"Faster," she said. "We've got to be back in
Lisbon by 0600 hours. Unless you find the prospect of being indicted on
sedition charges enticing." I pulled a besotted silk handkerchief from my back pocket and mopped my brow. "If I were dancing any faster, I'd get friction burns from the air resistance," I replied, glancing back at the crowd that had began to gather.
"You were always more of an architect than a performer," she sneered through clenched teeth. I grinned sharply. "Not if I were
dancing about architecture!" The barest hint of smile crossed her lips.
And so we danced our way across the cobblestones, the sound of our boots clattering like an army of
skeletons with castanets. Soon, spectators were transformed into willing participants. Here, a young couple miming our frantic
tarantella. There, a elderly woman remembering how to polka.
Still faster we
spun and
lunged and
stomped and
twirled. My lungs burned and my veins pumped acid. She seemed to gain energy from the whole pulsing mob, each new person joining the fray adding velocity to her manic whirl.
The cacophonous clattering turned into a roar that gradually exploded into
automatic rifle thunder. That night, the city burned. The hallowed halls of government crumbled to ash and every pork-fed politician roasted or ran.
In the middle of it all, as so meticulously planned, we simply vanished. Hours later, we watched it all on some twenty-four hour Portugese news network, the lyrical language belying the harsh reality of their words.
I turned to her with a smirk. "
Dance, dance, revolution!"
She slapped me.