Read Highsmith, Patricia for Free Online Page B

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. 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