Highsmith, Patricia Read Online Free PDF Page A

Philly once is directing. Raymond Cortes. If I recommend you, it’s a cinch you’ll get in,” he said with a glance at Therese. “He promised me the part of the second brother in the play. It’s called Small Rain.”
    “A comedy?” Therese asked.
    “Comedy. Three acts. Have you done any sets so far by yourself?”
    “How many sets will it take?” Richard asked, just as she was about to answer.
    “Two at the most; and they’ll probably get by on one. Georgia Halloran has the lead. Did you happen to see that Sartre thing they did in the fall down there? She was in that.”
    “Georgia?” Richard smiled. “Whatever happened with her and Rudy?”
    Disappointedly, Therese heard their conversation settling down on Georgia and Rudy and other people she didn’t know. Georgia might have been one of the girls Richard had had an affair with, Therese supposed. He had once mentioned about five. She couldn’t remember any of their names except Celia.
    “Is this one of your sets?” Dannie asked her, looking at the cardboard model that hung on the wall, and when she nodded, he got up to see it.
    And now, Richard and Phil were talking about a man who owed Richard money from somewhere. Phil said he had seen the man last night in the San Remo bar. Phil’s elongated face and his clipped hair was like an El Greco, Therese thought, yet the same features in his brother looked like an American Indian. And the way Phil talked completely destroyed the illusion of El Greco. He talked like any of the people one saw in Village bars, young people who were supposed to be writers or actors, and who usually did nothing.
    “It’s very attractive,” Dannie said, peering behind one of the little suspended figures.
    “It’s a model for Petrushka. The fair scene,” she said, wondering if he would know the ballet. He might be a lawyer, she thought, or even a doctor. There were yellowish stains on his fingers, not the stains of cigarettes.
    Richard said something about being hungry, and Phil said he was starving, but neither of them ate any of the cheese that was in front of them.
    “We’re due in half an hour, Phil,” Dannie repeated.
    Then a moment later, they were all standing up, putting on their coats.
    “Let’s eat out somewhere, Terry,” Richard said. “How about the Czech place up on Second?”
    “All right,” she said, trying to sound agreeable. This was the end of it, she supposed, and nothing was definite. She had an impulse to ask Phil a crucial question, but she didn’t.
    And on the street, they began to walk downtown instead of up. Richard walked with Phil, and only glanced back once or twice at her, as if to see if she were still there. Dannie held her arm at the curbs, and across the patches of dirty slippery stuff, neither snow nor ice, that were the remains of a snowfall three weeks ago.
    “Are you a doctor?” she asked Dannie.
    “Physicist,” Dannie replied. “I’m taking graduate courses at N. Y. U. now.”
    He smiled at her, but the conversation stopped there for a while.
    Then he said, “That’s a long way from stage designing, isn’t it.”
    She nodded. “Quite a long way.” She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn’t, because what would it matter if he did or didn’t? “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked.
    He smiled broadly, showing square white teeth. “Yes. To the subway. But Phil wants a bite somewhere first.”
    They were walking down Third Avenue. And Richard was talking to Phil about their going to Europe next summer. Therese felt a throb of embarrassment as she walked along behind Richard, like a dangling appendage, because Phil and Dannie would naturally think she was Richard’s mistress. She wasn’t his mistress, and Richard didn’t expect her to be in Europe. It was a strange relationship, she supposed, and who would believe it? Because from what she had seen in New York, everybody slept with everybody they had dates