Eat, Pray, Love

still alive... and my Italian teacher, and my therapist, and my agent... and Martin Luther
King Jr. and Katharine Hepburn... and Martin Scorsese (which you wouldn’t necessarily ex-
pect, but it’s still nice of him)... and my Guru, of course... and Joanne Woodward, and
Joan of Arc, and Ms. Carpenter, my fourth-grade teacher, and Jim Henson—”
The names spilled from me. They didn’t stop spilling for almost an hour, as we drove
across Kansas and my petition for peace stretched into page after invisible page of support-
ers. Iva kept confirming—yes, he signed it, yes, she signed it—and I became filled with a
grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls.
The list finally wound down, and my anxiety wound down with it. I was sleepy. Iva said,
“Take a nap. I’ll drive.” I closed my eyes. One last name appeared. “Michael J. Fox just
signed it,” I murmured, then drifted into sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe only for
ten minutes, but it was deep. When I woke up, Iva was still driving. She was humming a little
song to herself. I yawned.
My cell phone rang.
I looked at that crazy little telefonino vibrating with excitement in the ashtray of the rental
car. I felt disoriented, kind of stoned from my nap, suddenly unable to remember how a tele-
phone works.
“Go ahead,” Iva said, already knowing. “Answer the thing.”
I picked up the phone, whispered hello.
“Great news!” my lawyer announced from distant New York City. “He just signed it!”
Eat, Pray, Love