The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "It's all right, thanks," she said to a girl who bent over her for a moment, and the girl went away.

  Finally, there was nothing to do but buy a sanitary napkin from the slot machine. She used a little of the cotton from inside it, and tied it on her leg with the gauze. And then it was time to go back to the counter.

  Their eyes met at the same instant, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression as if half her mind were on whatever it was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, Therese felt sure the woman would come to her.

  Then Therese saw her walk slowly toward the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer.

  "May I see one of those valises?" the woman asked, and leaned on the counter, looking down through the glass top.

  The damaged valise lay only a yard away. Therese turned around and got a box from the bottom of a stack, a box that had never been opened. When she stood up, the woman was looking at her with the calm gray eyes that Therese could neither quite face nor look away from.

  "That's the one I like, but I don't suppose I can have it, can I?" she said, nodding toward the brown valise in the show window behind Therese.

  Her eyebrows were blond, curving around the bend of her forehead. Her mouth was as wise as her eyes, Therese thought, and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets.

  "Yes," Therese said.

  Therese went back to the stockroom for the key. The key hung just inside the door on a nail, and no one was allowed to touch it but Mrs. Hendrickson.

  Miss Davis saw her and gasped, but Therese said, "I need it," and went out.

  She opened the show window and took the suitcase down and laid it on the counter.

  "You're giving me the one on display?" She smiled as if she understood.

  She said casually, leaning both forearms on the counter, studying the contents of the valise, "They'll have a fit, won't they?"

  "It doesn't matter," Therese said.

  "All right. I'd like this. That's C. O. D. And what about clothes? Do these come with it?"

  There were cellophane wrapped clothes in the lid of the suitcase, with a price tag on them. Therese said, "No, they're separate. If you want doll clothes—these aren't as good as the clothes in the dolls' clothing department across the aisle."

  "Oh! Will this get to New Jersey before Christmas?"

  "Yes, it'll arrive Monday." If it didn't, Therese thought, she would deliver it herself.

  "Mrs. H. F. Aird," the woman's soft, distinct voice said, and Therese began to print it on the green C. O. D. slip.

  The name, the address, the town appeared beneath the pencil point like a secret Therese would never forget, like something stamping itself in her memory forever.

  "You won't make any mistakes, will you?" the woman's voice asked.

  Therese noticed the woman's perfume for the first time, and instead of replying, could only shake her head. She looked down at the slip to which she was laboriously adding the necessary figures, and wished with all her power to wish anything, that the woman would simply continue her last words and say, "Are you really so glad to have met me? Then why can't we see each other again? Why can't we even have lunch together today?" Her voice was so casual and she might have said it so easily. But nothing came after the "will you?" nothing to relieve the shame of having been recognized as a new salesgirl, hired for the Christmas rush, inexperienced and liable to make mistakes. Therese slid the book toward her for her signature.

  Then the woman picked up her gloves from the counter, and turned, and slowly went away, and Therese watched the distance widen and widen. Her ankles below the fur of the coat were pale and thin. She wore plain black suede shoes with high heels.

  "That's a C. O. D. order?"

  Therese looked into Mrs. Hendrickson's ugly, meaningless face. "Yes, Mrs. Hendrickson."

  "Don't you know you're supposed to give the customer the strip at the top? How do you expect them to claim the purchase when it comes? Where's the customer? Can you catch her?"

  "Yes." She was only ten feet away, across the aisle at the dolls' clothing counter. And with the green slip in her hand, she hesitated a moment, then carried it around the counter, forcing herself to advance, because she was suddenly abashed by her appearance, the old blue skirt, the cotton blouse—whoever assigned the green smocks had missed her—and the humiliating flat shoes. And the horrible bandage through which the blood was probably showing again.

  "I'm supposed to give you this," she said, laying the miserable little scrap beside the hand on the edge of the counter, and turning away.

  Behind the counter again, Therese faced the stock boxes, sliding them thoughtfully out and back, as if she were looking for something. Therese waited until the woman must have finished at the counter and gone away.

  She was conscious of the moments passing like irrevocable time, irrevocable happiness, for in these last seconds, she might turn and see the face she would never see again. She was conscious, too, dimly now and with a different horror, of the old, unceasing voices of customers at the counter calling for assistance, calling to her, and of the low, humming rrrrr of the little train, part of the storm that was closing in and separating her from the woman.

  But when she turned finally, she looked directly into the gray eyes again. The woman was walking toward her, and as if time had turned back, she leaned on the counter again and gestured to a doll and asked to see it.

  Therese got the doll and dropped it with a clatter on the glass counter, and the woman glanced at her.

  "Sounds unbreakable," the woman said.

  Therese smiled.

  "Yes, I'll get this, too," she said in the quiet slow voice that made a pool of silence in the tumult around them. She gave her name and address again, and Therese took it slowly from her lips, as if she did not already know it by heart. "That really will arrive before Christmas?"

  "It'll come Monday at the latest. That's two days before Christmas."

  "Good. I don't mean to make you nervous."

  Therese tightened the knot in the string she had put around the doll box, and the knot mysteriously came open. "No," she said. In an embarrassment so profound there was nothing left to defend, she got the knot tied under the woman's eyes.

  "It's a rotten job, isn't it?"

  "Yes. " Therese folded the C. O. D. slips around the white string, and fastened them with a pin.

  "So forgive me for complaining."

  Therese glanced at her, and the sensation returned that she knew her from somewhere, that the woman was about to reveal herself, and they would both laugh then, and understand. "You're not complaining. But I know it'll get there." Therese looked across the aisle, where the woman had stood before, and saw the tiny slip of green paper still on the counter.

  "You really are supposed to keep that C. O. D. slip."

  Her eyes changed with her smile now, brightened with a gray, colorless fire that Therese almost knew, almost could place. "I've gotten things before without them. I always lose them." She bent to sign the second C. O. D. slip.

  Therese watched her go away with a step as slow as when she had come, saw her look at another counter as she passed it, and slap her black gloves across her palm twice, three times. Then she disappeared into an elevator.

  And Therese turned to the next customer. She worked with an indefatigable patience, but her figures on the sales slips bore faint tails where the pencil jerked convulsively. She went to Mr. Logan's office, which see
med to take hours, but when she looked at the clock, only fifteen minutes had passed, and now it was time to wash up for lunch. She stood stiffly in front of the rotating towel, drying her hands, feeling unattached to anything or anyone, isolated. Mr. Logan had asked her if she wanted to stay on after Christmas. She could have a job downstairs in the cosmetic department. Therese had said no.

  In the middle of the afternoon, she went down to the first floor and bought a card in the greeting-card department. It was not a very interesting card, but at least it was simple, in plain blue and gold. She stood with the pen poised over the card, thinking of what she might have written—"You are magnificent" or even "I love you"—finally writing quickly the excruciatingly dull and impersonal: "Special salutations from Frankenberg's." She added her number 645-A in lieu of a signature. Then she went down to the post office in the basement, hesitated at the letter drop, losing her nerve suddenly at the sight of her hand holding the letter half in the slot. What would happen? She was going to leave the store in a few days, anyway. What would Mrs. H. F. Aird care? The blond eyebrows would perhaps lift a little, she would look at the card a moment, then forget it. Therese dropped it.

  On the way home, an idea came to her for a stage set, a house interior with more depth than breadth, with a kind of vortex down the center, from which rooms would go off on either side. She wanted to begin the cardboard model that night, but at last she only elaborated on her pencil sketch of it. She wanted to see someone—not Richard, not Jack or Alice Kelly downstairs, maybe Stella, Stella Overton, the stage designer she had met during her first weeks in New York. Therese had not seen her, she realized, since she had come to the cocktail party Therese had given before she left her other apartment. Stella was one of the people who didn't know where she lived now. Therese was on her way down to the telephone in the hall, when she heard the short quick rings of her doorbell that meant there was a call for her.

  "Thank you," Therese called down to Mrs. Osborne.

  It was Richard's usual call around nine o'clock. Richard wanted to know if she felt like seeing a movie tomorrow night. It was the movie at the Sutton they still hadn't seen. Therese said she wasn't doing anything, but she wanted to finish a pillow cover. Alice Kelly had said she could come down and use her sewing machine tomorrow night. And besides, she had to wash her hair.

  "Wash it tonight and see me tomorrow night," Richard said.

  "It's too late. I can't sleep if my head's wet."

  "I'll wash it tomorrow night. We won't use the tub, just a couple of buckets."

  She smiled. "I think we'd better not." She had fallen into the tub the time Richard had washed her hair. Richard had been imitating the tub drain with writhings and gluggings, and she had laughed so hard, her feet slipped on the floor.

  "Well, what about that art show Saturday? It's open Saturday afternoon."

  "But Saturday's the day I have to work to nine. I can't get away till nine thirty."

  "Oh. Well, I'll stay around school and meet you on the corner about nine thirty. Forty-fourth and Fifth. All right?"

  "All right."

  "Anything new today?"

  "No. With you?"

  "No. I'm going to see about boat reservations tomorrow. I'll call you tomorrow night."

  Therese did not telephone Stella at all.

  The next day was Friday, the last Friday before Christmas, and the busiest day Therese had known since she had been working at Frankenberg's, though everyone said tomorrow would be worse. People were pressed alarmingly hard against the glass counters. Customers she started to wait on got swept away and lost in the gluey current that filled the aisle. It was impossible to imagine any more people crowding onto the floor, but the elevators kept emptying people out.

  "I don't see why they don't close the doors downstairs!" Therese remarked to Miss Martucci, when they were both stooping by a stock shelf.

  "What?" Miss Martucci answered, unable to hear.

  "Miss Belivet!" Somebody yelled, and a whistle blew.

  It was Mrs. Hendrickson. She had been using a whistle to get attention today. Therese made her way toward her past salesgirls and through empty boxes on the floor.

  "You're wanted on the telephone," Mrs. Hendrickson told her, pointing to the telephone by the wrapping table.

  Therese made a helpless gesture that Mrs. Hendrickson had no time to see.

  It was impossible to hear anything on a telephone now. And she knew it was probably Richard being funny. He had called her once before.

  "Hello?" she said.

  "Hello, is this co-worker six forty-five A, Therese Belivet?" the operator's voice said over clickings and buzzings. "Go ahead."

  "Hello?" she repeated, and barely heard an answer. She dragged the telephone off the table and into the stockroom a few feet away. The wire did not quite reach, and she had to stoop on the floor. "Hello?"

  "Hello," the voice said. "Well—I wanted to thank you for the Christmas card."

  "Oh. Oh, you're—"

  "This is Mrs. Aird," she said. "Are you the one who sent it? Or not."

  "Yes," Therese said, rigid with guilt suddenly, as if she had been caught in a crime. She closed her eyes and wrung the telephone, seeing the intelligent, smiling eyes again as she had seen them yesterday. "I'm very sorry if it annoyed you," Therese said mechanically, in the voice with which she spoke to customers.

  The woman laughed. "This is very funny," she said casually, and Therese caught the same easy slur in her voice that she had heard yesterday, loved yesterday, and she smiled herself.

  "Is it? Why?"

  "You must be the girl in the toy department."

  "Yes."

  "It was extremely nice of you to send me the card," the woman said politely.

  Then Therese understood. She had thought it was from a man, some other clerk who had waited on her. "It was very nice waiting on you," Therese said.

  "Was it? Why?" She might have been mocking Therese. "Well—since it's Christmas, why don't we meet for a cup of coffee, at least? Or a drink."

  Therese flinched as the door burst open and a girl came into the room, stood right in front of her. "Yes—I'd like that."

  "When?" the woman asked. "I'm coming in to New York tomorrow in the morning. Why don't we make it for lunch? Do you have any time tomorrow?"

  "Of course. I have an hour, from twelve to one," Therese said, staring at the girl's feet in front of her in splayed flat moccasins, the back of her heavy ankles and calves in lisle stockings, shifting like an elephant's legs.

  "Shall I meet you downstairs at the Thirty-fourth Street entrance at about twelve?"

  "All right. I—" Therese remembered now she went to work at one sharp tomorrow. She had the morning off. She put her arm up to ward off the avalanche of boxes the girl in front of her had pulled down from the shelf. The girl herself teetered back onto her. "Hello?" she shouted over the noise of tumbling boxes.

  "I'm sow—ry," Mrs. Zabriskie said irritatedly, plowing out the door again.

  "Hello?" Therese repeated.

  The line was dead.

  CHAPTER 4

  "HELLO," the woman said, smiling.

  "Hello."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." At least, the woman had recognized her, Therese thought.

  "Do you have any preference as to restaurants?" the woman asked on the sidewalk.

  "No. It'd be nice to find a quiet one, but there aren't any in this neighborhood."

  "You haven't time for the East Side? No, you haven't, if you've only got an hour. I think I know a place a couple of blocks west on this street.

  Do you think you have time?"

  "Yes, certainly." It was twelve fifteen already. Therese knew she would be terribly late, and it didn't matter at all.

  They did not bother to talk on the way. Now and then the crowds made them separate, and once the woman glanced at Therese, across a pushcart full of dresses, smiling. They went into a restaurant with wooden rafters and white tablecloths, th
at miraculously was quiet, and not half filled. They sat down in a large wooden booth, and the woman ordered an old-fashioned without sugar, and invited Therese to have one, or a sherry, and when Therese hesitated, sent the waiter away with the order.

  She took off her hat and ran her fingers through her blond hair, once on either side, and looked at Therese. "And where did you get the nice idea of sending me a Christmas card?"

  "I remembered you," Therese said. She looked at the small pearl earrings, that were somehow no lighter than her hair itself, or her eyes. Therese thought her beautiful, though her face was a blur now because she could not bear to look at it directly. She got something out of her handbag, a lipstick and compact, and Therese looked at her lipstick case—golden like a jewel, and shaped like a sea chest. She wanted to look at the woman's mouth, but the gray eyes so close drove her away, flickering over her like fire.

  "You haven't been working there very long, have you?"

  "No. Only about two weeks."

  "And you won't be much longer—probably." She offered Therese a cigarette.

  Therese took one. "No. I'll have another job." She leaned toward the lighter the woman was holding for her, toward the slim hand with the oval red nails and a sprinkling of freckles on its back.

  "And do you often get inspired to send post cards?"

  "Post cards?"

  "Christmas cards?" She smiled at herself.

  "Of course not," Therese said.

  "Well, here's to Christmas." She touched Therese's glass and drank.

  "Where do you live? In Manhattan?"

  Therese told her. On Sixty-third Street. Her parents were dead, she said.

  She had lived in New York the past two years, and before that at a school in New Jersey. Therese did not tell her that the school was semi-religious, Episcopalian. She did not mention Sister Alicia whom she adored and thought of so often, with her pale-blue eyes and her ugly nose and her loving sternness. Because since yesterday morning, Sister Alicia had been thrust far away, far below the woman who sat opposite her.

  "And what do you do in your spare time?" The lamp on the table made her eyes silvery, full of liquid light. Even the pearl at her earlobe looked alive, like a drop of water that a touch might destroy.