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F alling off the wagon never tasted so good. I spend most the day at work reading. The hunger pains are gone for the most part; they’ve been replaced with something else: there’s a certain lightness to everything now, like my senses are on needles, like there’s a renewed connectivity between my movements and their surroundings. My thoughts come like breaths, full, direct, immediate. I feel good. I take that as a good sign, considering it’s Wednesday morning and I haven’t eaten anything since Saturday night. At work I drink tea and then more of the lemonade. I drink several large glasses of water. Around noon I begin feeling nauseated. During lunch I sit on the steps of the main library and read. My eyes feel sensitive to the light. The world feels serene, like an aperture’s been dilated to reveal a membrane behind it, all yellow and paper-thin. In the afternoon I sit at my desk and read more. After work I go on my usual run over the bridge. It’s a three-mile trek from my apartment into lower Manhattan and back, and from the first few blocks it doesn’t feel like I’ll make it: my legs feel like they’re filled with lead. I reach the bridge and begin to clamber my way upward. As I cross the East River, the skyline reveals a rolling piebald of oranges and pinks. I look at it for a moment and realize that I’m hallucinating. When I reach the Lower East Side I’m light-headed; I rub my temples and see clustered strobes behind my eyes. I go into a deli and buy a bottle of water. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll have the energy for the return trip. I start up the bridge at a walk and slowly bring myself to a jog at its zenith. I begin running again and I make my way back to Brooklyn. Pages 320 to 503:Alexey and Anna continue living together. Vronsky, who is now promoted to colonel, continues to see Anna. Against Alexey’s rules, Vronsky visits Anna one night at the house. He runs into Alexey. Alexey tells Anna the jig is up: he begins divorce proceedings. Stepan and Dolly run into Alexey on the street. He’s cold to them and they can’t figure out why. They invite Alexey to a dinner party. Alexey accepts begrudgingly. When Stepan stops by the next day, Alexey breaks the news that he is divorcing from Stepan’s sister. Stepan pleads with him to go the party anyway. He agrees. Levin shows up at the party and so does Kitty. Their reunion goes swell. Alexey argues politics at the dinner table with several intellectual sages. One of them takes a (unintentionally personal) swipe about cowardly men who won’t stand up to cheating wives. The next day Levin goes to Kitty’s house and proposes to her. She accepts. Anna nearly dies in childbirth. On her deathbed, Alexey forgives her. He also forgives Vronsky, and Vronsky flees the house in shame. Assuming Anna is dead, he tries to kill himself but fails. Anna survives, complete with a new baby daughter.
Levin marries Kitty, and the wedding has enough yuks to birth a cottage industry of vanilla romantic comedies for a century to come. After my run I go to a local coffee shop to read. On my way I trip over a curb, and later, I almost walk into oncoming traffic. This is bullshit. I walk into the first restaurant I see (it’s a Subway) and order a foot-long veggie sub with every vegetable they have. I devour it. I leave the Subway, walk across the street, and go into a Thai restaurant. I order a large hot and sour soup. When I’m done I go the coffee shop, where I sit and stare at the wall for nearly a half-hour. I feel a cocaine-like high coming over me, the symptoms of which I can only guess is the reward center of my brain firing off streams of dopamine-charged thanks for putting an end to this stupid fast. I take it with pleasure. Everything’s going to be okay. |
