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would end badly. He grabbed the arm of my coat and said, “Let’s go, baby.” But being Frank, he couldn’t just let it go, so he let rip, calling Ms. Cheshire a “two-dollar broad” and something worse. Then, for good measure, he added that she wasn’t worth as much as two dollars and stuffed a single dollar bill into her glass. As he walked me out, I thought, Oh, my God! but I have to admit there was also something exciting about what Frank had done. I’d never felt quite so defended in my life. The incident reminded me of a similar event years earlier in Ciro’s restaurant on the Strip when Frank walked in with Judy Garland. When he heard someone ask, “Who’s the broad?” Frank was so indignant on Judy’s behalf that he pushed the man into the restaurant phone booth, punched him, and slid the door shut. Then, as an afterthought, he opened the door and said, “The lady’s name is Garland. Spelled G-A-R-L-A-N-D.” That was so typical of Frank. To hit the guy was one thing, but to give the event a comic punch line turned it into a scene from a movie. As I was fast coming to appreciate, Frank’s life was like a series of little movies.

In spite of his famously short fuse, Frank had such strong feelings about manners and class, punctuality and style. He dressed in only the finest footwear, made especially for him and polished so hard you could see your reflection in the leather. He had an intense dislike for brown shoes and would use the moniker Mr. Brown Shoes for anyone he didn’t take to. His tailored English and Italian suits had to be hung, stored, and pressed just so. He wore the best Cartier watches and a gold pinkie ring inscribed with the Sinatra family crest. He described himself as “symmetrical, almost to a fault,” and once admitted, “I live my life certain ways that I could never change for a woman.”

As well as looking immaculate, he spoke impeccably well and always tried to behave in a gentlemanly way. He expected others to do the same, and when they didn’t, he’d lash out in frustration and disappointment. Several journalists were resented because they showed what he considered to be a lack of fairness from the safety of their newspaper columns or in the pages of lazily written books that merely pasted together a bunch of untruths. Despite the letters of complaint Frank wrote about the lies repeated ad nauseam, he rarely felt vindicated. There were only a few reporters he liked, one of them Larry King, whom he’d met in Miami when they were both starting out. Another was the Brooklyn-born New York Post columnist and author Pete Hamill, a fellow boozehound who wrote the only book I ever liked about Frank (until this one) called Why Sinatra Matters. He also liked Jim Bacon from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a few sports columnists, and an editor in Hawaii whose heart bypass he once funded, but that was about it.

The fallout from Frank’s very public confrontation with Maxine Cheshire at the Fairfax lasted for several weeks. If I’d hoped to escape the glare of publicity by getting away from Palm Springs, I was wrong. Not everyone was indignant on Ms. Cheshire’s behalf, however. Far from it. Some expressed their admiration for what Frank had done after she’d been so rude to me, and his friend Henry Kissinger called him up the next day to say he’d overpaid her. Unfazed by the controversy, Frank went on to perform at a White House dinner where President Nixon asked him, “What are you retired for? You really should sing.”

After giving it some thought, Frank made another surprise announcement, one that was almost as shocking as his political volte-face. His two-year retirement—or “vacation” as he called it—was over. He said that he’d had “the most wonderful time of my life” for two years but he was ready to cut a new record and go back on tour, and by that he meant the world. His fans were delighted. Apart from a few private charitable or political engagements, he’d kept his word about staying off the stage. Only I knew the real reason behind Frank’s decision to go back to work again that year. Although he’d undoubtedly missed the