Eat, Pray, Live.

The attention from EPL did take some adjusting to. Two years ago, Liz was spending a dozen hours a week answering every letter from readers, who naturally laid out their life stories, and would write back a second and third time. She couldn’t keep that up. Now José opens the mail, decides which letters are for sharing. Liz has whittled down her speaking engagements to a two-week binge. She says no 20 times a day, becoming almost an observer to the EPL phenomenon: “I go to the kitchen window and think, ‘Man, that parade’s still going on.’ But I’m not in it. It’s just going by, and meanwhile, you gotta do the laundry.”      
 
We continue up the path into a light, raw rain. She tells me about one of her recent accomplishments: “I read Middlemarch.”
 
That’s all. We smile on that for a moment, let the wet sting our faces. Liz makes fun of how lazy she is now, but she’s just spent the past two months getting up at five to retool her marriage book, sort out the endless EPL requests, help José run Two Buttons, settle in for dinner with him every night (he cooks). Actually taking the time to dip into a George Eliot novel seems … impossible. But taking the time has become a philosophy of sorts for Liz, who is now determined to lead her life at walking speed. Inner-tube on the river, ride her bike, stroll down the hill into town. As she sees it, everyone, including the wealthy, is in crisis over time; nobody has any. Certainly nobody is reading Middlemarch.
 
It’s a style and pace that couldn’t be more opposed to her old life — opposed to how the young Liz would have handled literary stardom. “Are you kidding?” she says with that disarming willingness to throw her former self under the bus. “With a bottomless need for attention and affection?”
 
We veer off the path to Two Buttons. On first glance, José is a little short of the Brazilian charmer of EPL; he’s balding, with glasses and no cape. He offers a glass of wine, or perhaps I’d prefer hot chocolate? José has a running joke: Antonio Banderas will play him in the movie version of EPL. (The movie is in development, with none other than Julia Roberts set to play Liz; alas, no Banderas. It could be released in 2010.) Catherine calls José “the first actual grown-up” Liz has ever romanced.
 
I sift among the Buddhas and silk wall hangings of Two Buttons. Women regularly show up here to pay homage. Occasionally they’ll hover for hours, trying to glom on to a piece of her, to simply overhear some piece of wisdom she might impart. (The other question all Liz acolytes want answered is: Do you still meditate? The answer: Nope. But you might catch her jumping up and down on Two Buttons’ dumpster out back in the afternoons, after her writing day is done.)

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