The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Rindy was a conservative, and didn't like her even to go without stockings in summer, and Carol conformed to her. The same store had Chinese suits of a black shiny material, with plain trousers and a high-collared jacket, and Carol bought one for Rindy. Therese bought the sandals for Carol anyway, while Carol was arranging for Rindy's suit to be sent. She knew the right size just by looking at the sandals, arid it pleased Carol after all that she bought them. Then they spent a weird hour in a Chinese theater where people in the audience were sleeping through all the clangor. And finally they went uptown for a late supper in a restaurant where a harp played. It was a glorious evening, a really magnificent evening.

  CHAPTER 10

  ON TUESDAY, the fifth day of work, Therese sat in a little bare room with no ceiling at the back of the Black Cat Theatre, waiting for Mr. Donohue, the new director, to come and look at her cardboard model. Yesterday morning, Donohue had replaced Cortes as director, had thrown out her first model, and also thrown out Phil McElroy as the second brother in the play. Phil had walked out yesterday in a huff. It was lucky she hadn't been thrown out along with her model, Therese thought, so she had followed Mr. Donohue's instructions to the letter. The new model hadn't the movable section she had put into the first, which would have permitted the living-room scene to be converted into the terrace scene for the last act. Mr. Donohue seemed to be adamant against anything unusual or even simple. By setting the whole play in the living room, a lot of the dialogue had to be changed in the last act, and some of the cleverest lines had been lost. Her new model indicated a fireplace, broad French windows giving onto a terrace, two doors, a sofa, and a couple of armchairs and a bookcase. It would look, when finished, like a room in a model house at Sloan's, lifelike down to the last ash tray.

  Therese stood up, stretched herself, and reached for the corduroy jacket that was hanging on a nail in the door. The place was cold as a barn. Mr.

  Donohue probably wouldn't come in until afternoon, or not even today if she didn't remind him again. There was no hurry about the scenery. It might have been the least important matter in the whole production, but she had sat up until late last night, enthusiastically working on the model.

  She went out to stand in the wings again. The cast was all on stage with scripts in hand. Mr. Donohue kept running the cast through the whole play, to get the flow of it, he said, but today it seemed to be only putting them to sleep. All the cast looked lazy except Tom Harding, a tall blond young man who had the male lead, and he was a little too energetic. Georgia Halloran was suffering from sinus headaches, and had to stop every hour to put drops in her nose and lie down for a few minutes. Geoffrey Andrews, a middle-aged man who played the heroine's father, grumbled constantly between his lines because he didn't like Donohue.

  "No, no, no, no," said Mr. Donohue for the tenth time that morning, stopping everything and causing everybody to lower his script and turn to him with a puzzled, irritated docility. "Let's start again from page twenty-eight."

  Therese watched him waving his arms to indicate the speakers, putting up a hand to silence them, following the script with his head down as if he led an orchestra. Tom Harding winked at her, and pulled his hand down his nose. After a moment, Therese went back to the room behind the partition, where she worked, where she felt a little less useless. She knew the play almost by heart now. It had a rather Sheridanesque comedy of errors plot—two brothers who pretend to be valet and master in order to impress an heiress with whom one of the brothers is in love. The dialogue was gay and altogether not bad, but the dreary, matter-of-fact set that Donohue had ordered for it—Therese hoped something could be done with the color they would use.

  Mr. Donohue did come in just after twelve o'clock. He looked at her model, lifted it up and looked at it from below and from both sides, without any change in his nervous, harassed expression. "Yes, this is fine. I like this very much. You see how much better this is than those empty walls you had before, don't you?"

  Therese took a deep breath of relief. "Yes," she said.

  "A set grows out of the needs of the actors. This isn't a ballet set you're designing, Miss Belivet."

  She nodded, looking at the model, too, and trying to see how it possibly was better, possibly more functional.

  "The carpenter's coming in this afternoon about four. We'll get together and have a talk about this." Mr. Donohue went out.

  Therese stared at the cardboard model. At least she would see it used. At least she and the carpenters would make it something real. She went to the window and looked out at the gray but luminous winter sky, at the backs of some five-story houses garlanded with fire escapes. In the foreground was a small vacant lot with a runted leafless tree in it, all twisted up like a signpost gone wild. She wished she could call Carol and invite her for lunch. But Carol was an hour and a half away by car.

  "Is your name Beliver?"

  Therese turned to the girl in the doorway. "Belivet. Telephone?"

  "The phone by the lights."

  "Thanks." Therese hurried, hoping it was Carol, knowing more likely it was Richard. Carol hadn't yet called her here.

  "Hello, this is Abby."

  "Abby?" Therese smiled. "How'd you know I was here?"

  "You told me, remember? I'd like to see you. I'm not far away. Have you had lunch yet?"

  They agreed to meet at the Palermo, a restaurant a block or two from the Black Cat.

  Therese whistled a song as she walked there, happy as if she were meeting Carol. The restaurant had sawdust on the floor, and a couple of black kittens played around under the rail of the bar. Abby was sitting at a table in the back.

  "Hi," Abby said as she came up. "You're looking very chipper. I almost didn't recognize you. Would you like a drink?"

  Therese shook her head. "No, thanks."

  "You mean, you're so happy without it?" Abby asked, and she chuckled with that secret amusement that in Abby was somehow not offensive.

  Therese took the cigarette that Abby offered her. Abby knew, she thought.

  And perhaps she was in love with Carol, too. It put Therese on guard with her. It created a tacit rivalry that gave her a curious exhilaration, a sense of certain superiority over Abby—emotions that Therese had never known before, never dared to dream of, emotions consequently revolutionary in themselves. So their lunching together in the restaurant became nearly as important as the meeting with Carol.

  "How is Carol?" Therese asked. She had not seen Carol in three days.

  "She's very fine," Abby said, watching her.

  The waiter came, and Abby asked him if he could recommend the mussels and the scaloppine.

  "Excellent, madame!" He beamed at her as if she were a special customer.

  It was Abby's manner, the glow in her face as if today, or every day, were a special holiday for her. Therese liked that. She looked admiringly at Abby's suit of red and blue weave, her cuff links that were scrolly G's, like filigree buttons in silver. Abby asked her about her job at the Black Cat. It was tedious to Therese, but Abby seemed impressed. Abby was impressed, Therese thought, because she did nothing herself.

  "I know some people in the producing end of the theater," Abby said.

  "I'll be glad to put in a word for you any time."

  "Thanks." Therese played with the lid of the grated cheese bowl in front of her. "Do you know anyone called Andronich? I think he's from Philadelphia."

  "No," Abby said.

  Mr. Donohue had told her to go and see Andronich next week in New York.

  He was producing a show that would open this spring in Philadelphia, and then on Broadway.

  "Try the mussels," Abby was eating hers with gusto. "Carol likes these, too."

  "Have you known Carol a long time?"

  "Um-hm," Abby nodded, looking at her with the bright eyes that revealed nothing.

  "And you know her husband, too, of course."

  Abby nodded again, silently.

  Therese smiled a little. Abby was out to questio
n her, she felt, but not to disclose anything about herself or about Carol.

  "How about some wine? Do you like Chianti?" Abby summoned a waiter with a snap of her fingers. "Bring us a bottle of Chianti. A good one. Builds up the blood," she added to Therese.

  Then the main course arrived, and two waiters fussed around the table, uncorking the Chianti, pouring more water and bringing fresh butter. The radio in the corner played a tango—a little cheesebox of a radio with a broken front, but the music might have come from a string orchestra behind them, at Abby's request. No wonder Carol likes her, Therese thought. She complemented Carol's solemnity, she could remind Carol to laugh.

  "Did you always live by yourself?" Abby asked.

  "Yes. Since I got out of school." Therese sipped her wine. "Do you? Or do you live with your family?"

  "With my family. But I've got my own half of the house."

  "And do you work?" Therese ventured.

  "I've had jobs. Two or three of them. Didn't Carol tell you we had a furniture shop once? We had a shop just outside of Elizabeth on the highway. We bought up antiques or plain second-hand stuff and fixed it up. I never worked so hard in my life." Abby smiled at her gaily, as if every word might be untrue. "Then my other job. I'm an entomologist. Not a very good one, but good enough to pull bugs out of Italian lemon crates and things like that. Bahama lilies are full of bugs."

  "So I've heard." Therese smiled.

  "I don't think you believe me."

  "Yes, I do. Do you still work at that?"

  "I'm on reserve. Just in time of emergency, I work. Like Easter."

  Therese watched Abby's fork cutting the scaloppine into small bites before she picked any up. "Do you take trips a lot with Carol?"

  "A lot? No, why?" Abby asked.

  "I should think you'd be good for her. Because Carol's so serious."

  Therese wished she could lead the conversation to the heart of things, but just what the heart of things was, she didn't know. The wine ran slow and warm in her veins, down to her finger tips.

  "Not all the time," Abby corrected, with the laughter under the surface of her voice, as it had been in the first word Therese had heard her say.

  The wine in her head promised music or poetry or truth, but she was stranded on the brink. Therese could not think of a single question that would be proper to ask, because all her questions were so enormous.

  "How'd you meet Carol?" Abby asked.

  "Didn't Carol tell you?"

  "She just said she met you at Frankenberg's when you had a job there."

  "Well, that's how," Therese said, feeling a resentment her against Abby building up, incontrollably.

  "You just started talking?" Abby asked with a smile, lighting a cigarette.

  "I waited on her," Therese said, and stopped.

  And Abby waited, for a precise description of that meeting, Therese knew, but she wouldn't give it to Abby or to anyone else. It belonged to her.

  Surely Carol hadn't told Abby, she thought, told her the silly story of the Christmas card. It wouldn't be important enough to Carol for Carol to have told her.

  "Do you mind telling me who started talking first?"

  Therese laughed suddenly. She reached for a cigarette and lighted it, still smiling. No, Carol hadn't told her about the Christmas card, and Abby's question struck her as terribly funny. "I did," Therese said.

  "You like her a lot, don't you?" Abby asked.

  Therese explored it for hostility. It was not hostile, but jealous. "Yes."

  "Why do you?"

  "Why do I? Why do you?"

  Abby's eyes still laughed. "I've known Carol since she was four years old."

  Therese said nothing.

  "You're awfully young, aren't you? Are you twenty-one?"

  "No. Not quite."

  "You know Carol's got a lot of worries right now, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "And she's lonely now," Abby added, her eyes watching.

  "Do you mean that's why she sees me?" Therese asked calmly. "Do you want to tell me I shouldn't see her?"

  Abby's unblinking eyes blinked twice after all. "No, not a bit. But I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want you to hurt Carol either."

  "I'd never hurt Carol," Therese said. "Do you think I would?"

  Abby was still watching her alertly, had never taken her eyes from her.

  "No, I don't think you would," Abby replied as if she had just decided it. And she smiled now as if she were especially pleased about something.

  But Therese did not like the smile or the question, and realizing her face showed her feelings, she looked down at the table. There was a glass of hot zabaglione standing on a plate in front of her.

  "Would you like to come to a cocktail party this afternoon, Therese? It's uptown at about six o'clock. I don't know if there'll be any stage designers there, but one of the girls who's giving it is an actress."

  Therese put her cigarette out. "Is Carol going to be there?"

  "No. She won't be. But they're all easy to get along with. It's a small party."

  "Thanks. I don't think I should go. I may have to work late today, too."

  "Oh. I was going to give you the address anyway, but if you won't come—"

  "No," Therese said.

  Abby wanted to walk around the block after they came out of the restaurant. Therese agreed, though she was tired of Abby now. Abby with her cocksureness, her blunt, careless questions made Therese feel she had gotten an advantage over her. And Abby had not let her pay the check.

  Abby said, "Carol thinks a lot of you, you know. She says you have a lot of talent."

  "Does she?" Therese said, only half believing it. "She never told me."

  She wanted to walk faster, but Abby held their pace back.

  "You must know she thinks a lot of you, if she wants you to take a trip with her."

  Therese glanced and saw Abby smiling at her, guilelessly. "She didn't say anything to me about that either," Therese said quietly, though her heart had begun pumping.

  "I'm sure she will. You'll go with her, won't you?"

  Why should Abby know about it before she did, Therese wondered. She felt a flush of anger in her face. What was it all about? Did Abby hate her?

  If she did, why wasn't she consistent about it? Then in the next instant, the rise of anger fell and left her weak, left her vulnerable and defenseless. She thought, if Abby pressed her against the wall at that moment and said: "Out with it. What do you want from Carol? How much of her do you want to take from me?" she would have babbled it all. She would have said: "I want to be with her. I love to be with her, and what has it got to do with you?"

  "Isn't that for Carol to talk about? Why do you ask me these things?"

  Therese made an effort to sound indifferent. It was hopeless.

  Abby stopped walking. "I'm sorry," she said, turning to her. "I think I understand better now."

  "Understand what?"

  "Just—that you win."

  "Win what?"

  "What," Abby echoed with her head up, looking up at the corner of a building, at the sky, and Therese suddenly felt furiously impatient.

  She wanted Abby to go so she could telephone Carol. Nothing mattered but the sound of Carol's voice. Nothing mattered but Carol, and why did she let herself forget for a moment?

  "No wonder Carol thinks such a lot of you," Abby said, but if it was a kind remark, Therese did not accept it as such. "So long, Therese. I'll see you again no doubt." Abby held out her hand.

  Therese took it. "So long," she said. She watched Abby walking toward Washington Square, her step quicker now, her curly head high.

  Therese went into the drugstore at the next corner and called Carol. She got the maid and then Carol.

  "What's the matter?" Carol asked. "You sound low."

  "Nothing. It's dull at work."

  "Are you doing anything tonight? Would you like to come out?"

  Therese came out of the drugstore smiling. Carol was
going to pick her up at five thirty. Carol insisted on picking her up, because it was such a rotten trip by train.

  Across the street, walking away from her, she saw Dannie McElroy, striding along without a coat, carrying a naked bottle of milk in his hand.

  "Dannie!" she called.

  Dannie turned and walked toward her. "Come by for a few minutes?" he yelled.

  Therese started to say no, then as he came up to her, she took his arm.

  "Just for a minute. I've had a long lunch hour already."

  Dannie smiled down at her. "What time is it? I've been studying till I'm blind."

  "After two." She felt Dannie's arm tensed hard against the cold. There were goose-pimples under the dark hair on his forearm. "You're mad to go out without a coat," she said.

  "It clears my head." He held the iron gate for her that led to his door.

  "Phil's out somewhere."

  The room smelled of pipe smoke, rather like hot chocolate cooking. The apartment was a semi-basement, generally darkish, and the lamp made a warm pool of light on the desk that was always cluttered. Therese looked down at the opened books on his desk, the pages and pages covered with symbols that she could not understand, but that she liked to look at. Everything the symbols stood for was true and proven. The symbols were stronger and more definite than words. She felt Dannie's mind swung on them, from one fact to another, as if he bore himself on strong chains, hand over hand through space. She watched him assembling a sandwich, standing at the kitchen table. His shoulders looked very broad and rounded with muscle under his white shirt, shifting a little with the motions of laying the salami and cheese slices onto the big piece of rye bread.

  "I wish you'd come by more often, Therese. Wednesday's the only day I'm not home at noon. We wouldn't bother Phil, having lunch, even if he's sleeping."

  "I will," Therese said. She sat down in his desk chair that was half turned around. She had come once for lunch, and once after work. She liked visiting Dannie. One did not have to make small talk with him.

  In the corner of the room, Phil's sofa bed was unmade, a tangle of blankets and sheets. The two times she had come in before, the bed had been unmade, or Phil had still been in it. The long bookcase pulled out at right angles to the sofa made a unit of Phil's corner of the room, and it was always in disorder, in a frustrated and nervous disorder not at all like the working disorder of Dannie's desk.