She couldn’t. It was too personal. She wished now that she had not talked so openly. “I’m sorry, Ed. Talking to you is one thing, but to total strangers... no, it’s not possible.”
“Hold on, little lady. You don’t understand what I’m suggesting. I wouldn’t ask you to bare your life to these people. It would be no more than describing the stages in mastering your own phobia. The flight of steps. How you forced yourself to study the spider in your backyard until you were able to get it in the glass jar. You don’t have to say one word about your troubles at school or at home. Believe me, this is something that could really help some pretty desperate people.”
She shook her head. “I’d like to — really I would — but I guess I’m a very private person.”
“Okay.” He gave a shrug and a smile. “I just thought I’d see how you felt about it. You don’t mind that I asked?”
Unbeknownst to Ed, the waiter had approached to see if they wanted more coffee, and must have caught the tail end of their conversation. Sarah rolled her eyes, and Ed actually colored a little, but the waiter carried on with a superb show of indifference.
When he had turned away, they exchanged smiles. “I guess I should be flattered,” said Ed, “but really, I’m not into seduction.”
She smiled again, but she knew as he said it that he was speaking the truth — at least for that moment, and that evening.
In the taxi she thought things over. She wanted to see him again. Talking with him this evening, she had begun to make sense of elements of her past she had understood imperfectly before. Her own frankness had surprised her. He had worked a miracle in getting her to confide so much. She felt stimulated and revitalized. She could not let it stop here.
“Ed, maybe, after all, I’d like to help with those patients of yours.”
5
Don had been notified that Professor Berlin wished to see him at noon on Thursday. The last time they had talked alone was the afternoon Jerry had almost gone berserk because Don had been unwilling to go along with the James Bond stunt. Possibly that was why this summons came in the form of a typed memo delivered personally by Bernice. After all those things Jerry had said, he would find it a strain to be informal. They both would.
“Honey, I’m no wiser than you,” Bernice told Don when he asked what this was about. “He told me to be damn sure you got it, that’s all. I don’t know what’s gotten into Jerry lately. I mean, if I worked in the Kremlin, I’d have more idea what was going on. Take that TV thing the week before last. Jerry knew it was on. You did. Did anyone else, do you suppose, apart from me? Sarah Jordan sure didn’t. When she came in the day they were shooting, she was ready to spend the morning in the lab. Jesus, was that young lady mad when I told her there was a TV unit coming in to film you with the spiders!”
“You told her that?”
“Sweetie, someone had to tell her. She had driven down from Lake Pinecliff that morning just to get her readings, like she always does on Thursdays. So I filled her in. I figured when she knew what was happening, she would speed up the readings to be through before the TV team arrived, but it seems when they got there, she was still working on it.” Bernice switched to a more casual tone. “I heard they shot some good film of her.”
“Yup.”
“Lucky for Sarah. Will we see her on the tube?”
“It’s possible. You mean, she definitely knew they were coming in that morning?”
“Only after I told her, darling.” Bernice gave a bland smile. “I guess those readings took a little longer to get through that morning.”
Don nodded. As Bernice seemed reluctant to return to her office, he asked, “Lake Pinecliff — where’s that, sweetheart?”
“New Jersey. Thirty, forty miles northwest of here. It’s in the mountains. Sarah goes there every Wednesday. We have a number to call in case she’s wanted.”
“I knew she was out Wednesdays. We have an arrangement. I figured she went home to her folks’.” He said with a sly smile, “What does she do in the mountains?”
Bernice gave a throaty laugh and aimed a mock punch at his chin. “Wouldn’t I love to know! I’ll tell you one thing — whatever it is, she does it in a crash helmet. Once, she parked her car beside mine and I saw it sitting on the passenger seat. You can’t tell me she wears a helmet just to drive a Ford Pinto.”
Don’s estimation of Sarah Jordan was undergoing drastic revision. Where once there had been a pathetically diligent girl so obsessive about her research that she could not even share a joke there were now glimpses of someone quite different: an ambitious, opportunistic, and — on the evidence of her TV interview — a magnetically attractive personality with a secret.
Jerry had the whiskey glasses out when Don appeared, signaling reconciliation. He had found an article in a British journal about the cryptozoa, the creatures that exist in continuously dark and damp environments. It said little, if anything, new, but it served the purpose of indicating Jerry’s willingness to resume active supervision of the research project.
They talked for a while about the direction Don’s work was taking. Increasingly, he was finding that biotic factors such as the food chain and its influence on the density of population were leading him toward a broader consideration of the ecosystem in which spiders existed. Jerry agreed that this was a logical development. The focus of the research was still the adaptation of a single species to changes in the environment, but it would be unwise to get so close that bigger ecological considerations might be overlooked. To Don, this comment of Jerry’s sounded like an oblique criticism of Sarah Jordan, until Jerry made the point that Don’s was the synecological approach. By implication, then, Sarah’s was autecological, concentrating on the effects on a single species of such things as temperature, humidity, light intensity, and soil composition. As a research procedure it was no less valid. You had to hand it to Jerry: he was a smart talker.
Over a second scotch, Jerry asked straight out whether the collaboration with Sarah was proving successful. Don answered warily that it was a little early to draw any conclusions, but that they had regular exchanges of information. Jerry asked how they got on on a personal level, and Don said they respected each other. He added defensively that he didn’t see why it was necessary to get involved personally. Then Jerry said something strange. He asked if Don had a fear of getting trapped.
Don asked Jerry to explain what he meant.
Jerry backed down, saying that if his meaning was not clear, he did not intend to elaborate. Leaving that, he said he had to confess he had mishandled the TV people’s visit. It had been a mistake to ignore Sarah when they were discussing the project with Laz. He had Wrongly assumed she would want nothing to do with TV. How she had got herself in front of the camera was still a mystery, but the most incredible thing was how terrific she had been.
Don kept silent, letting Jerry do the running.
There was no way anyone could have known Sarah would be such a natural, Jerry went on. He had respect for her intellectual caliber and her determination to succeed, but she had always given the impression of being a loner, not at all a girl you would expect to project herself with confidence on TV. He had given it some thought since then, because he didn’t like making an ass of himself, and he knew where he had blundered. He had mistaken Sarah’s reserved manner for lack of confidence. Usually these things went hand in hand. But not in her case.