I learn how to be a thief, a liar, and a poet all at once." Therese leaned back in the straight chair so her head would be in the warm square of sunlight. She wanted to say, and how to love. She had never loved anyone before Carol, not even Sister Alicia. Carol looked at her. "How do you become a poet?" "By feeling things--too much, I suppose," Therese answered conscientiously. "And how do you become a thief?" Carol licked something off her thumb and frowned. "You don't want any caramel pudding, do you?" "No, thank you. I haven't stolen yet, but I'm sure it's easy there. There are pocketbooks all around, and one just takes something. They steal the meat you buy for dinner." Therese laughed. One could laugh at it with Carol. One could laugh at anything with Carol. They had sliced cold chicken, cranberry sauce, green olives, and crisp white celery. But Carol left her lunch and went into the living room. She came back carrying a glass with some whisky in it, and added some water to it from the tap. Therese watched her. Then for a long moment, they looked at each other, Carol standing in the doorway and Therese at the table, looking over her shoulder, not eating. Carol asked quietly, "Do you meet a lot of people across the counter this way? Don't you have to be careful whom you start talking to?" "Oh, yes," Therese smiled. "Or whom you go out to lunch with?" Carol's eyes sparkled. "You might run into a kidnaper." She rolled the drink around in the iceless glass, then drank it off, the thin silver bracelets on her wrist rattling against the glass. "Well--do you meet many people this way?" "No," Therese said. "Not many? Just three or four?" "Like you?" Therese met her eyes steadily. And Carol looked fixedly at her, as if she demanded another word, another phrase from Therese. But then she set the glass down on the stove top and turned away. "Do you play the piano?" "Some." "Come and play something." And when Therese started to refuse, she said imperatively, "Oh, I don't care how you play. Just play something." Therese played some Scarlatti she had learned at the Home. In a chair on the other side of the room. Carol sat listening relaxed and motionless, not even sipping the new glass of whisky and water. Therese played the C major Sonata, which was slowish and rather simple, full of broken octaves, but it struck her as dull, then pretentious in the trill parts, and she stopped. It was suddenly too much, her hands on the keyboard that she knew Carol played, Carol watching her with her eyes half closed, Carol's, whole house around her, and the music that made her abandon herself, made her-defenseless. With a gasp, she dropped her hands in her lap. "Are you tired?" Carol asked calmly. The question seemed not of now but of always. "Yes."


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Carol came up behind her and set her hands on Therese's shoulders. Therese could see her hands in her memory--flexible and strong, the delicate tendons showing as they pressed her shoulders. It seemed an age as her hands moved toward her neck and under her chin, an age of tumult so intense it blotted out the pleasure of Carol's tipping her head back and kissing her lightly at the edge of her hair. Therese did not feel the kiss at all. "Come with me," Carol said. She went with Carol upstairs again. Therese pulled herself up by the banister and was reminded suddenly of Mrs. Robichek. "I think a nap wouldn't hurt you," Carol said, turning down the flowered cotton bedspread and the top blanket. "Thanks, I'm not really--" "Slip your shoes off," Carol said softly, but in a tone that commanded obedience. Therese looked at the bed. She had hardly slept the night before. "I don't think I shall sleep, but if I do--" "I'll wake you in half an hour." Carol pulled the blanket over her when she lay down. Carol sat down on the edge of the bed. "How old are you, Therese?" Therese looked up at her, unable to bear her eyes now but bearing them nevertheless, not caring if she died that instant, if Carol strangled her, prostrate and vulnerable in her bed, the intruder. "Nineteen." How old it sounded. Older than ninety-one. Carol's eyebrows frowned, though she smiled a little. Therese felt that she thought of something so intensely, one might have touched the thought in the air between them. Then Carol slipped her hands under her shoulders, and bent her head down to Therese's throat, and Therese felt the tension go out of Carol's body with the sigh that made her neck warm, that carried the perfume that was in Carol's hair. "You're a child," Carol said, like a reproach. She lifted her head. "What would you like?" Therese remembered what she had thought of in the restaurant, and she set her teeth in shame. "What would you like?" Carol repeated. "Nothing, thanks." Carol got up and went to her dressing table and lighted a cigarette. Therese watched her through half-closed lids, worried by Carol's restlessness, though she loved the cigarette, loved to see her smoke. "What would you like, a drink?" Therese knew she meant water. She knew from the tenderness and the concern in her voice, as if she were a child sick with fever. Then Therese said it: "I think I'd like some hot milk." The corner of Carol's mouth lifted in a smile. "Some hot milk," she mocked. Then she left the room. And Therese lay in a limbo of anxiety and sleepiness all the long while until Carol reappeared with the milk in a straight-sided white cup with a saucer under it, holding the saucer and the cup handle, and closing the door with her foot.


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"I let it boil and it's got a scum on it," Carol said annoyedly. "I'm sorry." But Therese loved it, because she knew this was exactly what Carol would always do, be thinking of something else and let the milk boil. "Is that the way you like it? Plain like that?" Therese nodded. "Ug," Carol said, and sat down on the arm of a chair and watched her. Therese was propped on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill. Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, one that had to do with happiness, one about the store, and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she-realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments. And of her parents. Her mother was not dead. But Therese had not seen her since she was fourteen. Carol, questioned her, and she answered, though she did not want to talk about her mother. Her mother was not that important, not even one of the disappointments. Her father was. Her father was quite different. He had died when she was six--a lawyer of Czechoslovakian descent who all his life had wanted to be a painter. He had been quite different, gentle, sympathetic, never raising his voice in anger against the woman who had nagged at him, because he had been neither a good lawyer nor a good painter. He had never been strong, he had died of pneumonia, but in Therese's mind, her mother had killed him. Carol questioned and questioned her, and Therese told of her mother's bringing her to the school in Montclair when she was eight, of her mother's infrequent visits afterward, for her mother had traveled a great deal around the country. She had been a pianist--no, not a first-rate one, how could she be, but she had always found work because she was pushing. And when Therese was about ten, her mother had remarried. Therese had visited at her mother's house in Long Island in the Christmas holidays, and they had asked her to stay with them, but not as if they wanted her to stay.


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And Therese had not liked the husband, Nick, because he was exactly like her mother, big and dark haired, with a loud voice, and violent and passionate gestures. Therese was sure their marriage would be perfect. Her mother had been pregnant even then, and now there were two children. After a week with them, Therese had returned to the Home. There had been perhaps three or four visits from her mother afterward, always with some present for her, a blouse, a book, once a cosmetic kit that Therese had loathed simply because it reminded her of her mother's brittle, mascaraed eye-lashes, presents handed her self- consciously by her mother, like hypocritical peace offerings. Once her mother had brought the little boy, her half brother, and then Therese had known she was an outsider. Her mother had not loved her father, had chosen to leave her at a school when she was eight, and why did she bother now even to visit her, to claim her at all? Therese would have been happier to have no parents, like half the girls in the school. Finally, Therese had told her mother she did not want her to visit again, and her mother hadn't, and the ashamed, resentful expression, the nervous sidewise glance of the brown eyes, the twitch of a smile and the silence--that was the last she remembered of her mother. Then she had become fifteen. The sisters at the school had known her mother was not writing. They had asked her to write, and she had, but Therese had not answered. Then when graduation came, when she was seventeen, the school had asked her mother for two hundred dollars. Therese hadn't wanted any money from her, had half believed her mother wouldn't give her any, but she had, and Therese had taken it. "I'm sorry I took it. I never told anyone but you. Some day I want to give it back." "Nonsense," Carol said softly. She was sitting on the arm of the chair, resting her chin in her hand, her eyes fixed on Therese, smiling. "You were still a child. When you forget about paying her back, then you'll be an adult." Therese did not answer. "Don't you think you'll ever want to see her again? Maybe in a few years from now?" Therese shook her head. She smiled, but the tears still oozed out of her eyes. "I don't want to talk any more about it." "Does Richard know all this?" "No. Just that she's alive. Does it matter? This isn't what matters." She felt if she wept enough, it would all go out of her, the tiredness and the loneliness and the disappointment, as though it were in the tears themselves. And she was glad Carol left her alone to do it now. Carol was standing by the dressing table, her back to her. Therese lay rigid in the bed, propped up on her elbow, racked with the half-suppressed sobs. "I'll never cry again," she said.


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"Yes, you will." And a match scraped. Therese took another cleansing tissue from the bed table and blew her nose. "Who else is in your life besides Richard?" Carol asked. She had fled them all. There had been Lily, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in the house where she had first lived in New York. Frances Cotter and Tim at the Pelican Press. Lois Vavrica, a girl who had been at the Home in Montclair, too. Now who was there? The Kellys who lived on the second floor at Mrs. Osborne's. And Richard. "When I was fired from that job last month," Therese said, "I was ashamed and I moved--" She stopped. "Moved where?" "I didn't tell anyone where, except Richard. I just disappeared. I suppose it was my idea of starting a new life, but mostly I was ashamed. I didn't want anyone to know where I was." Carol smiled. "Disappeared! I like that. And how lucky you are to be able to do it. You're free. Do you realize that?" Therese said nothing. "No," Carol answered herself. Beside Carol on the dressing table, a square gray clock ticked faintly, and as Therese had done a thousand times in the store, she read the time and attached a meaning to it. It was four fifteen and a little more, and suddenly she was anxious lest she had lain there too long, lest Carol might be expecting someone to come to the house. Then the telephone rang, sudden and long like the shriek of a hysterical woman in the hall, and they saw each other start. Carol stood up, and slapped something twice in her palm, as she had slapped the gloves in her palm in the store. The telephone screamed again, and Therese was sure Carol was going to throw whatever it was she held in her hand, throw it across the room against the wall. But Carol only turned and laid the thing down quietly, and left the room. Therese could hear Carol's voice in the hall. She did not want to hear what she was saying. She got up and put her skirt and her shoes on. Now she saw what Carol had held in her hand. It was a shoehorn of tan-colored wood. Anyone else would have thrown it, Therese thought. Then she knew one word for what she felt about Carol: pride. She heard Carol's voice repeating the same tones, and now opening the door to leave, she heard the words, "I have a guest," for the third time calmly presented as a barrier. "I think it's an excellent reason. What better?... What's the matter with tomorrow? If you--" Then there was no sound until Carol's first step on the stair, and Therese knew whoever had been talking to her had hung up on her. Who dared, Therese wondered. "Shouldn't I leave?" Therese asked. Carol looked at her in the same way she had when they first entered the house. "Not unless you want to.


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No. We'll take a drive later, if you want to." She knew Carol did not want to take another drive. Therese started to straighten the bed. "Leave the bed." Carol was watching her from the hall. "Just close the door." "Who is it that's coming?" Carol turned and went into the green room. "My husband," she said. "Hargess." Then the doorbell chimed downstairs, and the latch clicked at the same time. "No end prompt today," Carol murmured. "Come down, Therese." Therese felt sick with dread suddenly, not of the man but of Carol's annoyance at his coming. He was coming up the stairs. When he saw Therese, he slowed, and a faint surprise crossed his face, and then he looked at Carol. "Harge, this is Miss Belivet," Carol said. "Mr. Aird." "How do you do?" Therese said. Harge only glanced at Therese, but his nervous blue eyes inspected her from head to toe. He was a heavily built man with a rather pink face. One eyebrow was set higher than the other, rising in an alert peak in the center, as if it might have been distorted by a scar. "How do you do?" Then to Carol, "I'm sorry to disturb you. I only wanted to get one or two things." He went past her and opened the door to a room Therese had not seen. "Things for Rindy," he added. "Pictures on the wall?" Carol asked. The man was silent. Carol and Therese went downstairs. In the living room Carol sat down, but Therese did not. "Play some more, if you like," Carol said. Therese shook her head. "Play some," Carol said firmly. Therese was frightened by the sudden white anger in her eyes. "I can't," Therese said, stubborn as a mule. And Carol subsided. Carol even smiled. They heard Harge's quick steps cross the hall and stop, then descend the stairs slowly. Therese saw his dark clad figure and then his pinkish blond head appear. "I can't find that watercolor set. I thought it was in my room," he said complainingly. I know where it is." Carol got up and started toward the stairs. "I suppose you want me to take her something for Christmas," Harge said. "Thanks, I'll give the things to her." Carol went up the stairs. They are just divorced, Therese thought, or about to be divorced. Harge looked at Therese, almost offered her his cigarette case, and didn't. He had an intense expression that curiously mingled anxiety and boredom. The flesh around his mouth was firm and heavy, rounding into the line of his mouth so that he seemed lipless. He lighted a cigarette for himself. "Are you from New York?" he asked. Therese felt the disdain and incivility in the question, like the sting of a slap in the face. "Yes, from New York," she answered. He was on the brink of another question to her, when Carol came down the stairs. Therese had steeled herself to be alone with him for minutes.


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Now she shuddered as she relaxed, and she knew that he saw it. "Thanks," Harge said as he took the box from Carol. He walked to his overcoat that Therese had noticed on the loveseat, sprawled open with its black arms spread as if it were fighting and would take possession of the house. "Good-by," Harge said to her. He put the overcoat on as he walked to the door. "Friend of Abby's?" he murmured to Carol. "A friend of mine," Carol answered. "Are you going to take the presents to Rindy? When?" "What if I gave her nothing, Harge?" "Carol--" He stopped on the porch, and Therese barely heard him say something about making things unpleasant. Then, "I'm going to see Cynthia now. Can I stop by on the way back? It'll be before eight." "Harge, what's the purpose?" Carol said wearily. "Especially when you're so disagreeable." "Because it concerns Rindy." Then his voice faded unintelligibly. Then an instant later, Carol came in alone and closed the door. Carol stood against the door with her hands behind her, and they heard the car outside leaving. Carol must have agreed to see him tonight, Therese thought. "I'll go," Therese said. Carol said nothing. There was a deadness in the silence between them now, and Therese grew more uneasy. "I'd better go, hadn't I?" "Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Harge. He's not always-so rude. It was a mistake to say I had any guest here at all." "It doesn't matter." Carol's forehead wrinkled and she said with difficulty, "Do you mind if I put you on the train tonight, instead of driving you home?" "No." She couldn't have borne Carol's driving her home and driving back alone tonight in the darkness. They were silent also in the car. Therese opened the door as soon as the car stopped at the station. "There's a train in about four minutes," Carol said. Therese blurted suddenly, "Will I see you again?" Carol only smiled at her, a little reproachfully, as the window between them rose up. "Au revoir," she said. Of course, of course, she would see her again, Therese thought. An idiotic question! The car backed fast and turned away into the darkness. Therese longed for the store again, longed for Monday, because Carol might come in again on Monday. But it wasn't likely. Tuesday was Christmas Eve. Certainly she could telephone Carol by Tuesday, if only to wish her a merry Christmas. But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her-bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.1

Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 7 THE MAN LOOKED at it, holding it carelessly between thumb and forefinger. He was bald except for long strands of black hair that grew from a former brow line, plastered sweatily down over the naked scalp. His underlip was thrust out with the contempt and negation that had fixed itself on his face as soon as Therese had come to the counter and spoken her first words. "No," he said at last. "Can't you give me anything for it?" Therese asked. The lip came out farther. "Maybe fifty cents." And he tossed it back across the counter. Therese's fingers crept over it possessively. "Well, what about this?" From her coat pocket she dragged up the silver chain with the St. Christopher medallion. Again the thumb and forefinger were eloquent of scorn, turning the coin like filth. "Two fifty." But it cost at least twenty dollars, Therese started to say, but she didn't because that was what everybody said. "Thanks." She picked up the chain and went out. Who were all the lucky people, she wondered, who had managed to sell their old pocketknives, broken wrist watches and carpenters' planes that hung in clumps in the front window? She could not resist looking back through the window, finding the man's face again under the row of hanging hunting knives. The man was looking at her, too, smiling at her. She felt he understood every move she made. Therese hurried down the sidewalk. In ten minutes, Therese was back. She pawned the silver medallion for two dollars and fifty cents. She hurried westward, ran across Lexington Avenue, then Park, and turned down Madison. She clutched the little box in her pocket until its sharp edges cut her fingers. Sister Beatrice had given it to her. It was inlaid brown wood and mother-of-pearl, in a checked pattern. She didn't know what it was worth in money, but she had assumed it was rather precious. Well, now she knew it wasn't. She went into a leather goods shop. "I'd like to see the black one in the window--the one with the strap and the gold buckles," Therese said to the salesgirl. It was the handbag she had noticed last Saturday morning on the way to meet Carol for lunch. It had looked like Carol, just at a glance. She had thought, even if Carol didn't keep the appointment that day, if she could never see Carol again, she must buy the bag and send it to her anyway. "I'll take it," Therese said. "That's seventy-one eighteen with the tax," the salesgirl said. "Do you want that gift wrapped?" "Yes, please." Therese counted six crisp ten-dollar bills across the counter and the rest in singles. "Can I leave it here till about six thirty tonight?" Therese left the shop with the receipt in her billfold. It wouldn't do to risk bringing the handbag into the store. It might be stolen, even if it was Christmas Eve. Therese smiled.


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It was her last day of work at the store. And in four more days came the job at the Black Cat. Phil was going to bring her a copy of the play the day after Christmas. She passed Brentano's. Its window was full of satin ribbons, leather- bound books, and pictures of knights in armor. Therese turned back and went into the store, not to buy but to look, just for a moment, to see if there was anything here more beautiful than the handbag. An illustration in one of the counter displays caught her eye. It was a young knight on a white horse, riding through a bouquet-like forest, followed by a line of page boys, the last bearing a cushion with a gold ring on it. She took the leather-bound book in her hand. The price inside the cover was twenty-five dollars. If she simply went to the bank now and got twenty-five dollars more, she could buy it. What was twenty-five dollars? She hadn't needed to pawn the silver medallion. She knew she had pawned it only because it was from Richard, and she didn't want it any longer. She closed the book and looked at the edges of the pages that were like a concave bar of gold. But would Carol really like it, a book of love poems of the middle ages? She didn't know. She couldn't remember the slightest clue as to Carol's taste in books. She put the book down hurriedly and left. Upstairs in the doll department, Miss Santini was strolling along behind the counter, offering everybody candy from a big box. "Take two," she said to Therese. "Candy department sent 'em up." "I don't mind if I do." Imagine, she thought, biting into a nougat, the Christmas spirit had struck the candy department. There was a strange atmosphere in the store today. It was unusually quiet, first of all. There were plenty of customers, but they didn't seem in a hurry, even though it was Christmas Eve. Therese glanced at the elevators, looking for Carol. If Carol didn't come in, and she probably wouldn't, Therese was going to telephone her at six thirty, just to wish her a happy Christmas. Therese knew her telephone number. She had seen it on the telephone at the house. "Miss Belivet!" Mrs. Hendrickson's voice called, and Therese jumped to attention. But Mrs. Hendrickson only waved her hand for the benefit of the Western Union messenger who laid a telegram in front of Therese. Therese signed for it in a scribble, and tore it open. It said: MEET YOU DOWNSTAIRS AT 5PM. CAROL. Therese crushed it in her hand. She pressed it hard with her thumb into her palm, and watched the messenger boy who was really an old man walk back toward the elevators. He walked ploddingly, with a stoop that thrust his knees far ahead of him, and his puttees were loose and wobbly.


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"You look happy," Mrs. Zabriskie said dismally to her as she went by. Therese smiled. "I am." Mrs. Zabriskie had a two months' old baby, she had told Therese, and her husband was out of work now. Therese wondered if Mrs. Zabriskie and her husband were in love with each other, and really happy. Perhaps they were, but there was nothing in Mrs. Zabriskie's blank face and her plodding walk that would suggest it. Perhaps once Mrs. Zabriskie had been as happy as she. Perhaps it had gone away. She remembered reading--even Richard once saying--that love usually dies after two years of marriage. That, was a cruel thing, a trick. She tried to imagine Carol's face, the smell of her perfume, becoming meaningless. But in the first place could she say she was in love with Carol? She had come to a question she could not answer. At a quarter to five, Therese went to Mrs. Hendrickson and asked permission to leave a half hour early. Mrs. Hendrickson might have thought the telegram had something to do with it, but she let Therese go without even a complaining look, and that was another thing that made the day a strange one. Carol was waiting for her in the foyer where they had met before. "Hello!" Therese said. "I'm through." "Through what?" "Through with working. Here." But Carol seemed depressed, and it dampened Therese instantly. She said anyway, "I was awfully-happy to get the telegram." "I didn't know if you'd be free. Are you free tonight?" "Of course." And they walked on, slowly, amid the jostling crowd, Carol in her delicate looking suede pumps that made her a couple of inches taller than Therese. It had began to snow about an hour before, but it was stopping already. The snow was no more than a film underfoot, like thin white wool drawn across the street and sidewalk. "We might have seen Abby tonight, but she's busy," Carol said. "Anyway, we can take a drive, if you'd like. It's good to see you. You're an angel to be free tonight. Do you know what?" "No," Therese said, still happy in spite of herself, though Carol's mood was disquieting. Therese felt something had happened. "Do you suppose there's a place to get a cup of coffee around here?" "Yes. A little farther east." Therese was thinking of one of the sandwich shops between Fifth and Madison, but Carol chose a small bar with an awning in front. The waiter was reluctant at first, and said it was the cocktail hour, but when Carol started to leave, he went away and got the coffee. Therese was anxious about picking up the handbag. She didn't want to do it when Carol was with her, even though the package would be wrapped. "Did something happen?" Therese asked. "Something too long to explain."


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Carol smiled at her but the smile was tired, and a silence followed, an empty silence as if they traveled through space away from each other. Probably Carol had had to break an engagement she had looked forward to, Therese thought. Carol would of course be busy on Christmas Eve. "I'm not keeping you from doing anything now?" Carol asked. Therese felt herself growing tense, helplessly. "I'm supposed to pick up a package on Madison Avenue. It's not far. I can do it now, if you'll wait for me." "All right." Therese stood up. "I can do it in three minutes with a taxi. But I don't think you will wait for me, will you?" Carol smiled and reached for her hand. Indifferently, Carol squeezed her hand and dropped it. "Yes, I'll wait." The bored tone of Carol's voice was in her ears as she sat on the edge of the taxi seat. On the way back, the traffic was so slow, she got out and ran the last block. Carol was still there, her coffee only half finished. "I don't want my coffee," Therese said, because Carol seemed ready to go. "My car's downtown. Let's get a taxi down." They went down into the business section not far from the Battery. Carol's car was brought up from an underground garage. Carol drove west to the Westside Highway. "This is better." Carol shed her coat as she drove. "Throw it in back, will you?" And they were silent again. Carol drove faster, changing her lane to pass cars, as if they had a destination. Therese set herself to say something, anything at all, by the time they reached the George Washington Bridge. Suddenly it occurred to her that if Carol and her husband were divorcing, Carol had been downtown to see a lawyer today. The district there was full of law offices. And something had gone wrong. Why were they divorcing? Because Harge was having an affair with the woman called Cynthia? Therese was cold. Carol had lowered the window beside her, and every time the car sped, the wind burst through and wrapped its cold arms around her. "That's where Abby lives," Carol said, nodding across the river. Therese did not even see any special lights. "Who's Abby?" "Abby? My best friend." Then Carol looked at her. "Aren't you cold with this window open?" "No." "You must be." They stopped for a red light, and Carol rolled the window up. Carol looked at her, as if really seeing her for the first time that evening, and under her eyes that went from her face to her hands in her lap, Therese felt like a puppy Carol had bought at a roadside kennel, that Carol had just remembered was riding beside her. "What happened, Carol? Are you getting a divorce now?" Carol sighed. "Yes, a divorce," she said quite calmly, and started the car. "And he has the child?" "Just tonight."


Therese was about to ask another question, when Carol said, "Let's talk about something else." A car went by with the radio playing Christmas carols and everyone singing. And she and Carol were silent. They drove past Yonkers, and it seemed to Therese she had left every chance of talking further to Carol somewhere behind on the road. Carol insisted suddenly that she should eat something, because it was getting on to eight, so they stopped at a little restaurant by the roadside, a place that sold fried-clam sandwiches. They sat at the counter and ordered sandwiches and coffee, but Carol did not eat. Carol asked her questions about Richard, not in the concerned way she had Sunday afternoon, but rather as if she talked to keep Therese from asking more questions about her. They were personal questions, yet Therese answered them mechanically and impersonally. Carol's quiet voice went on and on, much quieter than the voice of the counter boy talking with someone three yards away. "Do you sleep with him?" Carol asked her. "I did. Two or three times." Therese told her about those times, the first time and the three times afterward. She was not embarrassed, talking about it. It had never seemed so dull and unimportant before. She felt Carol could imagine every minute of those evenings. She felt Carol's objective, appraising glance over her, and she knew Carol was about to say she did not look particularly cold, or perhaps, emotionally starved. But Carol was silent, and Therese stared uncomfortably at the list of songs on the little music box in front of her. She remembered someone telling her once she had a passionate mouth, she couldn't remember who. "Sometimes it takes time," Carol said. "Don't you believe in giving people another chance?" "But why? It isn't pleasant. And I'm not in love with him." "Don't you think you might be, if you got this worked out?" "Is that the way people fall in love?" Carol looked up at the deer's head on the wall behind the counter. "No," she said, smiling. "What do you like about Richard?" "Well, he has--" But she wasn't sure if it really was sincerity. He wasn't sincere, she felt, about his ambition to be a painter. "I like his attitude--more than most men's. He does treat me like a person instead of just a girl he can go so far with or not. And I like his family--the fact that he has a family." "Lots of people have families." Therese tried again. "He's flexible. He changes. He's not like most men that you can label doctor or--or insurance salesman." "I think you know him better than I knew Harge after months of marriage. At least you're not going to make the same mistake I did, to marry because it was the thing to do when you were about twenty, among the people I knew." "You mean you weren't in love?" "Yes, I was, very much. And so was Harge.


And he was the kind of man who could wrap your life up in a week and put it in his pocket. Were you ever in love, Therese?" She waited, until the word from nowhere, false, guilty, moved her lips, "No." "But you'd like to be." Carol was smiling. "Is Harge still in love with you?" Carol looked down at her lap, impatiently, and perhaps she was shocked at her bluntness, Therese thought, but when Carol spoke, her voice was the same as before, "Even I don't know. In a way, he's the same emotionally as he's always been. It's just that now I can see how he really is. He said I was the first woman he'd ever been in love with. I think it's true, but I don't think he was in love with me--in the usual sense of the word--for more than a few months. He's never been interested in anyone else, it's true. Maybe he'd be more human if he were. That I could understand and forgive." "Does he like Rindy?" "Dotes on her." Carol glanced at her smiling. "If he's in love with anyone, it's Rindy." "What kind of a name is that?" "Nerinda. Harge named her. He wanted a son, but I think he's even more pleased with a daughter. I wanted a girl. I wanted two or three children." "And--Harge didn't?" "I didn't." She looked at Therese again. "Is this the right conversation for Christmas Eve?" Carol reached for a cigarette, and, accepted the one Therese offered her, a Philip Morris. "I like to know all about you," Therese said. "I didn't want any more children, because I was afraid our marriage was going on the rocks anyway, even with Rindy. So you want to fall in love? You probably will soon, and if you do, enjoy it, it's harder later on." "To love someone?" "To fall in love. Or even to have the desire to make love. I think sex flows more sluggishly in all of us than we care to believe, especially men care to believe. The first adventures are usually nothing but a satisfying of curiosity, and after that one keeps repeating the same actions, trying to find--what?" "What?" Therese asked. "Is there a word? A friend, a companion, or maybe just a sharer. What good are words? I mean, I think people often try to find through sex, things that are much easier to find in other ways." What Carol said about curiosity, she knew was true. "What other ways?" she asked. Carol gave her a glance. "I think that's for each person to find out. I wonder if I can get a drink here." But the restaurant served only beer and wine, so they left. Carol did not stop anywhere for her drink as they drove back toward New York. Carol asked her if she wanted to go home or come out to her house for a while, and Therese said to Carol's house.


She remembered the Kellys had asked her to drop in on the wine and fruitcake party they were having tonight, and she had promised to, but they wouldn't miss her, she thought. "What a rotten time I give you," Carol said suddenly. "Sunday and now this. I'm not the best company this evening. What would you like to do? Would you like to go to a restaurant in Newark where they have lights and Christmas music tonight? It's not a night club. We could have a decent dinner there, too." "I really don't care about going anywhere--for myself." "You've been in that rotten store all day, and we haven't done a thing to celebrate your liberation." "I just like to be here with you," Therese said, and hearing the explanatory tone in her voice, she smiled. Carol shook her head, not looking at her. "Child, child, where do you wander--all by yourself?" Then a moment later on the New Jersey highway, Carol said, "I know what." And she turned the car into a graveled section off the road and stopped. "Come out with me." They were in front of a lighted stand piled high with Christmas trees. Carol told her to pick a tree, one not too big and not too small. They put the tree in the back of the car, and Therese sat in front beside Carol with her arms full of holly and fir branches. Therese pressed her face into them and inhaled the dark-green sharpness of their smell, their clean spice that was like a wild forest and like all the artifices of Christmas--tree baubles, gifts, snow, Christmas music, holidays. It was being through with the store and being beside Carol now. It was the purr of the car's engine, and the needles of the fir branches that she could touch with her fingers. I am happy, I am happy, Therese thought. "Let's do the tree now," Carol said as soon as they entered the house. Carol turned the radio on in the living room, and fixed a drink for both of them. There were Christmas songs on the radio, bells breaking resonantly, as if they were inside a great church. Carol brought a blanket of white cotton for the snow around the tree, and Therese sprinkled it with sugar so it would glisten. Then she cut an elongated angel out of some gold ribbon and fixed it to the top of the tree, and folded tissue paper and cut a string of angels to thread along the branches. "You're very good at that," Carol said, surveying the tree from the hearth. "It's superb. Everything but presents." Carol's present was on the sofa beside Therese's coat. The card she had made for it was at home, however, and she didn't want to give it without the card. Therese looked at the tree. "What else do we need?" "Nothing. Do you know what time it is?" The radio had signed off. Therese saw the mantel clock.


It was after one. "It's Christmas," she said. "You'd better stay the night." "All right." "What do you have to do tomorrow?" "Nothing." Carol got her drink from the radio top. "Don't you have to see Richard?" She did have to see Richard, at twelve noon. She was to spend the day at his house. But she could make some kind of excuse. "No. I said I might see him. It's not important." "I can drive you in early." "Are you busy tomorrow?" Carol finished the last inch of her drink. "Yes," she said. Therese began to clean up the mess she had made, the scraps of tissue and snippets of ribbon. She hated cleaning up after making something. "Your friend Richard sounds like the kind of man who needs a woman around him to work for. Whether he marries her or not," Carol said. "Isn't he like that?" Why talk of Richard now, Therese thought irritably. She felt that Carol liked Richard--which could only be her own fault--and a distant jealousy prickled her, sharp as a pin. "Actually, I admire that more than the men who live alone or think they live alone, and end by making the stupidest blunders with women." Therese stared at Carol's pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. She had absolutely nothing to say on the subject. She could find Carol's perfume like a fine thread in the stronger smell of evergreen, and she wanted to follow it, to put her arms around Carol. "It has nothing to do with whether people marry, has it?" "What?" Therese looked at her and saw her smiling a little. "Harge is the kind of man who doesn't let a woman enter his life. And on the other hand, your friend Richard might never marry. But the pleasure Richard will get out of thinking he wants to marry." Carol looked at Therese from head to foot. "The wrong girls," she added. "Do you dance, Therese? Do you like to dance?" Carol seemed suddenly cool and bitter, and Therese could have wept. "No," she said. She should never have told her anything about Richard, Therese thought, but now it was done. "You're tired. Come on to bed." Carol took her to the room that Harge had gone into Sunday, and turned down the covers of one of the twin beds. It might have been Harge's room, Therese thought. There was certainly nothing about it that suggested a child's room. She thought of Rindy's possessions that Harge had taken from this room, and imagined Harge moving first from the bedroom he shared with Carol, then letting Rindy bring her things into this room, keeping them here, closing himself and Rindy away from Carol. Carol laid some pajamas on the foot of the bed. "Good night, then," she said at the door. "Merry Christmas. What do you want for Christmas?" Therese smiled suddenly. "Nothing."


That night she dreamed of birds, long, bright red birds like flamingos, zipping through a black forest and making scallopy patterns, arcs of red that curved like their cries. Then her eyes opened and she heard it really, a soft whistle curving, rising and coming down again with an extra note at the end, and behind it the real, feebler twitter of birds. The window was a bright gray. The whistling began again, just below the window, and Therese got out of bed. There was a long open-topped car, in the driveway, and a woman standing in it, whistling. It was like a dream she looked out on, a scene without color, misty at the edges. Then she heard Carol's whisper, as clearly as if all three of them were in the same room together, "Are you going to bed or getting up?" The woman in the car with her foot on the seat said just as softly, "Both," and Therese heard the tremor of repressed laughter in the word and liked her instantly. "Go for a ride?" the woman asked. She was looking up at Carol's window with a big smile that Therese had just begun to see. "You nitwit," Carol whispered. "You alone?" "No." "Oh-oh." "It's all right. Do you want to come in?" The woman got out of the car. Therese went to the door of her room and opened it. Carol was just coming into the hall, tying the belt of her robe. "Sorry I wakened you," Carol said. "Go back to bed." "I don't mind. Can I come down?" "Well, of course!" Carol smiled suddenly. "Get a robe out of the closet." Therese got a robe, probably a robe of Harge's, she thought, and went downstairs. "Who made the Christmas tree?" the woman was asking. They were in the living room. "She did." Carol turned to Therese. "This is Abby. Abby Gerhard, Therese Belivet." "Hello," Abby said. "How do you do." Therese had hoped it was Abby. Abby looked at her now with the same bright, rather popeyed expression of amusement that Therese had seen when she stood in the car. "You make a fine tree," Abby told her. "Will everybody stop whispering?" Carol asked. Abby chafed her hands together and followed Carol into the kitchen. "Got any coffee, Carol?" Therese stood by the kitchen table, watching them, feeling at ease because Abby paid no further attention to her, only took off her coat and started helping Carol with the coffee. Her waist and hips looked perfectly cylindrical, without any front or back, under her purple knitted suit. Her hands were a little clumsy, Therese noticed, and her feet had none of the grace of Carol's. She looked older than Carol, and there were two wrinkles across her forehead that cut deep when she laughed and her strong arched eyebrows rose higher.


And she and Carol kept laughing now, while they fixed coffee and squeezed orange juice, talking in short phrases about nothing, or nothing that was important enough to be followed. Except Abby's sudden, "Well"--fishing a seed out of the last glass of orange juice and wiping her finger carelessly on her own dress--"how's old Harge?" "The same," Carol said. Carol was looking for something in the refrigerator, and watching her, Therese failed to hear all of what Abby said next, or maybe it was another of the fragmentary sentences that Carol alone understood, but it made Carol straighten up and laugh, suddenly and hard, made her whole face change, and Therese thought with sudden envy, she could not make Carol laugh like that, but Abby could. "I'm going to tell him that," Carol said. "I can't resist." It was something about a Boy Scout pocket gadget for Harge. "And tell him where it came from," Abby said, looking at Therese and smiling broadly, as if she should share in the joke, too. "Where're you from?" she asked Therese as they sat down in the table alcove at one side of the kitchen. "She's from New York," Carol answered for her, and Therese thought Abby was going to say, why how unusual, or something silly, but Abby said nothing at all, only looked at Therese with the same expectant smile, as if she awaited the next cue from her. For all their fussing about breakfast, there was only orange juice and coffee and some unbuttered toast that nobody wanted. Abby lighted a cigarette before she touched anything. "Are you old enough to smoke?" she asked Therese, offering her a red box that said Craven A's. Carol put her spoon down. "Abby, what is this?" she asked with an air of embarrassment that Therese had never seen before. "Thanks, I'd like one," Therese said, taking a cigarette. Abby settled her elbows on the table. "Well, what's what?" she asked Carol. "I suspect you're a little tight," Carol said. "Driving for hours in the open air? I left New Rochelle at two, got home and found your message, and here I am." She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day except what she felt like doing. "Well?" Abby said. "Well--I didn't win the first round," Carol said. Abby drew on her cigarette, showing no surprise at all. "For how long?" "For three months." "Starting when?" "Starting now. Starting last night, in fact." Carol glanced at Therese, then looked down at her coffee cup, and Therese knew Carol would not say any more with her sitting there. "That's not set already, is it?" Abby asked. "I'm afraid it is," Carol answered casually, with a shrug in her tone. "Just verbally, but it'll hold. What're you doing tonight? Late." "I'm not doing anything early. Dinner's at two today." "Call me sometime." "Sure."


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.11

Carol kept her eyes down, looking down at the orange juice glass in her hand, and Therese saw a downward slant of sadness in her mouth now, a sadness not of wisdom but of defeat. "I'd take a trip," Abby said. "Take a little trip away somewhere." Then Abby looked at Therese, another of the bright, irrelevant, friendly glances, as if to include her in something it was impossible she could be included in, and anyway, Therese had gone stiff with the thought that Carol might take a trip away from her. "I'm not much in the mood," Carol said, but Therese heard the play of possibility in it nevertheless. Abby squirmed a little and looked around her. "This place is gloomy as a coalpit in the mornings, isn't it?" Therese smiled a little. A coalpit, with the sun beginning to yellow the window sill, and the evergreen tree beyond it? Carol was looking at Abby fondly, lighting one of Abby's cigarettes. How well they must know each other, Therese thought, so well that nothing either of them said or did to the other could ever surprise, ever be misunderstood. "Was it a good party?" Carol asked. "Mm," Abby said indifferently. "Do you know someone called Bob Haversham?" "No." "He was there tonight. I met him somewhere before in New York. Funnily enough, he said he was going to work for Rattner and Aird in the brokerage department." "Really." "I didn't tell him I knew one of the bosses." "What time is it?" Carol asked after a moment. Abby looked at her wrist watch, a small watch set in a pyramid of gold panels. "Seven thirty. About. Do you care?" "Want to sleep some more, Therese?" "No. I'm fine." "I'll drive you in whenever you have to go," Carol said. But it was Abby who drove her finally, around ten o'clock, because she had nothing else to do, she said, and she would enjoy it. Abby was another one who liked cold air, Therese thought as they picked up speed on the highway. Who rode in an open-topped car in December? "Where'd you meet Carol?" Abby yelled at her. Therese felt she might almost, but not quite, have told Abby the truth. "In a store," Therese yelled back. "Oh?" Abby drove erratically, whipping the big car around curves, putting on speed where one didn't expect it. "Do you like her?" "Of course!" What a question! Like asking her if she believed in God. Therese pointed out her house to Abby when they turned into the street. "Do you mind doing something for me?" Therese asked. "Could you wait here a minute? I want to give you something to give to Carol." "Sure," Abby said. Therese ran upstairs and got the card she had made, and stuck it under the ribbon of Carol's present. She took it back down to Abby. "You're going to see her tonight, aren't you?"


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.12

Abby nodded, slowly, and Therese sensed the ghost of a challenge in Abby's curious black eyes, because she was going to see Carol and Therese wasn't, and what could Therese do about it? "And thanks for the ride in." Abby smiled. "Sure you don't want me to take you anywhere else?" "No, thanks," Therese said, smiling, too, because Abby would certainly have been glad to take her even to Brooklyn Heights. She climbed her front steps and opened her mailbox. There were two or three letters in it, Christmas cards, one from Frankenberg's. When she looked into the street again, the big cream-colored car was gone, like a thing she had imagined, like one of the birds in the dream.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 8 "AND NOW YOU make a wish," Richard said. Therese wished it. She wished for Carol. Richard had his hands on her arms. They were standing under a thing that looked like a beaded crescent, or a section of a starfish, that hung from the hall ceiling. It was ugly, but the Semco family attributed almost magical powers to it, and hung it up on special occasions. Richard's grandfather had brought it from Russia. "What did you wish?" He smiled down at her possessively. This was his house, and he had just kissed her, though the door into the living room was open and filled with people. "You're not supposed to tell," Therese said. "You can tell in Russia." "Well, I'm not in Russia." The radio roared louder suddenly, voices singing a carol. Therese drank the rest of the pink eggnog in her glass. "I want to go up to your room," she said. Richard took her hand, and they started up the stairs. "Ri--chard?" The aunt with the cigarette holder was calling him from the living-room door. Richard said a word Therese didn't understand, and waved a hand at her. Even on the second floor, the house trembled with the crazy dancing below, the dancing that had nothing to do with the music. Therese heard another glass fall, and pictured the pink foamy eggnog rolling across the floor. This was tame compared to the real Russian Christmases they had used to celebrate in the first week in January, Richard said. Richard smiled at her as he closed the door of his room. "I like my sweater," he said. "I'm glad." Therese swept her full skirt in an arc and sat on the edge of Richard's bed. The heavy Norwegian sweater she had given Richard was on the bed behind her, lying across its tissued box. Richard had given her a skirt from an East India shop, a long skirt with green and gold bands and embroidery. It was lovely, but Therese did not know where she could ever wear it. "How about a real shot? That stuff downstairs is sickening." Richard got his bottle of whisky from his closet floor. Therese shook her head. "No, thanks." "This'd be good for you." She shook her head again. She looked around her at the high-ceilinged, almost square room, at the wallpaper with the barely discernible pattern of pink roses, at the two peaceful windows curtained in slightly yellowed white muslin. From the door, there were two pale trails in the green carpet, one to the bureau and one to the desk in the corner. The pot of brushes and the portfolio on the floor by the desk were the only signs of Richard's painting. Just as painting took up only a corner of his brain, she felt, and she wondered how much longer he would go on with it before he dropped it for something else.


And she wondered, as she had often wondered before, if Richard liked her only because she was more sympathetic with his ambitions than anyone else he happened to know now, and because he felt her criticism was a help to him. Therese got up restlessly and went to the window. She loved the room-- because it stayed the same and stayed in the same place--yet today she felt an impulse to burst from it. She was a different person from the one who had stood here three weeks ago. This morning she had awakened in Carol's house. Carol was like a secret spreading through her, spreading through this house, too, like a light invisible to everyone but her. "You're different today," Richard said so abruptly that a thrill of peril passed down her body. "Maybe it's the dress," she said. She was wearing a blue taffeta dress that was God knows how old, that she hadn't put on since her first months in New York. She sat down on the bed again, and looked at Richard who stood in the middle of the floor with the little glass of straight whisky in his hand, his clear blue eyes moving from her face to her feet in the new high-heeled black shoes, back to her face again. "Terry." Richard took her hands, pinned her hands to the bed on either side of her. The smooth, thin lips descended on hers, firmly, with the flick of his tongue between her lips and the aromatic smell of fresh whisky. "Terry, you're an angel," Richard's deep voice said, and she thought of Carol saying the same thing. She watched him pick up his little glass from the floor and set it with the bottle into the closet. She felt immensely superior to him suddenly, to all the people below stairs. She was happier than any of them. Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out-- "Pretty?" Richard said. Therese sat up. "It's a beauty!" "I finished it last night. I thought if it was a good day, we'd go to the park and fly it." Richard grinned like a boy, proud of his handiwork. "Look at the back." It was a Russian kite, rectangular and bowed like a shield, its slim frame notched and tied at the corners. On the front, Richard had painted a cathedral with whirling domes and a red sky behind it. "Let's go fly it now," Therese said. They carried the kite downstairs. Then everybody saw them and came into the hall, uncles,. aunts, and cousins, until the hall was a din and Richard had to hold the kite in the air to protect it. The noise irritated Therese, but Richard loved it. "Stay for the champagne, Richard!" one of the aunts shouted, one of the aunts with a fat midriff straining like a second bosom under a satin dress.


"Can't," Richard said, and added something in Russian, and Therese had a feeling she often had, seeing Richard with his family, that there must have been a mistake, that Richard might be an orphan himself, a changeling, left on the doorstep and brought up a son of this family. But there was his brother Stephen standing in the doorway, with Richard's blue eyes, though Stephen was even taller and thinner. "What roof?" Richard's mother asked shrilly. "This roof?" Someone had asked if they were going to fly the kite on the roof, and since the house hadn't a roof one could stand on, Richard's mother had gone off into peals of laughter. Then the dog began to bark. "I'm going to make you that dress!" Richard's mother called to Therese, wagging her finger admonishingly. "I know your measurements!" They had measured her with a tape in the living room, in the midst of all the singing and present opening, and a couple of the men had tried to help, too. Mrs. Semco put her arm around Therese's waist, and suddenly Therese embraced her and kissed her firmly on the cheek, her lips sinking into the soft powdered cheek, in that one second pouring out in the kiss, and in the convulsive clasp of her arm, the affection Therese really had for her, that Therese knew would hide itself again as if it did not exist, in the instant she released her. Then she and Richard were free and alone, walking down the front sidewalk. It wouldn't be any different, if they were married, Therese thought, visiting the family on Christmas Day. Richard would fly his kites even when he was an old man, like his grandfather who had flown kites in Prospect Park until the year he died, Richard had told her. They took the subway to the park, and walked to the treeless hill where they had come a dozen times before. Therese looked around her. There were some boys playing with a football down on the flat field at the edge of the trees, but otherwise the park looked quiet and still. There was not much wind, not really enough, Richard said, and the sky was densely white as if it carried snow. Richard groaned, failing again. He was trying to get the kite up by running with it. Therese, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees, watched him put his head up and turn in all directions, as if he had lost something in the air. "Here it is!" She got up, pointing. "Yes, but it's not steady." Richard ran the kite into it anyway, and the kite sagged on its long string, then jerked up as if something had sprung it. It made a big arc, then began to climb in another direction. "It's found its own wind!" Therese said. "Yes, but it's slow." "What a gloomy Gus! Can I hold it?" "Wait'll I get it higher."


Richard pumped at it with long swings of his arms, but the kite stayed at the same place in the cold sluggish air. The golden domes of the cathedral wagged from side to side, as if the whole kite were shaking its head saying no, and the long limp tail followed foolishly, repeating the negation. "Best we can do," Richard said. "It can't carry any more string." Therese did not take her eyes from it. Then the kite steadied and stopped, like a picture of a cathedral pasted on the thick white sky. Carol wouldn't like kites probably, Therese thought. Kites wouldn't amuse her. She would glance at one, and say it was silly. "Want to take it?" Richard poked the string stick into her hands, and she got to her feet. She thought, Richard had worked on the kite last night when she was with Carol, which was why he hadn't called her, and didn't know she had not been home. If he had called, he would have mentioned it. Soon there would come the first lie. Suddenly the kite broke its mooring in the sky and tugged sharply to get away. Therese let the stick turn fast in her hands, as long as she dared to under Richard's eyes, because the kite was still low. And now it rested again, stubbornly still. "Jerk it!" Richard said. "Keep working it up." She did. It was like playing with a long elastic band. But the string was so long and slack now, it was all she could do to stir the kite. She pulled and pulled and pulled. Then Richard came and took it, and Therese let her arms hang. Her breath came harder, and little muscles in her arms were quivering. She sat down on the ground. She hadn't won against the kite. It hadn't done what she wanted it to do. "Maybe the string's too heavy," she said. It was a new string, soft and white and fat as a worm. "String's very light. Look now. Now it's going!" Now it was climbing in short, upward darts, as if it had found its own mind suddenly, and a will to escape. "Let out more string!" she shouted. Therese stood up. A bird flew under the kite. She stared at the rectangle that was growing smaller and smaller, jerking back and back like a snip's billowed sail going backward. She felt the kite meant something, this particular kite, at this minute. "Richard?" "What?" She could see him in the corner of her eye, crouched with his hands out in front of him, as if he rode a surfboard. "How many times were you in love?" she asked. Richard laughed, a short, hoarse laugh. "Never till you." "Yes, you were. You told me about two times." "If I count those, I might count twelve others, too," Richard said quickly, with the bluntness of preoccupation. The kite was starting to take arcing step's downward.


Therese kept her voice on the same level. "Were you ever in love with a boy?" "A boy?" Richard repeated, surprised. "Yes." Perhaps five seconds passed before he said, "No," in a positive and final tone. At least he troubled to answer, Therese thought. What would you do if you were, she had an impulse to ask, but the question would hardly serve a purpose. She kept her eyes on the kite. They were both looking at the same kite, but with what different thoughts in their minds. "Did you ever hear of it?" she asked. "Hear of it? You mean people like that? Of course." Richard was standing straight now, winding the string in with figure-eight movements of the stick. Therese said carefully, because he was listening, "I don't mean people like that. I mean two people who fall in love suddenly with each other, out of the blue. Say two men or two girls." Richard's face looked the same as it might have if they had been talking about politics. "Did I ever know any? No." Therese waited until he was working with the kite again, trying to pump it higher. Then she remarked, "I suppose it could happen, though, to almost anyone, couldn't it?" He went on, winding the kite. "But those things don't just happen. There's always some reason for it in the background." "Yes," she said agreeably. Therese had thought back into the background. The nearest she could remember to being "in love" was the way she had felt about a boy she had seen a few times in the town of Montclair, when she rode in the school bus. He had curly black hair and a handsome, serious face, and he had been perhaps twelve years old, older than she then. She remembered a short time when she had thought of him every day. But that was nothing, nothing like what she felt for Carol. Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions. "Do you think I could?" Therese asked simply, before she could debate whether she dared to ask. "What!" Richard smiled. "Fall in love with a girl? Of course not! My God, you haven't, have you?" "No," Therese said, in an odd, inconclusive tone, but Richard did not seem to notice the tone. "It's going again. Look, Terry!" The kite was wobbling straight up, faster and faster, and the stick was whirling in Richard's hands. At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she had ever been before. And why worry about defining everything. "Hey!"


Richard sprinted after the stick that was leaping crazily around the ground, as if it were trying to leave the earth, too. "Want to hold it?" he asked, capturing it. "Practically takes you up!" Therese took the stick. There was not much string left, and the kite was all but invisible now. When she let her arms go all the way up, she could feel it lifting her a little, delicious and buoyant, as if the kite might really take her up if it got all its strength together. "Let it out!" Richard shouted, waving his arms. His mouth was open, and two spots of red had come in his cheeks. "Let it out!" "There's no more string!" "I'm going to cut it!" Therese couldn't believe she had heard it, but glancing over at him, she saw him reaching under his overcoat for his knife. "Don't," she said. Richard came running over, laughing. "Don't!" she said angrily. "Are you crazy?" Her hands were tired, but she clung all the harder to the stick. "Let's cut it! It's more fun!" And Richard bumped into her rudely, because he was looking up. Therese jerked the stick sideways, out of his reach, speechless with anger and amazement. There was an instant of fear, when she felt Richard might really have lost his mind, and then she staggered backward, the pull gone, the empty stick in her hand. "You're mad!" she yelled at him. "You're insane!" "It's only a kite!" Richard laughed, craning up at the nothingness. Therese looked in vain, even for the dangling string. "Why did you do it?" Her voice was shrill with tears. "It was such a beautiful kite!" "It's only a kite!" Richard repeated. "I can make another kite!"


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 9 THERESE STARTED to get dressed, then changed her mind. She was still in her robe, reading the script of Small Rain that Phil had brought over earlier, and that was now spread all over the couch. Carol had said she was at Forty-eighth and Madison. She could be here in ten minutes. Therese glanced around her room, and at her face in the mirror, and decided to let it all go. She took some ash trays to the sink and washed them, and stacked the play script neatly on her worktable. She wondered if Carol would have her new handbag with her. Carol had called her last night from some place in New Jersey where she was with Abby, had told her she thought the bag was beautiful but much too grand a present. Therese smiled, remembering Carol's suggesting that she take it back. At least, Carol liked it. The doorbell sounded in three quick rings. Therese looked down the stairwell, and saw Carol was carrying something. She ran down. "It's empty. It's for you," Carol said, smiling. It was a suitcase, wrapped. Carol slipped her fingers from under the handle and let Therese carry it. Therese put it on the couch in her room, and cut the brown paper off carefully. The suitcase was of thick light-brown leather, perfectly plain. "It's terribly good looking!" Therese said. "Do you like it? I don't even know if you need a suitcase." "Of course, I like it." This was the kind of suitcase for her, "this exactly and no other. Her initials were on it in small gold letters--T. M. B. She remembered Carol asking her her middle name on Christmas Eve. "Work the combination and see if you like the inside." Therese did. "I like the smell, too," she said. "Are you busy? If you are, I'll leave." "No. Sit down. I'm not doing anything--except reading a play." "What play?" "A play I have to do sets for." She realized suddenly she had never mentioned stage designing to Carol. "Sets for?" "Yes--I'm a stage designer." She took Carol's coat. Carol smiled astonishedly. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" she asked quietly. "How many other rabbits are you going to pull out of your hat?" "It's the first real job. And it's not a Broadway play. It's going to be done in the Village. A comedy. I haven't got a union membership yet. I'll have to wait for a Broadway job for that." Carol asked her all about the union, the junior and senior memberships that cost fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars respectively. Carol asked her if she had all that money saved up. "No--just a few hundred. But if I get a job, they'll let me pay it off in installments."


Carol was sitting on the straight chair, the chair Richard often sat in, watching her, and Therese could read in Carol's expression that she had risen suddenly in Carol's estimation, and she couldn't imagine why she hadn't mentioned before that she was a stage designer, and in fact already had a job. "Well," Carol said, "if a Broadway job comes out of this, would you consider borrowing the rest of the money from me? Just as a business loan?" "Thanks. I--" "I'd like to do it for you. You shouldn't be bothered paying off two thousand dollars at your age." "Thanks. But I won't be ready for one for another couple of years." Carol lifted her head and blew her smoke out in a thin stream. "Oh, they don't really keep track of apprenticeships, do they?" Therese smiled. "No. Of course not. Would you like a drink? I've got a bottle of rye." "How nice. I'd love one, Therese." Carol got up and peered at her kitchenette shelves as Therese fixed the two drinks. "Are you a good cook?" "Yes. I'm better when I have someone to cook for. I can make good omelettes. Do you like them?" "No," Carol said flatly, and Therese laughed. "Why don't you show me some of your work?" Therese got a portfolio down from the closet. Carol sat on the couch and looked at everything carefully, but from her comments and questions, Therese felt she considered them too bizarre to be usable, and perhaps not very good either. Carol said she liked best the Petrushka set on the wall. "But it's the same thing," Therese said. "The same thing as the drawings, only in model form." "Well, maybe it's your drawings. They're very positive, anyway. I like that about them." Carol picked up her drink from the floor and leaned back on the couch. "You see, I didn't make a mistake, did I?" "About what?" "About you." Therese did not know exactly what she meant. Carol was smiling at her through her cigarette smoke, and it rattled her. "Did you think you had?" "No," Carol said. "What do you have to pay for an apartment like this?" "Fifty a month." Carol clicked her tongue. "Doesn't leave you much out of your salary, does it?" Therese bent over her portfolio, tying it up. "No. But I'll be making more soon. I won't be living here forever either." "Of course you won't. You'll travel, too, the way you do in imagination. You'll see a house in Italy you'll fall in love with. Or maybe you'll like France. Or California, or Arizona." The girl smiled. She probably wouldn't have the money for it, when that happened. "Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?" "Always," Carol said, smiling, too. She pushed her fingers through her hair. "I think I shall take a trip after all." "For how long?" "Just a month or so." Therese set the portfolio in the closet.


"How soon will you be going?" "Right away. I suppose as soon as I can arrange everything. And there isn't much to arrange." Therese turned around. Carol was rolling the end of her cigarette in the ash tray. It meant nothing to her, Therese thought, that they wouldn't see each other for a month. "Why don't you go somewhere with Abby?" Carol looked up at her, and then at the ceiling. "I don't think she's free in the first place." Therese stared at her. She had touched something, mentioning Abby. But Carol's face was unreadable now. "You're very nice to let me see you so often," Carol said. "You know I don't feel like seeing the people I generally see just now. One can't really. Everything's supposed to be done in pairs." How frail she is, Therese felt suddenly, how different from the day of the first lunch. Then Carol got up, as if she knew her thoughts, and Therese sensed a flaunt of assurance in her lifted head, in her smile as she passed her so close their arms brushed, and went on. "Why don't we do something tonight?" Therese asked. "You can stay here if you want to, and I'll finish reading the play. We can spend the evening together." Carol didn't answer. She was looking at the flower box in the bookshelf. "What kind of plants are these?" "I don't know." "You don't know?" They were all different, a cactus with fat leaves that hadn't grown a bit since she bought it a year ago, another plant like a miniature palm tree, and a droopy red-green thing that had to be supported by a stick. "Just plants." Carol turned around, smiling. "Just plants," she repeated. "What about tonight?" "All right. But I won't stay. It's only three. I'll give you a ring around six." Carol dropped her lighter in her handbag. It was not the handbag Therese had given her. "I feel like looking at furniture this afternoon." "Furniture? In stores?" "In stores or at the Parke-Bernet. Furniture does me good." Carol reached for her coat on the armchair, and again Therese noticed the long line from her shoulder to the wide leather belt, continued in her leg. It was beautiful, like a chord of music or a whole ballet. She was beautiful, and why should her days be so empty now, Therese wondered, when she was made to live with people who loved her, to walk in beautiful houses in beautiful cities, along blue seacoasts with a long horizon and a blue sky to background her. "Bye-bye," Carol said, and in the same movement with which she put on her coat, she put her arm around Therese's waist. It was only an instant, too disconcerting with Carol's arm suddenly about her, to be relief or end or beginning, before the doorbell rang in their ears like the tearing of a brass wall. Carol smiled. "Who is it?" she asked.


Therese felt the sting of Carol's thumbnail in her wrist as she released her. "Richard probably." It could only be Richard, because she knew his long ring. "Good. I'd like to meet him." Therese pressed the bell, then heard Richard's firm, hopping steps on the stairs. She opened the door. "Hello," Richard said. "I decided--" "Richard, this is Mrs. Aird," Therese said. "Richard Semco." "How do you do?" Carol said. Richard nodded, with almost a bow. "How do you do," he said, his blue eyes stretched wide. They stared at each other, Richard with a square box in his hands as if he were about to present it to her, and Carol standing with a new cigarette in her hand, neither staying nor leaving. Richard put the box on an end table. "I was so near, I thought I'd come up," he said, and under its note of explanation, Therese heard the unconscious assertion of a right, just as she had seen behind his inquisitive stare a spontaneous mistrust of Carol. "I had to take a present to a friend of Mamma's. This is lebkuchen." He nodded at the box and smiled, disarmingly. "Anybody want some now?" Carol and Therese declined. Carol was watching Richard as he opened the box with his pocketknife. She liked his smile, Therese thought. She likes him, the gangling young man with unruly blond hair, the broad lean shoulders, and the big funny feet in moccasins. "Please sit down," Therese said to Carol. "No, I'm going," she answered. "I'll give you half, Terry, then I'll be going too," he said. Therese looked at Carol, and Carol smiled at her nervousness and sat down on a corner of the couch. "Anyway, don't let me rush you off," Richard said, lifting the paper with the cake in it to a kitchen shelf. "You're not. You're a painter, aren't you, Richard?" "Yes." He popped some loose icing into his mouth, and looked at Carol, poised because he was incapable of being un-poised, Therese thought, his eyes frank because he had nothing to hide. "Are you a painter, too?" "No," Carol said with another smile. "I'm nothing." "The hardest thing to be." "Is it? Are you a good painter?" "I will be. I can be," said Richard, unperturbed. "Have you got any beer, Terry? I've got an awful thirst." Therese went to the refrigerator and got out the two bottles that were there. Richard asked Carol if she would like some, but Carol refused. Then Richard strolled past the couch, looking at the suitcase and the wrappings, and Therese thought he was going to say something about it, but he didn't. "I thought we might go to a movie tonight, Terry. I'd like to see that thing at the Victoria. Do you want to?" "I can't tonight. I've got a date with Mrs. Aird." "Oh." Richard looked at Carol. Carol put out her cigarette and stood up. "I must be going." She smiled at Therese.


"Call you back around six. If you change your mind, it's not important. Good-by, Richard." "Good-by," Richard said. Carol gave her a wink as she went down the stairs. "Be a good girl," Carol said. "Where'd the suitcase come from?" Richard asked when she came back in the room. "It's a present." "What's the matter, Terry?" "Nothing's the matter." "Did I interrupt anything important? Who is she?" Therese picked up Carol's empty glass. There was a little lipstick at the rim. "She's a woman I met at the store." "Did she give you that suitcase?" "Yes." "It's quite a present. Is she that rich?" Therese glanced at him. Richard's aversion to the wealthy, to the bourgeois, was automatic. "Rich? You mean the mink coat? I don't know. I did her a favor. I found something she lost in the store." "Oh?" he said. "What? You didn't say anything about it." She washed and dried Carol's glass and set it back on the shelf. "She left her billfold oh the counter and I took it to her, that's all." "Oh. Damned nice reward." He frowned. "Terry, what is it? You're not still sore about that silly kite, are you?" "No, of course not," she said impatiently. She wished he would go. She put her hands in her robe pockets and walked across the room, stood where Carol had stood, looking at the box of plants. "Phil brought the play over this morning. I started reading it." "Is that what you're worried about?" "What makes you think I'm worried?" She turned around. "You're in another of those miles-away moods again." "I'm not worried and I'm not miles away." She took a deep breath. "It's funny--you're so conscious of some moods and so unconscious of others." Richard looked at her. "All right, Terry," he said with a shrug, as if he conceded it. He sat down in the straight chair and poured the rest of the beer into his glass. "What's this date you have with that woman tonight?" Therese's lips widened in a smile as she ran the end of her lipstick over them. For a moment, she stared at the eyebrow tweezers that lay on the little shelf fixed to the inside of the closet door. Then she put the lipstick down on the shelf. "It's sort of a cocktail party, I think. Sort of a Christmas benefit thing. In some restaurant, she said." "Hmm. Do you want to go?" "I said I would." Richard drank his beer, frowning a little over his glass. "What about afterward? Maybe I could hang around here and read the play while you're gone, and then we could grab a bite and go to the movie." "Afterward, I thought I'd better finish the play. I'm supposed to start on Saturday, and I ought to have some ideas in my head." Richard stood up. "Yep," he said casually, with a sigh.


Therese watched him idle over to the couch and stand there, looking down at the manuscript. Then he bent over, studying the title page, and the cast pages. He looked at his wrist watch, and then at her. "'Why don't I read it now?" he asked. "Go ahead," she answered with a brusqueness that Richard either didn't hear or ignored, because he simply lay back on the couch with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. She picked up a book of matches from the shelf. No, he only recognized the "miles away" moods, she thought, when he felt himself deprived of her by distance. And she thought suddenly of the times she had gone to bed with him, of her distance then compared to the closeness that was supposed to be, that everyone talked about. It hadn't mattered to Richard then, she supposed, because of the physical fact they were in bed together. And it crossed her mind now, seeing Richard's complete absorption in his reading, seeing the plump, stiff fingers catch a front lock of his hair between them and pull it straight down toward his nose, as she had seen him do a thousand times before, it occurred to her Richard's attitude was that his place in her life was unassailable, her tie with him permanent and beyond question, because he was the first man she had ever slept with. Therese threw the match cover at the shelf, and a bottle of something fell over. Richard sat up, smiling a little, surprisedly. "'S matter, Terry?" "Richard, I feel like being alone--the rest of the afternoon. Would you mind?" He got up. The surprise did not leave his face. "No. Of course not." He dropped the manuscript on the couch again. "All right, Terry. It's probably better. Maybe you ought to read this now--read it alone," he said argumentatively, as if he persuaded himself. He looked at his watch again. "Maybe I'll go down and try to see Sam and Joan for a while." She stood there not moving, not even thinking of anything except of the few seconds of time to pass until he would be gone, while he brushed his hand once, a little clingy with its moisture, over her hair, and bent to kiss her. Then quite suddenly she remembered the Degas book she had bought days ago, the book of reproductions that Richard wanted and hadn't been able to find anywhere. She got it from the bottom drawer of the bureau. "I found this. The Degas book." "Oh, swell. Thanks." He took it in both hands. It was still wrapped. "Where'd you find it?" "Frankenberg's. Of all places." "Frankenberg's." Richard smiled. "It's six bucks, isn't it?" "Oh, that's all right." Richard had his wallet out. "But I asked you to get it for me." "Never mind, really." Richard protested, but she didn't take the money. And a minute later, he was gone, with a promise to call her tomorrow at five.


They might do something tomorrow night, he said. Carol called at ten past six. Did she feel like going to Chinatown, Carol asked. Therese said, of course. "I'm having cocktails with someone in the St. Regis," Carol said. "Why don't you pick me up here? It's the little room, not the big one. And listen, we're going on to some theater thing you've asked me to. Get it?" "Some sort of Christmas benefit cocktail party?" Carol laughed. "Hurry up." Therese flew. Carol's friend was a man called Stanley McVeigh, a tall and very attractive man of about forty with a mustache and a boxer dog on a leash. Carol was ready to go when she arrived. Stanley walked out with them, put them into a taxi and gave the driver some money through the window. "Who's he?" Therese asked. "An old friend. Seeing more of me now that Harge and I are separating." Therese looked at her. Carol had a wonderful little smile in her eyes tonight. "Do you like him?" "So so," Carol said. "Driver, will you make that Chinatown instead of the other?" It began to rain while they were having dinner. Carol said it always rained in Chinatown, every time she had been here. But it didn't matter much, because they ducked from one shop to another, looking at things and buying things. Therese saw some sandals with platform heels that she thought were beautiful, rather more Persian looking than Chinese, and she wanted to buy them for Carol, but Carol said Rindy wouldn't approve. 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.


Patricia Highsmith 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 question 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?"