KarMel Scholarship 2008

Fictional Story

“It Isn’t Done”

By Regency Gray

Desciption of Submission: “Two of the most powerful women in the world--who shall remain nameless-- dance for the first time.” - Regency

It isn’t done. It positively isn’t done. There’s no written rule against it, but there certainly is a some rule, some unspoken guideline stating that no one has ever or will ever do it.

So, what was she thinking and why couldn’t she stop thinking it?

Ten minutes ago, the most powerful women in the world had stepped into the room in an Armani dress, evergreen, that dazzled cameras and left the least and most experienced of statesmen thunderstruck. She’d always had that affect on men.

Now, she was having that affect on a woman who should know better. Twenty years in politics, twenty-five years of being ever so carefully herself that only person she’d come out of the closet to was herself and that was freedom.

Nine minutes ago, she’d decided that wasn’t enough. She wasn’t much for dancing but she couldn’t keep still and if she was moving to any beat it all, it was to the beat of the music of whatever orchestra the White House had queued up this go-round. She didn’t want to politely take the hand of the congressman to her left though she pitied his efforts--he was trying so hard. She wanted to sweep that woman over there, holding court with an irreverent yet strained smiled, onto the floor. She wanted to sway to the beat of a concerto with that heart so close she could mistake its rhythm for the sounds of their heels tapping the floor.

Abandon, thy name is doom. She drained her cup and handed it to her persistent, yet unsuitable, suitor and began what felt like a very long march across the room. Every step was an effort not to run, leap, hurdle herself back into the closet she had locked from the inside the moment she chose politics as her life’s work. Every step might be her ruin, but she wanted it. The step, the next one, the woman at the end of the long walk, the woman who still held them all enthralled even as the seams of her public persona were slowly pulling apart.

That woman seemed to sense her approach: she turned her head, eyes flickering curiously at her quiet though intense arrival.

A moment of truth like no other in her life appeared to be afoot. Turning away would be so easy, and so hard. She smiled first, a motion that began insincerely in an effort to pull her courage the rest of the way but that came alive as it was reflected on a face that didn’t look so strained anymore.

“Dance with me.” She almost jumped at the sound of her own voice. Her heart was acting before her head for the first time since she was sixteen years old. The gathering of statesmen around them seemed to fall into stunned silence.

It wasn’t done, never done.

Thought of, dreamed of, and fantasized about? Most certainly, but never truly done.

She wanted to do it so very badly.

That woman, that pillar of charismatic public strength, looked to be breaking apart before her very eyes. She hoped she hadn’t been wrong. She foolishly hadn’t planned a way out of this scenario if it went south and she felt her horror rising. Had she thrown it all away on a hunch, or a soul-burning desire that she couldn’t deny?

Regardless, she didn’t shake as much on the outside as she did within. That woman looked at her, luminous smile on the verge of becoming a different expression altogether. She finally rose from the seat that had become a throne in her presence and held out her hand and said,

“Only if you lead.”

Her hand did shake when it wrapped around the other woman’s. Their fingers laced together tightly, drawing equal and different strength from the touch. She guided that woman--no, this woman--to the floor amid growing whispers.

She had always liked to lead, enjoyed the feel of being trusted with the coming step. That hadn’t changed in the years since her last real dance. This woman, not much shorter than she, laid one light hand on her shoulder and allowed her to lead the way.

It was freeing in the worst way to hear the band go on, to see others stare. They’d always watched; some with adulation, others with envy. Tonight, it was disbelief.

This woman looked into her eyes and forever dead bolted the redwood doors of her private hell for good, from the outside.

She had always been a leader and now, like always, she was about to attempt something impossibly new. She kissed her. She kissed the woman gliding like a queen in her arms, and hesitantly, she was kissed back.

In the White House, in the ballroom, in the center of the dance floor, two people had fallen in love. Unlike many things born and raised in Washington, D.C., it was true and it would last.

And like anything that simply wasn’t done, it was inevitable.

Then again, so were they.

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