FRANK SINATRA HAS A FEVER

Sinatra was the name for when he was winning.
Winning and singing.
Frank was the name for when he was fucked.

And right now? He was truly.

When you’ve been on top of the world—and practically own the world you’re on top of—the idea of being brought to heel by the threat of a woman walking out on you seemed impossible.

And yet, here he was, staring down the barrel of a gun in the form of a whiskey bottle.

When getting through one-fifth of the stuff didn’t even remotely ease his pain, he knew he was in real trouble.

Turning on some gas taps and knocking back a half-dozen pills, Frank slowly began to succumb to unconsciousness, listening to the music on the radio in his hotel room.

It was Ella. His little sister (only by two years). She was singing his favourite Gershwin song, Someone to Watch Over Me, and he couldn’t think of anyone more appropriate to sing him to his death than his sweet, dear Ella.

“I love you, angel. My sweet angel of death.”

Listening to the lyrics, he laughed to himself as he thought about his own approach to phrasing the song:

I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
To one who’ll watch over me

Still, he couldn’t fault Ella. The main difference between them was that he brought out the pain more than she did. That was because, according to Bogart, he was an emotional sadist. He liked to increase the pain of these songs to places they’d never been taken before.

None of your Noël Coward “let’s-all-get-round-the-piano” malarkey—he got a kick out of torturing the songs with his own unique sense of anguish and would drag them, kicking and screaming, into the second half of the twentieth century if he had to.

If it wasn’t too late.
If he didn’t die tonight.

He was feeling sleepy, though, and Ella’s voice was cosy as hell as he began to feel the seduction of total oblivion become irresistible.

And then, as if Ella wasn’t enough, he heard his own voice playing on the radio, as though the universe were controlling the soundtrack to his suicide.

Of all the records, it was the most painful—the one he knew was his musical suicide note at Columbia, when that cunt Mitch Miller had him doing novelty songs.

How ironic that the radio would play it now, just as he was about to throw in the towel—after Ava had broken his heart and, with it, his only reason to live.

I’m sentimental
So I walk in the rain
I’ve got some habits
Even I can’t explain
Go to the corner
I end up in Spain
Why try to change me now?

Ella couldn’t sing that song that way. It wasn’t her fault. It was just that he had laid down his own Laurence Olivier version of the damn fucking thing, and it would never be beaten.

That wasn’t to say she wouldn’t sing other songs better than him.
But not this one.
No one ever would.
No one ever could.

There was something almost psychosexual about dying to the sound of your own voice, and Frank was kind of getting off on it.

But then—overriding the song by Cy Coleman—was the sound of a woman’s voice.
And not just any woman’s voice.
Ava’s voice.

Kinda like the sound when you put your ear to a seashell and hear the ocean calling to you.

But of course, she would be the last voice he’d hear—even if it was only in his head. She always had the final say on everything, including their marriage, which was now all but dead.

The room was getting dark.
Frank was ready for letting go.

Until he felt a hard slap across his face.

It was always a slap. It had been a slap that brought him back to life under the running tap the morning he was born, December 12th, 1915—by his grandmother, who refused to believe the doctor’s verdict that he was a stillborn.

Seemed like Frank—or was it Sinatra?—had no choice when the universe insisted he stick around against the odds.

Maybe he always knew that.
Maybe Ava did too.

“Wake up, Frank! Come on, Frank! For fuck’s sake—don’t you die on me!”

It was Ava. His angel of mercy, returned from Cal-Neva, the casino resort nearby that Frank had a considerable stake in.

“Was that song playing on the radio? Or was it in my head?”
“What song? The radio’s not even on.”

Opening the windows wide, she let in the cold night air as Frank came around slowly.

“If you’re gonna kill yourself, at least do it when I’m out of the fucking country, you bastard. I don’t want any part of your gruesome self-pity, you hear?”

Frank laughed.
“Self-pity is my city. It’s where I live. I got a permanent residence there.”
“Don’t I know it. But you know, Frank—it ain’t sexy. I don’t care how big your Sicilian dick is.”

He could take all the abuse in the world from her, as long as he knew she was close.
But the threat of her leaving terrified him.

“Don’t leave me, Ava. I won’t be able to make it without you.”

Ava scoffed at his pleading.
“Sure you will. You’ll make it fine. And you’ll even make a record about it. Probably pay for your kids’ private schooling, I wouldn’t wonder.”

Man, she could be so cold, he thought to himself.
And conversely, he could be so hot-tempered.
Fire and ice, they were.

“I love you, baby.”

His words fell strangely flat in the muted acoustics of the room, and he suddenly realized he was a dead man walking when it came to the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

“You love yourself more than you love me. That’s why you almost killed yourself tonight. If you truly loved me, you wouldn’t even pretend to do that crazy shit. But you did—and it’s because you love yourself more than you love me, Frank.

Mr. Frank Fucking Sinatra!”

She held out a cup of hot black coffee, which he took in his trembling hands.

“I’m taking a shower now. Try not to drop dead, if you can.”

Sitting by the stove, coffee in hand, Frank couldn’t help but think she loved him really.
She just had a funny way of showing it.
At least, that’s what he told himself.

“You love me really, you crazy bitch. You know you do.”