Read Online Pilgrims by Garrison Keillor - Free Book Online

so. He had waited three months to bring up the subject so let him put it in clear English. Darling, I want to rip your clothes off and make crazed love to you . That’s not so hard, is it? He’d made love to her with sweet abandon back when he believed the world was coming to an end in 1999. At midnight on December 31, the world’s computers would flicker and die and the electrical grid go dark and planes fall out of the sky, so he stockpiled batteries and gasoline (for a generator). He bought three hundred-pound bags of rice. And pasta. Pistols. And he made love to her that December sort of wildly, roughly, loudly, several times, and then January 1 dawned. Nothing had changed. The clocks had not stopped. The snowplow came clattering up the street. The old guys on the radio were telling the same old jokes. He sold the generator on eBay. They ate rice forthe next two years. Lovemaking went back into low gear. But it was lovely while it lasted, the end of the world.
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    The elevator door opened and she peered around the corner into the lobby—she did not want to hang out with another pilgrim right now. She wanted to look as Italian as possible. She could buy a silk scarf, Italianize herself. Look aristocratic. Walk purposefully, no map in hand. No sluggish person next to her saying, “Well, look at that , wouldja. Wonder how old that is.” She was a traitor, a turncoat (literally), abandoning her troops, but so what. Let them sleep. The coast was clear, the old bellman sat behind the bell desk, expressionless, and she scooted out the door and into the street.
    She strode down the sidewalk, swinging her arms. A few motorbikes buzzed by, a tiny taxi. A matinee-idol cop stood at the curb and watched from under hooded eyes, hands clasped behind his back. A man in a tailored brown suit walked his dog. The man wore a white apron festooned with silver and gold badges and puffed on a cigarette. His longish black hair, nicely oiled, was swept back on the sides, a sculpted look. Three young women walked arm in arm past her, six high heels tapping on the paving stones, taking long strides. They looked absolutely bellissima . Tall and lean and dark, womanly, striding forward into life. Three Audreys heading off to sit in a caffè and regale each other with tales of the sad-assed world of offices and copiers and clueless managers in pinstripes.
    She plunged into a stream of walkers heading across a main drag into a narrow, dark street. A herd of short people, Japanese, dressed as if for a wedding, chittering away, and three Arabicwomen in black burkas. (Eloise would be having a fit right now, waiting for the bomb to go off.) A man in pajama bottoms and a black T-shirt (“ FRA DIAVOLO PIZZA ”) and sandals hustled along. A man with corn-silk hair, no shirt, a tweed jacket two sizes too small, whistling. A display of paintings for sale, cheap: ballerinas, St. Peter’s at dusk, a still life of wine bottles, dogs sitting in an empty piazza. A falafel stand tended by a man with a badger face, a kerchief around his head, the radio playing funeral music. The happy jangle of voices around her. A man on the prowl, hands in his pocket, standing in a doorway, the glint of his eyes. He looked as if he might accost her, ask for money, try to sell her a stolen watch, pinch her butt. She whispered under her breath, as she passed, “Don’t mess with me, buddy.” And he didn’t.
    Oh my God . She felt great. Oh my God, the freedom. Overwhelming. Walking tall, going where you cared to go, stopping to stare, moving on. Freedom . Where had she been all her life?
    Well, she’d been raising three children and keeping the ship on course through the storms, maintaining good hygiene and nutrition while standing guard on the scholastic, religious, dental, and moral fronts and keeping up a cheerful demeanor and suppressing outbursts of violence. Kids. They had the stamina of goats. Bouncing off the walls and