Love in the Time of Cholera

Started reading Love in the Time of Cholera at Christopher Street Pier this afternoon. The Statue of Liberty was small but clearly visible from where I sat. Once in a while, the interval unmeasured by me, the yellow river taxi motored to the pier. Across the Hudson, the tower blocks of New Jersey. In front of me, a very young man, bare-chested, sat in a lotus position. Then he stood on his head. Then he sat down, and bent his leg in an impossible position behind his back. Two guys and a girl sat to my left, with a dog, and a stuffed white tiger. Two men, who had obviously been spending a lot of time at the gym, were talking about their boyfriends, one speaking in a girlish tone that issued so unexpectedly from his mighty chest.
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before....

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