Read Online Highsmith, Patricia by The Price of Salt - Free Book Online

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