This weekend was tough, all right. I woke up this morning, woozy and disoriented, bright sunlight coming in from the wrong angle, the bed facing the wrong way, the ringing phone in the wrong place. My back hurts, my feet are sore, and here I am, in my new apartment where nothing is in its right place.

My new Maryland view from the fourteenth floor is pastoral on one side; the oranges, reds, browns of autumn in a thick blanket. The urban hustle of the Metro and a construction site form another angle. Living in a corner unit affords the new home sunlight from all sides, as much time as daylight savings will allow. It’s a good building, not as finely finished as my old place in the city; the one so close to the White House where a good loogy could almost hit it. It’s now a seven-minute walk to my office. I’ll no longer have to take that bumpy ride down 16th Street with my twenty-minute Howard Stern fix, and a Big Gulp.

The new place is smaller; there are far less places to put the things I need to see. In the old place, I had a huge walk-in closet that allowed room for my framed gifts from Billy, his nuttiness in full view. There wasn’t a place I could walk in the old apartment where I wouldn’t catch a glimpse, or a wink and nod from my Guyster.

I’m not sure if I can find the same configuration here; sharing it with him, equal space for an equal partner.

This move wouldn’t have been possible, or bearable, without Joe. He’d just kept packing while I was in the corner, clutching a memory, crying. I played out the exact moment of Billy bopping me over and over again with the green stuffed play-hammer that makes a cartoony boing. He’d cashed in his skeeball tickets, bopping me with the glee of an eight-year old while we walked on the Santa Monica pier after his birthday dinner. Reading an email from the late October before, so beautiful in its normalcy, brought me to a halt for some time.

And there was Joe, selflessly working with the knowledge and sensitivity of how delicate this all was for me.

I took off work today to unpack. I’m looking around at all of the unpacked boxes; my new place a one bedroom version of Charles Foster Kane’s warehouse. I’ll go through box after box until I find my Rosebud.