Marathe and Kate at Ryle's
‘This is a beautiful thing as Hester would say. I don’t feel horrid anymore. Ramy I feel better than I feel, felt in ever so I don’t know how long. This is like novocaine of the soul. I’m like: why was I spending all that time doing one-hitters when this is really what I call feeling better.’
Context
Kate, mugged, concussed, and off House grounds, discovers alcohol at Ryle's — and independently reinvents the essay's exact figure: the essay called anhedonia "a kind of emotional novocaine," and Kate's first drinks are "novocaine of the soul," numbness as relief from It. (Her drunk idiolect is preserved as written.)