At the end of the story he met her on the bus.
He was returning from town with a bagful of film. She caught the bus just as he was lowering himself onto one of the front seats downstairs. As she boarded the bus, she saw him and immediately looked away. Even though there were empty seats she stayed on her feet, holding onto the pole by the stairs.
Sid gazed at the curve of her bottom, defining itself and then growing blurred as her long coat swung with the movements of the bus plowing through the fog. Why wouldn’t she sit down? He leaned forward impulsively, emboldened by the nights he’d spent in secret with her, and touched her arm. “Would you like to sit down, love?”
She looked down at him, and he recoiled. Her eyes were bright with loathing, and yet she looked trapped. She shook her head once, keeping her lips pressed so tight they grew pale, then she turned her back on him. He’d make her turn her back tonight, he thought, by God he would. He had to sit on his hands for the rest of the journey, but he walked behind her all the way from the bus stop to her house.
“You’re not tying me up with that,” the woman said. “Cut my wrists off, that would. Pajama cord or nothing, and none of your cheap stuff neither.”
“Sid, would you mind seeing if you can come up with some cord?” Toby Hale said, taking out his reptilian wallet. “I’ll stay and discuss the scene.”
There was sweat in his eyebrows. The woman was making him sweat because she was their only female model for the story, since Toby’s wife wouldn’t touch anything kinky. Sid kicked the fog as he hurried to the shops. Just let the fat bitch give him any lip.
Her husband bound her wrists and ankles to the legs of the bed. He untied her and turned her over and tied her again. He untied her and tied her wrists and ankles together behind her back, and poked his crotch at her face. Sid snapped her and snapped her, wondering how far Toby had asked them to go, and then he had to reload. “Get a bastard move on,” the woman told him. “This is bloody uncomfortable, did you but know.”
Sid couldn’t restrain himself. “If you don’t like the work, we can always get someone else.”
“Can you now?” The woman’s face rocked toward him on the bow of herself, and then she toppled sideways on the bed, her breasts flopping on her chest, a few pubic strands springing free of her purple knickers like the legs of a lurking spider. “Bloody get someone, then,” she cried.
Toby had to calm her and her suffused husband down while Sid muttered apologies. That night he set the frosted photograph in front of him and chanted his story over it until the girl pleaded for mercy. He no longer cared if Toby had his doubts about the story, though Sid was damned if he could see what had made him frown over it. If only Sid could find someone like the girl to model for the story… Even when he’d finished with her for the evening, his having been forced to apologize to Toby’s models clung to him. He was glad he would be photographing Enid Stone tomorrow. Maybe it was time for him to think of moving on.
He was on his way to Enid Stone’s press conference when he saw the girl again. As he emerged from his building she was arriving home from wherever she worked, and she was on his side of the road. The slam of the front door made her flinch and dodge to the opposite pavement, but not before a streetlamp had shown him her face. Her eyes were sunken in dark rings, her mouth was shivering; her long blonde hair looked dulled by the fog. She was moving awkwardly, as if it pained her to walk.
She must have female trouble, Sid decided, squirming at the notion. On his way to the bookshop his glimpse of her proved as hard to leave behind as the fog was, and he had to keep telling himself that it was nothing to do with him. The bookshop window was full of Enid Stone’s books upheld by wire brackets. Maybe one day he’d see a Sid Pym exhibition in a window.
He hadn’t expected Enid Stone to be so small. She looked like someone’s shrunken crabby granny, impatiently suffering her hundredth birthday party. She sat in an armchair at the end of a thickly carpeted room above the bookshop, confronting a curve of reporters sitting on straight chairs. “Don’t crowd me,” she was telling them. “A girl’s got to breathe, you know.”
Sid joined the photographers who were lined up against the wall like miscreants outside a classroom. Once the reporters began to speak, having been set in motion by a man from the publishers, Enid Stone snapped at their questions, her head jerking rapidly, her eyes glittering like a bird’s. “That’ll do,” she said abruptly. “Give a girl a chance to rest her voice. Who’s going to make me beautiful?”
This was apparently meant for the photographers, since the man from the publishers beckoned them forward. The reporters were moving their chairs aside when Enid Stone raised one bony hand to halt the advance of the cameras. “Where’s the one who takes the dirty pictures? Have you let him in?”
Even when several reporters and photographers turned to look at Sid, he couldn’t believe she meant him. “Is that Mr Muck? Show him the air,” she ordered. “No pictures till he goes.”
The line of photographers took a step forward and closed in front of Sid. As he stared at their backs, his face and ears throbbing as if from blows, the man from the publishers took hold of his arm. “I’m afraid that if Miss Stone won’t have you I must ask you to leave.”
Sid trudged downstairs, unable to hear his footsteps for the extravagant carpet. He felt as if he weren’t quite there. Outside, the fog was so thick that the buses had stopped running. It filled his eyes, his mind. However fast he walked, there was always as much of it waiting beyond it. Its passiveness infuriated him. He wanted to feel he was overcoming something, and by God, he would once he was home.
He grabbed the copy of the story he’d written for Toby Hale and threw it on the table. He found the photograph beside the bed and propped it against a packet of salt in front of him. The picture had grown dull with so much handling, but he hadn’t the patience to develop a fresh copy just now. “My name’s Mister Sidney and don’t you forget it,” he informed the photograph.
There was no response. His penis was as still as the fingerprinted glossy piece of card. The scene at the bookshop had angered him too much, that was all. He only had to relax and let his imagination take hold. “You’re here to learn discipline,” he said soft and slow.
The figure composed of dots seemed to shift, but it was only Sid’s vision; his eyes were smarting. He imagined the figure in front of him changing, and suddenly he was afraid of seeing her as she had looked beneath the streetlamp. The memory distressed him, but why should he think of it now? He ought to be in control of how she appeared to him. Perhaps his anger at losing control would give him the power to take hold of her. “My name’s Mr. Sidney,” he repeated, and heard a mocking echo in his brain.
His eyes were stinging when it should be her bottom that was. He closed his eyes and saw her floating helplessly toward him. “Come here if you know what’s good for you,” he said quickly, and then he thought he knew how to catch her. “Please,” he said in a high panicky voice, “please don’t hurt me.”