My Sister-in-Law Took My Expensive Defective Dress to a Corporate Party—So I Sent a Courier to Retrieve It Before the Event
I was carefully filling out the delivery forms for a new collection of evening gowns when the phone on my desk began to vibrate. My sister-in-law’s name appeared on the screen.
“Ira, hi! Now, don’t get all worked up and start stressing!” Alla chirped into the phone as casually as if we were discussing an apple cake recipe. Beneath all that sugary sweetness, however, I could clearly sense that she had done something awful.
“I stopped by your place to water the flowers while you and Petya were at work, and I borrowed that green dress in the thick garment bag! We have a huge banquet at the sports center tonight, and I had absolutely nothing to wear. I’ll bring it back tomorrow, so don’t worry. You’ll probably end up thanking me for the wonderful publicity!”
 
I slowly moved the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen, almost expecting it to display the caller’s medical diagnosis. Then I put it back to my cheek.
I am forty-three years old. For the past seven years, I have owned a small but highly successful evening-gown rental boutique. I know a great deal about fine Italian fabrics and complicated dress patterns—and, unfortunately, just as much about boundless human audacity.
“Alla,” I said, my voice as steady as an engine idling. “Put the dress back immediately. It is part of my business inventory. It was hanging separately in our bedroom because it was waiting for extensive restoration.”
“Oh, come on! What restoration? I’ve already tried it on, and it fits me like a glove!” forty-year-old Alla replied dismissively.
She worked as an administrator at a sports club, firmly believed that she was irresistible, and seemed convinced that the entire world existed solely to provide a suitable backdrop for her magnificence.
“The zipper is just a little tight,” she continued. “Gleb is going to fasten it for me, and then it’ll be perfect.”
Gleb was my relative’s latest acquisition. His occupation was impossible to define. He called himself a “stock-market trader” and a “wealth-attraction specialist,” yet somehow lived in Alla’s apartment and survived entirely on the contents of her refrigerator.
“Alla, listen to me very carefully.” I put down my pen and interlaced my fingers. “That dress is made from natural silk cut on the bias. The zipper has a serious defect. The metal coil separates under tension because one of the bottom teeth is missing. I’m sending our courier to you right now. You will hand him the dress in its garment bag. I’ll cover the delivery charge.”
“Absolutely not!” The syrup vanished from Alla’s voice, replaced at once by a shrill, quarrelsome tone. “You’re simply jealous! You’re always walking around in those severe business suits like a dried-up old prune, while tonight I’m going to be the star of the evening. I need to radiate success! A woman has to dress for the income level she intends to attract. It’s the psychology of abundance, Ira. With your tiny rental shop, you wouldn’t understand!”
“The garment bag has a red label that says, ‘Defective: zipper replacement required. Do not rent,’” I replied calmly. “The only thing you’re attracting right now is public humiliation, not wealth. The courier will be outside your building in twenty minutes.”
“To hell with you and your courier! I’m not letting you ruin my moment of glory just because you’re petty!” she shouted.
 
The line went dead. Alla had ended the call with the fury of someone whose telephone had personally refused to finance her glamorous lifestyle.
I placed my phone neatly on the desk and turned toward Zinaida Karlovna.
She was well into her sixties. In the past, she had served as head costume designer at the regional drama theater; now she worked for me as a restoration specialist. She had the posture of a soldier, the penetrating gaze of an interrogator, and the hands of a surgeon.
“Has our goddess of dumbbells stolen the emerald Ferretti?” Zinaida Karlovna asked, adjusting the glasses suspended from a delicate gold chain without looking up from the beaded corset she was embroidering.
“That’s the one. And she flatly refuses to give it back.”
The older woman shook her head and laid her fine needle on a velvet cushion.
“Natural bias-cut silk does not forgive mistakes, Ira. This isn’t cheap synthetic fabric that you can hold together with a furniture stapler. The thread tension runs diagonally so the material flows over the body like water. The zipper isn’t merely separating. If that woman tries to squeeze her ambitions into the dress and starts yanking at it, the fabric will split along the seams. Micro-weaving restoration starts at five hundred rubles per square centimeter, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I remember perfectly.” I nodded as I opened the delivery service on my computer. “I’ll send Semyon Markovich. Let’s see whether he can break through that wall of abundance psychology.”
Semyon Markovich was our courier, a man with the manners of a retired diplomat and an endless vocabulary. He could usually talk sense into a stone statue. An hour later, however, he called to give me his report.
“Irina Nikolaevna, I shall deliver my report verbally,” he began after clearing his throat with characteristic refinement. “The door was not opened. A female voice informed me through the keyhole that I was an emissary of dark forces attempting to obstruct her financial flow. I was then instructed to proceed to a destination generally expressed in obscene terms. The delivery has been canceled.”
“Thank you, Semyon Markovich. Please return to the boutique.”
 
I ended the call and looked out the window. The evening promised to be interesting.
That night, my husband and I sat in our kitchen. I cut myself a generous slice of homemade cherry pie. Thick ruby-red juice had soaked into the tender pastry, filling the room with the scent of cinnamon and a warm summer garden. I speared a juicy cherry with my dessert fork and looked at Pyotr.
My husband owned an auto-repair shop and worked there as a mechanic. He was a large, levelheaded man who had long ago abandoned any illusions about his younger sister’s personality.
“Petya, your sister opened a garment bag in our bedroom and went to a formal banquet wearing a defective rental dress. She also swore at Semyon Markovich through the door.”
Pyotr thoughtfully put a bite of cherry pie into his mouth, chewed it thoroughly, and pushed his plate aside.
“Understood, Ira. Do you want me to call her and knock some sense into her?”
“There’s no point. She’s busy tuning her vibrations to attract wealth. I’m just warning you: when that silk starts tearing at the seams in the middle of the event, I won’t be rescuing her.”
“And you shouldn’t,” my husband replied calmly, pulling the bowl of cookies toward him. “She doesn’t touch my tools in the garage because I put a stop to it the first time she tried. Your dresses are the tools of your trade. She can deal with the consequences herself.”
The inevitable happened shortly before ten that night, while I was leafing through a catalog of new fabrics. My phone erupted in an anxious trill. It was Alla.
“Ira!” My sister-in-law’s voice no longer radiated success; it trembled with panic. Rhythmic music pounded in the background, mixed with the clatter of dishes. “Ira, we have a problem! Your stupid dress has split open! This is cheap rubbish, not Italian quality!”
I leisurely turned another glossy page, studying the texture of a dark-blue velvet.
“I warned you that the zipper was defective, Alla. I also told you explicitly that the dress must not be worn.”
“Stop lecturing me!” she shrieked. The volume of Alla’s voice was always inversely proportional to the strength of her argument. “I need some way to get home! I can’t go outside looking like this. My jacket is too short to cover anything! Make Petya bring me another dress from your boutique immediately—the black velvet one in size fifty-four. And tell him to hurry, or I’ll make a huge scene!”
 
At that moment, I heard a brief struggle at the other end of the call.
“Give me that phone, you ridiculous scarecrow,” said a deep, authoritative female voice. The music suddenly faded, as though someone had firmly closed a heavy door. “Hello? Are you the owner of the dress?”
“Yes, I’m listening.” I set the catalog aside with renewed interest.
“My name is Antonina. I’m the senior cleaner here at the restaurant,” the woman explained. “Here’s the full picture. Your relative is hiding inside a bathroom stall. The zipper has been ripped completely out of the back. One of her friends had the brilliant idea of pulling the delicate silk together with thick safety pins. Naturally, the fabric became tight as a drum. Then madam tried to sit down at the table. The pins shot out, and the silk tore about fifteen centimeters down her back. Right now she has toilet paper wrapped around herself under her jacket so she doesn’t expose her bare skin. Believe me, it’s a spectacle worth every penny in the world.”
“Thank you for the detailed report, Antonina,” I replied, nodding with satisfaction. “Please put Alla back on the phone.”
“Here, take it, you tragic creature,” I heard Antonina say.
“Ira!” Alla screamed again. “You heard her! Bring me the black velvet dress!”
“The black velvet dress has been rented through Saturday,” I said slowly, articulating every word. “So has every other garment in my shop. My business does not operate at night to rescue people who secretly remove defective merchandise from someone else’s bedroom.”
“Are you mocking me?” Alla’s voice cracked into a hoarse rasp. “I’m your husband’s sister! I’m standing here almost naked!”
“I’ll call Petya. He’ll bring your own clothes. Wait there.”
I ended the call without waiting for the next wave of abuse and phoned my husband, who was working in the garage.
Forty minutes later, Pyotr’s old but reliable SUV pulled up outside the service entrance of the upscale restaurant.
As my husband later described it, Alla dashed outside clutching a tiny black jacket around herself. Torn strips of green silk and pieces of paper towel protruded treacherously from underneath it.
Pyotr silently lowered the window and handed his sister a large plastic bag.
 
“What is this?” Alla asked with disgust as she peered inside.
“Your sweatpants with the baggy knees and your gray wool sweater covered in pills,” her brother replied evenly.
“You brought me this to wear at an elegant banquet?” Alla clenched her fists in outrage. “Couldn’t you make your wife give me something decent?”
Pyotr gave his sister a long, heavy look, his strong hands resting on the steering wheel.
“Sis, you took someone else’s work equipment without permission. You were warned. You cursed at the courier. Be grateful I came at all instead of leaving you to call a cab in your underwear. Change in the back seat, and I’ll drive you home. You’re giving me Irina’s dress right now.”
Alla’s return to the restaurant in stretched-out sweatpants beneath an expensive blazer—just so she could retrieve her handbag from the table—became the sports club’s favorite legend before she had even reached the coatroom.
The next morning, the rental boutique was filled with its usual businesslike energy. I happily broke off a crisp corner of a warm croissant generously spread with thick raspberry jam. At the large cutting table, Zinaida Karlovna carefully laid out the emerald silk Pyotr had brought back during the night.
The door flew open, and Alla marched into the shop. She looked rumpled and stripped of the previous evening’s glamour, though she was still trying to carry herself like a victorious queen. Gleb shuffled in behind her, doing his best to resemble a dependable wall of stone.
Alla flung her handbag onto an antique chair and folded her arms across her chest.
 
“Well, are you happy now?” she demanded. “You humiliated me in front of the entire management team! Your cheap Chinese counterfeit ruined the whole evening! I demand compensation for emotional distress and the business negotiations you sabotaged. Gleb, tell her!”
Gleb cleared his throat, adjusted his collar, and adopted the pose of an Eastern sage.
“Irina, from the standpoint of energy circulation, your actions were extremely destructive. You blocked Alla’s financial channel and created a heavy karmic knot that will now drag you toward financial ruin—”
“Gleb.” I did not even raise my voice, yet he immediately stopped speaking. “The only thing your karma should be concerned about right now is where you will find actual money to pay your lady’s bills—not your imaginary financial fantasies.”
I walked over to the table, where Zinaida Karlovna had finished examining the dress through a special magnifying lens.
“Zinaida Karlovna, what is your professional verdict?”
The restorer adjusted her glasses with dignity and pointed one slender finger at the damaged fabric.
“The zipper defect we already knew about is only half the problem. What we have now is much worse. This young lady attempted to pull bias-cut silk together with safety pins. The result is three lengthwise tears down the back, broken warp threads, and severe deformation of the side seam caused by uneven tension.”
“That’s nothing!” Alla jerked one shoulder nervously. “Just stitch it up on a sewing machine with ordinary thread. No one will even notice. You’re seamstresses, aren’t you?”
Zinaida Karlovna looked at Alla as though she had just suggested hammering a rusty nail with a microscope.
 
“This is not an amateur sewing circle in the basement of an apartment block, madam,” the restorer replied dryly. “To rebuild the structure of bias-cut natural silk without destroying its commercial appearance requires invisible mending—micro-weaving. I will have to reconstruct the material one thread at a time under a magnifying glass for an entire week.”
I picked up a sheet of paper I had printed in advance and held it out to my sister-in-law.
Alla accepted it suspiciously between two fingers.
“What is this supposed to be?”
“It is an official estimate and invoice. Let’s review the items, Alla. First: the wasted courier call—four hundred rubles. Second: replacement of the zipper. That repair had already been scheduled before you helped yourself to the dress, so I will pay for it. Third: restoration of three tears in the silk using micro-weaving. The total damaged area is forty square centimeters. At Zinaida Karlovna’s established rate, that comes to twenty thousand rubles. Fourth: specialist dry-cleaning to remove perspiration and greasy sauce stains—one thousand five hundred rubles. The total is twenty-one thousand nine hundred rubles.”
Alla gripped the invoice with both hands. The arrogance instantly drained from her voice, leaving behind the bewilderment of a woman whose crown had just been snatched away.
“Have you lost your mind? For some piece of cloth? Twenty-two thousand rubles? I could have bought a new dress for that! I won’t give you a single kopeck. This was force majeure!”
“Force majeure, Alla, is when a meteorite crashes into the restaurant,” I said, leaning against the cutting table. “When a grown woman removes property from someone else’s wardrobe without permission, ignores direct warnings, insults a courier, and then tears natural silk with safety pins, that falls under Article 1064 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Damage caused to another person’s property must be reimbursed in full by the person responsible.”
“I am your husband’s sister! You wouldn’t dare! Petya will make your life miserable when he hears about this!” Alla shot a desperate glance toward the entrance, as though she expected her brother to appear and rescue her immediately.
The door did, in fact, open. Pyotr walked in carrying an insulated food bag. He had brought me lunch: hot homemade meat patties and fluffy mashed potatoes. Their rich, savory aroma filled the boutique and overwhelmed the faint smell of silk dust.
 
When he saw his sister, he gave her a weary look, placed the bag on a cabinet, and folded his arms.
“Petya! Your shrew of a wife is demanding more than twenty thousand rubles because her defective dress tore by itself while I was wearing it!” Alla rushed toward him. “Defend me!”
Pyotr looked from the shredded emerald silk on the table to the invoice in his sister’s hand.
“Sis,” he said, his voice as solid as granite, “you took something that wasn’t yours. You were warned. Then you damaged an item that earns Ira real income. The law may be harsh, but the principle is simple: if you take something without permission, you pay for it as if it were your own.”
“I don’t have that kind of money! Gleb isn’t trading on the stock exchange at the moment. He’s searching for new financial streams!” Alla shrieked, finally surrendering what remained of her successful image.
At those words, Gleb seemed to shrink. He drew his head into his shoulders and took a careful step toward the exit, suddenly fascinated by an advertising brochure on a nearby stand.
“Your financial streams are not my problem,” I said sharply. “You have exactly one week. If the full amount has not reached my business account within seven days, I will commission an independent merchandise appraisal. The official assessment alone will cost approximately ten thousand rubles. Then I will file a claim with the magistrate’s court. Under the court’s judgment, you will pay for the repairs, the appraisal, the filing fee, and my lawyer. The final bill will be close to fifty thousand. The choice is entirely yours.”
Alla stood in the middle of the boutique, her whitening fingers locked around the strap of her handbag. She understood that she had lost on every front. There were no gullible spectators here for whom she could stage a performance. Her brother had refused to defend her, her live-in boyfriend was cowering near the exit, and I regarded her with the icy composure of a surgeon removing an inflamed appendix.
“I hope you choke on your money, you profiteer,” Alla hissed, spinning around on her heels. “I will never set foot in your apartment again!”
“And please leave the keys to our apartment on the table,” I added to her retreating back. “The spare set Petya gave you two years ago to water the flowers while we were away.”
 
Alla hurled the key ring onto the coffee table with such hatred that she nearly shattered the glass top. Then she grabbed Gleb by the sleeve and stormed out of the boutique.
She slammed the front door with such ferocity that it seemed she was trying to trap the tail of her fleeing dignity in it.
A pleasant, productive silence settled over the shop.
Pyotr came over, slipped a familiar arm around my shoulders, and kissed the top of my head.
“You were tough on her,” he said. “But fair. It was long past time to shut off the free ride. She had completely forgotten where the boundaries were.”
“You know, Petya,” I said, straightening the cuff of my blouse and glancing at Zinaida Karlovna, who was already positioning a shadowless lamp over the damaged silk, “people say the only free cheese is in a mousetrap. Yesterday, your sister proved that even free cheese can be rented at a premium price if someone believes strongly enough in her own exceptional status.”
Zinaida Karlovna gave an amused snort as she deftly threaded an impossibly fine strand through the eye of her needle.
“A spectacular entrance that costs nothing always ends up being more expensive than an ordinary outfit, Ira. The important thing is to invoice the consequences correctly.”
I nodded and opened the container of hot meat patties. The day promised to be exceptionally productive.