I tried to stay up to finish The Tax Inspector—it is that sort of book that you are desperate to finish, its heartbeat thumping along with yours beneath the lines of black ink—but it was very late, and I’d been out all day, and my eyes were doing that closing trick.

(The book review tangent is that just before I started on The Tax Inspector, I was reading Ha Jin’s Waiting. I picked up Waiting because Mowmy was reading Manil Suri while she was visiting, and she said something about appreciating an Indian writer rather than a Chinese one. Her example of a Chinese writer was Amy Tan, which made me say, quite loudly: AMY TAN IS NOT A CHINESE WRITER. So then even though I’d told Jacq I’d read Dogs of Babel so that we could play Oprah’s Book Club, I was driven to read Ha Jin, who certainly appears to be a Chinese writer. I seem to remember, when Waiting was first published, a bunch of hoo-ha about how the book was the gorgeous what-happens when someone who doesn’t have English as a first language writes a book in English, for the language in his hands, well, it is born again, it is poetry, it opens our eyes to a renewed joy, that sort of thing. Waiting won the National Book Award that year the book came out.

Me, I thought Waiting was a bit tiresome. Like waiting! There was an overwhelming sense of clunkiness, like it was written by someone who doesn’t have English as a first language, or like it was translated, from the Chinese, by someone who doesn’t have English as a first language. But I kept reading, because it had its moments, and because I am the sort who, after having waited for the train for twenty minutes, and after other, more sensible people have walked off, muttering darkly at the public transportation system, I am the sort who will wait some more, because the logic is: I have waited so long already, surely it must come very, very soon.

I got to the end, finally, and it all came together, I suppose—the little lives drawn out over the years, heading slowly but surely toward their weary nonconclusion, it all made sense eventually. Waiting, waiting.)

(All is not lost with the Oprah Book Club. When I get back to Singapore, Jacq is going to lend me her Dogs of Babel. We may even do the thing where we look under our seats! and there is a special prize! and today’s special prize is a car! Well, a car would be nice, a little red Mini Cooper S with a black roof and white stripes on the bonnet, but I will happily settle for a pink iced bandung.)

Anyways.

Pure and utter exhaustion.

You think it is easy being a socialite, you try eating out every day, including that one day you wake at six-thirty to meet a breakfast date, then stroll uptown to a lunch date, and only return late that night post-dinner, walking slowly down Ninth Street dark and quiet, your eyes shut, that one glass of Spanish red beating, beating in your veins.

Oh, I am not whining. It turns out it is not only possible but quite easy, and terribly pleasant, (I should leave town every day!), to eat out three meals a day, even when one is not the lady president of Veuve Clicquot. There has been a smoked trout salad. Broiled mackerel in breadcrumbs. A ceviche trio, delightful, of squid, scallops, and red snapper. Pork and fennel pollen sausages. Squash blossom stuffed with peeky toe crab. Tagliatelle in a rabbit ragù. A boiled egg, and a donut. Ricotta fritters drizzled with a pomegranate molasses. I will say that again: Ricotta fritters drizzled with a pomegranate molasses.

Plus, people keep offering gifts, as if I am a King Chulalongkorn, dressed in gold. The only difference is that they do not retreat backward with small steps, heads bowed and hands pressed together. Schmio gave me a bunch of Maira Kalman books, Nicole gave me the new Ian McEwan, and Barbara—well, Barbara wants to introduce me to a lovely young lad in London who knows how to dance. We’ll take it. We’ll take it all.

The only problem is: I have a large bunch of asparagus and several round, sweet tomatoes in my fridge, and cheeses in varieties of more than one. I even have a mango, who has been sitting in the chiller drawer smiling at me for days. It is just as well I am making Jeff come over for dinner tonight, whereupon we will eat, and, if all goes well, we will drink hard liquor.