The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  And Carol listened, never taking her eyes from her. Carol watched her as she might have watched from a distance someone she could not help.

  "Strange," Carol said quietly. "And horrifying."

  "It was." Therese knew Carol understood. She saw the sympathy in Carol's eyes, too, and she smiled, but Carol did not smile back. Carol was still staring at her. "What are you thinking?" Therese asked.

  Carol took a cigarette. "What do you think? Of that day in the store."

  Therese smiled again. "It was so wonderful when you came over to me. Why did you come to me?"

  Carol waited. "For such a dull reason. Because you were the only girl not busy as hell. You didn't have a smock either, I remember."

  Therese burst out laughing. Carol only smiled, but she looked suddenly like herself, as she had been in Colorado Springs, before anything had happened. All at once, Therese remembered the candlestick in her handbag.

  "I brought you this," she said, handing it to her. "I found it in Sioux Falls."

  Therese had only twisted some white tissue around it. Carol opened it on the table.

  "I think it's charming," Carol said. "It looks just like you."

  "Thank you. I thought it looked like you." Therese looked at Carol's hand, the thumb and the tip of the middle finger resting on the thin rim of the candlestick, as she had seen Carol's fingers on the saucers of coffee cups in Colorado, in Chicago, and places forgotten. Therese closed her eyes.

  "I love you," Carol said.

  Therese opened her eyes, but she did not look up.

  "I know you don't feel the same about me. Do you?"

  Therese had an impulse to deny it, but could she? She didn't feel the same. "I don't know, Carol."

  "That's the same thing." Carol's voice was soft, expectant, expecting affirmation or denial.

  Therese stared at the triangles of toast on the plate between them. She thought of Rindy. She had put off asking about her. "Have you seen Rindy?"

  Carol sighed. Therese saw her hand draw back from the candlestick. "Yes, last Sunday for an hour or so. I suppose she can come and visit me a couple of afternoons a year. Once in a blue moon. I've lost completely."

  "I thought you said a few weeks of the year."

  "Well, a little more happened—privately between Harge and me. I refused to make a lot of promises he asked me to make. And the family came into it, too. I refused to live by a list of silly promises they'd made up like a list of misdemeanors—even if it did mean that they'd lock Rindy away from me as if I were an ogre. And it did mean that. Harge told the lawyers everything—whatever they didn't know already."

  "God," Therese whispered. She could imagine what it meant, Rindy visiting one afternoon, accompanied by a staring governess who had been forewarned against Carol, told not to let the child out of her sight, probably, and Rindy would soon understand all that. What would be the pleasure in a visit at all? Harge—Therese did not want to say his name. "Even the court was kinder," she said.

  "As a matter of fact, I didn't promise very much in court. I refused there, too."

  Therese smiled a little in spite of herself, because she was glad Carol had refused, that Carol had still been that proud.

  "But it wasn't a court, you know, just a round-table discussion. Do you know how they made that recording in Waterloo? They drove a spike into the wall, probably just about as soon as we got there."

  "A spike?"

  "I remember hearing somebody hammering something. I think it was when we'd just finished in the shower. Do you remember?"

  "No."

  Carol smiled. "A spike that picks up sound like a dictaphone. He had the room next to us."

  Therese didn't remember the hammering, but the violence of all of it came back, shattering, destroying— "It's all over," Carol said. "You know, I'd almost prefer not to see Rindy at all any more. I'm never going to demand to see her if she stops wanting to see me. I'll just leave that up to her."

  "I can't imagine her ever not wanting to see you."

  Carol's eyebrows lifted. "Is there any way of predicting what Harge can do to her?"

  Therese was silent. She looked away from Carol, and saw a clock. It was five thirty-five. She should be at the cocktail party before six, she thought, if she went at all. She had dressed for it, in the new black dress with a white scarf, in her new shoes, with her new black gloves.

  And how unimportant the clothes seemed now. She thought suddenly of the green woolen gloves that Sister Alicia had given her. Were they still in the ancient tissue at the bottom of her trunk? She wanted to throw them away.

  "One gets over things," Carol said.

  "Yes."

  "Harge and I are selling the house, and I've taken an apartment up on Madison Avenue. And a job, believe it or not. I'm going to work for a furniture house on Fourth Avenue as a buyer. Some of my ancestors must have been carpenters." She looked at Therese. "Anyway, it's a living and I'll like it. The apartment's a nice big one—big enough for two. I was hoping you might like to come and live with me, but I guess you won't."

  Therese's heart took a jump, exactly as it had when Carol had telephoned her that day in the store. Something responded in her against her will, made her feel happy all at once, and proud. She was proud that Carol had the courage to do such things, to say such things, that Carol always would have the courage. She remembered Carol's courage, facing the detective on the country road. Therese swallowed, trying to swallow the beating of her heart. Carol had not even looked at her. Carol was rubbing her cigarette end back and forth in the ash tray. To live with Carol?

  Once that had been impossible, and had been what she wanted most in the world. To live with her and share everything with her, summer and winter, to walk and read together, to travel together. And she remembered the days of resenting Carol, when she had imagined Carol asking her this, and herself answering no.

  "Would you?" Carol looked at her.

  Therese felt she balanced on a thin edge. The resentment was gone now.

  Nothing but the decision remained now, a thin line suspended in the air, with nothing on either side to push her or pull her. But on the one side, Carol, and on the other an empty question mark. On the one side, Carol, and it would be different now, because they were both different. It would be a world as unknown as the world just past had been when she first entered it. Only now, there were no obstacles. Therese thought of Carol's perfume that today meant nothing. A blank to be filled in, Carol would say.

  "Well," Carol said smiling, impatient.

  "No," Therese said. "No, I don't think so." Because you would betray me again. That was what she had thought in Sioux Falls, what she had intended to write or say. But Carol had not betrayed her. Carol loved her more than she loved her child. That was part of the reason why she had not promised. She was gambling now as she had gambled on getting everything from the detective that day on the road, and she lost then, too. And now she saw Carol's face changing, saw the little signs of astonishment and shock so subtle that perhaps only she in the world could have noticed them, and Therese could not think for a moment.

  "That's your decision," Carol said.

  "Yes."

  Carol stared at her cigarette lighter on the table. "That's that."

  Therese looked at her, wanting still to put out her hands, to touch Carol's hair and to hold it tight in all her fingers. Hadn't Carol heard the indecision in her voice? Therese wanted suddenly to run away, to rush quickly out the door and down the sidewalk. It was a quarter to six.

  "I've got to go to a cocktail party this afternoon. It's important because of a possible job. Harkevy's going to be there." Harkevy would give her some kind of a job, she was sure. She had called him at noon today about the models she had left at his studio. Harkevy had liked them all. "I got a television assignment yesterday, too."

  Carol lifted her head, smiling. "My little big shot. Now you look like you might do something good. Do you know, even your voice is different?"

  "Is it
?" Therese hesitated, finding it harder and harder to sit there.

  "Carol, you could come to the party if you want to. It's a big party in a couple of rooms at a hotel—welcoming the woman who's going to do the lead in Harkevy's play. I know they wouldn't mind if I brought someone." And she didn't know quite why she was asking her, why Carol would possibly want to go to a cocktail party now any more than she did.

  Carol shook her head. "No, thanks, darling. You'd better run along by yourself. I've got a date at the Elysee in a minute as a matter of fact."

  Therese gathered her gloves and her handbag in her lap. She looked at Carol's hands, the pale freckles sprinkled on their backs—the wedding ring was gone now—and at Carol's eyes. She felt she would never see Carol again. In two minutes, less, they would part on the sidewalk. "The car's outside. Out in front to the left. And here's the keys."

  "I know, I saw it."

  "Are you going to stay on?" Therese asked her. "I'll take care of the check."

  "I'll take care of the check," Carol said. "Go on, if you have to."

  Therese stood up. She couldn't leave Carol sitting here at he table where their two teacups were, with the ashes of their cigarettes in front of her. "Don't stay. Come out with me." Carol glanced up with a kind of questioning surprise in her face. "All right," she said. "There are a couple of things of yours out at the house. Shall I—"

  "It doesn't matter," Therese interrupted her. "And your flowers. Your plants." Carol was paying the check the waiter had brought over. "What happened to the flowers I gave you?"

  "The flowers you gave me—they died." Carol's eyes met hers for a second, and Therese looked away. They parted on the sidewalk, at the corner of Park Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. Therese ran across the avenue, just making it ahead of the green lights that released a pack of cars behind her, that blurred her view of Carol when she turned on the other sidewalk. Carol was walking slowly away, past the Ritz Tower doorway, and on. And that was the way it should be, Therese thought, not with a lingering handclasp, not with backward glances. Then as she saw Carol touch the handle of the car door, she remembered the beer can still under the front seat, remembered its clink as she had driven up the ramp from the Lincoln Tunnel coming into New York. She had thought then, she must get it out before she gave the car back to Carol, but she had forgotten.

  Therese hurried on to the hotel.

  People were already spilling out of the two doorways into the hall, and a waiter was having difficulty pushing his rolling table of ice buckets into the room. The rooms were noisy, and Therese did not see Bernstein or Harkevy anywhere. She didn't know anyone, not a soul. Except one face, a man she had talked to months ago, somewhere, about a job that didn't materialize. Therese turned around. A man poked a tall glass into her hand.

  "Mademoiselle," he said with a flourish. "Are you looking for one of these?"

  "Thank you." She didn't stay with him. She thought she saw Mr. Bernstein over in the corner. There were several women with big hats in the way.

  "Are you an actress?" the same man asked her, thrusting with her through the crowd.

  "No. A stage designer."

  It was Mr. Bernstein, and Therese sidled between a couple of groups of people and reached him. Mr. Bernstein held out a plump, cordial hand to her, and got up from his radiator seat.

  "Miss Belivet!" he shouted. "Mrs. Crawford, the make-up consultant—"

  "Let's not talk business!" Mrs. Crawford shrieked.

  "Mr. Stevens, Mr. Fenelon," Mr. Bernstein went on, and on and on, until she was nodding to a dozen people and saying "How do you do?" to about half of them. "And Ivor—Ivor!" Mr. Bernstein called.

  There was Harkevy, a slim figure with a slim face and a small mustache, smiling at her, reaching a hand over for her to shake. "Hello," he said, "I'm glad to see you again. Yes, I liked your work. I see your anxiety."

  He laughed a little.

  "Enough to let me squeeze in?" she asked.

  "You want to know," he said, smiling. "Yes, you can squeeze in. Come up to my studio tomorrow at about eleven. Can you make that?"

  "Yes."

  "Come and join me later. I must say good-by to these people who are leaving." And he went away.

  Therese set her drink down on the edge of a table, and reached for a cigarette in her handbag. It was done. She glanced at the door. A woman with upswept blond hair, with bright, intense blue eyes had just come into the room and was causing a small furor of excitement around her. She had quick, positive movements as she turned to greet people, to shake hands, and suddenly Therese realized she was Genevieve Cranell, the English actress who was to play the lead. She looked different from the few stills Therese had seen of her. She had the kind of face that must be seen in action to be attractive.

  "Hello, hello!" she called to everyone finally as she glanced around the room, and Therese saw the glance linger on her for an instant, while in Therese there took place a shock a little like that she had known when she had seen Carol for the first time, and there was the same flash of interest in the woman's blue eyes that had been in her own, she knew, when she saw Carol. And now it was Therese who-continued to look, and the other woman who glanced away, and turned around.

  Therese looked down at the glass in her hand, and felt a sudden heat in her face and her finger tips, the rush inside her that was neither quite her blood nor her thoughts alone. She knew before they were introduced that this woman was like Carol. And she was beautiful. And she did not look like the picture in the library. Therese smiled as she sipped her drink. She took a long pull at the drink to steady herself.

  "A flower, madame?" A waiter was extending a tray full of white orchids.

  "Thank you very much." Therese took one. She had trouble with the pin, and someone—Mr. Fenelon or Mr. Stevens it was—came up and helped.

  "Thanks," she said.

  Genevieve Cranell was coming toward her, with Mr. Bernstein behind her.

  The actress greeted the man with Therese as if she knew him very well.

  "Did you meet Miss Cranell?" Mr. Bernstein asked Therese.

  Therese looked at the woman. "My name is Therese Belivet." She took the hand the woman extended.

  "How do you do? So you're the set department?"

  "No. Only part of it." She could still feel the handclasp when the woman released her hand. She felt excited, wildly and stupidly excited.

  "Isn't anybody going to bring me a drink?" Miss Cranell asked anybody.

  Mr. Bernstein obliged. Mr. Bernstein finished introducing Miss Cranell to the people around him who hadn't met her. Therese heard her tell someone that she had just gotten off a plane and that her luggage was piled in the lobby, and while she spoke, Therese saw her glance at her a couple of times past the men's shoulders. Therese felt an exciting attraction in the neat back of her head, in the funny, careless lift of her nose at the end, the only careless feature of her narrow, classic face. Her lips were rather thin. She looked extremely alert, and imperturbably poised. Yet Therese sensed that Genevieve Cranell might not talk to her again at the party for the simple reason that she probably wanted to.

  Therese made her way to a wall mirror, and glanced to see if her hair and her lipstick were still all right.

  "Therese," said a voice near her. "Do you like champagne?"

  Therese turned and saw Genevieve Cranell. "Of course."

  "Of course. Well, toddle up to six-nineteen in a few minutes. That's my suite. We're having an inner circle party later."

  "I feel very honored," Therese said.

  "So don't waste your thirst on highballs. Where did you get that lovely dress?"

  "Bonwit's—it's a wild extravagance."

  Genevieve Cranell laughed. She wore a blue woolen suit that actually looked like a wild extravagance. "You look so young, I don't suppose you'll mind if I ask how old you are."

  "I'm twenty-one."

  She rolled her eyes. "Incredible. Can anyone still be only twenty-one?"

  People were wa
tching the actress. Therese was flattered, terribly flattered, and the flattery got in the way of what she felt, or might feel, about Genevieve Cranell.

  Miss Cranell offered her cigarette case. "For a while, I thought you might be a minor."

  "Is that a crime?"

  The actress only looked at her, her blue eyes smiling, over the flame of her lighter. Then as the woman turned her head to light her own cigarette, Therese knew suddenly that Genevieve Cranell would never mean anything to her, nothing apart from this half hour at the cocktail party, that the excitement she felt now would not continue, and not be evoked again at any other time or place. What was it that told her? Therese stared at the taut line of her blond eyebrow as the first smoke rose from her cigarette, but the answer was not there. And suddenly a feeling of tragedy, almost of regret, filled Therese. "Are you a New Yorker?" Miss Cranell asked her.

  "Vivy!"

  The new people who had just come in the door surrounded Genevieve Cranell and bore her away. Therese smiled again, and finished her drink, felt the first soothing warmth of the Scotch spreading through her. She talked with a man she had met briefly in Mr. Bernstein's office yesterday, and with another man she didn't know at all, and she looked at the doorway across the room, the doorway that was an empty rectangle at that moment, and she thought of Carol. It would be like Carol to come after all, to ask her once more. Or rather, like the old Carol, but not like this one.

  Carol would be keeping her appointment now at the Elysee bar. With Abby?

  With Stanley McVeigh? Therese looked away from the door, as if she were afraid Carol might appear, and she would have to say again, "No." Therese accepted another highball, and felt the emptiness inside her slowly filling with the realization she might see Genevieve Cranell very often, if she chose, and though she would never become entangled, might be loved herself.

  One of the men beside her asked, "Who did the sets for The Lost Messiah, Therese? Do you remember?"