Free Highsmith, Patricia by The Price of Salt

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. I learn how to be a thief, a liar, and a poet all at once.” Therese leaned back in the straight chair so her head would be in the warm square of sunlight.
    She wanted to say, and how to love. She had never loved anyone before Carol, not even Sister Alicia.
    Carol looked at her. “How do you become a poet?”
    “By feeling things—too much, I suppose,” Therese answered conscientiously.
    “And how do you become a thief?” Carol licked something off her thumb and frowned. “You don’t want any caramel pudding, do you?”
    “No, thank you. I haven’t stolen yet, but I’m sure it’s easy there. There are pocketbooks all around, and one just takes something. They steal the meat you buy for dinner.” Therese laughed. One could laugh at it with Carol. One could laugh at anything with Carol.
    They had sliced cold chicken, cranberry sauce, green olives, and crisp white celery. But Carol left her lunch and went into the living room. She came back carrying a glass with some whisky in it, and added some water to it from the tap. Therese watched her. Then for a long moment, they looked at each other, Carol standing in the doorway and Therese at the table, looking over her shoulder, not eating.
    Carol asked quietly, “Do you meet a lot of people across the counter this way? Don’t you have to be careful whom you start talking to?”
    “Oh, yes,” Therese smiled.
    “Or whom you go out to lunch with?” Carol’s eyes sparkled. “You might run into a kidnaper.” She rolled the drink around in the iceless glass, then drank it off, the thin silver bracelets on her wrist rattling against the glass. “Well—do you meet many people this