“So maybe you’re a little unhappy because you feel disoriented. You’re getting out of touch.”
That was exactly how she felt. She had not spoken to Vicky, her Tuesday lunch companion, or Stella (Friday) for three weeks. “Ed, I’m beginning to think there’s something in this. Is there more?”
“I’m not sure. Only you know if this makes sense, but the female spider doesn’t go in for steady relationships with the opposite sex, does she?”
“We are down to basics.” But it was true. The men in her life had been studs. They had come for sex and taken it and gone. And she felt nothing for them. She hadn’t wanted a relationship with any man until Ed came into her life. Broke in, clean through the web. If it had functioned properly, he would never have got near. “Maybe there’s something in what you say. I guess there are parallels I hadn’t thought about till now. But how can this help me?”
He got up and came to the water’s edge. “If you really want to make a success of this program, give up trying to act the spider. You’ve tried and it doesn’t work. Be yourself.”
She approached him and studied his face. “I don’t follow.”
“These things we just talked about are central to your lifestyle, right?”
“I guess so, now that you point them out.”
“You act that way without really thinking about it. You guard your territory, check developments all around you—”
“And give no encouragement to guys,” said Sarah with a grin. “You’re saying I don’t need to try because I already have the behavior pattern of a spider.”
“Enough to work on, anyway,” said Ed. “If you look at it positively.”
“Ed, you’re so right! Here I am, trying to fathom what motivates a spider, and I’m running my life on the same principles! This is what I need. It gives me something to build on.” She put one arm around his neck and kissed him lightly. “You know me so well!”
He looked at his watch. “Time I was going.”
Sarah stepped into her shoes and took his arm again. “Havelock should pay you a fee for this. You just solved his biggest problem. Things were getting pretty hairy in that studio.”
He laughed at the aptness of the expression.
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“Sure.”
They crossed a small bridge and picked up the footpath again.
She said, “Havelock calls me Spider Girl.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Not anymore. It did at first. I think I could even get to like it.”
“The media will — I guarantee. You could be stuck with it.”
“There are worse names.”
“Don’t I know it! Mine, for example.”
“‘Edmund.’ Yes, you mentioned that before. It’s almost the only thing you’ve told me about yourself. Why don’t you ever talk about your life?”
He looked away at the crowd around Bethesda Fountain. “It’s my training, I guess. It could complicate things.” His step quickened.
“Only with patients. You can talk freely with friends.”
“Sure — if it comes up.” From his tone, he didn’t expect it would.
Sarah said, “Generally I’m pretty reluctant to say much about myself. Talking to you is different. Exceptional. By nature I’m a very private person. I keep in the shadows, like the spider.”
“That won’t be possible anymore,” said Ed. “You’re out on the web now.”
“True.” She sounded, and felt, dubious. “But I’m still kind of anxious.”
“That’s to be expected. Anyone in public life will tell you—”
“No, it’s not stage fright. I know I can project myself okay. I’m apprehensive. I had control of my private world. I don’t have control of this one.”
He stopped walking and turned toward her. “Sarah, you have to let Spider Girl take over.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“As I see it, we have just identified an area of your personality that makes some sense of what you’re being asked to do. You must capitalize on that. Make it work for you. Maybe there are other things latent in your character that you can use. Find out what Spider Girl is like and what she can do for you.”
“I’ll need help.”
“There isn’t any more I can do. It has to come from you. What it comes down to, Sarah, is asserting parts of your personality that you may have suppressed in private life. You’re coming out into the open, so you have to equip yourself. I’m sure you can do it.”
“It’s a challenge. There is one thing you can do.” She took his hand. “It would help my confidence if you were there in the studio the day we start shooting for real.”
“When is that?”
“It should be Friday. But I guess you have patients to see.”
“I do, but” — he started walking again, keeping hold of her hand — “I’d like to help. I’ll see if I can reschedule my appointments. Besides, I want to meet Spider Girl myself.”
She began by treating it as a game. She had always enjoyed this kind of thing. She regularly read her horoscope in magazines (she was a Scorpio), and whenever she saw one of those personality tests — “How Tolerant Are You?” or “Are You Superstitious?” — she went through it in high anticipation of self-enlightenment. In the same spirit she wanted to see how she measured up as Spider Girl.
The web amused her most. She could believe in herself as the female controlling her territory, which the male invaded only at her pleasure or his peril. She thought of Don Rigden’s laborious attempts to get near, and it made her smile to picture him left dangling on the end of a thread.
Because it was amusing, she was attracted. And because it was based on real observation of her character, she found it stimulating. She was flattered. No one before Ed had troubled to analyze her so closely.
She slept well that night. The next morning, in the studio, she went on the web and rehearsed a sequence with a drama-school boy who was supposed to be playing the part of a housefly that gets caught in the web. Instead of trying to project herself into the character of a spider reacting to the capture of its prey, Sarah decided to do as Ed had suggested: act on her own impulses.
The web had been strung in a different position. It was now almost horizontal, which made it possible to move across it more naturally, instead of coming down feet first. An overhead camera would create the illusion of verticality. Sarah crossed to her crevice and waited out of sight while Havelock explained what he wanted. It took longer than necessary because the boy kept interrupting with questions. He had a plump, well-cared-for look, and he wanted it known that he had studied the Method.
Sarah had not spoken to him. She crouched in her hideout, massaging a leg that was threatening to cramp.
A long time was spent in working out the way the boy would get onto the web. Finally it was agreed he would jump from a hoist and they would film the drop in slow motion to simulate flight. He tried it a couple of times before he got the idea of diving into the web. Then he thought he could do it better if he tried it a few more times.
Each time he hit the web its trampoline effect gave Sarah a series of violent jerks and rasped the signal thread against her thigh. She could feel it burn through her tights.
Sloane finally came to the limit of his patience. He said if the boy wanted one more try at the dive, he was welcome to go to his office on the fifteenth floor and try it out the window. Or else they would rehearse the full sequence.
So the boy was hoisted up again and performed his dive and hit the web. Then he revealed the second of his acting skills — wriggling, to try to get free.
Sarah let him have the stage a few seconds more. Then she attacked. She crossed the web in a rapid crawling motion and was on him. Her hands did not touch him. She used her teeth. The spider poisons its prey first.