Thank you for clicking onto my third Price of Salt fic. This is another challenge/ experiment and an attempt to offer more to the section. Its a glimspe into the 'milk scene' and Carol's possible thoughts while she was making Therese the glass.

I rated it M, just incase for some slightly adult content, although there isn't anything explicit in it- but I hope you 'll still enjoy it anyways (heh) . Once again none of characters belong to me, but to Patricia Highsmith. I also reference several quotes from the book.

Carol set the milk on the stove.

"What do you want." She had asked Therese moments before.

"A glass of hot milk." Therese replied timidly, the bed covers drawn tightly to her chin.

Carol regarded Therese both tenderly and coldly.

Admittedly, she had wanted to hear another answer.

After a long pause, Carol had repeated . "A glass of hot milk."

She decided to amend her expression into a smile of gentle mockery. "A glass of milk."

So.

Milk it was.

Walking down the stairs, Carol's fixed and well-practiced smile transfigured into a discontented twist of her mouth and a perturbed knit of her brow.

In her kitchen, she watched the pan incredulously, confounded at the preposterousness of what she had been asked to do.

Why.

Why ask for milk now of all times?

Carol felt the pinch and press of her shoes as she shifted her weight on the tiled chessboard- like floor beneath her.

She watched herself perform the task in remote and impatient glimspes.

The activity was so frustratingly inane, Carol was unable to focus on it, like most of the doings that comprised the rest of her day. Going through her cupboards. Taking the milk bottle from the refrigerator, and pouring it out into the sauce pan. Being distracted, Carol poured out more than she originally intended. It didn't matter. The milkman would deliver more tomorrow.

Then the match igniting the gas. The brief threat of immolation, or burning her house down (easily avoided.) The scent and hiss of ignition. A muffled puff of air like a breath , and the engulfing sound as it took, a snapping crackle, that sounded like the whispered word 'exactly'.

Exactly.

With a minute flick of her hand and a brief blow of her lips, Carol blew out the match and lay its charred remains besides her on the counter.

Watched a watched pot and what it never did.

The bluish toungues of flame licking underneath it.

The organic reactions occuring before her.

Since the milk was chilled from the icebox, the process might take longer.

But how much longer?

Carol watched disinterestedly.

She couldn't remember.

Carol couldn't remember the last time she prepared a glass of hot milk for anybody. She hadn't expected to do it today.

Let alone for Therese Belivet, the strange and mysterious but very attractive salesgirl who had waited on her at Frankenburgs.

From an surreal succession of events, Therese Belivet was currently lying in some collasped fugue state in her outfitted bedroom, like some alabaster angel that Carol had found belonging to no one, recovering from her sudden crash and abandonment in her bed.

In a peculiar turn-about, Carol was now waiting on this shop girl. Indulging her questionable request. Reduced to taking drink requests in this frivolous and domestic (time-wasting ) ritual.

What was she doing, Carol thought.

She ought to tell the girl to get out.

But somewhere the maid or someone was waiting. Observing both of them.

Occasionally, Carol stirred the pan.

Her hand moved slowly in a steadfast repetitive motion. With the reprieve of thoughtlessness that accompanies a meaningless but necessary task, Carol watched her fingers and her red varnished nails hold the spoon as if it were a disembodied hand, a mannequin's hand moving on its own volition, or dragged along by a invisible string.

Under her hand, the milk was white.

White as an unfiltered and unlit cigarette. Other things came to mind. Cooked eggwhites, a row of strong teeth, cumulus clouds , a wedding gown, lead paint, the moon reflected in water, tacky glue, chalk, marble, blank paper, eye whites, cotton, linen, sand and salt. White as the ivory piano keys that Therese's fingers had skipped upon, and rendered their piercing and uncertain notes moments ago.

Earlier, Carol had wanted to hear Therese play their piano, to watch her hands on the keys, to know that Therese had touched them. Also, to find out if Therese had any talents or if the girl had a proper education.

Carol had regretted asking.

Therese's performance, abbreviated and abysmal as it was , had proved nothing.

The notes Therese had played had rang jarringly, disconcertingly, cutting like a glass scalpel into the interwoven spokes of Carol's vertebrate. The black keys of the piano were like its dark gaps , its unknowable rests . It was soon apparent that, the girl was so poorly made, her constitution so attenuated and unfortunate that something as slight and benign as playing the piano had sapped the will from her. Without forewarning, the young woman had gasped and ended her performance, her hands drooping and wilting on the keys like dying flowers.

Carol had told her to rest.

(But at least, unable to resist it , Carol had managed to sneak a stealthy kiss to Therese's hair-line when she approached, appreciating Therese's hair so much, and whatever the girl did to make it that way.)

Currently, Carol stared down into the milk.

Instead of the blank liquid, Carol saw Therese in it, her pale face divined like a soap carving, like she were baptised in that substance, her form rising from the surface tension and now floating on top of it, her curious and consuming eyes gazing up at her.

Carol tilted her head and her mouth dropped open.

She stared harder into the milk as if she had never seen such a thing before

She had not seen such a thing before.

And suddenly the act of making a glass of hot milk seemed endowed with ineffable power, an grand and an unravelling effort, beyond her or anyone's capacity.

As if startled by a noise only she could hear, Carol turned and twisted her head from side to side to look around herself.

She was still alone.

Regardless, the older woman caught and gripped at the counter breathless, her chest rioting, blinking and stalling.

Suddenly, Carol felt unreal. It were if she had never stepped foot in this house before and didn't know where anything in it was. Everything was preternaturally still , but her vision glimmered at its borders with a uncanny mistrust, like each inanimate object might suddenly become sentient and flit past her, with the malevolent intent of harming her .The room was filled with the foreboding presence of something singular, unseizable and unclear, with an sinister awareness of Carol and her now disparate place in it. It were if every room in this house was scrutinizing, knowledgable of her and was extremely displeased at what it knew - that Carol may be a trespasser that could be caught at any moment.

Carol even could see herself in her own kitchen. Dizzy and discomfited over a pan of milk.

It wasn't that this action was trivial, or meaningless.

It was that its meaning was buried.

It had to be .

Or else, once it was felt and realized, it could overwhelm, even destroy her.

Now Carol was envisioning Therese shimmering in this pan , but in truth, she knew Therese could be doing anything. The girl had been reckless enough to come to a lunch with someone she barely knew already. Carol barely knew who 'Therese was.

The young woman could be laughing at Carol, rifling through her cabinents, despoiling whatever she could get her hands on, intent on blackmail, or on robbing her blind.

But... if that was only thing that Therese Belivet was after, money or jewelry, a dress or a fur, an objet or the like, she didn't have to resort to conning her or steal it. She could just have it. Carol reasoned and craved a cigarette as she did. There was no material possession that she owned- besides her photographs of Rindy, that if they were gone that would greatly trouble her. For a long time, Carol's bedroom felt like a shop or a staged showroom, similar to the model sets one frequently made during her stint in the furniture business, only the guise and facade of a liveable situation. Her clothing were a costume, easily shed, divested and as for herself, Carol felt like a formerly living thing whose appearance only signified a presence of a once- viable life , a petrified piece of wood that had calcified in an deceptively intact condition, a ghost caught in an outwardly approved, agreeable and waxen form, condemned to watch her former life replay itself.

Carol might as well preempt Therese Belivet, remove any or all incentive for her to commit any crime. She did not want Therese , the poor shop girl from Frankenburg's, to have any troubles or be forced to do anything that might problem her future . If it were money Therese needed, Carol would just write her a check. Or if it were a valuable, some bauble, Carol needed to be more generous and giving anyways. The older woman even imagined, with an even decided deportment, returning to the room and giving Therese something like an reward for her time , a consolation prize or souvenir for coming all this way to her staged abode. Sitting besides Therese on the bed, and slipping her engagement band from Harge onto the younger woman's finger.

"Here Therese." She pictured herself affecting nonchalance- how trivial and degraded this bit of stone. But giving it to Therese would give it shine, significance again. She imagined pushing her ring up onto Therese hand - and it ofcourse, in her mind, it fit her ring finger perfectly. " I never liked diamonds anyways. Do you like it? Would you like to put it on? You ought to have it then."

Ofcourse Therese would never accept her ring.

In that case, Therese could simply ask for something else. It would be easily given over and surrendered , by proxy , it was already hers. Like the glass of milk she was preparing.

Or possibly, Carol thought, Therese might not want that. She might want something else. The girl might be impulsive, unstable and dangerous. Mad. Capable of doing anything.

And as for herself, apparently ,Carol was now incapable of even making a glass of hot milk.

Carol thought bewilderedly: It were if all her life were contained in one glass of milk! Like the milk might be a mirror of her own soul, opaque to her, as she was to herself .

But even Carol, who wasn't the most erudite of individuals, could gleam; it wasn't milk that Therese had actually asked for.

It was something else. Something far more rare, precious and telling.

Carol recalled from her school days Shakesphere had once written about 'the milk of human kindness.'

There was a warmth, an consolation to that phrase.

The milk of human kindness.

The words had a substantive and sonorous sound to it, like the 'bread of life', or 'rivers of living water.' But if there were such a thing- 'a milk of human kindness', Carol thought, there ought to be the milk of human passion,the milk of temptation, and of fear and of thought and of even stronger and more rousing sentiments.

Carol wondered: Which kind was in her ?

(Or was she desiccated, dry of all sentiment anymore?)

Which kind was in Therese?.

And would those substances flow, blend, themselves distinct but one, and inseparable?

Carol now remembered, like a rolling in of chilly shrouding fog, that the milk had been mentioned by Shakesphere not with a tone of sympathy, levity or charm, but forebodingly however.

It had been Lady MacBeth 's line, she recalled: Yet do I fear thy nature,t is too full o' th' milk of human kindness .

The words: I fear were particuar potent. It implied that kindness were an indiscretion to be feared, an aliment, a imperiling and regrettable tendency , one that needed to be eventually retificied , and one should use caution when excerising it .

Should Carol be cautious?

Should she be afraid ?

With only a minor flutter of fear, Carol re-imagined their earlier exchange, this time more to her predilection.

Carol imagined restating the question to Therese lying in her bed. This time, in a somewhat more winsome and appealing posture: the young woman lying on her side, her long toes and legs gracefully pointed but relaxed. Staring up at her intimately and intently. The curve of her elbow cradling her head, her fingers on the back of her neck, her other outspread hand lain enticingly on the satin bedspread. Yes, Carol thought, like that.

This time Carol added- carefully-and respectfully, an endearment. "What do you want my dear?"

This time Carol imagined, Therese , peer up at her, saying in a faint but significant whisp, words unravelling like a poetical tendril of smoke or a hint of perfume, in a lilting dying voice. "I want ..."

Carol's eyes closed.

"I want-"

She knew what Therese wanted, but she wanted to hear her say it .

"I want you Carol. " She heard Therese whisper, so quiet, barely on the cusp of eternally disappearing , like the girl was herself. "I want us to make love to eachother."

Carol paused.

"Oh?" After a long moment, Carol remarked coolly, ironically, unable to help it. "Are you sure you don't want a glass of hot milk instead?"

"Carol!" She envisioned, Therese sitting up in the bed, crying out. Shivering in mortification as if she were being laughed at .

But saying her name again wasn't an proper answer. Or was it that Therese wanted to have both and did not want to ask it of her? Why should she have to choose?

Therese stared at her ,even more pleadingly.

"Carol." The young woman whispered her name again, as if it were a answer to anything Carol might ask of her.

Carol blinked.

" ...I'll think I'll get you a glass anyways." Carol straightened her head and instructed, needing time to make her own decision. " Stay just as you are. Wait a moment."

The older woman left the room as if directed by the vast invisible will .

And she thought of doing the same act. Heating up milk like she was now.

But with a new goal. Another intention.

Carol considered: Whom one slept with was a matter of habit.

And Carol's habits were always exemplary.

Would she be willing to spoil (that nearly) spotless record by making love to Therese ?

She didn't know , not anymore than Therese did, lying back in her bed, waiting for her.

Just to make Therese wait slightly longer, Carol re-did her lipstick.

As she assessed her own lips in her compact mirror, Carol remembered hadn't been with another woman in a long time, which was of increasing, aggravating concern, a crystallizing and sharpened point of pain and tension. While Carol had attempted to amend her insupportable ways, to live rightly, Carol felt something of a pull within her, a intrinsic need for it, like a longing for relief and cessation of suffering , and here now, she admitted that impossible and terribly inconvenient tug, and how it so stubbornly persisted ( in spite of knowing better), when Carol saw other women constantly around her, sometimes in close proximities or far away , like they were figures to be admired through glass, while she was confined and negotiated that private and exquisitely wretched struggle within herself, as these women spoke, drank, laughed, went about their business with their decorated hats and gloves, how they walked in their high-heeled shoes, not at all cognizant of Carol, and how she saw them, how she possibly felt for them.

But this wasn't the same.

It wasn't simply a woman in a woman's body, some highly physical but vague entity that Carol required- or a acquiescent friend', but a woman that could behold her and desire her just as avidly and intensely . It was a certain kind of woman Carol thought of, dreamt of, what she desired and had always wanted.

A woman that looked, spoke, walked exactly like Therese Belivet.

And now she was here. In her house. Carol thought, smiling oddly. Wasn't that wonderful?

Numbed and everywhere a tingle with anticipation, Carol's heart usually stale and compacted ,now felt liquid, ductile as copper thread, mallable as a pounded gold sheet. She felt the very same when she recalled seeing Therese for the first time at the counter , that insurmountable foot of counter separating them like a continental divide or a vast ocean now reduced to the size of a glass of milk that could be easily swallowed down.

In her imaginings, Carol made sure the milk was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup.

Afterwards , she walked back purposely, squaring her shoulders, back to her bedroom.

There, Therese , like an angel, would still be there, sitting up expectantly for her . The bedspread was held over her supine and waiting body.

And Carol knew then she would not deprive Therese.

Not if she drank.

Carol sat down besides Therese on the bed .

"Here Therese" Carol lifted the full glass to Therese's lips, only slightly stern, like she were offering Therese a much-needed remedy. " I'd like to nourish you well and make sure you're comfortable in my home. Do take it."

If she did take the glass, Therese might go from her state of weakened paleness to flushed and healthful. Deathly to lively. The calcium would help her, assist her on her way onwards. It was like Therese were a cabinet full of materials , some rough, simple and useful , some luxuriant, rarified and plentiful, all waiting to be attended to and assembled into a breathing human being if only given proper subsistence. Therese would grow to be very beautiful, happy and strong if someone gave it to her. Carol knew she would.

But Therese was hesitant to take the glass from Carol, as might people be , in fairy tales fearing the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill.

"Why not drink it? " Carol chided her. "I made it especially for you. Are you concerned its too still too hot? You poor thing. Do I need me to blow on it for you?"

Her very last sentence was a deep insistent croon.

Therese nodded in response to that, Carol imagined, now beyond speech.

Carol blew the milk very lightly, her lips red, and looking redder contrasted agianst the milk's whiteness.

With it, Therese's face grew rosy too.

"Now Therese." Carol assured her afterwards. "I assure you ... its just fine. I prepared this glass just for you. It won't burn or scald your lips. I promise. I wouldn't never do such a thing to you."

Therese still would not accept the glass.

Why was Therese so reluctant? Was it because she was taking a drink from a person she barely knew? Did Therese think Carol would poison her, put arsenic in it ? There was another poison that was near undetectable , but tasted a little like bitter almonds that she didn't remember the name of.

Or Carol might have put honey in her milk to sweeten it instead.

To assuage her fears, Carol took a small sip of the milk to test the taste and temperature.

'Cheers' she thought to herself, remembering that she had heard once in medieval times the gesture of the cheers , the clashing meeting of the cups were meant for the content of the cups to overflow into one another's, so if one glass were tainted, the poison might be shared.

Meanwhile, Carol's lipstick left a trace , a subtle blot of a sanguinary petal that marred the rim.

"See? Its quite fine. " Carol swallowed the sip down ,under Therese's watchful hazel eyes. " I've had some myself. I told you so. Here. Take a small taste."

Glancing at Therese, Carol then understood what Therese wanted.

Delicately, Carol dipped two of her fingers in the cup and stirred.

Slowly, she put her milk-dipped fingers infront of Therese's parted lips.

The young woman stared at Carol and leaned in.

Trembling , she took Carol's fingers into her mouth. She tasted a droplet off Carol's fingers, with a quickening dab of her tongue.

Carol slid her wettened finger down Therese's bottom lip.

"There. Is it alright for you Therese?" Carol inquired and set the glass aside.

" Yes. Its... perfect Carol. " Therese said.

In her mind's eyes, Carol then unbuttoned her own blouse.

"You're very beautiful Therese." Carol spoke as she did it, with a humbled sincerity that shocked her.

She founded she wanted to say more , to offer Therese more than that,something more , than a rote 'you're beautiful', but it were like Carol had never said anything of import before to anyone and did not know what else she could say . She knew by experience, was always better, a profounder proof of affection to remain silent and listen, but the weight and urgency of her own need for expression was like a damned up torrent locked inside. There was no better or eloquent way to make herself understood- except through a more immediate and corporeal embrace. But should it be done this way? So suddenly, without precedent? But how long could she and Therese both restrain , deny themselves of one another? Should they? Did they have to, even in Carol's thoughts?

Nevermind. She could simply stare at Therese in silence and be done with. The astonishment at Therese's presence somehow dispossessed from herself, yet Carol was completely confident, assured what had been instantly formed between her and Therese and was now absolute and unassailable, like it were the very first covenant , and she and Therese were exisiting if not only subsisting but for the thought of the other's one thought of one another. It was a feeling unlike any Carol had felt before. She wanted to say it: 'I've never- I've never' but didn't know what she never had had before.

Carol wanted to say: 'Don't you know I love you?'

She imagined taking Therese tightly, her nails digging into the younger's woman's shoulders, and kissing her once, impatiently upon the mouth. "Don't you know I love you?"

Instead, Carol ( going back to her original and thrilling conception, in her imagination) cast her blouse aside. "I feel there is something between us. Something very unique and wonderful indeed." She tried not to quell, or waver. Finally she asked. "What do you think Therese."

Therese might laugh at her. Stand and leave. Strike her. Or pull out a weapon concealed from under the bed spread- even possibly Harge's gun (how was this possible ? Therese did not even know it existed and it was safely locked in the safe).

Instead, Therese only inched in closer.

"I think ...you are magnificent." She thought of Therese saying it, the awe-struck way she said it at lunch.

Finally, eyes on hers, poised with tension, Carol unhooked her bra, and slid it down, so her breasts were exposed, the air cool on them.

"The feeling's mutual then." Carol put her bra aside. She tried to smile, but found she couldn't. This was a happy but solemn occasion. She felt an absurd sense of expectation, wonderment, fear and joy, like a bride on her wedding night. "...Won't you come to me darling."

Carol beckoned towards herself with her hand. The same hand that had stirred the milk.

Therese came forward obediently

Cautiously, Carol raised the glass and trickled the smallest steam of milk down her collar bone. Allowed the warm milk to merander over the curve of her breast.

Therese stared , fasinated, eyes half-lidded, like she were entranced, or might swoon.

"Carol." The young woman choked. "Could I please ... drink from you?"

Silently,the older woman nodded, and took Therese by the back of her head and guided her forward.

Therese allowed it.

Carol sighed as Therese's head fell into her breast.

The younger woman's eyes closed and her arms wrapped around Carol's torso.

"That's good Therese." Carol whispered, and kissed the top of her head as Therese licked the droplets wandering down her chest."Yes, drink it all off me, every... drop, be good and diligent, don't let a single drop of mine escape you-"

Her head fell back as Therese suckled her nipples as the droplets had collected, dangled there at its tip, as her other hand slipped down her body...

Carol saw just then, in the midst of distracting thoughts, the milk before her was churning, foaming, boiling over.

Realizing this, Carol skimmed the membrane off the top , recollected herself, poured it into a glass, and brought the glass of milk to Therese.

"I let it boil and it's got scum on it," Carol said annoyedly. "I'm sorry."

But Therese loved it, because she knew this was exactly what Carol would always do, be thinking of something else and let the milk boil.