A Conversation with the Mann (43 page)

Over our meal we talked. She told me about the picture she was doing at Columbia, this story or that about her director, her
costar, one about Harry Cohn throwing a tantrum over some little thing that had to do more with getting attention than getting
what he wanted. Liliah sounded bored with it all, bored with show business like the whole of it was a crazy children's game
she was playing only for lack of anything better to do.

“Oh, well,” she said, done talking about Hollywood, waving a hand once in the air, shooing away the subject. “So, tell me
what it is you want,
Zhaqué
.”

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.

A
FTER 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.

S
AMMY 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.

I
n 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.