[NOTE: The following story is based on the life, myths, and movies of the legendary Rat Pack, a bold group of swingers who grooved during mid-20th century America. Their like shall not be seen again.]
[NOTE II: Very little editing has been done to the original text.]
Chapter One: Oh, Yeah!
Frank Sinatra let himself into the Penthouse Suite of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and stopped at the threshold to fully appreciate the scene. He nearly dropped his bottle of Metamucil.
In his absence, Peter Lawford had found two broads and the brunette sitting on the floor with the bongo drum between her knees was stacked like the proverbial small brick structure. Not that the other one, the blonde who was astride Peter's back on the couch, was the stringy spinster type. Her stern in its tight Capris was well constructed.
"A-ring-a-ding-ding!" Frank said quietly to himself.
The record player and the bongo drum had buried the sound of Frank's entrance under a rhythmic clamor, so the old man closed the door and leaned back against it while he studied the situation, trying to decide just what in hell the blonde was doing or was about to do to Peter. In broad daylight, yet, and did she prefer bongo accompaniment?
He stood there, paunchy, pale, balding, volatile, once good-looking, in a feral sort of way, now clad in slacks, sweater, open-throated shirt, dirty buck shoes, all of which looked expensive and were. Thirty years ago when he bought them.
Frank Sinatra had expensive tastes, in clothes, food, liquor, cars, hotel suites and women. Especially women. Every woman he'd known in his life had cost him plenty, one way or another.
He could certainly afford them, being one of the most successful and popular entertainers in the entire world for the last fifty years. He had everything he could ever want, except one: Angie Dickinson.
"Dear Angie, so soft, so neat, so cool, so molten when the late afternoon sun leaked through the drawn Venetian blinds to paint streaks across the bed, across her tumultuous sun-browned body. Dear Angie, so dear that even now he could not think of her without feeling the aching need of her and she so gone, so gone away. Gone, daddy-o, gone."
Frank shook his head, concentrating on the jiggling globes encased in the Capris. He saw now that the blonde was massaging Peter Lawford's neck and back, and pretty expertly, too. Peter had stripped to the waist, exposing his pale, flabby back; he was lying face down on the couch, an empty bottle of Chivas in his hand and although the music and the hammering bongo drum drowned out everything else, Frank knew he was grunting, almost purring, purring in his pleasure. That guy and his massages: sometimes Frank thought Peter would rather be massaged than the other.
The phone on the table beside the couch shrilled and the brunette squatted on the floor stopped punishing the drum. The blonde straddling Lawford reached out a hand toward the demanding phone. Peter roused himself out of his stroked-cat torpor in time to grasp her waist just before the slim fingers picked up the instrument.
"Ah-ah, mustn't touch," he said lazily, his words thick and slurred. He rolled over between her legs and smiled up at her.
"But Pe-ter, it just keeps ringing," the blonde protested.
"It'll stop in time," Lawford said. "They always do. I've made it a cardinal rule never to answer a telephone during the month of December, you see." His voice held the suggestion of a British accent, not definite enough to be phoney, more the voice of a man who had gone to school in England as a boy, which in fact he had, though he had left his home as a young man to become an American movie star and was now using that accent to help him coast on the reputation he made twenty years ago.
The girl atop him stared down, her eyes round. "But that's crazy," she said at length. "Why don't you answer the telephone in December?"
"Because there was a time that whenever I answered the phone in December they made me take some little friends and go out into the snow," Lawford explained. His finger traced an experimental pattern on the girl's full halter. "That was at the..." He prodded the firm breast. "...The Bulge, you see."
"The Bulge?" the blonde asked.
"An out-of-season brouhaha in Belgium." Lawford smiled. "Not recommended." His hands busied themselves deftly in assuring him that the blonde was nicely balanced, just so much on one side to equal the delectability on the other side.
"What were you doing in Belgium in the winter?" the girl asked.
"Trying to keep warm, mostly," Lawford answered. "If there's one thing I hate, you succulent thing, you, it's being cold." With which the phone quit and Lawford reached up to pull the girl down on top of him.
Frank Sinatra moved from the doorway, his footsteps silenced by the thick carpet, as the blonde murmured: "It's nice and warm in here."
Peter Lawford's voice was somewhat obstructed by his speaking into a valley of white flesh, revealed by a disarranged halter. "Everywhere I feel," he murmured. "Yes, sir, everywhere I feel."
The bongo drum started again, as though on cue, and Sinatra grinned appreciatively. Frank came to a settee that blocked his way to the bongo brunette, put a hand on its back and tried to vault it, a move he might not even have been capable of in his youth. He landed in a heap beside the girl with the drum.
The dark-haired girl missed only half a beat in her rhythm, but she kept her eyes pinned on Frank, gasping for breath beside her, and when he placed his age-spotted hand on her shoulder he felt her shiver. Delight or disgust, he couldn't be sure. He saw the tip of her tongue flick over her full lower lip and then stay between her white teeth, half withdrawn.
Without saying a word, Frank undid his belt and slid his trousers down to his ankles. The brunette watched as the elderly crooner crawled to her, removed the bongos from between her knees and, turning around, replaced them with his now bare buttocks.
"Beat me, baby," Frank said in a guttural growl. "Eight to the bar."
The girl didn't hesitate. Pow! her palm came down on the pale white flesh, right in time with the music. Frank groaned as her pounding grew more frenetic, more orgiastic. Perspiration showed on her forehead and her lips parted, her eyes rolled back when, with a crash and a final thump, the record ended.
The brunette's head dropped on her chest. The blonde on the couch murmured a faint groan. Peter Lawford made a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a chuckle.
"Golly, Pet-ey," said the blonde. "Doesn't that thing ever come to life?" Lawford made the sound again and rolled over, covering his flaccid shame.
There was a silence, and then Sinatra laughed. "Nice timing everybody," he said. "Next time, let's try it with a Krupa record and see who wins."
The blonde on the couch scrambled upright, adjusting herself in frustration. Peter Lawford swung his feet to the floor and peered hazily at Frank. The brunette still contemplated her drum, exhausted.
"Well, Frank," Lawford said when he found his voice. "How long have you been with us?"
"Just a little while, looking on, like," Sinatra replied. "Quite something. One time when twenty-twenty vision paid off." Of course, he had worn thick glasses for years, but today he couldn't remember just where he had left them. Maybe at Angie's? No, he hadn't seen her in, what was it?
The telephone began ringing again. It was enough to rouse the brunette from her entranced contemplations and she swung her brown eyes to Frank. "Somebody answer that damn thing," she said, throatily. "I go nuts when anybody lets a phone ring without answering it. It just don't make sense."
"So many things don't, Doll," Frank said cheerfully. "Like you giving it all to that drum instead of a livin', breathin' somebody like me."
Lawford turned to pick up the phone, held it out toward Sinatra. "Our dear friend Nixon. He's probably ready to bust a gusset. Maybe you'd better..."
"No," Frank cut in harshly. "Let him bust. Silver-tonguing us into this deal, the fat little crook." He twisted to reach for a pack of cigarettes in the slacks. "Besides," he added, "I like to make him sweat."
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