The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Dannie's beer can hissed as he opened it. He leaned against the wall with the beer and the sandwich, smiling, delighted to have her here. "Remember what you said about physics not applying to people?"

  "Umm. Vaguely."

  "Well, I'm not sure you're right," he said as he took a bite. "Take friendships, for instance. I can think of a lot of cases where the two people have nothing in common. I think there's a definite reason for every friendship just as there's a reason why certain atoms unite and others don't—certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other—what do you think? I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever."

  "Maybe. I can think of a few cases, too." Richard and herself, for one.

  Richard got on with people, elbowed his way through the world in a way she, couldn't. She had always been attracted to people with Richard's kind of self-assurance. "And what's weak about you, Dannie?"

  "Me?" he said, smiling. "Do you want to be my friend?"

  "Yes. But you're about the strongest person I know."

  "Really? Shall I enumerate my shortcomings?"

  She smiled, looking at him. A young man of twenty-five who had known where he was going since he was fourteen. He had driven all his energy into one channel—just the opposite of what Richard had done.

  "I have a secret and very buried need for a cook," Dannie said, "and a dancing teacher, and someone to remind me to do little things like take my laundry and get haircuts."

  "I can't remember to take my laundry either."

  "Oh," he said sadly. "Then it's out. And I'd had some hope. I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because you see what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street, there's always a definite reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me."

  She smiled."Even the poets?" She thought of Carol, and then of Abby, of their conversation at lunch that had been so much more than a glance and so much less, and the sequence of emotions it had evoked in her. It depressed her. "But you have to make allowances for people's perversities, things that don't make much sense."

  "Perversities? That's only a subterfuge. A word used by the poets."

  "I thought it was used by the psychologists, "Therese said.

  "I mean, to make allowances—that's a meaningless term. Life is an exact science on its own terms, it's just a matter of finding them and defining them. What doesn't make any sense to you?"

  "Nothing. I was thinking of something that doesn't matter anyway." She was suddenly angry again, as she had been on the sidewalk after the lunch.

  "What?" he persisted, frowning.

  "Like the lunch I just had," she said.

  "With whom?"

  "It doesn't matter. If it did, I'd go into it. It's just a waste, like losing something, I thought. But maybe something that didn't exist anyway." She had wanted to like Abby because Carol did.

  "Except in your mind? That can still be a loss."

  "Yes—but there are some people or some things people do that you can't salvage anything from finally, because nothing connects with you." It was of something else she wanted to talk about, though, not this at all. Not Abby or Carol, but before. Something that made perfect connection and perfect sense. She loved Carol. She leaned her forehead against her hand.

  Dannie looked at her for a moment, then pushed himself off from the wall.

  He turned to the stove, and got a match from his shirt pocket, and Therese sensed that the conversation dangled, would always dangle and never be finished, whatever they went on to say. But she felt if she told Dannie every word that she and Abby had exchanged, that he could clear away its subterfuges with a phrase, as if he sprinkled a chemical in the air that would dry up the mist instantly. Or was there always something that logic couldn't touch? Something illogical, behind the jealousy, the suspicion and the hostility in Abby's conversation, that was Abby all by herself?

  "Everything's not as simple as a lot of combinations," Therese added.

  "Some things don't react. But everything's alive." He turned around with a broad smile, as if quite another train of thought had entered his head.

  He was holding up the match that was still smoking. "Like this match. And I'm not talking physics, about the indestructibility of smoke. In fact, I feel rather poetic today."

  "About the match?"

  "I feel as if it were growing, like a plant, not disappearing. I feel everything in the world must have the texture of a plant sometimes to a poet. Even this table, like my own flesh." He touched the table edge with his palm; "It's like a feeling I had once riding up a hill on a horse. It was in Pennsylvania. I didn't know how to ride very well then, and I remember the horse turning his head and seeing the hill, and deciding by himself to run up it, his hind legs sank before we took off, and suddenly we were going like blazes and I felt completely in harmony with the horse and the land, as if we were a whole tree simply being stirred by the wind in its branches. I remember being sure that nothing would happen to me then, but some other time, yes, eventually. And it made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realize what I felt going up the hill, then there'll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up. Do you know what I mean?" Dannie had clenched his fist, but his eyes were bright as if he still laughed at himself. "Did you ever wear out a sweater you particularly liked, and throw it away finally?"

  She thought of the green woolen gloves of Sister Alicia that she had neither worn nor thrown away. "Yes," she said.

  "Well, that's all I mean. And the lambs who didn't realize how much wool they were losing when somebody sheared them to make the sweater, because they could grow more wool. It's very simple." He turned to the coffeepot that he had reheated, that was already boiling.

  "Yes." She knew. And like Richard and the kite, because he could make another kite. She thought of Abby with a sense of vacuity suddenly, as if the luncheon had been eradicated. For an instant, she felt as if her mind had overflowed a brim and was swimming emptily into space. She stood up.

  Dannie came toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and though she felt it was only a gesture, a gesture instead of a word, the spell was broken. She was uneasy at his touch, and the uneasiness was a point of concreteness. "I should go back," she said. "I'm way late."

  His hands came down, pinning her elbows hard against her sides, and he kissed her suddenly, held his lips hard against hers for a moment, and she felt his warm breath on her upper lip before he released her.

  "You are," he said, looking at her.

  "Why did you—" She stopped, because the kiss had so mingled tenderness and roughness, she didn't know how to take it.

  "'Why,'Terry," he said, turning away from her, smiling. "Did you mind?"

  "No," she said.

  "Would Richard mind?"

  "I suppose." She buttoned her coat. "I must go," she said, moving toward the door.

  Dannie swung the door open for her, smiling his easy smile, as if nothing had happened. "Come back tomorrow? Come for lunch."

  "Tomorrow's Saturday. I don't work."

  "And we couldn't possibly have lunch."

  She shook her head. "I don't think so."

  "All right, come Monday."

  "All right." She smiled, too, and put her hand out automatically and Dannie shook it once, politely.

  She ran the two blocks to the Black Cat. A little like the horse, she thought. But not enough, not enough to be perfect, and what Dannie meant was perfect.

  CHAPTER 11

  "THE PASTIMES OF idle people," Carol said, stretching her legs out before her on the glider. "It's time Abby got herself a job again."

  Therese said nothing. She hadn't told Carol all the conversation at lunch, but she didn't want to talk about Abby any more.

  "Don't you want to sit in
a more comfortable chair?"

  "No," Therese said. She was sitting on a leather stool near the glider.

  They had finished dinner a few moments ago, and then come up to this room that Therese had not seen before, a glass enclosed porch off the plain green room.

  "What else did Abby say that bothers you?" Carol asked, still looking straight before her, down her long legs in the navy-blue slacks.

  Carol seemed tired. She was worried about other things, Therese thought, more important things than this. "Nothing. Does it bother you, Carol?"

  "Bother me?"

  "You're different with me tonight."

  Carol glanced at her. "You imagine," she said, and the pleasant vibration of her voice faded into silence again.

  The page she had written last night, Therese thought, had nothing to do with this Carol, was not addressed to her. I feel I am in love with you, she had written, and it should be spring. I want the sun throbbing on my head like chords of music. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine.

  "I don't think Abby likes me," Therese remarked. "I don't think she wants me to see you."

  "That's not true. You're imagining again."

  "I don't mean she said it." Therese tried to sound as calm as Carol. "She was very nice. She invited me to a cocktail party."

  "Whose party?"

  "I don't know. She said uptown. She said you wouldn't be there, so I didn't particularly want to go."

  "Where uptown?"

  "She didn't say. Just that one of the girls giving it was an actress."

  Carol set her lighter down with a click on the glass table, and Therese sensed her displeasure. "She did," Carol murmured, half to herself. "Sit over here, Therese."

  Therese got up, and sat down at the very foot of the glider.

  "You mustn't think Abby feels that way about you. I know her well enough to know she wouldn't."

  "All right," Therese said.

  "But Abby's incredibly clumsy sometimes in the way she talks."

  Therese wanted to forget the whole thing. Carol was still so distant even when she spoke, even when she looked at her. A bar of light from the green room lay across the top of Carol's head, but she could not see Carol's face now.

  Carol poked her with the back of her toe. "Hop up."

  But Therese was slow to move, and Carol swung her feet over Therese's head and sat up. Then Therese heard the maid's step in the next room, and the plump, Irish-looking maid in the gray and white uniform came in bearing a coffee tray, shaking the porch floor with her quick, eager little steps that sounded so eager to please.

  "The cream's in here, ma'am," she said, pointing to a pitcher that didn't match the demitasse set. Florence glanced at Therese with a friendly smile and round blank eyes. She was about fifty, with a bun at the back of her neck under the starched white band of her cap. Therese could not establish her somehow, could not determine her allegiance. Therese had heard her refer to Mr. Aird twice as if she were very devoted to him, and whether it was professional or genuine, Therese did not know.

  "Will there be anything else, ma'am?" Florence asked. "Shall I put out the lights?"

  "No, I like the lights. We won't need anything else, thanks. Did Mrs. Riordan call?"

  "Not yet, ma'am."

  "Will you tell her I'm out when she does?"

  "Yes, ma'am." Florence hesitated, "I was wondering if you were finished with that new book, ma'am. The one about the Alps."

  "Go in my room and get it, if you'd like it, Florence. I don't think I want to finish it."

  "Thank you, ma'am. Good night, ma'am. Good night, miss."

  "Good night," Carol said.

  While Carol was pouring the coffee, Therese asked, "Have you decided how soon you're going away?"

  "Maybe in about a week." Carol handed her the demitasse with cream in it.

  "Why?"

  "Just that I'll miss you. Of course."

  Carol was motionless for a moment, and then she reached for a cigarette, a last one, and crumpled the pack up. "I was thinking, in fact, you might like to go with me. What do you think, for three weeks or so?"

  There it was, Therese thought, as casual as if she suggested their taking a walk together. "You mentioned it to Abby, didn't you?"

  "Yes," Carol said. "Why?"

  Why? Therese could not put into words why it hurt her that Carol had. "It just seems strange you'd tell her before you said anything to me."

  "I didn't tell her. I only said I might ask you." Carol came over to her and put her hands on Therese's shoulders. "Look, there's no reason for you to feel like this about Abby—unless Abby said a lot else to you at lunch that you didn't tell me."

  "No," Therese said. No, but it was the undercurrents, it was worse. She felt Carol's hands leave her shoulders.

  "Abby's a very old friend of mine," Carol said. "I talk over everything with her."

  "Yes," Therese said.

  "Well, do you think you'd like to go?"

  Carol had turned away from her, and suddenly it meant nothing, because of the way Carol asked her, as if she didn't really care one way or the other if she went. "Thanks—I don't think I can afford it just now."

  "You wouldn't need much money. We'd go in the car. But if you have a job offered you right away, that's different."

  As if she wouldn't turn down a job on a ballet set to go away with Carol—to go with her through country she had never seen before, over rivers and mountains, not knowing where they would be when night came.

  Carol knew that, and knew she would have to refuse if Carol asked her in this way. Therese felt suddenly sure that Carol taunted her, and she resented it with the bitter resentment of a betrayal. And the resentment resolved itself into a decision never to see Carol again. She glanced at Carol, who was waiting for her answer, with that defiance only half masked by an air of indifference, an expression that Therese knew would not change at all if she should give a negative answer. Therese got up and went to the box on the end table for a cigarette. There was nothing in the box but some phonograph needles and a photograph.

  "What is it?" Carol asked, watching her.

  Therese felt Carol had been reading all her thoughts. "It's a picture of Rindy," Therese said.

  "Of Rindy? Let's see it."

  Therese watched Carol's face as she looked at the picture of the little girl with the white-blond hair and the serious face, with the taped white bandage on her knee. In the picture, Harge was standing in a rowboat, and Rindy was stepping from a dock into his arms.

  "It's not a very good picture," Carol said, but her face had changed, grown softer. "That's about three years old. Would you like a cigarette?

  There's some over here. Rindy's going to stay with Harge for the next three months."

  Therese had supposed that from the conversation in the kitchen that morning with Abby. "Is that in New Jersey, too?"

  "Yes. Harge's family lives in New Jersey. They've a big house." Carol waited. "The divorce will come through in a month, I think, and after March, I'll have Rindy the rest of the year."

  "Oh. But you'll see her again before March, won't you?"

  "A few times. Probably not much."

  Therese looked at Carol's hand holding the photograph, beside her on the glider, carelessly. "Won't she miss you?"

  "Yes, but she's very fond of her father, too."

  "Fonder than she is of you?"

  "No. Not really. But he's bought her a goat to play with now. He takes her to school on his way to work, and he picks her up at four. Neglects his business for her—and what more can you ask of a man?"

  "You didn't see her Christmas, did you?" Therese said.

  "No. Because of something that happened in the lawyer's office. That was the afternoon Harge's lawyer wanted to see us both, and Harge had brought Rindy, too. Rindy said she wanted to go to Harge's house for Christmas.

  Rindy didn't know I wasn't going to be there this year. They have a big t
ree that grows on the lawn and they always decorate it, so Rindy was set on it. Anyway, it made quite an impression on the lawyer, you know, the child asking to go home for Christmas with her father. And naturally I didn't want to tell Rindy then I wasn't going, or she'd have been disappointed. I couldn't have said it anyway, in front of the lawyer.

  Harge's machinations are enough."

  Therese stood there, crushing the unlighted cigarette in her fingers.

  Carol's voice was calm, as it might have been if she talked to Abby, Therese thought. Carol had never said so much to her before. "But the lawyer understood?"

  Carol shrugged. "It's Harge's lawyer, not mine. So I agreed to the three-month arrangement now, because I don't want her to be tossed back and forth. If I'm to have her nine months and Harge three—it might as well start now."

  "You won't even visit her?"

  Carol waited so long to answer, Therese thought she was not going to.

  "Not very often. The family isn't too cordial. I talk to Rindy every day on the telephone. Sometimes she calls me."

  "Why isn't the family cordial?"

  "They never cared for me. They've been complaining ever since Harge met me at some deb party. They're very good at criticizing. I sometimes wonder just who would pass with them."

  "What do they criticize you for?"

  "For having a furniture shop, for instance. But that didn't last a year.

  Then for not playing bridge, or not liking to. They pick out the funny things, the most superficial things."

  "They sound horrid."

  "They're not horrid. One's just supposed to conform. I know what they'd like, they'd like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly. Shall we play some music? Don't you ever like the radio?"

  "Sometimes."

  Carol leaned against the window sill. "And now Rindy's got television every day. Hopalong Cassidy. How she'd love to go out West. That's the last doll I'll ever buy for her, Therese. I only got it because she said she wanted one, but she's outgrown them."