The Price of Salt, or Carol

by Claire Morgan

Therese thought her beautiful, though her face was a blur now because she could not bear to look at it directly.

“What a strange girl you are.” “Why?” “Flung out of space,” Carol said.

I'm internally screaming

“No, I’m not,” she said, feeling inarticulate and resenting it.

yep yep yep

She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together.

Now she replied slowly, trying to sound as detached as Carol, though she heard her shyness predominating,

Therese started to say, but she didn’t because that was what everybody said.

Therese wondered if Mrs. Zabriskie and her husband were in love with each other, and really happy.

Therese in disbelief that straight people exist hahah

But Carol seemed depressed, and it dampened Therese instantly.

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.

If Carol had to go home now, Therese thought, she would do something violent. Like jump off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Or take the three Benzedrine tablets Richard had given her last week.

I’d call this a very reasonable reaction

his eyes glanced away from her, the peaked brow lifting still higher, the eyes darting everywhere,

SIDEEYE

Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a little yielding, noisy so the whole world could hear, so one always listened, too, for the loud, harsh step of the intruder’s foot.

“That’s that,” Carol said. “Now let’s forget it.”

THAT'S THAT????????

Therese heard her own reply like an idiot’s babble,

real

In the middle of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back?

I like to see you walking. When I see you from a distance, I feel you’re walking on the palm of my hand and you’re about five inches high.

“That’s that.”

DEAD. DIED. DECEASED.