Intimate Strangers Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous

And Then There Was One: Sinatra Bequeaths His Rules of Order Esquire, March 1996 In black tie, Dean sleeps forever. He lounges in his marble vault, behind the bank in Westwood, draped in midnight attire, in the uniform, crimson hanky peeking from breast pocket. He was the beautiful one. Always did know how to dress. The Leader liked that. Sam was another story. He was the youngest, the wild card. Onstage, 1963: "What are you doing in that cockamamie street suit!" Frank admonished, emerging godlike from the wings of the Sands, Dean by his side. "And what is this, with the tie down and the collar open? Where the hell did you learn that? Now, go up to your room and get yourself into a little ol' tuxedo!" This happened nightly. Sam: "What're you, Esquire magazine? Let's get one thing straight, Frank! I'm thirty-seven years old! I will change my clothes when I get good and ready!" Frank: "Are you ready?" Sam: "Yes, Frank." Sam was a pussycat in his tiny tux, Frank always said. Right now he's up on that Forest Lawn hilltop, wearing one of his English toy suits--over a red shirt. (Red--the color of Bojangles's eyes!) On his wrist is the enormous gold Cartier watch he so treasured. "Laid on me by my man, Francis," he'd tell those who asked, before the end. "It goes with me." Frank gave it to him on the reunion tour, the last time the three of them tried to do it all over again. Recapture the old mothery gas--that, of course, was Frank's idea. Dean told him, "Why don't we find a good bar instead." Wrecked, the Leader sat amid the leftover antipasti Christmas night. Dag was dead since before dawn. They called each other Dag (pronounced daig), for no one else could, would dare. He was not surprised by the bad news, but the sorrow was pounding him in slow waves. "Don't worry," he said softly to a few intimates, "I'm not going anyplace for a long time." And he picked at his food. The mantle of style would now be his alone, although of course it always had been. It was just nice to have some company, their company, those two bums in particular. He embodied the code to which all freethinking men aspired, but only two truly understood how it was done, no lessons needed, sang and swung to boot. Thirty-five years after it started--all that rehearsed spontaneity in the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel--only the oldest survives; the freshly minted octogenarian, he persists. His force wanes not at all, keeping younger men of close acquaintance up all hours while he belts his Jack Daniel's and explains history as he knows it. He does not let go. "You've got to love livin', baby! Because dyin' is a pain in the ass!" That was what he always told them, never stopped telling them. Sam paid heed until he couldn't anymore. Dean didn't, hadn't for years. His gorgeous indifference, which Frank quietly revered, finally withered him, which Frank detested witnessing. "How can you eat that motherfucking shit?" Frank goaded him from across the table last June. Together, they sat at Dean's booth, next to the bar, at Da Vinci in Beverly Hills. It was the final Summit. Dean had just turned seventy-eight, and Frank never missed a birthday. Frank missed nothing, never has, even now. So he saw what he saw and his heart broke and, hating it, he fought. ("Fight, fight, fight!" he whispers inside his head every day, staving off that rat-bastard, Time.) He wanted a rise out of gentle Dag, so he poked at the pasta and needled like a hero. He tore off bread and pelted his frail paisan, a ritual of theirs since always. Dean only smiled. Frank stayed feisty. They sipped their separate amber and talked as best they could. After an hour or so, Frank got up to leave, said he had to go to New York tomorrow. "Good," Dean said. "Don't come back." Such was the love between the largest of men. [read more]