“Ass” was unusually salty language for Bob.
“Bob,” Mank said through a battle wound of a smile, “I told you this would be an uphill struggle.” Then he patted his candidate on the shoulder and went back to work.
Next stop was the Royal Suite, entering into the expansive sitting room, a celebrity cocktail party where laughter rose like bubbles in a glass. The maybe one hundred supporters, stuffed in the space with its own bank of TVs and bar, were blissfully unaware of the frustration their hero was suffering on a night that seemed headed to victory.
The eclectic mix encompassed L.A. Rams tackle Rosey Grier and decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, astronaut John Glenn and Civil Rights activist John Lewis, labor leader Cesar Chavez and comedian Milton Berle. Plenty of Kennedy people, too, including Pierre Salinger and Bob’s sisters Pat Lawford and Jean Smith with her husband Steve, a trusted RFK confidante. Others were familiar but I couldn’t connect with names. No sign of brother Ted, though the four Kennedy kids from out at Malibu — David, Michael, Courtney and Mary — were winding through the crowd as if in a garden maze, in pursuit of waiters with trays of hors d’oeuvres.
This was where Frankenheimer had wound up, chatting with a guy with white curly Roman hair and black eyebrows; Bob said this was On the Waterfront screenwriter Budd Schulberg. Listening politely, cocktail in hand and trying not to look bored, was a slender curvy beauty about forty. For a moment I thought she was the film director’s actress wife, but no. Her flipped-up, lightly sprayed brunette bob was maybe too young for her, but there were worse sins. She looked familiar to me, or was that wishful thinking?
Frankenheimer, like everybody else, had noticed Bob come in and motioned for him to come over. As his appendage, I made the trip.
We said quick hellos minus any introduction of the brunette, who was either famous enough that I should have known her or dismissed by these two chauvinists as window dressing. But she had a nod and a pink lipstick smile that encouraged me to ignore the twenty-year gap between us. My self-esteem went up.
So did Frankenheimer’s eyebrows, as he gestured Nero-style with a downward thumb. “Bob, I checked out the Embassy Room — must be nearly two thousand people crammed in. Security guards and fire marshals are routing the overflow into the ballroom downstairs. I wish the fucking networks would declare a winner — the natives are getting restless.”
“With these new computerized voting machines,” Bob said, “you know it’s going to be damn slow. Could be midnight before we know.”
The director shuddered. “Hope to hell you’re wrong. It’s stifling down there. People may start passing out. And frantic! Chavez has a marimba band going at times. At least I’m getting good footage — lots of cute girls in straw hats, white blouses, blue skirts, red sashes. Chanting ‘Sock it to me, Bobby.’”
“Well, that’s embarrassing,” he said with a shudder.
The brunette spoke for the first time. “For the record, I did not wear a straw hat for the occasion, or a sash.” She did have a white blouse on, silk, and a navy skirt, short but by no means mini.
Bob gave her a half-smile. “I never dreamed you had, Miss Romaine.”
Now I remembered her.
I noted that she seemed at ease in front of the candidate; being here made her somebody in the campaign.
Schulberg was saying, “If you win big tonight it’ll be thanks to black and brown people. Don’t forget that, Bob, if you find yourself making a victory speech. You’re the only white man in this country they trust.”
“If Drew Pearson hasn’t changed that,” Bob said glumly, referring to a column that laid the Martin Luther King wiretap at his feet.
Frankenheimer said, “Bob, what’s this about me going up with you on that postage-stamp stage for your big speech? You don’t want to be seen with me!”
Bob gave him the “What’s Up Doc?” grin. “I can’t be too particular, campaigning.”
“A Hollywood director standing next to you on that dais is lousy for your man-of-the-people image. Surround yourself with Chavez and that guy from the Auto Workers, Schrade. Best I just wait back behind the stage till you finish.”
Bob thought about that for a second, then said, “When I say, ‘Let’s go on to win it in Chicago,’ or something to that effect, you go collect your Rolls. Wait for us by the kitchen, then drive us to the factory.”
“What factory?” I asked.
“The Factory,” Frankenheimer said, addressing the slow student in the classroom. “Nightclub over on North LePeer that Salinger has a piece of.” To Bob he said, “I’ll have a table waiting for you and Ethel with Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Jean Seburg, Andy Williams...”
The glittery list went on. How did Bob’s man-of-the-people image fit in with jet set hobnobbing and riding around in a Rolls-Royce?
Misreading me, Bob said, “You can skip the nightclub baloney if you like.”
“That,” I said, “is exactly the kind of place you need a bodyguard.”
The brunette, who’d been taking all this in, flashed me a chin-crinkly smile and said, “Who do you think you’re fooling, Nate? You just want to meet Sharon Tate.”
So she remembered me, too.
“Well,” Bob said to me, almost irritated, “I don’t need a bodyguard here. I’m obviously among friends. I’m going across the hall to check on Ethel and maybe get away from this madness for a while.”
I fell in after him, but he turned and raised a warning forefinger, then wound through the bodies casting smiles and nods like manna to the masses, and went out.
I turned and Frankenheimer was gone. Schulberg, too.
That left the brunette, whose cocktail glass was empty.
“Let me get that freshened for you,” I said, wanting to be useful to somebody.
“Sure. Ginger.”
“And what, seven?”
“No. Ginger and ginger.” Her very dark brown eyes flicked with amusement in their near Cher setting. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Sure I do. You’re on TV.”
“Guilty. Just guest shots and bits. Never did land a series for all the pilots I shot.”
“In the war?”
Her laugh was nice, throaty but feminine. “I fought a different war than you.”
We were threading through the rolled-up white shirt sleeves toward the bar where a Chicano guy in a tux jacket was making drinks for a steady crowd and wishing he were anywhere else.
“I Dream of Jeannie,” I said. “Harem girl, right? Bewitched. Salem-style witch, only glamorous?”
Her mouth was wide, in a nice way; it widened further in a smile no whiter than a Bing Crosby Christmas. She said, “You don’t look like somebody who watches that kind of pap.”
“If the pap has Barbara Eden or Elizabeth Montgomery in it, I’ll lower myself. Now, if you had a juicy role on a McHale’s Navy, I’d never know.”
We were in line at the bar.
“I’ve been on that and worse,” she confessed. “Now, you? You look more like the Have Gun — Will Travel type.”
I wished I were traveling with a gun. “Maverick’s more my style.”
The cat eyes narrowed. “Weren’t you a consultant on Peter Gunn? Wasn’t that based on you?”
“That’s the rumor. And I do remember you, Miss Romaine. Nita. But not entirely from situation comedy appearances.”