“You make it sound like exams.”
“It’s the most important one I’ll ever take in this place.”
“How do you pass?”
“By showing I care enough to try. And by not making demands. I worked at the dancing so hard I had complaints from the girl in the room under mine. One rehearsal Don didn’t show up, and I was suicidal. It turned out he had to go on an errand for his professor, but he forgot to let me know. I was in real danger of losing him. He made it up by taking me out to dinner, and that was nice, and I almost blew it by throwing myself at him, the strain was so awful. I kept repeating over and over to myself what you had told me.”
“What was that?”
“You don’t remember? The Peahen doesn’t chase the Peacock around the park.”
They both laughed.
“Well, I cooled it, and kept hoping my seguidilla would come right. Last Friday it did. We had a rehearsal as usual in the old Ping-Pong room, and I don’t know why, but suddenly I got it all together — the steps, the arm movements, the poise, the rhythm — all in perfect harmony. I wasn’t even thinking about the problem of managing the dress. I just let it happen and I knew I had it — even before Don kissed me. He switched off the tape and held me and our mouths met and the 1812 Overture was playing in my head. I asked if he wanted to try the dance once more to be sure, but he said he couldn’t be more sure. You know, the way he said it, he wasn’t talking about the dance at all.” Meg smiled contentedly.
“Did you—?”
“The same night. Nancy, words can’t express it. It sounds crazy, but all that waiting and uncertainty paid off. It wouldn’t have been so sensational without it.”
“I’m so happy for you. What happens now?”
“Well, the party’s on Saturday and I just know the dance will go right. We’re not rehearsing again, because we reached the peak and we don’t want to go over. We made no promises, but if I read it right, I’ll be cooking breakfast in Don’s apartment Sunday morning.”
“And after?”
“We’ll see how he wants to play it. Put it this way: the girl in the room under mine won’t get disturbed anymore by dancing.”
Ed Cunningham was not really a fitness freak, but he believed in keeping in shape. Twice a week he worked out at a handsomely equipped health spa four blocks from his Park Avenue office. There, beside the pool, a few months previously, he had first met Harry Shakespeare.
They met again in the sauna the week after Shakespeare became Sarah’s agent. Through the steam he sounded more British than a costume movie. “Decent of you to bring me a new client, old man. I do appreciate it. We came to a useful agreement with NBC and I’m confident there are more goodies to come.”
“I knew she could use your help,” said Ed.
“A sweet girl,” said Shakespeare, “and most unusual. The proverbial nerves of steel. You met her working on the Laz documentary series, didn’t you?”
Ed nodded. “I was interested in the way she mastered her fear of spiders.”
“Are you psychoanalyzing her?”
“Christ, no. She wouldn’t want that; nor would I. She has a horror of psychiatry. I simply got her to tell me her story, and then repeat it to some of my patients. I’m writing a book on the treatment of phobias.”
“I see. I only asked because I notice you loom rather large in her thoughts. I’ve talked to her on the phone several times and she seems to base all her decisions on whether you would approve or disapprove.”
Ed was silent for a moment.
“If you had been treating her, old boy, I would have said she had an old-fashioned crush on her shrink.”
“I’m aware of this,” said Ed, “and I want to discourage it. If she’ll take advice from you—”
“Just a minute. You can’t back off now. This girl is going to need all the support she can get when the media move in on her.”
“No, I simply want to cool it a little. There’s a young guy she works with — Don Rigden — who has dated her a couple of times. He’s a responsible guy who I’m sure would like to help if she’ll let him. That’s why I’m backing off, as you put it. But I aim to be there in the background.”
“Just so long as she doesn’t transfer her affection to me, old boy,” said Harry Shakespeare, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Between my girlfriend’s divorce and my own, my life is complicated enough.”
“What’s the world like from a cobweb?”
Sarah looked down from the center of the orb web to where Havelock Sloane was standing on the studio floor, hands on hips. This morning he was in a pale-green denim suit and white turtleneck sweater. Very snappy, but from this angle there was no question that he was wearing a hairpiece.
She raised her hand and returned the greeting, thinking he would then move on. But he remained, and so did his semicircle of disciples.
“How does it feel up there?”
This was her third day of getting acquainted with the web. Havelock had told her to use any free time between rehearsals learning to move on it.
“I have sore feet. The rope kind of catches them sideways.”
“We’ll have Costume fix you some thicker sneakers. Are your hands holding up?”
She showed him two red palms.
“That’s the kind of dedication I’m looking for,” Havelock called up, and she could not be sure if he was serious. “Let’s see how you move now.”
She gripped the strand above her with both hands and tucked her legs in to ease back through the space. The way the web was strung, it tilted away from Havelock, and Sarah was now on the underside. Keeping legs and arms bent, she scaled the rungs formed by the spirals in a rapid movement that took her to the scaffolding under the arc lamps.
“Not bad. Now would you come down to the center again on this side.”
There was only one way to do as he asked, and that was backward. She straightened the sides of her leotard, turned, and put her weight on the outermost spiral. She made a smooth descent without looking down, and although the spacing was uneven, her feet met the rope cleanly each time. At the center, she turned neatly, tucked her backside into the hub of the web, and reclined as if on a hammock, easing the weight off her sore feet.
“Sarah, my dear, that move is a knockout from here, and it’s too bad we can’t let America see it. They’d forget all about spiders. It’s not possible you could come down face first? That’s the way the spider moves, but I figure you’d be in danger of breaking your neck. Am I right?”
“I wouldn’t care to try it. You need an acrobat for that.”
“I’ll get the tech boys to look at it. Maybe we can string the web horizontally and get a high camera angle on you. Take a break now, sweetheart. Get some extra-thick sneakers. I want you back here by eleven-forty-five to try something different.”
It transpired that Sloane wanted to work out a routine on the web to simulate the courtship ritual. “This is where we need your expert knowledge, Sarah. Take us through the stages leading up to coition, would you, and we’ll see how we can stage it.”
So she pointed to the crevice where the female would lie in wait, out of sight of suitors or prey but linked by the signal thread to the center of her web. And she described the strategy of the male, first anchoring a thread of its own, high and clear of the web, as a safety thread to swing back on in emergencies.