The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "It's only a kite!" Richard repeated. "I can make another kite!"

  CHAPTER 9

  THERESE STARTED to get dressed, then changed her mind. She was still in her robe, reading the script of Small Rain that Phil had brought over earlier, and that was now spread all over the couch. Carol had said she was at Forty-eighth and Madison. She could be here in ten minutes.

  Therese glanced around her room, and at her face in the mirror, and decided to let it all go.

  She took some ash trays to the sink and washed them, and stacked the play script neatly on her worktable. She wondered if Carol would have her new handbag with her. Carol had called her last night from some place in New Jersey where she was with Abby, had told her she thought the bag was beautiful but much too grand a present. Therese smiled, remembering Carol's suggesting that she take it back. At least, Carol liked it.

  The doorbell sounded in three quick rings.

  Therese looked down the stairwell, and saw Carol was carrying something.

  She ran down.

  "It's empty. It's for you," Carol said, smiling.

  It was a suitcase, wrapped. Carol slipped her fingers from under the handle and let Therese carry it. Therese put it on the couch in her room, and cut the brown paper off carefully. The suitcase was of thick light-brown leather, perfectly plain.

  "It's terribly good looking!" Therese said.

  "Do you like it? I don't even know if you need a suitcase."

  "Of course, I like it." This was the kind of suitcase for her, "this exactly and no other. Her initials were on it in small gold letters—T. M. B. She remembered Carol asking her her middle name on Christmas Eve.

  "Work the combination and see if you like the inside."

  Therese did. "I like the smell, too," she said.

  "Are you busy? If you are, I'll leave."

  "No. Sit down. I'm not doing anything—except reading a play."

  "What play?"

  "A play I have to do sets for." She realized suddenly she had never mentioned stage designing to Carol.

  "Sets for?"

  "Yes—I'm a stage designer." She took Carol's coat.

  Carol smiled astonishedly. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" she asked quietly. "How many other rabbits are you going to pull out of your hat?"

  "It's the first real job. And it's not a Broadway play. It's going to be done in the Village. A comedy. I haven't got a union membership yet. I'll have to wait for a Broadway job for that."

  Carol asked her all about the union, the junior and senior memberships that cost fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars respectively. Carol asked her if she had all that money saved up.

  "No—just a few hundred. But if I get a job, they'll let me pay it off in installments."

  Carol was sitting on the straight chair, the chair Richard often sat in, watching her, and Therese could read in Carol's expression that she had risen suddenly in Carol's estimation, and she couldn't imagine why she hadn't mentioned before that she was a stage designer, and in fact already had a job. "Well," Carol said, "if a Broadway job comes out of this, would you consider borrowing the rest of the money from me? Just as a business loan?"

  "Thanks. I—"

  "I'd like to do it for you. You shouldn't be bothered paying off two thousand dollars at your age."

  "Thanks. But I won't be ready for one for another couple of years."

  Carol lifted her head and blew her smoke out in a thin stream. "Oh, they don't really keep track of apprenticeships, do they?"

  Therese smiled. "No. Of course not. Would you like a drink? I've got a bottle of rye."

  "How nice. I'd love one, Therese." Carol got up and peered at her kitchenette shelves as Therese fixed the two drinks. "Are you a good cook?"

  "Yes. I'm better when I have someone to cook for. I can make good omelettes. Do you like them?"

  "No," Carol said flatly, and Therese laughed. "Why don't you show me some of your work?"

  Therese got a portfolio down from the closet. Carol sat on the couch and looked at everything carefully, but from her comments and questions, Therese felt she considered them too bizarre to be usable, and perhaps not very good either. Carol said she liked best the Petrushka set on the wall.

  "But it's the same thing," Therese said. "The same thing as the drawings, only in model form."

  "Well, maybe it's your drawings. They're very positive, anyway. I like that about them." Carol picked up her drink from the floor and leaned back on the couch. "You see, I didn't make a mistake, did I?"

  "About what?"

  "About you."

  Therese did not know exactly what she meant. Carol was smiling at her through her cigarette smoke, and it rattled her. "Did you think you had?"

  "No," Carol said. "What do you have to pay for an apartment like this?"

  "Fifty a month."

  Carol clicked her tongue. "Doesn't leave you much out of your salary, does it?"

  Therese bent over her portfolio, tying it up. "No. But I'll be making more soon. I won't be living here forever either."

  "Of course you won't. You'll travel, too, the way you do in imagination.

  You'll see a house in Italy you'll fall in love with. Or maybe you'll like France. Or California, or Arizona."

  The girl smiled. She probably wouldn't have the money for it, when that happened. "Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?"

  "Always," Carol said, smiling, too. She pushed her fingers through her hair. "I think I shall take a trip after all."

  "For how long?"

  "Just a month or so."

  Therese set the portfolio in the closet. "How soon will you be going?"

  "Right away. I suppose as soon as I can arrange everything. And there isn't much to arrange."

  Therese turned around. Carol was rolling the end of her cigarette in the ash tray. It meant nothing to her, Therese thought, that they wouldn't see each other for a month. "Why don't you go somewhere with Abby?"

  Carol looked up at her, and then at the ceiling. "I don't think she's free in the first place."

  Therese stared at her. She had touched something, mentioning Abby. But Carol's face was unreadable now.

  "You're very nice to let me see you so often," Carol said. "You know I don't feel like seeing the people I generally see just now. One can't really. Everything's supposed to be done in pairs."

  How frail she is, Therese felt suddenly, how different from the day of the first lunch. Then Carol got up, as if she knew her thoughts, and Therese sensed a flaunt of assurance in her lifted head, in her smile as she passed her so close their arms brushed, and went on.

  "Why don't we do something tonight?" Therese asked. "You can stay here if you want to, and I'll finish reading the play. We can spend the evening together."

  Carol didn't answer. She was looking at the flower box in the bookshelf.

  "What kind of plants are these?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know?"

  They were all different, a cactus with fat leaves that hadn't grown a bit since she bought it a year ago, another plant like a miniature palm tree, and a droopy red-green thing that had to be supported by a stick. "Just plants."

  Carol turned around, smiling. "Just plants," she repeated.

  "What about tonight?"

  "All right. But I won't stay. It's only three. I'll give you a ring around six." Carol dropped her lighter in her handbag. It was not the handbag Therese had given her. "I feel like looking at furniture this afternoon."

  "Furniture? In stores?"

  "In stores or at the Parke-Bernet. Furniture does me good." Carol reached for her coat on the armchair, and again Therese noticed the long line from her shoulder to the wide leather belt, continued in her leg. It was beautiful, like a chord of music or a whole ballet. She was beautiful, and why should her days be so empty now, Therese wondered, when she was made to live with people who loved her, to walk in beautiful houses in beautiful cities, along blue seacoasts with a long horizon an
d a blue sky to background her.

  "Bye-bye," Carol said, and in the same movement with which she put on her coat, she put her arm around Therese's waist. It was only an instant, too disconcerting with Carol's arm suddenly about her, to be relief or end or beginning, before the doorbell rang in their ears like the tearing of a brass wall. Carol smiled. "Who is it?" she asked.

  Therese felt the sting of Carol's thumbnail in her wrist as she released her. "Richard probably." It could only be Richard, because she knew his long ring.

  "Good. I'd like to meet him."

  Therese pressed the bell, then heard Richard's firm, hopping steps on the stairs. She opened the door.

  "Hello," Richard said. "I decided—"

  "Richard, this is Mrs. Aird," Therese said. "Richard Semco."

  "How do you do?" Carol said.

  Richard nodded, with almost a bow. "How do you do," he said, his blue eyes stretched wide.

  They stared at each other, Richard with a square box in his hands as if he were about to present it to her, and Carol standing with a new cigarette in her hand, neither staying nor leaving. Richard put the box on an end table.

  "I was so near, I thought I'd come up," he said, and under its note of explanation, Therese heard the unconscious assertion of a right, just as she had seen behind his inquisitive stare a spontaneous mistrust of Carol. "I had to take a present to a friend of Mamma's. This is lebkuchen." He nodded at the box and smiled, disarmingly. "Anybody want some now?"

  Carol and Therese declined. Carol was watching Richard as he opened the box with his pocketknife. She liked his smile, Therese thought. She likes him, the gangling young man with unruly blond hair, the broad lean shoulders, and the big funny feet in moccasins.

  "Please sit down," Therese said to Carol.

  "No, I'm going," she answered.

  "I'll give you half, Terry, then I'll be going too," he said.

  Therese looked at Carol, and Carol smiled at her nervousness and sat down on a corner of the couch.

  "Anyway, don't let me rush you off," Richard said, lifting the paper with the cake in it to a kitchen shelf.

  "You're not. You're a painter, aren't you, Richard?"

  "Yes." He popped some loose icing into his mouth, and looked at Carol, poised because he was incapable of being un-poised, Therese thought, his eyes frank because he had nothing to hide. "Are you a painter, too?"

  "No," Carol said with another smile. "I'm nothing."

  "The hardest thing to be."

  "Is it? Are you a good painter?"

  "I will be. I can be," said Richard, unperturbed. "Have you got any beer, Terry? I've got an awful thirst."

  Therese went to the refrigerator and got out the two bottles that were there. Richard asked Carol if she would like some, but Carol refused.

  Then Richard strolled past the couch, looking at the suitcase and the wrappings, and Therese thought he was going to say something about it, but he didn't.

  "I thought we might go to a movie tonight, Terry. I'd like to see that thing at the Victoria. Do you want to?"

  "I can't tonight. I've got a date with Mrs. Aird."

  "Oh." Richard looked at Carol.

  Carol put out her cigarette and stood up. "I must be going." She smiled at Therese. "Call you back around six. If you change your mind, it's not important. Good-by, Richard."

  "Good-by," Richard said.

  Carol gave her a wink as she went down the stairs. "Be a good girl,"

  Carol said.

  "Where'd the suitcase come from?" Richard asked when she came back in the room.

  "It's a present."

  "What's the matter, Terry?"

  "Nothing's the matter."

  "Did I interrupt anything important? Who is she?"

  Therese picked up Carol's empty glass. There was a little lipstick at the rim. "She's a woman I met at the store."

  "Did she give you that suitcase?"

  "Yes."

  "It's quite a present. Is she that rich?"

  Therese glanced at him. Richard's aversion to the wealthy, to the bourgeois, was automatic. "Rich? You mean the mink coat? I don't know. I did her a favor. I found something she lost in the store."

  "Oh?" he said. "What? You didn't say anything about it."

  She washed and dried Carol's glass and set it back on the shelf. "She left her billfold oh the counter and I took it to her, that's all."

  "Oh. Damned nice reward." He frowned. "Terry, what is it? You're not still sore about that silly kite, are you?"

  "No, of course not," she said impatiently. She wished he would go. She put her hands in her robe pockets and walked across the room, stood where Carol had stood, looking at the box of plants. "Phil brought the play over this morning. I started reading it."

  "Is that what you're worried about?"

  "What makes you think I'm worried?" She turned around.

  "You're in another of those miles-away moods again."

  "I'm not worried and I'm not miles away." She took a deep breath. "It's funny—you're so conscious of some moods and so unconscious of others."

  Richard looked at her. "All right, Terry," he said with a shrug, as if he conceded it. He sat down in the straight chair and poured the rest of the beer into his glass. "What's this date you have with that woman tonight?"

  Therese's lips widened in a smile as she ran the end of her lipstick over them. For a moment, she stared at the eyebrow tweezers that lay on the little shelf fixed to the inside of the closet door. Then she put the lipstick down on the shelf. "It's sort of a cocktail party, I think. Sort of a Christmas benefit thing. In some restaurant, she said."

  "Hmm. Do you want to go?"

  "I said I would."

  Richard drank his beer, frowning a little over his glass. "What about afterward? Maybe I could hang around here and read the play while you're gone, and then we could grab a bite and go to the movie."

  "Afterward, I thought I'd better finish the play. I'm supposed to start on Saturday, and I ought to have some ideas in my head."

  Richard stood up. "Yep," he said casually, with a sigh.

  Therese watched him idle over to the couch and stand there, looking down at the manuscript. Then he bent over, studying the title page, and the cast pages. He looked at his wrist watch, and then at her.

  "'Why don't I read it now?" he asked.

  "Go ahead," she answered with a brusqueness that Richard either didn't hear or ignored, because he simply lay back on the couch with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. She picked up a book of matches from the shelf. No, he only recognized the "miles away" moods, she thought, when he felt himself deprived of her by distance. And she thought suddenly of the times she had gone to bed with him, of her distance then compared to the closeness that was supposed to be, that everyone talked about. It hadn't mattered to Richard then, she supposed, because of the physical fact they were in bed together. And it crossed her mind now, seeing Richard's complete absorption in his reading, seeing the plump, stiff fingers catch a front lock of his hair between them and pull it straight down toward his nose, as she had seen him do a thousand times before, it occurred to her Richard's attitude was that his place in her life was unassailable, her tie with him permanent and beyond question, because he was the first man she had ever slept with. Therese threw the match cover at the shelf, and a bottle of something fell over.

  Richard sat up, smiling a little, surprisedly. "'S matter, Terry?"

  "Richard, I feel like being alone—the rest of the afternoon. Would you mind?"

  He got up. The surprise did not leave his face. "No. Of course not." He dropped the manuscript on the couch again. "All right, Terry. It's probably better. Maybe you ought to read this now—read it alone," he said argumentatively, as if he persuaded himself. He looked at his watch again. "Maybe I'll go down and try to see Sam and Joan for a while."

  She stood there not moving, not even thinking of anything except of the few seconds of time to pass until he would be gone, while he brushed his ha
nd once, a little clingy with its moisture, over her hair, and bent to kiss her. Then quite suddenly she remembered the Degas book she had bought days ago, the book of reproductions that Richard wanted and hadn't been able to find anywhere. She got it from the bottom drawer of the bureau. "I found this. The Degas book."

  "Oh, swell. Thanks." He took it in both hands. It was still wrapped.

  "Where'd you find it?"

  "Frankenberg's. Of all places."

  "Frankenberg's." Richard smiled. "It's six bucks, isn't it?"

  "Oh, that's all right."

  Richard had his wallet out. "But I asked you to get it for me."

  "Never mind, really."

  Richard protested, but she didn't take the money. And a minute later, he was gone, with a promise to call her tomorrow at five. They might do something tomorrow night, he said.

  Carol called at ten past six. Did she feel like going to Chinatown, Carol asked. Therese said, of course.

  "I'm having cocktails with someone in the St. Regis," Carol said. "Why don't you pick me up here? It's the little room, not the big one. And listen, we're going on to some theater thing you've asked me to. Get it?"

  "Some sort of Christmas benefit cocktail party?"

  Carol laughed. "Hurry up."

  Therese flew.

  Carol's friend was a man called Stanley McVeigh, a tall and very attractive man of about forty with a mustache and a boxer dog on a leash.

  Carol was ready to go when she arrived. Stanley walked out with them, put them into a taxi and gave the driver some money through the window.

  "Who's he?" Therese asked.

  "An old friend. Seeing more of me now that Harge and I are separating."

  Therese looked at her. Carol had a wonderful little smile in her eyes tonight. "Do you like him?"

  "So so," Carol said. "Driver, will you make that Chinatown instead of the other?"

  It began to rain while they were having dinner. Carol said it always rained in Chinatown, every time she had been here. But it didn't matter much, because they ducked from one shop to another, looking at things and buying things. Therese saw some sandals with platform heels that she thought were beautiful, rather more Persian looking than Chinese, and she wanted to buy them for Carol, but Carol said Rindy wouldn't approve.