Memories of Midnight

“Fuck what the casting director said. I’m up to my ass in generals. I need non-coms.” He raised his hands in despair. “Everybody wants to be a chief, nobody wants to be an Indian.”

“Excuse me,” Catherine said. “I’m Catherine Alexander.”

“Thank God!” the little man said. “You take over. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I had a thirty-five-hundred-dollar-a-year job in Dearborn editing a furniture trade magazine, and I was drafted into the Signal Corps and sent to write training films. What do I know about producing or directing? This is all yours.” He turned and hurried toward the exit, leaving Catherine standing there.

A lean, gray-haired man in a sweater moved toward her, an amused smile on his face. “Need any help?”

“I need a miracle,” Catherine said. “I’m in charge of this, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

He grinned at her. “Welcome to Hollywood. I’m Tom O’Brien, the assistant director.”

“Do you think you could direct this?”

She saw the corner of his lips twist. “I could try. I’ve done six pictures with Willie Wyler. The situation isn’t as bad as it looks. All it needs is a little organization. The script’s written, and the set’s ready.”

Catherine looked around the soundstage. “Some of these uniforms look terrible. Let’s see if we can’t do better.”

O’Brien nodded approvingly. “Right.”

Catherine and O’Brien walked over to the group of extras. The din of conversation on the enormous stage was deafening.

“Let’s hold it down, boys,” O’Brien yelled. “This is Miss Alexander. She’s going to be in charge here.”

Catherine said, “Let’s line up, so we can take a good look at you, please.”

O’Brien formed the men into a ragged line. Catherine heard laughter and voices nearby and turned in annoyance. One of the men in uniform stood in a corner, paying no attention, talking to some girls who were hanging on his every word and giggling. The man’s manner irritated Catherine.

“Excuse me. Would you mind joining the rest of us?”

He turned and asked, lazily, “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes. We’d like to go to work.”

He was extraordinarily handsome, tall and wiry, with blue-black hair and stormy dark eyes. His uniform fitted perfectly. On his shoulders were the bars of a captain, and across his breast he had pinned on a splash of brightly colored ribbons. Catherine stared at them. “Those medals … ?”

“Are they impressive enough, boss?” His voice was deep and filled with insolent amusement.

“Take them off.”

“Why? I thought I’d give this film a little color.”

“There’s one little thing you forgot. America’s not at war yet. You would have had to have won those at a carnival.”

“You’re right,” he admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t think of that. I’ll take some of them off.”

“Take them all off,” Catherine snapped.

After the morning’s shooting, while Catherine was having lunch at the commissary, he walked up to her table. “I wanted to ask you how I did this morning? Was I convincing?”

His manner infuriated her. “You enjoy wearing that uniform and strutting around the girls, but have you thought about enlisting?”

He looked shocked. “And get shot at? That’s for suckers.”

Catherine was ready to explode. “I think you’re contemptible.”

“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?”

“Don’t bother coming back to the set,” Catherine snapped. “I’ll tell Mr. O’Brien to send you your check for this morning’s work. What’s your name?”

“Douglas. Larry Douglas.”

The experience with the arrogant young actor rankled Catherine, and she was determined to put it out of her mind. For some reason, she found it difficult to forget him.

When Catherine returned to Washington, William Fraser said, “I missed you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about you. Do you love me?”

“Very much, Bill.”

“I love you too. Why don’t we go out tonight and celebrate?”

Catherine knew that that was the night he was going to propose.

They went to the exclusive Jefferson Club. In the middle of dinner, Larry Douglas walked in, still wearing his Army Air Corps uniform with all the medals. Catherine watched unbelievingly as he walked over to their table and greeted not her but Fraser.

Bill Fraser rose. “Cathy, this is Captain Lawrence Douglas. Larry, this is Miss Alexander—Catherine. Larry’s been flying with the RAF. He was the leader of the American squadron over there. They talked him into heading up a fighter base in Virginia to get some of our boys ready for combat.”

Like the rerun of an old movie, Catherine remembered how she had ordered him to take off his bars and his medals, and how he had cheerfully obliged. She had been smug, overbearing—and she had called him a coward! She wanted to crawl under the table.

The next day, Larry Douglas telephoned Catherine at her office. She refused to take his calls. When she finished work he was outside, waiting for her. He had taken off his medals and ribbons and was wearing the bars of a second lieutenant.

He smiled and walked up to her. “Is this better?”

Catherine stared at him. “Isn’t—isn’t wearing the wrong insignia against regulations?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were in charge of all that.”

She looked into his eyes and knew that she was lost. There was a magnetic force about him that was irresistible.

“What do you want from me?”

“Everything. I want you.”

They had gone to his apartment and made love. And it was an exquisite joy that Catherine had never dreamed possible, a fantastic coming together that rocked the room and the universe—until there was an explosion that became a delirious ecstasy, an unbelievable shattering journey, an arriving and a departing, an ending and a beginning. And she had lain there, spent and numb, holding him tightly, never wanting to let him go, never wanting this feeling to stop.

They were married five hours later in Maryland.