Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [158]
And now here she was, sitting with him. She leaned her head on her hand tipsily and looked sideways at him. He was telling a story, animatedly. She could barely make out the words. It didn’t matter. Could she be in love with this man? She shook her head, as if in wonderment at something he was saying, but really to herself: this wouldn’t do.
Frank was not immune to guilt either, though alcohol and admiration could quickly make him feel that other rules applied in his case. He had told himself that with dozens of girls—but Ava was different. Marilyn Maxwell had been sweet and sincere and deliciously naughty; Lana was gorgeous and fiery but ultimately too self-protective and shallow: her deepest belief was in her own celebrity. This one stared at him—and stared at him and stared at him—and her green-gold eyes said that she knew all his secrets. The smile that curled one corner of those amazing lips confirmed it. And his deepest secret was this: she possessed him.
After a long time they realized they were hungry, and they ate a little something. But—there were more drinks with dinner—mostly they devoured each other with their eyes. And laughed, when the tension became unbearable. He lit both their cigarettes with a gold lighter, then paid the check. He took her hand (she kept stealing glances at his hands; they were beautiful) and led her to his car.
She resisted for a moment, then she didn’t.
Just a little while.
As drunk as she was—and her head seemed to be floating a vast distance over her feet—she swore her deepest oath to herself: she would not sleep with him. Somehow, whether he knew it or not, he was testing her, and she was testing herself. If she crossed this line, he would categorize her. If she crossed this line, she would be back in the bad place she had been with Artie, adrift and uncertain, a poor fatherless girl from nowhere, and nothing.
They went someplace—she was never sure, later, just where. Not his place was all she knew. A beautiful apartment, someplace. With paintings, and big windows with a view of the city, and music—his—and a divine fragrance she couldn’t get out of her mind for days afterward. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom, and she stopped in the doorway. He gave her the gentlest pull, but this time she stood firm. So they sat on the couch in the living room and kissed. Kissed and kissed. She had never kissed like this before. Kissing him, she thought, was in a different universe from fucking almost anyone else.
He reached around and began to unzip her dress. And though she loved her own body, and in most cases was out of her clothes in a second, at this moment she hesitated. She touched his arm.
Francis.
No one had ever called him this before.1 He moved his hand back, and they kissed some more. For a long time.
He said her name, softly, after a while. Then he took her home.
Neither of them slept that night. It would be months before they saw each other again.
The house in the desert was finished on time and, thanks to the round-the-clock construction schedule, phenomenally over budget. Twin Palms wound up costing $150,000, a huge sum in 1948, and five times the original estimate. But it was finished, and it was beautiful, and now Frank and Nancy and the children had an incomparable weekend refuge. Palm Springs looked like no place else. There were a couple of paved streets; the rest was