Highsmith, Patricia (4 page)

“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. 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.

Therese called up Phil to thank him, but nobody answered the telephone.

She wrote him a note, in care of the Black Cat Theatre.

“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.” 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. 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.

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.