The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Behind Carol, an airport searchlight made a pale sweep in the night, and disappeared. Carol's voice seemed to linger in the darkness. In its richer, happier tone, Therese could hear the depths within her where she loved Rindy, deeper than she would probably ever love anyone else. "Harge doesn't make it easy for you to see her, does he?"

  "You know that," Carol said.

  "I don't see how he could be so much in love with you."

  "It's not love. It's a compulsion. I think he wants to control me. I suppose if I were a lot wilder but never had an opinion on anything except his opinion—Can you follow all this?"

  "Yes."

  "I've never done anything to embarrass him socially, and that's all he cares about really. There's a certain woman at the club I wish he'd married. Her life is entirely filled with giving exquisite little dinner parties and being carried out of the best bars feet first—She's made her husband's advertising business a great success, so he smiles on her little faults. Harge wouldn't smile, but he'd have some definite reason for complaint. I think he picked me out like a rug for his living room, and he made a bad mistake. I doubt if he's capable of loving anyone, really. What he has is a kind of acquisitiveness, which isn't much separate from his ambition. It's getting to be a disease, isn't it, not being able to love?" She looked at Therese. "Maybe it's the times. If one wanted to, one could make out a case for racial suicide. Man trying to catch up with his own destructive machines."

  Therese said nothing. It reminded her of a thousand conversations with Richard, Richard mingling war and big business and Congressional witch-hunts and finally certain people he knew into one grand enemy, whose only collective label was hate. Now Carol, too. It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing. Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything, for certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut off? But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have uttered the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it.

  "You're the young generation," Carol said. "And what have you got to say?" She sat down on the glider.

  "I suppose the first thing is not to be afraid." Therese turned and saw Carol's smile. "You're smiling because you think I am afraid, I suppose."

  "You're about as weak as this match." Carol held it burning for a moment after she lighted her cigarette. "But given the right conditions, you could burn a house down, couldn't you?"

  "Or a city."

  "But you're even afraid to take a little trip with me. You're afraid because you think you haven't got enough money."

  "That's not it."

  "You've got some very strange values, Therese. I asked you to go with me, because it would give me pleasure to have you. I should think it'd be good for you, too, and good for your work. But you've got to spoil it by a silly pride about money. Like that handbag you gave me. Out of all proportion. Why don't you take it back, if you need the money? I don't need the handbag. It gave you pleasure to give it to me, I suppose. It's the same thing, you see. Only I make sense and you don't." Carol walked by her and turned to her again, poised with one foot forward and her head up, the short blond hair as unobtrusive as a statue's hair. "Well, do you think it's funny?"

  Therese was smiling. "I don't care about the money," she said quietly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just that," Therese said. "I've got the money to go. I'll go."

  Carol stared at her. Therese saw the sullenness leave her face, and then Carol began to smile, too, with surprise, a little incredulously.

  "Well, all right," Carol said. "I'm delighted."

  "I'm delighted."

  "What brought this happy change about?"

  Doesn't she really know, Therese thought. "You do seem to care whether I go or not," Therese said simply.

  "Of course I care. I asked you, didn't I?" Carol said, still smiling, but with a twist of her toe, she turned her back on Therese and walked toward the green room.

  Therese watched her go, her hands in her pockets and her moccasins making light slow clicks on the floor. Therese looked at the empty doorway.

  Carol would have walked out exactly the same way, she thought, if she had said no, she wouldn't go. She picked up her half-finished demitasse, then set it down again.

  She went out and across the hall, to the door of Carol's room. "What are you doing?"

  Carol was bending over her dressing table, writing. "What am I doing?"

  She stood up and slipped a piece of paper into her pocket. She was smiling now, really smiling in her eyes, like the moment in the kitchen with Abby. "Something," Carol said. "Let's have some music."

  "Fine." A smile spread over her face.

  "Why don't you get ready for bed first? It's late, do you know that?"

  "It always gets late with you."

  "Is that a compliment?"

  "I don't feel like going to bed tonight."

  Carol crossed the hall to the green room. "You get ready. You've got circles under your eyes."

  Therese undressed quickly in the room with the twin beds. The phonograph in the other room played "Embraceable You." Then the telephone rang.

  Therese opened the top drawer of the bureau. It was empty except for a couple of men's handkerchiefs, an old clothesbrush, and a key. And a few papers in the corner. Therese picked up a card covered in isinglass. It was an old driver's license that belonged to Harge. Hargess Foster Aird.

  Age: 37. Height: 5'8". Weight: 168. Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. She knew all that. A 1950 Oldsmobile. Color: dark blue. Therese put it back and closed the drawer. She went to the door and listened.

  "I am sorry, Tessie, but I did get stuck after all," Carol was saying regretfully, but her voice was happy. "Is it a good party?... Well, I'm not dressed and I'm tired."

  Therese went to the bed table and got a cigarette from the box there. A Philip Morris. Carol had put them there, not the maid, Therese knew, because Carol remembered that she liked them. Naked now, Therese stood listening to the music It was a song she didn't know.

  Was Carol on the telephone again?

  "Well, I don't like it," she heard Carol say, half angry, half joking, "one damn bit."

  . it's easy to live... when you're in love...

  "How do I know what kind of people they are?... Oh-ho! Is that so?"

  Abby, Therese knew. She blew her smoke out and snuffed at the slightly sweet smelling wisps of it, remembering the first cigarette she had ever smoked, a Philip Morris, on the roof of a dormitory at the Home, four of them passing it around.

  "Yes, we're going," Carol said emphatically. "Well, I am. Don't I sound it?"

  ... For you... maybe I'm a fool but it's fun... People say you rule me with one... wave of your hand... darling, it's grand o o o they just don't understand...

  It was a good song. Therese closed her eyes and leaned on the half-open door, listening. Behind the voice was a slow piano that rippled all over, the keyboard. And a lazy trumpet.

  Carol said, "That's nobody's business but mine, is it?... Nonsense!" and Therese smiled at her vehemence.

  Therese closed the door. The phonograph had dropped another record.

  "Why don't you come say hello to Abby?" Carol said.

  Therese had ducked behind the bathroom door because she was naked. "Why?"

  "Come along," Carol said, and Therese put on a robe and went.

  "Hello," Abby said. "I hear you're going."

  "Is that news to you?"

  Abby sounded silly, as if she wanted to talk all night. She wished Therese a pleasant trip, and told her about the roads in the corn belt, how bad they could be in winter.

  "Will you forgive me if I was
rude today?" Abby said for the second time.

  "I like you O. K., Therese."

  "Cut it, cut it!" Carol called down.

  "She wants to talk to you again," Therese said.

  "Tell Abigail I'm in the tub."

  Therese told her, and got away.

  Carol had brought a bottle and two little glasses into the room.

  "What's the matter with Abby?" Therese asked.

  "What do you mean, what's the matter with her?" Carol poured a brown colored liquor into the two glasses. "I think she's had a couple tonight."

  "I know. But why did she want to have lunch with me?"

  "Well—I guess a lot of reasons. Try some of this stuff."

  "It just seems vague," Therese said.

  "What does?"

  "The whole lunch."

  Carol gave her a glass. "Some things are always vague, darling."

  It was the first time Carol had called her darling. "What things?"

  Therese asked. She wanted an answer, a definite answer.

  Carol sighed. "A lot of things. The most important things. Taste your drink."

  Therese sipped it, sweet and dark brown, like coffee, with the sting of alcohol. "Tastes good."

  "You would think so."

  "Why do you drink it if you don't like it?"

  "Because it's different. This is to our trip, so it's got to be something different." Carol grimaced and drank the rest of her glass.

  In the light of the lamp, Therese could see all the freckles on half of Carol's face. Carol's white looking eyebrow bent like a wing around the curve of her forehead. Therese felt ecstatically happy all at once.

  "What's that song that was playing before, the one with just the voice and the piano?"

  "Hum it."

  She whistled part of it, and Carol smiled.

  "'Easy Living,'" Carol said. "That's an old one."

  "I'd like to hear it again."

  "I'd like you to get to bed. I'll play it again."

  Carol went into the green room, and stayed there while it played. Therese stood by the door of her room, listening, smiling.

  ... I'll never regret... the years I'm giving... They're easy to give, when you're in love... I'm happy to do whatever I do for you...

  That was her song. That was everything she felt about Carol. She went in the bathroom before it was over, and turned the water on in the tub, got in and let the greenish looking water tumble about her feet.

  "Hey!" Carol called. "Have you ever been to Wyoming?"

  "No."

  "It's time you saw America."

  Therese lifted the dripping rag and pressed it against her knee. The water was so high now, her breasts looked like flat things floating on the surface. She studied them, trying to decide what they looked like besides what they were.

  "Don't go to sleep in there," Carol called in a preoccupied voice, and Therese knew she was sitting on the bed, looking at a map.

  "I won't."

  "Well, some people do."

  "Tell me more about Harge," she said as she dried herself. "What does he do?"

  "A lot of things."

  "I mean, what's his business?"

  "Real estate investment."

  "What's he like? Does he like to go to the theater? Does he like people?"

  "He likes a little group of people who play golf," Carol said with finality. Then in a louder voice, "And what else? He's very, very meticulous about everything. But he forgot his best razor. It's in the medicine cabinet and you can see it if you want to and you probably do.

  I've got to mail it to him, I suppose."

  Therese opened the medicine cabinet. She saw the razor. The medicine cabinet was still full of men's things, after-shaving lotions and lather brushes. "Was this his room?" she asked as she came out of the bathroom.

  "Which bed did he sleep in?"

  Carol smiled. "Not yours."

  "Can I have some more of this?" Therese asked, looking at the liqueur bottle.

  "Of course."

  "Can I kiss you good night?"

  Carol was folding the road map, pursing her lips as if she would whistle, waiting. "No," she said.

  "Why not?" Anything seemed possible tonight.

  "I'll give you this instead." Carol pulled her hand out of her pocket.

  It was a check. Therese read the sum, two hundred dollars, made out to her. "What's this for?"

  "For the trip. I don't want you to spend the money you'll need for that union membership thing." Carol took a cigarette. "You won't need all of that, I just want you to have it."

  "But I don't need it," Therese said. "Thanks. I don't care if I spend the union money."

  "No back talk," Carol interrupted her. "It gives me pleasure, remember?"

  "But I won't take it." She sounded curt, so she smiled a little as she put the check down on the table top by the liqueur bottle. But she had thumped the check down, too. She wished she could explain it to Carol. It didn't matter at all, the money, but since it did give Carol pleasure, she hated not to take it. "I don't like the idea," Therese said. "Think of something else." She looked at Carol. Carol was watching her, was not going to argue with her, Therese was glad to see.

  "To give me pleasure?" Carol asked.

  Therese's smile broadened. "Yes," she said, and picked up the little glass.

  "All right," Carol said. "I'll think. Good night." Carol had stopped by the door.

  It was a funny way of saying good night, Therese thought, on such an important night. "Good night," Therese answered.

  She turned to the table and saw the check again. But it was for Carol to tear up. She slid it under the edge of the dark-blue linen table runner, out of sight.

  CHAPTER 12

  JANUARY. IT WAS all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a bus and caught it. Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.

  A young man named Red Malone and a baldheaded carpenter worked with her on the Small Rain set. Mr. Donohue was very pleased with it. He said he had asked a Mr. Baltin to come in and see her work. Mr. Baltin was a graduate of a Russian academy, and had designed a few sets for theaters in New York. Therese had never heard of him. She tried to get Mr. Donohue to arrange an appointment for her to see Myron Blanchard or Ivor Harkevy, but Mr. Donohue never promised anything. He couldn't, Therese supposed.

  Mr. Baltin came in one afternoon, a tall, bent man in a black hat and a seedy overcoat, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had brought only three or four models down to the theatre, her very best ones. Mr. Baltin told her of a play that was to start in production in about six weeks. He would be glad to recommend her as an assistant, and Therese said that would work out very well, because she would be out of town until then, anyway. Everything was working out very well in these last days. Mr. Andronich had promised her a two-week job in Philadelphia in the middle of February, which would be just about the time she would be back from the trip with Carol. Therese wrote down the name and address of the man Mr. Baltin knew.

  "He's looking for someone now, so call him the first of the week," Mr.

  Baltin said. "It'll just be a helper's job, but his helper, a pupil of mine, is working with Harkevy now."

  "Oh. Do you suppose you—or he could arrange for me to see Harkevy?"

  "Nothing easier. All you have to do is call Harkevy's studio and ask to speak to Charles. Charles Winant. Tell him that you've spoken with me.

  Let's see—call him Friday. Friday afternoon ar
ound three."

  "All right. Thank you." Friday was a whole week off. Harkevy was not unapproachable, Therese had heard, but he had the reputation of never making appointments, much less keeping them if he did make them, because he was very busy. But maybe Mr. Baltin knew.

  "And don't forget to call Kettering," Mr. Baltin said as he left.

  Therese looked again at the name he had given her: Adolph Kettering, Theatrical Investments, Inc., at a private address. "I'll call him Monday morning. Thanks a lot."

  That was the day, a Saturday, when she was to meet Richard in the Palermo after work. It was the seventh of January, eleven days before she and Carol planned to leave. She saw Phil standing with Richard at the bar.

  "Well, how's the old Cat?" Phil asked her, dragging up a stool for her.

  "Working Saturdays, too?"

  "The cast didn't work. Just my department," she said.

  "When's the opening?"

  "The twenty-first."

  "Look," Richard said. He pointed to a spot of dark-green paint on her skirt.

  "I know. I did that days ago."

  "What would you like to drink?" Phil asked her.

  "I don't know. Maybe I'll have a beer, thanks." Richard had turned his back on Phil, who stood on the other side of him, and she sensed an ill-feeling between them. "Did you do any painting today?" she asked Richard.

  Richard's mouth was down at both corners. "Had to pinch hit for some driver who was sick. Ran out of gas in the middle of Long Island."

  "Oh. That's rotten. Maybe you'd rather paint than go anywhere tomorrow."

  They had talked of going over to Hoboken tomorrow, just to walk around and eat at the Clam House. But Carol would be in town tomorrow, and had promised to call her.

  "I'll paint if you'll sit for me," Richard said.

  Therese hesitated uncomfortably. "I just don't feel in the mood for sitting these days.

  "All right. It's not important." He smiled. "But how can I ever paint you if you'll never sit?"

  "Why don't you do it out of the air?"

  Phil slid his hand out and held the bottom of her glass. "Don't drink that. Have something better. I'll drink this."