It was nine o’clock or so when Devlin, Ginny and the Williamses finished their coffee and prepared to leave.
“Same time tomorrow?” said Devlin, enjoying a well-fed glow and relaxed from all the laughter and runaway wit.
“We can meet for breakfast. How’s that?” said Ginny, smiling and nudging him.
“After running in Columbus Park,” said Arthur. “How about a run in Columbus Park in the morning? Run with the brothers, O.K.?”
“I got my own brother right here,” said Melissa, squeezing Arthur’s arm.
“You love him like a brother, right?” said Ginny.
“Not quite,” said Melissa, with a stage grimace.
Arthur paid for his wife and himself. Devlin and Ginny went dutch. They pushed their chairs back, got up and headed for the door, where the smiling host hoped they had enjoyed themselves and was further wishing them a “nice evening” when the big guy whom Devlin had seen in the men’s room came around the corner from the bar, heading downstairs to the men’s room again.
He started to push his way through the four friends and the host, bunched up near the door, and then spotted Ginny and stopped.
“Well,” he said with a humor-free chuckle. “Well, well.” He stood blocking the door, looking at Ginny. “My friend the drink-spiller. I been waitin’ at Ric’s all night and you never showed. What’s the matter, Baby, don’t you like me any more?”
He looked around and spotted the Williamses and Dev. “Which one’s the boy friend?” he asked. “Him?” He nodded toward Arthur. “No, I don’t think so. He probably goes with her.” He nodded toward Melissa. “This the guy?” He looked at Devlin, a few inches shorter than he.
The rest stood, stunned.
The big guy moved toward Ginny and started to put an arm around her. “Come on, Baby, let’s you and me talk,” he said. Ginny moved away, slipping his arm off her. He advanced some more. “Hey, come on, what’s the problem?”
Devlin, recovering, put his arm out and took the big guy by his shoulder.
“Hey.” The guy turned to Devlin. “Hey. Get your fuckin’ arm off me. Get your God-damned arm off me.” His tone went from cajoling Ginny to threatening. He took on the look of the abused.
“Get away from here,” said Devlin. “Go away. You’re not wanted.”
“The fuck I’m not wanted. Who the fuck are you, anyway?” he said, and swung on Devlin.
He only grazed Devlin’s chin, but the move enraged the priest, who grabbed the man with both arms and began to wrestle him. The two banged against the stand with the reservation listings and rolled into a dessert tray, falling to the floor after knocking several custard puddings to the floor.
Devlin held on to the guy as the two rolled to the floor amid screams from several women and breaking of glassware. He felt the guy reach down for his face to pull him away, but the guy didn’t gouge or poke, as he could have.
Hands grappled at him and the other guy. Shouts and curses filled the air. Finally, Devlin felt himself pulled off and held by someone very strong and saw the other guy held by somebody else. Waiters scurried around.
Devlin was heaving with anger. The other guy looked more hurt than anything else. Devlin was pushed out the door into the night air. Arthur and another man got him outside.
“Take it easy,” said Arthur. Devlin heaved with exertion and emotion. His coat was torn. “Your coat’s torn,” said Arthur.
“Cheap coat,” said Devlin, engaging in the trivial as people do sometimes, when the main event is something they’d rather not think about.
Devlin felt awful, though somewhat cleansed. Ginny and Melissa joined them right away outside. The big guy was kept inside, though apparently he was not fighting to get at Devlin — or Ginny either, for that matter.
The host came out, calm as hell for the circumstances, Devlin thought. He apologized profusely and asked if he could do anything. They were telling him no, when a friend of Ginny’s came by, a reporter for the Tribune.
“What’s the matter, Al, wouldn’t they pay? You have to chase ‘em on to the sidewalk?” he asked, grinning, then stopped when he saw Devlin’s torn jacket and general disarray. “What’s up, Ginny, a rumble?” he asked.
“Hi, Ken,” she said. “Oh, nothing. Forget it.”
“Forget what? Gimme somethin’ to forget?”
“Let’s go,” said Ginny, heading them down Rush Street. Ken stood in front of the restaurant. Al went back in. Ken followed him to see what was going on.
“Nosy guy,” said Arthur as they headed for their cars.
“It’s his business to be nosy,” said Ginny. “Let’s hope he gets nothing for his trouble. You all right?” She turned to Devlin.
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Devlin, stopping to test a few muscles.
“Everything seems to be working. My mind is scrambled a bit. But the rest seems to be O.K. How you doin’?”
“Terrible,” she said. They walked along, silent. “At least you got to meet my old flame.”
Devlin stopped again and felt his chin. He tapped away at it gingerly, with two fingers held together, looking in the distance as if measuring some reaction. Then he very carefully moved his jaw around, increasing the movement until he did it rapidly and in its full circle.
“There,” he said. “That’s all right. I couldn’t stand a broken jaw. You have to eat with a straw and worst of all, you can hardly talk. All you can do is mumble. I’d hate that.”
“Where’s you car, Ginny?” asked Arthur. “How you gettin’ home?”
“Down the block, in a lot,” she said, pointing. “I’ll get home same way I came. No problem.”
“Now wait a minute. With that madman back there, you don’t want to just go off by yourself. Do you?” asked Arthur.
“He’s through for the night.”
“You don’t think he’ll follow you?”
“No. He didn’t before.”
“Before?” Devlin asked.
“When I . . .” she paused. “. . . treated him badly once before.”
“We should go with you,” said Devlin. “Let us follow you. Let me come with you in your car, and Arthur and Melissa can follow us to your place, and we’ll take it from there. Tuck you in, or whatever.”
“O.K.,” she said. She liked the idea of Devlin coming with her. Wanted to thank him, for one thing.
They found Ginny’s car. Then Arthur and Melissa got theirs and came up behind them, and the two cars took off for Ginny’s place, whose address the Williamses had too.
Devlin sat back in the front seat while Ginny headed to Grand Avenue, then turned to La Salle Street and then headed north.
“You all right?” she asked him.
“Yep.” He sighed.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “You didn’t need that, running into some of my past that way.”
“Old flame?”
“Of sorts,” she said. “We had something going for a very little while, not long ago. Finally, he got to me very badly, and one night . . .”
“You threw a drink at him.”
She looked at him quickly. “How’d you know?”
He smiled. “I heard him complaining in the men’s room. You wounded the hell out of him. When did it happen?”
“Week or so ago. It was the night you called me about your friends the columnists. Night of the fire across the street from you. That you didn’t even know about, resting in your back bedroom as you were.”
“I don’t feel so good about all this,” he said.
“Well if you wouldn’t wear that turtleneck, things like this wouldn’t happen to you,” she said, stopping at North Avenue at a light.
“You mean if I dressed like a priest, I wouldn’t get into fights with wounded, unrequited lovers.”
“Right. Unrequited lovers would leave you alone because they would know you weren’t one yourself. Or would assume you weren’t.” She looked ahead.
“On the other hand, my position is not entirely clear in the matter, is it?” he asked.
“No, it isn’t,” she said quickly, looking ahead.
He sat there with 20 years of his life, no, really, his whole life, weighing him down. He reached out, holding his hand between them. She saw it out of the corner of her eye, left it there for a minute, then took it with her right hand, holding the wheel with her left. Later, she was to describe the touch to Devlin as electric. To him at the moment, it was more explosive than anything. It blew up a lifetime of carefully nurtured restraint. He didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know if he liked it or not.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Three days later, on Sunday, the Tribune’s gossip column featured an item about Devlin and Ginny. “Pardon us for asking,” the column said, “but was that a Sun-Times reporter (female) on Rush Street the other night with a priest (male)? And didn’t that priest have to deck an obstreperous admirer of the good-looking reporter when the admirer pressed his attentions a bit too hard? We thought you were supposed to call a priest in case of accident, not have one with you to keep the wolves at bay. This could be the start of something: Have collar, will deck obstreperous admirers. But the gallant cleric, from Oak Park, we hear, was in turtleneck for the evening. So it goes. . . . . ”
Devlin heard about it when he came into the sacristy to vest for mass. One of the ushers, a bald, red-faced fellow who looked like he was about to burst out of his starched white collar, asked him, “Father Devlin, did you read the Tribune? There was something there about an Oak Park priest with a woman on Rush Street, coming to her aid or something? Crazy story. Did you read it, Father?”
“I didn’t, Mike,” Devlin said quickly, doing what he could to hide his utter surprise.
Mike asked in what was a combination of curiosity and devilment. He had to know it was a provocative question to ask an Oak Park priest, but he didn’t necessarily know anything at all. But priests to him were one solid mass of anointed humanity, distinguished by their various idiosyncrasies if they had any, otherwise all wonderful fellows.
Devlin excused himself, pretending the need to pray before mass. He fumbled with the various strings and over-the-head lace-bordered garments he had put on hundreds of times, stunned with the news. |
Sweet Jesus, in the Tribune, he groaned inwardly. It wasn’t a prayer — or was it? Jesus, he said to himself. Shit.
It wasn’t a prayer. What did he have to pray about? It was past time for prayer. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Nay further, he thought, pulling the chasuble over his head, the fool hath said in his heart, I can have dinner out with a lady friend and not read about it in the Tribune. Geez.
He said mass as well as he could, looking out at the sea of upraised faces and wondering morosely which had read the paper already, before nine o’clock mass. He preached about charity, the greatest of all virtues, the rock-bottom, unassailable Christian preachment.
Who could knock charity? Who could take exception to his tried-and-true observations? No one could, which is what made the sermon insipid and ineffective — as if the two didn’t go together and furthermore as if anyone knew what made a sermon effective in the first place.
Still, as he laid out the Christian truisms — “observed in the breach by all of us every day,” he said — every last unassailable observation seemed to him mired in double meaning and telling all those faces that he was the Oak Park priest in question.
He was a man obsessed. Every look from the congregation, whom he normally ignored as much as he could, every hesitation by the servers as they brought and handed him the book, every glance from the leader of song, checking for a cue — everything told him, “You’re the one. You’re the one. At best you’re nuts. At worst you’re a scandal.”
He was in agony.
After mass he called Ginny, who was asleep. She hadn’t seen the Tribune. He read her the passage from his room.
“That bastard,” she said.
“Bastards. It’s a jointly written column,” he said.
“I mean Kenny Cooper, the guy we met in front of the place, from the Trib. Crap. Anything for an item.”
“How’d he know I was a priest?”
“Geez, I don’t know, Pat. But you do get up in front of hundreds of people every week, and all it took was one of them there that night, blowing your cover.” She laughed. “’Have collar, will travel.’ Where do they get that stuff? You’d think you were my bodyguard. At least they didn’t make you for a playboy.”
“But ‘priest with woman on Rush Street’ says a lot, wouldn’t you say?” Devlin said.
“Rush Street,” she said. “We ate at the quietest place practically in Cook County, which happens to be on Chicago’s hot street. Well, what you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. But let’s do something today.”
“Good.” She brightened.
“Quiet drink somewhere,” he said.
“You and me.”
“Me and you, right.” They set a time, early afternoon. He was to come by her place. She knew a beer garden pub on Clark Street. They would go there and rest up and regroup. Devlin hung up, the Tribune item out of his head completely.
(end of chapter 11)
Blithe Spirit 