The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "I—" Should she tell her she usually worked on her stage models? Sketched and painted sometimes, carved things like cats' heads and tiny figures to go in her ballet sets, but that she liked best to take long walks practically anywhere, liked best simply to dream? Therese felt she did not have to tell her. She felt the woman's eyes could not look at anything without understanding completely. Therese took some more of her drink, liking it, though it was like the woman to swallow, she thought, terrifying, and strong.

  The woman nodded to the waiter, and two more drinks arrived.

  "I like this."

  "What?" Therese asked.

  "I like it that someone sent me a card, someone I didn't know. It's the way things should be at Christmas. And this year I like it especially."

  "I'm glad." Therese smiled, wondering if she were serious.

  "You're a very pretty girl," she said. "And very sensitive, too, aren't you?"

  She might have been speaking of a doll, Therese thought, so casually had she told her she was pretty. "I think you are magnificent," Therese said with the courage of the second drink, not caring how it might sound, because she knew the woman knew anyway.

  She laughed, putting her head back. It was a sound more beautiful than music. It made a little wrinkle at the corner of her eyes, and it made her purse her red lips as she drew on her cigarette. She gazed past Therese for a moment, her elbows on the table and her chin propped up on the hand that held her cigarette. There was a long line, from the waist of her fitted black suit up to the widening shoulder, and then the blond head with the fine, unruly hair held high. She was about thirty or thirty-two, Therese thought, and her daughter, for whom she had bought the valise and the doll, would be perhaps six or eight. Therese could imagine the child, blond haired, the face golden and happy, the body slim and well proportioned, and always playing. But the child's face, unlike the woman's with its short cheeks and rather Nordic compactness, was vague and nondescript. And the husband? Therese could not see him at all.

  Therese said, "I'm sure you thought it was a man who sent you the Christmas card, didn't you?"

  "I did," she said through a smile. "I thought it just might be a man in the ski department who'd sent it."

  "I'm sorry."

  "No, I'm delighted." She leaned back in the booth. "I doubt very, much if I'd have gone to lunch with him. No, I'm delighted."

  The dusky and faintly sweet smell of her perfume came to Therese again, a smell suggestive of dark-green silk, that was hers alone, like the smell of a special flower. Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. Therese could not understand it, but it was so. Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed. She had never seen the woman before. If she had, could she have forgotten? In the silence, Therese felt they both waited for the other to speak, yet the silence was not an awkward one. Their plates had arrived. It was creamed spinach with an egg on top, steamy and buttery smelling.

  "How is it you live alone?" the woman asked, and before Therese knew it, she had told the woman her life story.

  But not in tedious detail. In six sentences, as if it all mattered less to her than a story she had read somewhere. And what did the facts matter after all, whether her mother was French or English or Hungarian, or if her father had been an Irish painter, or a Czechoslovakian lawyer, whether he had been successful or not, or whether her mother had presented her to the Order of St. Margaret as a troublesome, bawling infant, or as a troublesome, melancholy eight-year-old? Or whether she had been happy there? Because she was happy now, starting today. She had no need of parents or background.

  "What could be duller than past history!" Therese said, smiling.

  "Maybe futures that won't have any history."

  Therese did not ponder it. It was right. She was still smiling, as if she had just learned how to smile and did not know how to stop. The woman smiled with her, amusedly, and perhaps she was laughing at her, Therese thought.

  "What kind of a name is Belivet?" she asked.

  "It's Czech. It's changed," Therese explained awkwardly. "Originally—"

  "It's very original."

  "What's your name?" Therese asked. "Your first name?"

  "My name? Carol. Please don't ever call me Carole."

  "Please don't ever call me Therese," Therese said, pronouncing the "th."

  "How do you like it pronounced? Therese?"

  "Yes. The way you do," she answered. Carol pronounced her name the French way, Terez. She was used to a dozen variations, and sometimes she herself pronounced it differently. She liked the way Carol pronounced it, and she liked her lips saying it. An indefinite longing, that she had been only vaguely conscious of at times before, became now a recognizable wish. It was so absurd, so embarrassing a desire, that Therese thrust it from her mind.

  "What do you do on Sundays?" Carol asked!

  "I don't always know. Nothing in particular. What do you do?"

  "Nothing—lately. If you'd like to visit me sometime, you're welcome to.

  At least there's some country around where I live. Would you like to come out this Sunday?" The gray eyes regarded her directly now, and for the first time, Therese faced them. There was a measure of humor in them, Therese saw. And what else? Curiosity and a challenge, too.

  "Yes," Therese said.

  "What a strange girl you are."

  "Why?"

  "Flung out of space," Carol said.

  CHAPTER 5

  RICHARD WAS STANDING on the street corner, waiting for her, shifting from, foot to foot in the cold. She wasn't cold at all tonight, she realized suddenly, even though other people on the streets were hunched in their overcoats. She took Richard's arm and squeezed it affectionately tight.

  "Have you been inside?" she asked. She was ten minutes late.

  "Of course not. I was waiting." He pressed his cold lips and nose into her cheek. "Did you have a rough day?"

  "No."

  The night was very black, in spite of the Christmas lights on some of the lampposts. She looked at Richard's face in the flare of his match. The smooth slab of his forehead overhung his narrowed eyes, strong looking as a whale's front, she thought, strong enough to batter something in. His face was like a face sculpted in wood, planed smooth and unadorned. She saw his eyes open like unexpected spots of blue sky in the darkness.

  He smiled at her. "You're in a good mood tonight. Want to walk down the block? You can't smoke in there. Like a cigarette?"

  "No, thanks."

  They began to walk. The gallery was just beside them, a row of lighted windows, each with a Christmas wreath, on the second floor of the big building. Tomorrow she would see Carol, Therese thought, tomorrow morning at eleven. She would see her only ten blocks from here, in a little more than twelve hours. She started to take Richard's arm again, and suddenly felt self-conscious about it. Eastward, down Forty-third Street, she saw Orion exactly spread in the center of the sky between the buildings. She had used to look at him from windows in school, from the window of her first New York apartment.

  "I got our reservations today," Richard said. "The President Taylor sailing March seventh. I talked with the ticket fellow, and I think he can get us outside rooms, if I keep after him."

  "March seventh?" She heard the start of excitement in her voice, though she did not want to go to Europe now at all.

  "About ten weeks off," Richard said, taking her hand.

  "Can you cancel the reservation in case I can't go?" She could as well tell him now that she didn't want to go, she thought, but he would only argue, as he had before when she hesitated.

  "Oh, of course, Terry!" And he laughed.

  Richar
d swung her hand as they walked. As if they were lovers, Therese thought. It would be almost like love, what she felt for Carol, except that Carol was a woman. It was not quite insanity, but it was certainly blissful. A silly word, but how could she possibly be happier than she was now, and had been since Thursday?

  "I wish we could share one together," Richard said.

  "Share what?"

  "Share a room!" Richard boomed out, laughing, and Therese noticed the two people on the sidewalk who turned to look at them. "Should we have a drink somewhere just to celebrate? We can go in the Mansfield around the corner."

  "I don't feel like sitting still. Let's have it later."

  They got into the show at half price on Richard's art school passes. The gallery was a series of high-ceilinged, plush carpeted rooms, a background of financial opulence for the commercial advertisements, the drawings, lithographs, illustrations, or whatever that hung in a crowded row on the walls. Richard pored over some of them for minutes at a time, but Therese found them a little depressing.

  "Did you see this?" Richard asked, pointing to a complicated drawing of a lineman repairing a telephone wire that Therese had seen somewhere before, that tonight actually pained her to look at.

  "Yes," she said. She was thinking of something else. If she stopped scrimping to save money for Europe—which had been silly anyway because she wasn't going—she could buy a new coat. There would be sales right after Christmas. The coat she had now was a kind of black polo coat, and she always felt drab in it.

  Richard took her arm. "You haven't enough respect for technique, little girl."

  She gave him a mocking frown, and took his arm again. She felt very close to him suddenly, as warm and happy with him as she had been the first night she met him, at the party down on Christopher Street where Frances Cotter had taken her. Richard had been a little drunk, as he had never been since with her, talking about books and politics and people more positively than she had ever heard him talk since, too. He had talked with her all evening, and she had liked him so very much that night for his enthusiasms, his ambitions, his likes and dislikes, and because it was her first real party and he had made it a success for her.

  "You're not looking," Richard said.

  "It's exhausting. I've had enough when you have."

  Near the door, they met some people Richard knew from the League, a young man, a girl, and a young colored man. Richard introduced Therese to them.

  She could tell they were not close friends of Richard's, but he announced to all of them. "We're going to Europe in March." And they all looked envious.

  Outside, Fifth Avenue seemed empty and waiting, like a stage set for some dramatic action. Therese walked along-quickly beside Richard, her hands in her pockets. Somewhere today she had lost her gloves. She was thinking of tomorrow, at eleven o'clock. She wondered if she would possibly still be with Carol this time tomorrow night.

  "What about tomorrow?" Richard asked.

  "Tomorrow?"

  "You know. The family asked if you could come out this Sunday and have dinner with us."

  Therese hesitated, remembering. She had visited the Semcos four or five Sunday afternoons. They had a big dinner around two o'clock, and then Mr.

  Semco, a short man with a bald head, would want to dance with her to polkas and Russian folk music on the phonograph.

  "Say, you know Mamma wants to make you a dress?" Richard went on. "She's already got the material. She wants to measure you for it."

  "A dress—but that's so much work." Therese had a vision of Mrs. Semco's embroidered blouses, white blouses with rows upon rows of stitches. Mrs. Semco was proud of her needlework. Therese did not feel she should accept such a colossal labor.

  "She loves it," Richard said. "Well, what about tomorrow? Want to come out around noon?"

  "I don't think I want to this Sunday. They haven't made any great plans, have they?"

  "No," Richard said, disappointed. "You just want to work or something tomorrow?"

  "Yes. I'd rather." She didn't want Richard to know about Carol, or even ever meet her.

  "Not even take a drive somewhere?"

  "I don't think so, thanks." Therese didn't like his holding her hand now.

  His hand was moist, which made it icy cold.

  "You don't think you'll change your mind?"

  Therese shook her head. "No." There were some mitigating things she might have said, excuses, but she did not want to lie about tomorrow either, any more than she had already lied. She heard Richard sigh, and they walked along in silence for a while.

  "Mamma wants to make you a white dress with lace edging. She's going crazy with frustration with no girls in the family but Esther."

  That was his cousin by marriage, whom Therese had only seen once or twice. "How is Esther?"

  "Just the same."

  Therese extricated her fingers from Richard's. She was hungry suddenly.

  She had spent her dinner hour writing something, a kind of letter to Carol that she hadn't mailed and didn't intend to. They caught the uptown bus at Third Avenue, then walked east to Therese's house. Therese did not want to invite Richard upstairs, but she did anyway.

  "No, thanks, I'll shove on," Richard said. He put a foot on the first step. "You're in a funny mood tonight. You're miles away."

  "No, I'm not," she said, feeling inarticulate and resenting it.

  "You are now. I can tell. After all, don't you—"

  "What," she prompted.

  "We aren't getting very far, are we?" he said, suddenly earnest. "If you don't even want to spend Sundays with me, how're we going to spend months together in Europe?"

  "Well—if you want to call it all off, Richard."

  "Terry, I love you." He brushed his palm over his hair, exasperatedly.

  "Of course, I don't want to call it all off, but—" He broke off again.

  She knew what he was about to say, that she gave him practically nothing in the way of affection, but he wouldn't say it, because he knew very well that she wasn't in love with him, so why did he really expect her affection? Yet the simple fact that she wasn't in love with him made Therese feel guilty, guilty about accepting anything from him, a birthday present, or an invitation to dinner at his family's, or even his time.

  Therese pressed her finger tips hard on the stone banister. "All right—I know. I'm not in love with you," she said.

  "That's not what I mean, Terry."

  "If you ever want to call the whole thing off—I mean, stop seeing me at all, then do it." It was not the first time she had said that, either.

  "Terry, you know I'd rather be with you than anyone else in the world.

  That's the hell of it."

  "Well, if it's hell—"

  "Do you love me at all, Terry? How do you love me?"

  Let me count the ways, she thought. "I don't love you, but I like you. I felt tonight, a few minutes ago," she said, hammering the words out however they sounded, because they were true, "that I felt closer to you than I ever have, in fact."

  Richard looked at her, a little incredulously. "Do you?" He started slowly up the steps, smiling, and stopped just below her. "Then—why not let me stay with you tonight, Terry? Just let's try, will you?"

  She had known from his first step toward her that he was going to ask her that. Now she felt miserable and ashamed, sorry for herself and for him, because it was so impossible, and so embarrassing because she didn't want it. There was always that tremendous block of not even wanting to try it, which reduced it all to a kind of wretched embarrassment and nothing more, each time he asked her. She remembered the first night she had let him stay, and she writhed again inwardly. It had been anything but pleasant, and she had asked right in the middle of it, "Is this right?"

  How could it be right and so unpleasant, she had thought. And Richard had laughed, long and loud and with a heartiness that had made her angry. And the second time had been even worse, probably because Richard had thought all the difficulties had been
gotten over. It was painful enough to make her weep, and Richard had been very apologetic and had said she made him feel like a brute. And then she had protested that he wasn't. She knew very well that he wasn't, that he was angelic compared to what Angelo Rossi would have been, for instance, if she had slept with him the night he stood here on the same steps, asking the same question.

  "Terry, darling—"

  "No," Therese said, finding her voice at last. "I just can't tonight, and I can't go to Europe with you either," she finished with an abject and hopeless frankness.

  Richard's lips parted in a stunned way. Therese could not bear to look at the frown above them. "Why not?"

  "Because. Because I can't," she said, every word agony. "Because I don't want to sleep with you."

  "Oh, Terry!" Richard laughed. "I'm sorry I asked you. Forget about it, honey, will you? And in Europe, too?"

  Therese looked away, noticed Orion again, tipped at a slightly different angle, and looked back at Richard. But I can't, she thought. I've got to think about it sometime, because you think about it. It seemed to her that she spoke the words and that they were solid as blocks of wood in the air between them, even though she heard nothing. She had said the words before to him, in her room upstairs, once in Prospect Park when she was winding a kite string. But he wouldn't consider them, and what could she do now, repeat them? "Do you want to come up for a while anyway?" she asked, tortured by herself, by a shame she could not really account for.

  "No," Richard said with a soft laugh that shamed her all the more for its tolerance and its understanding. "No, I'll go on. Good night, honey. I love you, Terry." And with a last look at her, he went.

  CHAPTER 6

  THERESE STEPPED out into the street and looked, but the streets were empty with a Sunday morning emptiness. The wind flung itself around the tall cement corner of Frankenberg's as if it were furious at finding no human figure there to oppose. No one but her, Therese thought, and grinned suddenly at herself. She might have thought of a more pleasant place to meet than this. The wind was like ice against her teeth. Carol was a quarter of an hour late. If she didn't come, she would probably keep on waiting, all day and into the night. One figure came out of the subway's pit, a splintery thin hurrying figure of a woman in a long black coat under which her feet moved as fast as if four feet were rotating on a wheel.