by John Ridley
I must have been staring at her and wasn't sure if that had prompted the question. “From you?” I asked, pulling myself from her flame.
“From life.”
“I don't know.”
“Everyone wants something.”
“What do you want?”
A slight shake of her head. “That is a question, not an answer. But I will tell you. I want to be happy.”
“That's it?”
“What else is there? All the time, I want to be happy. If something makes me unhappy, I dismiss it from my life.” With the back of her hand she pushed away her plate of cooling food, demonstrating the ease in application of her philosophy. “It is that simple.” Elbows on the table, she wove a bridge with her fingers, rested her chin on it. “And you, Zhaqué? What is it you want?”
I tried to make my goal sound as simple as hers. “I want to be famous.”
“And what does that mean, being famous? What does that mean to you?”
“It means you've made it. It means you're somebody, a star.”
“Why do you want that?”
I laughed. “You're an international celebrity and you have to ask?”
Liliah didn't see the funny. “We are not discussing me. What does being famous mean to you?”
“It means … it means you don't have to just want things. You can get what you want.”
“You cannot get the things you want now?”
“You kidding? When you're a Negro?”
“I don't know. I am not Negro.”
“I'll tell you: When you're a Negro, there isn't much you can get except a shove to the ground and a kick to the gut.”
Liliah's head lifted from her fingers. She angled it to one side as she tried to gain perspective on me.
She said: “You wanted to have dinner with me. You accomplished that.”
“To be honest, I don't know how. Forget that I'm Negro. I'm sure there must be plenty of guys who want to go out with you.”
“Many, many men want to be with me.”
That sank me a little. “… So, I don't know, I mean, I'm thankful, but I don't know why you'd waste time with—”
“Because you made the phone call, Zhaqué. Many men want to be with me. Most are too frightened to try.” Then, bluntly: “Being famous, fame: It is not something you can touch. It is nothing you can hold on to. It is not real. What does not exist cannot make you happy, Zhaqué. So I think you worry about the wrong things, which tells me you have nothing to worry about at all.”
At first I thought she was trying to be rough on me, but then Liliah gave a smile. A rich, delicious smile that forced my lips into a matching one. This woman. This woman was the A-bomb of women—a force undeniable. I felt the dinner becoming more than a once-off episode to be recounted to “the boys” in the locker room like a fishing story. I felt as if I'd caught a ride on a runaway train moving too fast for me to jump off. More than that. I didn't want to.
The hour of the show was approaching and I secretly cussed it for killing the evening. But as we waited at the valet, Liliah asked if I would mind if she came with me to Ciro's.
Would I mind?
I yessed the idea. Fast. She told the valet to leave her car, that she would pick it up later.
I put Liliah into the passenger side of my rental, happy I'd sprung for a Caddy, then got myself behind the wheel. As I put the car in gear, she wrapped her arms around mine. There was nothing sexual in the way she held me, but at the same time her grasp was empty of innocence. Everything she did was a kaleidoscope. You saw what you wanted to see. You felt what you wanted to feel.
I felt desire.
AFTER THE SHOW. Liliah sat backstage in my dressing room as a few celebs came around to congratulate me. Maybe they truly wanted to wish me well. Probably they'd heard Liliah Davi was in the house and just wanted to ogle her.
Things slowed down. Joint empty except for staff, we had a couple of drinks at the bar before Herman closed up. Finally, Liliah said she was tired and I took that to mean the night was over. We got in my car and I started for Chasen's. Liliah told me not to bother. The restaurant would be closed by that hour. She'd send someone for her car in the morning. Per her directions, I headed on Beverly to Wilshire, then for Santa Monica. Her home.
Her home was near the beach. Nice. Not too big. Nothing about it screamed movie goddess. It just said, said quietly, Here's a woman who liked to be near the water, away from Hollywood, and able to watch the sun set.
I pulled into the driveway.
Lilian said: “Thank you for sharing your company.”
“Are you kidding? I had a great time. Really.”
“Do you have a girl?” She couldn't have been more plain about things if she was asking me if I owned a goldfish.
I couldn't have been more plain in my answer. “She's in Detroit. She wants to be a singer.” I modified that. “She is a singer.”
“And you have not seen her in some time?”
“We both … we work a lot. No.”
“But you love her?”
“Yes.”
With her precise motions that over the evening I had become accustomed to, Liliah took a platinum case from her purse. From the case she took a cigarette that she held before her. “Light me.”
“… I don't have matches.”
A lighter, platinum like her case, was suddenly in her hand. And then it was in mine.
I flicked it hot, held it up, and through the cigarette Liliah sucked the flame. She blew smoke. And then she leaned to me. She gave me a lingering kiss, the dampness of which soaked through my lips, through my body, like an alcohol. The drunkening affect was the same.
She slipped from the car for her house.
Her lighter still in hand, I called to her. “Miss Davi …”
Without turning back she went inside.
I looked at the lighter I held. It wasn't a lighter. It was an invitation. It was a key that would open the door behind which Liliah Davi had just disappeared. All I had to do was use it.
I checked my watch. It was past two-thirty. It was past five-thirty in Detroit. Tammi would be sleeping.
I headed the Caddy east for the Sunset Colonial.
Along the drive I told myself how proud I was of me for doing right by Tammi. I congratulated myself on being honorable, which, even though Tammi would never know of my temptation, felt better and carried more satisfaction than I could ever get out of a couple of hours with another woman. Even if the other woman was one of the most sensational women alive. And all the while I was telling myself such things, I was squeezing Liliah's lighter so hard that the metal of it was tattooing the flesh of my palm.
I barely made West L.A. before turning around, heading again for Santa Monica.
When I arrived back at Liliah's house, before I could ring the bell, she opened the door—still wearing her gown. Hair and makeup still perfect, as if morning, noon, and night she remained at full glamour—in expectation of me, as if what was going on was inevitable. I resented her that, her knowing the power of her own sexuality. But I didn't resent it so much that I could do anything other than keep walking for her. When I reached Liliah I stopped. I tried to explain, to rationalize why I had returned as much for myself as for her.
I didn't even get a good start before she said: “What happens between the two of us has nothing to do with love. It has to do with a man and a woman, and what happens with a man and a woman when they are alone together.”
Liliah had a near-fantastic ability to break everything down to its simplest elements. There was no fighting her. There was no refusing her. I didn't want to try.
“You could fool somebody with those looks,” I said. “You are a thinker.”
“And does that make me dangerous?”
“Very.”
She smiled. “Sex without danger is just sex, and danger without sex is merely dangerous.”
If I even began to understand diat… “What?”
Lilian took me by the
hand, led me inside her house. She explained all.
And then she explained it all again.
SAMMY CALLED. He told me that Jilly had called and told him to call Frank so he'd called Frank and the two talked. Talked about this and that and whatever else stars talk about. What they didn't talk about was the Jack Eigen show and Sammy's brutal excommunication from the church of Sinatra. But Sammy knew that the fact that they talked without talking about all that had happened was Frank's way of saying that all that had happened was over and through and in the past.
For whatever I'd done to smooth things, Sammy told me: “Thanks.”
For whatever I'd done.
What had I done? I'd kept myself in good standing with the biggest celebrity on the planet. And all that was required was selling Sammy out.
part VI
Dale Buis and Chester Ovnandgot killed.
When people die, when their lives are ended violently, it's sad and tragic. But as sad as it is, as tragic as it is, the reality of it is that in a world full of people, two of them dying really isn't any big thing.
Most times.
Except Dale Buis and Chester Ovnand were Americans. And Dale Buis and Chester Ovnand were in the military. And they were military advisers. And Major Dale Buis and Sergeant Chester Ovnand were killed by communist guerrillas in Bienhoa.
Bienhoa was in Vietnam.
The president didn't care for American military advisers getting killed, so he sent over more advisers same as the next president, who wuould send advisers and soldiers, and the next president, who would send more soldiers and some ships and planes and tanks after something that may or may not have happened in the Tonkin Gulf, and the next president, who would send more soldiers and more ships and more planes and more tanks and send them to a couple of other countries as well until the next president finally said: “There, that's it. That's enough. It's over.”
And in between all that time the American public would go from not thinking about what was going on over there, to supporting what was going on over there, to disliking what was going on over there, to publicly hating what was going on over there. And what was going on over there—the Vietnam War—would rage in the papers, and then in the living rooms, and finally out on the American streets. And while the war got fought over there, its meaning and significance got fought out over here between the young and old, black and white, the establishment and the counterculture, vocal dissidents and the silent majority. This country would be torn apart. Vietnam would be rejoined. The North Vietnamese would lose some 600,000 soldiers. We lost 57,939.
And ourselves.
February of 1960 to December of 1961
In early 1960 Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and de Gaulle had a summit conference in Paris. In the high heat of the cold war, after the U2 incident, the summit took on significant proportions. It was all anyone was talking about, all the news.
Frank Sinatra didn't dig not being the news even if the news that upstaged him was something as minorly important as world peace. So Frank decided he was going to have a summit of his own, a summit conference of cool. The ambassadors: Martin, Lawford, Bishop, and a reinstated Sammy Davis.
Then and now the uninitiated would call them the Rat Pack or the Clan. Frank hated both names—hated Rat Pack because Humphrey Bogart used to have a collection of friends who ran under that moniker. Frank loved Bogart. Frank wasn't trying to imitate Bogart. And race-tolerant Sinatra didn't care for the Clan for obvious reasons. To Frank, the group, like the event that gathered them, like the top of a mountain so few could climb, would be The Summit.
So Frank gathered his boys, a few broads, and headed out to Las Vegas to shoot a movie—Ocean's Eleven. But the movie just gave them something to do during the day. The Summit itself took place at night in the Copa Room at the Sands when all five would hit the stage. It wasn't just a show, it was a happening. With Bishop and Lawford thrown in out of pity, Frank, Sammy, and Dean, the biggest acts of their day in their element—a city of gin and sin—were enough to not only sell out the Copa but to sell out the entire burg. There wasn't a room to be had anywhere. Every casino was stuffed to capacity with people hoping, wishing, praying they might be among the lucky to catch the Lords of Cool. They had a better chance of sitting in with Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and de Gaulle.
The line formed behind the high rollers who got their way for dropping heavy at the tables, and even they were to the rear of the “special guests,” showbiz buddies and Mafia cronies who came in daily chartered plane-style. At a mere $5.95 The Summit was the most priceless ticket in town. No one wanted to miss it.
I saw it all.
For the three weeks that The Summit was in session, I was the opening act, and for all my time in lousy little clubs, it was my toughest gig in years. I wasn't so much a comic as I was a delaying tactic. I would go up onstage and try to tell jokes while stragglers filed into the Copa Room, while the management hunted down one more chair to seat one more guest. I would kill time any way I could until the boys, who spent the day working—if you call doing one take of every scene work—and the evening napping, had roused themselves enough to grace the fans with their presence.
And eventually they would. Sort of. The shows were poor. Qualitywise, they wouldn't much hold up to a high school amateur night. Mostly they consisted of Frank and his crew—tired, hung over—mixing drinks from a cocktail cart, swapping jokes that only they seemed to get, talking about broads, dames, and dolls, and trampling to death any attempt by one of the others to actually do a serious number in its entirety … And the audience loved it. The stars, the thugs, the chosen few, were happy to pay their money to sit and swill and watch these icons get high on a mix of booze, fame, and the love of women. Who wouldn't want to drink up some of that? In a changing world, as the blitzkrieg of civil rights and Vietnam and the youth movement began raining their chaos across the American landscape, the sight of middle-aged men having frat-boy fun and saluting the martini and lounge music values that middle-brow USAville held dear was somehow reassuring. The Summit was counter-counterculture. It was the last party, the nightcap of a generation, and a good time to be had by all.
By almost all.
Sammy Davis, Jr. had come to Vegas to work. The man loved a good time as much as anyone—more than most—but while he was onstage he was strictly Mr. Entertainment. The horsing around was all right, but he actually wanted to perform, to sing or dance or do some impressions. He wanted to do something—anything—without having at least one of the others toss a pratfall into the middle of it. But all that clowning around was just injury to insult. The real nastiness were the jokes. The “smile so we can see you, Sammy” jokes. The “what's the matter, you got watermelon in your mouth?” jokes. And the big joke, the showstopper—Dino picking up Sammy, announcing: “I'd like to thank the N-double-A-C-P for this award.” Oh, the howls that followed that one. Night after night, the same bits that were supposed to be funny because the guys who were telling them were “progressive.” And night after night, upon hearing the punch lines, Sammy would grin and laugh and stomp his feet like he was just about to bust from the rib-splitting hilarity of a racial slur well told.
Onstage.
But while one of the other cats was trying, not hard but trying, to get through a solo, Sammy would go backstage and pour himself into a lonely folding chair. Out of the spotlight, away from the people, he would hunch and droop, all the energy and life that he carried for his audience wrung from his body. I would watch him as he sat, just sat, looking so very tired—beat down with a weariness that took a guy a lifetime to stockpile. A lifetime of trying to please and appease, of living in the shadow of a legend while day by day by year climbing a mountain and reaching the top, only to find out no matter how much they pay to see you, no matter how hard they clap for you, they are still going to want to know, in truth and in jest: “If I hug you, is that going to rub off on me?”
He was such a star. He had all that a person could want. What could it matter to h
im what they thought? But it did matter. To him it mattered more than any other thing in the world—the money or the fame or the lust of women of every color.
Looking at Sammy, I promised myself when I got to where he was I would stop trying to make people love me. I'd stop caring if they did.
And then there would come a cue and Sammy would bolt up, reinvigorated by an unquenchable desire to be before a crowd, and burst back onstage. And through the curtain I could hear a thunder of applause for any of the one thousand ways that only he knew how to entertain.
AFTER THE SHOWS the party went private, in one of the Sands suites that was strictly off-limits to anyone who wasn't FOF, or at least sixty percent legs and forty percent chest. It was a room filled with smoke and vacant smiles. It's where stars mingled with mobsters and politicians, and an election was bought and paid for in cash. One million, literally, in the bag. It's where the entertaining wasn't done by the entertainers but by starlets, and dolls who wanted to be starlets, and chorus girls who just wanted to get noticed and by plain old prostitutes lubed with liquor and ready for a little hey-hey.
I'd be lying if I said on occasions I wasn't part of all that. I was. But most times I wasn't. Not that I wasn't up for some ring-a-ding-ding, but I already had a girl. And I had a girl on the side. I had Liliah.
When I first called and invited her out to The Summit, she was an incalculable as ever. Maybe she'd come. Maybe she wouldn't. If she felt like it, she might. Or even if she didn't, perhaps she would.
I hated myself on the first day of the show when all I did was vex over her arrival or non-arrival, when I wouldn't leave the room for fear of missing the call from the lobby from her that never came. I hated myself for thinking that me and her could have anything more than a once-only fling. I despised myself for even letting Liliah get her hands in my head when I was truthfully so very much in love with Tammi.
Then, from up onstage, in the middle of wrestling a herd of people into an audience, I caught sight of her sitting front row and everything else I'd been feeling and thinking got shoved aside by desire.
