Eat, Pray, Love

around the world in simple exchange for the keys to David’s apartment. But around ten
o’clock that night, I finally get my answer. A wonderfully written e-mail, of course. David al-
ways wrote wonderfully. He agrees that, yes, it’s time we really said good-bye forever. He’s
been thinking along the same lines himself, he says. He couldn’t be more gracious in his re-
sponse, and he shares his own feelings of loss and regret with that high tenderness he was
sometimes so achingly capable of reaching. He hopes that I know how much he adores me,
beyond even his ability to find words to express it. “But we are not what the other one needs,”
he says. Still, he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday. He’s sure of it. After
all, he says, “beauty attracts beauty.”
Which is a lovely thing to say, truly. Which is just about the loveliest thing that the love of
your life could ever possibly say, when he’s not saying, “COME BACK! DON’T GO! I’LL
CHANGE!”
I sit there staring at the computer screen in silence for a long, sad time. It’s all for the best,
I know it is. I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the un-
known future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises. I know all this. But still...
It’s David. Lost to me now.
I drop my face in my hands for a longer and even sadder time. Finally I look up, only to
see that one of the Albanian women who work at the Internet café has paused from her night-
shift mopping of the floor to lean against the wall and watch me. We hold our tired gazes on
each other for a moment. Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, “This blows
ass.” She nods sympathetically. She doesn’t understand, but of course, in her way, she un-
derstands completely.
My cell phone rings.
It’s Giovanni. He sounds confused. He says he’s been waiting for me for over an hour in
the Piazza Fiume, which is where we always meet on Thursday nights for language ex-
change. He’s bewildered, because normally he’s the one who’s late or who forgets to show up
for our appointments, but he got there right on time tonight for once and he was pretty
sure—didn’t we have a date?
I’d forgotten. I tell him where I am. He says he’ll come pick me up in his car. I’m not in the
mood for seeing anybody, but it’s too hard to explain this over the telefonino, given our limited
language skills. I go wait outside in the cold for him. A few minutes later, his little red car pulls
up and I climb in. He asks me in slangy Italian what’s up. I open my mouth to answer and col-
lapse into tears. I mean—wailing. I mean—that terrible, ragged breed of bawling my friend
Sally calls “double-pumpin’ it,” when you have to inhale two desperate gasps of oxygen with
every sob. I never even saw this griefquake coming, got totally blindsided by it.