Poll Dancer

by Laura Heffernan

  He shrugged. “Maybe not yet. But we’re working to pass an ordinance to ensure that people like you are forced to remain outside the city limits.”

  “How could you possibly do that?” I snorted. “I’m no lawyer, but I believe we’re protected by a little thing like the First Amendment. Dancing is a type of expression.”

  “The First Amendment doesn’t protect immoral activity.”

  A choking sound escaped me. “You’ve got to be kidding! No one is going to agree to something like that. I’m a dance teacher. There’s no ‘immoral activity’ going on here.”

  “Says you,” he said. “But I’ll get enough support to put it to a vote. And after the election, I’ll be able to use my connections to get the city council on board.”

  I shook my head. Why hadn’t I heard about any of this? “You’re holding an election to shut down the dance studio?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t do that.”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense.”

  “The election is to fill the vacant state senate seat,” he said impatiently. “Don’t tell me you’re the only person in Saratoga County who didn’t hear the news.”

  I racked my brain, but I’d never cared in the slightest about state politics. If this rando hadn’t blocked my entrance to work, I wouldn’t care now. “Sorry. Drawing a blank.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t have expected any better of you.”

  “Tiberius Baker’s seat is open,” the woman beside me said helpfully.

  “So what happened to good ‘ole Tiberius?”

  “My father resigned his seat,” Curtis sniffed, as if relaying this news was beneath him. “He had an ‘epiphany’.”

  Okay, whatever that meant. I’d barely paid attention to local news recently, and I didn’t have time to get any deeper into this conversation. My students would be arriving soon, and I had a class to teach. Assuming they managed to wade through the throng of people in the street.

  “Your father sounds like a swell guy,” I said. “If he shares your views, we’re better off without him in politics. I can’t wait to donate to your opponent. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a class to teach.”

  With as much dignity as I could muster, I swept around him and began to glide through the crowd toward the front door.

  “Enjoy your class!” He yelled behind me. I gave him the finger. “It’ll be your last. After I’m elected, you’ll have to keep your clothes on!”

  Forcing myself not to shake with rage, I kept my head high as I walked into the building, letting the door slam shut behind me.

  What a jerk. I couldn’t believe his nerve. It wasn’t enough that he judged what I did, but now he was trying to physically prevent me from doing it? I’d thought New York was supposed to be fairly liberal, but apparently pushy-nose-in-your-business types lived everywhere.

  The clock on the wall ticked loudly, reminding me that I couldn’t sit here and fume all day. In less than ten minutes, my first class of the day would get here. Taking a deep breath, I moved around my studio, allowing the familiar space to calm me the way it always did. The only thing better than this place would be when I opened my own business, teaching on my terms. Where, among other things, my boss wouldn’t be delighted when I accidentally humiliated myself.

  In a few short minutes, the room would come alive with activity. Now, fairy lights twinkled in the silence. The mirrors on the walls gleamed, and the poles waited. This was my favorite part of the day. I savored the silence, running through the evening’s lesson in my head.

  Meanwhile, my body went through the mechanics of my favorite moves. Up, down, around. Far too advanced for tonight’s beginner class, but these spins and holds put me in the zone.

  A ding from my phone’s alarm brought me back into the moment. Show time.

  Slowly, I lowered myself to the floor, inch by inch, stretching out my legs. Then I went to open the door and greet my students. Thankfully, the mess outside hadn’t prevented them from getting to the door.

  They filed in, the newbies huddling in the corner near the cubbies with their doe eyes while those who’d been here before knew what to do. I directed the new students to take off their shoes and line up. When they finished, I faced them with a smile.

  “Welcome! I’m Mel. I’ve been teaching for about eight years now, and I’m here to tell you, this is the best type of workout.”

  “Are you a stripper?”

  Used to the question, I smiled gently at the person who asked. “I’m not, but strippers pioneered this sport. In this room, strippers are our muses, our inspiration. We get enough slut-shaming out in the world.” Like from those idiots outside, I didn’t say.

  Her face reddened, and I grasped the instructor pole at the front of the room to draw attention away from her. I slid smoothly to the floor, then back up, giving bedroom eyes while still talking. “Pole can be whatever you need it to be. You can be sexy if you want. You don’t have to.”

  With my left hand, I gripped the pole at knee level. My right hand grabbed the pole above my head. Slowly, I lifted my body off the floor, my legs and arms creating an X. One of the girls gasped. Others clapped. “For some people, pole is about strength. That’s why I got started. Some people like the tricks. Don’t worry. We’ll start with some simple spins and stretches. No advanced moves this week.”

  One of the more advanced beginner students snorted. She knew the move I’d just shown them took years training. I caught her eye and grinned.

  “Okay! Let’s start with a basic warm-up.”

  Music filled the room. In unison, six women of all ages, shapes, and sizes followed as I led them through the motions, following a warm-up routine so familiar I could do it in my sleep. Had done it with pneumonia.

  About halfway through the class, the door swung open. Helen stuck her head in. Worry lined her face. My boss had been a dancer for about sixty years, and she looked it. Solid muscle from head to toe, long gray hair always pulled back in a bun, dark eyes that usually danced with her joie de vivre. She wore tights and flowy skirts and leotards, whether she taught ballet or salsa or the waltz. The one thing she never, ever taught was pole. She never entered this room once that door closed at the start of my classes.

  Concerned, I told the students to keep practicing and hustled over to her. She motioned me into the lobby, not speaking until the door shut behind us. The music from the stereo stopped abruptly.

  “I’m so sorry, Mel. I hate to do this. We have to cancel your classes.”

  “What? Why?” My stomach twisted. This couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to be related to Curtis and his crowd of busybodies.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have been so flippant about negative publicity.” She held a piece of paper out to me, her face white. “They got an emergency temporary injunction. We’ve been shut down.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Spinning Swan: This is a great move for exhibitions, because it looks more difficult than it is, and it’s very pretty. Don’t attempt on a static/locked pole; you’ll just be a sitting swan.

  - Push and Pole Fitness Tutorials, Vol. 1

  Helen’s words rang in my ears the entire time I cleaned out my locker. Her voice haunted me down the stairs and out of the studio. Shut down…no job…they think we’re a “bad influence on the community.”

  I fumed. Who did that Curtis jerk think he was? Who made him the morality police? He was probably one of those guys who thought it was women’s fault he couldn’t control his libido. That wearing a short skirt or dancing around in a skimpy outfit (aka a dance costume) was “asking for it.”

  I’d begged my boss to let me work until the injunction lifted, but she’d said she couldn’t risk more bad exposure. If the morality police outside realized that I was still here working, planning to start teaching again, they might never go away. If they made her other students leave, or worse got a more expansive injunction, she could lose the bu
siness she’d spent decades building. All because some people felt that their personal definition of morality should dictate other people’s behavior.

  Although I understood why Helen couldn’t keep me on, it hurt. What was I going to do now? Pole fitness studios weren’t exactly like Zumba. I couldn’t go to any local gym and sign up to teach. At a minimum, the owner of the space would have to pay several hundred dollars to install poles and buy thick crash mats. Worse, any local studio that did a basic search for my name would find both the disaster video and the injunction. They wouldn’t be jumping at the chance to invest in me.

  My throat tightened at the thought. For a minute, I couldn’t breathe. I stopped and forced myself to inhale and exhale slowly. This wasn’t the time to be upset. If anyone from the protest lingered outside, I couldn’t let them see me cry. Blinking away my tears, I threw open the front door.

  With my head held high, I strutted down the street, away from the studio. Once around the corner and out of sight, I stopped, leaning against the side of a building. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. I took long, slow deep breaths, reminding myself that there were plenty of other dance studios in the Capital District. My students would follow me if I went somewhere else. Which didn’t help if Curtis managed to pass a law that prevented me from teaching anywhere. Could he do that? Wouldn’t the sheer number of representatives from New York City vote it down? There had to be a lot of them.

  All of these thoughts circled around my head, making it difficult to focus on anything. Several long moments passed before I composed myself. My mind continued to race.

  What was I going to do? It was possible Helen would let me come back once her lawyers got the injunction lifted, but that didn’t help me if Curtis actually changed the laws. Could he do that? I had no idea. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to work for a boss who cut me loose because of something that wasn’t my fault. She could’ve let me answer phones, teach some of the yoga classes, anything.

  It killed me that she cut me off so easily. I was the one who showed up on her doorstep and talked her into offering pole fitness lessons a few years ago. She’d never even heard of it. My classes made her a lot of money. Until they didn’t, apparently. Now she had no use for me.

  Sometimes I gave private lessons at home for extra cash and convenience, but my condo wasn’t nearly big enough to teach more than one person at a time. I needed to find a new space ASAP—but what if Curtis got another temporary injunction against a different studio? How wide-reaching was his crusade? Could I go to Albany and teach there? It was about half an hour away, so kind of a pain, but not impossible if I found a space near the northern end. They had a pretty big college. Maybe I could offer some student specials.

  My blood boiled. I couldn’t even get into my car to drive home without fear of running into something. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand out here all night, or I’d freeze. Going back inside wasn’t an option, so I set off down the street. A brisk walk would burn off some frustration. Maybe if that Puritan asshole was still around, I could find him and punch him in the nose.

  A headline swam before my eyes “Stripper Assaults Upstanding Citizen.” Okay, fine, I wouldn’t hit him. But I certainly would dream about it.

  After a couple of turns around the block, I felt well enough to pause in my march of rage, so I stopped in at the coffee shop adjacent to the studio. Then I texted Lana that I’d be bringing over some tea and pastries for an emergency girls’ night. Usually I preferred coffee, but at the moment I needed something to help lower my blood pressure. Coffee would make me tense, and if my nerves grew any more rigid, they’d snap in half.

  While I waited, I texted my students to let them know that my classes were canceled until further notice, but I’d be giving private lessons. Despite it being a Friday night, most of them wrote back immediately expressing outrage and support, which helped a little. By the time I collected my drinks and headed to the parking lot, I felt much better. I’d figure something out.

  Outside, a guy who’d parked a bit too close to the edge of the lot struggled to dig his car out of the frozen mess. Silly. You never park next to the mountain of plowed snow unless you have four-wheel drive. You definitely don’t park on top of it. Especially not when the snow is frozen solid, and you’re wearing a thousand-dollar suit. He looked so pitiful that I went over to help.

  This winter had been particularly swear-worthy, with Mother Nature dumping almost a foot of white powder like clockwork every Wednesday. Naturally, the temperature never rose enough to melt the snow, so after a couple of months of this, grimy white towers lined the sidewalks and created a perimeter around most public parking lots. People who didn’t choose their spaces carefully risked getting stuck. Much like this guy.

  At the sound of my feet crunching on the snow, he looked up. The guy was solid, muscular, and a few inches taller than me, making him probably around six-foot-three. The shape of his forearms told me he worked out regularly. He looked a little older than me, maybe early thirties. He had gorgeous, longish red hair, laughing hazel eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. He was also very good-looking. I was such a sucker for freckles. When he spotted me, his smile lit up the gloomy day.

  “Need help?” I asked.

  His eyes swept the puffy coat and mittens covering my muscular frame. No one looked particularly strong when wearing layers of down. I braced myself, waiting for him to say something chauvinistic so I could tell him to go screw himself and continue to Lana’s. After the day I’d had, I didn’t need another run-in, so I probably should have just gotten in my car and driven away without a word. But then he nodded.

  “I’m completely stuck,” he said. “I push the shovel as hard as I can, but it doesn’t go anywhere. I guess that’s what I get for driving a Smart Car in a New York winter.”

  I reached out with one hand. “May I?”

  “I appreciate the offer, but are you sure you want to shovel snow in those shoes?”

  Right. Six-inch pole platforms weren’t ideal winter wear. But the ground wasn’t icy, and at this point the shoes were practically extensions of my feet. “Eh. They’re not my best pair.”

  He looked skeptical, but to his credit, he simply shrugged and took the tray of drinks from my hand before handing me the shovel. “Thanks.”

  Despite having a lot of strength and barely contained rage, turned out, my shoveling skills weren’t all that superior to the car owner’s. After a couple of minutes, I admitted defeat and stepped back, surveying the problem. He’d apparently driven right up into the snowbank when parking. The snow beneath the car lifted it off the ground, preventing the wheels on the passenger side from touching. Even if he stepped on the gas, no amount of shoveling or salt was going to help unless we got the car off that snow.

  I moved around to the front license plate and put my hands on the hood. “Get in and put it in neutral.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You’re stuck on a mound of snow. I’m going to shove you off.”

  “You can’t move a car!”

  I thought about telling him that if I could hang upside-down in mid-air by one ankle, I could do anything, but it wasn’t worth the questions such a statement usually inspired. I’d had enough negative attention for one night.

  Instead I shrugged and crouched. “What have you got to lose?”

  “If you accidentally kill yourself, I would feel terrible.”

  I grinned up at him. “I’ll do my best to survive.”

  With another glance at me, he got in the car. A moment later, the parking brake disengaged, and the car engine revved. Through the windshield, he gave me a thumbs up. I braced myself against the snow at my back, dug my heels into the ice as well as I could, and shoved, praying the car wouldn’t rocket backward into the vehicle behind it.

  Of course it did.

  He had been so skeptical I could move the car at all, he hadn’t mentioned the consequence of pushing too hard. M
eanwhile, in my haste to prove I was stronger than he thought, I may have gotten a bit overzealous. The tiny red car shot backward across the lane, which was thankfully free of oncoming traffic. It stopped with a thump when the rear bumper collided with my green Toyota Corolla, coming to rest in a circle of light provided the street lamp.

  A popping sound filled the air. Bits of red glass peppered the ground between our cars.

  “Oops.”

  Inside the car, the man’s face turned beet red. His shoulders shook. It took me a minute to realize he was laughing. He tumbled out of the driver’s door, leaning against the side of the car for support while he got himself under control. Hesitantly, I walked toward him.

  “Thank you?” he said. “I guess I should’ve believed you could help. But now I have to leave a note for the owner of this car.”

  Sheepishly, I raised my hand. “Hi. Car owner, right here.”

  He laughed harder. Finally seeing the humor in the whole thing, I let out a giggle of my own. Before I knew it, the two of us were sitting on the ground in the snow, rocking back and forth, until an employee came out to see if we were okay. Wiping tears from our eyes, we sent her back inside.

  “Listen, I have to get going,” my new friend said. With a start, I realized that I didn’t even know his name. It felt weird to ask now. Although theoretically, it would get weirder if we went out and got married and had beautiful red-headed kids and I still didn’t know his name.

  He climbed to his feet, brushing snow off the back of his coat before reaching down to help me up.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem.” He fished a business card out of his wallet and handed it to me. “For one thing, I made you break your taillight. Give me a call when you get it fixed, if not before.”

  “Thanks,” I said absently.

  A broken taillight for a fifteen-year-old car cost about twenty bucks to replace. I didn’t need his help, not when it was entirely my fault. He was cute, though, so maybe it would be worth calling him in a couple of days, once I got my life sorted.