CLOB

Slightly reworked from Oct of 07. Enjoy! You don't get to enjoy elegant prose like this very often. In honor of the day, which is historic for some reason other than race.

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It is beyond her control. Slowly, slowly she feels herself pulled to him, her stylish yet sensible shoes inching forward until she could reach out and touch him, if she dared. She hears voices all around her, but the only sound she understands is the beating of her heart.

He sits, preoccupied, lost in his thoughts, thinking who knows what. Then some subtle sense, perhaps the half-noticed scent of some perfume, makes him lift his eyes. There she is. He stares at her, his stern face impassive, like a fine leather sack filled with slate.

Electricity is in the air.

She does not dare meet his eyes, his dark, brooding, sultry eyes. Oh, she thinks, he can see right through me. I've never, never felt this way before. Oh god don't let him guess how I feel. Look -- look nonchalant. Yes, there it is.


"So," he says. "It's you." The three short baritone syllables sound curt, clipped as they are through his sensitive lips. Who could guess at the stirring in his loins.

"Yes. Hello, President-elect Obama."

"I think we're passed being so formal, don't you? Hillary?" His expressionless eyes hold hers as the wolf holds the lamb. Some unnameable emotion curls the corner of his mouth like the memory of salt and honey.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Barack."

And they are alone, full though the room is of countless movers and shakers, king makers, players and powers that be. Only the two of them, she, entering the winter of her years but still filled with the juices of spring -- he, so tall, so broad, so laden with strength and history.

And because they are young in their hearts and beautiful as only the privileged and powerful can be, they have found each other and will soon fall into each other’s embrace the way rain slides down glass. Music will course through their limbs like heartbeats, one pulse between them, shared like breath between kisses. Their passion will make them blind and they will sculpt each other with their lips.

Until now they had not found themselves. Her breath would grow sharp sometimes and she knew he was near, but when she turned, sharply, she found no one, or someone who isn’t him. He would catch the sound of distant singing carried on the wind, but reflected off too many walls to find the source. His pace would quicken and he might move as if dancing, some rhythm sifting through his genes, but only alone. No matter. Their desire has outlasted the wait.

And now they have found each other, and know the moment for what it is.

Afterward, when passion is finally sated, and they lay, she supine, he recumbent, they come again to themselves. A moment of reflection, and she reclaims once more her poise, assumes her familiar mask of nonplussed equipoise.

But he is changed, forever changed, and his smile returns time and again. He will remember always her caressing thighs and desperate sighs, the taste of her breath mixed with tears, hers and his.

Is such passion as this preordained to fail if not to fade? Will she serve under him later, in her Office, has she has served now?

Inauguration Day, 2009. What wonders will the future hold?


J