Nine Ladies Dancing (A Short Story) (12 Days of Christmas series Book 9) by Amanda Brice

Author:Amanda Brice
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2013-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

“Shut it down!”

I’d been hearing those words for weeks now from the most doctrinaire members of the opposing party. I just didn’t expect to hear them from my own boss.

About a stripper, no less.

Oh yes. A stripper. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, Snow Queenie had slithered down from her pole and was now demonstrating the fine art of striptease. And not the classy-coy version practiced by a young Gypsy Rose Lee as she politely asked to “entertain” her audience. This brassy bombshell didn’t ask for permission before removing a lot more than her glove.

Was ballet her gimmick? When Mr. Kaufman said he wanted dancers, I didn’t think he meant of the exotic variety.

As far as congressmen went, Rob Kaufman was one of the most laid-back. He rarely raised his voice, was kind to his staff, and his appearances on TV were limited to being a pundit on the morning shows rather than a punch line for the late-night comedians. Not anymore. He paid for the party out of his own trust fund, but the headlines on the next news cycle would most definitely gleefully report about the congressman who paid for a yacht full of strippers with taxpayer money.

So yeah, I wasn’t surprised he was livid. I would be too.

Sex and Congress. Sex and Congress. Went together like tweets and Bitly. If the Senate passed a bill to give tax subsidies to workers who move close to their place of business, the Capitol Hill neighborhood would suddenly turn into a mini red-light district. And I’m not talking about Christmas lights.

Hey, at least someone would be working in Congress.

Clearly the Snow Queen wasn’t the first stripper to perform for a group of sitting Members, and she wouldn’t be the last. But if my boss had to get caught up in a scandal, why couldn’t he just sext like everyone else?

I didn’t stick around to see the rest of the show. As I fled from the room, I heard the chief of staff call out, “Don’t even bother coming to work on Monday, Natalie. I’ll have your desk cleared out for you.”

Too bad we’d already left Georgetown Harbor and I would be stuck on the boat for the next forty-five minutes. At least. Probably closer to two hours. If it hadn’t been thirty degrees outside, I’d have probably contemplated jumping and swimming to shore.

How could something like this happen? Ballet DC was a respected company. True, it didn’t have quite the cachet of the Washington Ballet or Suzanne Farrell’s troupe, but the ballet world was small, and I just couldn’t believe the dancers would stake their reputation on dirty dancing.

Artistic license my ass. Balanchine may have been a bit of a perv in the way he sexualized his ballerinas—both the ones he married and those he did not—but even he would agree this went too far. (If he wasn’t already dead, that was.) A stripper in The Nutcracker, a frothy Christmas concoction designed for children?

But I wasn’t thinking clearly by that point.

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