Terpsichore, Not by Michael Praetorius
She e-mailed him when she got home, but the e-mail came back, so she deleted the address. The next year he was nowhere in evidence, so she danced a bit with Jim and spent a long time discussing her boyfriend with a woman named Rebecca. Rebecca was twenty-three years old and married and knew how to elicit intelligent conversation from Stassen. Or maybe Stassen was improving.
El Presidente was still in power and still danced well, though not with her. Russell and Riva still thought he was power mad. Riva thought he suppressed women’s voices, although he encouraged them to run for office. It was all very entertaining.
The weather was exceptionally rainy and all the paths were too muddy for wandering. Two comrades announced that they had married one another during the past year. Someone else had a birthday but celebrations were limited to cake and song.
Karla Huebner has appeared in such literary and genre venues as Northwest Review, Colorado State Review, Magic Realism, Fantasy Macabre, Ceilidh, Weave, and Opossum. She teaches at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio (where they went on a very long faculty strike last year) and her book Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic is now available for pre-order from University of Pittsburgh Press; her novel In Search of the Magic Theater is forthcoming from Regal House and her collection Heartwood was a finalist for the 2020 Raz-Shumaker award. Karla recommends the House Rabbit Society, Doctors Without Borders, and the Nature Conservancy.
