Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [106]
Hoping to negotiate a deal, I replied rather cautiously, “Well, yes, but it doesn’t have a tennis court or a projection room, so it’s far from perfect.”
Frank grew impatient. “Do you want it or not?” he asked.
I nodded.
“We’ll take it,” he told the agent, who I’m sure couldn’t believe his ears.
Frank walked out without even seeing the whole property. And so it was that we bought the house we referred to thereafter as Foothill. In the woods below our property, Frank discovered a tan-colored dog with all its teeth worn down after eating bark off trees. It was a stray and must have had some collie in it. Frank took that toothless dog to the vet and had his teeth reconstructed. He called it Leroy, after the song “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” and Leroy lived with us happily until he died, always ready to give us a dentures smile.
Frank once asked me over breakfast, “If you could have a home anywhere in the world, where would it be?”
I thought of the fun times we’d had in Rome and Milan, and how stunning the European countryside was. “Italy,” I replied.
Frank almost choked on his coffee. “Are you nuts?” he cried. “They’d kill us!”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “They love you!”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” he replied. “They’d kill us with love.” He was right. I thought of the time we’d gone to the little village where Dolly had grown up near Genoa and had to be escorted through the crowds by armed police. Or the fans who’d rushed forward hysterically each time Frank had stepped from a limo or out of a ristorante. Frank was too adored in his ancestors’ country ever to live there, I realized with a sigh. My Italian dream would have to remain just that.
Instead, we continued enjoying our friends and family in the comfort of our Italian-style homes—without the danger of being killed. Not that we didn’t almost finish off a few of our friends in the process. One night the normally elegant and chic Jimmy Van Heusen was so drunk that Jilly and some of the boys had to carry him to bed. As they pulled him up the stairs, Jimmy’s pants came down until his ass was sticking out. He was a big man, and they couldn’t lift him onto the bed, so they left him on the floor, and his wife, Bobby, who was a tiny woman, just covered him up with a blanket. The following morning we were sitting around the pool when Jimmy walked out, chic as ever, head high, as if nothing had happened.
When Jack Benny came to stay at the Compound once, leaving Mary at their home in Los Angeles, he tried to keep pace with Frank, Dean, and the rest. There was no way he could win that contest, especially because he was diabetic. By the time we got to Ruby’s Dunes restaurant, Jack could hardly stand. The next thing we knew he was facedown in his mashed potatoes. Uncle Ruby helped the boys carry Jack out to a back room while we had dinner. When we’d finished, they carried him to the car and took him home. The last thing Jack said to me as I put him to bed was “Don’t tell Mary, Barbara! Whatever you do, don’t tell Mary.”
First thing next morning, Mary called up and said, “Well, I hear Jack got drunk last night.” Somebody had blabbed.
Alan Shepard was with us at the bar one night when Jack walked in. Frank had met most of the Apollo astronauts at various benefits over the years, and Alan was in Palm Springs to play golf in Dinah