The Wait

Sara Corbett: He wasn't sure why they'd sent the muscle-building pudding.

His old sponsors still sometimes mailed him stuff — maybe it was an act of hope. All he knew was that he now had a case of protein-heavy, nutritionally pumped-up chocolate pudding sitting in his kitchen and, by god, he was hungry. As the dishwasher churned, as his wife, Amber, lounged nearby on a leather couch wearing a tank top and sweat pants, having just come home from the gym, as the family's three dogs yapped on the patio outside and, a continent away, the year's flock of professional cyclists began their slow migration toward London for the prologue stage of the 2007 Tour de France, Floyd Landis picked up a spoon and started eating.