The Other Side of Midnight

"You're a fake. You enjoy wearing that uniform and strutting around the girls, but have you thought about enlisting?"

He stared at her incredulously. "And get shot at?" he asked. "That's for suckers." He leaned forward and grinned. "This is a lot more fun."

Catherine's lips were quivering with anger. "Aren't you eligible for the draft?"

"I suppose technically I'm eligible, but a friend of mine knows a guy in Washington and"--he lowered his voice--"I don't think they'll ever get me."

"I think you're contemptible," Catherine exploded.

"Why?"

"If you don't know why, I could never explain it to you."

"Why don't you try? At dinner tonight. Your place. Do you cook?"

Catherine rose to her feet, her cheeks flushed with anger. "Don't bother coming back to the set," she said. "I'll tell Mr. O'Brien to send you your check for this morning's work."

She turned to go, then remembered and asked, "What's your name?"

"Douglas," he said. "Larry Douglas."

Fraser telephoned Catherine from London the next night to find out how things had gone. She reported to him the day's happenings but made no mention of the incident with Larry Douglas. When Fraser returned to Washington, she would tell him about it, and they would laugh over it together.

Early the next morning as Catherine was getting dressed to go to the studio, the doorbell rang. She opened the bungalow door and a delivery boy stood there holding a large bouquet of roses.

"Catherine Alexander?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Sign here please."

She signed the form that he handed her. "They're lovely," she said, taking the flowers.

"That'll be fifteen dollars."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Fifteen dollars. They're C.O.D."

"I don't under--" her lips tightened. Catherine reached for the card attached to the flowers and pulled it out of the envelope. The card read: "I would have paid for these myself, but I'm not working. Love, Larry."

She stared at the card unbelievingly.

"Well, do you want 'em or not?" asked the delivery boy.

"Not," she snapped. She thrust the flowers back in his arms.

He looked at her, puzzled. "He said you'd laugh. That it was kind of a private joke."

"I'm not laughing," Catherine said. She slammed the door furiously.

All that day, the incident kept rankling her. She had met egotistical men but never anyone with the outrageous conceit of Mr. Larry Douglas. She was sure that he had had an endless succession of victories with empty-headed blondes and bosomy brunettes who couldn't wait to fling themselves into his bed. But for him to put her in that category made Catherine feel cheap and humiliated. The mere thought of him made her flesh crawl. She determined to put him out of her mind.

At seven o'clock that evening Catherine started to leave the stage. An assistant came up to her, an envelope in his hand.

"Did you charge this, Miss Alexander?" he asked.

It was a charge slip from central casting and it read: