Highsmith, Patricia (17 page)

“What’s that song that was playing before, the one with just the voice and the piano?”

“Hum it.”

She whistled part of it, and Carol smiled.

“‘Easy Living,’” Carol said. “That’s an old one.”

“I’d like to hear it again.”

“I’d like you to get to bed. I’ll play it again.”

Carol went into the green room, and stayed there while it played. Therese stood by the door of her room, listening, smiling.

… I’ll never regret… the years I’m giving… They’re easy to give, when you’re in love… I’m happy to do whatever I do for you…

That was her song. That was everything she felt about Carol. She went in the bathroom before it was over, and turned the water on in the tub, got in and let the greenish looking water tumble about her feet.

“Hey!” Carol called. “Have you ever been to Wyoming?”

“No.”

“It’s time you saw America.”

Therese lifted the dripping rag and pressed it against her knee. The water was so high now, her breasts looked like flat things floating on the surface. She studied them, trying to decide what they looked like besides what they were.

“Don’t go to sleep in there,” Carol called in a preoccupied voice, and Therese knew she was sitting on the bed, looking at a map.

“I won’t.”

“Well, some people do.”

“Tell me more about Harge,” she said as she dried herself. “What does he do?”

“A lot of things.”

“I mean, what’s his business?”

“Real estate investment.”

“What’s he like? Does he like to go to the theater? Does he like people?”

“He likes a little group of people who play golf,” Carol said with finality. Then in a louder voice, “And what else? He’s very, very meticulous about everything. But he forgot his best razor. It’s in the medicine cabinet and you can see it if you want to and you probably do.

I’ve got to mail it to him, I suppose.”

Therese opened the medicine cabinet. She saw the razor. The medicine cabinet was still full of men’s things, after-shaving lotions and lather brushes. “Was this his room?” she asked as she came out of the bathroom.

“Which bed did he sleep in?”

Carol smiled. “Not yours.”

“Can I have some more of this?” Therese asked, looking at the liqueur bottle.

“Of course.”

“Can I kiss you good night?”

Carol was folding the road map, pursing her lips as if she would whistle, waiting. “No,” she said.

“Why not?” Anything seemed possible tonight.

“I’ll give you this instead.” Carol pulled her hand out of her pocket.

It was a check. Therese read the sum, two hundred dollars, made out to her. “What’s this for?”

“For the trip. I don’t want you to spend the money you’ll need for that union membership thing.” Carol took a cigarette. “You won’t need all of that, I just want you to have it.”

“But I don’t need it,” Therese said. “Thanks. I don’t care if I spend the union money.”

“No back talk,” Carol interrupted her. “It gives me pleasure, remember?”

“But I won’t take it.” She sounded curt, so she smiled a little as she put the check down on the table top by the liqueur bottle. But she had thumped the check down, too. She wished she could explain it to Carol. It didn’t matter at all, the money, but since it did give Carol pleasure, she hated not to take it. “I don’t like the idea,” Therese said. “Think of something else.” She looked at Carol. Carol was watching her, was not going to argue with her, Therese was glad to see.

“To give me pleasure?” Carol asked.

Therese’s smile broadened. “Yes,” she said, and picked up the little glass.

“All right,” Carol said. “I’ll think. Good night.” Carol had stopped by the door.

It was a funny way of saying good night, Therese thought, on such an important night. “Good night,” Therese answered.

She turned to the table and saw the check again. But it was for Carol to tear up. She slid it under the edge of the dark-blue linen table runner, out of sight.

JANUARY. IT WAS all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a bus and caught it. Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester’s bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.

A young man named Red Malone and a baldheaded carpenter worked with her on the Small Rain set. Mr. Donohue was very pleased with it. He said he had asked a Mr. Baltin to come in and see her work. Mr. Baltin was a graduate of a Russian academy, and had designed a few sets for theaters in New York. Therese had never heard of him. She tried to get Mr. Donohue to arrange an appointment for her to see Myron Blanchard or Ivor Harkevy, but Mr. Donohue never promised anything. He couldn’t, Therese supposed.

Mr. Baltin came in one afternoon, a tall, bent man in a black hat and a seedy overcoat, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had brought only three or four models down to the theatre, her very best ones. Mr. Baltin told her of a play that was to start in production in about six weeks. He would be glad to recommend her as an assistant, and Therese said that would work out very well, because she would be out of town until then, anyway. Everything was working out very well in these last days. Mr. Andronich had promised her a two-week job in Philadelphia in the middle of February, which would be just about the time she would be back from the trip with Carol. Therese wrote down the name and address of the man Mr. Baltin knew.

“He’s looking for someone now, so call him the first of the week,” Mr.

Baltin said. “It’ll just be a helper’s job, but his helper, a pupil of mine, is working with Harkevy now.”

“Oh. Do you suppose you—or he could arrange for me to see Harkevy?”

“Nothing easier. All you have to do is call Harkevy’s studio and ask to speak to Charles. Charles Winant. Tell him that you’ve spoken with me.

Let’s see—call him Friday. Friday afternoon around three.”

“All right. Thank you.” Friday was a whole week off. Harkevy was not unapproachable, Therese had heard, but he had the reputation of never making appointments, much less keeping them if he did make them, because he was very busy. But maybe Mr. Baltin knew.

“And don’t forget to call Kettering,” Mr. Baltin said as he left.

Therese looked again at the name he had given her: Adolph Kettering, Theatrical Investments, Inc., at a private address. “I’ll call him Monday morning. Thanks a lot.”

That was the day, a Saturday, when she was to meet Richard in the Palermo after work. It was the seventh of January, eleven days before she and Carol planned to leave. She saw Phil standing with Richard at the bar.

“Well, how’s the old Cat?” Phil asked her, dragging up a stool for her.

“Working Saturdays, too?”

“The cast didn’t work. Just my department,” she said.

“When’s the opening?”

“The twenty-first.”

“Look,” Richard said. He pointed to a spot of dark-green paint on her skirt.

“I know. I did that days ago.”

“What would you like to drink?” Phil asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have a beer, thanks.” Richard had turned his back on Phil, who stood on the other side of him, and she sensed an ill-feeling between them. “Did you do any painting today?” she asked Richard.

Richard’s mouth was down at both corners. “Had to pinch hit for some driver who was sick. Ran out of gas in the middle of Long Island.”

“Oh. That’s rotten. Maybe you’d rather paint than go anywhere tomorrow.”

They had talked of going over to Hoboken tomorrow, just to walk around and eat at the Clam House. But Carol would be in town tomorrow, and had promised to call her.

“I’ll paint if you’ll sit for me,” Richard said.

Therese hesitated uncomfortably. “I just don’t feel in the mood for sitting these days.

“All right. It’s not important.” He smiled. “But how can I ever paint you if you’ll never sit?”

“Why don’t you do it out of the air?”

Phil slid his hand out and held the bottom of her glass. “Don’t drink that. Have something better. I’ll drink this.”

“All right. I’ll try a rye and water.”

Phil was standing on the other side of her now. He looked cheerful, but a little dark around the eyes. For the past week, in a sullen mood, he had been writing a play. He had read a few scenes of it aloud at his New Year’s party. Phil called it an extension of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. She had drawn a rough sketch for a set New Year’s morning, and showed it to Phil when she came down to see him. And suddenly it occurred to her, that was what was the matter with Richard.

“Terry, I wish you’d make a model we can photograph from that sketch you showed me. I’d like to have a set to go with the script.” Phil pushed the rye and water toward her, and leaned on the bar close beside her.

“I might,” Therese said. “Are you really going to try to get it produced?”

“Why not?” Phil’s dark eyes challenged her above his smile. He snapped his fingers at the barman. “Check?”

“I’ll pay,” Richard said.

“No, you won’t. This is mine.” Phil had his old black wallet in his hand.

His play would never be produced, Therese thought, might not even be finished, because Phil’s moods were capricious.

“I’ll be moving along,” Phil said. “Drop by soon, Terry. Cheerio, Rich.”

She watched him go off and up the little front stairs, shabbier than she had ever seen him in his sandals and threadbare polo coat, yet with an attractive nonchalance about his shabbiness. Like a man walking through his house in his favorite old bathrobe, Therese thought. She waved back at him through the front window.

“I hear you took Phil sandwiches and beer New Year’s Day,” Richard said.

“Yes. He called up and said he had a hangover.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I forgot, I suppose. It wasn’t important.”

“Not important. If you—” Richard’s stiff hand gestured slowly, hopelessly. “If you spend half the day in a guy’s apartment, bringing him sandwiches and beer? Didn’t it occur to you I might have wanted some sandwiches, too?”

“If you did, you had plenty of people to get them for you. We’d eaten and drunk everything in Phil’s house. Remember?”

Richard nodded his long head, still smiling the downward, disgruntled smile. “And you were alone with him, just the two of you.”

“Oh, Richard—” She remembered, and it was so unimportant. Dannie hadn’t been back from Connecticut that day. He had spent New Year’s at the house of one of his professors. She had hoped Dannie would come in that afternoon at Phil’s, but Richard would probably never think that, never guess she liked Dannie a lot better than Phil.

“If any other girl did that, I’d suspect something was brewing and I’d be right,” Richard went on.

“I think you’re being silly.”

“I think you’re being naive.” Richard was looking at her stonily, resentfully, and Therese thought, it surely couldn’t be only this he was so resentful about. He resented the fact that she wasn’t and never could be what he wished her to be, a girl who loved him passionately and would love to go to Europe with him. A girl like herself, with her face, her ambitions, but a girl who adored him. “You’re not Phil’s type, you know,” he said.

“Whoever said I was? Phil?”

“That twerp, that half-baked dilettante,” Richard murmured. “And he has the nerve to sound off tonight and say you don’t give a damn for me.”

“He hasn’t any right to say that. I don’t discuss you with him.”

“Oh, that’s a fine answer. Meaning if you had, he’d know you didn’t give a damn, eh?” Richard said it quietly, but his voice shook with anger.

“What’s Phil suddenly got against you?” she asked.

“That’s not the point!”

“What is the point?” she said impatiently.

“Oh, Terry, let’s stop it.”

“You can’t find any point,” she said, but seeing Richard turn away from her and shift his elbows on the bar, almost as if he writhed physically under her words, she felt a sudden compassion for him. It was not now, not last week that galled him, but the whole past and future futility of his own feelings about her.

Richard plunged his cigarette into the ash tray on the bar. “What do you want to do tonight?” he asked.

Tell him about the trip with Carol, she thought. Twice before she had meant to tell him, and put it off. “Do you want to do anything?” She emphasized the last word.

“Of course,” he said depressedly. “What do you say we have dinner, then call up Sam and Joan? Maybe we can walk up and see them tonight.”

“All right.” She hated it. Two of the most boring people she had ever met, a shoe clerk and a secretary, happily married on West Twentieth Street, and she knew Richard meant to show her an ideal life in theirs, to remind her that they might live together the same way one day. She hated it, and any other night she might have protested, but the compassion for Richard was still in her, dragging after it an amorphous wake of guilt and a necessity to atone. Suddenly, she remembered a picnic they had had last summer, off the road near Tarrytown, remembered precisely Richard’s reclining on the grass, working ever so slowly with his pocketknife at the cork in the wine bottle, while they talked of—what? But she remembered that moment of contentment, that conviction that they shared something wonderfully real and rare together that day, and she wondered now where it had gone to, on what it had been based. For now even his long flat figure standing beside her seemed to oppress her with its weight. She forced down her resentment, but it only grew heavy inside her, like a thing of substance. She looked at the chunky figures of the two Italian workmen standing at the bar, and at the two girls at the end of the bar whom she had noticed before, and now that they were leaving, she saw that they were in slacks. One had hair cut like a boy’s.