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

Richard wanted her to go with him, and there was really nothing that stood in the way of her going with him. And Richard's friend Phil McElroy had written him that he might be able to get her a job with a theatre group next month. Therese had not met Phil yet, but she had very little faith that he could get her a job. She had combed New York since September, gone back and combed it a few times more, and she hadn't found anything. Who gave a job in the middle of the winter to a stage designer apprentice just beginning to be an apprentice? It didn't seem real either that she might be in Europe with Richard next summer, sitting with him in sidewalk cafes, walking with him in Aries, finding the places Van Gogh had painted, she and Richard choosing towns to stop in for a while and paint. It seemed less real these last few days since she had been working at the store. She knew what bothered her at the store. It was the sort of thing she wouldn't try to tell Richard. It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the waste actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done--and here it was the complicated procedures with money bags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from serving the store as efficiently as they might--the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. It reminded her of conversations at tables, on sofas, with people whose words seemed to hover over dead, unstirrable things, who never touched a string that played. And when one tried to touch a live string, looked at one with faces as masked as ever, making a remark so perfect in its banality that one could not even believe it might be subterfuge. And the loneliness, augmented by the fact one saw within the store the same faces day after day, the few faces one might have spoken to and never did, or never could. Not like the face on the passing bus that seems to speak, that is seen once and at least is gone forever. She would wonder, standing in the time-clock queue in the basement every morning, her eyes sorting out unconsciously the regular employees from the temporary ones, just how she had happened to land here--she had answered an ad, of course, but that didn't explain fate--and what was coming next instead of a stage-designing job. Her life was a series of zigzags. At nineteen, she was anxious. "You must learn to trust people, Therese. Remember that," Sister Alicia had often told her. And often, quite often, Therese tried to apply it.


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"Sister Alicia," Therese whispered carefully, the sibilant syllables comforting her. Therese sat up again and picked up her fork, because the cleanup boy was working in her direction. She could see Sister Alicia's face, bony and reddish like pink stone when the sunlight was on it, and the starched blue billow of her bosom. Sister Alicia's big bony figure coming around a corner in a hall, between the white enamel tables in the refectory, Sister Alicia in a thousand places, her small blue eyes always finding her out among the other girls, seeing her differently, Therese knew, from all the other girls, yet the thin pink lips always set in the same straight line. She could see Sister Alicia handing her the knitted green gloves wrapped in tissue, not smiling, only presenting them to her directly, with hardly a word, on her eighth birthday. Sister Alicia telling her with the same straight mouth that she must pass her arithmetic. Who else had cared if she passed her arithmetic? Therese had kept the green gloves at the bottom of her tin locker at school, for years after Sister Alicia had gone away to California. The white tissue had become limp and crackle-less like ancient cloth, and still she had not worn the gloves. Finally, they were too small to wear. Someone moved the sugar container, and the propped booklet fell flat. Therese looked at the pair of hands across from her, a woman's plump, aging hands, stirring her coffee, breaking a roll now with a trembling eagerness, daubing half the roll greedily into the brown gravy of the plate that was identical with Therese's. The hands were chapped, there was dirt in the parallel creases of the knuckles, but the right hand bore a conspicuous silver filigree ring set with a clear green stone, the left a gold wedding ring, and there were traces of red polish in the corners of the nails. Therese watched the hand carry a forkful of peas upward, and she did not have to look at the face to know what it would be like. It would be like all the fifty-year-old faces of women who worked at Frankenberg's, stricken with an ever-lasting exhaustion and terror, the eyes distorted behind glasses that enlarged or made smaller, the cheeks splotched with rouge that did not brighten the gray-ness underneath. Therese could not look. "You're a new girl, aren't you?" The voice was shrill and clear in the din, almost a sweet voice. "Yes," Therese said, and looked up. She remembered the face. It was the face whose exhaustion had made her see all the other faces. It was the woman Therese had seen creeping down the marble stairs from the mezzanine at about six thirty one evening when the store was empty, sliding her hands down the broad marble banister to take some of the weight from her bunioned feet. Therese had thought: she is not ill, she is not a beggar, she simply works here.


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

"Are you getting along all right?" And here was the woman smiling at her, with the same terrible creases under her eyes and around her mouth. Her eyes were actually alive now, and rather affectionate. "Are you getting along all right?" the woman repeated, for there was a great clatter of voices and dishes all around them. Therese moistened her lips. "Yes, thank you." "Do you like it here?" Therese nodded. "Finished?" A young man in a white apron gripped the woman's plate with an imperative thumb. The woman made a tremulous, dismissing gesture. She pulled her saucer of canned sliced peaches toward her. The peaches, like slimy little orange fishes, slithered over the edge of the spoon each time the spoon lifted, all except one which the woman would eat. "I'm on the third floor in the sweater department. If you want to ask me anything"--the woman said with nervous uncertainty, as if she were trying to deliver a message before they would be cut off or separated--"come up and talk to me sometime. My name is Mrs. Robichek, Mrs. Ruby Robichek, five forty-four." "Thank you very much," Therese said. And suddenly the woman's ugliness disappeared, because her reddish brown eyes behind the glasses were gentle, and interested in her. Therese could feel her heart beating, as if it had come to life. She watched the woman get up from the table, and watched her short, thick figure move away until it was lost in the crowd that waited behind the barricade. Therese did not visit Mrs. Robichek, but she looked for her every morning when the employees trickled into the building around a quarter to nine, and she looked for her in the elevators and in the cafeteria. She never saw her, but it was pleasant to have someone to look for in the store. It made all the difference in the world. Nearly every morning when she came to work on the seventh floor, Therese would stop for a moment to watch a certain toy train. The train was on a table by itself near the elevators. It was not a big fine train like the one that ran on the floor at the back of the toy department, but there was a fury in its tiny pumping pistons that the bigger trains did not possess. Its wrath and frustration on the closed oval track held Therese spellbound. Awrr rr rr rrgh! it said as it hurled itself blindly into the papier-mache tunnel. And Urr rr rr rrgh! as it emerged. The little train was always running when she stepped out of the elevator in the morning, and when she finished work in the evening. She felt it cursed the hand that threw its switch each day. In the jerk of its nose around the curves, in its wild dashes down the straight lengths of track, she could see a frenzied and futile pursuit of a tyrannical master.


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It drew three Pullman cars in which minuscule human figures showed flinty profiles at the windows, behind these an open boxcar of real miniature lumber, a boxcar of coal that was not real, and a caboose that snapped round the curves and clung to the fleeing train like a child to its mother's skirts. It was like something gone mad in imprisonment, something already dead that would never wear out, like the dainty, springy-footed foxes in the Central Park Zoo, whose complex footwork repeated and repeated as they circled their cages. This morning, Therese turned away quickly from the train, and went on toward the doll department where she worked. At five past nine, the great block-square toy department was coming to life. Green cloths were being pulled back from the long tables. Mechanical toys began to toss balls into the air and catch them, shooting galleries popped and their targets rotated. The table of barnyard animals squawked, cackled, and brayed. Behind Therese, a weary rat-tat-tat--tat-tat had started up, the drumbeats of the giant tin soldier who militantly faced the elevators and drummed all day. The arts and handicrafts table gave out a smell of fresh modeling clay, reminiscent of the art room at school when she was very small, and also of a kind of vault on the school grounds, rumored to be the real tomb of someone, that she had used to stick her nose into through iron bars. Mrs. Hendrickson, section manager of the doll department, was dragging dolls from the stock shelves and seating them, splay legged, atop the glass counters. Therese said hello to Miss Martucci, who stood at the counter counting the bills and coins from her moneybag with such concentration she could give Therese only a deeper nod of her rhythmically nodding head. Therese counted twenty-eight fifty from her own moneybag, recorded it on a slip of white paper for the sales receipts envelope, and transferred the money by denominations into her drawer in the cash register. By now, the first customers were emerging from the elevators, hesitating a moment with the bewildered, somewhat startled expressions that people always had on finding themselves in the toy department, then starting off on weaving courses. "Do you have the dolls that wet?" a woman asked her. "I'd like this doll, but with a yellow dress," a woman said, pushing a doll toward her, and Therese turned and got the doll she wanted out of a stock shelf. The woman had a mouth and cheeks like her mother's, Therese noticed, slightly pocked cheeks under dark-pink rouge, separated by a thin red mouth full of vertical lines. "Are the Drinksy-Wetsy dolls all this size?" There was no need of salesmanship. People wanted a doll, any doll, to give for Christmas.


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It was a matter of stooping, pulling out boxes in search of a doll with brown eyes instead of blue, calling Mrs. Hendrickson to open a showcase window with her key, which she did grudgingly if she were convinced the particular doll could not be found in stock, a matter of sidling down the aisle behind the counter to deposit a purchased doll on the mountain of boxes on the wrapping counter that was always growing, always toppling, no matter how often the stock boys came to take the packages away. Almost no children came to the counter. Santa Claus was supposed to bring the dolls, Santa Claus represented by the frantic faces and the clawing hands. Yet there must be a certain good will in all of them, Therese thought, even behind the cool, powdered faces of the women in mink and sable, who were generally the most arrogant, who hastily bought the biggest and most expensive dolls, the dolls with real hair and changes of clothing. There was surely love in the poor people, who waited their turn and asked quietly how much a certain doll cost, and shook their heads regretfully and turned away. Thirteen dollars and fifty cents for a doll only ten inches high. "Take it," Therese wanted to say to them. "It really is too expensive, but I'll give it to you. Frankenberg's won't miss it." But the women in the cheap cloth coats, the timid men huddled inside shabby mufflers would be gone, wistfully glancing at other counters as they made their way back to the elevators. If people came for a doll, they didn't want anything else. A doll was a special kind of Christmas gift, practically alive, the next thing to a baby. There were almost never any children, but now and again one would come up, generally a little girl, very rarely a little boy, her hand held firmly by a parent. Therese would show her the dolls she thought the child might like. She would be patient, and finally a certain doll would bring that metamorphosis in the child's face, that response to make-believe that was the purpose of all of it, and usually that was the doll the child went away with. Then one evening after work, Therese saw Mrs. Robichek in the coffee and doughnut shop across the street. Therese often stopped in the doughnut shop to get a cup of coffee before going home. Mrs. Robichek was at the back of the shop, at the end of the long curving counter, dabbling a doughnut into her mug of coffee. Therese pushed and thrust herself toward her, through the press of girls and coffee mugs and doughnuts. Arriving at Mrs. Robichek's elbow, she gasped, "Hello," and turned to the counter, as if a cup of coffee had been her only objective. "Hello," said Mrs. Robichek, so indifferently that Therese was crushed. Therese did not dare look at Mrs. Robichek again.


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And yet their shoulders were actually pressed together! Therese was half finished with her coffee, when Mrs. Robichek said dully, "I'm going to take the Independent subway. I wonder if we'll ever get out of here." Her voice was dreary, not as it had been the day in the cafeteria. Now she was like the hunched old woman Therese had seen creeping down the stairs. "We'll get out," Therese said reassuringly. Therese forced a path for both of them to the door. Therese was taking the Independent subway, too. She and Mrs. Robichek edged into the sluggish mob at the entrance of the subway, and were sucked gradually and inevitably down the stairs, like bits of floating waste down a drain. They found they both got off at the Lexington Avenue stop, too, though Mrs. Robichek lived on Fifty-fifth Street, just east of Third Avenue. Therese went with Mrs. Robichek into the delicatessen where she was going to buy something for her dinner. Therese might have bought something for her own dinner, but somehow she couldn't in Mrs. Robichek's presence. "Do you have food at home?" "No, I'm going to buy something later." "Why don't you come and eat with me? I'm all alone. Come on." Mrs. Robichek finished with a shrug, as if that were less effort than a smile. Therese's impulse to protest politely lasted only a moment. "Thank you. I'd like to come." Then she saw a cellophane wrapped cake on the counter, a fruit cake like a big brown brick topped with red cherries, and she bought it to give to Mrs. Robichek. It was a house like the one Therese lived in, only brown-stone and much darker and gloomier. There were no lights at all in the halls, and when Mrs. Robichek put on the light in the third-floor hall, Therese saw that the house was not very clean. Mrs. Robichek's room was not very clean either, and the bed was unmade. Did she get up as tired as she went to bed, Therese wondered. Therese was left standing in the middle of the room while Mrs. Robichek moved on dragging feet toward the kitchenette, carrying the bag of groceries she had taken from Therese's hands. Now that she was home, Therese felt, where no one could see her, she allowed herself to look as tired as she really was. Therese could never remember how it began. She could not remember the conversation just before and the conversation didn't matter, of course. What happened was that Mrs. Robichek edged away from her, strangely, as if she were in a trance, suddenly murmuring instead of talking, and lay down flat on her back on the unmade bed. It was the continued murmuring, the faint smile of apology, and the terrible, shocking ugliness of the short, heavy body with the bulging abdomen, and the apologetically tilted head still politely looking at her, that she could not make herself listen.


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"I used to have my own dress shop in Queens. Oh, a fine big one," Mrs. Robichek said, and Therese caught the note of boasting and began to listen despite herself, hating it. "You know, the dresses with the V at the waist and the little buttons running up. You know, three, five years ago--" Mrs. Robichek spread her stiff hands inarticulately across her waist. The short hands did not nearly span the front half of herself. She looked very old in the dim lamplight that made the shadows under her eyes black. "They called them Caterina dresses. You remember? I designed them. They come out of my shop in Queens. They famous, all right!" Mrs. Robichek got up from the bed and went to a small trunk that stood against the wall. She opened it, talking all the while, and began to drag out dresses of dark, heavy looking material, which she let fall on the floor. Mrs. Robichek held up a garnet-red velvet dress with a white collar and tiny white buttons that came to a V down the front of the narrow bodice. "See, I got lots of them. I made them. Other stores copied." Above the white collar of the dress, which she gripped with her chin, Mrs. Robichek's ugly head was tilted grotesquely. "You like this? I give you one. Come here. Come here, try one on." Therese was repelled by the thought of trying one on. She wished Mrs. Robichek would lie down and rest again, but obediently Therese got up, as if she had no will of her own, and came toward her. Mrs. Robichek pressed a black velvet dress upon Therese with trembling and importunate hands, and Therese suddenly knew how she would wait on people in the store, thrusting sweaters upon them helter skelter, for she could not have performed the same action in any other way. For four years, Therese remembered, Mrs. Robichek had said she had worked at Frankenberg's. "You like the green one better? Try it on." And in the instant Therese hesitated, she dropped it and picked up another, the dark-red one. "I sell five of them to girls at the store, but you I give one. Left over, but they still in style. You like this one better?" Therese liked the red better. She liked red, especially garnet-red, and she loved red velvet. Mrs. Robichek pressed her toward a corner where she could take off her clothing and lay it on an armchair. But she did not want the dress, did not want to be given it. It reminded her of being given clothing at the Home, hand-me-downs, because she was considered practically as one of the orphan girls, who made up half the school, who never got packages from outside. Therese pulled off her sweater and felt completely naked. She gripped her arms above the elbow, and her flesh there felt cold and sensation less.


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"I sewed," Mrs. Robichek was saying ecstatically to herself, "how I sewed, morning to night! I managed four girls. But my eyes got bad. One blind, this one. Put the dress on." She told Therese about the operation on the eye. It was not blind, only partially blind. But it was very painful. Glaucoma. It still gave her pain. That and her back. And her feet. Bunions. Therese realized she was relating all her troubles and her bad luck so that she, Therese, would understand why she had sunk so low as to work in a department store. "It fits?" Mrs. Robichek asked confidently. Therese looked in the mirror in the wardrobe door. It showed a long thin figure with a narrowish head that seemed ablaze at the outline, bright yellow fire running down to the bright red bar on either shoulder. The dress hung in straight draped folds down almost to her ankles. It was the dress of queens in fairy tales, of a red deeper than blood. She stepped back, and pulled in the looseness of the dress behind her, so it fitted her ribs and her waist, and she looked back at her own dark-hazel eyes in the mirror. Herself meeting herself. This was she, not the girl in the dull plaid skirt and the beige sweater, not the girl who worked in the doll department at Frankenberg's. "Do you like it?" Mrs. Robichek asked. Therese studied the surprisingly tranquil mouth, whose modeling she could see distinctly, though she wore no more lipstick than she might if someone had kissed her. She wished she could kiss the person in the mirror and make her come to life, yet she stood perfectly still, like a painted portrait. "If you like it, take it," Mrs. Robichek urged impatiently, watching from a distance, lurking against the wardrobe as saleswomen lurk while women try on coats and dresses in front of mirrors in department stores. But it wouldn't last, Therese knew. She would move, and it would be gone. Even if she kept the dress, it would be gone, because it was a thing of a minute, this minute. She didn't want the dress. She tried to imagine the dress in her closet at home, among her other clothing, and she couldn't. She began to unbutton the buttons, to unfasten the collar. "You like it, yes?" Mrs. Robichek asked as confidently as ever. "Yes," Therese said firmly, admitting it. She couldn't get the hook and eye unfastened at the back of the collar. Mrs. Robichek had to help her, and she could hardly wait. She felt as if she were being strangled. What was she doing here? How did she happen to have put on a dress like this? Suddenly Mrs. Robichek and her apartment were like a horrible dream that she had just realized she was dreaming. Mrs. Robichek was the hunchbacked keeper of the dungeon. And she had been brought here to be tantalized. "What's the matter?


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.10

A pin stick you?" Therese's lips opened to speak, but her mind was too far away. Her mind was at a distant point, at a distant vortex that opened on the scene in the dimly lighted, terrifying room where the two of them seemed to stand in desperate combat. And at the point of the vortex where her mind was, she knew it was the hopelessness that terrified her and nothing else. It was the hopelessness of Mrs. Robichek's ailing body and her job at the store, of her stack of dresses in the trunk, of her ugliness, the hopelessness of which the end of her life was entirely composed. And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real? It was the terror of this hopelessness that made her want to shed the dress and flee before it was too late, before the chains fell around her and locked. It might already be too late. As in a nightmare, Therese stood in the room in her white slip, shivering, unable to move. "What's the matter? You cold? It's hot." It was hot. The radiator hissed. The room smelled of garlic and the fustiness of old age, of medicines, and of the peculiar metallic smell that was Mrs. Robichek's own. Therese wanted to collapse in the chair where her skirt and sweater lay. Perhaps if she lay on her own clothing, she thought, it wouldn't matter. But she shouldn't lie down at all. If she did, she was lost. The chains would lock, and she would be one with the hunchback. Therese trembled violently. She was suddenly out of control. It was a chill, not merely fright or tiredness. "Sit down," Mrs. Robichek's voice said from a distance, and with shocking unconcern and boredom, as if she were quite used to girls feeling faint in her room, and from a distance, too, her dry, rough-tipped fingers pressed against Therese's arms. Therese struggled against the chair, knowing she was going to succumb to it, and even aware that she was attracted to it for that reason. She dropped into the chair, felt Mrs. Robichek tugging at her skirt to pull it from under her, but she couldn't make herself move. She was still at the same point of consciousness, however, still had the same freedom to think, even though the dark arms of the chair rose about her. Mrs. Robichek was saying, "You stand up too much at the store. It's hard these Christmases. I seen four of them. You got to learn how to save yourself a little." Creeping down the stairs clinging to the banister. Save herself by eating lunch in the cafeteria.


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

Taking shoes off bunioned feet like the row of women perched on the radiator in the women's room, fighting for a bit of the radiator to put a newspaper on and sit for five minutes. Therese's mind worked very clearly. It was astonishing how clearly it worked, though she knew she was simply staring into space in front of her, and that she could not have moved if she had wanted to. "You just tired, you baby," Mrs. 'Robichek said, tucking a woolen blanket about her shoulders in the chair. "You need to rest, standing up all day and standing up tonight, too." A line from Richard's Eliot came to Therese. That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all. She wanted to say it, but she could not make her lips move. Something sweet and burning was in her mouth. Mrs. Robichek was standing in front of her, spooning something from a bottle, and pushing the spoon between her lips. Therese swallowed it obediently, not caring if it were poison. She could have moved her lips now, could have gotten up from the chair, but she didn't want to move. Finally, she lay back in the chair, and let Mrs. Robichek cover her with the blanket, and she pretended to go to sleep. But all the while she watched the humpbacked figure moving about the room, putting away the things from the table, undressing for bed. She watched Mrs. Robichek remove a big laced corset and then a strap device that passed around her shoulders and partially down her back. Therese closed her eyes then in horror, pressed them tight shut, until the creaking of a spring and a long groaning sigh told her that Mrs. Robichek had gone to bed. But that was not all. Mrs. Robichek reached for the alarm clock and wound it, and without lifting her head from the pillow, groped with the clock for the straight chair beside the bed. In the dark, Therese could barely see her arm rise and fall four times before the clock found the chair. I shall wait fifteen minutes until she is asleep and then go, Therese thought. And because she was tired, she tensed herself to hold back that spasm, that sudden seizure that was like falling, that came every night long before sleep, yet heralded sleep. It did not come. So after what she thought was fifteen minutes, Therese dressed herself and went out the door silently. It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all. CHAPTER 2 "TERRY, remember that fellow Phil McElroy I told you about? The one with the stock company? Well, he's in town, and he says you've got a job in a couple of weeks." "A real job? Where?" "A show in the Village. Phil wants to see us tonight. I'll tell you about it when I see you.


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

I'll be over in about twenty minutes. I'm just leaving school now." Therese ran up the three flights of stairs to her room. She was in the middle of washing up, and the soap had dried on her face. She stared down at the orange washcloth in the basin. "A job!" she whispered to herself. The magic word. She changed into a dress, and hung a short silver chain with a St. Christopher medallion, a birthday present from Richard, around her neck, and combed her hair with a little water so it would look neater. Then she set some loose sketches and cardboard models just inside the closet where she could reach them easily when Phil McElroy asked to see them. No, I haven't had much actual experience, she would have to say, and she felt a sink of failure. She hadn't even an apprentice's job behind her, except that two-day job in Montclair, making the cardboard model that the amateur group had finally used, if that could be called a job. She had taken two courses in scenic design in New York, and she had read a lot of books. She could hear Phil McElroy--an intense and very busy young man, probably, a little annoyed at having come to see her for nothing--saying regretfully that she wouldn't do after all. But with Richard present, Therese thought, it wouldn't be quite as crushing as if she were alone. Richard had quit or been fired from about five jobs since she had known him. Nothing bothered Richard less than losing and finding jobs. Therese remembered being fired from the Pelican Press a month ago, and she winced. They hadn't even given her notice, and the only reason she had been fired, she supposed, was that her particular research assignment had been finished. When she had gone in to speak to Mr. Nussbaum, the president, about not being given notice, he had not known, or had pretended not to know, what the term meant. "Notiz?--Wuss?" he had said indifferently, and she had turned and fled, afraid of bursting into tears in his office. It was easy for Richard, living at home with a family to keep him cheerful. It was easier for him to save money. He had saved about two thousand in a two-year hitch in the Navy, and a thousand more in the year since. And how long would it take her to save the fifteen hundred dollars that a junior membership in the stage designers' union cost? After nearly two years in New York, she had only about five hundred dollars of it. "Pray for me," she said to the wooden Madonna on the bookshelf. It was the one beautiful thing in her apartment, the wooden Madonna she had bought the first month she had been in New York. She wished there were a better place for it in the room than on the ugly bookshelf.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.13

The bookshelf was like a lot of fruit crates stacked up and painted red. She longed for a bookshelf of natural-colored wood, smooth to the touch and sleek with wax. She went down to the delicatessen and bought six cans of beer and some blue cheese. Then when she came upstairs, she remembered the original purpose of her going to the store, to buy some meat for dinner. She and Richard had planned to have dinner in tonight. That might be changed now, but she didn't like to take it on her own initiative to alter plans where Richard was concerned, and she was about to run down again for the meat when Richard's long ring sounded. She pressed the release button. Richard came up the steps at a run, smiling. "Did Phil call?" "No," she said. "Good. That means he's coming." "When?" "In a few minutes, I guess. He probably won't stay long." "Does it really sound like a definite job?" "Phil says so," "Do you know what kind of play it is?" "I don't know anything except they need somebody for sets, and why not you?" Richard looked her over critically, smiling. "You look swell tonight. Don't be nervous, will you? It's just a little company in the Village, and you've probably got more talent than all the rest of them put together." She took the overcoat he had dropped on a chair and hung it in the closet. Under the overcoat was a roll of charcoal paper he had brought from art school. "Did you do something good today?" she asked. "So so. That's something I want to work on at home," he said carelessly. "We had that redheaded model today, the one I like." Therese wanted to see his sketch, but she knew Richard probably didn't think it good enough. Some of his first paintings were good, like the lighthouse in blues and blacks that hung over her bed, that he had done when he was in the Navy and just starting to paint. But his life drawing was not good yet, and Therese doubted that it ever would be. There was a new charcoal smudge all over one knee of his tan cotton trousers. He wore a shirt inside the red and black checked shirt, and buckskin moccasins that made his big feet look like shapeless bear paws. He was more like a lumberjack or a professional athlete of some sort, Therese thought, than anything else. She could more easily imagine him with an ax in his hand than a paintbrush. She had seen him with an ax once, cutting wood in the yard back of his house in Brooklyn. If he didn't prove to his family that he was making some progress in his painting, he would probably have to go into his father's bottled gas business this summer, and open the branch in Long Island that his father wanted him to. "Will you have to work this Saturday?"


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she asked, still afraid to talk about the job. "Hope not. Are you free?" She remembered now, she was not. "I'm free Friday," she said resignedly. "Saturday's a late day." Richard smiled. "It's a conspiracy." He took her hands and drew her arms around his waist, his restless prowling of the room at an end. "Maybe Sunday? The family asked if you could come out for dinner, but we don't have to stay long. I could borrow a truck and we could drive somewhere in the afternoon." "All right." She liked that and so did Richard, sitting up in front of the big empty gas tank, and driving anywhere, as free as if they rode a butterfly. She took her arms from around Richard. It made her feel self-conscious and foolish, as if she stood embracing the stem of a tree, to have her arms around Richard. "I did buy a steak for tonight, but they stole it at the store." "Stole it? From where?" ' "Off the shelf where we keep our handbags. The people they hire for Christmas don't get any regular lockers." She smiled at it now, but this afternoon, she had almost wept. Wolves, she had thought, a pack of wolves, stealing a bloody bag of meat just because it was food, a free meal. She had asked all the salesgirls if they had seen it, and they had all denied it. Bringing meat into the store wasn't allowed, Mrs. Hendrickson had said indignantly. But what was one to do, if all the meat stores closed at six o'clock? Richard lay back on the studio couch. His mouth was thin and its line uneven, half of it downward slanting, giving an ambiguity to his expression, a look sometimes of humor, sometimes of bitterness, a contradiction that his rather blank and frank blue eyes did nothing to clarify. He said slowly and mockingly, "Did you go down to the lost and found? Lost, one pound of beefsteak. Answers to the name Meatball." Therese smiled, looking over the shelves in her kitchenette. "Do you think you're joking? Mrs. Hendrickson did tell me to go down to the lost and found." Richard gave a hooting laugh and stood up. "There's a can of corn here and I've got lettuce for a salad. And there's bread and butter. Shall I go get some frozen pork chops?" Richard reached a long arm over her shoulder and took the square of pumpernickel bread from the shelf. "You call that bread? It's fungus. Look at it, blue as a mandrill's behind. Why don't you eat bread once you buy it?" "I use that to see in the dark with. But since you don't like it--" She took it from him and dropped it into the garbage bag. "That wasn't the bread I meant anyway." "Show me the bread you meant." The doorbell shrieked right beside the refrigerator, and she jumped for the button. "That's them," Richard said. There were two young men.


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Richard introduced them as Phil McElroy and his brother, Dannie. Phil was not at all what Therese had expected. He did not look intense or serious or even particularly intelligent. And he scarcely glanced at her when they were introduced. Dannie stood with his coat over his arm until Therese took it from him. She could not find an extra hanger for Phil's coat, and Phil took it back and tossed it onto a chair, half on the floor. It was an old dirty polo coat. Therese served the beer and cheese and crackers, listening all the while for Phil and Richard's conversation to turn to the job. But they were talking about things that had happened since they had seen each other last in Kingston, New York. Richard had worked for two weeks last summer on some murals in a roadhouse there, where Phil had had a job as a waiter. "Are you in the theatre, too?" she asked Dannie. "No, I'm not," Dannie said. He seemed shy, or perhaps bored and impatient to leave. He was older than Phil and a little more heavily built. His dark-brown eyes moved thoughtfully from object to object in the room. "They haven't got anything yet but a director and three actors," Phil said to Richard, leaning back on the couch. "A fellow I worked with in Philly once is directing. Raymond Cortes. If I recommend you, it's a cinch you'll get in," he said with a glance at Therese. "He promised me the part of the second brother in the play. It's called Small Rain." "A comedy?" Therese asked. "Comedy. Three acts. Have you done any sets so far by yourself?" "How many sets will it take?" Richard asked, just as she was about to answer. "Two at the most; and they'll probably get by on one. Georgia Halloran has the lead. Did you happen to see that Sartre thing they did in the fall down there? She was in that." "Georgia?" Richard smiled. "Whatever happened with her and Rudy?" Disappointedly, Therese heard their conversation settling down on Georgia and Rudy and other people she didn't know. Georgia might have been one of the girls Richard had had an affair with, Therese supposed. He had once mentioned about five. She couldn't remember any of their names except Celia. "Is this one of your sets?" Dannie asked her, looking at the cardboard model that hung on the wall, and when she nodded, he got up to see it. And now, Richard and Phil were talking about a man who owed Richard money from somewhere. Phil said he had seen the man last night in the San Remo bar. Phil's elongated face and his clipped hair was like an El Greco, Therese thought, yet the same features in his brother looked like an American Indian. And the way Phil talked completely destroyed the illusion of El Greco.


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He talked like any of the people one saw in Village bars, young people who were supposed to be writers or actors, and who usually did nothing. "It's very attractive," Dannie said, peering behind one of the little suspended figures. "It's a model for Petrushka. The fair scene," she said, wondering if he would know the ballet. He might be a lawyer, she thought, or even a doctor. There were yellowish stains on his fingers, not the stains of cigarettes. Richard said something about being hungry, and Phil said he was starving, but neither of them ate any of the cheese that was in front of them. "We're due in half an hour, Phil," Dannie repeated. Then a moment later, they were all standing up, putting on their coats. "Let's eat out somewhere, Terry," Richard said. "How about the Czech place up on Second?" "All right," she said, trying to sound agreeable. This was the end of it, she supposed, and nothing was definite. She had an impulse to ask Phil a crucial question, but she didn't. And on the street, they began to walk downtown instead of up. Richard walked with Phil, and only glanced back once or twice at her, as if to see if she were still there. Dannie held her arm at the curbs, and across the patches of dirty slippery stuff, neither snow nor ice, that were the remains of a snowfall three weeks ago. "Are you a doctor?" she asked Dannie. "Physicist," Dannie replied. "I'm taking graduate courses at N. Y. U. now." He smiled at her, but the conversation stopped there for a while. Then he said, "That's a long way from stage designing, isn't it." She nodded. "Quite a long way." She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn't, because what would it matter if he did or didn't? "Do you know where we're going?" she asked. He smiled broadly, showing square white teeth. "Yes. To the subway. But Phil wants a bite somewhere first." They were walking down Third Avenue. And Richard was talking to Phil about their going to Europe next summer. Therese felt a throb of embarrassment as she walked along behind Richard, like a dangling appendage, because Phil and Dannie would naturally think she was Richard's mistress. She wasn't his mistress, and Richard didn't expect her to be in Europe. It was a strange relationship, she supposed, and who would believe it? Because from what she had seen in New York, everybody slept with everybody they had dates with more than once or twice. And the two people she had gone out with before Richard--Angelo and Harry--had certainly dropped her when they discovered she didn't care for an affair with them. She had tried to have an affair with Richard three or four times in the year she had known him, though with negative results; Richard said he preferred to wait.


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He meant wait until she cared more for him. Richard wanted to marry her, and she was the first girl he had ever proposed to, he said. She knew he would ask her again before they left for Europe, but she didn't love him enough to marry him. And yet she would be accepting most of the money for the trip from him, she thought with a familiar sense of guilt. Then the image of Mrs. Semco, Richard's mother, came before her, smiling approval on them, on their marrying, and Therese involuntarily shook her head. "What's the matter?" Dannie asked. "Nothing." "Are you cold?" "No. Not at all." But he tucked her arm closer anyway. She was cold, and felt rather miserable in general. It was the half dangling, half cemented relationship with Richard, she knew. They saw more and more of each other, without actually growing closer. She still wasn't in love with him, not after ten months, and maybe she never could be, though the fact remained that she liked him better than any one person she had ever known, certainly any man. Sometimes she thought she was in love with him, waking up in the morning and looking blankly at the ceiling, remembering suddenly that she knew him, remembering suddenly his face shining with affection for her because of some gesture of affection on her part, before her sleepy emptiness had time to fill up with the realization of what time it was, what day, what she had to do, the soldier substance that made up one's life. But the feeling bore no resemblance to what she had read about love. Love was supposed to be a kind of blissful insanity. Richard didn't act blissfully insane either, in fact. "Oh, everything's called St. Germain-des-Pres!" Phil shouted with a wave of his hand. "I'll give you some addresses before you go. How long do you think you'll be there?" A truck with rattling, slapping chains turned in front of them, and Therese couldn't hear Richard's answer. Phil went into the Riker's shop on the corner of Fifty-third Street. "We don't have to eat here. Phil just wants to stop a minute." Richard squeezed her shoulder as they went in the door. "It's a great day, isn't it, Terry? Don't you feel it?- It's your first real job!" Richard was convinced, and Therese tried hard to realize it might be a great moment. But she couldn't recapture even the certainty she remembered when she had looked at the orange washcloth in the basin after Richard's telephone call. She leaned against the stool next to Phil's, and Richard stood beside her, still talking to him. The glaring white light on the white tile walls and the floor seemed brighter than sunlight, for here there were no shadows. She could see every shiny black hair in Phil's eyebrows, and the rough and smooth spots on the pipe Dannie held in his hand, unlighted.


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She could see the details of Richard's hand that hung limply out of his overcoat sleeve, and she was conscious again of their incongruity with his limber, long-boned body. They were thick, even plump looking hands, and they moved in the same inarticulate, blind way if they picked up a salt shaker or the handle of a suitcase. Or stroked her hair, she thought. The insides of his hands were extremely soft, like a girl's, and a little moist. Worst of all, he generally forgot to clean his nails, even when he took the trouble to dress up. Therese had said something about it a couple of times to him, but she felt now that she couldn't say anything more without irritating him. Dannie was watching her. She was held by his thoughtful eyes for a moment, then she looked down. Suddenly she knew why she couldn't recapture the feeling she had before: she simply didn't believe Phil McElroy could get her a job on his recommendation. "Are you worried about that job?" Dannie was standing beside her. "No." "Don't be. Phil can give you some tips." He poked his pipe stem between his lips, and seemed to be about to say something else, but he turned away. She half listened to Phil's conversation with Richard. They were talking about boat reservations. Dannie said, "By the way, the Black Cat Theatre's only a couple of blocks from Morton Street where I live. Phil's staying with me, too. Come and have lunch with us, will you?" "Thanks very much. I'd like to." It probably wouldn't be, she thought, but it was nice of him to ask her. "What do you think, Terry?" Richard said. "Is March too soon to go to Europe? It's better to go early than wait till everything's so crowded over there." "March sounds all right," she said. "There's nothing to stop us, is there? I don't care if I don't finish the winter term at school." "No, there's nothing to stop us." It was easy to say. It was easy to believe all of it, and just as easy not to believe any of it. But if it were all true, if the job were real, the play a success, and she could go to France with at least a single achievement behind her--Suddenly, Therese reached out for Richard's arm, slid her hand down it to his fingers. Richard was so surprised, he stopped in the middle of a sentence. The next afternoon, Therese called the Watkins number that Phil had given her. A very efficient sounding girl answered. Mr. Cortes was not there, but they had heard about her through Phil McElroy. The job was hers, and she would start work December twenty-eighth at fifty dollars a week. She could come in beforehand and show Mr. Cortes some of her work, if she wanted to, but it wasn't necessary, not if Mr. McElroy had recommended her so highly.


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Therese called up Phil to thank him, but nobody answered the telephone. She wrote him a note, in care of the Black Cat Theatre.


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Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 3 "ROBERTA WALLS, the youngest D. S. in the toy department, paused just long enough in her midmorning flurry to whisper to Therese, "If we don't sell this twenty-four ninety-five suitcase today, it'll be marked down Monday and the department'll take a two-dollar loss!" Roberta nodded at the brown pasteboard suitcase on the counter, thrust her load of gray boxes into Miss Martucci's hands, and hurried on. Down the long aisle, Therese watched the salesgirls make way for Roberta. Roberta flew up and down counters and from one corner of the floor to the other, from nine in the morning until six at night. Therese had heard that Roberta was trying for another promotion. She wore red harlequin glasses, and unlike the other girls, always pushed the sleeves of her green smock up above her elbows. Therese saw her flit across an aisle and stop Mrs. Hendrickson with an excited message delivered with gestures. Mrs. Hendrickson nodded agreement, Roberta touched her shoulder familiarly, and Therese felt a small start of jealousy. Jealousy, though she didn't care in the least for Mrs. Hendrickson, even disliked her. "Do you have a doll made of cloth that cries?" Therese didn't know of such a doll in stock, but the woman was positive Frankenberg's had it, because she had seen it advertised. Therese pulled out another box, from the last spot it might possibly be, and it wasn't. "Wotcha lookin' fuh?" Miss Santini asked her. Miss Santini had a cold. "A doll made of cloth that cries," Therese said. Miss Santini had been especially courteous to her lately. Therese remembered the stolen meat. But now Miss Santini only lifted her eyebrows, stuck out her bright red underlip with a shrug, and I went on. "Made of cloth? With pigtails?" Miss Martucci, a lean, straggly haired Italian girl with a long nose like a wolf's looked at Therese. "Don't let Roberta hear you," Miss Martucci said with a glance around her. "Don't let anybody hear you, but those dolls are in the basement." "Oh." The upstairs toy department was at war with the basement toy department. The tactics were to force the customer into buying on the seventh floor, where everything was more expensive. Therese told the woman the dolls were in the basement. "Try and sell this today," Miss Davis said to her as she sidled past, slapping the battered imitation alligator suitcase with her red-nailed hand. Therese nodded. "Do you have any stiff-legged dolls? One that stands up?" Therese looked at the middle-aged woman with the crutches that thrust her shoulders high. Her face was different from all the other faces across the counter, gentle, with a certain cognizance in the eyes as if they actually saw what they looked at. "That's a little bigger than I wanted," the woman said when Therese showed her a doll. "I'm sorry. Do you have a smaller one?" "I think so."


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Therese went farther down the aisle, and was aware that the woman followed her on her crutches, circling the press of people at the counter, so as to save Therese walking back with the doll. Suddenly Therese wanted to take infinite pains, wanted to find exactly the doll the woman was looking for. But the next doll wasn't quite right, either. The doll didn't have real hair. Therese tried in another place and found the same doll with real hair. It even cried when it bent over. It was exactly what the woman wanted. Therese laid the doll down carefully in fresh tissue in a new box. "That's just perfect," the woman repeated. "I'm sending this to a friend in Australia who's a nurse. She graduated from nursing school with me, so I made a little uniform like ours to dress a doll in. Thank you so much. And I wish you a merry Christmas!" "Merry Christmas to you!" Therese said, smiling. It was the first merry Christmas she had heard from a customer. "Have you had your relief yet, Miss Belivet?" Mrs. Hendrickson asked her, as sharply as if she reproached her. Therese hadn't had it. She got her pocketbook and the novel she was reading from the shelf under the wrapping counter. The novel was Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which Richard was anxious for her to read. How anyone could have read Gertrude Stein without reading any Joyce, Richard said, he didn't know. She felt a bit inferior when Richard talked with her about books. She had browsed all over the bookshelves at school, but the library assembled by the Order of St. Margaret had been far from catholic, she realized now, though it had included such unexpected writers as Gertrude Stein. The hall to the employees' rest rooms was blocked by big shipping carts piled high with boxes. Therese waited to get through. "Pixie!" one of the shipping cart boys shouted to her. Therese smiled a little because it was silly. Even down in the cloakroom in the basement, they yelled "Pixie!" at her morning and night. "Pixie, waiting for me?" the raw-edged voice roared again, over the crash and bump of the stock carts. She got through, and dodged a shipping cart that hurtled toward her with a clerk aboard. "No smoking here!" shouted a man's voice, the very growly voice of an executive, and the girls ahead of Therese who had lighted cigarettes blew their smoke in the air and said loudly in chorus just before they reached the refuge of the women's room, "Who does he think he is, Mr. Frankenberg?" "Yoo-hoo! Pixie!" "Ah'm juss bahdin mah tahm, Pixie!" A shipping cart skidded in front of her, and she struck her leg against its metal corner. She went on without looking down at her leg, though pain began to blossom there, like a slow explosion.


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She went on into the different chaos of women's voices, women's figures, and the smell of disinfectant. Blood was running to her shoe, and her stocking was torn in a jagged hole. She pushed some skin back into place, and feeling sickened, leaned against the wall and held to a water pipe. She stayed there a few seconds, listening to the confusion of voices among the girls at the mirror. Then she wet toilet paper and daubed until the red was gone from her stocking, but the red kept coming. "It's all right, thanks," she said to a girl who bent over her for a moment, and the girl went away. Finally, there was nothing to do but buy a sanitary napkin from the slot machine. She used a little of the cotton from inside it, and tied it on her leg with the gauze. And then it was time to go back to the counter. Their eyes met at the same instant, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression as if half her mind were on whatever it was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, Therese felt sure the woman would come to her. Then Therese saw her walk slowly toward the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer. "May I see one of those valises?" the woman asked, and leaned on the counter, looking down through the glass top. The damaged valise lay only a yard away. Therese turned around and got a box from the bottom of a stack, a box that had never been opened. When she stood up, the woman was looking at her with the calm gray eyes that Therese could neither quite face nor look away from. "That's the one I like, but I don't suppose I can have it, can I?" she said, nodding toward the brown valise in the show window behind Therese. Her eyebrows were blond, curving around the bend of her forehead. Her mouth was as wise as her eyes, Therese thought, and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets. "Yes," Therese said. Therese went back to the stockroom for the key. The key hung just inside the door on a nail, and no one was allowed to touch it but Mrs. Hendrickson.


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Miss Davis saw her and gasped, but Therese said, "I need it," and went out. She opened the show window and took the suitcase down and laid it on the counter. "You're giving me the one on display?" She smiled as if she understood. She said casually, leaning both forearms on the counter, studying the contents of the valise, "They'll have a fit, won't they?" "It doesn't matter," Therese said. "All right. I'd like this. That's C. O. D. And what about clothes? Do these come with it?" There were cellophane wrapped clothes in the lid of the suitcase, with a price tag on them. Therese said, "No, they're separate. If you want doll clothes--these aren't as good as the clothes in the dolls' clothing department across the aisle." "Oh! Will this get to New Jersey before Christmas?" "Yes, it'll arrive Monday." If it didn't, Therese thought, she would deliver it herself. "Mrs. H. F. Aird," the woman's soft, distinct voice said, and Therese began to print it on the green C. O. D. slip. The name, the address, the town appeared beneath the pencil point like a secret Therese would never forget, like something stamping itself in her memory forever. "You won't make any mistakes, will you?" the woman's voice asked. Therese noticed the woman's perfume for the first time, and instead of replying, could only shake her head. She looked down at the slip to which she was laboriously adding the necessary figures, and wished with all her power to wish anything, that the woman would simply continue her last words and say, "Are you really so glad to have met me? Then why can't we see each other again? Why can't we even have lunch together today?" Her voice was so casual and she might have said it so easily. But nothing came after the "will you?" nothing to relieve the shame of having been recognized as a new salesgirl, hired for the Christmas rush, inexperienced and liable to make mistakes. Therese slid the book toward her for her signature. Then the woman picked up her gloves from the counter, and turned, and slowly went away, and Therese watched the distance widen and widen. Her ankles below the fur of the coat were pale and thin. She wore plain black suede shoes with high heels. "That's a C. O. D. order?" Therese looked into Mrs. Hendrickson's ugly, meaningless face. "Yes, Mrs. Hendrickson." "Don't you know you're supposed to give the customer the strip at the top? How do you expect them to claim the purchase when it comes? Where's the customer? Can you catch her?" "Yes." She was only ten feet away, across the aisle at the dolls' clothing counter.


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And with the green slip in her hand, she hesitated a moment, then carried it around the counter, forcing herself to advance, because she was suddenly abashed by her appearance, the old blue skirt, the cotton blouse-- whoever assigned the green smocks had missed her--and the humiliating flat shoes. And the horrible bandage through which the blood was probably showing again. "I'm supposed to give you this," she said, laying the miserable little scrap beside the hand on the edge of the counter, and turning away. Behind the counter again, Therese faced the stock boxes, sliding them thoughtfully out and back, as if she were looking for something. Therese waited until the woman must have finished at the counter and gone away. She was conscious of the moments passing like irrevocable time, irrevocable happiness, for in these last seconds, she might turn and see the face she would never see again. She was conscious, too, dimly now and with a different horror, of the old, unceasing voices of customers at the counter calling for assistance, calling to her, and of the low, humming rrrrr of the little train, part of the storm that was closing in and separating her from the woman. But when she turned finally, she looked directly into the gray eyes again. The woman was walking toward her, and as if time had turned back, she leaned on the counter again and gestured to a doll and asked to see it. Therese got the doll and dropped it with a clatter on the glass counter, and the woman glanced at her. "Sounds unbreakable," the woman said. Therese smiled. "Yes, I'll get this, too," she said in the quiet slow voice that made a pool of silence in the tumult around them. She gave her name and address again, and Therese took it slowly from her lips, as if she did not already know it by heart. "That really will arrive before Christmas?" "It'll come Monday at the latest. That's two days before Christmas." "Good. I don't mean to make you nervous." Therese tightened the knot in the string she had put around the doll box, and the knot mysteriously came open. "No," she said. In an embarrassment so profound there was nothing left to defend, she got the knot tied under the woman's eyes. "It's a rotten job, isn't it?" "Yes. " Therese folded the C. O. D. slips around the white string, and fastened them with a pin. "So forgive me for complaining." Therese glanced at her, and the sensation returned that she knew her from somewhere, that the woman was about to reveal herself, and they would both laugh then, and understand. "You're not complaining. But I know it'll get there." Therese looked across the aisle, where the woman had stood before, and saw the tiny slip of green paper still on the counter. "You really are supposed to keep that C. O. D. slip."


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Her eyes changed with her smile now, brightened with a gray, colorless fire that Therese almost knew, almost could place. "I've gotten things before without them. I always lose them." She bent to sign the second C. O. D. slip. Therese watched her go away with a step as slow as when she had come, saw her look at another counter as she passed it, and slap her black gloves across her palm twice, three times. Then she disappeared into an elevator. And Therese turned to the next customer. She worked with an indefatigable patience, but her figures on the sales slips bore faint tails where the pencil jerked convulsively. She went to Mr. Logan's office, which seemed to take hours, but when she looked at the clock, only fifteen minutes had passed, and now it was time to wash up for lunch. She stood stiffly in front of the rotating towel, drying her hands, feeling unattached to anything or anyone, isolated. Mr. Logan had asked her if she wanted to stay on after Christmas. She could have a job downstairs in the cosmetic department. Therese had said no. In the middle of the afternoon, she went down to the first floor and bought a card in the greeting-card department. It was not a very interesting card, but at least it was simple, in plain blue and gold. She stood with the pen poised over the card, thinking of what she might have written--"You are magnificent" or even "I love you"--finally writing quickly the excruciatingly dull and impersonal: "Special salutations from Frankenberg's." She added her number 645-A in lieu of a signature. Then she went down to the post office in the basement, hesitated at the letter drop, losing her nerve suddenly at the sight of her hand holding the letter half in the slot. What would happen? She was going to leave the store in a few days, anyway. What would Mrs. H. F. Aird care? The blond eyebrows would perhaps lift a little, she would look at the card a moment, then forget it. Therese dropped it. On the way home, an idea came to her for a stage set, a house interior with more depth than breadth, with a kind of vortex down the center, from which rooms would go off on either side. She wanted to begin the cardboard model that night, but at last she only elaborated on her pencil sketch of it. She wanted to see someone--not Richard, not Jack or Alice Kelly downstairs, maybe Stella, Stella Overton, the stage designer she had met during her first weeks in New York. Therese had not seen her, she realized, since she had come to the cocktail party Therese had given before she left her other apartment. Stella was one of the people who didn't know where she lived now.


The Price of Salt -- Highsmith, Patricia -- d3477ce58404d2d159337a1eb92fe0db -- Anna’s Archive.7

Therese was on her way down to the telephone in the hall, when she heard the short quick rings of her doorbell that meant there was a call for her. "Thank you," Therese called down to Mrs. Osborne. It was Richard's usual call around nine o'clock. Richard wanted to know if she felt like seeing a movie tomorrow night. It was the movie at the Sutton they still hadn't seen. Therese said she wasn't doing anything, but she wanted to finish a pillow cover. Alice Kelly had said she could come down and use her sewing machine tomorrow night. And besides, she had to wash her hair. "Wash it tonight and see me tomorrow night," Richard said. "It's too late. I can't sleep if my head's wet." "I'll wash it tomorrow night. We won't use the tub, just a couple of buckets." She smiled. "I think we'd better not." She had fallen into the tub the time Richard had washed her hair. Richard had been imitating the tub drain with writhings and gluggings, and she had laughed so hard, her feet slipped on the floor. "Well, what about that art show Saturday? It's open Saturday afternoon." "But Saturday's the day I have to work to nine. I can't get away till nine thirty." "Oh. Well, I'll stay around school and meet you on the corner about nine thirty. Forty-fourth and Fifth. All right?" "All right." "Anything new today?" "No. With you?" "No. I'm going to see about boat reservations tomorrow. I'll call you tomorrow night." Therese did not telephone Stella at all. The next day was Friday, the last Friday before Christmas, and the busiest day Therese had known since she had been working at Frankenberg's, though everyone said tomorrow would be worse. People were pressed alarmingly hard against the glass counters. Customers she started to wait on got swept away and lost in the gluey current that filled the aisle. It was impossible to imagine any more people crowding onto the floor, but the elevators kept emptying people out. "I don't see why they don't close the doors downstairs!" Therese remarked to Miss Martucci, when they were both stooping by a stock shelf. "What?" Miss Martucci answered, unable to hear. "Miss Belivet!" Somebody yelled, and a whistle blew. It was Mrs. Hendrickson. She had been using a whistle to get attention today. Therese made her way toward her past salesgirls and through empty boxes on the floor. "You're wanted on the telephone," Mrs. Hendrickson told her, pointing to the telephone by the wrapping table. Therese made a helpless gesture that Mrs. Hendrickson had no time to see. It was impossible to hear anything on a telephone now. And she knew it was probably Richard being funny. He had called her once before. "Hello?" she said. "Hello, is this co-worker six forty-five A, Therese Belivet?" the operator's voice said over clickings and buzzings. "Go ahead." "Hello?" she repeated, and barely heard an answer.


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

She dragged the telephone off the table and into the stockroom a few feet away. The wire did not quite reach, and she had to stoop on the floor. "Hello?" "Hello," the voice said. "Well--I wanted to thank you for the Christmas card." "Oh. Oh, you're--" "This is Mrs. Aird," she said. "Are you the one who sent it? Or not." "Yes," Therese said, rigid with guilt suddenly, as if she had been caught in a crime. She closed her eyes and wrung the telephone, seeing the intelligent, smiling eyes again as she had seen them yesterday. "I'm very sorry if it annoyed you," Therese said mechanically, in the voice with which she spoke to customers. The woman laughed. "This is very funny," she said casually, and Therese caught the same easy slur in her voice that she had heard yesterday, loved yesterday, and she smiled herself. "Is it? Why?" "You must be the girl in the toy department." "Yes." "It was extremely nice of you to send me the card," the woman said politely. Then Therese understood. She had thought it was from a man, some other clerk who had waited on her. "It was very nice waiting on you," Therese said. "Was it? Why?" She might have been mocking Therese. "Well--since it's Christmas, why don't we meet for a cup of coffee, at least? Or a drink." Therese flinched as the door burst open and a girl came into the room, stood right in front of her. "Yes--I'd like that." "When?" the woman asked. "I'm coming in to New York tomorrow in the morning. Why don't we make it for lunch? Do you have any time tomorrow?" "Of course. I have an hour, from twelve to one," Therese said, staring at the girl's feet in front of her in splayed flat moccasins, the back of her heavy ankles and calves in lisle stockings, shifting like an elephant's legs. "Shall I meet you downstairs at the Thirty-fourth Street entrance at about twelve?" "All right. I--" Therese remembered now she went to work at one sharp tomorrow. She had the morning off. She put her arm up to ward off the avalanche of boxes the girl in front of her had pulled down from the shelf. The girl herself teetered back onto her. "Hello?" she shouted over the noise of tumbling boxes. "I'm sow--ry," Mrs. Zabriskie said irritatedly, plowing out the door again. "Hello?" Therese repeated. The line was dead.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 4 "HELLO," the woman said, smiling. "Hello." "What's the matter?" "Nothing." At least, the woman had recognized her, Therese thought. "Do you have any preference as to restaurants?" the woman asked on the sidewalk. "No. It'd be nice to find a quiet one, but there aren't any in this neighborhood." "You haven't time for the East Side? No, you haven't, if you've only got an hour. I think I know a place a couple of blocks west on this street. Do you think you have time?" "Yes, certainly." It was twelve fifteen already. Therese knew she would be terribly late, and it didn't matter at all. They did not bother to talk on the way. Now and then the crowds made them separate, and once the woman glanced at Therese, across a pushcart full of dresses, smiling. They went into a restaurant with wooden rafters and white tablecloths, that miraculously was quiet, and not half filled. They sat down in a large wooden booth, and the woman ordered an old-fashioned without sugar, and invited Therese to have one, or a sherry, and when Therese hesitated, sent the waiter away with the order. She took off her hat and ran her fingers through her blond hair, once on either side, and looked at Therese. "And where did you get the nice idea of sending me a Christmas card?" "I remembered you," Therese said. She looked at the small pearl earrings, that were somehow no lighter than her hair itself, or her eyes. Therese thought her beautiful, though her face was a blur now because she could not bear to look at it directly. She got something out of her handbag, a lipstick and compact, and Therese looked at her lipstick case--golden like a jewel, and shaped like a sea chest. She wanted to look at the woman's mouth, but the gray eyes so close drove her away, flickering over her like fire. "You haven't been working there very long, have you?" "No. Only about two weeks." "And you won't be much longer--probably." She offered Therese a cigarette. Therese took one. "No. I'll have another job." She leaned toward the lighter the woman was holding for her, toward the slim hand with the oval red nails and a sprinkling of freckles on its back. "And do you often get inspired to send post cards?" "Post cards?" "Christmas cards?" She smiled at herself. "Of course not," Therese said. "Well, here's to Christmas." She touched Therese's glass and drank. "Where do you live? In Manhattan?" Therese told her. On Sixty-third Street. Her parents were dead, she said. She had lived in New York the past two years, and before that at a school in New Jersey. Therese did not tell her that the school was semi-religious, Episcopalian. She did not mention Sister Alicia whom she adored and thought of so often, with her pale-blue eyes and her ugly nose and her loving sternness.


Because since yesterday morning, Sister Alicia had been thrust far away, far below the woman who sat opposite her. "And what do you do in your spare time?" The lamp on the table made her eyes silvery, full of liquid light. Even the pearl at her earlobe looked alive, like a drop of water that a touch might destroy. "I--" Should she tell her she usually worked on her stage models? Sketched and painted sometimes, carved things like cats' heads and tiny figures to go in her ballet sets, but that she liked best to take long walks practically anywhere, liked best simply to dream? Therese felt she did not have to tell her. She felt the woman's eyes could not look at anything without understanding completely. Therese took some more of her drink, liking it, though it was like the woman to swallow, she thought, terrifying, and strong. The woman nodded to the waiter, and two more drinks arrived. "I like this." "What?" Therese asked. "I like it that someone sent me a card, someone I didn't know. It's the way things should be at Christmas. And this year I like it especially." "I'm glad." Therese smiled, wondering if she were serious. "You're a very pretty girl," she said. "And very sensitive, too, aren't you?" She might have been speaking of a doll, Therese thought, so casually had she told her she was pretty. "I think you are magnificent," Therese said with the courage of the second drink, not caring how it might sound, because she knew the woman knew anyway. She laughed, putting her head back. It was a sound more beautiful than music. It made a little wrinkle at the corner of her eyes, and it made her purse her red lips as she drew on her cigarette. She gazed past Therese for a moment, her elbows on the table and her chin propped up on the hand that held her cigarette. There was a long line, from the waist of her fitted black suit up to the widening shoulder, and then the blond head with the fine, unruly hair held high. She was about thirty or thirty-two, Therese thought, and her daughter, for whom she had bought the valise and the doll, would be perhaps six or eight. Therese could imagine the child, blond haired, the face golden and happy, the body slim and well proportioned, and always playing. But the child's face, unlike the woman's with its short cheeks and rather Nordic compactness, was vague and nondescript. And the husband? Therese could not see him at all. Therese said, "I'm sure you thought it was a man who sent you the Christmas card, didn't you?" "I did," she said through a smile. "I thought it just might be a man in the ski department who'd sent it." "I'm sorry." "No, I'm delighted." She leaned back in the booth. "I doubt very, much if I'd have gone to lunch with him. No, I'm delighted."


The dusky and faintly sweet smell of her perfume came to Therese again, a smell suggestive of dark-green silk, that was hers alone, like the smell of a special flower. Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. Therese could not understand it, but it was so. Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed. She had never seen the woman before. If she had, could she have forgotten? In the silence, Therese felt they both waited for the other to speak, yet the silence was not an awkward one. Their plates had arrived. It was creamed spinach with an egg on top, steamy and buttery smelling. "How is it you live alone?" the woman asked, and before Therese knew it, she had told the woman her life story. But not in tedious detail. In six sentences, as if it all mattered less to her than a story she had read somewhere. And what did the facts matter after all, whether her mother was French or English or Hungarian, or if her father had been an Irish painter, or a Czechoslovakian lawyer, whether he had been successful or not, or whether her mother had presented her to the Order of St. Margaret as a troublesome, bawling infant, or as a troublesome, melancholy eight-year-old? Or whether she had been happy there? Because she was happy now, starting today. She had no need of parents or background. "What could be duller than past history!" Therese said, smiling. "Maybe futures that won't have any history." Therese did not ponder it. It was right. She was still smiling, as if she had just learned how to smile and did not know how to stop. The woman smiled with her, amusedly, and perhaps she was laughing at her, Therese thought. "What kind of a name is Belivet?" she asked. "It's Czech. It's changed," Therese explained awkwardly. "Originally--" "It's very original." "What's your name?" Therese asked. "Your first name?" "My name? Carol. Please don't ever call me Carole." "Please don't ever call me Therese," Therese said, pronouncing the "th." "How do you like it pronounced? Therese?" "Yes. The way you do," she answered. Carol pronounced her name the French way, Terez. She was used to a dozen variations, and sometimes she herself pronounced it differently. She liked the way Carol pronounced it, and she liked her lips saying it. An indefinite longing, that she had been only vaguely conscious of at times before, became now a recognizable wish. It was so absurd, so embarrassing a desire, that Therese thrust it from her mind.


"What do you do on Sundays?" Carol asked! "I don't always know. Nothing in particular. What do you do?" "Nothing--lately. If you'd like to visit me sometime, you're welcome to. At least there's some country around where I live. Would you like to come out this Sunday?" The gray eyes regarded her directly now, and for the first time, Therese faced them. There was a measure of humor in them, Therese saw. And what else? Curiosity and a challenge, too. "Yes," Therese said. "What a strange girl you are." "Why?" "Flung out of space," Carol said.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 5 RICHARD WAS STANDING on the street corner, waiting for her, shifting from, foot to foot in the cold. She wasn't cold at all tonight, she realized suddenly, even though other people on the streets were hunched in their overcoats. She took Richard's arm and squeezed it affectionately tight. "Have you been inside?" she asked. She was ten minutes late. "Of course not. I was waiting." He pressed his cold lips and nose into her cheek. "Did you have a rough day?" "No." The night was very black, in spite of the Christmas lights on some of the lampposts. She looked at Richard's face in the flare of his match. The smooth slab of his forehead overhung his narrowed eyes, strong looking as a whale's front, she thought, strong enough to batter something in. His face was like a face sculpted in wood, planed smooth and unadorned. She saw his eyes open like unexpected spots of blue sky in the darkness. He smiled at her. "You're in a good mood tonight. Want to walk down the block? You can't smoke in there. Like a cigarette?" "No, thanks." They began to walk. The gallery was just beside them, a row of lighted windows, each with a Christmas wreath, on the second floor of the big building. Tomorrow she would see Carol, Therese thought, tomorrow morning at eleven. She would see her only ten blocks from here, in a little more than twelve hours. She started to take Richard's arm again, and suddenly felt self-conscious about it. Eastward, down Forty-third Street, she saw Orion exactly spread in the center of the sky between the buildings. She had used to look at him from windows in school, from the window of her first New York apartment. "I got our reservations today," Richard said. "The President Taylor sailing March seventh. I talked with the ticket fellow, and I think he can get us outside rooms, if I keep after him." "March seventh?" She heard the start of excitement in her voice, though she did not want to go to Europe now at all. "About ten weeks off," Richard said, taking her hand. "Can you cancel the reservation in case I can't go?" She could as well tell him now that she didn't want to go, she thought, but he would only argue, as he had before when she hesitated. "Oh, of course, Terry!" And he laughed. Richard swung her hand as they walked. As if they were lovers, Therese thought. It would be almost like love, what she felt for Carol, except that Carol was a woman. It was not quite insanity, but it was certainly blissful. A silly word, but how could she possibly be happier than she was now, and had been since Thursday? "I wish we could share one together," Richard said. "Share what?" "Share a room!" Richard boomed out, laughing, and Therese noticed the two people on the sidewalk who turned to look at them.


"Should we have a drink somewhere just to celebrate? We can go in the Mansfield around the corner." "I don't feel like sitting still. Let's have it later." They got into the show at half price on Richard's art school passes. The gallery was a series of high-ceilinged, plush carpeted rooms, a background of financial opulence for the commercial advertisements, the drawings, lithographs, illustrations, or whatever that hung in a crowded row on the walls. Richard pored over some of them for minutes at a time, but Therese found them a little depressing. "Did you see this?" Richard asked, pointing to a complicated drawing of a lineman repairing a telephone wire that Therese had seen somewhere before, that tonight actually pained her to look at. "Yes," she said. She was thinking of something else. If she stopped scrimping to save money for Europe--which had been silly anyway because she wasn't going--she could buy a new coat. There would be sales right after Christmas. The coat she had now was a kind of black polo coat, and she always felt drab in it. Richard took her arm. "You haven't enough respect for technique, little girl." She gave him a mocking frown, and took his arm again. She felt very close to him suddenly, as warm and happy with him as she had been the first night she met him, at the party down on Christopher Street where Frances Cotter had taken her. Richard had been a little drunk, as he had never been since with her, talking about books and politics and people more positively than she had ever heard him talk since, too. He had talked with her all evening, and she had liked him so very much that night for his enthusiasms, his ambitions, his likes and dislikes, and because it was her first real party and he had made it a success for her. "You're not looking," Richard said. "It's exhausting. I've had enough when you have." Near the door, they met some people Richard knew from the League, a young man, a girl, and a young colored man. Richard introduced Therese to them. She could tell they were not close friends of Richard's, but he announced to all of them. "We're going to Europe in March." And they all looked envious. Outside, Fifth Avenue seemed empty and waiting, like a stage set for some dramatic action. Therese walked along-quickly beside Richard, her hands in her pockets. Somewhere today she had lost her gloves. She was thinking of tomorrow, at eleven o'clock. She wondered if she would possibly still be with Carol this time tomorrow night. "What about tomorrow?" Richard asked. "Tomorrow?" "You know. The family asked if you could come out this Sunday and have dinner with us." Therese hesitated, remembering. She had visited the Semcos four or five Sunday afternoons.


They had a big dinner around two o'clock, and then Mr. Semco, a short man with a bald head, would want to dance with her to polkas and Russian folk music on the phonograph. "Say, you know Mamma wants to make you a dress?" Richard went on. "She's already got the material. She wants to measure you for it." "A dress--but that's so much work." Therese had a vision of Mrs. Semco's embroidered blouses, white blouses with rows upon rows of stitches. Mrs. Semco was proud of her needlework. Therese did not feel she should accept such a colossal labor. "She loves it," Richard said. "Well, what about tomorrow? Want to come out around noon?" "I don't think I want to this Sunday. They haven't made any great plans, have they?" "No," Richard said, disappointed. "You just want to work or something tomorrow?" "Yes. I'd rather." She didn't want Richard to know about Carol, or even ever meet her. "Not even take a drive somewhere?" "I don't think so, thanks." Therese didn't like his holding her hand now. His hand was moist, which made it icy cold. "You don't think you'll change your mind?" Therese shook her head. "No." There were some mitigating things she might have said, excuses, but she did not want to lie about tomorrow either, any more than she had already lied. She heard Richard sigh, and they walked along in silence for a while. "Mamma wants to make you a white dress with lace edging. She's going crazy with frustration with no girls in the family but Esther." That was his cousin by marriage, whom Therese had only seen once or twice. "How is Esther?" "Just the same." Therese extricated her fingers from Richard's. She was hungry suddenly. She had spent her dinner hour writing something, a kind of letter to Carol that she hadn't mailed and didn't intend to. They caught the uptown bus at Third Avenue, then walked east to Therese's house. Therese did not want to invite Richard upstairs, but she did anyway. "No, thanks, I'll shove on," Richard said. He put a foot on the first step. "You're in a funny mood tonight. You're miles away." "No, I'm not," she said, feeling inarticulate and resenting it. "You are now. I can tell. After all, don't you--" "What," she prompted. "We aren't getting very far, are we?" he said, suddenly earnest. "If you don't even want to spend Sundays with me, how're we going to spend months together in Europe?" "Well--if you want to call it all off, Richard." "Terry, I love you." He brushed his palm over his hair, exasperatedly. "Of course, I don't want to call it all off, but--" He broke off again. She knew what he was about to say, that she gave him practically nothing in the way of affection, but he wouldn't say it, because he knew very well that she wasn't in love with him, so why did he really expect her affection?


Yet the simple fact that she wasn't in love with him made Therese feel guilty, guilty about accepting anything from him, a birthday present, or an invitation to dinner at his family's, or even his time. Therese pressed her finger tips hard on the stone banister. "All right--I know. I'm not in love with you," she said. "That's not what I mean, Terry." "If you ever want to call the whole thing off--I mean, stop seeing me at all, then do it." It was not the first time she had said that, either. "Terry, you know I'd rather be with you than anyone else in the world. That's the hell of it." "Well, if it's hell--" "Do you love me at all, Terry? How do you love me?" Let me count the ways, she thought. "I don't love you, but I like you. I felt tonight, a few minutes ago," she said, hammering the words out however they sounded, because they were true, "that I felt closer to you than I ever have, in fact." Richard looked at her, a little incredulously. "Do you?" He started slowly up the steps, smiling, and stopped just below her. "Then--why not let me stay with you tonight, Terry? Just let's try, will you?" She had known from his first step toward her that he was going to ask her that. Now she felt miserable and ashamed, sorry for herself and for him, because it was so impossible, and so embarrassing because she didn't want it. There was always that tremendous block of not even wanting to try it, which reduced it all to a kind of wretched embarrassment and nothing more, each time he asked her. She remembered the first night she had let him stay, and she writhed again inwardly. It had been anything but pleasant, and she had asked right in the middle of it, "Is this right?" How could it be right and so unpleasant, she had thought. And Richard had laughed, long and loud and with a heartiness that had made her angry. And the second time had been even worse, probably because Richard had thought all the difficulties had been gotten over. It was painful enough to make her weep, and Richard had been very apologetic and had said she made him feel like a brute. And then she had protested that he wasn't. She knew very well that he wasn't, that he was angelic compared to what Angelo Rossi would have been, for instance, if she had slept with him the night he stood here on the same steps, asking the same question. "Terry, darling--" "No," Therese said, finding her voice at last. "I just can't tonight, and I can't go to Europe with you either," she finished with an abject and hopeless frankness. Richard's lips parted in a stunned way. Therese could not bear to look at the frown above them. "Why not?" "Because. Because I can't," she said, every word agony.


"Because I don't want to sleep with you." "Oh, Terry!" Richard laughed. "I'm sorry I asked you. Forget about it, honey, will you? And in Europe, too?" Therese looked away, noticed Orion again, tipped at a slightly different angle, and looked back at Richard. But I can't, she thought. I've got to think about it sometime, because you think about it. It seemed to her that she spoke the words and that they were solid as blocks of wood in the air between them, even though she heard nothing. She had said the words before to him, in her room upstairs, once in Prospect Park when she was winding a kite string. But he wouldn't consider them, and what could she do now, repeat them? "Do you want to come up for a while anyway?" she asked, tortured by herself, by a shame she could not really account for. "No," Richard said with a soft laugh that shamed her all the more for its tolerance and its understanding. "No, I'll go on. Good night, honey. I love you, Terry." And with a last look at her, he went.


Patricia Highsmith CHAPTER 6 THERESE STEPPED out into the street and looked, but the streets were empty with a Sunday morning emptiness. The wind flung itself around the tall cement corner of Frankenberg's as if it were furious at finding no human figure there to oppose. No one but her, Therese thought, and grinned suddenly at herself. She might have thought of a more pleasant place to meet than this. The wind was like ice against her teeth. Carol was a quarter of an hour late. If she didn't come, she would probably keep on waiting, all day and into the night. One figure came out of the subway's pit, a splintery thin hurrying figure of a woman in a long black coat under which her feet moved as fast as if four feet were rotating on a wheel. Then Therese turned around and saw Carol in a car drawn up by the curb across the street. Therese walked toward her. "Hi!" Carol called, and leaned over to open the door for her. "Hello. I thought you weren't coming." "Awfully sorry I'm late. Are you freezing?" "No." Therese got in and pulled the door shut. The car was warm inside, a long dark-green car with dark-green leather upholstery. Carol drove slowly west. "Shall we go out to the house? Where would you like to go?" "It doesn't matter," Therese said. She could see freckles along the bridge of Carol's nose. Her short fair hair that made Therese think of perfume held to a light was tied back with the green and gold scarf that circled her head like a band. "Let's go out to the house. It's pretty out there." They drove uptown. It was like riding inside a rolling mountain that could sweep anything before it, yet was absolutely obedient to Carol. "Do you like driving?" Carol asked without looking at her. She had a cigarette in her mouth. She drove with her hands resting lightly on the wheel, as if it were nothing to her, as if she sat relaxed in a chair somewhere, smoking. "Why're you so quiet?" They roared into the Lincoln Tunnel. A wild, inexplicable excitement mounted in Therese as she stared through the windshield. She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together. She felt Carol glancing at her from time to time. "Have you had breakfast?" "No, I haven't," Therese answered. She supposed she was pale. She had started to have breakfast, but she had dropped the milk bottle in the sink, and then given it all up. "Better have some coffee. It's there in the thermos." They were out of the tunnel. Carol stopped by the side of the road. "There," Carol said, nodding at the thermos between them on the seat. Then Carol took the thermos herself and poured some into the cup, steaming and light brown. Therese looked at the coffee gratefully. "Where'd it come from?" Carol smiled.


"Do you always want to know where things come from?" The coffee was very strong and a little sweet. It sent strength through her. When the cup was half empty, Carol started the car. Therese was silent. What was there to talk about? The gold four-leaf clover with Carol's name and address on it that dangled from key chain on the dashboard? The stand of Christmas trees they passed on the road? The bird that flew by itself across a swampy looking field? No. Only the things she had written to Carol in the unmailed letter were to be talked about, and that was impossible. "Do you like the country?" Carol asked as they turned into a smaller road. They had just driven into a little town and out of it. Now on the driveway that made a great semicircular curve, they approached a white two-story house that had projecting side wings like the paws of a resting lion. There was a metal door mat, a big shining brass mailbox, a dog barking hollowly from around the side of the house, where a white garage showed beyond some trees. The house smelled of some spice, Therese thought, mingled with a separate sweetness that was not Carol's perfume either. Behind her, the door closed with a light, firm double report. Therese turned and found Carol looking at her puzzledly, her lips parted a little as if in surprise, and Therese felt that in the next second Carol would ask, "What are you doing here?" as if she had forgotten, or had not meant to bring her here at all. "There's no one here but the maid. And she's far away," Carol said, as if in reply to some question of Therese's. "It's a lovely house," Therese said, and saw Carol's little smile that was tinged with impatience. "Take off your coat." Carol took the scarf from around her head and ran her fingers through her hair. "Wouldn't you like a little breakfast? It's almost noon." "No, thanks." Carol looked around the living room, and the same puzzled dissatisfaction came back to her face. "Let's go upstairs. It's more comfortable." Therese followed Carol up the white wooden staircase, past an oil painting of a small girl with yellow hair and a square chin like Carol's, past a window where a garden with an S-shaped path, a fountain with a blue-green statue appeared for an instant and vanished. Upstairs, there was a short hall with four or five rooms around it. Carol went into a room with green carpet and walls, and took a cigarette from a box on a table. She glanced at Therese as she lighted it. Therese didn't know what to do or say, and she felt Carol expected her to do or say something, anything. Therese studied the simple room with its dark-green carpet and the long green pillowed bench along one wall. There was a plain table of pale wood in the center.


A game room, Therese thought, though it looked more like a study with its books and music albums and its lack of pictures. "My favorite room," Carol said, walking out of it. "But that's my room over there." Therese looked into the room opposite. It had flowered cotton upholstery and plain blond woodwork like the table in the other room. There was a long plain mirror over the dressing table, and throughout a look of sunlight, though no sunlight was in the room. The bed was a double bed. And there were military brushes on the dark bureau across the room. Therese glanced in vain for a picture of him. There was a picture of Carol on the dressing table, holding up a small girl with blond hair. And a picture of a woman with dark curly hair, smiling broadly, in a silver frame. "You have a little girl, haven't you?" Therese asked. Carol opened a wall panel in the hall. "Yes," she said. "Would you like a coke?" The hum of the refrigerator came louder now. Through all the house, there was no sound but those they made. Therese did not want the cold drink, but she took the bottle and carried it downstairs after Carol, through the kitchen and into the back garden she had seen from the window. Beyond the fountain were a lot of plants some three feet high and wrapped in burlap bags that looked like something, standing there in a group, Therese thought, but she didn't know what. Carol tightened a string that the wind had loosened. Stooped in the heavy wool skirt and the blue cardigan sweater, her figure looked solid and strong, like her face, but not like her slender ankles. Carol seemed oblivious of her for several minutes, walking about slowly, planting her moccasined feet firmly, as if in the cold flowerless garden she was at last comfortable. It was bitterly cold without a coat, but because Carol seemed oblivious of that, too, Therese tried to imitate her. "What would you like to do?" Carol asked. "Take a walk? Play some records?" "I'm very content," Therese told her. She was preoccupied with something, and regretted after all inviting her out to the house, Therese felt. They walked back to the door at the end of the garden path. "And how do you like your job?" Carol asked in the kitchen, still with her air of remoteness. She was looking into the big refrigerator. She lifted out two plates covered with wax paper. "I wouldn't mind some lunch, would you?" Therese had intended to tell her about the job at the Black Cat Theatre. That would count for something, she thought, that would be the single important thing she could tell about herself. But this was not the time. Now she replied slowly, trying to sound as detached as Carol, though she heard her shyness predominating, "I suppose it's educational.