All You Could Ask For: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

much too selfish to ever consider sending him away for the good of the Resistance. Let Paris fall and the Germans come marching up Fifth Avenue, I wasn’t letting that man get away. Which is why the way it ended hurt me so, and why to this day I hope to someday see him whacking off a stallion.
    They say the best revenge is living well, and I’m not buying that, either. Nobody is living better than I am; I have a duplex on Park Avenue, a driver, a chef, an assistant, and a killer house in South Hampton, and I did it all on my own. But I still haven’t gotten past what happened with Phillip and I doubt I ever will, and I wish to god he was ten times more miserable than I am.
    If that sounds bitchy, I guess I don’t really care.
SAMANTHA
    FUCK HIM.
    With every step I ran, those words were in my head. And they were liberating; those two words freed me from my self-pity. Anger is inspirational. Anger has launched wars, cured diseases, conquered civilizations; it’s not always the most beneficent of emotions but damned if it doesn’t help get things done. And now it was helping me. The anger surged through me and propelled me with each step I took. It helped. And as I ran, I started to remember who I am.
    Fuck him.
    I’m not a politician’s wife. I’m a jock. I was the captain of the soccer and lacrosse teams in high school. I ran three marathons my senior year of college. When I lived in New York I played ultimate frisbee in Central Park every day. I climb rocks and mountains, I ski, I surf. I don’t stand on a makeshift stage in hotel ballrooms, smile blankly, and wave.
    Fuck him.
    I got a job at MTV Sports after I got out of the Peace Corps and I loved it. I produced shows about extreme athletes, shows that took me all over the country, all over the world. I filmed motocross racers and skydivers and cliff divers and skateboarders. I trekked across an Arizona desert for three weeks, shooting a guy who runs forty miles a day barefoot for fun. I filmed guys climbing mountains on bicycles and fighting crocodiles with their bare hands. And along the way I participated in most of it. I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute, off a mountaintop with a bungee cord, and over a Volkswagen on a motorcycle. I walked on hot coals, collected honey from a swarming hive of bees, and swam with a great white shark. It all seems like it was so long ago, a different lifetime, but it wasn’t. Come to think of it, the swim with the shark was this year on this island. I’m still that girl, I just took a little break from myself.
    Fuck him.
    The sky was impossibly blue and there was no sign of a cloud anywhere. It was one of those perfect days you only get in Hawaii, that wonderful kind of hot only the islands can provide. As I broke a sweat, my legs settled into a very comfortable gait. I don’t remember ever feeling so loose or so strong. Every step was freeing, every breath invigorating. There was no strain, no fatigue, no pain, just the rhythmic beating of my heart accompanied by the crashing waves on the beach. Overhead, gulls were singing and in the distance a Polynesian song was playing. It was the most peaceful, perfect, beautiful, Zen experience I have ever had. I was fully one with the sky and the sea and the earth. And with every step I took and every beat of my heart, I heard the same words in my head, again and again.
    Fuck him.
    I haven’t any idea how much time passed as I ran; I would have run forever, but eventually my body needed fuel. I could feel it begin to cry out for water, for food, and I remembered I hadn’t eaten any breakfast at all. The timing was perfect, as I was approaching what appeared to be a gorgeous hotel, so I just ran straight in through the front doors, through the lobby, and found a restaurant out by the swimming pool. I wasn’t even breathing heavily as I asked for a menu. I wanted the healthiest food they had, the healthiest food imaginable. I felt as though I wanted to eat the earth.
    “May