Strangers in the Night, page 2
“Are you going to the ball game tonight?” Lana asked, standing. “Everyone will be there. The money we raise goes to charity.”
“Frank’s team is playing?” I asked carefully. Lana and Frank Sinatra had dated off and on for a couple of years and she’d been devastated by the split. I didn’t see how she could be, really. She’d known he was married, after all.
I’d crossed paths with Frank a few times, and though he had a nice voice, he was no Bing Crosby. Besides, I’d taken an instant disliking to him a few years ago when he’d tossed off some comment about marrying me. As if he stood a chance. I didn’t understand why women swooned over him. He wore his conceit like a cheap suit, and really, he wasn’t all that handsome.
“Yup,” she said. “Come on, you should join us.”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. I have plans with my sister. We’re going to get some ice cream and stay in, listen to records.”
“You’re never going to meet anyone new if you keep that up, but suit yourself.” She blew me a kiss and sashayed away.
Lana knew that I yearned not only for MGM to stop treating me like a pretty little girl with a head full of air, but for a man who saw me as more than a notch on his belt. I’d been dating since my divorce from Artie, but no one of real interest. Unless you could count Robert Duffy, my on-and-off boyfriend of two years, and I didn’t. I was looking for something I hadn’t found. Something I was afraid might be mythical: the kind of love that made you feel as if it was your reason for living.
At the time, I didn’t know I’d already met him—the man who would turn my life inside out and stay with me until my final breath.
But Lana was right. I could use a night out. Maybe I’d join the Swooners softball team that night after all.
* * *
As it turned out, it was a fine night for softball. The league was a success and had managed to pull in actors from MGM and Warner Bros. studios. The rivalry was all in good fun with a bucketload of taunting and teasing and dirty talk. Just my kind of thing. It didn’t take Lana very long to convince me to join the bat girls and I was given a uniform.
“I can light a tennis ball on fire, but I never liked softball much,” I admitted.
“Not to worry,” Lana said. “You won’t have to play. We’re bat girls. And you look positively adorable in that jersey.”
We were called the Swooners, a name Frank had obviously found funny, and it had stuck.
I tied my hair back and put on a ballcap that matched my softball uniform. It was a balmy summer night; the air was thick with impending rain. Though unusual for that time of year, the weather didn’t put a damper on the buoyant mood. Everyone was laughing and having a grand old time harassing each other.
Soon the field lights clicked on and illuminated the darkening sky. While a few boys swept the bases and raked the dirt to prepare for the start, Frank headed our way.
Lana scurried from the dugout and out of sight. She was trying to avoid him, the poor girl. That wasn’t easy to do in this town. As far as I could tell, Frank Sinatra was just about everywhere.
“Look who’s joined us,” he said, punching his left hand into his mitt. A puff of dust lifted from the glove. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show.”
I smiled. “As long as you don’t put me in the outfield, I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know. We may need you out there.” He teased. “Hey, that jersey suits you.”
“I’m not one of your swooning fans, but it’ll do.”
He laughed, clearly delighted. Sometimes men needed a good ribbing, and the best way was to insult their ego. They lapped it up. My brothers had taught me that.
“Let me show you what you’ll be doing.” He pointed out where they kept the bats in the dugout and explained that the most important thing was to cheer for the team.
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said, with a mock salute.
He chuckled but his eyes were serious, intent on mine—and about the most piercing blue I’d ever seen. I wondered how I’d missed that before. I supposed I’d never really looked at him squarely.
“We’re all going for drinks after, if you want to join,” he said, scratching a line in the dirt with his cleats.
“Mind if I bring someone?” I asked, thinking of Duff. “I wouldn’t want you to flirt with me.”
“Now why would I do that?” He grinned. “Sure, that’s fine. Well, I’d better get to it.” He tipped the brim of his baseball cap and jogged over to the team, now huddled in a pack. It sounded like they were trying to decide on the batting order.
A short time later, the game began.
Lana and I caroused with the players in the dugout, collected bats left behind after a hit, and made jokes about a man’s athletic ability translating to his performance in bed. I mean, really, who could resist the parallel?
When it was Frank’s turn at bat, he took a few practice swings. The first pitch was a ball but on the second pitch, a satisfying crack of the bat split the air. The ball arced over the bases and into the outfield before it dropped into the grass not far from the fence. We cheered as he raced around first base and then second, and slid into third just before the third baseman caught the ball launched at him from the outfield.
“Lucky hit, Sinatra!” someone shouted from the Warner Bros.’ bench.
Frank gave them the bird, eliciting laughter, and then looked toward home plate.
I glanced at Lana, who quickly looked away, pretending she wasn’t watching his every move. I slipped my arm around her shoulders. “He’s a heartbreaker, isn’t he?”
“He certainly broke mine, but I’m over him, I really am. I’m trying to shake the lingering awkwardness between us, that’s all. It’s just as well that we’re through. He’d never leave his wife.”
I nodded. She was right, if the gossip was to be believed. Those Italian men who took lovers never left their wives. And since I’d moved to Hollywood, I’d learned most of the gossip turned out to be true.
Derek, the next teammate at bat, hit the ball down the first base line.
Frank made a run for it.
The other team scooped up the ball and the next instant, Derek was called out—but Frank slid into home plate.
“Safe!” the umpire shouted, throwing his arms wide.
Cheers erupted from the stands. Lana and I jumped up and down, screeching as Mickey dashed out from the dugout and jumped on Frank’s back. Frank laughed, hoisted Mickey onto his shoulders, and staggered to the dugout. More laughter and catcalls peppered the stands. I was glad Mickey and I had remained friends. This town was too small—the studio even smaller—to make enemies. I’d even started to talk to Artie again. As it turned out, he was a hell of a lot nicer as a friend than as a husband.
When the game ended, Clayton’s Bar was already closed so we high-fived and disbanded. I headed home, where Reenie set us up with a couple of bone-dry gin martinis and some music. Reenie had not only become a permanent fixture as my maid and assistant in the house, she’d become a true friend. When it would get on into the evenings, we’d have a drink or some dinner, or head out to a hot jazz club, ignoring the rules not allowing so-called coloreds to enter. No one would ask a young movie star to leave, especially not one who had been married to jazz king Artie Shaw, and I made it clear I would only be a patron if they allowed Reenie to enter, too.
I filled her in on the softball game and we talked for some time. At well past midnight, we finally decided to call it a night.
As I slipped under the covers, happy to surrender to sleep, a commotion outside drifted through the windowpane. I ignored it, assuming it was the group of college boys who lived in the Sunset Towers apartments behind the house. Sometimes they made a racket late at night.
A soft knock came at the bedroom door. “Miss G, do you hear that?” Reenie’s voice was low but urgent. “Someone is shouting your name outside.”
“What the devil?”
I threw back the covers and walked to the window, pushing aside the drapes. I craned my neck to see the full scale of the multistory building. Each apartment unit had a balcony and there, several floors above me under the moonlight, stood an extremely sauced Frank Sinatra.
“Hey, Ava Gardner!” he shouted. “Why don’t you come have a drink with us tonight?” Several friends joined him. They jabbed each other in the ribs, laughing and shouting.
“They’re going to knock someone over the banister, the fools,” I said as Reenie looked over my shoulder.
“Ava Gardner!” Frank shouted again. “Come out and play!”
I reddened. That man was a real ass to wake up the neighborhood at this hour, and to drag me into it, drunk or not.
“Ava!” he called again.
His friends cupped their mouths with their hands and joined in a chorus of “Ava! Come out and play!”
“Will you pipe down!” a male voice came from the unit below them. “It’s two o’clock in the morning!”
The men laughed as Frank cussed out the onlooker, and then tipped his head back and shouted again with gusto. “Ava Gardner! Come outside!”
“I said shut up, or I’m calling the cops!” the neighbor yelled back.
“Hey, jerk, why don’t you go chew on some nails!” Frank replied.
His friends stumbled inside, pulling Frank along behind them.
“What was that all about?” Reenie asked, her large brown eyes reflecting the lamplight from the street that was streaming through the window.
“Men behaving like boys is all,” I said, heading back to my bedroom. But as I turned off the light and pulled the blankets up to my chin, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face, even while I didn’t understand my own amusement. Frank was something. He was a horse’s ass, but he was something. Maybe I’d run into him again, sometime soon.
Maybe I was looking forward to it.
Chapter 2
Frank
Hollywood was everything I wanted it to be and more.
Sunshine and film sets and good-looking women; parties and late nights, and more talent in a few hundred square miles than in all the world combined. I liked being among it all, living the high life. I was glad to leave behind the lousy sods I’d grown up with, who knew how often I’d been beaten up by the kids on the block, taken a whack on the head from Pop, or worse, a slap from Ma followed by a stream of swear words that would make any sailor proud. I was glad to leave behind those who’d witnessed me begging for gigs at picnics and church halls and the bars in downtrodden Hoboken. I’d wanted to say goodbye to those who knew how often I was left on my own as a kid or pawned off on a neighbor. Who knew the kind of person all that loneliness had made me.
Hungry.
Hungry for success and for the kind of connection with someone I didn’t yet understand. Hungry enough to fight my way in, or out, or over. Hungry enough to get back up and try again. To become the greatest singer the world had ever known. And none of it came easy. I think that made me love it all the more, made me proud and, some would say, it made me conceited. But I’d earned my success, and I wasn’t the least bit sorry for it, or for moving to Hollywood, where I could live in a dreamland. Where I could be somebody.
Two years after my first musical with MGM and two years after my first slew of hits without Dorsey’s band, I packed up my life in Hoboken for good and moved the wife and kids to California. I was in the big leagues, and I needed a lifestyle to prove it. When Mary Astor’s waterfront house became available on Toluca Lake, I took that as a sign of good fortune and bought it. I believed in luck, probably more than I should. It turned out the neighborhood wasn’t the friendliest to entertainers, or Jews, or Black people, but I learned that too late. It bothered me—I was no bigot and I couldn’t stand anyone who was, so we wouldn’t stick around for long—but in the beginning, for now, we were home.
I glanced at the house my wife Nancy had named Warm Valley and thought, for the tenth time, that I was glad we were here, in sunny California. I kissed our daughter, little Nancy, on the head and followed it with an identical kiss for my wife. She wasn’t too keen to leave Jersey at first, but I coaxed her with a thousand sunny days, a big house with a lawn, and anything else she could want. She liked the idea of spending less time apart, and I liked the idea of having my daughter and Frank Jr. nearby. Though I’d never felt much passion for my wife, I loved her deep down more than just about anyone but my kids. She knew me, saw me for who and what I was, warts and all, and she believed in me. I never once doubted her affection or her support. What was more, she made our house a home.
And for now, she kept looking the other way while I dallied with women as I tried to find that something that always seemed just out of reach. That certain something I longed for to satiate my hunger.
“Grab the paddles, Nance.” I motioned to my six-year-old and two other giggly little girls, the daughters of a friend. We were hosting a Fourth of July party, and friends and neighbors had begun to trickle in.
Nancy scooped up the paddles and nearly tipped over as she stood, their length making them cumbersome in her little arms. Still, she didn’t complain or ask for help. That was my good girl.
“Get the other end of the paddles, girls,” I said.
The lawn sloped to the water, where a brand-new dock that I’d rebuilt jutted onto the lake. Fifty feet from the shore, I’d installed a floating raft for swimming.
Nancy’s friends took their job very seriously and helped her all the way to the water. I pulled the canoe from the shed and dragged it to the dock, stepping inside it and helping each of them climb in before pushing off onto the placid waters.
“Daddy, tell us a story,” Nancy said, showing off how cool her papa was to her friends.
I made something up about a mermaid and they clapped and wiggled and the next thing I knew, we’d rowed far out into the lake and then back again. I wasn’t the most present of fathers, always coming and going for the job, and I felt guilty about it regularly enough, but that didn’t change how I felt about the kids. During our times together, I focused on them exclusively, and with all the affection in the world. I hoped that somehow made up for my failings. As idyllic as our home was, being there—and staying there—was difficult for me, impossible even, no matter how much I loved the family. Restlessness was rooted in my soul like a stubborn weed.
By the time I helped the girls out of the boat, the rest of the guests had arrived. I strode up to the house, ready for a cold drink.
“Do we have enough ice?” I asked, wiping my sweaty forehead with a towel. “We’re going to need buckets of it in this heat.”
Nancy flitted around the kitchen.
“We can always send someone out for more,” she said, tying a clean apron around her waist. She’d insisted on doing all of the cooking and attacked a towering pile of sausages like she was on some kind of military mission.
It was a sweltering day, perfect for backyard lounging, canoeing, and swimming. We had a crowd as usual, milling on the lawn and through the house. I basked in the noise and activity; it distracted me from the ever-present buzz in my limbs.
I stepped outside to make sure the lawn chairs were set up and the yard toys had been put out for the kids: Hula-Hoops, a football, Frisbees, and a bucket of bubbles. Children raced through the yard like a flight of swallows, chasing each other from an activity in the yard to the water and back again. The sky was a deep blue I’d only ever seen in Southern California, and the sun bore down on our pale legs and arms. Within the hour, the women lounged on the patio in sunhats and swimsuits, glasses of lemonade and champagne on the tables between them. The men had already made quick work of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, sausages, and cold salads. I always kept my boys watered and well-fed.
“Everyone have enough?” I asked, opening one eye to peer at my pals stretched out next to me in the grass.
“More than enough. I’m stuffed,” George Evans said.
Jimmy Van Heusen, songwriter and all-around pal, patted his stomach. “I’d say I’m good for at least an hour.”
We all laughed.
“Frank, I need to talk to you later,” George said, his tone heavy with meaning.
I glanced at him briefly to read his face, but his expression was inscrutable. He’d given me an earful the night before as a publicist and booking agent does from time to time, but his suggestions had recently turned to warnings. Not being able to serve in the war in France had damaged my reputation, and though I’d tried to enlist and been dismissed for a punctured eardrum, the doctor’s note didn’t seem to matter to the press. They chewed me up and spit me out. Now that the war was over, I’d hoped things would turn around. But I couldn’t turn things around, George had said, if I continued to travel with politicians, speaking out on their behalf. People wanted me to entertain them, not preach to them.
I didn’t know why I couldn’t use my fame to help someone I believed in, that was all. And if I wanted to speak out against racism or try to help the Little Guy breaking his back working long hours for nothing, I’d do it. It was the right thing to do, the press be damned.
“I’d say it’s high time we went for a swim, fellas,” I said, not wanting to ruminate on my thoughts.
Danny, a new neighbor, and Jimmy got to their feet, and George followed me to the water’s edge.
I raised my hands over my head in a mock stretch but with a swift movement, I gave George a hearty shove. He yelped as he hit the water.
“Didn’t see that coming, did you?” I called, laughing as he attempted to splash me. The cascades of water fell short by at least a mile. An athlete, he was not.
I dove in after him. I’d barely surfaced when two large hands dunked me under again. I rose to the surface again sputtering and laughing.
“Serves you right, you cad,” George said, water dripping from his nose, his eyes bright with amusement.
I pushed the hair out of my eyes and looked back at the shore, where Danny and Jimmy were still perched like a couple of too-cool cats.
