The Other Side of Midnight

She heard the wail of a siren in the distance. Oh, my God, she thought wildly, it’s a raid! They’re always raiding these places!

The door to the manager’s office opened and Ron came out. He was carrying a key and apparently was deaf to the siren which was coming closer and closer. He walked over to Catherine’s side of the car and opened the door.

‘All set,’ he said. The siren was a screaming banshee moving in on them. Could the police arrest them for merely being in the courtyard?

‘Come on,’ Ron said.

‘Don’t you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

The siren passed them and went ululating down the street away from them, receding into the distance. Damn! ‘The birds,’ she said weakly.

There was a look of impatience on Ron’s face.

‘If there’s anything wrong – ’ he said.

‘No, no,’ Catherine cut in quickly. ‘I’m coming.’ She got out of the car and they moved towards one of the bungalows. ‘I hope you got my lucky number,’ she said brightly.

‘What did you say?’

Catherine looked up at him and suddenly realized no words had come out. Her mouth was completely dry. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked.

They reached the door and it said number thirteen. It was exactly what she deserved. It was a sign from heaven that she was going to get pregnant, that God was out to punish Saint Catherine.

Ron unlocked the door and held it open for her. He flicked on the light switch and Catherine stepped inside. She could not believe it. The room seemed to consist of one enormous bed. The only other furniture was an uncomfortable-looking easy chair in a corner, a small dressing table with a mirror over it, and next to the bed, a battered radio with a slot for feeding it quarters. No one would ever walk in here and mistake this room for anything but what it was: a place where a boy brought a girl to screw her. You couldn’t say, Well, here we are in the ski lodge, or the war games room, or the bridal suite at the Ambassador. No. What this was was a cheap love nest. Catherine turned to see what Ron was doing and he was throwing the bolt on the door. Good. If the Vice Squad wanted them, they’d have to break down the door first. She could see herself being carried out in the nude by two policemen while a photographer snapped her picture for the front page of the Chicago Daily News.

Ron moved up to Catherine and put his arms around her. ‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.

She looked up at him and forced a laugh that would have made Margaret Sullavan proud. ‘Nervous? Ron, don’t be silly.’

He was still studying her, unsure. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Cathy?’

‘I don’t keep a scorecard.’

‘I’ve had a strange feeling about you all evening.’

Here it comes. He was going to throw her out on her virgin ass and tell her to get lost in a cold shower. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not tonight. ‘What kind of feeling?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ron’s voice was perplexed. ‘One minute you’re kind of sexy and, you know, with it, and the next minute your mind is way off somewhere and you’re as frigid as ice. It’s like you’re two people. Which one is the real Catherine Alexander?’

Frigid as ice, she automatically said to herself. Aloud she said, ‘I’ll show you.’ She put her arms around him and kissed him on the lips and she could smell egg foo young.

He kissed her harder and pulled her close to him. He ran his hands over her breasts, caressing them, pushing his tongue into her mouth. Catherine felt a hot moisture deep down inside her and she could feel her pants dampen. Here I go, she thought. It’s really going to happen! It’s really going to happen! She clung to him harder, filled with a growing, almost unbearable excitement.

‘Let’s get undressed,’ Ron said hoarsely. He stepped back from her and started to take off his jacket.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let me.’ There was a new confidence in her voice. If this was the night of nights, she was going to do it right. She was going to remember everything she had ever read or heard. Ron wasn’t going back to school to snicker to the girls about how he had made love to a dumb little virgin. Catherine might not have Jean-Anne’s bust measurement, but she had a brain ten times as useful, and she was going to put it to work to make Ron so happy in bed he wouldn’t be able to stand it. She took off his jacket and laid it on the bed, then reached for his tie.

‘Hold it,’ Ron said. ‘I want to see you undress.’

Catherine stared at him, swallowed, slowly reached for her zipper and got out of her dress. She was standing in her bra, slip, pants, shoes and stockings.

‘Go on.’

She hesitated a moment, then reached down and stepped out of her slip. Lions, 2 – Christians, 0, she thought.

‘Hey, great! Keep going.’

Catherine slowly sat down on the bed and carefully removed her shoes and stockings, trying to make it look as sexy as she could. Suddenly she felt Ron behind her, undoing her bra. She let it fall to the bed. He lifted Catherine to her feet and started sliding her pants down. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, wishing that she were in another place with another man, a human being who loved her, whom she loved, who would father splendid children to bear his name, who would fight for her and kill for her and for whom she would be an adoring helpmate. A whore in his bed, a great cook in his kitchen, a charming hostess in his living room … a man who would kill a son of a bitch like Ron Peterson for daring to bring her to this tacky, degrading room. Her pants fell to the floor. Catherine opened her eyes.

Ron was staring at her, his face filled with admiration. ‘My God, Cathy, you’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’re really beautiful.’ He bent down and kissed her breast. She caught a glimpse in the dressing-table mirror. It looked like a French farce, sordid and dirty. Everything inside her except the hot pain in her groin told her that this was dreary and ugly and wrong, but there was no way to stop it now. Ron was whipping off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, his face flushed. He undid his belt and stripped down to his shorts, then sat down on the bed and started to take off his shoes and socks. ‘I mean it, Catherine,’ he said, his voice tight with emotion. ‘You’re the most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.’

His words only increased Catherine’s panic. Ron stood up, a broad, anticipatory grin on his face, and let his shorts drop to the floor. His male organ was standing out stiffly, like an enormous, inflated salami with hair around it. It was the largest, most incredible thing Catherine had ever seen in her life.

‘How do you like that?’ he said, looking down at it proudly.

Without thinking, Catherine said, ‘Sliced on rye. Hold the mustard and lettuce.’

And she stood there, watching it go down.

In Catherine’s sophomore year there was a change in the atmosphere of the campus.

For the first time there was a growing concern about what was happening in Europe and an increasing feeling that America was going to get involved. Hitler’s dream of the thousand-year rule of the Third Reich was on its way to becoming a reality. The Nazis had occupied Denmark and invaded Norway.

Over the past six months the talk on campuses across the country had shifted from sex and clothes and proms to the ROTC and the draught and lend-lease. More and more college boys were appearing in army and navy uniforms.

One day Susie Roberts, a classmate from Senn, stopped Catherine in the corridor. ‘I want to say good-bye, Cathy. I’m leaving.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘The Klondike.’

‘The Klondike?’

‘Washington, D.C. All the girls are striking gold there. They say for every girl there are at least a hundred men. I like those odds.’ She looked at Catherine. ‘What do you want to stick around this place for? School’s a drag. There’s a whole big world waiting out there.’

‘I can’t leave just now,’ Catherine said. She was not sure why: She had no real ties in Chicago. She corresponded regularly with her father in Omaha and talked to him on the telephone once or twice a month and each time he sounded as though he were in prison.

Catherine was on her own now. The more she thought about Washington, the more exciting it seemed. That evening she phoned her father and told him she wanted to quit school and go to work in Washington. He asked her if she would like to come to Omaha, but Catherine could sense the reluctance in his voice. He did not want her to be trapped, as he had been.

The next morning Catherine went to the dean of women and informed her she was quitting school. Catherine sent a telegram to Susie Roberts and the next day she was on a train to Washington, D.C.

Chapter Four

Noelle

Paris: 1940