The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Richard lay back on the studio couch. His mouth was thin and its line uneven, half of it downward slanting, giving an ambiguity to his expression, a look sometimes of humor, sometimes of bitterness, a contradiction that his rather blank and frank blue eyes did nothing to clarify. He said slowly and mockingly, "Did you go down to the lost and found? Lost, one pound of beefsteak. Answers to the name Meatball."

  Therese smiled, looking over the shelves in her kitchenette. "Do you think you're joking? Mrs. Hendrickson did tell me to go down to the lost and found."

  Richard gave a hooting laugh and stood up.

  "There's a can of corn here and I've got lettuce for a salad. And there's bread and butter. Shall I go get some frozen pork chops?"

  Richard reached a long arm over her shoulder and took the square of pumpernickel bread from the shelf. "You call that bread? It's fungus.

  Look at it, blue as a mandrill's behind. Why don't you eat bread once you buy it?"

  "I use that to see in the dark with. But since you don't like it—" She took it from him and dropped it into the garbage bag. "That wasn't the bread I meant anyway."

  "Show me the bread you meant."

  The doorbell shrieked right beside the refrigerator, and she jumped for the button.

  "That's them," Richard said.

  There were two young men. Richard introduced them as Phil McElroy and his brother, Dannie. Phil was not at all what Therese had expected. He did not look intense or serious or even particularly intelligent. And he scarcely glanced at her when they were introduced.

  Dannie stood with his coat over his arm until Therese took it from him.

  She could not find an extra hanger for Phil's coat, and Phil took it back and tossed it onto a chair, half on the floor. It was an old dirty polo coat. Therese served the beer and cheese and crackers, listening all the while for Phil and Richard's conversation to turn to the job. But they were talking about things that had happened since they had seen each other last in Kingston, New York. Richard had worked for two weeks last summer on some murals in a roadhouse there, where Phil had had a job as a waiter.

  "Are you in the theatre, too?" she asked Dannie.

  "No, I'm not," Dannie said. He seemed shy, or perhaps bored and impatient to leave. He was older than Phil and a little more heavily built. His dark-brown eyes moved thoughtfully from object to object in the room.

  "They haven't got anything yet but a director and three actors," Phil said to Richard, leaning back on the couch. "A fellow I worked with in Philly once is directing. Raymond Cortes. If I recommend you, it's a cinch you'll get in," he said with a glance at Therese. "He promised me the part of the second brother in the play. It's called Small Rain."

  "A comedy?" Therese asked.

  "Comedy. Three acts. Have you done any sets so far by yourself?"

  "How many sets will it take?" Richard asked, just as she was about to answer.

  "Two at the most; and they'll probably get by on one. Georgia Halloran has the lead. Did you happen to see that Sartre thing they did in the fall down there? She was in that."

  "Georgia?" Richard smiled. "Whatever happened with her and Rudy?"

  Disappointedly, Therese heard their conversation settling down on Georgia and Rudy and other people she didn't know. Georgia might have been one of the girls Richard had had an affair with, Therese supposed. He had once mentioned about five. She couldn't remember any of their names except Celia.

  "Is this one of your sets?" Dannie asked her, looking at the cardboard model that hung on the wall, and when she nodded, he got up to see it.

  And now, Richard and Phil were talking about a man who owed Richard money from somewhere. Phil said he had seen the man last night in the San Remo bar. Phil's elongated face and his clipped hair was like an El Greco, Therese thought, yet the same features in his brother looked like an American Indian. And the way Phil talked completely destroyed the illusion of El Greco. He talked like any of the people one saw in Village bars, young people who were supposed to be writers or actors, and who usually did nothing.

  "It's very attractive," Dannie said, peering behind one of the little suspended figures.

  "It's a model for Petrushka. The fair scene," she said, wondering if he would know the ballet. He might be a lawyer, she thought, or even a doctor. There were yellowish stains on his fingers, not the stains of cigarettes.

  Richard said something about being hungry, and Phil said he was starving, but neither of them ate any of the cheese that was in front of them.

  "We're due in half an hour, Phil," Dannie repeated.

  Then a moment later, they were all standing up, putting on their coats.

  "Let's eat out somewhere, Terry," Richard said. "How about the Czech place up on Second?"

  "All right," she said, trying to sound agreeable. This was the end of it, she supposed, and nothing was definite. She had an impulse to ask Phil a crucial question, but she didn't.

  And on the street, they began to walk downtown instead of up. Richard walked with Phil, and only glanced back once or twice at her, as if to see if she were still there. Dannie held her arm at the curbs, and across the patches of dirty slippery stuff, neither snow nor ice, that were the remains of a snowfall three weeks ago.

  "Are you a doctor?" she asked Dannie.

  "Physicist," Dannie replied. "I'm taking graduate courses at N. Y. U. now."

  He smiled at her, but the conversation stopped there for a while.

  Then he said, "That's a long way from stage designing, isn't it."

  She nodded. "Quite a long way." She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn't, because what would it matter if he did or didn't? "Do you know where we're going?" she asked.

  He smiled broadly, showing square white teeth. "Yes. To the subway. But Phil wants a bite somewhere first."

  They were walking down Third Avenue. And Richard was talking to Phil about their going to Europe next summer. Therese felt a throb of embarrassment as she walked along behind Richard, like a dangling appendage, because Phil and Dannie would naturally think she was Richard's mistress. She wasn't his mistress, and Richard didn't expect her to be in Europe. It was a strange relationship, she supposed, and who would believe it? Because from what she had seen in New York, everybody slept with everybody they had dates with more than once or twice. And the two people she had gone out with before Richard—Angelo and Harry—had certainly dropped her when they discovered she didn't care for an affair with them. She had tried to have an affair with Richard three or four times in the year she had known him, though with negative results; Richard said he preferred to wait. He meant wait until she cared more for him. Richard wanted to marry her, and she was the first girl he had ever proposed to, he said. She knew he would ask her again before they left for Europe, but she didn't love him enough to marry him. And yet she would be accepting most of the money for the trip from him, she thought with a familiar sense of guilt. Then the image of Mrs. Semco, Richard's mother, came before her, smiling approval on them, on their marrying, and Therese involuntarily shook her head.

  "What's the matter?" Dannie asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Are you cold?"

  "No. Not at all."

  But he tucked her arm closer anyway. She was cold, and felt rather miserable in general. It was the half dangling, half cemented relationship with Richard, she knew. They saw more and more of each other, without actually growing closer. She still wasn't in love with him, not after ten months, and maybe she never could be, though the fact remained that she liked him better than any one person she had ever known, certainly any man. Sometimes she thought she was in love with him, waking up in the morning and looking blankly at the ceiling, remembering suddenly that she knew him, remembering suddenly his face shining with affection for her because of some gesture of affection on her part, before her sleepy emptiness had time to fill up with the realization of what time it was, what day, what she had to do, the soldier substance that m
ade up one's life. But the feeling bore no resemblance to what she had read about love. Love was supposed to be a kind of blissful insanity.

  Richard didn't act blissfully insane either, in fact.

  "Oh, everything's called St. Germain-des-Pres!" Phil shouted with a wave of his hand. "I'll give you some addresses before you go. How long do you think you'll be there?"

  A truck with rattling, slapping chains turned in front of them, and Therese couldn't hear Richard's answer. Phil went into the Riker's shop on the corner of Fifty-third Street.

  "We don't have to eat here. Phil just wants to stop a minute." Richard squeezed her shoulder as they went in the door. "It's a great day, isn't it, Terry? Don't you feel it?- It's your first real job!"

  Richard was convinced, and Therese tried hard to realize it might be a great moment. But she couldn't recapture even the certainty she remembered when she had looked at the orange washcloth in the basin after Richard's telephone call. She leaned against the stool next to Phil's, and Richard stood beside her, still talking to him. The glaring white light on the white tile walls and the floor seemed brighter than sunlight, for here there were no shadows. She could see every shiny black hair in Phil's eyebrows, and the rough and smooth spots on the pipe Dannie held in his hand, unlighted. She could see the details of Richard's hand that hung limply out of his overcoat sleeve, and she was conscious again of their incongruity with his limber, long-boned body.

  They were thick, even plump looking hands, and they moved in the same inarticulate, blind way if they picked up a salt shaker or the handle of a suitcase. Or stroked her hair, she thought. The insides of his hands were extremely soft, like a girl's, and a little moist. Worst of all, he generally forgot to clean his nails, even when he took the trouble to dress up. Therese had said something about it a couple of times to him, but she felt now that she couldn't say anything more without irritating him.

  Dannie was watching her. She was held by his thoughtful eyes for a moment, then she looked down. Suddenly she knew why she couldn't recapture the feeling she had before: she simply didn't believe Phil McElroy could get her a job on his recommendation.

  "Are you worried about that job?" Dannie was standing beside her.

  "No."

  "Don't be. Phil can give you some tips." He poked his pipe stem between his lips, and seemed to be about to say something else, but he turned away.

  She half listened to Phil's conversation with Richard. They were talking about boat reservations.

  Dannie said, "By the way, the Black Cat Theatre's only a couple of blocks from Morton Street where I live. Phil's staying with me, too. Come and have lunch with us, will you?"

  "Thanks very much. I'd like to." It probably wouldn't be, she thought, but it was nice of him to ask her.

  "What do you think, Terry?" Richard said. "Is March too soon to go to Europe? It's better to go early than wait till everything's so crowded over there."

  "March sounds all right," she said.

  "There's nothing to stop us, is there? I don't care if I don't finish the winter term at school."

  "No, there's nothing to stop us." It was easy to say. It was easy to believe all of it, and just as easy not to believe any of it. But if it were all true, if the job were real, the play a success, and she could go to France with at least a single achievement behind her—Suddenly, Therese reached out for Richard's arm, slid her hand down it to his fingers. Richard was so surprised, he stopped in the middle of a sentence.

  The next afternoon, Therese called the Watkins number that Phil had given her. A very efficient sounding girl answered. Mr. Cortes was not there, but they had heard about her through Phil McElroy. The job was hers, and she would start work December twenty-eighth at fifty dollars a week. She could come in beforehand and show Mr. Cortes some of her work, if she wanted to, but it wasn't necessary, not if Mr. McElroy had recommended her so highly.

  Therese called up Phil to thank him, but nobody answered the telephone.

  She wrote him a note, in care of the Black Cat Theatre.

  CHAPTER 3

  "ROBERTA WALLS, the youngest D. S. in the toy department, paused just long enough in her midmorning flurry to whisper to Therese, "If we don't sell this twenty-four ninety-five suitcase today, it'll be marked down Monday and the department'll take a two-dollar loss!" Roberta nodded at the brown pasteboard suitcase on the counter, thrust her load of gray boxes into Miss Martucci's hands, and hurried on.

  Down the long aisle, Therese watched the salesgirls make way for Roberta.

  Roberta flew up and down counters and from one corner of the floor to the other, from nine in the morning until six at night. Therese had heard that Roberta was trying for another promotion. She wore red harlequin glasses, and unlike the other girls, always pushed the sleeves of her green smock up above her elbows. Therese saw her flit across an aisle and stop Mrs. Hendrickson with an excited message delivered with gestures.

  Mrs. Hendrickson nodded agreement, Roberta touched her shoulder familiarly, and Therese felt a small start of jealousy. Jealousy, though she didn't care in the least for Mrs. Hendrickson, even disliked her.

  "Do you have a doll made of cloth that cries?"

  Therese didn't know of such a doll in stock, but the woman was positive Frankenberg's had it, because she had seen it advertised. Therese pulled out another box, from the last spot it might possibly be, and it wasn't.

  "Wotcha lookin' fuh?" Miss Santini asked her. Miss Santini had a cold.

  "A doll made of cloth that cries," Therese said. Miss Santini had been especially courteous to her lately. Therese remembered the stolen meat.

  But now Miss Santini only lifted her eyebrows, stuck out her bright red underlip with a shrug, and I went on.

  "Made of cloth? With pigtails?" Miss Martucci, a lean, straggly haired Italian girl with a long nose like a wolf's looked at Therese. "Don't let Roberta hear you," Miss Martucci said with a glance around her. "Don't let anybody hear you, but those dolls are in the basement."

  "Oh." The upstairs toy department was at war with the basement toy department. The tactics were to force the customer into buying on the seventh floor, where everything was more expensive. Therese told the woman the dolls were in the basement.

  "Try and sell this today," Miss Davis said to her as she sidled past, slapping the battered imitation alligator suitcase with her red-nailed hand.

  Therese nodded.

  "Do you have any stiff-legged dolls? One that stands up?"

  Therese looked at the middle-aged woman with the crutches that thrust her shoulders high. Her face was different from all the other faces across the counter, gentle, with a certain cognizance in the eyes as if they actually saw what they looked at.

  "That's a little bigger than I wanted," the woman said when Therese showed her a doll. "I'm sorry. Do you have a smaller one?"

  "I think so." Therese went farther down the aisle, and was aware that the woman followed her on her crutches, circling the press of people at the counter, so as to save Therese walking back with the doll. Suddenly Therese wanted to take infinite pains, wanted to find exactly the doll the woman was looking for. But the next doll wasn't quite right, either.

  The doll didn't have real hair. Therese tried in another place and found the same doll with real hair. It even cried when it bent over. It was exactly what the woman wanted. Therese laid the doll down carefully in fresh tissue in a new box.

  "That's just perfect," the woman repeated. "I'm sending this to a friend in Australia who's a nurse. She graduated from nursing school with me, so I made a little uniform like ours to dress a doll in. Thank you so much.

  And I wish you a merry Christmas!"

  "Merry Christmas to you!" Therese said, smiling. It was the first merry Christmas she had heard from a customer.

  "Have you had your relief yet, Miss Belivet?" Mrs. Hendrickson asked her, as sharply as if she reproached her.

  Therese hadn't had it. She got her pocketbook and the novel she was reading from the shelf under
the wrapping counter. The novel was Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which Richard was anxious for her to read. How anyone could have read Gertrude Stein without reading any Joyce, Richard said, he didn't know. She felt a bit inferior when Richard talked with her about books. She had browsed all over the bookshelves at school, but the library assembled by the Order of St.

  Margaret had been far from catholic, she realized now, though it had included such unexpected writers as Gertrude Stein.

  The hall to the employees' rest rooms was blocked by big shipping carts piled high with boxes. Therese waited to get through.

  "Pixie!" one of the shipping cart boys shouted to her.

  Therese smiled a little because it was silly. Even down in the cloakroom in the basement, they yelled "Pixie!" at her morning and night.

  "Pixie, waiting for me?" the raw-edged voice roared again, over the crash and bump of the stock carts.

  She got through, and dodged a shipping cart that hurtled toward her with a clerk aboard.

  "No smoking here!" shouted a man's voice, the very growly voice of an executive, and the girls ahead of Therese who had lighted cigarettes blew their smoke in the air and said loudly in chorus just before they reached the refuge of the women's room, "Who does he think he is, Mr. Frankenberg?"

  "Yoo-hoo! Pixie!"

  "Ah'm juss bahdin mah tahm, Pixie!"

  A shipping cart skidded in front of her, and she struck her leg against its metal corner. She went on without looking down at her leg, though pain began to blossom there, like a slow explosion. She went on into the different chaos of women's voices, women's figures, and the smell of disinfectant. Blood was running to her shoe, and her stocking was torn in a jagged hole. She pushed some skin back into place, and feeling sickened, leaned against the wall and held to a water pipe. She stayed there a few seconds, listening to the confusion of voices among the girls at the mirror. Then she wet toilet paper and daubed until the red was gone from her stocking, but the red kept coming.