The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton

had never conceived of real experience. It was a waste for a person as beautiful and capable as she was, never to have run like a gazelle across the sand on a beach and talked at high speeds about the intricacies of nothing at all, and woken later in the arms of some improbable boy.
    Walter and his group had grown up, gotten tenure, or at least regular jobs, developed paunches. A few had bought homes and toupees and plastic Christmas trees. Some were dead. Some had comethrough, made it so far, nursing sick friends and lovers. The playwrights of his generation insisted that they were hanging on with emboldened hearts. Walter doubted that his heart was emboldened by either the deaths of his friends or their political struggles to fight the disease. Still, his young wild life, his secret, lived on in him. For all the ridiculous and petty intrigues of that spent time, he thought of the secret as a force of its own, a current, strong and clear, that ran through him, informing his older, wiser, stodgy self.
    Lucy had no such thing, and now and then Walter wanted to wake her, a simple slap, one, two, three, back and forth, hello, wake up, here you are, twenty-one years of age, on this remarkable and sensitive planet, a place where single cells suffer shock if the pressure changes. Suffer shock, he wanted to demand. An old dear, indeed! He remembered that neither his parents nor Daniel had ever suggested that Walter be other than he was, and yet he wanted to grip Lucy’s shoulder and insist that she be different. He noticed, as he reached for another Kleenex, that the car tissue box said, in red cross-stitch, “Happy is the house that shelters a friend.”
    Emerson, on Lucy’s tissue box.
    “Who wrote this saying?” Walter asked, testing her.
    “Marc’s mom gave that to me,” she said. “I don’t think anyone wrote it. Those phrases, ones that are true, get passed on and on.” She nodded, as if to agree with herself. Looking over her shoulder, she parallel-parked the van in one dream-come-true Driver’s Education continuous maneuver.

    On the blue linoleum strip in the basement of the Schaumburg park district building, Linda and twenty little girls in spandex and tulle finery made a line. They scratched their legs and talked to one another, some of them making the age-old feminine gesture, slapping their hands to their mouths as they giggled over their three-year-old fancies. Melissa, their teacher, born and bred in Schaumburg, was sixteen. A schaumie, Walter thought. He wasn’t sure if her hair was supposed to look teased and in place, a great puff of it in a second tier of bangs, or if she’d had a nightmare just before she’d rolled out of bed. There wasno telling. She was wearing a black leotard that didn’t quite cover the last tuck of her bottom, but the shortage kept her busy, yanking at the material every few minutes. Once her charges were in line she stood in front of them demonstrating the steps. She did not turn around to see if they were bending their legs correctly, or safely, if they were keeping their backs straight, their feet pointed. There was no barre for them to hold. She motioned to her boyfriend in the corner, her extended index finger jabbing the air, the sign that he should hit the button on the tape deck. There were several girls who didn’t have any interest in following Melissa, and they wrung their friends’ hands and spun until they fell down.
    Walter sat on the folding chair on the side, next to Lucy. He tried not to look as if he were watching his homeland go up in flames. In spite of his need to educate, he would keep his outrage at bay and refrain from pontification. He would not keel over into his own lap. He’d sit erect and behave himself. This type of suppression was like holding his breath for a long period, and he intended to see the effort as an exercise, something that would at least firm his stomach muscles and possibly develop his character. When the girls on the dance