristen’s party set-up crew.
Merry had a curfew of ten o’clock, but I told my mother that Patty had to be home by eleven and, since I had to stay at Kristen’s until the party officially ended at midnight, Patty had offered to drop Merry off.
“There won’t be any alcohol, will there?” Mom asked.
“I told you before. No. Just cider and soda,” I assured my mother yet again.
“You didn’t mention cider before!”
“Kristen got a few gallons at a farm stand. I don’t think it’s going to be anything harder than you get at the grocery.”
My mother considered this and finally relented. “All right. Just make sure that you watch out for your little sister.”
“All the boys there will have dates. Merry will be fine.”
“All right.”
The doorbell rang, and the conversation ended. It was Kristen. She had a lovely “Horn o’ Plenty” filled with fruits and nuts, which was wrapped in yellow cellophane.
“Hello, Mrs. Cummings,” Kristen said. “This is for you. Happy Halloween!”
“Oh, Kristen! That looks huge!” my mother gushed.
I took the present from Kristen and moved it onto our dining room table. It matched my mother’s fall pattern tablecloth, which was apparently Kristen’s intention.
My mother looked at it, and complained, “We didn’t get you anything!”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I just wanted to thank you for allowing Jim and Merry to come to my party!”
“It’s lovely!”
Merry had come downstairs when she heard the doorbell, and she gushed over Kristen’s present. “Wow!”
Neither Merry nor I had our costumes. Kristen has promised us that she’d have costumes ready for us when we got there—they were going to be a surprise. Kristen kept on kidding me for weeks about what my costume would be. At one point, she said I’d be going as Adam and wearing only a fig leaf.
One time when she had said that, I answered, “If I’m Adam, will you be Eve? If so, what size fig leaves do they have in those naughty catalogs that you have?” That remark earned me a playful smack from Kristen.
Kristen drove us to her house, and at the gate, I noticed a large pail hanging nearby underneath a miniature street lamp. Kristen looked in it and smiled. She noticed Merry and I looking at it as well and she explained, “We fill this with Hershey bars and Snickers candy. There are instructions on the bottom of the pail explaining how to contact the house when it’s empty. We did this last year. A couple of kids got greedy, but not as many as you’d think.”
“Neat,” said Merry, who ran out of the car and snagged a Snickers for herself.
We drove past the gate and Kristen parked her car in the garage.
When Merry and I got to the playroom, we both whistled at the transformation.
The entire apartment now sported a Halloween theme with cobwebs along the ceiling. The overstuffed chairs were gone, replaced by some beanbag chairs. A stereo and some large speakers were on the side of the room, and there was a stack of LP records on a record changer. In the center of the living room was an open area where people could stand or dance.
The redesign of the apartment extended into the bedroom as well; the bed was completely gone, as was the door that led to it. Where the bed had been were some beanbags, a stereo, and a twenty-one inch television that would be set to the local station that had promised twelve hours of scary movies through the night.
We had told our friends that there would be dancing and scary movies, and I was quite happy with the alterations, although I privately wondered where Kristen and I would sleep that night, after the party. I didn’t worry too much about it; Kristen seemed to have everything planned perfectly.
One of the things I realized was that Kristen’s redesign gave people few places to spend alone in private (actually, only the bathroom). Kristen had told me that she had hired some off-duty police officers to work as security guards and to ensure when people left the apartment, they went home and didn’t wander around the property.
Kristen’s parents had their own party to attend, and were already gone. However, they seemed to approve of the arrangements that Kristen made.
The three of us had a meal of turkey sandwiches that were conveniently stored in the refrigerator among cases of soft drinks like Coke, Pepsi, Tab, Seven-Up, and Dr Pepper.
In the kitchen was a fountain that had the dark brown cider bubbling inside it. There were paper cups around the fountain, and garbage bins conveniently placed all throughout the apartment.
There wasn’t much for Merry and I to do; Kristen seemed to have done a great job in the two days since I had last been at the apartment.
Our guests would start arriving between six and seven o’clock. Kristen went into the bedroom, fetched out a box, and handed it to me. “Merry and I will change in the bedroom. You can change in the living room. Your outfit is in the box.”
When I opened the box, I smiled. I knew from my History class that this was a Roman tunic. It was brown with sequins and rhinestones. There was also a cape that matched the tunic, and instructions that identified the rest of costume as being arm guards and leg guards. There was also a surprisingly heavy sword (it was very dull—I tested it!), and a very fancy helmet with a red plume on top. Inside the box was also a pair of sandals and a paper bag.
I put on the outfit and then looked in the paper bag. There was something hairy that I finally figured out was a beard and something called “spirit gum” and “spirit gum remover.” There were enough instructions on the spirit gum to indicate that I used this to fasten the beard to my face. Since I didn’t have a mirror, I didn’t put on the beard.
I look at myself. The toga fit nicely; it was apparent that Kristen had the outfit tailored for me, since she knew all my sizes.
I put my street clothes into the costume box, closed it, and then waited for the other two girls to arrive from the bedroom.
After a few minutes, I got restless. It took a lot of willpower for me to avoid going toward the bedroom, mostly out of respect for Merry’s privacy. I instead turned to the stereo and put it on. I didn’t know which record was on the bottom of the stack, so I switched it to the receiver and quickly found a station playing ”Monster Mash.”
I found the beanbag chair relaxing, and was startled when I heard Kristen’s voice.
“I see Antony has made it.”
I turned and found my beautiful Goddess dressed as Cleopatra. Her hair was black (a wig, I later found out), and she was wearing an opulent headdress made of gold mesh.