Pilgrims

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “Well. I think I do.”

  “You’re making a mistake to think that,” he said. “You don’t

  know me at all, hardly, and you’re making a mistake to think

  otherwise.”

  We looked at each other across the table. Dean’s face was

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  even and open. I didn’t come all the way out to California for

  this, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

  I watched as a waitress at the dessert case sliced a tall white

  cake and slid a wedge carefully onto a plate. She glanced behind

  her, then licked a smear of frosting off her thumb. Another

  waitress was scrubbing the inside of the large coffee urn with

  what appeared to be a toilet brush.

  “What’re you doing?” Dean asked after some time.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “Watching.”

  He smiled slightly.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.” Dean’s smile widened. “It’s just that I don’t see

  you jumping up and running off.”

  “You think I won’t?”

  Dean shrugged. “I’m just waiting, is all.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  The waitresses moved through the restaurant, seating cus-

  tomers, serving food, sliding tips into their apron pockets.

  Someone came out of the kitchen with a mop to clean up a spill.

  The manager worked on a crossword puzzle and sipped from a

  tall glass of milk. I watched them, and Dean sat quietly across

  the table, waiting.

  I thought, How long is this guy going to sit here?

  But Dean did not get up to leave, and neither did I.

  94 ✦

  Come and Fetch

  These Stupid Kids

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  Margie and peg were arrested after they got drunk on

  the chef ’s cooking wine and went into the parking lot

  and rubbed butter on the windshield of every car parked

  there. It was late at night. It was also late in September, and

  long past the end of the tourist season. There had been very few

  customers that evening, in the restaurant where Margie and Peg

  worked, and there were very few cars in the parking lot. As it

  happened, though, one of the cars that Margie and Peg buttered

  turned out to be the police car of a Delaware state patrolman.

  They hadn’t noticed that it was a police car. They hadn’t really

  been paying attention. The Delaware state patrolman came out

  of the restaurant and into the parking lot, where he handily

  caught the girls in the act of vandalism.

  Peg started to run when she saw him, but Margie shouted,

  “Don’t run, Peg! He’ll gun you down like a dog!”

  Which Peg believed, although the Delaware state patrolman

  had done nothing more threatening than bark, “Hey!”

  The patrolman held Peg and Margie in the parking lot and

  radioed for a town cop to come and deal with the situation.

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  “Come and fetch these stupid kids,” he told the town cop over

  the radio.

  The Delaware state patrolman stood in the parking lot with

  Margie and Peg, waiting for the town cop. It rained and rained

  on them. The patrolman was wearing a practical raincoat, but

  the girls were soaked in their waitress uniforms.

  “I wonder if we might be allowed to go inside the restaurant while waiting for the other policeman to arrive,” Margie requested. “I wonder if it might not be more pleasant not to stand in the rain as we await the arrival of that gentleman. No?”

  Margie had a habit (newly developed that summer) of speak-

  ing in such an aristocratic and refined manner. A very new

  habit. A very new affectation, which was not enjoyed by every

  individual she encountered. On this night in particular, Margie

  sounded as if she were coming very close to calling the Dela-

  ware state patrolman “my good fellow.” The Delaware state

  patrolman looked at Margie, in her wet waitress uniform, talk-

  ing so archly. Margie was clearly drunk. Margie had one eye-

  brow raised inquisitively. She had one finger pressed coyly

  against her chin.

  “You can stand outside in the rain all night, for all I care,

  Little Miss Du Pont,” the Delaware state patrolman said.

  “That’s very funny,” Peg told him.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The town cop showed up. He looked bored. He was so bored,

  in fact, that he charged Margie and Peg with public drunken-

  ness, disturbing the peace, and vandalism.

  “Gracious!” Margie said. “That is quite a lot of serious

  charges for a harmless little prank such as our own.”

  The girls were loaded into the town cop’s car and taken to the

  local jail, where they were fingerprinted and booked.

  Peg’s boyfriend, a handsome guy named J.J., eventually ar-

  rived to bail out Peg and Margie, but not before the two girls

  had spent a few hours in the tidy jail cell.

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  Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

  “Take a look around you, ladies,” the bored town cop had said

  when he was locking them up. “Get a feel for it. Remember

  what it feels like to be behind bars. Not so nice, is it? Remember

  that feeling, next time you decide to commit a crime.”

  Margie and Peg took a look around. They got a feel for it.

  They chewed some gum that Margie had, and then fell asleep.

  When Peg’s boyfriend J.J. finally showed up to spring them out

  of jail, it was already three o’clock in the morning.

  “You two are turkeys,” J.J. said, and he brought the car around

  to the front of the station so the girls wouldn’t get any wetter.

  They drove home. The rain was hitting the car hard, hail-

  like. Each drop of rain had the weight, it seemed, of an un-

  cooked bean. The Delaware shore was getting just a small piece

  of some hurricane farther out in the Atlantic, but it was a

  dramatic piece.

  J.J. drove with his chin almost touching the steering wheel,

  trying to see the road. Peg slept in the back seat. Margie found

  some gum that was stuck in her hair and worked it out.

  “The cop told me you two were supposed to spend the whole

  night in jail, but I talked him out of it,” J.J. told Margie.

  “How did you manage to accomplish that, you clever dar-

  ling?” Margie asked.

  “I told him that the road to our house might be washed out

  by morning from all this rain, and I might not be able to come

  and get you. He was nice about it.”

  “Men certainly do like to talk about manly things like roads

  being washed out, don’t they?”

  “That’s right,” said J.J.

  “Did you give him a firm and manly handshake, J.J.?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you call him sir?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good for you, J.J.,” said Margie. “Thank you so very much

  for releasing us from that dreadful prison.”

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  When they got back to the house, Margie’s spoiled and fool-

  ish boyfriend John was awake.
r />   “I demand to have a drink with the criminal masterminds,”

  John said.

  John had the same habit that Margie had, of speaking in a

  refined and aristocratic manner. Actually, Margie had inherited

  her speech pattern directly from John. John had invented it.

  “Do you think we are loathsome, John?” Margie asked, and

  kissed him on the cheek.

  John said, “I have a demand! I demand that we sit outside in

  this magnificent rain and hear chilling tales about life in the big

  house.”

  Margie said, “Foolish John. Silly John. Don’t you realize that

  this is the big house?”

  Margie was absolutely right. It was a very big house, indeed.

  It was John’s house. He was only twenty-one years old, but he

  owned this big house right on the Delaware shore. His parents

  had given it to him as a graduation present. Margie’s parents, by

  contrast, had given her a bracelet. Peg’s parents had taken her

  out to dinner for a graduation present, and J.J.’s parents had sent

  him a graduation card, signed by all his aunts and uncles.

  John was rich. His father was a producer who lived in Holly-

  wood and was very rich. As for John’s mother, she was a former

  Miss Delaware. She was divorced from John’s father and lived

  in a mansion on Chesapeake Bay. She had driven down only

  once that summer to visit her son at his new beach house. She

  had arrived in a Mercedes, and that car had looked as black and

  hard as a wet rock.

  John planned to live in his graduation gift house on the beach

  forever, and he had invited his friends from college to live with

  him just as long as they wanted. Originally, there had been five

  young people living there, in John’s house. They’d had only two

  names between them. There had been three Margarets and two

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  Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

  Johns. Some had nicknames, and some did not. They were

  John, J.J., Margie, Mags, and Peg.

  “Gracious!” John had observed with delight. “We are a full

  house. We consist of a pair and three of a kind. Isn’t that lucky?

  Isn’t that a marvelous hand to be dealt?”

  But Mags left the beach house at the end of August and

  moved to Florida.

  Mags secretly said to Peg, “I’ll tell you something, Peg. The

  fact is, I’m beginning to hate John.”

  John said about Mags, after she had gone, “She was welcome

  to leave at any time. Nobody has to stay in this house simply to

  please me. Although she might have thought to replace herself

  with another Margaret, just to keep up our lucky hand of cards,

  no? Alas! Now we are merely two pairs. But you will all stay,

  won’t you?”

  “We will all stay!” Peg had said, and hugged her handsome

  boyfriend J.J.

  “Is the house even winterized?” J.J. had asked John.

  “Oh, mercy! I don’t know,” said the spoiled and foolish John.

  “Couldn’t you winterize it, J.J.? You’re so clever. No? How hard

  could that be, to winterize my house?”

  In fact, the house was not winterized, as its four occupants

  were beginning to realize by the end of September. They did

  not have any realistic way of staying warm. What’s more, by the

  night of Margie’s and Peg’s arrest, it did not even appear that

  any of the four young people had a job. J.J.’s job as a lifeguard

  had ended right after Labor Day, when the tourists left. It

  certainly seemed that Margie and Peg would be fired from their

  waitressing jobs, after their drunken butter prank in the parking

  lot of the restaurant. As for spoiled and foolish John, he’d never

  had any sort of job whatsoever. John had passed his summer

  growing his hair and writing sequels to movies that already had

  sequels.

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  “Well, my resplendent jailbirds,” said John. “Let us com-

  mence to the roof. Let us sit upon the widow’s walk and drink

  some alcohol while enjoying this magnificent rain.”

  So it passed that the four friends climbed up onto the roof

  of John’s big beach house to drink some beer and watch the

  weather. They were just a dune away from the sea, and the

  beach was having a difficult time holding on to itself against the

  beating waves and rain. The four friends sat, exposed to the

  rain, on four saturated lawn chairs. The cold water puddled at

  their feet and pelted their backs.

  John proclaimed, “This storm shall bring the cold water in.

  We shall not be able to go swimming anymore. My friends, I

  am sorry to report it. This storm marks the end of our happy

  summer.”

  “No swimming!” Margie said, horrified.

  “No swimming,” said John. “Yes! Sadly, this tempest brings

  our sweet summer to a close.”

  Margie seemed devastated. It appeared to be the first time

  that she had ever considered the concept of seasonal change.

  “No more swimming?” she said again. She was shocked, re-

  ally. “Can it be true?”

  “September is the cruelest month,” John said.

  There was a bag of potato chips open on John’s lap, and the

  rain had made it into a soggy, salty feed bag. He fished some of

  the damp potato chips out and tossed them over the edge of the

  house.

  “What a storm,” observed Peg. “Gosh.”

  J.J. said reassuringly, “This is nothing, Peg. This isn’t even the

  real storm. The real storm is too busy tearing the shit out of

  some other place to worry about us.”

  “J.J. is correct,” John announced. “Why, this is just the after-

  thought of a real storm.”

  “My goodness,” said Margie. “It is raining very hard none-

  theless.” Then she said, “Peg, sweetheart?”

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  “Yes,” said Peg.

  “Is it terribly difficult to get a job if one has a police record?”

  “We don’t have a police record, Margie.”

  “Do we not? Did we not just get arrested, this very night?”

  “Yeah, but a police record is different. A police record is

  something you have if you’re a career criminal. You can’t get a

  police record until you’ve committed a string of crimes.”

  “Peg sounds very confident about this,” Margie said.

  “For someone who has no idea what the devil she’s talking

  about,” said John, “Peg sounds like a veritable attorney general.”

  “I happen to believe that it is impossible to get a job with a

  police record,” Margie said. “I shall never be able to get another

  job, and neither shall Peg. We are doomed! John, sweetheart?

  Will you always take care of me?”

  “Naturally,” said John.

  “But what shall become of Peg? She will have to become a

  plaything of a rich old man. John, love? Do you know any rich

  old men who need young playthings?”

  John replied, “Only my father. And I imagine that he already

  has a plaything.”

  There was an impressive flash of lightning.

 
; “Oh, baby,” said J.J.

  John stood up. He took his ponytail over one shoulder and

  wrung it out. He announced, “I have a demand. We shall go

  swimming. This is our last chance. Let us not hesitate, for

  tomorrow the water shall be too cold.”

  “That’s funny,” J.J. said. “I’m not going swimming.”

  “That’s funny,” Peg said. “I’m damn sure not going swim-

  ming, either.”

  “You are both exquisitely funny,” John said, “because we actu-

  ally are going swimming indeed. I demand it.”

  “Nobody’s going swimming tonight, buster,” said Peg.

  John thrust his fist in the air and shouted, “To the sea! We

  shall go to the sea with zeal! I demand zeal.”

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  Margie said, “My sweet John has taken leave of his senses.”

  “The storm will be gone by tomorrow, my friends,” John said.

  “The sun will come out, but the water will already be cold. And

  you shall be very sorry indeed that you missed your last chance

  to swim.”

  “John’s senses have simply left him,” Margie said.

  “This is not even the real storm,” John said. “Is that not

  exactly what J.J. said? No? And J.J. is a sensible man. This is

  merely the afterthought of a storm. I would be embarrassed to

  call this a storm.”

  “I’ll go swimming,” J.J. said. “What the hell.”

  Margie looked from Peg to John and then to J.J., who was,

  in fact, known among the friends as a sensible man. J.J. was

  slouching with his beer on his stomach. His handsome body

  was slunk down, low and wet, in the chair, in a terrible posture,

  like someone’s drunken uncle.

  “Sure. I’ll go swimming,” J.J. said. And he added, as an expla-

  nation, “We couldn’t get much wetter, could we?”

  “You got it,” said Peg. “That makes sense, I guess.”

  At that point, it was as though an official decision had been

  made. It was as if the four friends were a conference of business-

  men in strong agreement. It was as if the four friends were four

  CEOs in consensus, the way they stood up and headed down

  the stairs, over the dune, and to the beach. When they passed

  through the front porch, Margie picked up her Dumbo inflat-

  able inner tube and slipped it over her head and around her

  waist. It was a child’s toy, but it amused her. She had taken it

  swimming all summer. She held Dumbo’s plastic gray trunk in

  her hand, as though it were a divining rod, and followed the