The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "No!" Carol finished her brandy.

  Therese walked up and down, in the lobby while Carol was in the telephone booth. She saw Carol nod slowly several times, saw her fumble to get a cigarette lighted, but by the time Therese got there to light it for her, Carol had it and motioned her away. Carol talked for three or four minutes, then came out and paid her bill.

  "What is it, Carol?"

  Carol stood looking out the doorway of the hotel for a moment. "Now we go to the Temple Square Hotel," she said.

  There they picked up another telegram. Carol opened it and glanced at it, and tore it up as they walked to the door.

  "I don't think we'll stay here tonight," Carol said. "Let's go back to the car."

  They went back to the hotel where Carol had gotten the first telegram.

  Therese said nothing to her, but she felt something had happened that meant Carol had to get back East immediately. Carol told the clerk to cancel their room reservation.

  "I'd like to leave a forwarding address in case of any other messages," she said. "That's the Brown Palace, Denver."

  "Right you are."

  "Thank you very much. That's good for the next week at least."

  In the car, Carol said, "What's the next town west?"

  "West?" Therese looked at the map. "Wendover. This is that stretch. A hundred and twenty-seven miles."

  "Christ!" Carol said suddenly. She stopped the car completely and took the map and looked at it.

  "What about Denver?" Therese asked.

  "I don't want to go to Denver." Carol folded the map and started the car.

  "Well, we'll do it anyway. Light me a cigarette, will you, darling? And watch out for the next place to get something to eat."

  They hadn't had lunch yet, and it was after three. They had talked about this stretch last night, the straight road west from Salt Lake City across the Great Salt Lake Desert. They had plenty of gas, Therese noticed, and probably the country wasn't entirely deserted, but Carol was tired. They had been driving since six that morning. Carol drove fast.

  Now and then she pressed the pedal down to the floor and held it there a long while before letting up. Therese glanced at her apprehensively. She felt they were running away from something.

  "Anything behind us?" Carol asked.

  "No." On the seat between them, Therese could see a piece of the telegram sticking out of Carol's handbag. GET THIS. JACOPO. was all she could read. She remembered Jacopo was the name of the little monkey in the back of the car.

  They came to a gas-station cafe standing all by itself like a wart on the flat landscape. They might have been the first people who had stopped there in days. Carol looked at her across the white oilcloth table, and sank back in the straight chair. Before she could speak, an old man in an apron came from the kitchen in back, and told them there was nothing but ham and eggs, so they ordered ham and eggs and coffee. Then Carol lighted a cigarette and leaned forward, looking down at the table.

  "Do you know what's up?" she said. "Harge has had a detective following us since Chicago."

  "A detective? What for?"

  "Can't you guess?" Carol said in almost a whisper.

  Therese bit her tongue. Yes, she could guess. Harge had found out they were traveling together. "Abby told you?"

  "Abby found out." Carol's fingers slid down her cigarette and the fire burned her. When she got the cigarette out of her mouth, her lip began to bleed.

  Therese looked around her. The place was empty. "Following us?" she asked."With us?"

  "He may be in Salt Lake City now. Checking on all the hotels. It's a very dirty business, darling. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry."

  Carol sat back restlessly in her chair. "Maybe I'd better put you on a train and send you home."

  "All right—if you think that's the best idea."

  "You don't have to be mixed up in this. Let them follow me to Alaska, if they want to. I don't know what they've got so far. I don't think much."

  Therese sat rigidly on the edge of her chair. "What's he doing—making notes about us?"

  The old man was coming back, bringing them glasses of water.

  Carol nodded. "Then there's the dictaphone trick," she said as the man went away. "I'm not sure if they'll go that far. I'm not sure if Harge would do that." The corner of her mouth trembled. She stared down at one spot on the worn white oilcloth. "I wonder if they had time for a dictaphone in Chicago. It's the only place we stayed more than ten hours.

  I rather hope they did. It's so ironic. Remember Chicago?"

  "Of course." She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was pretense, like pretending self-control when something you loved was dead in front of your eyes. They would have to separate here. "What about Waterloo?"

  She thought suddenly of the man in the lobby.

  "We got there late. It wouldn't have been easy."

  "Carol, I saw someone—I'm not sure, but I think I saw him twice."

  "Where?"

  "In the lobby in Waterloo the first time. In the morning. Then I thought I saw the same man in that restaurant with the fireplace." It was only last night, the restaurant with the fireplace.

  Carol made her tell completely about both times and describe the man completely. He was hard to describe. But now she racked her brain to extract the last detail she could, even to the color of his shoes. And it was odd and rather terrifying, dragging up what was probably a figment of her imagination and tying it to a situation that was real. She felt she might even be lying to Carol as she watched Carol's eyes grow more and more intense.

  "What do you think?" Therese asked.

  Carol sighed. "What can anyone think? Just watch out for him the third time."

  Therese looked down at her plate. It was impossible to eat. "It's about Rindy, isn't it?"

  "Yes." She put down her fork without taking the first bite, and reached for a cigarette. "Harge wants her—in toto. Maybe with this, he thinks he can do it."

  "Just because we're traveling together?"

  "Yes."

  "I should leave you."

  "Damn him," Carol said quietly, looking off at a corner of the room.

  Therese waited. But what was there to wait for? "I can get a bus somewhere from here, and then get a train."

  "Do you want to go?" Carol asked.

  "Of course, I don't. I just think it's best."

  "Are you afraid?"

  "Afraid? No." She felt Carol's eyes appraise her as severely as at that moment in Waterloo, when she had told Carol she loved her.

  "Then I'm damned if you'll go. I want you with me."

  "Do you mean that?"

  "Yes. Eat your eggs. Stop being silly." And Carol even smiled a little.

  "Shall we go to Reno as we'd planned?"

  "Any place."

  "And let's take our time."

  A few moments later, when they were on the road, Therese said again, "I'm still not sure it was the same man the second time, you know."

  "I think you're sure," Carol said. Then suddenly on the long straight road, she stopped the car. She sat for a moment in silence, looking down the road. Then she glanced at Therese. "I can't go to Reno. That's a little too funny. I know a wonderful place just south of Denver."

  "Denver?"

  "Denver," Carol said firmly, and backed the car around.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN THE MORNING, they lay in each other's arms long after the sun had come into the room. The sun warmed them through the window of the hotel in the tiny town whose name they hadn't noticed. There was snow on the ground outside.

  "There'll be snow in Estes Park," Carol said to her.

  "What's Estes Park?"

  "You'll like it. Not like Yellowstone. It's open all year."

  "Carol, you're not worried, are you?"

  Carol pulled her close. "Do I act like I'm worried?"

  Therese was not worried. That first panic had vanished. She was watching, but not as she had watched yesterday afternoon just after Salt Lake C
ity.

  Carol wanted her with her, and whatever happened they would meet it without running. How was it possible to be afraid and in love, Therese thought. The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.

  The road into Estes Park slanted downward. The snowdrifts piled higher and higher on either side, and then the lights began, strung along the fir trees, arching over the road. It was a village of brown logged houses and shops and hotels. There was music, and people walked in the bright street with their heads lifted up, as if they were enchanted.

  "I do like it," Therese said.

  "It doesn't mean you don't have to watch out for our little man."

  They brought the portable phonograph up to their room, and played some records they had just bought and some old ones from New Jersey. Therese played "Easy Living" a couple of times, and Carol sat across the room watching her, sitting on the arm of a chair with her arms folded.

  "What a rotten time I give you, don't I?"

  "Oh, Carol—" Therese tried to smile. It was only a mood of Carol's, only a moment. But it made Therese feel helpless.

  Carol looked around at the window. "And why didn't we go to Europe in the first place? Switzerland. Or fly out here at least."

  "I wouldn't have liked that at all." Therese looked at the yellow suede shirt that Carol had bought for her, that hung over the back of a chair.

  Carol had sent Rindy a green one. She had bought some silver earrings, a couple of books, and a bottle of Triple Sec. Half an hour ago, they had been happy, walking through the streets together. "It's that last rye you got downstairs," Therese said. "Rye depresses you."

  "Does it?"

  "Worse than brandy."

  "I'm going to take you to the nicest place I know this side of Sun Valley," she said.

  "What's the matter with Sun Valley?" She knew Carol liked skiing.

  "Sun Valley just isn't the place," Carol said mysteriously. "This place is near Colorado Springs."

  In Denver, Carol stopped and sold her diamond engagement ring at a jeweler's. Therese felt a little disturbed by it, but Carol said the ring meant nothing to her and she loathed diamonds anyway. And it was quicker than wiring her bank for money. Carol wanted to stop at a hotel a few miles out from Colorado Springs, where she had been before, but she changed her mind almost as soon as they got there. It was too much like a resort, she said, so they went to a hotel that backed on the town and faced the mountains.

  Their room was long from the door to the square floor-length windows that overlooked a garden, and beyond, the red and white mountains. There were touches of white in the garden, odd little pyramids of stone, a white bench or a chair, and the garden looked foolish compared to the magnificent land that surrounded it, the flat sweep that rose up into mountains upon mountains, filling the horizon like half a world. The room had blond furniture about the color of Carol's hair, and there was a bookcase as smooth as she could want it, with some good books amid the bad ones, and Therese knew she would never read any of them while they were here. A painting of a woman in a large black hat and a red scarf hung above the bookcase, and on the wall near the door was spread a pelt of brown leather, not a real pelt but something someone had cut out of a piece of brown suede. Above it was a tin lantern with a candle. Carol also rented the room next to them, which had a connecting door, though they did not use it even to put their suitcases in. They planned to stay a week, or longer if they liked it.

  On the morning of the second day, Therese came back from a tour of inspection of the hotel grounds and found Carol stooped by the bed table.

  Carol only glanced at her, and went to the dressing table and looked under that, and then to the long built-in closet behind the wall panel.

  "That's that," Carol said. "Now let's forget it."

  Therese knew what she was looking for. "I hadn't thought of it," she said. "I feel like we've lost him."

  "Except that he's probably gotten to Denver by now," Carol said calmly.

  She smiled, but she twisted her mouth a little. "And he'll probably drop in down here."

  It was so, of course. There was even the remotest chance that the detective had seen them when they drove back through Salt Lake City, and followed them. If he didn't find them in Salt Lake City, he might inquire at the hotels. She knew that was why Carol had left the Denver address, in fact, because they hadn't intended to go to Denver. Therese flung herself in the armchair, and looked at Carol. Carol took the trouble to search for a dictaphone, but her attitude was arrogant. She had even invited trouble by coming here. And the explanation, the resolution of those contradictory facts was nowhere but in Carol herself, unresolved, in her slow, restless step as she walked to the door now and turned, in the nonchalant lift of her head, and in the nervous line of her eyebrows that registered irritation in one second and in the next were serene.

  Therese looked at the big room, up at the high ceiling, at the large square, plain bed, the room that for all its modernness had a curiously old-fashioned, ample air about it that she associated with the American West, like the oversized Western saddles she had seen in the riding stable downstairs. A kind of cleanness, as well. Yet Carol looked for a dictaphone. Therese watched her, walking back toward her, still in her pajamas and robe. She had an impulse to go to Carol, crush her in her arms, pull her down on the bed, and the fact that she didn't now made her tense and alert filled her with a repressed but reckless exhilaration.

  Carol blew her smoke up into the air. "I don't give a damn. I hope the papers find out about it and rub Harge's nose in his own mess. I hope he wastes fifty thousand dollars. Do you want to take that trip that bankrupts the English language this afternoon? Did you ask Mrs. French yet?"

  They had met Mrs. French last night in the game room of the hotel. She hadn't a car, and Carol had asked her if she would like to take a drive with them today.

  "I asked her," Therese said. "She said she'd be ready right after lunch."

  "Wear your suede shirt." Carol took Therese's face in her hands, pressed her cheeks, and kissed her. "Put it on now."

  It was a six- or seven-hour trip to the Cripple Creek gold mine, over Ute Pass and down a mountain. Mrs. French went with them, talking the whole time. She was a woman of about seventy, with a Maryland accent and a hearing aid, ready to get out of the car and climb anywhere, though she had to be helped every foot of the way. Therese felt very anxious about her, though she actually disliked even touching her. She felt if Mrs. French fell, she would break in a million pieces. Carol and Mrs. French talked about the State of Washington, which Mrs. French knew well, since she had lived there for the past few years with one of her sons. Carol asked a few questions, and Mrs. French told her all about her ten years of traveling since her husband's death, and about her two sons, the one in Washington and the one in Hawaii who worked for a pineapple company.

  And obviously Mrs. French adored Carol, and they were going to see a lot more of Mrs. French. It was nearly eleven when they got back to the hotel. Carol asked Mrs. French to have supper in the bar with them, but Mrs. French said she was too tired for anything but her shredded wheat and hot milk, which she would have in her room.

  "I'm glad," Therese said when she had gone. "I'd rather be alone with you."

  "Really, Miss Belivet? Whatever do you mean?" Carol asked as she opened the door into the bar. "You'd better sit down and tell me all about that."

  But they were not alone in the bar more than five minutes.

  Two men, one named Dave and the other whose name Therese at least did not know and did not care to, came over and asked to join them. They were the two who had come over last night in the game room and asked Carol and her to play gin rummy. Carol had declined last night. Now she said, "Of course, sit down." Carol and Dave began a conversation that sounded very interesting, but Therese was seated so that she couldn't parti
cipate very well. And the man next to Therese wanted to talk about something else, a horseback trip he had just made around Steamboat Springs. After supper, Therese waited for a sign from Carol to leave, but Carol was still deep in conversation. Therese had read about that special pleasure people got from the fact that someone they loved was attractive in the eyes of other people, too. She simply didn't have it. Carol looked at her every now and then and gave her a wink. So Therese sat there for an hour and a half, and managed to be polite, because she knew Carol wanted her to be.

  The people who joined them in the bar and sometimes in the dining room did not annoy her so much as Mrs. French, who went with them somewhere almost every day in the car. Then an angry resentment that Therese was actually ashamed of would rise in her because someone was preventing her from being alone with Carol.

  "Darling, did you ever think you'll be seventy-one, too, some day?"

  "No," Therese said.

  But there were other days when they drove out into the mountains alone, taking any road they saw. Once they came upon a little town they liked and spent the night there, without pajamas or toothbrushes, without past or future, and the night became another of those islands in time, suspended somewhere in the heart or in the memory, intact and absolute.

  Or perhaps it was nothing but happiness, Therese thought, a complete happiness that must be rare enough, so rare that very few people ever knew it. But if it was merely happiness, then it had gone beyond the ordinary bounds and become something else, become a kind of excessive pressure, so that the weight of a coffee cup in her hand, the speed of a cat crossing the garden below, the silent crash of two clouds seemed almost more than she could bear. And just as she had not understood a month ago the phenomenon of sudden happiness, she did not understand her state now, which seemed an aftermath. It was more often painful than pleasant, and consequently she was afraid she had some grave and unique flaw. She was as afraid sometimes as if she were walking about with a broken spine. If she ever had an impulse to tell Carol, the words dissolved before she began, in fear and in her usual mistrust of her own reactions, the anxiety that her reactions were like no one else's, and that therefore not even Carol could understand them.