On the way out, she felt someone touch her arm. It was Cunningham. He said in a low voice, “Sarah, I enjoyed our film interview and I hope you did. I’m really interested in the things you were saying. I’d like to talk some more. Would you allow a silver-haired shrink to take you to dinner Saturday evening?”
He put it so sweetly she could not refuse.
4
The silk sheet rippled and slipped over the shape of the unseen tarantula as it crept closer to Don Rigden’s inert body. Don lay apparently asleep, his bare chest registering the evenness of his breathing. Inches from his left forearm, the creature emerged, dark and alien against the white material. With a squirming action it climbed onto the flesh of his arm.
When it reached his shoulder, Don moved. He lifted it off with his right hand. He sat up, holding the spider by its body, so that its legs moved freely while he spoke to the camera.
“There’s really no reason to be scared of a spider, even a large one like this. They really — oh, shit! — I mean rarely bite, and if they do it’s no worse than a bee sting. I’m sorry. The first time the damn spider gets it right, I have to blow my lines. Could we do another take?”
The screen went blank.
“That was take seven,” said Greg Laz. “We tried another four after that, but I guess the spider was tired.”
“Or depressed,” Don murmured.
He was seated in a small screening room in a building near Forty-Second and Lexington. Laz had invited him there to see the previous day’s rushes. Jerry sat beside him. On Jerry’s other side was Sarah. Don had no idea why she had been invited.
Already they had sat through the unedited footage of Don’s interview in the lab. By any standard, it had been a letdown. He was not trained to project his personality, and it showed.
“Remember, these are only rushes,” Laz tactfully pointed out. “The tarantula sequence would look better if we dubbed in some music.” He said it without conviction.
“Let’s face it,” said Don. “There’s nothing there you can use.
Beside him, Jerry Berlin was ominously silent. He had just watched his ambitions for the department sink like water through sand. If his expression was any clue to his thoughts, he suspected Don had blown it deliberately.
If so, he was mistaken. Sure, Don had expressed some reluctance when the project was first discussed, but once he had been persuaded to take part, he had wanted very much to make a success of it. In his imagination he had been through the interview many times. He had rehearsed some pretty clever things to say. When the time came, he had used several. As he spoke them, they had sounded impressive. On film, they appeared to be just what they were — pretentious. He had made the mistake of trying too hard.
Then Laz announced that he had some more film. With no further explanation, the interview between Cunningham and Sarah was screened.
Don was stunned. No one had mentioned to him that they had filmed Sarah. Jerry had not said a word about it. Don glanced his way, frowning. Jerry gave a shrug and looked away.
Don stared at the screen in blank amazement. What he saw was a revelation. It was not just that Sarah spoke fluently and with authority; it was her manner. There was warmth in her words. Her eyes shone. There was no hint of the tight-lipped intransigence he had come to believe was rooted in her character.
The contrast between the two filmed interviews was cruel. It made no difference that Sarah’s had ended in confusion when a cabinet fell from a bench. On the contrary, it had strengthened the conviction that she was in control as she commanded the film crew to stand still while she collected the runaway spiders.
Jerry, so conspicuously silent about Don’s performance, immediately got to his feet to register approval of Sarah’s. “Can you use it?” he demanded of Laz. “What we just saw is exciting television. It’s got to be used.”
Laz nodded. “I agree. Sarah is terrific. A natural. She talks with conviction. She can persuade people that they can beat their phobias. What’s more, as most spider haters are women, they’ll really believe her when she tells them she was once as scared as they are. But just let them see her pick one up in her bare hands to save its life — terrific! There’s no other word. That’s not to say,” he added, “that Don’s isn’t a first-class introduction to the subject. Maybe if we edit a little here and there ... ”
Don didn’t need telling that no one would be editing his interview, or the scene with the tarantula. It wouldn’t be worth it. The screening had achieved its purpose: it was clear to everyone that Sarah must speak for the department in Laz’s documentary; no one could possibly object.
What angered Don was that he had been taken for a ride. He hadn’t wanted to do the show. They had pressured him into it. There was no reason why he should have succeeded. He had no training in TV. Yet it went on his score sheet as a failure, made worse by Sarah’s scintillating success.
He was not jealous that Sarah had eclipsed him, but he felt some resentment at the underhanded way she had done it. He remembered now that she had been in the lab early Thursday morning when the filming was done. The arc lamps had been in position when he arrived. To have got Laz to film her, she must have arrived early and convinced him she was worth it. Never underestimate the ambition of a single-minded woman.
Through much of Friday Sarah considered what she would wear for her dinner date with Ed Cunningham. It was a problem. Generally she dressed casually but smartly, in pants, sweaters, and T-shirts, all good-name clothes that she replaced before the fabrics lost their crispness. They were fine for most occasions, but she had convinced herself that something more formal was called for this time. She had two evening outfits, a three-quarter-length white cotton number chosen by her mother that she had worn for her graduation party and not wanted to wear since, and a sexy red silk blouse and fitted pants that just would not do for dinner with a middle-aged guy she hardly knew.
She spent Saturday morning touring the boutiques in the East Sixties, yet finally found what she wanted in Ohrbach’s, on West Thirty-Fourth — a simple black dress with a high neck that was a line-for-line copy of a Paris original. The strappy high heels came from Charles Jourdan.
She had got into the dress and was trying to decide if it needed jewelry when she remembered her mother’s asking the same question as she sat in front of her dressing table in a black satin gown almost twenty years ago. It must have been as far back as that because Sarah herself had been wearing the black leotard she had for her ballet, the first she had ever possessed, with a swan motif embroidered on the front. At four years old she practiced every day and had classes two afternoons a week. She hadn’t told anyone that she was planning to fly to Russia to join the Bolshoi company. Anyway, this time she told her mother there was no need for jewelry, but she would look a whole lot prettier if she put her hair up. Of course her advice had been ignored.
Mother.
Christ, it was Saturday and she had not called her mother.
She had a note in her date book to call her this weekend. She had meant to do it Friday.
But why? It wasn’t her birthday. Or Daddy’s.
She looked at her watch. There was just enough time.
“Who is this?” the voice on the line asked. “Is it you, Sally?” Her mother never used the name she had chosen for Sarah.
“Who else? I’m sorry this is—”
“I thought you would call last evening. Where are you?”
“At college, Mother.”
“At college? I didn’t think this would be you. I said to Daddy last evening when you didn’t call, ‘I know what Sally is doing. She’s coming home. She didn’t call because she’s coming home this weekend.’”