“A woman, who I’ll call ‘Freckles’, was the most astonishing woman I ever met. She had the understanding and the patience to put up with me, which I am sure wasn’t an easy job at times. She never nagged, never argued.”

Arnaz had hopes of marrying Freckles, but though separated from her husband, she was still married. One night bringing Freckles back to her New York apartment, her husband confronted the couple in the lobby.

The husband started swinging at Desi who grabbed the man by the neck and insisted that he didn’t want to fight. The husband cooled off and invited Arnaz to his nearby apartment to talk about the situation.

Freckles warned Desi that her husband might try to kill him, and that he had tried to kill someone else before. But Desi wasn’t fazed by her warning.

Desi said:

“I sat down in his apartment on the 9^th floor, and the guy opened the window and said, ‘Come over here and look at this view.’  I told him, ‘We’re in the middle of winter, and all of a sudden you open the window, letting in the wind and snow, just so I can look at the view? I know the view, so close the damned thing.’”

The husband closed the window, sat down silently for a few minutes, and then started telling Desi about his tough life. Eventually, he said, “Let’s have some breakfast.”

When Desi returned to Freckles’ apartment, she asked what happened? Desi replied, “His first plan was to push me out of the window, but he then cooked a wonderful breakfast for me.”

Desi claimed he really wanted to marry Freckles, but then, while filming the musical comedy ‘Too Many Girls’, Desi met a redheaded actress.

All the young performers in that movie met for a night of dancing, then went to the beach. Desi came with Freckles. Walking along the beach by himself, he passed the redhead, Lucille Ball, who was sitting there. She patted the sand next to her and said, “Sit down.”

Desi said:

“I never went back to Freckles that day. I heard she left with someone else. Later, I called her and said, ‘I don’t know why I did what I did, to you of all people. You know I was in love with you.’

‘Yes, but you aren’t now, are you?’

‘Freckles, I don’t know how a thing like this can happen. It’s not natural. It has no reason.’

‘Everything that happens in life is natural and has a reason. Good luck, Desi.’

“I’ve met many women in my life,” Desi wrote in his book, “but no one as unselfish and understanding as Freckles. And even though I might have done some bad things in my life, none of them could have been as bad as what I did to her.”