Gliding elated her as no other experience did. She had discovered it the previous summer on vacation at Redondo Beach, California, saved through the winter, and bought her own Rogallo in March. After days spent observing the diminutive world of spiders, the sensation of space and height was exhilarating. There were private moments high above the green slopes when she cried out in ecstasy. Essentially, she had discovered, it was a sport that inspired a sense of self-awareness without depression. There was, too, the consciousness of danger. It raised the adrenaline and triggered the senses into vivid perceptions. After a day’s gliding she always stayed overnight at the town’s one motel, awoke refreshed, and drove back to the city, where she breakfasted out, usually eggs and bacon, griddle cakes, and coffee, more than she ever prepared in the room where she lived.
Mentally ready for a full day in the araneology lab, she arrived so early that she had to get the keys herself, usually a technician’s job.
Bernice, Jerry Berlin’s secretary, cooed with pleasure at being interrupted. Her main contribution to the running of the department was keeping everyone informed of what everyone else was doing. In the course of a week it was remarkable how many staff and research students came her way on the flimsy pretext of consulting the phone book, borrowing scissors, or looking at the schedule. Bernice was forty-three and into her third marriage and claimed she could handle anything. Most of the time she sat behind her Olivetti handling plastic cups of coffee and relaying information.
“Great to see someone in this place isn’t on Valium,” she told Sarah. “Generally it’s after ten before the first one crawls in. Coffee, honey?”
“I just came for the key to Lab Five.”
“Plug that in, will you?” Bernice was busy already, separating two cups from the supply on the bookcase behind her. “To your right, honey. There should be a spoon here somewhere. Jesus, since Jerry used this office as a dining room, every damn thing has been missing. You heard about the visit from Greg Laz, the TV producer? I told Jerry straight they can have their lunch someplace else when they come back today. He says he’ll take them out.”
“They’re coming in today?”
“The entire unit, as I understand. Camera crew, sound people, lights. You weren’t by any chance planning to work in Lab Five? Sweetie, forget it.”
Sarah controlled her anger. “Nobody told me this was scheduled for today. When was this arranged?”
“They phoned early yesterday. I thought everyone had heard. Didn’t your research partner tell you? He’s in it, for God’s sake.”
“I was off campus yesterday. I’m never here Wednesdays.” Sarah had heard that Berlin was angling to get the department on TV. She had not attached any importance to it. So many of Jerry’s overtures to the media came to nothing. “You say Don Rigden is involved?”
“Didn’t you know? Jerry brought him in for lunch last week with Laz. A cozy little threesome right here.”
Sarah felt the blood rise to her cheeks.
Bernice was quick to follow with, “Don’t ask me why Jerry asked him. I thought you had two years’ seniority. If anyone here is qualified to go on TV and talk about spiders, it must be you. You might not have wanted to do it, but it’s nice to be asked. I don’t know how you see it, honey, but it strikes me that equality of the sexes still has a long way to go in this college. Do you like your coffee strong? This time of day, I do. What is it with Don Rigden — a communication problem? Funny, I get along okay with the guy. I guess men find it easy to relate to me.”
Sarah occupied herself with the kettle, declining the strong invitation to unburden her thoughts about Don. All she said — and it was enough for Bernice — was, “We have a satisfactory understanding about research.”
“Sure you have. That’s obvious. Jerry regards you two as his Super Bowl team. What beats me is why Don should go to lunch with Laz and not mention it to you.”
“It isn’t important.”
“I mean, it’s not as if it was anything personal, like whether he sleeps with his girl. Who is she, that dark-haired one with the face of a fifteen-year-old who tags after him? Meg someone...”
“Kellaway.”
“You know her, then. I believe it’s cooled lately. I had it from Della, who works in the dean’s office, that there was definitely a relationship there a month or two back. Maybe she was rushing him. I always think of Don as a guy who values his freedom. What do you say?”
“I’ve never thought about it. What time are the TV people expected? I’d like to get some time in the lab before they take over.”
“Jerry said not before ten-thirty. They plan to shoot here this morning, with Don showing them around the lab, and in Don’s apartment this afternoon.”
“His apartment?”
Her eyes shining, Bernice confided to Sarah the proposal to re-create the scene from Dr. No. “I understand he isn’t crazy about the idea. You bet he’ll do it, though. Jerry was laying it on the line to him in here on Monday morning. I didn’t hear exactly what was said, but you can get the drift from the tones in their voices. Don is no pushover, but Jerry has all the trump cards, doesn’t he?” Without pause, Bernice switched to other developments in the department, and Sarah stopped listening. The monologue was self-fueling. Bernice’s visitors were never so reckless as to give anything in return.
Sarah despised Bernice for her compulsive gossiping. It was oral incontinence, the more to be deplored because of the privileged position she held. Jerry should have fired her years ago.
Once acquired, confidences should be kept. Sarah herself gathered information, but she used it for her own purposes. She had a number of contacts — they were not really friends — female, observant, and discreet. She had cultivated them with care. They talked to her because she was a sensitive listener, appreciative of what they had to say. Compiled, compared, and intricately linked, their news provided her with a network of intelligence reaching into each area of university life her interest had penetrated. It gave her confidence and a secret sensation of power. More practically, it was a safeguard against surprise. She could face anything at all except the unexpected.
This was why the news that Jerry had invited Don Rigden to do the TV program had shaken her. By a freakish combination of circumstances, it had escaped her until this morning. She had neglected to take an interest in Jerry’s wooing of the TV people because she had assumed he would grab at any interview that was offered. The choice of Don, without even the courtesy of informing her, had hit her like a whiplash. As the senior research student, she was entitled to be consulted, whatever her potential as a TV performer — and how could Jerry judge that? It just reinforced her feeling that the day Don had been launched on graduate research, her own status had dropped ten points.
She was still smarting when she left Bernice and let herself into the lab. In an effort to subdue the hurt, she picked up her clipboard and began to record developments in the glass cabinets ranged in rows along the benches. This catalogue of births, molts, deaths, and significant behavioral changes was a daily task essential to her project. It could be completed in forty minutes. This morning she was in no hurry. She was determined that she would still be engaged in it when Jerry brought the TV crew to the lab. She would leave them no doubt that there had been a serious breakdown in communication.