Ginny was on the high of her life. She went at her work each day as if every one of those sometimes shopworn stories were the first one she did for the college paper. Her editors were impressed.

“Good story on the mother with the Down’s syndrome kid,” said one. She had forgotten about it, noting its page one location almost in passing in the midst of making calls for an edition story.

“Thanks, Eddie,” she said. “Got a cigarette?” She’d gone back to smoking, partly because she was enjoying life so much and wanted to savor all the little pleasures. Amazingly, she kept her butt consumption down, which helped preserve the fleeting joys of drag and exhale.

“What have you got for tomorrow?” Eddie asked.

“Never satisfied, are you?” she asked, grinning.

“The insatiable journalistic maw? You kidding? Million stories in the naked city, kid, and room for every one of them. If they’re good enough.”

“Sure, sure, old buddy, except on tight news-hole days. Right?”

Eddie waved her away and took a phone call.

She hustled back to her desk to take a call. “Ginny?” It was Fred the banker.

“I can’t talk now, Fred. I’m very busy.”

“I won’t be long,” he said. “Listen. About the other night.”

“What other night?”

“Oh, That night. You want to apologize.”

“Well, yes,” he said, faltering.

“It’s O.K. Fred. No hard feelings.”

“Really?”

“Really. We all have our moments.”

“Well yes, but —”

“No, really, Fred. Don’t worry about it.”

He seemed to brighten. “Well that’s good. I’m glad I called.”

“Thanks for calling,” she said.

“Well I was thinking we might get together. For a drink?”

She thought of telling him she was on the wagon, but didn’t. “I tell you, Fred,” she said. “Let’s not for a while, O.K.? Let’s go our separate ways for a while, O.K.?”

“How long?”

Jesus, she thought, he really wants to know how long. “I don’t know.”

I should tell him never, she thought. “I . . . don’t know Let’s just let it ride for a while. O.K.?” Eleanor at the desk was signaling her another call. “They’re on my tail here, Fred,” Ginny said. “I have to go.” She hung up and took Eleanor’s call, she thought from a source.

It wasn’t a source, but the Trib columnist, wanting to know, of all things, the phone number for Father Patrick Devlin.

“Why are you asking me?” she said. It was all she could manage, stunned as she was by the caller’s boldness.

“You’re his friend, aren’t you? I thought you’d know.”

Ginny clicked the line dead, then sat there, staring. Chutzpah, she thought, then turned to her notes.

But she was distracted. What did her answer tell the Tribune fink? She should have played games with him. Hanging up told all. Patrick and she were an item. An eye-tem.

She called Patrick.

“Hello there,” he said. He called her “Sweet” in private, but on the rectory telephone spoke differently. “How’s the scandal business?”

“Please. Not now,” she said. “I don’t feel like it.”

“Got a headache? Ho, ho, ho, ho,” he said.

“How you doin’?”

“Oh, I’m just sitting here mulling a traumatic lunchtime conversation with my confessor.”

“You went to confession?”

“To my friend Nate.”

Is he at St. Emma’s?”

“There hasn’t been a priest at St. Emma’s named Nate since Jesus appeared in the upper room.”

“Patrick, will you make sense?”

“O.K. Nate’s not a priest. He’s a lawyer and former basketball player at Columbus Park. No, Austin Town Hall. He played baseball at Columbus. Second base. Weak arm, so he played second base. Great on the pivot.”

She was smiling by now. “You know, I’m forgetting why I called you.”

“Why did you call?”

“I forget,” she said, breaking off in laughter. Eddie turned from his spot at the desk a few yards away as she laughed, giving her a stage look, over his glasses. He grinned, shook his head and turned back.

“I called because that columnist called, from the Trib. Wanted your phone number. Said I’d know because I’m your friend. It bothered me.”

“Pay no attention. Are we news?”

“To some we are. Let’s face it.”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “Since Nate heard my confession, I’m not the same devil-may-care fellow.”

“He threatened excommunication?”

“Nothing that bad. He just foretold financial disaster. Nothing serious.”

“For the nation?”

“For me.”

“For you? Why? Your portfolio in trouble?”

“My career, as you might say from outside the church. My vocation, as seen from the inside. I’m at a crossroads.”

“Because of me?”

“I would have to say you represent a major part of the conundrum, yes.”

“Hmm. We’ll have to talk about this some more.”

“Why? It’s only a major life decision, calling for all our powers of will and concentration.”

“Why don’t we have dinner? In an hour or so, after I’m through here. At a McDonald’s or Burger King. Where the price is right?”

Normally I’d say no,” he said. “You don’t discuss impending financial disaster at a Burger King. The Ritz Carlton is where you discuss financial disaster. You fold the napkins neatly as the Titanic begins to tilt radically forward. But in this case I’ll make an exception.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

They stood in line at the McDonald’s on Madison Street in Oak Park.

Devlin had suggested it rather than some place downtown, because he didn’t feel like going downtown and Ginny didn’t care. In fact, she said she would just as soon leave downtown behind for the moment. Her story hadn’t panned out, she’d had to put it off for later in the week, and Eddie had twitted her about breaking her string. All in good fun, but she was a bit irritated.

Time to flee west.

“May I help you?” asked the pretty black girl from behind the chrome-like counter top. It was the patented McDonald’s “May I help you?” but it had a smidgeon of willingness to make contact about it. The girl had not succumbed to becoming a robot.

“Let’s see,” said Devlin, dressed in open-necked sport shirt and slacks.

“We’re at McDonald’s. You’re supposed to know,” Ginny told him, smiling at the counter girl.

“I know, I know,” said Devlin, looking up at the display of possibilities.

“Let’s see, let’s see. You go,” he told Ginny.

“Hamburger, small fries, small coffee,” she said, adding, “For here.” He looked at her in amazement.

“Geez, you sure make up your mind fast.”

The counter girl looked at him, pencil ready.

“Uhh,” he said, then paused. “The same,” he said, going for his wallet.

But Ginny had money ready. Putting out her hand and touching his arm, she said, winking, “Wait. Let the steady income take the check. Hard times coming and all that.”

The girl watched with a glimmer of a smile, took the money and gave change with what which Ginny took as a “That’s O.K.” look on her face, and turned behind her to pick up the burgers and rest.

They sat near a window, from which Devlin could see St. Denis’s steeple a few blocks away.

“I been in this neighborhood a long time,” he said. “Since I was a kid.”

“Mmmm,” she said, biting into the hamburger. “Mmmm,” she said again, holding up the burger. “Good.”

He bit into his and stared out the window. “We used to get shakes at the Daisy Dairy down the street.” He motioned east with his head. Remember milk stores?”

“No,” she said.

“People bought their milk there.”

“Really?”

“I mean they were stores that mainly sold milk and cream and so forth. This one had a soda counter too. Had a nervy, lippy, good-looking dame behind the counter. Took nothin’ from nobody. Buddy of mine left without paying once’, she told me, ‘Hey, Shorty, go shag your friend in here. He owes me money.’ I said something about he couldn’t be any friend of mine if he skipped that way. She called me ‘Shorty.’ I didn’t think I was particularly short.”

“Were you?”

“Hey, who’s side are you on, anyway?”

“What if someone sees you here with me. We’re in your back yard, aren’t we?”

“At McDonald’s? Are you kidding? Second only to the Daisy Dairy for wholesome surroundings. You’re my cousin from Podunk Corners, Ohio, in for the weekend. You’re someone I’m counseling. You’re a newspaper reporter I’m trying to dissuade from exposing the archbishop any further than he’s been exposed already by your snoopy confreres. No problem.”

“Really. Anyhow, you don’t know where a priest will turn up these days, dressed in what sort of civilian clothes and in what sort of company.”

“You even read about it in the newspaper. You know that columnist called me today? Mike Reid?”

“The one exposed me? Me the Rush Street Brawler? He wanted my new phone number.”

“Right. How’d you know?”

“He got it, and called me. Since we talked.”

“No.”

“Yep. Wanted to know what’s up, why I lost my job at St. Denis. Was it connected with the fight and so forth?”

“What’d you tell him?”

“The unvarnished truth. It’s all I’m capable of. All I’m good for, at this point.”

“Namely?”

“No. Not connected to my fight.”

“You confirmed the fight?”

“What, do you want me to lie to the guy?’ If I can’t tell the truth, what good am I?”

“Patrick, you innocent! You babe in the woods! Couldn’t you at least equivocate? Be Jesuitical about it?”

“Oops! Protestantism hanging out there. Tuck it back in. Actually,” he continued, “there is opinion to support that. In fact, I read an article about it by a Jesuit once. He said you could do that, the Redemptorist said you couldn’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A journal article. On the morality of lying. I mean equivocating. The Jesuit emphasized the inquirer’s right to know. The Redemptorist emphasized proper use of the faculty, in this case speech and its equivalents. Like in birth control. Use the faculty for what God intended it and for no other purposes. In the case of birth control, the faculty in question is —” He lowered his eyes towards his lap, then shifted them towards hers, bending over the table as he did so.

“Patrick, stop it,” she said.

“I’m just giving you a short course in moral theology.”

“What’s a Redemptorist?”

“Another order. Strict constructionists. Nice fellows but very strict. Used to be, anyhow. To be frank, I haven’t read anything in the field in twenty years.”

“And Jesuits?”

“Jesuitical, actually. Very smart. So smart they figure loopholes, which makes them very helpful to the rank and file, who can’t figure them. Often liberal, therefore.”

“That’s their reputation.”

“Sure. It’s because they’re so smart. They are very smart bastards, let me tell you.”

She sat back and looked at him, drinking her bad McDonald’s coffee.

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait for him to call me again, and then equivocate. He’ll see through it, though. I’m no good at it.”

“I don’t mean with Reid. I mean with yourself.”

“He looked down again. “Tell him I’m not gonna play with myself, if that’s what you mean. There’s no future there—-”

She held up a hand, as if signaling “Stop.”

“You mean my life and vocation and financial future and all that.”

She nodded.

Well for openers, I’m going to keep my head when all about me are losing theirs, or at least letting them twirl around a bit on their necks.

Catholic friends aren’t worried about it.”

“How many know you’re in transit?”

“Am I in transit? Let’s not jump any guns here. They got guys up in the South American mountains who do a nice job saying mass and so forth,

things. We ought to relax a little. Maybe it’s time for a rennaissance of clergy concubinage in Oak Park. Our native son Hemingway would guugetgs be roud of us.” |

“You are a stubborn bastard, aren’t you?”

“What I am is cute. I’m one cute pr ——” He stopped when he noticed a woman looking at him. “ — bastard,” he said, looking self-satisfied.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Hey, watch your language.”

(end of chapter 15)