she would have babbled it all. She would have said: "I want to be with her. I love to be with her, and what has it got to do with you?" "Isn't that for Carol to talk about? Why do you ask me these things?" Therese made an effort to sound indifferent. It was hopeless. Abby stopped walking. "I'm sorry," she said, turning to her. "I think I understand better now." "Understand what?" "Just--that you win." "Win what?" "What," Abby echoed with her head up, looking up at the corner of a building, at the sky, and Therese suddenly felt furiously impatient. She wanted Abby to go so she could telephone Carol. Nothing mattered but the sound of Carol's voice. Nothing mattered but Carol, and why did she let herself forget for a moment? "No wonder Carol thinks such a lot of you," Abby said, but if it was a kind remark, Therese did not accept it as such. "So long, Therese. I'll see you again no doubt." Abby held out her hand. Therese took it. "So long," she said. She watched Abby walking toward Washington Square, her step quicker now, her curly head high. Therese went into the drugstore at the next corner and called Carol. She got the maid and then Carol. "What's the matter?" Carol asked. "You sound low." "Nothing. It's dull at work." "Are you doing anything tonight? Would you like to come out?" Therese came out of the drugstore smiling. Carol was going to pick her up at five thirty. Carol insisted on picking her up, because it was such a rotten trip by train. Across the street, walking away from her, she saw Dannie McElroy, striding along without a coat, carrying a naked bottle of milk in his hand. "Dannie!" she called. Dannie turned and walked toward her. "Come by for a few minutes?" he yelled. Therese started to say no, then as he came up to her, she took his arm. "Just for a minute. I've had a long lunch hour already." Dannie smiled down at her. "What time is it? I've been studying till I'm blind." "After two." She felt Dannie's arm tensed hard against the cold. There were goose-pimples under the dark hair on his forearm. "You're mad to go out without a coat," she said. "It clears my head." He held the iron gate for her that led to his door. "Phil's out somewhere." The room smelled of pipe smoke, rather like hot chocolate cooking. The apartment was a semi-basement, generally darkish, and the lamp made a warm pool of light on the desk that was always cluttered. Therese looked down at the opened books on his desk, the pages and pages covered with symbols that she could not understand, but that she liked to look at. Everything the symbols stood for was true and proven. The symbols were stronger and more definite than words.


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She felt Dannie's mind swung on them, from one fact to another, as if he bore himself on strong chains, hand over hand through space. She watched him assembling a sandwich, standing at the kitchen table. His shoulders looked very broad and rounded with muscle under his white shirt, shifting a little with the motions of laying the salami and cheese slices onto the big piece of rye bread. "I wish you'd come by more often, Therese. Wednesday's the only day I'm not home at noon. We wouldn't bother Phil, having lunch, even if he's sleeping." "I will," Therese said. She sat down in his desk chair that was half turned around. She had come once for lunch, and once after work. She liked visiting Dannie. One did not have to make small talk with him. In the corner of the room, Phil's sofa bed was unmade, a tangle of blankets and sheets. The two times she had come in before, the bed had been unmade, or Phil had still been in it. The long bookcase pulled out at right angles to the sofa made a unit of Phil's corner of the room, and it was always in disorder, in a frustrated and nervous disorder not at all like the working disorder of Dannie's desk. Dannie's beer can hissed as he opened it. He leaned against the wall with the beer and the sandwich, smiling, delighted to have her here. "Remember what you said about physics not applying to people?" "Umm. Vaguely." "Well, I'm not sure you're right," he said as he took a bite. "Take friendships, for instance. I can think of a lot of cases where the two people have nothing in common. I think there's a definite reason for every friendship just as there's a reason why certain atoms unite and others don't--certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other--what do you think? I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever." "Maybe. I can think of a few cases, too." Richard and herself, for one. Richard got on with people, elbowed his way through the world in a way she, couldn't. She had always been attracted to people with Richard's kind of self-assurance. "And what's weak about you, Dannie?" "Me?" he said, smiling. "Do you want to be my friend?" "Yes. But you're about the strongest person I know." "Really? Shall I enumerate my shortcomings?" She smiled, looking at him. A young man of twenty-five who had known where he was going since he was fourteen. He had driven all his energy into one channel--just the opposite of what Richard had done. "I have a secret and very buried need for a cook," Dannie said, "and a dancing teacher, and someone to remind me to do little things like take my laundry and get haircuts." "I can't remember to take my laundry either." "Oh," he said sadly. "Then it's out.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.8

And I'd had some hope. I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because you see what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street, there's always a definite reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me." She smiled. "Even the poets?" She thought of Carol, and then of Abby, of their conversation at lunch that had been so much more than a glance and so much less, and the sequence of emotions it had evoked in her. It depressed her. "But you have to make allowances for people's perversities, things that don't make much sense." "Perversities? That's only a subterfuge. A word used by the poets." "I thought it was used by the psychologists, "Therese said. "I mean, to make allowances--that's a meaningless term. Life is an exact science on its own terms, it's just a matter of finding them and defining them. What doesn't make any sense to you?" "Nothing. I was thinking of something that doesn't matter anyway." She was suddenly angry again, as she had been on the sidewalk after the lunch. "What?" he persisted, frowning. "Like the lunch I just had," she said. "With whom?" "It doesn't matter. If it did, I'd go into it. It's just a waste, like losing something, I thought. But maybe something that didn't exist anyway." She had wanted to like Abby because Carol did. "Except in your mind? That can still be a loss." "Yes--but there are some people or some things people do that you can't salvage anything from finally, because nothing connects with you." It was of something else she wanted to talk about, though, not this at all. Not Abby or Carol, but before. Something that made perfect connection and perfect sense. She loved Carol. She leaned her forehead against her hand. Dannie looked at her for a moment, then pushed himself off from the wall. He turned to the stove, and got a match from his shirt pocket, and Therese sensed that the conversation dangled, would always dangle and never be finished, whatever they went on to say. But she felt if she told Dannie every word that she and Abby had exchanged, that he could clear away its subterfuges with a phrase, as if he sprinkled a chemical in the air that would dry up the mist instantly. Or was there always something that logic couldn't touch? Something illogical, behind the jealousy, the suspicion and the hostility in Abby's conversation, that was Abby all by herself? "Everything's not as simple as a lot of combinations," Therese added. "Some things don't react. But everything's alive." He turned around with a broad smile, as if quite another train of thought had entered his head. He was holding up the match that was still smoking. "Like this match. And I'm not talking physics, about the indestructibility of smoke. In fact, I feel rather poetic today." "About the match?"


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.9

"I feel as if it were growing, like a plant, not disappearing. I feel everything in the world must have the texture of a plant sometimes to a poet. Even this table, like my own flesh." He touched the table edge with his palm; "It's like a feeling I had once riding up a hill on a horse. It was in Pennsylvania. I didn't know how to ride very well then, and I remember the horse turning his head and seeing the hill, and deciding by himself to run up it, his hind legs sank before we took off, and suddenly we were going like blazes and I felt completely in harmony with the horse and the land, as if we were a whole tree simply being stirred by the wind in its branches. I remember being sure that nothing would happen to me then, but some other time, yes, eventually. And it made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realize what I felt going up the hill, then there'll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up. Do you know what I mean?" Dannie had clenched his fist, but his eyes were bright as if he still laughed at himself. "Did you ever wear out a sweater you particularly liked, and throw it away finally?" She thought of the green woolen gloves of Sister Alicia that she had neither worn nor thrown away. "Yes," she said. "Well, that's all I mean. And the lambs who didn't realize how much wool they were losing when somebody sheared them to make the sweater, because they could grow more wool. It's very simple." He turned to the coffeepot that he had reheated, that was already boiling. "Yes." She knew. And like Richard and the kite, because he could make another kite. She thought of Abby with a sense of vacuity suddenly, as if the luncheon had been eradicated. For an instant, she felt as if her mind had overflowed a brim and was swimming emptily into space. She stood up. Dannie came toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and though she felt it was only a gesture, a gesture instead of a word, the spell was broken. She was uneasy at his touch, and the uneasiness was a point of concreteness. "I should go back," she said. "I'm way late." His hands came down, pinning her elbows hard against her sides, and he kissed her suddenly, held his lips hard against hers for a moment, and she felt his warm breath on her upper lip before he released her. "You are," he said, looking at her. "Why did you--" She stopped, because the kiss had so mingled tenderness and roughness, she didn't know how to take it. "'Why,'Terry," he said, turning away from her, smiling. "Did you mind?" "No," she said.


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"Would Richard mind?" "I suppose." She buttoned her coat. "I must go," she said, moving toward the door. Dannie swung the door open for her, smiling his easy smile, as if nothing had happened. "Come back tomorrow? Come for lunch." "Tomorrow's Saturday. I don't work." "And we couldn't possibly have lunch." She shook her head. "I don't think so." "All right, come Monday." "All right." She smiled, too, and put her hand out automatically and Dannie shook it once, politely. She ran the two blocks to the Black Cat. A little like the horse, she thought. But not enough, not enough to be perfect, and what Dannie meant was perfect.


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

Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 11 "THE PASTIMES OF idle people," Carol said, stretching her legs out before her on the glider. "It's time Abby got herself a job again." Therese said nothing. She hadn't told Carol all the conversation at lunch, but she didn't want to talk about Abby any more. "Don't you want to sit in a more comfortable chair?" "No," Therese said. She was sitting on a leather stool near the glider. They had finished dinner a few moments ago, and then come up to this room that Therese had not seen before, a glass enclosed porch off the plain green room. "What else did Abby say that bothers you?" Carol asked, still looking straight before her, down her long legs in the navy-blue slacks. Carol seemed tired. She was worried about other things, Therese thought, more important things than this. "Nothing. Does it bother you, Carol?" "Bother me?" "You're different with me tonight." Carol glanced at her. "You imagine," she said, and the pleasant vibration of her voice faded into silence again. The page she had written last night, Therese thought, had nothing to do with this Carol, was not addressed to her. I feel I am in love with you, she had written, and it should be spring. I want the sun throbbing on my head like chords of music. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine. "I don't think Abby likes me," Therese remarked. "I don't think she wants me to see you." "That's not true. You're imagining again." "I don't mean she said it." Therese tried to sound as calm as Carol. "She was very nice. She invited me to a cocktail party." "Whose party?" "I don't know. She said uptown. She said you wouldn't be there, so I didn't particularly want to go." "Where uptown?" "She didn't say. Just that one of the girls giving it was an actress." Carol set her lighter down with a click on the glass table, and Therese sensed her displeasure. "She did," Carol murmured, half to herself. "Sit over here, Therese." Therese got up, and sat down at the very foot of the glider. "You mustn't think Abby feels that way about you. I know her well enough to know she wouldn't." "All right," Therese said. "But Abby's incredibly clumsy sometimes in the way she talks." Therese wanted to forget the whole thing. Carol was still so distant even when she spoke, even when she looked at her. A bar of light from the green room lay across the top of Carol's head, but she could not see Carol's face now. Carol poked her with the back of her toe. "Hop up." But Therese was slow to move, and Carol swung her feet over Therese's head and sat up.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.2

Then Therese heard the maid's step in the next room, and the plump, Irish-looking maid in the gray and white uniform came in bearing a coffee tray, shaking the porch floor with her quick, eager little steps that sounded so eager to please. "The cream's in here, ma'am," she said, pointing to a pitcher that didn't match the demitasse set. Florence glanced at Therese with a friendly smile and round blank eyes. She was about fifty, with a bun at the back of her neck under the starched white band of her cap. Therese could not establish her somehow, could not determine her allegiance. Therese had heard her refer to Mr. Aird twice as if she were very devoted to him, and whether it was professional or genuine, Therese did not know. "Will there be anything else, ma'am?" Florence asked. "Shall I put out the lights?" "No, I like the lights. We won't need anything else, thanks. Did Mrs. Riordan call?" "Not yet, ma'am." "Will you tell her I'm out when she does?" "Yes, ma'am." Florence hesitated, "I was wondering if you were finished with that new book, ma'am. The one about the Alps." "Go in my room and get it, if you'd like it, Florence. I don't think I want to finish it." "Thank you, ma'am. Good night, ma'am. Good night, miss." "Good night," Carol said. While Carol was pouring the coffee, Therese asked, "Have you decided how soon you're going away?" "Maybe in about a week." Carol handed her the demitasse with cream in it. "Why?" "Just that I'll miss you. Of course." Carol was motionless for a moment, and then she reached for a cigarette, a last one, and crumpled the pack up. "I was thinking, in fact, you might like to go with me. What do you think, for three weeks or so?" There it was, Therese thought, as casual as if she suggested their taking a walk together. "You mentioned it to Abby, didn't you?" "Yes," Carol said. "Why?" Why? Therese could not put into words why it hurt her that Carol had. "It just seems strange you'd tell her before you said anything to me." "I didn't tell her. I only said I might ask you." Carol came over to her and put her hands on Therese's shoulders. "Look, there's no reason for you to feel like this about Abby--unless Abby said a lot else to you at lunch that you didn't tell me." "No," Therese said. No, but it was the undercurrents, it was worse. She felt Carol's hands leave her shoulders. "Abby's a very old friend of mine," Carol said. "I talk over everything with her." "Yes," Therese said. "Well, do you think you'd like to go?" Carol had turned away from her, and suddenly it meant nothing, because of the way Carol asked her, as if she didn't really care one way or the other if she went. "Thanks--I don't think I can afford it just now."


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.3

"You wouldn't need much money. We'd go in the car. But if you have a job offered you right away, that's different." As if she wouldn't turn down a job on a ballet set to go away with Carol-- to go with her through country she had never seen before, over rivers and mountains, not knowing where they would be when night came. Carol knew that, and knew she would have to refuse if Carol asked her in this way. Therese felt suddenly sure that Carol taunted her, and she resented it with the bitter resentment of a betrayal. And the resentment resolved itself into a decision never to see Carol again. She glanced at Carol, who was waiting for her answer, with that defiance only half masked by an air of indifference, an expression that Therese knew would not change at all if she should give a negative answer. Therese got up and went to the box on the end table for a cigarette. There was nothing in the box but some phonograph needles and a photograph. "What is it?" Carol asked, watching her. Therese felt Carol had been reading all her thoughts. "It's a picture of Rindy," Therese said. "Of Rindy? Let's see it." Therese watched Carol's face as she looked at the picture of the little girl with the white-blond hair and the serious face, with the taped white bandage on her knee. In the picture, Harge was standing in a rowboat, and Rindy was stepping from a dock into his arms. "It's not a very good picture," Carol said, but her face had changed, grown softer. "That's about three years old. Would you like a cigarette? There's some over here. Rindy's going to stay with Harge for the next three months." Therese had supposed that from the conversation in the kitchen that morning with Abby. "Is that in New Jersey, too?" "Yes. Harge's family lives in New Jersey. They've a big house." Carol waited. "The divorce will come through in a month, I think, and after March, I'll have Rindy the rest of the year." "Oh. But you'll see her again before March, won't you?" "A few times. Probably not much." Therese looked at Carol's hand holding the photograph, beside her on the glider, carelessly. "Won't she miss you?" "Yes, but she's very fond of her father, too." "Fonder than she is of you?" "No. Not really. But he's bought her a goat to play with now. He takes her to school on his way to work, and he picks her up at four. Neglects his business for her--and what more can you ask of a man?" "You didn't see her Christmas, did you?" Therese said. "No. Because of something that happened in the lawyer's office. That was the afternoon Harge's lawyer wanted to see us both, and Harge had brought Rindy, too. Rindy said she wanted to go to Harge's house for Christmas. Rindy didn't know I wasn't going to be there this year.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.4

They have a big tree that grows on the lawn and they always decorate it, so Rindy was set on it. Anyway, it made quite an impression on the lawyer, you know, the child asking to go home for Christmas with her father. And naturally I didn't want to tell Rindy then I wasn't going, or she'd have been disappointed. I couldn't have said it anyway, in front of the lawyer. Harge's machinations are enough." Therese stood there, crushing the unlighted cigarette in her fingers. Carol's voice was calm, as it might have been if she talked to Abby, Therese thought. Carol had never said so much to her before. "But the lawyer understood?" Carol shrugged. "It's Harge's lawyer, not mine. So I agreed to the three- month arrangement now, because I don't want her to be tossed back and forth. If I'm to have her nine months and Harge three--it might as well start now." "You won't even visit her?" Carol waited so long to answer, Therese thought she was not going to. "Not very often. The family isn't too cordial. I talk to Rindy every day on the telephone. Sometimes she calls me." "Why isn't the family cordial?" "They never cared for me. They've been complaining ever since Harge met me at some deb party. They're very good at criticizing. I sometimes wonder just who would pass with them." "What do they criticize you for?" "For having a furniture shop, for instance. But that didn't last a year. Then for not playing bridge, or not liking to. They pick out the funny things, the most superficial things." "They sound horrid." "They're not horrid. One's just supposed to conform. I know what they'd like, they'd like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly. Shall we play some music? Don't you ever like the radio?" "Sometimes." Carol leaned against the window sill. "And now Rindy's got television every day. Hopalong Cassidy. How she'd love to go out West. That's the last doll I'll ever buy for her, Therese. I only got it because she said she wanted one, but she's outgrown them." Behind Carol, an airport searchlight made a pale sweep in the night, and disappeared. Carol's voice seemed to linger in the darkness. In its richer, happier tone, Therese could hear the depths within her where she loved Rindy, deeper than she would probably ever love anyone else. "Harge doesn't make it easy for you to see her, does he?" "You know that," Carol said. "I don't see how he could be so much in love with you." "It's not love. It's a compulsion. I think he wants to control me. I suppose if I were a lot wilder but never had an opinion on anything except his opinion-- Can you follow all this?" "Yes." "I've never done anything to embarrass him socially, and that's all he cares about really. There's a certain woman at the club I wish he'd married.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.5

Her life is entirely filled with giving exquisite little dinner parties and being carried out of the best bars feet first--She's made her husband's advertising business a great success, so he smiles on her little faults. Harge wouldn't smile, but he'd have some definite reason for complaint. I think he picked me out like a rug for his living room, and he made a bad mistake. I doubt if he's capable of loving anyone, really. What he has is a kind of acquisitiveness, which isn't much separate from his ambition. It's getting to be a disease, isn't it, not being able to love?" She looked at Therese. "Maybe it's the times. If one wanted to, one could make out a case for racial suicide. Man trying to catch up with his own destructive machines." Therese said nothing. It reminded her of a thousand conversations with Richard, Richard mingling war and big business and Congressional witch-hunts and finally certain people he knew into one grand enemy, whose only collective label was hate. Now Carol, too. It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing. Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything, for certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut off? But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have uttered the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it. "You're the young generation," Carol said. "And what have you got to say?" She sat down on the glider. "I suppose the first thing is not to be afraid." Therese turned and saw Carol's smile. "You're smiling because you think I am afraid, I suppose." "You're about as weak as this match." Carol held it burning for a moment after she lighted her cigarette. "But given the right conditions, you could burn a house down, couldn't you?" "Or a city." "But you're even afraid to take a little trip with me. You're afraid because you think you haven't got enough money." "That's not it." "You've got some very strange values, Therese. I asked you to go with me, because it would give me pleasure to have you. I should think it'd be good for you, too, and good for your work. But you've got to spoil it by a silly pride about money. Like that handbag you gave me. Out of all proportion. Why don't you take it back, if you need the money? I don't need the handbag. It gave you pleasure to give it to me, I suppose. It's the same thing, you see.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.6

Only I make sense and you don't." Carol walked by her and turned to her again, poised with one foot forward and her head up, the short blond hair as unobtrusive as a statue's hair. "Well, do you think it's funny?" Therese was smiling. "I don't care about the money," she said quietly. "What do you mean?" "Just that," Therese said. "I've got the money to go. I'll go." Carol stared at her. Therese saw the sullenness leave her face, and then Carol began to smile, too, with surprise, a little incredulously. "Well, all right," Carol said. "I'm delighted." "I'm delighted." "What brought this happy change about?" Doesn't she really know, Therese thought. "You do seem to care whether I go or not," Therese said simply. "Of course I care. I asked you, didn't I?" Carol said, still smiling, but with a twist of her toe, she turned her back on Therese and walked toward the green room. Therese watched her go, her hands in her pockets and her moccasins making light slow clicks on the floor. Therese looked at the empty doorway. Carol would have walked out exactly the same way, she thought, if she had said no, she wouldn't go. She picked up her half-finished demitasse, then set it down again. She went out and across the hall, to the door of Carol's room. "What are you doing?" Carol was bending over her dressing table, writing. "What am I doing?" She stood up and slipped a piece of paper into her pocket. She was smiling now, really smiling in her eyes, like the moment in the kitchen with Abby. "Something," Carol said. "Let's have some music." "Fine." A smile spread over her face. "Why don't you get ready for bed first? It's late, do you know that?" "It always gets late with you." "Is that a compliment?" "I don't feel like going to bed tonight." Carol crossed the hall to the green room. "You get ready. You've got circles under your eyes." Therese undressed quickly in the room with the twin beds. The phonograph in the other room played "Embraceable You." Then the telephone rang. Therese opened the top drawer of the bureau. It was empty except for a couple of men's handkerchiefs, an old clothesbrush, and a key. And a few papers in the corner. Therese picked up a card covered in isinglass. It was an old driver's license that belonged to Harge. Hargess Foster Aird. Age: 37. Height: 5'8". Weight: 168. Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. She knew all that. A 1950 Oldsmobile. Color: dark blue. Therese put it back and closed the drawer. She went to the door and listened. "I am sorry, Tessie, but I did get stuck after all," Carol was saying regretfully, but her voice was happy. "Is it a good party?... Well, I'm not dressed and I'm tired." Therese went to the bed table and got a cigarette from the box there. A Philip Morris.


Carol had put them there, not the maid, Therese knew, because Carol remembered that she liked them. Naked now, Therese stood listening to the music It was a song she didn't know. Was Carol on the telephone again? "Well, I don't like it," she heard Carol say, half angry, half joking, "one damn bit." . it's easy to live... when you're in love... "How do I know what kind of people they are?... Oh-ho! Is that so?" Abby, Therese knew. She blew her smoke out and snuffed at the slightly sweet smelling wisps of it, remembering the first cigarette she had ever smoked, a Philip Morris, on the roof of a dormitory at the Home, four of them passing it around. "Yes, we're going," Carol said emphatically. "Well, I am. Don't I sound it?" ... For you... maybe I'm a fool but it's fun... People say you rule me with one... wave of your hand... darling, it's grand o o o they just don't understand... It was a good song. Therese closed her eyes and leaned on the half-open door, listening. Behind the voice was a slow piano that rippled all over, the keyboard. And a lazy trumpet. Carol said, "That's nobody's business but mine, is it?... Nonsense!" and Therese smiled at her vehemence. Therese closed the door. The phonograph had dropped another record. "Why don't you come say hello to Abby?" Carol said. Therese had ducked behind the bathroom door because she was naked. "Why?" "Come along," Carol said, and Therese put on a robe and went. "Hello," Abby said. "I hear you're going." "Is that news to you?" Abby sounded silly, as if she wanted to talk all night. She wished Therese a pleasant trip, and told her about the roads in the corn belt, how bad they could be in winter. "Will you forgive me if I was rude today?" Abby said for the second time. "I like you O. K., Therese." "Cut it, cut it!" Carol called down. "She wants to talk to you again," Therese said. "Tell Abigail I'm in the tub." Therese told her, and got away. Carol had brought a bottle and two little glasses into the room. "What's the matter with Abby?" Therese asked. "What do you mean, what's the matter with her?" Carol poured a brown colored liquor into the two glasses. "I think she's had a couple tonight." "I know. But why did she want to have lunch with me?" "Well--I guess a lot of reasons. Try some of this stuff." "It just seems vague," Therese said. "What does?" "The whole lunch." Carol gave her a glass. "Some things are always vague, darling." It was the first time Carol had called her darling. "What things?" Therese asked. She wanted an answer, a definite answer. Carol sighed. "A lot of things. The most important things. Taste your drink." Therese sipped it, sweet and dark brown, like coffee, with the sting of alcohol. "Tastes good." "You would think so."


"Why do you drink it if you don't like it?" "Because it's different. This is to our trip, so it's got to be something different." Carol grimaced and drank the rest of her glass. In the light of the lamp, Therese could see all the freckles on half of Carol's face. Carol's white looking eyebrow bent like a wing around the curve of her forehead. Therese felt ecstatically happy all at once. "What's that song that was playing before, the one with just the voice and the piano?" "Hum it." She whistled part of it, and Carol smiled. "'Easy Living,'" Carol said. "That's an old one." "I'd like to hear it again." "I'd like you to get to bed. I'll play it again." Carol went into the green room, and stayed there while it played. Therese stood by the door of her room, listening, smiling. ... I'll never regret... the years I'm giving... They're easy to give, when you're in love... I'm happy to do whatever I do for you... That was her song. That was everything she felt about Carol. She went in the bathroom before it was over, and turned the water on in the tub, got in and let the greenish looking water tumble about her feet. "Hey!" Carol called. "Have you ever been to Wyoming?" "No." "It's time you saw America." Therese lifted the dripping rag and pressed it against her knee. The water was so high now, her breasts looked like flat things floating on the surface. She studied them, trying to decide what they looked like besides what they were. "Don't go to sleep in there," Carol called in a preoccupied voice, and Therese knew she was sitting on the bed, looking at a map. "I won't." "Well, some people do." "Tell me more about Harge," she said as she dried herself. "What does he do?" "A lot of things." "I mean, what's his business?" "Real estate investment." "What's he like? Does he like to go to the theater? Does he like people?" "He likes a little group of people who play golf," Carol said with finality. Then in a louder voice, "And what else? He's very, very meticulous about everything. But he forgot his best razor. It's in the medicine cabinet and you can see it if you want to and you probably do. I've got to mail it to him, I suppose." Therese opened the medicine cabinet. She saw the razor. The medicine cabinet was still full of men's things, after-shaving lotions and lather brushes. "Was this his room?" she asked as she came out of the bathroom. "Which bed did he sleep in?" Carol smiled. "Not yours." "Can I have some more of this?" Therese asked, looking at the liqueur bottle. "Of course." "Can I kiss you good night?" Carol was folding the road map, pursing her lips as if she would whistle, waiting. "No," she said. "Why not?" Anything seemed possible tonight. "I'll give you this instead."


Carol pulled her hand out of her pocket. It was a check. Therese read the sum, two hundred dollars, made out to her. "What's this for?" "For the trip. I don't want you to spend the money you'll need for that union membership thing." Carol took a cigarette. "You won't need all of that, I just want you to have it." "But I don't need it," Therese said. "Thanks. I don't care if I spend the union money." "No back talk," Carol interrupted her. "It gives me pleasure, remember?" "But I won't take it." She sounded curt, so she smiled a little as she put the check down on the table top by the liqueur bottle. But she had thumped the check down, too. She wished she could explain it to Carol. It didn't matter at all, the money, but since it did give Carol pleasure, she hated not to take it. "I don't like the idea," Therese said. "Think of something else." She looked at Carol. Carol was watching her, was not going to argue with her, Therese was glad to see. "To give me pleasure?" Carol asked. Therese's smile broadened. "Yes," she said, and picked up the little glass. "All right," Carol said. "I'll think. Good night." Carol had stopped by the door. It was a funny way of saying good night, Therese thought, on such an important night. "Good night," Therese answered. She turned to the table and saw the check again. But it was for Carol to tear up. She slid it under the edge of the dark-blue linen table runner, out of sight.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 12 JANUARY. IT WAS all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a bus and caught it. Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two- faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define. A young man named Red Malone and a baldheaded carpenter worked with her on the Small Rain set. Mr. Donohue was very pleased with it. He said he had asked a Mr. Baltin to come in and see her work. Mr. Baltin was a graduate of a Russian academy, and had designed a few sets for theaters in New York. Therese had never heard of him. She tried to get Mr. Donohue to arrange an appointment for her to see Myron Blanchard or Ivor Harkevy, but Mr. Donohue never promised anything. He couldn't, Therese supposed. Mr. Baltin came in one afternoon, a tall, bent man in a black hat and a seedy overcoat, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had brought only three or four models down to the theatre, her very best ones. Mr. Baltin told her of a play that was to start in production in about six weeks. He would be glad to recommend her as an assistant, and Therese said that would work out very well, because she would be out of town until then, anyway. Everything was working out very well in these last days. Mr. Andronich had promised her a two-week job in Philadelphia in the middle of February, which would be just about the time she would be back from the trip with Carol. Therese wrote down the name and address of the man Mr. Baltin knew. "He's looking for someone now, so call him the first of the week," Mr. Baltin said. "It'll just be a helper's job, but his helper, a pupil of mine, is working with Harkevy now." "Oh. Do you suppose you--or he could arrange for me to see Harkevy?" "Nothing easier. All you have to do is call Harkevy's studio and ask to speak to Charles. Charles Winant. Tell him that you've spoken with me. Let's see--call him Friday. Friday afternoon around three." "All right. Thank you." Friday was a whole week off. Harkevy was not unapproachable, Therese had heard, but he had the reputation of never making appointments, much less keeping them if he did make them, because he was very busy.


But maybe Mr. Baltin knew. "And don't forget to call Kettering," Mr. Baltin said as he left. Therese looked again at the name he had given her: Adolph Kettering, Theatrical Investments, Inc., at a private address. "I'll call him Monday morning. Thanks a lot." That was the day, a Saturday, when she was to meet Richard in the Palermo after work. It was the seventh of January, eleven days before she and Carol planned to leave. She saw Phil standing with Richard at the bar. "Well, how's the old Cat?" Phil asked her, dragging up a stool for her. "Working Saturdays, too?" "The cast didn't work. Just my department," she said. "When's the opening?" "The twenty-first." "Look," Richard said. He pointed to a spot of dark-green paint on her skirt. "I know. I did that days ago." "What would you like to drink?" Phil asked her. "I don't know. Maybe I'll have a beer, thanks." Richard had turned his back on Phil, who stood on the other side of him, and she sensed an ill-feeling between them. "Did you do any painting today?" she asked Richard. Richard's mouth was down at both corners. "Had to pinch hit for some driver who was sick. Ran out of gas in the middle of Long Island." "Oh. That's rotten. Maybe you'd rather paint than go anywhere tomorrow." They had talked of going over to Hoboken tomorrow, just to walk around and eat at the Clam House. But Carol would be in town tomorrow, and had promised to call her. "I'll paint if you'll sit for me," Richard said. Therese hesitated uncomfortably. "I just don't feel in the mood for sitting these days. "All right. It's not important." He smiled. "But how can I ever paint you if you'll never sit?" "Why don't you do it out of the air?" Phil slid his hand out and held the bottom of her glass. "Don't drink that. Have something better. I'll drink this." "All right. I'll try a rye and water." Phil was standing on the other side of her now. He looked cheerful, but a little dark around the eyes. For the past week, in a sullen mood, he had been writing a play. He had read a few scenes of it aloud at his New Year's party. Phil called it an extension of Kafka's Metamorphosis. She had drawn a rough sketch for a set New Year's morning, and showed it to Phil when she came down to see him. And suddenly it occurred to her, that was what was the matter with Richard. "Terry, I wish you'd make a model we can photograph from that sketch you showed me. I'd like to have a set to go with the script." Phil pushed the rye and water toward her, and leaned on the bar close beside her. "I might," Therese said. "Are you really going to try to get it produced?" "Why not?" Phil's dark eyes challenged her above his smile.


He snapped his fingers at the barman. "Check?" "I'll pay," Richard said. "No, you won't. This is mine." Phil had his old black wallet in his hand. His play would never be produced, Therese thought, might not even be finished, because Phil's moods were capricious. "I'll be moving along," Phil said. "Drop by soon, Terry. Cheerio, Rich." She watched him go off and up the little front stairs, shabbier than she had ever seen him in his sandals and threadbare polo coat, yet with an attractive nonchalance about his shabbiness. Like a man walking through his house in his favorite old bathrobe, Therese thought. She waved back at him through the front window. "I hear you took Phil sandwiches and beer New Year's Day," Richard said. "Yes. He called up and said he had a hangover." "Why didn't you mention it?" "I forgot, I suppose. It wasn't important." "Not important. If you--" Richard's stiff hand gestured slowly, hopelessly. "If you spend half the day in a guy's apartment, bringing him sandwiches and beer? Didn't it occur to you I might have wanted some sandwiches, too?" "If you did, you had plenty of people to get them for you. We'd eaten and drunk everything in Phil's house. Remember?" Richard nodded his long head, still smiling the downward, disgruntled smile. "And you were alone with him, just the two of you." "Oh, Richard--" She remembered, and it was so unimportant. Dannie hadn't been back from Connecticut that day. He had spent New Year's at the house of one of his professors. She had hoped Dannie would come in that afternoon at Phil's, but Richard would probably never think that, never guess she liked Dannie a lot better than Phil. "If any other girl did that, I'd suspect something was brewing and I'd be right," Richard went on. "I think you're being silly." "I think you're being naive." Richard was looking at her stonily, resentfully, and Therese thought, it surely couldn't be only this he was so resentful about. He resented the fact that she wasn't and never could be what he wished her to be, a girl who loved him passionately and would love to go to Europe with him. A girl like herself, with her face, her ambitions, but a girl who adored him. "You're not Phil's type, you know," he said. "Whoever said I was? Phil?" "That twerp, that half-baked dilettante," Richard murmured. "And he has the nerve to sound off tonight and say you don't give a damn for me." "He hasn't any right to say that. I don't discuss you with him." "Oh, that's a fine answer. Meaning if you had, he'd know you didn't give a damn, eh?" Richard said it quietly, but his voice shook with anger. "What's Phil suddenly got against you?" she asked. "That's not the point!" "What is the point?" she said impatiently. "Oh, Terry, let's stop it."


"You can't find any point," she said, but seeing Richard turn away from her and shift his elbows on the bar, almost as if he writhed physically under her words, she felt a sudden compassion for him. It was not now, not last week that galled him, but the whole past and future futility of his own feelings about her. Richard plunged his cigarette into the ash tray on the bar. "What do you want to do tonight?" he asked. Tell him about the trip with Carol, she thought. Twice before she had meant to tell him, and put it off. "Do you want to do anything?" She emphasized the last word. "Of course," he said depressedly. "What do you say we have dinner, then call up Sam and Joan? Maybe we can walk up and see them tonight." "All right." She hated it. Two of the most boring people she had ever met, a shoe clerk and a secretary, happily married on West Twentieth Street, and she knew Richard meant to show her an ideal life in theirs, to remind her that they might live together the same way one day. She hated it, and any other night she might have protested, but the compassion for Richard was still in her, dragging after it an amorphous wake of guilt and a necessity to atone. Suddenly, she remembered a picnic they had had last summer, off the road near Tarrytown, remembered precisely Richard's reclining on the grass, working ever so slowly with his pocketknife at the cork in the wine bottle, while they talked of--what? But she remembered that moment of contentment, that conviction that they shared something wonderfully real and rare together that day, and she wondered now where it had gone to, on what it had been based. For now even his long flat figure standing beside her seemed to oppress her with its weight. She forced down her resentment, but it only grew heavy inside her, like a thing of substance. She looked at the chunky figures of the two Italian workmen standing at the bar, and at the two girls at the end of the bar whom she had noticed before, and now that they were leaving, she saw that they were in slacks. One had hair cut like a boy's. Therese looked away, aware that she avoided them, avoided being seen looking at them. "Want to eat here? Are you hungry yet?" Richard asked. "No. Let's go somewhere else." So they went out and walked north, in the general direction of where Sam and Joan lived. Therese rehearsed the first words until all their sense was rubbed out. "Remember Mrs. Aird, the woman you met in my house that day?" "Sure." "She's invited me to go on a trip with her, a trip West in a car for a couple of weeks or so. I'd like to go." "West? California?" Richard said surprisedly. "Why?" "Why?" "Well---do you know her as well as that?"


"I've seen her a few times." "Oh. Well, you didn't mention it." Richard walked along with his hands swinging at his sides, looking at her. "Just the two of you?" "Yes." "When would you be leaving?" "Around the eighteenth." "Of this month?--Then you won't get to see your show." She shook her head. "I don't think it's so much to miss." "Then it's definite?" "Yes." He was silent a moment. "What kind of a person is she? She doesn't drink or anything, does she?" "No." Therese smiled. "Does she look like she drinks?" "No. I think she's very good looking, in fact. It's just damned surprising, that's all." "Why?" "You so seldom make up your mind about anything. You'll probably change your mind again." "I don't think so." "Maybe I can see her again sometime with you. Why don't you arrange it?" "She said she'd be in the city tomorrow. I don't know how much time she's got--or really whether she'll call or not." Richard didn't continue and neither did Therese. They did not mention Carol again that evening. Richard spent Sunday morning painting, and came to Therese's apartment around two. He was there when Carol telephoned a little later. Therese told her that Richard was with her, and Carol said, "Bring him along." Carol said she was near the Plaza, and they might meet there in the Palm Room. Half an hour later, Therese saw Carol look up at them from a table near the center of the room, and almost like the first time, like the echo of an impact that had been tremendous, Therese was jolted by the sight of her. Carol was wearing the same black suit with the green and gold scarf that she had worn the day of the luncheon. But now Carol paid more attention to Richard than to her. The three of them talked of nothing, and Therese, seeing the calm in Carol's gray eyes that only once turned to her, seeing a quite ordinary expression on Richard's face, felt a kind of disappointment. Richard had gone out of his way to meet her, but Therese thought it was even less from curiosity than because he had nothing else to do. She saw Richard looking at Carol's hands, the nails manicured in a bright red, saw him notice the ring with the clear green sapphire, and the wedding ring on the other hand. Richard could not say they were useless hands, idle hands, despite the longish nails. Carol's hands were strong, and they moved with an economy of motion. Her voice emerged from the flat murmur of other voices around them, talking of nothing at all with Richard, and once she laughed. Carol looked at her. "Did you tell Richard we might go on a trip?" she asked. "Yes. Last night." "West?" Richard asked. "I'd like to go up to the Northwest. It depends on the roads." And Therese was suddenly impatient. Why did they sit here having a conference about it?


Now they were talking about temperatures, and the state of Washington. "Washington's my home state," Carol said. "Practically." Then a few moments later, Carol asked if anyone wanted to take a walk in the park. Richard paid the check for their beer and coffee, pulling a bill from the tangle of bills and change that bulged a pocket of his trousers. How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn't see her, as he sometimes hadn't seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him. He was looking down at the table now, the thin careless line of his mouth half smiling as he straightened up and shoved his hand quickly through his hair. They walked from the entrance of the park at Fifty-ninth Street toward the zoo, and through the zoo at a strolling pace. They walked on under the first bridge over the path, where the path bent and the real park began. The air was cold and still, a little overcast, and Therese felt a motionlessness about everything, a lifeless stillness even in their slowly moving figures. "Shall I hunt up some peanuts?" Richard asked. Carol was stooped at the edge of the path, holding her fingers out to a squirrel. "I have something," she said softly, and the squirrel started at her voice but advanced again, seized her fingers in a nervous grip and fixed its teeth on something, and dashed away. Carol stood up, smiling. "Had something in my pocket from this morning." "Do you feed squirrels out where you live?" Richard asked. "Squirrels and chipmunks," Carol replied. What dull things they talked of, Therese thought. Then they sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette, and Therese, watching a diminutive sun bring its orange fire down finally into the scraggly black twigs of a tree, wished the night were here already and that she were alone with Carol. They began to walk back. If Carol had to go home now, Therese thought, she would do something violent. Like jump off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Or take the three benzedrine tablets Richard had given her last week. "Would you people like to have some tea somewhere?" Carol asked as they neared the zoo again. "How about that Russian place over by Carnegie Hall?" "Rumpelmayer's is right here," Richard said. "Do you like Rumpelmayer's?" Therese sighed. And Carol seemed to hesitate. But they went there. Therese had been here once with Angelo, she remembered. She did not care for the place. Its bright lights gave her a feeling of nakedness, and it was annoying not to know if one were looking at a real person or at a reflection in a mirror. "No, none of that, thanks," Carol said, shaking her head at the great tray of pastry the waitress was holding. But Richard chose something, chose two pastries, though Therese had declined. "What's that for, in case I change my mind?"


she asked him, and Richard winked at her. His nails were dirty again, she noticed. Richard asked Carol what kind of car she had, and they began discussing the merits of various car makes. Therese saw Carol glance about at the tables in front of her. She doesn't like it here either, Therese thought. Therese stared at a man in the mirror that was set obliquely behind Carol. His back was to Therese, and he leaned forward, talking animatedly to a woman, jerking his spread left hand for emphasis. She looked at the thin, middle-aged woman he spoke to, and back at him, wondering if the aura of familiarity about him were real or an illusion like the mirror, until a memory fragile as a bubble swam upward in her consciousness and burst at the surface. It was Harge. Therese glanced at Carol, but if Carol had noticed him, she thought, Carol would not know that he was in the mirror behind her. A moment later, Therese looked over her shoulder, and saw Harge in profile, much like one of the images she carried in her memory from the house--the short high nose, the full lower face, the receding twist of blond hair above the usual hairline. Carol must have seen him, only three tables away to her left. Carol looked from Richard to Therese. "Yes," she said to her, smiling a little, and turned back to Richard and went on with her conversation. Her manner was just as before, Therese thought, not different at all. Therese looked at the woman with Harge. She was not young, not very attractive. She might have been one of his relatives. Then Therese saw Carol mash out a long cigarette. Richard had stopped talking. They were ready to leave. Therese was looking at Harge the moment he saw Carol. After his first glimpse of her, his eyes drew almost shut as if he had to squint to believe her, and then he said something to the woman he was with and stood up and went to her. "Carol," Harge said. "Hello, Harge." She turned to Therese and Richard. "Would you excuse me a minute?" Watching from the doorway where she stood with Richard, Therese tried to see it all, to see beyond the pride and aggressiveness in Harge's anxious, forward leaning figure that was not quite so tall as the crown of Carol's hat, to see beyond Carol's acquiescent nods as he spoke, to surmise not what they talked of now but what they had said to each other five years ago, three years ago, that day of the picture in the rowboat. Carol had loved him once, and that was hard to remember. "Can we get free now, Terry?" Richard asked her. Therese saw Carol nod good-by to the woman at Harge's table, then turn away from Harge. Harge looked past Carol, to her and Richard, and without apparently recognizing her, he went back to his table.


"I'm sorry," Carol said as she rejoined them. On the sidewalk, Therese drew Richard aside and said, "I'll say good night, Richard. Carol wants me to visit a friend of hers tonight with her." "Oh." Richard frowned. "I had those concert tickets for tonight, you know." Therese remembered suddenly. "Alex's. I forgot. I'm sorry." He said gloomily, "It's not important." It wasn't important. Richard's friend Alex was accompanying somebody in a violin concert, and had given Richard the tickets, she remembered, weeks ago. "You'd rather see her than me, wouldn't you?" he said. Therese saw that Carol was looking for a taxi. Carol would leave them both in a moment. "You might have mentioned the concert this morning, Richard, reminded me, at least." "Was that her husband?" Richard's eyes narrowed under his frown. "What is this, Terry?" "What's what?" she said. "I don't know her husband." Richard waited a moment, then the frown left his eyes. He smiled, as if he conceded he had been unreasonable. "Sorry. I just took it for granted I'd see you tonight." He walked toward Carol. "Good night," he said. He looked as if he were leaving by himself, and Carol said, "Are you going downtown? Maybe I can drop you." "I'm walking, thanks." "I thought you two had a date," Carol said to Therese. Therese saw that Richard was lingering, and she walked toward Carol, out of his hearing. "Not an important one. I'd rather stay with you." A taxi had slid up beside Carol. Carol put her hand on the door handle. "Well, neither is our date so important, so why don't you go on with Richard tonight?" Therese glanced at Richard, and saw that he had heard her. "Bye-bye, Therese," Carol said. "Good night," Richard called. "Good night," Therese said, and watched Carol pull the taxi door shut after her. "So," Richard said. Therese turned toward him. She wouldn't go to the concert, and neither would she do anything violent, she knew, nothing more violent than walk quickly home and get to work on the set she wanted to finish by Tuesday for Harkevy. She could see the whole evening ahead, with a half-dismal, half- defiant fatality, in the second it took for Richard to walk to her. "I still don't want to go to the concert," she said. To her surprise, Richard stepped back and said angrily, "All right, don't!" and turned away. He walked west on Fifty-ninth Street in his loose, lopsided gait that jutted his right shoulder ahead of the other, hands swinging unrhythmically at his sides, and she might have known from the walk alone that he was angry. And he was out of sight in no time. The rejection from Kettering last Monday flashed across her mind. She stared at the darkness where Richard had disappeared. She did not feel guilty about tonight. It was something else. She envied him.


She envied him his faith there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for him. She envied him that attitude. She almost resented his having it.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 13 RICHARD BEGAN IT. "Why do you like her so much?" It was an evening on which she had broken a date with Richard on the slim chance Carol would come by. Carol hadn't, and Richard had come by instead. Now at five past eleven in the huge pink-walled cafeteria on Lexington Avenue, she had been about to begin, but Richard was ahead of her. "I like being with her, I like talking with her. I'm fond of anybody I can talk to." The phrases of some letter she had written to Carol and never mailed drifted across her mind as if to answer Richard. I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me. "You've got a hell of a crush on her," Richard announced, explanatorily and resentfully. Therese took a deep breath. Should she be simple and say yes, or should she try to explain it? What could he ever understand of it, even if she explained it in a million words? "Does she know it? Of course she knows it." Richard frowned and drew on his cigarette. "Don't you think it's pretty silly? It's like a crush that schoolgirls get." "You don't understand," she said. She felt so very sure of herself. I will comb you like music caught in the heads of all the trees in the forest... "What's there to understand? But she understands. She shouldn't indulge you. She shouldn't play with you like this. It's not fair to you." "Not fair to me?" "What's she doing, amusing herself with you? And then one day she'll get tired of you and kick you out." Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an emotion? She was angry, but she did not want to argue. She said nothing. "You're in a daze!" "I'm wide awake. I never felt more awake." She picked up the table knife and rubbed her thumb back and forth on the ridge at the base of the blade. "Why don't you leave me alone?" He frowned. "Leave you alone?" "Yes." "You mean, about Europe, too?" "Yes," she said. "Listen, Terry--" Richard wriggled in his chair and leaned forward, hesitated, then took another cigarette, lighting it distastefully, throwing the match on the floor. "You're in some kind of trance! It's worse--" "Just because I don't want to argue with you?" "It's worse than being lovesick, because it's so completely unreasonable. Don't you understand that?" No, she didn't understand a word. "But you're going to get over it in about a week. I hope. My God!" He squirmed again. "To say--to say for a minute you practically want to say good- by to me because of some silly crush!" "I didn't say that. You said it." She looked back at him, at his rigid face that was beginning to redden in the center of the flat cheeks.


"But why should I want to be with you if all you do is argue about this?" He sat back. "Wednesday, next Saturday, you won't feel like this at all. You haven't known her three weeks yet." She looked over toward the steam tables, where people edged slowly along, choosing this and that, drifting toward the curve in the counter where they dispersed. "We may as well say good-by," she said, "because neither of us will ever be any different from what we are this minute." "Therese, you're like a person gone so crazy, you think you're saner than ever!" "Oh, let's stop it!" Richard's hand with its row of knuckles embedded in the white, freckled flesh was clenched on the table motionless, like a picture of a hand that had hammered some ineffectual, inaudible point. "I'll tell you one thing, I think your friend knows what she's doing. I think she's committing a crime against you. I've half a mind to report her to somebody, but the trouble is you're not a child. You're just acting like one." "Why do you make so much out of it?" she asked. "You're practically in a frenzy." "You make enough out of it to want to say good-by to me! What do you know about her?" "What do you know about her?" "Did she ever make any passes at you?" "God!" Therese said. She felt like saying it a dozen times. It summed up everything, her imprisonment now, here, yet. "You don't understand." But he did, and that was why he was angry. But did he understand that she would have felt the same way if Carol had never touched her? Yes, and if Carol had never even spoken to her after that brief conversation about a doll's valise in the store. If Carol, in fact, had never spoken to her at all, for it had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol--"I think I understand you better than you understand me. You don't really want to see me again, either, because you said yourself I'm not the same person. If we keep on seeing each other, you'll only get more and more--like this." "Terry, forget for a minute I ever said I wanted you to love me, or that I love you. It's you as a person, I mean. I like you. I'd like--" "I wonder sometimes why you think you like me, or did like me. Because you didn't even know me." "You don't know yourself." "But I do--and I know you. You'll drop painting someday and me with it. Just as you've dropped everything else you ever started, as far-as I can see.


The dry-cleaning thing, or the used-car lot--" "That's not true," Richard said sullenly. "But why do you think you like me? Because I paint a little, too, and we can talk about that? I'm just as impractical as a girl friend for you as painting is as a business for you." She hesitated a minute, then said the rest of it, "You know enough about art anyway to know you'll never make a good painter. You're like a little boy playing truant as long as you can, knowing all the time what you ought to be doing and what you'll finally be doing, working for your father." Richard's blue eyes had gone suddenly cold. The line of his mouth was straight and very short now, the thin upper lip faintly curling. "All that isn't quite the point now, is it?" "Well--yes. It's part of your hanging on when you know it's hopeless, and when you know you'll finally let go." "I will not!" "Richard, there's no point--!" "You're going to change your mind, you know." She understood that. It was like a song he kept singing to her. A week later, Richard stood in her room with the same expression of sullen anger on his face, talking in the same tone. He had called up at the unusual hour of three in the afternoon, and insisted on seeing her for a moment. She was packing a bag to take to Carol's for the week end. If she hadn't been packing for Carol's house, Richard might have been in quite another mood, she thought, because she had seen him three times the past week, and he had never been pleasanter, never been more considerate of her. "You can't just give me marching orders out of your life," he said, flinging his long arms out, but there was a lonesome tone in it, as if he had already started on that road away from her. "What really makes me sore is that you act like I'm not worth anything, that I'm completely ineffectual. It isn't fair to me, Terry. I can't compete!" No, she thought, of course he couldn't. "I don't have any quarrel with you," she said. "It's you who choose to quarrel over Carol. She hasn't taken anything away from you, because you didn't have it in the first place. But if you can't go on seeing me--" She stopped, knowing he could and probably would go on seeing her. "What logic," he said, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye. Therese watched him, caught by the idea that had just come to her, that she knew suddenly was a fact. Why hadn't it occurred to her the night of the theater, days ago? She might have known it from a hundred gestures, words, looks, this past week.


But she remembered the night of the theater especially-- he had surprised her with tickets to something she particularly wanted to see-- the way he had held her hand that night, and from his voice on the telephone, not just telling her to meet him here or there, but asking her very sweetly if she could. She hadn't liked it. It was not a manifestation of affection, but rather a means of ingratiating himself, of somehow paving the way for the sudden questions he had asked so casually that night, "What do you mean you're fond of her? Do you want to go to bed with her?" Therese had replied, "Do you think I would tell you if I did?" while a quick succession of emotions--humiliation, resentment, loathing of him--had made her speechless, had made it almost impossible for her to keep walking beside him. And glancing at him, she had seen him looking at her with that soft, inane smile that in memory now looked cruel, and unhealthy. And its unhealthiness might have escaped her, she thought, if it weren't that Richard was so frankly trying to convince her she was unhealthy. Therese turned and tossed into the overnight bag her toothbrush and her hairbrush, then remembered she had a toothbrush at Carol's. "Just what do you want from her, Therese? Where's it going to go from here?" "Why are you so interested?" He stared at her and for a moment beneath the anger she saw the fixed curiosity she had seen before, as if he were watching a spectacle through a keyhole'. But she knew he was not so detached as that. On the contrary, she sensed that he was never so bound to her as now, never so determined not to give her up. It frightened her. She could imagine the determination transformed to hatred and to violence. Richard sighed, and twisted the newspaper in his hands. "I'm interested in you. You can't just say to me, 'Find someone else.' I've never treated you the way I treated the others, never thought of you that way." She didn't answer. "Damn!" Richard threw the newspaper at the bookshelf, and turned his back on her. The newspaper flicked the Madonna, and it tipped back against the wall as if astonished, fell over, and rolled off the edge. Richard made a lunge for it and caught it in both hands. He looked at Therese and smiled involuntarily. "Thanks." Therese took it from him. She lifted it to set it back then brought her hands down quickly and smashed the figure to the floor. "Terry!" The Madonna lay in three or four pieces. "Never mind it," she said. Her heart was beating as if she were angry, or fighting. "But--" "To hell with it!" she said, pushing the pieces aside with her shoe. Richard left a moment later, slamming the door. What was it, Therese wondered, the Andronich thing or Richard?


Mr. Andronich's secretary had called about an hour ago and told her that Mr. Andronich had decided to hire an assistant from Philadelphia instead of her. So that job would not be there to come back to, after the trip with Carol. Therese looked down at the broken Madonna. The wood was quite beautiful inside. It had cracked cleanly along the grain. Carol asked her in detail that evening about her talk with Richard. It irked Therese that Carol was so concerned as to whether Richard were hurt or not. "You're not used to thinking of other people's feelings," Carol said bluntly to her. They were in the kitchen fixing a late dinner, because Carol had given the maid the evening off. "What real reason have you to think he's not in love with you?" Carol asked. "Maybe I just don't understand how he works. But it doesn't seem like love to me." Then in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a conversation about the trip, Carol remarked suddenly, "You shouldn't have talked to Richard at all." It was the first time Therese had told Carol any of it, any of the first conversation in the cafeteria with Richard. "Why not? Should I have lied to him?" Carol was not eating. Now she pushed back her chair and stood up. "You're much too young to know your own mind. Or what you're talking about. Yes, in that case, lie." Therese laid her fork down. She watched Carol get a cigarette and light it. "I had to say good-by to him and I did. I have. I won't see him again." Carol opened a panel in the bottom of the bookcase and took out a bottle. She poured some into an empty glass and slammed the panel shut. "Why did you do if now? Why not two months ago or two months from now? And why did you mention me?" "I know--I think it fascinates him." "It probably does." "But if I simply don't see him again--" She couldn't finish it, about his not being apt to follow her, spy on her. She didn't want to say such things to Carol. And besides, there was the memory of Richard's eyes. "I think he'll give it up. He said he couldn't compete." Carol struck her forehead with her hand. "Couldn't compete," she repeated. She came back to the table and poured some of the water from her glass into the whisky. "How true. Finish your dinner. I may be making too much of it, I don't know." But Therese did not move. She had done the wrong thing. And at best, even doing the right thing, she could not make Carol happy as Carol made her happy, she thought as she had thought a hundred times before. Carol was happy only at moments here and there, moments that Therese caught and kept.


One had been in the evening they put away the Christmas decorations, and Carol had refolded the string of angels and put them between the pages of a book. "I'm going to keep these," she had said. "With twenty-two angels to defend me, I can't lose." Therese looked at Carol now, and though Carol was watching her, it was through that veil of preoccupation that Therese so often saw, that kept them a world apart. "Lines," Carol said. "I can't compete. People talk of classics. These lines are classic. A hundred different people will say the same words. There are lines for the mother, lines for the daughter, for the husband and the lover. I'd rather see you dead at my feet. It's the same play repeated with different casts. What do they say makes a play a classic, Therese?" "A classic--" Her voice sounded tight and stifled. "A classic is something with a basic human situation." When Therese awakened, the sun was in her room. She lay for a moment, watching the watery looking sunspots rippling on the pale green ceiling, listening for any sound of activity in the house. She looked at her blouse, hanging over the edge of the bureau. Why was she so untidy in Carol's house? Carol didn't like it. The dog that lived somewhere beyond the garages was barking intermittently, halfheartedly. There had been one pleasant interval last evening, the telephone call from Rindy. Rindy back from a birthday party at nine thirty. Could she give a birthday party on her birthday in April. Carol said of course. Carol had been different after that. She had talked about Europe, and summers in Rapallo. Therese got up and went to the window, raised it higher and leaned on the sill, tensing herself against the cold. There were no mornings anywhere like the mornings from this window. The round bed of grass beyond the driveway had darts of sunlight in it, like scattered gold needles. There were sparks of sun in the moist hedge leaves, and the sky was a fresh solid blue. She looked at the place in the driveway where Abby had been that morning, and at the bit of white fence beyond the hedges that marked the end of the lawn. The ground looked breathing and young, even though the winter had browned the grass. There had been trees and hedges around the school in Montclair, but the green had always ended in part of a red brick wall, or a gray stone building that was part of the school--an infirmary, a woodshed, a toolhouse--and the green each spring had seemed old already, used and handed down by one generation of children to the next, as much a part of school paraphernalia as textbooks and uniforms. She dressed in the plaid slacks she had brought from home, and one of the shirts she had left from another time, that had been laundered. It was twenty past eight.


Carol liked to get up about eight thirty, liked to be awakened by someone with a cup of coffee, though Therese had noticed she never had Florence do it. Florence was in the kitchen when she went down, but she had only just started the coffee. "Good morning," Therese said. "Do you mind if I fix the breakfast?" Florence hadn't minded the two other times she had come in and found Therese fixing them. "Go ahead, miss," Florence said. "I'll just make my own fried eggs. You like doing things for Mrs. Aird yourself, don't you?" she said like a statement. Therese was getting two eggs out of the refrigerator. "Yes," she said, smiling. She dropped one of the eggs into the water that was just beginning to heat. Her answer sounded rather flat, but what other answer was there? When she turned around after setting the breakfast tray, she saw Florence had put the second egg in the water. Therese took it out with her fingers. "She wants only one egg," Therese said. "That's for my omelette." "Does she? She always used to eat two." "Well--she doesn't now," Therese said. "Shouldn't you measure that egg anyway, miss?" Florence gave her the pleasant professional smile. "Here's the egg timer, top of the stove." Therese shook her head. "It comes out better when I guess." She had never gone wrong yet on Carol's egg. Carol liked it a little better done than the egg timer made it. Therese looked at Florence, who was concentrating now on the two eggs she was frying in the skillet. The coffee was almost all filtered. In silence, Therese prepared the cup to take up to Carol. Later in the morning, Therese helped Carol take in the white iron chairs and the glider from the lawn in back of the house. It would be simpler with Florence there, Carol said, but Carol had sent her away marketing, then had a sudden whim to get the furniture in. It was Harge's idea to leave them out all winter, she said, but she thought they looked bleak. Finally only one chair remained by the round fountain, a prim little chair of white metal with a bulging bottom and four lacy feet. Therese looked at it and wondered who had sat there. "I wish there were more plays that happened out of doors," Therese said. "What do you think of first when you start to make a set?" Carol asked. "What do you start from?" "The mood of the play, I suppose. What do you mean?" "Do you think of the kind of play it is, or of something you want to see?" One of Mr. Donohue's remarks brushed Therese's mind with a vague unpleasantness. Carol was in an argumentative mood this morning. "I think you're determined to consider me an amateur," Therese said. "I think you're rather subjective. That's amateurish, isn't it?" "Not always." But she knew what Carol meant.


"You have to know a lot to be absolutely subjective, don't you? In those things you showed me, I think you're too subjective--without knowing enough." Therese made fists of her hands in her pockets. She had so hoped Carol would like her work, unqualifiedly. It had hurt her terribly that Carol hadn't liked in the least a certain few sets she had shown her. Carol knew nothing about it, technically, yet she could demolish a set with a phrase. "I think a look at the West would do you good. When did you say you had to be back? The middle of February?" "Well, now I don't--I just heard yesterday." "What do you mean? It fell through? The Philadelphia job?" "They called me up. They want somebody from Philadelphia." "Oh, baby. I'm sorry." "Oh, it's just this business," Therese said. Carol's hand was on the back of her neck, Carol's thumb rubbing behind her ear as Carol might have fondled a dog. "You weren't going to tell me." "Yes, I was." "When?" "Sometime on the trip." "Are you very disappointed?" "No," Therese said positively. They heated the last cup of coffee and took it out to the white chair on the lawn and shared it. "Shall we have lunch out somewhere?" Carol asked her. "Let's go to the club. Then I ought to do some shopping in Newark. How about a jacket? Would you like a tweed jacket?" Therese was sitting on the edge of the fountain, one hand pressed against her ear because it was aching from the cold. "I don't particularly need one," she said. "But I'd particularly like to see you in one." Therese was upstairs, changing her clothes, when she heard the telephone ring. She heard Florence say, "Oh, good morning, Mr. Aird. Yes, I'll call her right now," and Therese crossed the room and closed the door. Restlessly, she began to put the room in order, hung her clothes in the closet, and smoothed the bed she had already made. Then Carol knocked on the door and put her head in. "Harge is coming by in a few minutes. I don't think he'll be long." Therese did not want to see him. "Would you like for me to take a walk?" Carol smiled. "No. Stay up here and read a book, if you want to." Therese got the book she had bought yesterday, the Oxford Book of English Verse, and tried to read it, but the words stayed separate and meaningless. She had a disquieting sense of hiding, so she went to the door and opened it. Carol was just coming from her room, and for an instant, Therese saw the same look of indecision cross her face that Therese remembered from the first moment she had entered the house. Then she said, "Come down." Harge's car drove up as they walked into the living room.


Carol went to the door, and Therese heard their greeting, Carol's only cordial, but Harge's very cheerful, and Carol came in with a long flower box in her arms. "Harge, this is Miss Belivet. I think you met her once," Carol said. Harge's eyes narrowed a little, then opened. "Oh, yes. How do you do?" "How do you do?" Florence came in, and Carol handed the flower box to her. "Would you put these in something?" Carol said. "Ah, here's that pipe. I thought so." Harge reached behind the ivy on the mantel, and brought forth a pipe. "Everything is fine at home?" Carol asked as she sat down at the end of the sofa. "Yes. Very." Harge's tense smile did not show his teeth, but his face and the quick turns of his head radiated geniality and self-satisfaction. He watched with proprietary pleasure as Florence brought in the flowers, red roses, in a vase, and set them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Therese wished suddenly that she had brought Carol flowers, brought them on any of a half a dozen occasions past, and she remembered the flowers Dannie had brought to her one day when he simply dropped in at the theater. She looked at Harge, and his eyes glanced away from her, the peaked brow lifting still higher, the eyes darting everywhere, as if he looked for little changes in the room. But it might all be pretense, Therese thought, his air of good cheer. And if he cared enough to pretend he must also care in some way for Carol. "May I take one for Rindy?" Harge asked. "Of course." Carol got up, and she would have broken a flower, but Harge stepped forward and put a little knife blade against the stem and the flower came off. "They're very beautiful. Thank you, Harge." Harge lifted the flower to his nose. Half to Carol, half to Therese, he said, "It's a beautiful day. Are you going to take a drive?" "Yes, we were," Carol said. "By the way, I'd like to drive over one afternoon next week. Perhaps Tuesday." Harge thought a moment. "All right. I'll tell her." "I'll speak to her on the phone. I meant tell your family." Harge nodded once, in acquiescence, then looked at Therese. "Yes, I remember you. Of course. You were here about three weeks ago. Before Christmas." "Yes. One Sunday." Therese stood up. She wanted to leave them alone. "I'll go upstairs," she said to Carol. "Good-by, Mr. Aird." Harge made her a little bow. "Good-by." As she went up the stairs, she heard Harge say, "Well, many happy returns, Carol. I'd like to say it. Do you mind?" Carol's birthday, Therese thought. Of course, Carol wouldn't have told her. She closed the door and looked around the room, realized she was looking for any sign that she had spent the night. There was none.


She stopped at the mirror and looked at herself for a moment, frowningly. She was not so pale as she had been three weeks ago when Harge saw her, she did not feel like the drooping, frightened thing Harge had met then. From the top drawer, she got her handbag and took her lipstick out of it. Then she heard Harge knock on the door, and she closed the drawer. "Come in." "Excuse me. I must get something." He crossed the room quickly, went into the bathroom, and he was smiling as he came back with the razor in his hand. "You were in the restaurant with Carol last Sunday, weren't you?" "Yes," Therese said. "Carol said you do stage designing." "Yes." He glanced from her face to her hands, to the floor, and up again. "I hope you see that Carol gets out enough," he said. "You look young and spry. Make her take some walks." Then he went briskly out the door, leaving behind him a faint shaving- soap scent. Therese tossed her lipstick onto the bed, and wiped her palms down the side of her skirt. She wondered why Harge troubled to let her know he took it for granted she spent a great deal of time with Carol. "Therese!" Carol called suddenly. "Come down!" Carol was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Harge had gone. She looked at Therese with a little smile. Then Florence came in and Carol said, "Florence, you can take these somewhere else. Put them in the dining room." "Yes, ma'am." Carol winked at Therese. Nobody used the dining room, Therese knew. Carol preferred to eat anywhere else. "Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?" Therese asked her. "Oh!" Carol laughed. "It's not. It's my wedding anniversary. Get your coat and let's go." As they backed out of the driveway, Carol said, "If there's anything I can't stand, it's a hypocrite." "What did he say?" "Nothing of any importance." Carol was still smiling. "But you said he was a hypocrite." "Par excellence." "Pretending all this good humor?" "Oh--just partially that." "Did he say anything about me?" "He said you looked like a nice girl. Is that news?" Carol shot the car down the narrow road to the village. "He said the divorce will take about six weeks longer than we'd thought, due to some more red tape. That's news. He has an idea I still might change my mind in the meantime. That's hypocrisy. I think he likes to fool himself." Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a little yielding, noisy so the whole world could hear, so one always listened, too, for the loud, harsh step of the intruder's foot. "Carol I never took that check, you know," Therese remarked suddenly. "I stuck it under the cloth on the table by the bed." "What made you think of that?" "I don't know.


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

Do you want me to tear it up? I started to that night." "If you insist," Carol said.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 14 THERESE LOOKED DOWN at the big cardboard box. "I don't want to take it." Her hands were full. "I can let Mrs. Osborne take the food out and the rest can stay here." "Bring it," Carol said, going out the door. She carried down the last dribble of things, the books and the jackets Therese had decided at the last minute that she wanted. Therese came back upstairs for the box. It had come an hour ago by messenger--a lot of sandwiches in wax paper, a bottle of blackberry wine, a cake, and a box containing the white dress Mrs. Semco had promised her. Richard had had nothing to do with the box, she knew, or there would have been a book or an extra note in it. An unwanted dress still lay on the couch, a corner of the rug was turned back, but Therese was impatient to be off. She pulled the door shut, and hurried down the steps with the box, past the Kellys' who were both away at work, past Mrs. Osborne's door. She had said good-by to Mrs. Osborne an hour ago when she had paid the next month's rent. Therese was just closing the car door, when Mrs. Osborne called her from the front steps. "Telephone call!" Mrs. Osborne shouted, and reluctantly Therese got out, thinking it was Richard. It was Phil McElroy, calling her to ask about the interview with Harkevy yesterday. She had told Dannie about it last night when they had had dinner together. Harkevy hadn't promised her a job, but he had said to keep in touch, and Therese felt he meant it. He had let her come to see him backstage in the theater where he was supervising the set for Winter Town. He had chosen three of her cardboard models and looked very carefully at them, dismissed one as a little dull, pointed out some impracticality in the second, and liked best the hall-like set Therese had started the evening she had come back from the first visit to Carol's house. He was the first person who had ever given her less conventional sets a serious consideration. She had called Carol up immediately and told her about the meeting. She told Phil about the Harkevy interview, but she didn't mention that the Andronich job had fallen through. She knew it was because she didn't want Richard to hear about it. Therese asked Phil to let her know what play Harkevy was doing sets for next, because he said he hadn't decided himself between two plays. There was more of a chance he would take her on as apprentice, if he chose the English play he had talked about yesterday. "I don't know any address to give you yet," Therese said. "I know we'll get to Chicago." Phil said he might drop her a letter general delivery there. "Was that Richard?" Carol asked when she came back. "No. Phil McElroy."


"So you haven't heard from Richard?" "I haven't for the last few days. He sent me a telegram this morning." Therese hesitated, then took it from her pocket and read it. "I have not changed, neither have you. WRITE TO ME. I LOVE YOU. RICHARD." "I think you should call him," Carol said. "Call him from my house." They were going to spend the night at Carol's house and leave early in the morning. "Will you put on that dress tonight?" Carol asked. "I'll try it on. It looks like a wedding dress." Therese put on the dress just before dinner. It hung below her calf, and the waist tied in back with long white bands that in front were stitched down and embroidered. She went down to show it to Carol. Carol was in the living room writing a letter. "Look," Therese said, smiling. Carol looked at her for a long moment, then came over and examined the embroidery at the waist. "That's a museum piece. You look adorable. Wear it this evening, will you?" "It's so elaborate." She didn't want to wear it, because it made her think of Richard. "What the hell kind of style is it, Russian?" Therese gave a laugh. She liked the way Carol cursed, always casually, and when no one else could hear her. "Is it?" Carol repeated. Therese was going upstairs. "Is it what?" "Where did you get this habit of not answering people?" Carol demanded, her voice suddenly harsh with anger. Carol's eyes had the angry white light she had seen in them the time she refused to play the piano. And what angered her now was just as trifling. "I'm sorry, Carol. I guess I didn't hear you." "Go ahead," Carol said, turning away. "Go on up and take it off." It was Harge still, Therese thought. Therese hesitated a minute, then went upstairs. She untied the waist and the sleeves, glanced at herself in the mirror, then tied them all back again. If Carol wanted her to keep it on, she would. They fixed dinner themselves, because Florence had already started her three weeks' leave. They opened some special jars of things that Carol said she had been saving, and they made stingers in the cocktail shaker just before dinner. Therese thought Carol's mood had passed, but when she started to pour a second stinger for herself, Carol said shortly, "I don't think you should have any more of that." And Therese deferred, with a smile. And the mood went on. Nothing Therese said or did could change it, and Therese blamed the inhibiting dress for not being able to think of the right things to say. They took brandied chestnuts and coffee up to the porch after dinner, but they said even less to each other in the semidarkness, and Therese only felt sleepy and rather depressed. The next morning, Therese found a paper bag on the back doorstep.


Inside it was a toy monkey with gray and white fur. Therese showed it to Carol. "My God," Carol said softly, and smiled. "Jacopo." She took the monkey and rubbed her forefinger against its slightly dirty white cheek. "Abby and I used to have him hanging in the back of the car," Carol said. "Abby brought it? Last night?" "I suppose." Carol went on to the car with the monkey and a suitcase. Therese remembered wakening from a doze on the glider last night, awakening to an absolute silence, and Carol sitting there in the dark, looking straight before her. Carol must have heard Abby's car last night. Therese helped Carol arrange the suitcases and the lap rug in the back of the car. "Why didn't she come in?" Therese asked. "Oh that's Abby," Carol said with a smile, with the fleeting shyness that always surprised Therese. "Why don't you go call Richard?" Therese sighed. "I can't now, anyway. He's left the house by this time." It was eight forty, and his school began at nine. "Call his family then. Aren't you going to thank them for the box they sent you?" "I was going to write them a letter." "Call them now, and you won't have to write them a letter. It's much nicer to call anyway." Mrs. Semco answered the telephone. Therese praised the dress and Mrs. Semco's needlework, and thanked her for all the food and the wine. "Richard just left the house," Mrs. Semco said. "He's going to be awfully lonely. He mopes around already." But she laughed, her vigorous, high-pitched laugh that filled the kitchen where Therese knew she stood, a laugh that would ring through the house, even to Richard's empty room upstairs. "Is everything all right with you and Richard?" Mrs. Semco asked with the faintest suspicion, though Therese could tell she still smiled. Therese said yes. And she promised she would write. Afterward, she felt better because she had called. Carol asked her if she had closed her window upstairs, and Therese went up again, because she couldn't remember. She hadn't closed the window, and she hadn't made her bed either, but there wasn't time now. Florence could take care of the bed when she came in on Monday to lock the house up. Carol was on the telephone when Therese came downstairs. She looked up at Therese with a smile and held the telephone toward her. Therese knew from the first tone that it was Rindy. "... at--uh--Mr. Byron's. It's a farm. Have you ever been there, Mother?" "Where is it, sweetheart?" Carol said: "At Mr. Byron's. He has horses. But not the kind you would like." "Oh. Why not?" "Well, these are heavy." Therese tried to hear anything in the shrill, rather matter-of-fact voice that resembled Carol's voice, but she couldn't. "Hello," Rindy said. "Mother?" "I'm still here." "I've got to say good-by now. Daddy's ready to leave." And she coughed. "Have you got a cough?" Carol asked. "No."


"Then don't cough into the phone." "I wish you would take me on the trip." "Well, I can't because you're in school. But we'll have trips this summer." "Can you still call me?" "On the trip? Of course I will. Every day." Carol took the telephone and sat back with it, but she still watched Therese the minute or so more that she talked. "She sounds so serious," Therese said. "She was telling me all about the big day yesterday. Harge let her play hooky." Carol had seen Rindy day before yesterday, Therese remembered. It had evidently been a pleasant visit, from what Carol had told Therese over the telephone, but she hadn't mentioned any details about it, and Therese had not asked her anything. Just as they were about to leave, Carol decided to make a last call to Abby. Therese wandered back into the kitchen, because the car was too cold to sit in. "I don't know any small towns in Illinois," Carol was saying. "Why Illinois?... All right, Rockford... I'll remember, I'll think of roquefort... Of course I'll take good care of him. I wish you'd come in, nitwit... Well, you're mistaken, very mistaken." Therese took a sip from Carol's half-finished coffee on the kitchen table, drank from the place where the lipstick was. "Not a word," Carol said, drawling the phrase. "No one, so far as I know, not even Florence... Well, you do that, darling. Cheerio now." Five minutes later, they were leaving Carol's town on the highway marked on the strip map in red, the highway they would use until Chicago. The sky was overcast. Therese looked around her at the country that had grown familiar now, the clump of woods off to the left that the road to New York passed, the tall flagstaff in the distance that marked the club Carol belonged to. Therese let a crack of air in at her window. It was quite cold and the heater felt good on her ankles. The clock on the dashboard said quarter to ten, and she thought suddenly of the people working in Frankenberg's, penned in there at a quarter of ten in the morning, this morning and tomorrow morning and the next, the hands of clocks controlling every move they made. But the hands of the clock on the dashboard meant nothing now to her and Carol. They would sleep or not sleep, drive or not drive, whenever it pleased them. She thought of Mrs. Robichek, selling sweaters this minute on the third floor, commencing another year there, her fifth year. "Why so silent?" Carol asked. "What's the matter?" "Nothing." She did not want to talk. Yet she felt there were thousands of words choking her throat, and perhaps only distance, thousands of miles, could straighten them out. Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her. Somewhere in Pennsylvania they went through a section of pale sunshine, like a leak in the sky, but around noon, it began to rain.


Carol cursed, but the sound of the rain was pleasant, drumming irregularly on the windshield and the roof. "You know what I forgot?" Carol said. "A raincoat. I'll have to pick one up somewhere." And suddenly, Therese remembered she had forgotten the book she was reading. And there was a letter to Carol in it, one sheet that stuck out both ends of the book. Damn. It had been separate from her other books, and that was why she had left it behind, on the table by the bed. She hoped Florence wouldn't decide to look at it. She tried to remember if she had written Carol's name in the letter, and she couldn't. And the check. She had forgotten to tear that up, too. "Carol, did you get that check?" "That check I gave you?--You said you were going to tear it up." "I didn't. It's still under the cloth." "Well, it's not important," Carol said. When they stopped for gas, Therese tried to buy some stout, which Carol liked sometimes, at a grocery store next to the gas station, but they had only beer. She bought one can, because Carol didn't care for beer. Then they drove into a little road off the highway and stopped, and opened the box of sandwiches Richard's mother had put up. There was also a dill pickle, a mozzarella cheese, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. Therese had forgotten to ask for an opener, so she couldn't open the beer, but there was coffee in the thermos. She put the beer can on the floor in the back of the car. "Caviar. How very, very nice of them," Carol said, looking inside a sandwich. "Do you like caviar?" "No. I wish I did." "Why?" Therese watched Carol take a small bite of the sandwich from which she had removed the top slice of bread, a bite where the most caviar was. "Because people always like caviar so much when they do like it," Therese said. Carol smiled, and went on nibbling, slowly. "It's an acquired taste. Acquired tastes are always more pleasant--and hard to get rid of." Therese poured more coffee into the cup they were sharing. She was acquiring a taste for black coffee. "How nervous I was the first time I held this cup. You brought me coffee that day. Remember?" "I remember." "How'd you happen to put cream in it that day?" "I thought you'd like it. Why were you so nervous?" Therese glanced at her. "I was so excited about you," she said, lifting the cup. Then she looked at Carol again and saw a sudden stillness, like a shock, in Carol's face. Therese had seen it two or three times before when she had said something like that to Carol about the way she felt, or paid Carol an extravagant compliment. Therese could not tell if she were pleased or displeased. She watched Carol fold the wax paper around the other half of her sandwich.