Sinatraland by Sam Kashner

Author:Sam Kashner [KASHNER, SAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000
ISBN: 9781468302080
Publisher: ABRAMS (Ignition)
Published: 2012-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

Dear Frank,

How wrong can a guy get? When I read that the Butterfly and your lawyer Mickey Rudin were in Nicaragua, I knew it couldn’t be good news. Nicaragua, Frank? Did you see how they stoned Bobby Kennedy when he went down there? Not that you’d be upset about that, not after what Bobby’s put you through, Francis.

I had high hopes for you and Mia. You guys lasted about as long as Rosalie and yours truly, a year and a half. I remember the time just before Rosalie and I started to see one another almost every day—it was April, my birthday—and it was spring, of course. It’s funny how some women don’t exist for us in the winter, Frank. The spring is when the whole ball of wax seems to take shape. That’s when my feelings for Rosalie seemed to come into being. A friend of mine says that the spring is when all those old romantic movies start to play themselves out in your mind—though they never get made in real life.

I decided to confide in Myron, of all people, with talk about Rosalie, Jill and that whole boatload of sensitive bullshit about having only one true love, and knowing when she’s right there, standing in the same room with you. Recognizing that, Frank, that’s the hard part. It’s hard to love in the present tense, isn’t it, Francis? I know that as soon as I met Rosalie I started to live in the future. I told Myron how practically immediately after making love to Rosalie for the first time, I proposed going on a trip to Europe. “You’ll see April in Paris,” I told her. But she was smarter than me, Frank. She knew that the future was just another trap I had set for myself out there. “I’m not worried about what’s going to happen six months from now,” Rosalie would say, “Why should you?”

It’s time for that empty feeling, again, Francis.

I remember thinking, just before you got married, that it’s not going to be easy. After all, she’s so young. But I thought to myself Fink, they’ve got to try. Maybe they’ll only be able to have a couple of years together, but like Rosalie and me, it gave one the feeling that there was still some fruit left to life, even if as a great man once said “it’s half way down the tree.”

But if I know you, Frank, you’re worried more about Mia than about yourself. Because that’s how I felt, even after Rosalie and her sister watched me walk out of that apartment forever. When you get to be our age, Frank, you’ve already built a moat around yourself. You don’t let yourself hurt as much as you used to.

Maybe in the end, age does matter. I used to dream about Rosalie becoming the happy genius of the Finkelstein household. But it was just a dream. And after all, Frank, a dream is a fantasy, and at the end of the day the fantasy is over and guys like us have to return to the real world.

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