The Other Side of Midnight

by Sidney Sheldon

  The corridor door opened and three more girls pushed their way in, shoving Catherine to one side.

  "Is the job filled yet?" one of them asked.

  "Maybe he'd like a harem," another girl suggested. "Then we can all stay."

  The door to the inner office opened, and a man came out. He was just a little under six feet, and had the almost-slim body of a nonathlete who keeps in shape at the athletic club three mornings a week. He had curly blond hair graying at the temples, bright blue eyes and a strong, rather forbidding jaw line. "What in hell's going on here, Sally?" His voice was deep and authoritative.

  "These girls heard about the vacancy, Mr. Fraser."

  "Jesus! I didn't hear about it myself until an hour ago." His eyes swept over the room. "It's like jungle drums." As his eyes moved toward Catherine, she stood up straight and gave him her warmest I'll-be-a-great-secretary smile, but his eyes passed right over her and went back to the receptionist. "I need a copy of Life," he told her. "An issue that came out three or four weeks ago. It has a picture of Stalin on the cover."

  "I'll order it, Mr. Fraser," the receptionist said.

  "I need it now." He started back toward his office.

  "I'll call the Time-Life Bureau," the receptionist said, "and see if they can dig up a copy."

  Fraser stopped at the door. "Sally, I have Senator Borah on the line. I want to read him a paragraph from that issue. You have two minutes to find a copy for me." He went into his office and closed the door.

  The girls in the room looked at one another and shrugged. Catherine stood there, thinking hard. She turned and pushed her way out of the office.

  "Good. That's one down," one of the girls said.

  The receptionist picked up the telephone and dialed information. "The number for the Time-Life Bureau," she said. The room grew silent as the girls watched her. "Thank you." She replaced the receiver, then picked it up and dialed again. "Hello. This is Mr. William Fraser's office in the State Department. Mr. Fraser needs a back issue of Life immediately. It's the one with Stalin on the cover...You don't keep any back issues there? Who could I talk to?...I see. Thank you." She hung up.

  "Tough luck, honey," one of the girls said.

  Another added: "They sure come up with some beauties, don't they? If he wants to come over to my place tonight, I'll read to him." There was a laugh.

  The intercom buzzed. She flipped down the key. "Your two minutes are up," Fraser's voice said. "Where's the magazine?"

  The receptionist drew a deep breath. "I just talked to the Time-Life Bureau, Mr. Fraser, and they said it would be impossible to get..."

  The door opened and Catherine hurried in. In her hand was a copy of Life with a picture of Stalin on the cover. She pushed her way through to the desk and placed the magazine in the receptionist's hand. The receptionist stared at it incredulously. "I...I have a copy of it here, Mr. Fraser. I'll bring it right in." She rose, gave Catherine a grateful smile and hurried into the inner office. The other girls turned to stare at Catherine with suddenly hostile eyes.

  Five minutes later the door to Fraser's office opened, and Fraser and the receptionist appeared. The receptionist pointed to Catherine. "That's the girl."

  William Fraser turned to regard Catherine speculatively. "Would you come in, please?"

  "Yes, sir." Catherine followed Fraser into his office, feeling the eyes of the other girls stabbing into her back. Fraser closed the door.

  His office was the typical, bureaucratic Washington office, but he had decorated it in style, stamping it with his personal taste in furniture and art.

  "Sit down, Miss..."

  "Alexander, Catherine Alexander."

  "Sally tells me that you came up with the Life magazine."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I assume you didn't just happen to have a three-week-old issue in your purse."

  "No, sir."

  "How did you find it so quickly?"

  "I went down to the barber shop. Barber shops and dentists' offices always have old issues lying around."

  "I see." Fraser smiled, and his craggy face seemed less formidable. "I don't think that would have occurred to me," he said. "Are you that bright about everything?"

  Catherine thought about Ron Peterson. "No, sir," she replied.

  "Are you looking for a job as a secretary?"

  "Not really." Catherine saw his look of surprise. "I'll take it," she added hastily. "What I'd really like to be is your assistant."

  "Why don't we start you out as a secretary today?" Fraser said dryly. "Tomorrow you can be my assistant."

  She looked at him hopefully. "You mean I have the job?"

  "On trial." He flicked down the intercom key and leaned toward the box. "Sally, would you please thank the young ladies. Tell them the position is filled."

  "Right, Mr. Fraser."

  He flicked the button up. "Will thirty dollars a week be satisfactory?"

  "Oh yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Fraser."

  "You can start tomorrow morning, nine o'clock. Have Sally give you a personnel form to fill out."

  When Catherine left the office, she walked over to the Washington Post. The policeman at the desk in the lobby stopped her.

  "I'm William Fraser's personal secretary," she said loftily, "over at the State Department. I need some information from your morgue."

  "What kind of information?"

  "On William Fraser."

  He studied her a moment and said, "That's the weirdest request I've had all week. Has your boss been bothering you, or something?"

  "No," she said disarmingly. "I'm planning to write an expose on him."

  Five minutes later, a clerk was showing her into the morgue. He pulled out the file on William Fraser, and Catherine began to read.

  One hour later Catherine was one of the world's foremost authorities on William Fraser. He was forty-five years old, had been graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, had started an advertising agency, Fraser Associates, which had become one of the most successful agencies in the business, and had taken a leave of absence a year ago at the request of the President, to work for the government. He had been married to Lydia Campion, a wealthy socialite. They had been divorced for four years. There were no children. Fraser was a millionaire and had a home in Georgetown and a summer place at Bar Harbor, Maine. His hobbies were tennis, boating and polo. Several of the news stories referred to him as "one of America's most eligible bachelors."

  When Catherine arrived home and told Susie her good news, Susie insisted that they go out to celebrate. Two rich Annapolis cadets were in town.

  Catherine's date turned out to be a pleasant enough boy, but all evening she kept mentally comparing him to William Fraser, and compared to Fraser the boy seemed callow and dull. Catherine wondered whether she was going to fall in love with her new boss. She had not felt any girlish tingly feeling when she had been with him, but there was something else, a liking for him as a person and a feeling of respect. She decided that the tingly feeling probably existed only in French sex novels.

  The cadets took the girls to a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Washington where they had an excellent dinner, then went to see Arsenic and Old Lace, which Catherine enjoyed tremendously. At the end of the evening the boys brought them home, and Susie invited them in for a nightcap. When it appeared to Catherine that they were starting to settle down for the night, she excused herself and said she had to go to bed.

  Her date protested. "We haven't even gotten started yet," he said. "Look at them."

  Susie and her escort were on the couch, locked in a passionate embrace.

  Catherine's escort clutched her arm. "There could be a war soon," he said earnestly. Before Catherine could stop him, he took her hand and placed it against the hardness between his legs. "You wouldn't send a man into battle in this condition, would you?" Catherine withdrew her hand, fighting not to be angry. "I've given it a lot of thought," she said evenly, "and I've decided to sleep only with the walking wounde
d." She turned and went into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. She found it difficult to go to sleep. She lay in bed thinking about William Fraser, her new job and the male hardness of the boy from Annapolis. An hour after she had gone to bed, she heard Susie's bedsprings creaking wildly. From then on sleep was impossible.

  At eight-thirty the next morning Catherine arrived at her new office. The door was unlocked, and the light in the reception office was on. From the inner office she heard the sound of a man's voice and she walked inside.

  William Fraser was at his desk, dictating into a machine. He looked up as Catherine entered and snapped off the machine. "You're early," he said.

  "I wanted to look around and get my bearings before I began work."

  "Sit down." There was something in his tone that puzzled her. He seemed angry. Catherine took a seat. "I don't like snoops, Miss Alexander."

  Catherine felt her face redden. "I--I don't understand."

  "Washington's a small town. It's not even a town. It's a goddamn village. There's nothing that goes on here that everybody doesn't know about in five minutes."

  "I still don't--"

  "The publisher of the Post phoned me two minutes after you arrived there to ask why my secretary was doing research on me."

  Catherine sat there stunned, not knowing what to say.

  "Did you find out all the gossip you wanted to know?"

  She felt her embarrassment swiftly changing to anger. "I wasn't snooping," Catherine said. She rose to her feet. "The only reason I wanted information on you was so that I would know what kind of man I was working for." Her voice was trembling with indignation. "I think a good secretary should adapt to her employer, and I wanted to know what to adapt to."

  Fraser sat there, his expression hostile.

  Catherine stared at him, hating him, on the verge of tears. "You don't have to worry about it anymore, Mr. Fraser. I quit." She turned and started toward the door.

  "Sit down," Fraser said, his voice like a whiplash. Catherine turned, in shock. "I can't stand goddamn prima donnas."

  She glared at him. "I'm not a..."

  "OK. I'm sorry. Now, will you sit down. Please?" He picked up a pipe from his desk and lit it.

  Catherine stood there not knowing what to do, filled with humiliation. "I don't think it's going to work," she began. "I..."

  Fraser drew on the pipe and flicked out the match. "Of course it'll work, Catherine," he said reasonably. "You can't quit now. Look at all the trouble I'd have breaking in a new girl."

  Catherine looked at him and saw the glint of amusement in his bright blue eyes. He smiled, and reluctantly her lips curved into a small smile. She sank into a chair.

  "That's better. Did anyone ever tell you you're too sensitive?"

  "I suppose so. I'm sorry."

  Fraser leaned back in his chair. "Or maybe I'm the one who's oversensitive. It's a pain in the ass being called 'one of America's most eligible bachelors.'"

  Catherine wished he would not use words like that. But what bothered her most? she wondered. Ass or bachelor?

  Maybe Fraser was right. Perhaps her interest in him was not as impersonal as she thought. Perhaps subconsciously...

  "...a target for every goddamned idiotic unmarried female in the world," Fraser was saying. "You wouldn't believe it if I told you how aggressive women can be."

  Wouldn't she? Try our cashier. Catherine blushed as she thought of it.

  "It's enough to turn a man into a fairy." Fraser sighed. "Since this seems to be National Research Week, tell me about you. Any boyfriends?"

  "No," she said. "That is, no one special," she added quickly.

  He looked at her quizzically. "Where do you live?"

  "I share an apartment with a girl who was a classmate at college."

  "Northwestern."

  She looked at him in surprise, then realized he must have seen the personnel form she had filled out.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm going to tell you something about me that you didn't find in the newspaper morgue. I'm a tough son-ofabitch to work for. You'll find me fair, but I'm a perfectionist. We're hard to live with. Do you think you can manage?"

  "I'll try," Catherine said.

  "Good. Sally will fill you in on the routine around here. The most important thing you have to remember is that I'm a chain coffee drinker. I like it black and hot."

  "I'll remember." She got to her feet and started toward the door.

  "And, Catherine?"

  "Yes, Mr. Fraser?"

  "When you go home tonight, practice saying some profanity in front of the mirror. If you're going to keep wincing every time I say a four-letter word, it's going to drive me up the wall."

  He was doing it to her again, making her feel like a child. "Yes, Mr. Fraser," she said coldly. She stormed out of the office, almost slamming the door behind her.

  The meeting had not gone anything like Catherine had expected. She no longer liked William Fraser. She thought he was a smug, dominating, arrogant boor. No wonder his wife had divorced him. Well she was here and she would start, but she made up her mind that she would begin looking for another job, a job working for a human being instead of a despot.

  When Catherine walked out of the door, Fraser leaned back in his chair, a smile touching his lips. Were girls still that achingly young, that earnest and dedicated? In her anger with her eyes blazing and her lips trembling Catherine had seemed so defenseless that Fraser had wanted to take her in his arms and protect her. Against himself, he admitted ruefully. There was a kind of old-fashioned shining quality about her that he'd almost forgotten existed in girls. She was lovely and she was bright, and she had a mind of her own. She was going to become the best goddamn secretary that he had ever had. And deep down Fraser had a feeling that she was going to become more than that. How much more, he was not sure yet. He had been burned so often that an automatic warning system took over the moment his emotions were touched by any female. Those moments had come very seldom. His pipe had gone out. He lit it again, and the smile was still on his face. A little later when Fraser called her in for dictation, Catherine was courteous but cool. She waited for Fraser to say something personal so she could show him how aloof she was, but he was distant and businesslike. He had, Catherine thought, obviously wiped the incident of this morning from his mind. How insensitive could a man be?

  In spite of herself Catherine found the new job fascinating. The telephone rang constantly, and the names of the callers filled her with excitement. During the first week the Vice-President of the United States called twice, half a dozen senators, the Secretary of State and a famous actress who was in town publicizing her latest picture. The week was climaxed by a telephone call from President Roosevelt, and Catherine was so nervous she dropped the phone and disconnected his secretary.

  In addition to the telephone calls Fraser had a constant round of appointments at the office, his country club or at one of the better-known restaurants. After the first few weeks Fraser allowed Catherine to set up his appointments for him and make the reservations. She began to know who Fraser wanted to see and who he wanted to avoid. Her work was so absorbing that by the end of the month she had totally forgotten about looking for another job.

  Catherine's relationship with Fraser was still on a very impersonal level, but she knew him well enough now to realize that his aloofness was not unfriendliness. It was a dignity, a wall of reserve that served as a shield against the world. Catherine had a feeling that Fraser was really very lonely. His job called for him to be gregarious, but she sensed that by nature he was a solitary man. She also sensed that William Fraser was out of her league. For that matter so is most of male America, she decided.

  She double-dated with Susie every now and then but found most of her escorts were married sexual athletes, and she preferred to go to a movie or the theater alone. She saw Gertrude Lawrence and a new comedian named Danny Kaye in Lady in the Dark, and Life with Father, and Alice in Arms, with a young actor named K
irk Douglas. She loved Kitty Foyle with Ginger Rogers because it reminded her of herself. One night at a performance of Hamlet she saw Fraser sitting in a box with an exquisite girl in an expensive white evening gown that Catherine had seen in Vogue. She had no idea who the girl was. Fraser made his own personal dates, and she never knew where he was going or with whom. He looked across the theater and saw her. The next morning he made no reference to it until he had finished the morning's dictation.

  "How did you like Hamlet?" he asked.

  "The play's going to make it, but I didn't care much for the performances."

  "I liked the actors," he said. "I thought the girl who played Ophelia was particularly good."

  Catherine nodded and started to leave.

  "Didn't you like Ophelia?" Fraser persisted.

  "If you want my honest opinion," Catherine said carefully, "I didn't think she was able to keep her head above water." She turned and walked out.

  When Catherine arrived at the apartment that night, Susie was waiting for her. "You had a visitor," Susie said.

  "Who?"

  "An FBI man. They're investigating you."

  My God, thought Catherine. They found out I'm a virgin, and there's probably some kind of law against it in Washington. Aloud she said, "Why would the FBI be investigating me?"

  "Because you're working for the government now."

  "Oh."

  "How's your Mr. Fraser?"

  "My Mr. Fraser's just fine," Catherine said.

  "How do you think he'd like me?"

  Catherine studied her tall, willowy brunette roommate. "For breakfast."

  As the weeks went by Catherine became acquainted with the other secretaries working in nearby offices. Several of the girls were having affairs with their bosses, and it did not seem to matter to them whether the men were married or single. They envied Catherine's working for William Fraser.

  "What's Golden Boy really like?" one of them asked Catherine one day at lunch. "Has he made a pass at you yet?"

  "Oh, he doesn't bother with that," Catherine said earnestly. "I just come in at nine o'clock every morning, we roll around on the couch until one o'clock, then we break for lunch."

  "Seriously, how do you find him?"

  "Resistible," Catherine lied. Her feelings toward William Fraser had mellowed considerably since their first quarrel. He had told her the truth when he said he was a perfectionist. Whenever she made a mistake, she was reprimanded for it, but she had found him to be fair and understanding. She had watched him take time out from his own problems to help other people, people who could do nothing for him, and he always arranged it so that he never took credit for it. Yes, she liked William Fraser very much indeed, but that was no one's business but her own.