My Year of Rest and Relaxation: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

A few days later, the narrator wakes up on her couch. Reva has since left. Her vision is blurred. She’s still wearing Reva’s mother’s shoes and the fur coat. All she has on underneath it is a nude bodysuit. She has a stamp on her hand from a club, Dawn’s Early. There’s a half-empty bottle of Gordon’s gin on the table, as well as some polaroids of the narrator out at a club with some “party people,” including—shockingly—Ping Xi.

The narrator hasn’t thought about Ping Xi in ages—she avoids thinking about Ducat in general. She wishes she could forget the people she met in the art world, all the glamorous party people. The interns at Ducat would talk about their wild nights out at clubs around town, places that the kids of artists and other influential people would frequent. She guesses this is the kind of place that Dawn’s Early is. The narrator walks to the window and sees that it’s snowing, and she’s grateful: now she can stay in and return to her normal sleeping schedule.

Before going back to sleep, the narrator takes a shower, and a memory suddenly occurs to her of a police officer who visited her middle school to teach the students about drugs and drug abuse. He warned them about Rohypnol but added that, on the positive side, “the victim forgets!” Now, she surveys her own memory and is satisfied when she can locate the answers to a series of random trivia facts.

The narrator steps out of the shower and takes an Ambien and some Benadryl, then she checks her phone and sees that she’s called Trevor’s phone and an unfamiliar number, which she guesses must be Ping Xi’s.

The narrator lounges around until evening and then takes a Nembutal and watches movies. She finds the porn channel again and turns the volume down low so that the noises can lull her to sleep. But she can’t fall asleep—in fact, she doesn’t feel at all sleepy. She calls Trevor, who snaps that it’s 5:00 a.m. The narrator begs him to come over. She hears a woman’s voice in the background on Trevor’s end. He grunts “Wrong number,” into the phone and then hangs up. She calls him again and again and tells him she misses him the next time he picks up. He hangs up on her. 

Still unable to sleep, the narrator takes more and more pills. She pops in Braveheart, but then the VCR breaks, so she’s stuck with TV. She watches nonsensical commercials on TV: commercials for cat food, for chocolate yogurt, for anti-aging creams. She flips through the channels until Reva starts banging on the door, begging to be let in, insisting she needs to talk.

Reluctantly, the narrator lets Reva inside. Reva announces that her relationship with Ken is over. Then she starts to cry. She tries to hug the narrator, but the narrator pushes her off. Eventually, Reva explains that Ken transferred her, claiming not to want to see her around the office anymore, though technically the transfer is a promotion. Reva can’t believe he would do this to her when they used to be in love. The narrator doubts this. Inwardly, she reflects that Reva’s complaining is a good thing, since it encourages the narrator to be cold and Zen, like a Buddhist monk. Eventually, Reva alludes to being pregnant by Ken, though the narrator ignores this big reveal. Instead, she insinuates that Reva is being overdramatic about the whole thing. 

Reva glances around the apartment and comments on all the prescriptions. She accepts a Xanax from the narrator, then she asks for a cigarette. The narrator is amused—even when drunk, Reva is usually so uptight. The narrator grumbles that Ken is an idiot. She suggests that maybe Reva will run into Trevor, who also works at the World Trade Center, where Ken has transferred her. Reva asks if the narrator wishes Trevor still loved her. The narrator does wish this, but she doesn’t admit it to Reva. Reva kisses the narrator’s cheek, tells her she loves her, then leaves. 

After Reva leaves, the narrator thinks about Reva’s apparent pregnancy—an accident. She feels sorry for the thing in Reva’s womb, the mere “side effect of delusion and sloppiness.” She wonders if maybe Reva should keep it—perhaps that “would wake her up.”

The narrator calls Trevor again. He snaps that Claudia, his partner, doesn’t believe in platonic friendships between men and women. He really likes her, so he and the narrator can’t be friends. The narrator pretends to only be calling to ask for money. He hangs up on her. She keeps calling and calling. The next time he answers, she threatens to kill herself if he doesn’t come over to bring her a DVD player and have sex with her. She hangs up, knowing he will come. She calls down to the doorman and instructs him to send Trevor up when he arrives.

Trevor arrives at some point, though the narrator doesn’t remember when. She feels his penis in her mouth. After he finishes, he leaves and says he won’t be back. After, the narrator gets up, puts on some clothes, and takes some Advil. She flips through TV channels and impulsively buys a rice cooker.