The Fat Lady Sang

by Robert Evans

  Bringing the receiver back to my ear: “What about her?”

  “She wants to meet you.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Nine hours earlier, Nikki told me, she’d walked in the door of Drai’s, by far L.A.’s top action nightspot. “Beverly walks over to my table, whispers in my ear. ‘Bob Evans—you know him?’ ‘Of course I do. He’s my best friend.’ ‘I want to meet him. Arrange it.’ Kisses me on the cheek and leaves with some gorgeous young hunk who looks younger than your kid. I got her number—take it. I’ve done my part.”

  Poor Nikki had to hold the phone to her ear for more than five minutes. That’s how long it took to find the light, my glasses, a pen, and a pad.

  “I thought you checked out,” she said when I got back.

  “Don’t be a wise-ass. What’s the fuckin’ number?”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Evans, for doing me such a favor!”

  “Sorry, Nikki, I was just in the middle of a great dream.”

  “I’m sure you were. You’re too old for a wet one!”

  Hanging the phone up in her ear, I passed out till four.

  Now I was up, and thinking: Did I dream that call? I turned my head and found a crumpled piece of paper next to me reading “D’Angelo” and a 310 number. No dream. How I’d wished it were.

  For years, I’d watched her on the silver screen. Not once did she fail to light it up. Nor did her raspy, naughty lyrics ever fail to light up the Viper Room, where she appeared most every Sunday. Strange, after all those years in the same town, we’d never met. At many a party we’d stood within a hundred feet of each other, yet we never shared a hello. Laughter always surrounded her. The guys doin’ the laughin’, she doin’ the talkin’. Never being one to break up a one-woman show, I walked the other way.

  Picking up my call, she had no idea that I was in Paris. Not wanting to give Miss Smart-Ass the edge, I yawned.

  “Nikki passed on the message.”

  “The messenger always gets killed,” she puttered back.

  “Yeah, she almost did. Poor Nikki, I love her. There’s no one like her. Thank God . . . the world ain’t ready for another.” Yawning again. “Listen, kid, if we’re gonna get together . . . let’s do it soon before I’m too old to appreciate you.”

  “Poor baby,” she purred back. “I’m working tomorrow and Friday. How about Saturday?”

  Before I could tell her I was in Paris, she putter-puttered, “On one condition, lover boy. I know you’re a silk pajama man. Let’s cut to the chase. No getting-to-know-you stuff. Saturday at noon I’m coming over, wearing my pink silks. Don’t be a disappointment to me. Get a good night’s sleep on Friday. You’ll need it!”

  My throbbing head wasn’t up to her putter-putter games.

  “D’Angelo, if I’m gonna be there to greet you in them pink silks, I’ve got some big travelin’ plans to change!”

  “Shhh. Change ’em. It’ll be worth it!”

  Paris? It suddenly looked like Pittsburgh. Good-bye, Jack! Good-bye, Roman! Hello, Los Angeles and pink silks!

  On Saturday, at noon, the clock struck twelve, and the doorbell rang. Hello, Beverly in them pink silks! Well, I was half right. The silks arrived, but no Beverly. Instead, my butler, Alan, walked in with a beautifully wrapped package. A three-foot rose was pinned to the top. What the fuck is this? I thought. With my luck, it could be a bomb! Should I open it? Maybe I’ll have Alan open it . . .

  He did. Under the tissues were the best-lookin’ pink PJs I’d ever seen. But where the fuck was Beverly?

  On top of the pinkies was a handwritten note:

  I read it, and reread it, and re-reread it. Was I pissed? You’re fuckin’ A! Pissed with myself. Could I have been that stupid?

  Fantasizing about Beverly in them pink PJs had flipped me back from Paris to Los Angeles, only to end up with a fuckin’ letter, a red rose, and a box of PJs filled with tissue, not Beverly. Taking a long, hard look at myself in the mirror, I realized once more how pussy power has never ceased to fuck up my life. It’s been more than half a century, and I ain’t learned yet.

  Strange, ain’t it? In 1958 I’d skipped the set of the Marilyn Monroe picture Let’s Make Love and flew off to Paris to get engaged to the then love of my life, Danielle Loder. As soon as I got there she dumped me. Forty years later, I fly from Paris to Los Angeles to meet a potential woman-of-my-dreams and end up with a box of pink PJs. What does it prove? You figure ’em out, I can’t.

  I never told Jack or Roman the reason for my quick exit from Paris. It would have given them too much pleasure.

  Nine days later, at ten thirty in the evening, Miss D’Angelo was on the horn. Not wanting to give her the satisfaction of her fuckin’ stand-up, I held my temper.

  “Great trip, huh?”

  “What trip?”

  “Fiji.”

  Bursting into laughter. “I’ve been in town the whole time! Just wanted to keep you on hold . . . get my house in order.”

  “You mean ‘your guys’ . . . ?”

  “That’s right!” she giggle-giggled.

  “Well, thanks. I flew six thousand miles to hold my dick.”

  “Is it that long? Poor Beverly lost out. Do I get another chance?”

  Smart-ass broke my cool. “Them PJs made me opt for takin’ a hike. I was in Paris with Roman and Jack . . .”

  “You were where?”

  “In Paris! I called you from Paris!”

  I could have gone through the entire Sunday New York Times by the time she caught her breath from laughing.

  “I . . . I thought you were up the block,” she gasped. “You’re torturing me. Every time I laugh it hurts! I’m in terrible pain.”

  “Good. Hope it gets worse.”

  “Shhh. Lover boy, be nice. I need some TLC bad. I’m in awful shape—lyin’ in an orthopedic bed with my leg in a cast. Would you mind letting go of your dick long enough to do a lady a favor?”

  “Sure, why not? By this time I can’t find it anyway!”

  “I’m at the Beverly Prescott Hotel. Sixth floor.”

  “Who are you shackin’ up with?”

  “I’d be on my knees to you for a smoke, but my leg’s in a cast. It’s up so high, it looks like I just kicked a fifty-yard field goal and my knee froze in midair!”

  “Put it in the wrong place, huh?”

  “Uh-uh, a kneecap floats! Mine doesn’t. That’s why I’m here! And I’m dying for a smoke. Walk a mile for a Marlboro, but I can’t walk! They don’t believe in cigarettes here.”

  “What else, madam?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be Prince Charming, you can pick up a bottle of vitamin Cs. And if you have any Tylenol 3 . . . I’ll take that, too.”

  I looked at my watch. “I’ll be there at eleven.”

  At 11:05 I got out of my car at the Beverly Prescott and told my trusty young right-hand man, Rio, “I’ll be back in half an hour. Wait for me.”

  Armed with cigs, vitamin C, Tylenol 3, and a bunch of roses I grabbed from my sitting room, I went up.

  When I arrived, her girlfriend was saying good-bye. I sat on a chair, took one good look at her, and this time it was my turn to burst into laughter—but I couldn’t. The lady I had longed to meet for years was lying flat on her back, her leg suspended in the air like an oak tree in free fall.

  Before I could utter a word, she looked over at me.

  “I look awful, don’t I?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She put her finger to her lips. “Shhh.” Then, curling the same finger, she beckoned me over to her bed.

  At seven o’clock the next morning, I snuck out of room 605 and woke up poor Rio, my young assistant. I looked like the walking wounded. Rio rolled down the window.

  “Take me to the nearest hospital,” I said.

  “I can’t. I have class in half an hour and I haven’t done my homework. You look terrible.”

  Yeah, but it was sure worth it.

  What happened during those eigh
t hours? It’s not for me to say, except . . . I never thought so many firsts could happen in one night. Especially with a cripple!

  She was also the first lady I ever chose over the city of Paris.

  Now, a year later, there she was standing beside my bed. I burst into tears. Couldn’t stop crying. Neither could she.

  8

  With the bedside manner of Hannibal Lecter, Cedar’s primo neurologist dropped by on his daily rounds. Pulling up a chair, he nonchalantly gave me news I did not want to hear.

  “Robert, I know that patience is not one of your many virtues. Considering the fact that you’re totally coherent after three strokes, you’ve got to consider yourself a lucky man. You took a big hit. Don’t expect your life as you’ve known it to ever be the same.”

  Acerbically noncommittal, he let me know that there was no way to predict the percentage of recovery I could expect. But his lethal purr made it all too clear that I shouldn’t expect any miracles.

  “Psychologically, your entire thinking process—your desires, your likes and dislikes—will be permanently altered. Your physical capacity? Well, that’s a different story. It’s mostly dependent upon how your body and limbs react to your rehabilitation program. I’d be less than candid, Bob, if I didn’t tell you that rehabilitation is no day at the beach. Will you have pain? Yes. Will you have frustration? Absolutely. Will you become depressed? Sure, how could you not? It doesn’t matter, though. Put it all on the back burner. Rehabilitation is the gold key to a successful recovery.

  “I’ve got a feeling you’ll be one of the lucky ones. Can’t promise you the extent of your mobility, but with enough rehab—nine months or a year—you could actually walk again. Your mobility might be limited, but we have these new miracle canes now, they’ve got four prongs on the bottom. Balances your every step. You could actually be able to walk up and downstairs. Not bad, huh?”

  The motherfucker wasn’t through. He had more good news to shout about. “Monday, you start therapy. You’re very fortunate. We’ve got the top three therapists in the hospital on your case. One for speech, another for occupational therapy, and the third and most important, your physical therapist. She’s tough, but she gets the job done. Stick with her. Why? Because we’re working against the tick of the clock. It’s the first six months, Bob, that are most important. In that time, we can judge, with some accuracy, just how much of your damage is unalterable. I implore you, if you’ve ever practiced discipline, this is the moment of truth. These six months are vital. After that, your motor nerves and arteries will start to atrophy, becoming more and more inflexible. Once that happens, your body will never be able to recuperate to any discernible degree. We’re talking about a nine-month window. That’s when the clock runs out. Whatever inability you have then, you will be left with. Forget trying to be cavalier, Bob. Every stroke patient is prone to having another. You can’t afford a fourth. It could leave you dead or, worse, a vegetable.”

  Tapping me on the shoulder with his shitfaced smile, he half-whispered, “We won’t get you back as good as new, but we’ll get you back.” Then he threw his knockout punch. “You mustn’t forget you’re a different person now than you were before the stroke. You’re going to have to accept the fact that you’ll be left with no choice but to have different goals, different pleasures.” He shrugged his shoulders professorially. “You may even get to like the new person better than the person you left behind.”

  The more he soft-pedaled my all-but-crippled future, the more he was getting off. Dr. Lecter was one sick fuck. Predicting gloom must have been his kink. Helping his victims envision a life of continued misery, his aphrodisiac.

  But my rage at Lecter’s diatribe worked—in reverse. Through the clouds of his doomsday forecast I glimpsed a purpose, new hope. My new goal? To get well enough to tell this sadistic white-coater that he wasn’t preaching to the converted, that he was talking to the wrong guy. I was determined now to prove his professional expertise dead wrong. I was not going to have the rest of my life determined by what this half-assed brain mechanic thought was “realistic,” I hadn’t come this far to be sidelined by him or any other miracle medicine man.

  It wouldn’t be the first time I’d tangled with an eminent doctor.

  9

  In September 1973 I went toe-to-toe with a doctor whose healing powers were considered mythical by the most sophisticated people in the world.

  Throughout that summer, Bobby Riggs had been using my tennis court on a daily basis to practice for his match with Billie Jean King. Being a hustler, he offered every A-plus player in town two games and service for five hundred bucks a set. Tennis players, no matter their level of skill, have bigger egos than serves. All but two were an easy mark for Riggs to pick up a couple thousand a day without breaking a sweat. Yeah, but each and every player got a bit of advice from Riggs in return.

  “The dame doesn’t stand a chance against me. I could nail my right hand to my back and beat her with my left. That five hundred you just gave up? Forget it. You can make thousands using what I’ve just told you.”

  Me? The schmuck, I was his host for the entire summer. After two and a half months of daily hustling on my court, he embraced me. “You’ve been one great host, Evans. Thanks.” Shaking his head, he whispered, “Beg, borrow, steal, do what you gotta do, but give the seven-to-five odds on me. Just spread it out. Don’t want them odds to go higher. It’ll be the easiest hundred Gs you ever copped.”

  Well, getting it from the horse’s mouth ain’t bad. But knowing that he was half horse, half hustler, I decided to put up just half the bread. Gave 7-5 and spread fifty Gs on Riggs.

  Riggs? He lost. Me? I still think he was going the other way, picked up his last big payday. Once a hustler, always a hustler.

  The event itself had built up such steam that it became the first time in tennis history that a match was played on prime-time television. The Houston Astrodome was filled to capacity, and I was invited to sit in Riggs’s box. That made it a fun night to look forward to, especially with my fifty grand riding on my pal Riggs.

  Didn’t quite get there. Shortly before the match, my brother, Charles, who’d been stricken with a heart attack two years earlier, called me ebulliently. Finally, after a year of waiting, he had been admitted to the Kempner Clinic at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Walter Kempner’s international reputation was mythical. You needed high political influence, international celebrity, or some other world-class power to gain admittance to his almost holy, four-day clinic. As one decade followed another, Kempner’s fame turned to fact. His face graced the covers of every major publication in the world as the purveyor of the single most advanced treatment in modern medicine.

  The highlight of Kempner’s international reputation was his “rice cure.” The Kempner Clinic was situated in the midst of acres of rice houses, where patients lived, sometimes for as long as a year, under the strict dictates of the Messiah. His intensive diet regimen was reputed to offer not only weight loss but also significant improvements in blood pressure and in reduction of heart attack and stroke. His method also improved kidney and liver function and even improved eyesight.

  After a year of politicking and calling in every chit that he could, my brother, Charles, was booked to enter the Kempner Clinic on September 18, 1973. Being knighted wouldn’t have brought about a more ecstatic reaction.

  “Bob, you’re coming, too. This is a life-sharing experience.”

  “Can’t, Charlie. I’ve got fifty thousand on Riggs. I’m going to Houston.”

  A long silence ensued.

  “Bob, I’m scared shitless. I don’t want to face it alone. It’s my fuckin’ ticker. It failed me once. Doesn’t bode well at my age. This guy could be my saving grace. Please, be there with me, will you?”

  Together we checked in as outpatients, staying at the Howard Johnson Manor directly across the road from the Kempner Clinic.

  I never visited a concentration camp, but I’m prone to believe that Kemp
ner did his residency in one of them joints. What transpired during those four days had to be the single most degrading experience of my life. Always sporting a hospital gown, always waiting on line. Was it worth it? Sure, if you’re a masochist . . . which I ain’t. I don’t like needles, but I became a pincushion there real quick. And that was the fun part. Rather than go into detail, I’d rather simply say that every indignity known to mankind was perpetrated on this guy—and I didn’t even want to be there. You name it, we got it stuck into us, out of us, and around us.

  My brother and I moved from one interrogation to the next, waiting for the SS to grab us and shove another pipe up our asses, down our throats, or wherever else they knew it would hurt. The only thing missing was the tattooed serial numbers on our wrists. Hey, maybe it was worth it. On Friday, we were to meet the Fuhrer himself.

  My brother shook his head. “We ain’t gonna make Friday.” I wasn’t laughing. Perceptions can be mighty dangerous. It was only Kempner’s reputation that made us stick it out. On the night of the big match at the Astrodome, Charles and I lay on our beds at the Howard Johnson, watching my fifty K go down the drain as Billie Jean King beat Riggs easily in two sets. It hurt, but it came in a distant second to being an inmate at Kamp Kempner.

  Our degradation finally concluded, Charles and I got the nod that Dr. Kempner would see us Friday at 11 A.M.

  At exactly 11:01, Eva Braun announced, “Charles and Robert Evans.” We stood. “Dr. Kempner is ready to see you now.”

  Behind the double doors, the Fuhrer himself sat behind a large, semicircular oakdesk. No smile. No charm. No pleasantries. Ahh, but with a German growl that would scare the shit out of a Doberman pinscher, he ordered us to sit.

  “Vich vun off you is Charles? Vich vun off you is Robert?”

  “I’m Charles Evans.”

  For the next fifteen minutes he sat in total silence, fastidiously examining each and every result of the hundreds of tests my brother had endured. Finally, Kempner smilelessly looked up, turned his head toward one very nervous Jew.