He made everything easier, just for a moment. When Laura asks me what I miss, this is what I tell her. And she answers--kindly, gently--a day away and an ocean between us: And hope too, I think.

The presence of another person, the continued conversation, the hope that it might be something more. He made New York nearly tolerable. But maybe New York isn't meant to be nearly tolerable. Maybe there is someplace better, with someone who, if not better, is at least more right.

But for a moment there, the conversation with him was comfortable and good. I won't say I miss him (even though I do) because it feels like there is a limit to the time we afford grief when the thing was barely a thing. And it's not so much grief as an occasional dull ache, and I don't know how much of it is him, and how much is just life. But I am quite sure I have passed the imaginary threshold of the time allowed and so I won't say that I miss him (but I do). In part because I don't want him to know, but then again, it's not for him that I say it, but for me.

We were fine and then we were busy and then we were not fine. A story in three parts.

But I am okay. And he made New York manageable, and I cannot have a man doing that when it is so clearly time to go. I've never known a day of my adult life in a city outside of this one. And I think, maybe, it's time to figure out who I am somewhere else. Not today, but tomorrow maybe, or next week, or well...sometime soon.

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