The Price of Salt

by Claire Morgan

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.

Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese’s skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. Therese could not understand it, but it was so. Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed.

But in the first place could she say she was in love with Carol? She had come to a question she could not answer.

Carol was like a secret spreading through her, spreading through this house, too, like a light invisible to everyone but her.

“But those things don’t just happen. There’s always some reason for it in the background.”

She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that.

think there’s a definite reason for every friendship just as there’s a reason why certain atoms unite and others don’t—certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other—what do you think? I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever.”

at the two girls at the end of the bar whom she had noticed before, and now that they were leaving, she saw that they were in slacks. One had hair cut like a boy’s. Therese looked away, aware that she avoided them, avoided being seen looking at them.

I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.

“You’ve got a hell of a crush on her,”

Then she kissed Therese on the lips, as if they had kissed a thousand times before. “Don’t you know I love you?” Carol said.

And she did not have to ask if this were right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect.

How was it possible to be afraid and in love, Therese thought. The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.

She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist.

I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do.

that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women.

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?