Poll Dancer

by Laura Heffernan

  By the time Daniel finished his call, I’d scheduled five lessons for the next day. Might as well keep busy until the polls closed and the results started rolling in. It only took a few minutes to fill him in on the things Lana and I discovered.

  When I finished, he simply sat there, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it. Erica has always been so good at keeping her personal and private life separate.”

  “Did you know that she and Curtis are neighbors?”

  “No. It never would’ve occurred to me to ask where she lived.” He tapped on his keyboard for a few minutes, then stopped to read something. “Here it is. Erica inherited that property when her mother died last year. That’s around the time she returned from D.C.”

  I sighed. “I still don’t get why she would do any of this. She took the job to hurt me—why? Because I happened to be running against her former neighbor? Because she and Curtis’s mom used to be close? She could’ve just turned us down. There was no reason to sabotage the campaign.”

  Daniel’s eyes continued to travel down the computer screen, skimming the page as I spoke. He clicked a couple of times, then the blood drained from his face. “I can’t believe I missed this.”

  “What?”

  Instead of answering, he turned the screen. He’d somehow accessed a document filed with the D.C. family court. I leaned forward and devoured the words. A little over a year ago, Erica Popov of Washington, D.C. filed for divorce from her husband, Doug Popov, claiming irreconcilable differences—and adultery. My eyes tripped over one of the allegations.

  “Her ex-husband left her for a stripper?” With each word, my voice grew higher. “Her ex-husband left her for a stripper and you hired her to help a pole fitness teacher win a state election?”

  “I’m so sorry, Melody.” He hung his head in his hands before going back to the screen. When he spoke again, disbelief filled his voice. “According to this, her husband also took their savings and saddled her with a significant amount of debt.”

  Closing my eyes, I shook my head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I swear, I had no idea. I’ve known Erica for years. She’s a great strategical thinker, with a sharp political mindset. We’re old friends. When she moved back to the area, I thought she was a godsend.”

  “Well, someone sent her, but I don’t think God had much to do with it,” I said bitterly.

  He sighed. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You swear you didn’t know about this?”

  “I swear,” he said, his eyes earnest. “Our relationship has always been surface level. We were acquaintances, then colleagues. I didn’t ask why her marriage failed. We were never close, and to be honest, it never occurred to me.”

  With a heavy sigh, I leaned back in my chair. “So what do we do now?”

  Behind me, a bell rang to indicate that someone had come in the front door. In my haste to get to Daniel and tell him about Erica’s betrayal, I must’ve forgotten to lock it behind me. Unless it was someone with a key.

  A shared glance told me that he’d had the same thought. Together, we left the office to greet our new arrival.

  It wasn’t Erica. To my surprise and dismay, the second-to-last person I wanted to see ever again stood in our doorway. Probably coming to gloat. What a day.

  “Why didn’t we hire a security guard?” I muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  “Hey, Melody. I need to talk to Daniel for a minute,” Curtis said.

  “I hope you don’t think you can get us to drop out.”

  “That’s not why I’m here, but by all means, feel free.”

  My campaign manager chuckled and shook his head. “It’s not going to be that easy. You’ll need to get votes the old fashioned way. Your platform is abominable, so you’ll need to rely on your charm and charisma.”

  I snorted.

  “Funny you should mention that,” he said. “I’ve been thinking my platform could use a few tweaks.”

  “Oh, yeah? You want to stop gays from adopting now? Forced pregnancy for women of child-bearing age?” Daniel asked.

  He chuckled. “I love sparring with you. We really should work together again at some point. And no, that’s not what I mean at all. I assume Melody told you about our earlier conversation?”

  “She did. Why?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Daniel glanced at the big storefront windows facing out onto the street. The road shouldn’t be busy this time of day, but anyone who happened to wander by would see us. As would Erica if she appeared. I didn’t expect her to drop by, but she didn’t know that she’d been discovered.

  “Are we okay here?” I asked.

  “Let’s go back to my office.”

  We sat again, this time with me pulling up a chair beside Daniel behind the desk. Two on one. Once everyone got settled, I leaned forward and put my elbows on the desk. “Okay. What do you have to say that’s so important?”

  Curtis held up an envelope similar to the one the reporter gave Erica. I raised my eyebrows at him but said nothing. He took a deep breath. “Some information has come to my attention. The two of you deserve to have all the facts. I never wanted to win like this.”

  “Are you saying you and Erica weren’t working together?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. I was trying to repair my family’s image after my father abandoned his post. When I decided to run, the last thing I wanted was to take the campaign in a personal direction. I had as much to lose as you did.”

  “I never would have outed you to win,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I realized that the night you met Mom. And I was wrong to use your past against you. I’m afraid I let her views influence me too much. She was so depressed when Dad left, a completely different person. When I told her I wanted to run for his seat, it invigorated her. She came back to life. I allowed myself to take her ideas and run with them.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” As much as interfamily dynamics fascinated me, I didn’t understand what Curtis was doing at my campaign headquarters if he hadn’t come to gloat.

  “Because I wasn’t the only one influenced by my mother. She’s been spending a lot of time with Erica. And now I understand why.” He cleared his throat. “A couple of minutes after you left, Erica zoomed into her garage. She went out the back door and came over to our yard.”

  “She just wanders into your back yard any time she wants?” Maybe Curtis was the one who should get a dog. I wondered if Princess Sofia Sassypants still needed a new home. Although she may not be the best watchdog unless a burglar was terrified of being snuggled to death.

  Curtis shrugged. “We grew up together. We’ve had that adjoining fence since we were kids. Anyway, I tried to get close enough to listen, hear what she and Mom were talking about, but they clammed up whenever I got within ten feet. I took them a bottle of wine, then snuck out and headed over to Erica’s house.”

  Wow. I couldn’t believe what he was telling us. Somehow, I’d inspired my opponent to commit a felony for me. This wasn’t the Curtis I’d gotten to know over the past few weeks, but my respect for him was rising steadily.

  “You took a big risk,” Daniel said. “What if she’d caught you?”

  “I needed to see what was going on. I knew the back door was unlocked,” he said. “Inside her office, a phone flashed on the desk. It wasn’t her regular smartphone.”

  From his pocket, he produced a small blue flip phone, the type I hadn’t seen in ages. I resisted the urge to reach for it. “Do those things still work?”

  Daniel snorted. “Apparently, so. But, Curtis, why did you bring us an old phone?”

  “That’s the thing. It’s not an old phone.” Triumph laced his voice. “There are only two phone numbers in the call history. The first one is the number for our house. Same landline we’ve had for decades. The other I googled. It belongs to Jerry Braithwaite at the Albany Times.�
��

  The guy from the mall. No shocker there, all things considered. If Curtis expected my expression to register surprise, he was disappointed. Too weary from it all to speak, I nodded.

  “You knew?”

  “Saw them together about an hour ago. That’s why I stopped by Erica’s house in the first place. I wanted to confront her.”

  “They’re not just talking,” Curtis said. “Once I put the phone away, I spotted these sitting on her desk.”

  He offered the envelope to me, and I took it gingerly, still not quite believing what was happening.

  The envelope contained several pictures of me, some taken through my condo windows. Darn it, I really needed to use my curtains. None of the pictures were terribly interesting, though. Probably because I hadn’t done much in the past few days. But then Curtis handed me a bank statement with Erica’s name at the top. The balance was zero, and there were almost no transactions. Halfway down the page, I spotted a cash deposit for five thousand dollars, which was immediately transferred to an account at another bank. A second deposit appeared below it. Both were made at a bank branch a couple of blocks from the Baker home.

  My heart leaped into my throat. Suddenly, it all made sense. Erica’s husband left her for a stripper. He took everything with him. She associated pole fitness with stripping, and therefore assumed I was no better than the woman who’d “stolen” her husband. She’d always been conservative—Daniel told me, ages ago, that his college roommate dumped her for saving herself for marriage. Curtis’s mother was religious. The two of them knew each other well.

  Mr. Baker used to represent the family in the state senate. He resigned in a manner that left them open to ridicule. Now that Curtis was running, Mrs. Baker couldn’t stand the thought of him losing to someone with “loose morals.” She’d been paying Erica to help Curtis win this whole time.

  Mouth open, I turned to Daniel. He looked as shell-shocked as I felt. For a long moment, neither of us could speak. Finally, he looked across the desk. “I assume that, in light of all of this information, you’re planning to drop out and concede the election?”

  He nodded, looking miserable. “It’s the right thing to do. As much as I loved working with my father, loved being in politics, I can’t take the job knowing that my mother conspired to sabotage my opponent. That’s completely unacceptable.”

  Finally, I found my voice. “No.”

  They both turned to me, identically confused faces.

  “You’re not dropping out, Curtis. I am.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The Attitude: An excellent spin for when you’re feeling sassy. Grasp the pole with your dominant arm above your head and walk in a circle. Bring your other arm across your belly to grasp the pole, creating a triangle with the pole. The top arm provides your push, the bottom arm your pull. Hook your front leg on the pole, and push off with your back leg, lifting it behind you and giving you momentum to spin.

  - Push and Pole Fitness Tutorials, Vol. 1

  At my proclamation, both men looked even more gob-smacked than they had a second earlier. But the moment the words came out of my mouth, I knew it was the right thing to do. From the moment I’d decided to run for election, I hadn’t been happy. My whole world had been tilted on its head, and there was only one way to get back where I needed to be.

  “I can’t have heard you right,” Daniel said.

  “You did. I’m dropping out.”

  “But why?” Curtis asked.

  “You said it yourself. You love politics. You loved working with your father. You love verbal sparring. I don’t. I don’t love any of it. All I ever wanted was to teach pole fitness.”

  “Then why did you run for office?” Curtis asked. “Why not support another candidate?”

  “Because you got a freaking injunction against me! I couldn’t work, and I was pissed.” In retrospect, perhaps running for state senate out of spite wasn’t the best decision ever. Although it should’ve been fine. If Erica hadn’t been plotting against me, I might have won. Early on, the voters responded to me. They found me fresh and interesting.

  His face turned red. “Right. That was Mom’s idea. Sorry about that.”

  Fat lot of good it did me now. “I only ran because you said you were going to shut me down permanently if you won. As soon as Erica told me I wouldn’t be able to work as a legislator and be a dance teacher, I knew I’d made a mistake. But it was too late to pull out.”

  “It’s never too late,” Curtis said. “And you can’t stop me from dropping out. I don’t want to win because my mother smeared you in the press. It’s not right. I’ll find another job, maybe run for Assembly in the fall. Or even take some time off, figure out what I really want. I’ve got the money Dad gave me before he took off.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t stop me, either!” I glared at him defiantly.

  “Hold on,” Daniel said. “So neither of you wants to fill Tiberius’s seat?”

  We both shook our heads, equal looks of determination. Daniel looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. Leaning back against the desk, he stared at the wall for a long time. “Okay, then. What do we do now?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” I said. “I don’t have the right look for politics. I don’t have the right personality or the background. Sure, I can learn about the law and procedure, but shouldn’t we vote for someone who already knows about these things?”

  “I already told you, there’s no way I’m doing it,” Daniel said. “Not to mention, it’s too late to move into the district.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But listen up. I have an idea.”

  By the time I finished explaining, Daniel was nodding along with me. “Somehow, I had a feeling you were going to say that.”

  “It’s perfect, right?”

  “Perfect is not the word I would use to describe any of this,” Daniel said. “But I suppose it makes sense, in light of everything that’s happened.”

  Curtis shrugged. “You’ve certainly got balls, Melody.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yeah. I’m going back to my office. I need to call a press conference. For this to work, I should go first.”

  Daniel said, “We’ll wait twenty minutes, then do the same. Good luck.”

  It didn’t take long to drive home. My mind raced, turning the day’s events over and over. As badly as I’d wanted to confront Erica, this was even better. She’d be completely caught off-guard by our double announcements, and she’d be pissed that she had to find out secondhand from the news.

  Not from her good friend Jerry, though. He wasn’t invited to the conferences. She could read about our agreement on social media, like everyone else.

  Lana met me and Daniel at my front door, carrying her portable pole in a bag on her shoulder. Soon enough, I’d go get my pole back from Erica. She had no right to keep it. But for today, I appreciated my best friend bringing me both the physical and emotional support.

  “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “You’ve got this,” she said. “You’re doing something extremely brave, you know.”

  “Not extremely stupid?”

  “Sometimes the right thing is both,” Daniel said.

  “Shush. It’s never stupid to stand up for yourself. You’ve got this.” Lana wrapped her arms rightly around me, then pivoted and pushed me toward my bedroom. “Daniel and I will set up. Go. Get ready.”

  A long shower erased much of the tension from my shoulders. Having made a decision left me feeling a thousand times better. I took great care in getting dressed, pulling out my highest heels, my most glittery bra top, and the black booty shorts that always left me strutting with confidence.

  Daniel waited for me in the living room, along with the members of the media who had been able to show up at the last minute. We got more than I expected. He grinned when he saw me. The admiration on his face made me feel e
ven better about what I was doing.

  Eyes widened when I entered the room. A smirk played across my lips. They all thought they knew what I was going to say. I gazed back, head held high. The time for pretending to be someone else passed. Before all this started, I’d never been ashamed to be myself. It had been wrong to let Erica destroy my sense of self. Lana had been right all along, but I’d been too afraid to listen to her.

  “Thank you, everyone, for coming,” I said to the reporters packed into my small entryway. “I know it was last minute for you. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been getting a lot of media attention. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised since I am running for public office. But the weird thing to me was that no one seemed to care about the issues. Instead, people seemed awfully concerned about the fact that I like to dance on a pole. It’s just an apparatus, like a balance beam. But to some people, doing pole makes me some kind of ‘loose woman.’”

  In the audience, someone snorted. I stifled a laugh.

  “That gem came directly from the mouth of my opponent’s mother. Thanks, Mrs. Baker, but I’m not a sex worker. And if I were, I’d still be worthy of respect as a human being.”

  A couple more flashbulbs hit me in the face. One reporter raised a hand, followed by another, until everyone seemed to have something to ask. Daniel asked them all to hold their questions until the end, and the hands slowly went down.

  I continued my prepared speech. “If I can’t win this election without abandoning my sense of self, then I haven’t won at all. I refuse to continue pretending to be someone else. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I love what I do, and I’m sorry I ever thought I needed to live a lie to get elected.