She tried to imagine what it would be like to have worked fifteen years in Frankenberg's department store, and she found she was unable to.
The story opens with the novel’s protagonist, Therese, in the cafeteria of a large New York City department store where—for the lack of anything else of interest—she is re-reading the booklet given to new employees detailing all the important information about working for the company. One of the benefits is a three weeks’ vacation granted upon the fifteenth year of employment. That she cannot find anything more interesting to do while eating lunch than re-reading the employee handbook says one thing about her and her reaction to the intended lure offered in exchange for fifteen years of loyalty adds to that thing. From the beginning, the deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction with all the things that are supposed to make a person happy are telegraphed. She is not just alone in the cafeteria; she is alienated and isolated from social convention.
"It doesn't matter.”
Such a little thing. Three simple words of no complexity strung together to create a direct statement easily understood by anyone. And yet it is with these three words that Therese’s revolt against social conventions and standards begins. A striking blonde female customer has asked to buy the display model of a valise and Therese breaks protocol in her effort to please the customer. More important, however, is the recognition that the beautiful customer knows Therese has broken the rules and Therese has confirmed to the customer that she has broken the rules. Three words that tell a story.
"This? This is Waterloo."
This quote sounds like it is a metaphor—and it is. But it also quite literal. In a move that prefigured Thelma and Louse by decades, Therese and Carol hop in the car and set out for a road trip that takes them wherever the road may lead. On the way from Chicago to Minneapolis they make a fateful stopover in a town called Waterloo. In a move that prefigured Abba’s hit song by decades, Waterloo is the site not just where Napoleon surrendered and finally ended his reign of terror, but where Therese and Carol surrender to their love for each other. The small midwestern town of Waterloo will also become the site—unknown at the time—where Carol surrenders her to her husband in his divorce suit.
Monday
My darling, I am not even going into court. This morning I was given a private showing of what Harge intended to bring against me. Yes, they have a few conversations recorded--namely Waterloo, and it would be useless to try to face a court with this.
Therese and Carol were not the only ones making a stopover in Waterloo on that fateful night. Therese even noticed him when she went down to the lobby to buy some newspapers: “the man in the dark overcoat who looked at her over the top of his newspaper, and slumped in his chair and went on reading beside the black and cream-colored marble column.” It was in a Waterloo hotel room that the conversation leading to and the sounds made during their first passionate round of lovemaking was secretly recorded by the man in the dark overcoat. The man in the overcoat turns out to be a private detective that Carol’s husband hired to follow her and get the unvarnished skinny on what was going on. His intrusion throws a monkey wrench into love, but the The Price of Salt is one of the landmarks of American fiction because in the end the love of two women for each other is not punished.
