STRANGER IN THE NIGHT

Ten summers on from that final college dance with Jill, Sheik wondered if he was even remotely the same person as he was back then in the summer of 66. The arrogance of his youth had been pretty much all been beaten out of him after running errands for the Trenton mob and getting cold feet about it had now cost him a significant proportion of his good looks. With his once perfect nose now bent out of shape and a scar across his upper lip from a glass bottle in the face, Sheik's pipe dream of being a successful lounge singer had almost completely evaporated, like the final drags from the last cigarette of a packet of smokes.

And yet, in his darkest hour, bleeding in the rain down a darkened side alley South side of the city, he couldn't shake the image of Caesar's Palace out of his mind and just like those sailors did with the North Star, he kept it as his lodestone to lead him out of the darkness toward the neon lights.

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

He sang the line from Petula Clark's 'Downtown', spitting out a half-broken tooth onto the flooded street and grimacing at all the brutal punishment he'd been dealt lately. His run of continuous bad luck had started ever since his painful break up with Jill, the girl he still thought of as close to being 'the one' as any in his life. He'd even called her old number late one night when he was blind drunk, getting himself into an incomprehensible argument with her father who hadn't taken kindly to the nocturnal interruption and told him that Jill wouldn't be coming back to Trenton outside of Christmas holidays - with her fiancee. She was probably married by now and maybe even had kids of her own.

Still, undeterred against all the odds, with just the merest flicker of his dream still intact, Sheik buttoned up his rain-soaked jacket which clung tight to his skin and knowing his own apartment wouldn't be safe, went to clean himself up at a friend's place where he would re-assess his limited options.

New Jersey was fast becoming completely inhospitable to Sheik, just like so many girlfriends who'd grown tired of his unrealistic dreams of showbusiness.

The grim irony was, he could let go of the girls but he couldn't let go of the dream.

It was the American dream.

Having been forced to leave New Jersey for his own personal safety after mounting considerable debts with shady goons, Sheik made his way to Las Vegas where he hoped to bump into his hero Frank Sinatra, knowing that there would be thousands just like him similarly looking for a brush with celebrity immortality.

Maybe it was his own delusional conceit, but Sheik had a strong gambler's hunch that destiny wouldn't be so fickle with this matter as it had seemed to be at times with his spluttering attempt at a career in the entertainment business.

Balancing some escort work with some croupier training, Sheik surprised himself with how quickly he'd managed to find himself back on his feet in this brand new town. He'd always had the gift of the gab, but had become increasingly self-conscious in recent years due to the violent attacks he'd suffered from his ex-employers and their mafia minions. Remembering the line "a twenty-per-cent slice of something big is better than a one-hundred-per-cent slice of nothing," from one of his favourite Paul Newman movies as if it were gospel straight out of the bible, he knew he was in the process of re-building himself, new and improved, just like 'Fast Eddie' Felson.

The 27-year-old had picked up just enough about cards and dice from his old mob friends back in Jersey and had enough street smarts to spot those desperate hustlers trying to game the house. He'd probably be doing the same as them but luckily for him he looked sharp enough in a black waistcoat to be on the right side of the tables.

And as long as Frank was singing in Sin City, he promised all that was holy that he would try and keep his misshapen nose clean.

September had rolled around and for all the adults who no longer attended school, there was a sense it was time to try and get serious about preparing for the final quarter of the business year and Sheik was no different. Having managed to stay off the booze (especially quarts) since his arrival at the start of the summer, he'd saved more money than he'd could have ever hoped when he first arrived.

Not knowing anyone helped and although back in his Jersey past his mouth could get him into the beds of beautiful woman and ingratiate himself with the not-so- great and the bad of powerful male company, he'd taken an unofficial vow of silence in Las Vegas. He only talked at work if it was absolutely required and only sang after hours, after work when he would sit at the piano in the empty lounge of the Casino and perform to an audience of just himself and the generally disinterested dawn cleaners.

His favourite song to practice in the deserted space lately had been 'It Was A Very Good Year'. He felt he imbued the lyrics with just the right statement of tone similar to that of his hero, Frank. The wistful sentiment suited his own world-weary life experience and had taught him that when a singer is perfectly aligned with a song that's when he most likely affects the audience listening to him with the greatest impact.

When I was 21, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls
Who lived up the stairs
With all that perfumed hair
And it came undone
When I was 21

"Is there an echo in here?"

Sheik turned round at the piano to see where the direction of the familar-sounding voice was coming from.

Everything that happened after this life-defining moment for Sheik was like an opium dream. He later desperately tried to remember each minute detail before the finer details slipped through the cracks of his mind like futile attempts to cup water.

What he did remember about the encounter was Mr. Frank Sinatra approaching him at the baby grand piano and offering him a glug from the bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label he swung loosely in his right hand.

"You'll sing even better with Jack as your vocal coach."

Disbelieving that his lips would touch where Sinatra's had been on the neck end of the bottle, Sheik couldn't stop his hands from shaking as he drank the Jack in awe as if it was from a holy chalice.

"Go ahead. Now sing some more."

The whiskey hadn't traveled quite far enough through the lining of his stomach into his bloodstream to relax him sufficiently for the request, but treating the situation as an almost out-of-body experience, Sheik somehow managed to open his mouth and sing the following verse.

When I was 35, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means
We'd ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was 35

Slapping his back with a sort of parental enthusiasm, Sinatra beamed and offered some more whiskey to Sheik who was beginning to feel a little more relaxed.

"Where you from?"

"New Jersey."

"Heyyy, the old neighbourhood. Which part. Wait, don't tell me."

Looking over his face like he was performing a screen test for a major motion picture, Sinatra took a punt.

"Newark!"

"Nope."

"Princeton!"

"Nope."

"Don't tell me Hoboken. You don't look like a Hoboken guy."

"Nuh uh."

"Go on."

"Trenton."

Visibly relieved to have finally settled the matter, Sinatra pressed Sheik further on his background.

"Now I look more closely at you, you do look like a Trenton kid. I hear it's pretty rough round parts of the city."

"I guess you can mix with the wrong crowd anywhere."

"Ain't that the truth. Well, keep on with the singing, kid. You might not make the Billboard Top 100 but you definitely wouldn't bring shame on anyone's wedding day with them pipes."

And before he could ask the great man where he was headed to and whether he could possibly join him, Sinatra disappeared like a phantom, as if his entire appearance in the half-lit lounge had been an illusion all along.

"Wakey wakey Mr Rosen! I need you to pass on a message from me for Jill."

Holding the phone away from his ear as Mr Rosen shouted a torrent of abuse at him down the telephone receiver, Sheik smiled having anticipcated his reaction to be just this.

"Are you calm now? I just need you to tell her one thing from me, alright?"

Exhausted from all his shouting and too proud and intrigued by the young man's delusion to hang up on him, Mr Rosen waited for the message from 'Sheik' he planned instantly never to pass onto his daughter.

"Tell her I met Frank."

There was a considerable pause before Sheik elaborated.

"Frank who? Frank Sinatra, of course. Where you been living all these years? Under a rock?"

After yet more insults from Mr Rosen, it took another few minutes before Sheik could wrap up the call in civil fashion.

"Putting your personal feelings toward me aside on this one occasion and hoping that you'll do what I ask, I guarantee it'll bring you good luck, Mr Rosen so if you'll just let Jill know I met Frank Sinatra I'll be forever grateful."

And with that he hung up the phone and punched the air, ecstatic that his lifetime dream had finally come true.

Staring out onto Las Vegas Boulevard from the casino hotel room he'd been allowed to stay in for the night, Sheik felt a million dollars. He only wished he had been a little more confident in the presence of his hero.

"You'll see him again. If you did it once, you can do it twice."

Confident his luck had taken a turn for the better, Sheik couldn't sleep that night, too excited about his meeting the greatest singer in the world.

Sadly, like sand in an egg timer, Sheik's run of good luck ran out a year later as his past caught up with him when a couple of Jersey guys who were doing some business in Vegas caught sight of him behind the crap table at 'Arab's Paradise' Casino and bundled him into the back of a car late one night after work.

Burying him in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Mojave Desert, his memory was preserved only by the telephone message reluctantly passed onto Jill by her father, Mr Rosen.

76 had been a good year (by Sheik's standards) but 77 was easily the worst one ever.

But still, the world kept turning and Sinatra kept singing.

But now the days are short, I'm in the autumn of my years
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
From fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs
It poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year

Dedicated to WH! Happy Birthday Old Sport!

Digital Renegade

1st September 2023