A Date for Saturday Night

by Fr. Francis X. Talbot, S.J.

WHEN ADRIAN SUGGESTED that we might dine at the Half Moon Hotel, Coney Island, North America, I was a bit hesitant in my answer. Priests sometimes go to Coney Island, I admitted to myself; they even live there and have a church there. They are therefore not unknown. Walking along the Boardwalk or Surf Avenue, with a Roman collar confining me, would probably cause no more stir or scandal than a dwarf from one of the side-shows, or the fat woman who usually sits before the gaping mob. But Coney Island, even at an early dinner hour, encloses everybody visiting it in the aroma of a bright-light district and characterizes every visitor as a frequenter of broadways and manners. There might be a church in Coney Island, but Coney Island is not reputed for its churchiness.

“The ‘Half Moon’ is decent enough for a Monsignor,” Adrian advised me. Since the young man has less respect for Monsignori than he has for Cardinals, his reference increased my suspicions. Contra, whatever is not too scandalous for a Monsignor is edifying enough for me, and, contra, there did seem an impelling reason other than idle curiosity. I turned to Adrian and admonished him: “To Coney Island.”

“To Coney Island, James,” he repeated, in turn, to the roadster. As if the Ford understood him, it smoothly slid away from the curb and into the lane of the street. “Whoopee,” Adrian exulted, with a rising inflection on the first and a purr on the second. The roadster, being sensitive to its driver's emotion, quickened its pace.

Perhaps Adrian needs some explanation. He is somewhat younger than I am, but more maturely radical. He is youthful enough to write poetry, but old enough to recognize how wretched are his verses, even when published. He was a Vers Librist, before he became a Symbolist. He professed to see something in the Dadists and, at the moment, was debating the ultimate influences on English Literature of the Transition group. Several Transitionists who had acquired the habit of suppressing all capital letters in their names, and who believed the language would be purified if commas and periods were annihilated, had issued a proclamation which attracted him.

“What can they mean by that fifth declaration: ‘The expression of these concepts can be achieved only through the rhythmic “hallucination of the word”’? And the sixth: ‘The literary creator has the right to disintegrate the primal matter of words imposed on him by text books and dictionaries’? And the seventh: ‘He—’”

“He, he! to interflipt,” I cut him short. He was driving, and the roadster was such a sensitive Ford that when he said fifth, the indicator rose to fifty, when he said sixth it swung to sixty, and now on the seventh it was struggling to keep up with him. I had to take the conversation away from him.

“Interflipt is a perfect transitional word. It means to interrupt flippantly. Joyce uses ‘eithou’ to indicate ‘I, ‘you,’ ‘either,’ all at once. Do you remember that beautiful storiette by Theo Rutra which begins: ‘Abyssblue hosannaed into spring. Platonics stood horizontal song. He lingered in a sassaslab. It was so alcohol’ ?”

The last word had suggested gasoline to Adrian, and gaso- line speed, and speed had recalled the tenth declaration: “Time is a tyranny to be abolished.” My interlude had brought Adrian’s eyes back on the road and his mind on the roadster.

So we reached the Half Moon safely.

“You are not the first priest that ever walked into this hotel,” Adrian reminded me, as he boldly packed me into a compartment of the revolving doors. “It’s all very sedate and conservative. It's a good hotel and there's no scandal about a Roman collar being seen here—especially in my company.” He ended in the lordly manner that is sometimes so irritating in Adrian.

With a flourish that would impress any check-girl, he skimmed his hat on to the table where the silver coins in a little dish were displayed. We marched up the softly carpeted steps to the dining room. A gentleman, as aged as he was distinguished looking, glanced at us from his deeply cushioned chair. A solidly, respectable couple observed us coldly and with utter detachment. It was more like the Mayflower than the Half Moon, and not like Coney Island in any respect.

Adrian chose a table in a quiet corner of the long-sweeping, high-ceilinged dining room. We looked out over the ocean and heard the music of the waves playing upon the sands. Sunset was upon the crests of the waters and night was black in the hollows. A white ship floated nearer, and afar was a shadowy ship vaguely silhouetted. The ocean was at its loveliest.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, as I turned towards Adrian. The man was thinking of meters and rhymes. The beauty of it all was just the subject of a poem he was creating. “It will be another wretched poem,” I thought to myself. “While he is thinking of his own poems he is neglecting to read this obvious poem of God.”

“Yes sir! Yes sir!” said the smiling waiter. “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” he repeated as he poised his pencil over his order pad. The preliminaries passed quickly, for Adrian was more interested in his rhymes than he was in fish and cauliflower. Instead of talking to me, he was quite clearly composing verses within his own mind, verses, I could not help reflecting, that I shall most assuredly, within the next week, reject as “not being found available for publication.”

Left to myself, my eyes wandered down the long rows of immaculately clothed tables. A girl was coming towards us, a blond head in contrast with a black dress. She did not seem to walk, but to dance rhythmically with the abandonment of restraint. As she passed the diners, she cast her smiles upon them as a child would toss the petals of a daisy upon her dolls. She sparkled like the waves with sunshine upon them. Now and then she stopped at the tables, and uncovered the tray on which she was carrying the hot buns. “A cabaret effect,” I thought to myself. “She could easily get a job as a night-club queen.” Adrian's back was toward her and his face was towards the sea, still fascinated.

The cabaret girl turned abruptly to the right a few tables above us. She did not offer us of her buns. I could see the diners responding to her smiles as she encircled the dining room. She lilted towards our table a second time, just as the soup was arriving and Adrian was returning from the ocean view. Without a glance she spurned us again.

“Call that girl that is serving the buns,” I told Adrian. He turned as she was the third time rhythmically turning away from us and loudly motioned her. The smile left her face for a moment, but she came. He appraised her, and he scowled. He thought I might not be favorably impressed by her rouge and carmined lips and the black thread of her eyebrows.

“You have been neglecting us,” I said, not without a touch of asperity.

“Have I?” she answered, not without a touch of brazenness.

“You were going to pass us the third time, without offering us a bun,” I told her. Adrian said nothing, but chose two muffins.

She was serious when I looked up at her. She folded the napkin over her tray, and as she turned to go she leaned towards me and whispered: “I was afraid of you.” With a light laugh, she tripped away.

“What did she say?” Adrian inquired. I did not tell him.

Her words had startled me, for why should she be afraid of me? Was I the sort of being that would inspire fear in a painted young lady? Did her instinct set her against me? Why was the smile frozen on her pretty face when we forced her to come to us? Why should she be afraid of me? Adrian, who concluded that I had been insulted and was burning to demand an apology from the manager of the hotel, kept asking me what she said.

With smiles for all, she floated towards us again. As she passed, I asked: “Why?”

She stared at me for a moment from her sea-blue eyes, and in a low tone said: “You reminded me of something.”

Adrian did not hear her words. His napkin was now clutched in his hand and both his fists were on the table.

“What did she say to you?” he demanded. He suspected something outrageous. I suppressed him partially by telling him to keep on searching for his wretched rhymes. What did I remind her of, I reflected. I examined my conscience quickly, and buttered my bun abstractedly, and struggled with the chicken on my plate. Adrian called the nymph to our table.

“Give me a muffin,” he growled viciously. “And what are you saying to him?” he demanded. She looked at him along the length of her dainty nose. She excluded him completely from the world by injecting her shoulder between us.

“Do you know what you remind me of?” she whispered. She was frightfully serious.

I shook my head, fearful of the revelation. Doom was impending.

“I'll tell you. I haven't ‘been’ for three weeks. And when I saw you coming into the dining room, I thought of it. That is why I was afraid to come near. I am never going again.”

I began to smile. She smiled. I had to laugh outright. She tittered guiltily. She blithely danced away, play-acting to the diners.

Adrian’s face was really funny to look on as he turned from me to her and back and forth.

“What's the joke?” he asked testily. Since he was completely left out of it, he felt fearful and outraged. He had the greatest confidence in me, but he was scandalized that I should be talking and laughing with the painted thing that was dispensing buns. He was troubled, and he made no secret of it. The girl had returned. “How about going?” I asked. She rested her tray on the table and leaned towards me. Adrian heard my question, and was easing forward to hear the answer; but I waved him off. He leaned back against his chair and looked sulkily out towards the ocean. Adrian is gentleman enough to know when he is intruding. She, too, cast a look on him that would have put anybody, even though he was not a gentleman, in his proper place.

“The priests in our Church are cranky. They scolded me the last time,” she confided. “I missed Mass two Sundays. I have to work here all Sunday morning, and I would lose my job if I went to Mass. Mother is sick now, and can’t work. But when I tell the priest about missing Mass, oh, la la.”

The headwaiter was ostentatiously making his presence felt. She made a funny little noise towards Adrian who had been keeping his eyes on the darkling waves. “Ta, ta,” she said to him sweetly, for the benefit of the headwaiter who looked as if he, too, would like to scold her. She was off with her smiles and her buns.

“Finished?” snapped Adrian to me. The dinner was a failure.

“This coffee is delicious,” I assured him. “I like to sip my coffee slowly after dinner.” I was waiting for the girl with the buns. She had eluded the headwaiter and in the course of her wanderings among the diners she was casually approaching our table.

“Will you go on Saturday night?” I asked her.

“I'm never going again,” she answered flatly.

“Why be afraid? Everything will be all right. Say yes. Come on. Say that you'll go next Saturday.”

“I don’t finish work until half-past nine,” she weakened.

“That’s not too late,” I told her.

The head waiter hovered near again. She did not deign to notice him but sauntered off to a group of men that were growing hungry for her muffins.

Adrian motioned to me to precede him out of the dining room. He had heard enough of what I had said to make him suspicious and angry. We passed her on the way out.

“Next Saturday?” I pleaded with her.

“No,” she snapped. “Yes. I’ll go. Sure.” She almost sang the word. Sure. She gave her word.

When we were settled in the roadster, Adrian looked at me before he stepped on the gas. He was ineffably polite.

“It's probably okay,” he exploded. “But I feel bound to tell you, Father, that I didn’t like to see you flirting with that girl, and what is more, making a date with her. I couldn't help hearing about Saturday night. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I don't like it. And I want to tell you something more. I'm responsible for bringing you down here to Coney Island, but I'm not responsible for anything else that happened.” He was really angry when he finished his speech.

“Adrian, my friend,” I said kindly, “please don’t worry. I think your poem about the sunset on the sea at Coney Island is going to be very good. But the best poems are sometimes not written. My dear Adrian! You haven't the slightest idea as to the reason why we came down to Coney Island. You were not responsible for our coming. You were only the poor sap that drove the machine.”

He stared at me. The sun rose in his eyes.

“I'll recite the poem as we drive along,” he said, and a happy ring was in his voice. “It came on me like a flash. I hope you are going to like it.”

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