The Short History of a Prince (29 page)

“I like to think,” he said, “that he’s forgotten about us entirely, just as we never, not even in the deepest sleep, not even in a waking dream, give him a moment’s thought.”

They took a cab back to the Richmond Hotel. At four-thirty Susan got in the tub. She talked to Walter through the closed bathroom door. “Lester’s not like you think,” she called. “He’s not a Texas Holy Roller type, afraid to take the Lord’s name in vain, none of that. He’s even secretly
pro-choice, something he says he can’t tell his wife. And he doesn’t feel persecuted, the way so many of those Christian types do. Among other things, he has doubt.”

“Ah, doubt, that’s good,” Walter said. He was looking out the window, down into the alley from the seventeenth floor of the hotel. She was splashing in the tub, running more water to froth up the bubbles.

“Could you iron my skirt?” she yelled over the noise of her bath. “Do you know how to do pleats?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“We haven’t really talked about Otten, you know. Tell me about it.”

“I have to concentrate while I’m ironing because my mistress is particular,” he said, setting up the board. “You’ll have to come visit so you can experience the breakfast scene at Lee’s. I take my papers over there before school sometimes and I sit at my table in the corner, if I can find it through the smoke, and have coffee, do my corrections. You walk in and the men at the counter turn as one and give a nod. Their plectrons are going so you can practically hear the car crashes as they happen. Underneath that noise is the murmur of complaint and gossip and old-guy boasts. Basically it’s a story contest down there, a continuous battle of Can You Match That? There’s about six regular full-time stool sitters. I figure if we lose Lake Margaret I’ll move down to Lee’s, take my place at the counter, smoke three packs by nine A.M., talk exclusively about accidents and learn to figure out how many fire trucks are going out on a single call.”

He knew she wasn’t listening, that she was thinking of Lester, but he went on anyway. “I found a ladder out in the backwoods. If you live in Wisconsin, by the way, you have to say, ‘Out in the backwoods.’ Mr. Brodie, my neighbor, told me it was a tree stand, meant for climbing up so you can sit on a limb and wait for a deer to happen by. Then you shoot it. I was under the impression that slaughtering an animal requires stainless steel and a drum or so of Saran Wrap, not something as regular and unhygienic as an unpainted wooden ladder. It’s not exactly a comfortable feeling, knowing that most of my students, the boys at least, own guns and go hunting with their fathers, that they’ve killed an animal or two by the time they’re fourteen.”

He was still ironing and talking when she emerged in her plush terry-cloth robe, her hair wrapped in the white bath towel. “Let me see how you did the creases.” She leaned over the board, and the heady mixture of soap, shampoo, gel and cologne penetrated his clogged sinuses. A whiff of her and he could breathe again. “I don’t think Lester is going to decide whether to jeopardize his career and his marriage based on the way I’ve ironed these pleats. You just tell him how hard it is to get good help these days.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right. They’re fine.”

She paced up and down, going over, again, her tenuous plan. “I’ll either see you later, or I won’t. I could call you at some point, so that you know I haven’t been stabbed or anything. I should call Gary now, in case, for some reason, he’d call me later. Except he doesn’t know where I am. I never call when I’m away, and so that would be strange, wouldn’t it? Oh, Jesus, Walter, I’ve never been this nervous.”

“Watch your language, for one thing. You weren’t beside yourself when you danced for Mr. B. that summer you went to New York?”

“It’s absurd! I know it is. But how often do you meet someone who lights up all of your circuits? I’ve generated lust for various people along the way, but it’s been three times all told that I’ve experienced this intense, animal reaction to a person. Daniel did it for me. Gary. And now Lester. It’s a rare thing. Oh, all right, Mitch did too, but that was only because he was the first. It’s still a rare sensation. I’ll admit it’s making me crazy.”

Walter stood by the sink as she applied her makeup, advising her to tone it down, keep it natural. He told her she was stunning, and did not mention that she had a fevered, glassy-eyed look. He kissed her, redid her lipstick, and held her hand on the way down in the elevator and out to the curb. “Good-bye,” she said as the cab pulled up. “Have fun,” he called, and as she drove off he felt obliged to whisper after her, “Be careful.”

In the hotel restaurant he found a window seat, and as he settled himself he ruffled up his curls and smoothed the lumps from his bulky gray sweater. He would have liked to have worn something flashy, but he had left his New York dress-up clothes with his beautician friend in the city. His Wisconsin wardrobe was plain, lackluster, one part interchangeable
with the next, most of it meant to jibe with what he supposed was an Otten parent’s vision of an English teacher. He ordered a forty-dollar bottle of wine and the salmon. To his waitress, Joanne, he said, “I know this is gauche, but what I really want, to go along with the meal, with the new potatoes, is an order of fries, like the ones they have in the café next door. Is that possible?”

Joanne laughed at his request and said she’d use her clout to get him an extra-greasy heap of what amounted to pure fry. Walter was accustomed to being alone, but he had half a mind to ask her to sit down with him, to forget the other tables, to speak to him about the politics of waitressing at the Richmond Hotel. He would have liked her to talk to him while he waited for dinner, while he waited for Julian to materialize out on the sidewalk. He wondered if anyone in Otten ever drank a bottle of wine that cost more than five dollars and fifty cents. Not on his salary, they didn’t, he said to himself. He wondered if they imagined what they were missing. He wondered for the thousandth time if Mitch and Susan had slept together in Mitch’s attic in high school, and if Daniel and Susan had done it in the sickroom. He wondered if Julian was going to walk into the restaurant and see him eating French fries and drinking a forty-dollar bottle of Cabernet. He wondered if Susan was seducing Lester, and he hoped, if she was, that the happiness would stick, stay with her like permanent ink on her skin, like a tattoo, never fading. He wished Julian would walk into the restaurant and see him eating French fries with his forty-dollar bottle of wine. Julian might later write a come-hither poem for Walter, about what it was like standing in the doorway and seeing his baby sipping wine from a good year, eating potatoes from a season that had for once had enough rain.

At the beginning of the evening back in November, when he had first met Julian in the box at Orchestra Hall before the concert started, Walter had stood outside of himself, pleased that Mr. McCloud was attracted to someone, that there was again the possibility of love, that he was capable of feeling, capable of sustaining heartbreak. Months had passed and he was eating supper alone in Chicago, watching out the window. He knew he didn’t have to wait for change or miracle to bring Julian. He was neither a fisherman casting a wide net into the sea, nor the wife wringing her hands waiting at home. He
could find Julian if he wanted to. He could call his office at Tulane, call his apartment on Belmont Avenue. He could write a letter and send it to both places, for insurance.

He picked at his fish. Around him the couples paid no attention while he nursed along his wine. He told himself he should stop the nonsense, stop waiting. He was as daffy as Susan and her wildly improbable Lester. He thought about Julian’s visiting him in Otten. Walter could give him an architectural tour of the town, of the storefronts with their façades and the long, plain brick buildings behind. He didn’t think they’d dare go to breakfast at Lee’s. They could drive to the Piggly Wiggly and buy dairy products and fresh beef. They could invite themselves over to Mrs. Denval’s for Sunday brunch, for instant coffee and doughnut holes. Julian would recite his poems for Mrs. D., and make her want him for a pet, too. And then what? How would they fill the hours? Walter didn’t think he knew how to do activities with another person anymore. He didn’t relish the idea of biking, or shopping, or working an elaborate jigsaw puzzle simply for the purpose of being in someone else’s company. They would have to make a construct of time, pursue hobbies if they were to become a couple. Walter would bang on the study door while Julian worked at a poem, informing him that their decoupage class down at the town hall was about to start.

When Susan came back, if she returned, maybe he should tell her about Julian and ask her advice. Julian not only had nice eyes and inspiring lips but he and Walter had felt the same way about Maurizio Pollini. Julian too had sensed Beethoven’s rudeness at the end of the adagio, in the Opus 7 in E flat, the noise of the D flat against the C. He was someone who might have had holding power, the sort of man to make a life with. At eight o’clock Walter surrendered his watch. He looked out the window one last time.
Come to me, bend to me, kiss me good day
. There was a little bit of wine left in the bottle and he took it with him, walking up the seventeen flights to his room.

By eight-thirty he was in bed watching a movie—what, he didn’t know—a black-and-white film with obscure actors. It was something sad, he could already tell. He might have gone out, to a theater, to a concert, but he felt it was important to be ready in case she showed up. He had papers to grade and
The Great Gatsby
to read, but he
couldn’t stand the thought of work. The movie was about thwarted love, and so he removed the full box of Kleenex from the bathroom dispenser and put it beside him on the pillow. His arms and legs were sore from shoveling in Otten, in a time and place that seemed far away, long ago. He began to cry before he knew what was happening in the movie, before he knew exactly who would lose what. He put his head back and did not wipe the tears as they fell.

At nine-ten the key turned in the lock. The door closed behind her. She spread both arms out and leaned against the wall. The collar of her coat was up to her temples, and her beret was pulled down over her ears. It had begun to snow again, and the coat was covered with tiny dark spots.

“You’re back,” Walter said, pressing the off button on the remote. There was a pile of crumpled tissues by his pillow, and he quickly collected them and threw them in the wastebasket. He climbed out of bed and went to her, unwrapped her from her coat, lifted off her hat and led her to the chair.

“Did you drink that whole bottle of wine?” she whimpered.

“Not all,” he said.

“You look cute in those jammies.”

He glanced down at the blue-and-white-striped pajamas, a Christmas gift from his mother. “Thank you,” he said. “Tell me about your evening, please.”

She folded over, the way only a dancer can, her long arms draped on the floor, her head at her feet, her breasts resting on her calves. “I love him. I love him. I love him without knowing what love is. I would take any little thing he gave me, and tell myself it was enough. I would do it with full knowledge, knowing it was what fool women do for fool men.” She stood up, her hands to her mouth, and murmured, “He has silver hair, and he’s swarthy.”

“Swarthy?”

“I learned that word in high school, when we read
Lord Jim
. Why did I ever think he looked like Daniel? He doesn’t look a damn thing like any of you McClouds. Lester’s mother was Peruvian, and his
father is British, so you get this man with silver hair, brown skin and green eyes, a Texan! How can I love him, I don’t even know him?” She took off her pump and threw it at the bed.

“And then what happened?”

“He wouldn’t have me,” she shouted. “He’s—honorable! He said we both had too much to lose. Do you think there’s another man like him anywhere in the world? Or do you think it means he doesn’t, you know, fancy me? I don’t think that, I don’t think that. Isn’t it my luck? As a teenager I love a dying boy, I grow up slightly, marry the first heterosexual I meet because I figure being in the ballet world I’ll never meet another, and then someone I really love, heart, soul, body, won’t have me!”