The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "I'll never cry again," she said.

  "Yes, you will." And a match scraped.

  Therese took another cleansing tissue from the bed table and blew her nose.

  "Who else is in your life besides Richard?" Carol asked.

  She had fled them all. There had been Lily, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in the house where she had first lived in New York. Frances Cotter and Tim at the Pelican Press. Lois Vavrica, a girl who had been at the Home in Montclair, too. Now who was there? The Kellys who lived on the second floor at Mrs. Osborne's. And Richard. "When I was fired from that job last month," Therese said, "I was ashamed and I moved—" She stopped.

  "Moved where?"

  "I didn't tell anyone where, except Richard. I just disappeared. I suppose it was my idea of starting a new life, but mostly I was ashamed.

  I didn't want anyone to know where I was."

  Carol smiled. "Disappeared! I like that. And how lucky you are to be able to do it. You're free. Do you realize that?"

  Therese said nothing.

  "No," Carol answered herself.

  Beside Carol on the dressing table, a square gray clock ticked faintly, and as Therese had done a thousand times in the store, she read the time and attached a meaning to it. It was four fifteen and a little more, and suddenly she was anxious lest she had lain there too long, lest Carol might be expecting someone to come to the house.

  Then the telephone rang, sudden and long like the shriek of a hysterical woman in the hall, and they saw each other start.

  Carol stood up, and slapped something twice in her palm, as she had slapped the gloves in her palm in the store. The telephone screamed again, and Therese was sure Carol was going to throw whatever it was she held in her hand, throw it across the room against the wall. But Carol only turned and laid the thing down quietly, and left the room.

  Therese could hear Carol's voice in the hall. She did not want to hear what she was saying. She got up and put her skirt and her shoes on. Now she saw what Carol had held in her hand. It was a shoehorn of tan-colored wood. Anyone else would have thrown it, Therese thought. Then she knew one word for what she felt about Carol: pride. She heard Carol's voice repeating the same tones, and now opening the door to leave, she heard the words, "I have a guest," for the third time calmly presented as a barrier. "I think it's an excellent reason. What better?... What's the matter with tomorrow? If you—"

  Then there was no sound until Carol's first step on the stair, and Therese knew whoever had been talking to her had hung up on her. Who dared, Therese wondered.

  "Shouldn't I leave?" Therese asked.

  Carol looked at her in the same way she had when they first entered the house. "Not unless you want to. No. We'll take a drive later, if you want to."

  She knew Carol did not want to take another drive. Therese started to straighten the bed.

  "Leave the bed." Carol was watching her from the hall. "Just close the door."

  "Who is it that's coming?"

  Carol turned and went into the green room. "My husband," she said.

  "Hargess."

  Then the doorbell chimed downstairs, and the latch clicked at the same time.

  "No end prompt today," Carol murmured. "Come down, Therese."

  Therese felt sick with dread suddenly, not of the man but of Carol's annoyance at his coming.

  He was coming up the stairs. When he saw Therese, he slowed, and a faint surprise crossed his face, and then he looked at Carol.

  "Harge, this is Miss Belivet," Carol said. "Mr. Aird."

  "How do you do?" Therese said.

  Harge only glanced at Therese, but his nervous blue eyes inspected her from head to toe. He was a heavily built man with a rather pink face. One eyebrow was set higher than the other, rising in an alert peak in the center, as if it might have been distorted by a scar. "How do you do?"

  Then to Carol, "I'm sorry to disturb you. I only wanted to get one or two things." He went past her and opened the door to a room Therese had not seen. "Things for Rindy," he added.

  "Pictures on the wall?" Carol asked.

  The man was silent.

  Carol and Therese went downstairs. In the living room Carol sat down, but Therese did not.

  "Play some more, if you like," Carol said.

  Therese shook her head.

  "Play some," Carol said firmly.

  Therese was frightened by the sudden white anger in her eyes. "I can't,"

  Therese said, stubborn as a mule.

  And Carol subsided. Carol even smiled.

  They heard Harge's quick steps cross the hall and stop, then descend the stairs slowly. Therese saw his dark clad figure and then his pinkish blond head appear.

  "I can't find that watercolor set. I thought it was in my room," he said complainingly.

  I know where it is." Carol got up and started toward the stairs.

  "I suppose you want me to take her something for Christmas," Harge said.

  "Thanks, I'll give the things to her." Carol went up the stairs.

  They are just divorced, Therese thought, or about to be divorced.

  Harge looked at Therese, almost offered her his cigarette case, and didn't. He had an intense expression that curiously mingled anxiety and boredom. The flesh around his mouth was firm and heavy, rounding into the line of his mouth so that he seemed lipless. He lighted a cigarette for himself. "Are you from New York?" he asked.

  Therese felt the disdain and incivility in the question, like the sting of a slap in the face. "Yes, from New York," she answered.

  He was on the brink of another question to her, when Carol came down the stairs. Therese had steeled herself to be alone with him for minutes. Now she shuddered as she relaxed, and she knew that he saw it.

  "Thanks," Harge said as he took the box from Carol. He walked to his overcoat that Therese had noticed on the loveseat, sprawled open with its black arms spread as if it were fighting and would take possession of the house. "Good-by," Harge said to her. He put the overcoat on as he walked to the door. "Friend of Abby's?" he murmured to Carol.

  "A friend of mine," Carol answered.

  "Are you going to take the presents to Rindy? When?"

  "What if I gave her nothing, Harge?"

  "Carol—" He stopped on the porch, and Therese barely heard him say something about making things unpleasant. Then, "I'm going to see Cynthia now. Can I stop by on the way back? It'll be before eight."

  "Harge, what's the purpose?" Carol said wearily. "Especially when you're so disagreeable."

  "Because it concerns Rindy." Then his voice faded unintelligibly.

  Then an instant later, Carol came in alone and closed the door. Carol stood against the door with her hands behind her, and they heard the car outside leaving. Carol must have agreed to see him tonight, Therese thought.

  "I'll go," Therese said. Carol said nothing. There was a deadness in the silence between them now, and Therese grew more uneasy. "I'd better go, hadn't I?"

  "Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Harge. He's not always-so rude. It was a mistake to say I had any guest here at all."

  "It doesn't matter."

  Carol's forehead wrinkled and she said with difficulty, "Do you mind if I put you on the train tonight, instead of driving you home?"

  "No." She couldn't have borne Carol's driving her home and driving back alone tonight in the darkness.

  They were silent also in the car. Therese opened the door as soon as the car stopped at the station.

  "There's a train in about four minutes," Carol said.

  Therese blurted suddenly, "Will I see you again?"

  Carol only smiled at her, a little reproachfully, as the window between them rose up. "Au revoir," she said.

  Of course, of course, she would see her again, Therese thought. An idiotic question!

  The car backed fast and turned away into the darkness.

  Therese longed for the store again, longed for Monday, because Carol might come in again on Monday. But it wasn't likely. Tuesda
y was Christmas Eve. Certainly she could telephone Carol by Tuesday, if only to wish her a merry Christmas.

  But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her-bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE MAN LOOKED at it, holding it carelessly between thumb and forefinger.

  He was bald except for long strands of black hair that grew from a former brow line, plastered sweatily down over the naked scalp. His underlip was thrust out with the contempt and negation that had fixed itself on his face as soon as Therese had come to the counter and spoken her first words.

  "No," he said at last.

  "Can't you give me anything for it?" Therese asked.

  The lip came out farther. "Maybe fifty cents." And he tossed it back across the counter.

  Therese's fingers crept over it possessively. "Well, what about this?"

  From her coat pocket she dragged up the silver chain with the St.

  Christopher medallion.

  Again the thumb and forefinger were eloquent of scorn, turning the coin like filth. "Two fifty."

  But it cost at least twenty dollars, Therese started to say, but she didn't because that was what everybody said. "Thanks." She picked up the chain and went out.

  Who were all the lucky people, she wondered, who had managed to sell their old pocketknives, broken wrist watches and carpenters' planes that hung in clumps in the front window? She could not resist looking back through the window, finding the man's face again under the row of hanging hunting knives. The man was looking at her, too, smiling at her. She felt he understood every move she made. Therese hurried down the sidewalk.

  In ten minutes, Therese was back. She pawned the silver medallion for two dollars and fifty cents.

  She hurried westward, ran across Lexington Avenue, then Park, and turned down Madison. She clutched the little box in her pocket until its sharp edges cut her fingers. Sister Beatrice had given it to her. It was inlaid brown wood and mother-of-pearl, in a checked pattern. She didn't know what it was worth in money, but she had assumed it was rather precious.

  Well, now she knew it wasn't. She went into a leather goods shop.

  "I'd like to see the black one in the window—the one with the strap and the gold buckles," Therese said to the salesgirl.

  It was the handbag she had noticed last Saturday morning on the way to meet Carol for lunch. It had looked like Carol, just at a glance. She had thought, even if Carol didn't keep the appointment that day, if she could never see Carol again, she must buy the bag and send it to her anyway.

  "I'll take it," Therese said.

  "That's seventy-one eighteen with the tax," the salesgirl said. "Do you want that gift wrapped?"

  "Yes, please." Therese counted six crisp ten-dollar bills across the counter and the rest in singles. "Can I leave it here till about six thirty tonight?"

  Therese left the shop with the receipt in her billfold. It wouldn't do to risk bringing the handbag into the store. It might be stolen, even if it was Christmas Eve. Therese smiled. It was her last day of work at the store. And in four more days came the job at the Black Cat. Phil was going to bring her a copy of the play the day after Christmas.

  She passed Brentano's. Its window was full of satin ribbons, leather-bound books, and pictures of knights in armor. Therese turned back and went into the store, not to buy but to look, just for a moment, to see if there was anything here more beautiful than the handbag.

  An illustration in one of the counter displays caught her eye. It was a young knight on a white horse, riding through a bouquet-like forest, followed by a line of page boys, the last bearing a cushion with a gold ring on it. She took the leather-bound book in her hand. The price inside the cover was twenty-five dollars. If she simply went to the bank now and got twenty-five dollars more, she could buy it. What was twenty-five dollars? She hadn't needed to pawn the silver medallion. She knew she had pawned it only because it was from Richard, and she didn't want it any longer. She closed the book and looked at the edges of the pages that were like a concave bar of gold. But would Carol really like it, a book of love poems of the middle ages? She didn't know. She couldn't remember the slightest clue as to Carol's taste in books. She put the book down hurriedly and left.

  Upstairs in the doll department, Miss Santini was strolling along behind the counter, offering everybody candy from a big box.

  "Take two," she said to Therese. "Candy department sent 'em up."

  "I don't mind if I do." Imagine, she thought, biting into a nougat, the Christmas spirit had struck the candy department. There was a strange atmosphere in the store today. It was unusually quiet, first of all.

  There were plenty of customers, but they didn't seem in a hurry, even though it was Christmas Eve. Therese glanced at the elevators, looking for Carol. If Carol didn't come in, and she probably wouldn't, Therese was going to telephone her at six thirty, just to wish her a happy Christmas. Therese knew her telephone number. She had seen it on the telephone at the house.

  "Miss Belivet!" Mrs. Hendrickson's voice called, and Therese jumped to attention. But Mrs. Hendrickson only waved her hand for the benefit of the Western Union messenger who laid a telegram in front of Therese.

  Therese signed for it in a scribble, and tore it open. It said: MEET YOU DOWNSTAIRS AT 5PM. CAROL.

  Therese crushed it in her hand. She pressed it hard with her thumb into her palm, and watched the messenger boy who was really an old man walk back toward the elevators. He walked ploddingly, with a stoop that thrust his knees far ahead of him, and his puttees were loose and wobbly.

  "You look happy," Mrs. Zabriskie said dismally to her as she went by.

  Therese smiled. "I am." Mrs. Zabriskie had a two months' old baby, she had told Therese, and her husband was out of work now. Therese wondered if Mrs. Zabriskie and her husband were in love with each other, and really happy. Perhaps they were, but there was nothing in Mrs. Zabriskie's blank face and her plodding walk that would suggest it.

  Perhaps once Mrs. Zabriskie had been as happy as she. Perhaps it had gone away. She remembered reading—even Richard once saying—that love usually dies after two years of marriage. That, was a cruel thing, a trick. She tried to imagine Carol's face, the smell of her perfume, becoming meaningless. But in the first place could she say she was in love with Carol? She had come to a question she could not answer.

  At a quarter to five, Therese went to Mrs. Hendrickson and asked permission to leave a half hour early. Mrs. Hendrickson might have thought the telegram had something to do with it, but she let Therese go without even a complaining look, and that was another thing that made the day a strange one.

  Carol was waiting for her in the foyer where they had met before.

  "Hello!" Therese said. "I'm through."

  "Through what?"

  "Through with working. Here." But Carol seemed depressed, and it dampened Therese instantly. She said anyway, "I was awfully-happy to get the telegram."

  "I didn't know if you'd be free. Are you free tonight?"

  "Of course."

  And they walked on, slowly, amid the jostling crowd, Carol in her delicate looking suede pumps that made her a couple of inches taller than Therese. It had began to snow about an hour before, but it was stopping already. The snow was no more than a film underfoot, like thin white wool drawn across the street and sidewalk.

  "We might have seen Abby tonight, but she's busy," Carol said. "Anyway, we can take a drive, if you'd like. It's good to see you. You're an angel to be free tonight. Do you know what?"

  "No," Therese said, still happy in spite of herself, though Carol's mood was disquieting. Therese felt something had happened.
r />   "Do you suppose there's a place to get a cup of coffee around here?"

  "Yes. A little farther east."

  Therese was thinking of one of the sandwich shops between Fifth and Madison, but Carol chose a small bar with an awning in front. The waiter was reluctant at first, and said it was the cocktail hour, but when Carol started to leave, he went away and got the coffee. Therese was anxious about picking up the handbag. She didn't want to do it when Carol was with her, even though the package would be wrapped.

  "Did something happen?" Therese asked.

  "Something too long to explain." Carol smiled at her but the smile was tired, and a silence followed, an empty silence as if they traveled through space away from each other.

  Probably Carol had had to break an engagement she had looked forward to, Therese thought. Carol would of course be busy on Christmas Eve.

  "I'm not keeping you from doing anything now?" Carol asked.

  Therese felt herself growing tense, helplessly. "I'm supposed to pick up a package on Madison Avenue. It's not far. I can do it now, if you'll wait for me."

  "All right."

  Therese stood up. "I can do it in three minutes with a taxi. But I don't think you will wait for me, will you?"

  Carol smiled and reached for her hand. Indifferently, Carol squeezed her hand and dropped it. "Yes, I'll wait."

  The bored tone of Carol's voice was in her ears as she sat on the edge of the taxi seat. On the way back, the traffic was so slow, she got out and ran the last block.

  Carol was still there, her coffee only half finished.

  "I don't want my coffee," Therese said, because Carol seemed ready to go.

  "My car's downtown. Let's get a taxi down."

  They went down into the business section not far from the Battery.

  Carol's car was brought up from an underground garage. Carol drove west to the Westside Highway.

  "This is better." Carol shed her coat as she drove. "Throw it in back, will you?"