Charlie looked at his watch—almost noon. The relentless sun and dry desert air hit him like a blast from an A-bomb. Margaret, hungover and baking in the heat, released a sigh. With this crew, cocktails began at breakfast, and the rest of the day was all just a long surf on a buzzy wave. Dean Martin was passed out on a chaise, snoring.

Most of the gang was there, in the latest and most fashionable bathing suits: Martin, Sinatra, Davis, and, fluttering around them like butterflies, a coterie of women, including Judy, whose attention Sinatra was desperately trying to catch. Someone said that Lawford was back east with his wife and the rest of the Kennedy clan; Charlie and Margaret would soon be returning briefly to New York City to spend Christmas with their children, even though they had made little progress in their quest.

“A pretty girl is like a melody,” Sinatra crooned, then shook his hips like a burlesque dancer: “Boom chicka-boom.”

Judy ignored him and reached for her towel.

Sinatra displayed a mock pout—he was accustomed to a little resistance. “Come on, baby, let’s have a little kiss and hug, a little rock and roll! It’s been a long dry spell for me!” His confidence made that an unlikely story, and not for the first time, Charlie marveled at the blithe presumption of the man—whether or not the world truly was his oyster, he would grab it and attempt to shuck it any chance he got.

“A long dry spell? I doubt that,” Judy said as she settled down next to Margaret and picked up a copy of Hollywood Nightlife with a sad Liz Taylor on the cover, making a convincing show of bored disdain.

Sinatra turned to Charlie, who was sitting at a nearby table under an umbrella reading William Lederer’s A Nation of Sheep. “What would you say, Charlie, if I told you that this little broad with the cold German blood has broken my heart? And not just once, but many times!”

“That would surprise me, Frank,” said Charlie, since Sinatra could easily have had a hundred other women fall at his feet. Judy rolled her eyes and turned a page in the scandal sheet.

Sinatra took a seat at Charlie’s table and drummed his fingers on the dimpled glass tabletop. Charlie obediently closed his book. The great man demanded attention.

“You know, Judy, you’re really stupid,” Sinatra finally said.

“Well, thanks a bunch,” Judy said.