Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [95]
We had a lot of crazies after Frank over the years, and we handed most of their details to the police or the FBI. Frank was always more concerned about my safety than his own; after all, as far as women were concerned, I was the enemy. He sent me to a shooting range in Cathedral City to learn how to use a gun and had Jilly give me a tiny pistol to carry in my purse. I was also told to carry a rifle on my saddle whenever I was out riding in the desert. Fortunately, I never had to use either weapon, although I did wish I had something on me when I found a strange woman in my bedroom at the Waldorf one day. “Who are you?” I asked, taken aback.
“Are you Barbara?” she replied, frowning. An image of her pulling out a gun and shooting me dead flashed before my eyes. I didn’t respond, so she smiled and pleaded, “Barbara, I’ve got to talk to Frank. Please, you have to help me!”
I managed a smile and told her, “Just a minute. I’ll get someone who can.” I went and found Jilly, who rushed in and escorted her out of there. I have no idea what she had in mind for me or for Frank, but it could have been the end.
Another strange woman gate-crashed a party we threw at a hotel, and when I asked who she was, she told me, “I’m a close friend of the family.”
“But I am the family!” I informed her. She turned tail and fled.
One woman tried to get in to see Frank at our home in Los Angeles because she claimed that he kept buzzing over her house in a plane. Later she followed me to a restaurant and burst in to announce she’d had a child by Frank. She carried the fantasy on and on, bombarding us with mail that said things like “I know Frank’s trying to reach me, Barbara, so would you please just give him this number and tell him he can call.” She was completely loco. After a while we stopped hearing from her and hoped she’d given up. One day Frank opened a newspaper in Palm Springs and saw her photograph accompanying a story that she’d been run over and killed on Date Palm Drive, just a few miles down the road from our home. God only knows what she was doing there.
Frank attracted women. He couldn’t help it. Just to look at him—the way he moved, and how he behaved—was to know that he was a great lover and a true gentleman. He adored the company of women, and he knew how to treat them. I had friends whose husbands were “players,” and every time the husbands had affairs my friends were showered with gifts. Well, I was constantly showered with gifts, but no matter what temptations Frank may have faced when I wasn’t around, he made me feel so safe and loved that I never became paranoid about losing him.
Privately, I sometimes discussed the possibility with my two French girlfriends (who seemed to know about these things), and one of them warned me against complacency. “No matter how much he loves you now, you don’t know what could happen in the future,” she said. “You must have a Plan B.” Thinking of Lee Annenberg’s advice when I married Frank, to “be nice, be sweet, be adorable, but look the other way,” my Plan B was to look the other way, if ever I had to. I had a great life, traveling the world with the man I loved, who went out of his way, every day, to please me. From the day he’d married me, I felt cherished from dawn till dusk. He’d named a plane and a boat after me. He bought me the most exquisite things and took me to the finest places. If ever I was unwell, he’d sit with me and take care of me in the sweetest and most attentive way. I was confident that he truly loved me and that we’d both finally found contentment and tranquillity in each other’s arms. And he never gave me cause to