Down with Love (Barbara Novak)
I’m not gonna storm out of here, Catch. And I’m not gonna admit that you got Barbara Novak to fall in love, because I’m not Barbara Novak. There is no Barbara Novak….And I didn’t fall in love with Zip Martin. I fell in love with Catcher Block. And that was a year ago, when for three and a half weeks, I worked as your secretary. I don’t expect you to remember me. I wasn’t a blonde then. But you did ask me out. And it broke my heart to say no, but I loved you too much. I couldn’t bear to become just another notch in your bedpost. With your dating habits, I knew that even if I was lucky enough to get a regular spot on your rotating schedule, I would never have your undivided attention long enough for you to fall in love with me. I knew I had to do something to set myself apart. I knew I had to quit my job as your secretary and write an international best-seller, controversial enough to get the attention of a New York publisher as well as Know magazine. But insignificant enough that as long as I went unseen, Know magazine’s star journalist would refuse to do a cover story about it. I knew that every time we were supposed to meet, you would get distracted by one of your many girlfriends and stand me up, and this would give me a reason to fight with you over the phone and declare that I wouldn’t meet with you for a hundred years. And then all I would have to do was be patient and wait the two or three weeks it would take for everyone in the world to buy a copy of my best-seller – and then I would begin to get the publicity I would need for you, to, one, see what I look like, and, two, see me denounce you in public as the worst kind of man. I knew that this would make you wanna get even by writing one of your exposés. And in order to do that, you would have to go undercover, assume a false identity and pretend to be the kind of man who would make the kind of girl I was pretending to be fall in love.