The Queen of Tarts, She Made Some Hearts

I’d decided to put my apartment up for sale, and head to Key West. I have friends there, I was long growing tired of New York City – the climate, the “rat race”, and, with only a few exceptions, all of my closest friends from over the years had moved away to various other parts of the globe. I was negotiating on a small building, a former bakery, to build out a small restaurant, it had a second floor apartment where I could live. The amount I was selling my NYC studio for plus some savings would pretty much cover the cost of the building and the renovations. I’d decided I deserved a break, and a longer stretch exploring Argentina, and maybe even see if there was more to the spark between Henry and I. What would it take, if so, to convince him to leave South American and come to that States, and how would we get all the logistics worked out?

Little did I know that my six week vacation plan would become an ostensibly permanent move. The deal in Key West fell through while I was in Buenos Aires, Henry and I fanned the spark into a flame, I was already there. Everything I owned was in storage, ready to ship to anywhere… why not? But, at the beginning of April, that had not come to pass. I knew some of it was coming – the offer on my apartment had been agreed upon, the paperwork in process, I was doing all the stuff I needed to do to move on to the next step in life. But, a last goodbye dinner had to be had, with a few of those folk who’d been the mainstays of friendship and my time (23 years!) in the city. I don’t think I even remembered that I’d already done a “hearts” dinner at the time – it had been five years earlier.