Luck Be a Lady Tonight

It’s one of those nights in Hollywood when everyone seems to be out. Odd for a Thursday.

The sidewalks are full and the streets busy, but it isn’t a noisy night. There’s a muted quality to it, a kind of drum riff, as sweet as jazz played by moonlight, as smooth as honey in tea.

Forget the kids with purple hair, the drag queens, hookers and others of a more mischievous nature.

The moon sails high in a starry sky and we all stay mellow, sharing the sidewalks like Brits on a boardwalk, with a kind of gentility that Hollywood doesn’t see much anymore.

It’s the drum riff that does it. You don’t get crazy when steel brushes lure you to quiet meadows of the mind.

I am cruising Vine, looking for a club called El Floridita because my friend, Nick Edenetti, is singing there. I’ve never heard of the place, but that isn’t important.

I had never heard of Burbank’s China Trader either, where Nick’s billing on the menu was only a little higher than the Sichuan pork, or Gio’s, where the lights went out and Nick had to sing in total darkness, like a spook in the shadows.

El Floridita is just another stop on a saloon singer’s swing through nights that aren’t always as mellow as this one.

As it turns out, the place has style. Mirrored walls reflect back a hundred Nicks up there singing, arms outstretched, belting out “Come Rain or Come Shine” in replicated images that fade to infinity.

The mirrors are like a throwback to another Hollywood era when flash and elegance still mattered, before teen-age movie stars began coming to restaurants in jeans torn out at the knees.

El Floridita is a Cuban restaurant that seats maybe 200 and serves cooked bananas and black bean soup and, oh yes, “fried sord fish.” I have the sord fish.

There are maybe 20 people in the audience tonight and sometimes a blender sounds in the background because the bar is right on the edge of the big room, but Nick doesn’t seem to mind.

The mirrors trick the eye here, too, and from a certain angle it looks as though the place is packed. The hum of the blender melts into the music like it isn’t there at all. Things work when you want them to.

“This is a terrific place,” Nick is saying, as though he is playing the Music Center. “Things are really looking good.”

Now is the best time in his life, Nick says, and I believe him. He’s gained weight in the last couple of years, but his voice is strong and he’s as optimistic as ever for a guy who’s been singing in saloons for 32 years.

He talks about appearances on television shows and says he’s got more nightclub offers than he can handle.

“Get this,” he says, leaning over our table at El Floridita. He is wearing a silky brown suit and a white tuxedo shirt with ruffles down the front. A diamond pinkie ring flashes in the dim light.

“This woman comes up to me after a show once and taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘I definitely hear my father’s voice in you.’ You know who she is? Tina Sinatra! “

Nick slumps back and shakes his head like he is remembering a miracle at Lourdes. Frank Sinatra’s daughter. What a night.

Manhattan-born and Brooklyn-raised, Edenetti taught himself to sing by listening to Sinatra records and occasionally does impressions of Old Blue Eyes.

In a certain light, Nick looks like Frank, sitting on a bar stool with a coat over one shoulder and a tendril of cigarette smoke tracing lines of memory in the pale blue spots.

He’s played in more clubs across the country than he can remember, from gambling rooms to strip joints, and for a while bought air time for his own television show from 1 to 6 a.m. every Sunday on a one-horse Westside channel.

“I’m looking for a great room now,” Nick says, reaching for a cigarette and then putting it back. He’s trying to quit. “I want to retool the Sinatra thing, but it’s got to be in the right place. I’ve got so many offers. . . .”

When it’s time to sing, Nick kicks in with “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” a hundred mirrored images of him belting it across an almost empty room, holding a mike with one hand, jabbing the air with the other. It’s show time, folks.

Later, back on the street, cruising up Vine to the Hollywood Freeway, I think about Nick and about all the guys who never stop trying. The song was written for them.

Luck if you’ve ever been a lady to begin with, luck be a lady tonight....

The drum riff fades, the sidewalks empty and the night goes back to the dreamers.