New Year's Eve 1994 found Sonya and I moving into the Gayoso in Memphis. It had been a hotel long ago, then offices for a department store. Now it was an apartment building.

We were the first people to move into the building. The manager had to let us in and give us the keys and introduce us to the security guard so he wouldn't shoot us when we slipped through the chain link fence that still surrounded the not-yet-completed building.

We were sitting in the deep bay windows, watching the people going to the New Year's festivities on Beale Street. People kept looking up and acting shocked that there were people in the windows; the building had been empty for years and I guess they thought we were ghosts.

The next night we walked down to Beale Street to get some food and everything was closed. We ended up at the coffee shop at the Peabody; there was a bone in my chicken salad sandwich.