Love Is Always Write Volume 4

table, he was dressed in a pair of ink stained, threadbare jeans and a thin thermal top from Stacy's drawer. It was a little baggy on him, but the sleeves pushed up past his elbows nicely, and there was the constant faint scent of his lover's preferred cologne.
    Music flooded the apartment as Jonathan set to work. It was hard to divide his attention between drawing and anything else. So his phone was turned off, the TV reflected a black convex view of the room, and outside the sunny march days continued to troop through the frigid New York climate and promise days made for picnics and trips to the beach.
    ****
    He had two full strips done when claustrophobia hit full force. His desk angled towards one of the tall patio windows, and the gentle waving of their little potted plants was too much to ignore. It was somewhere around lunch anyway, and he could just walk to the deli instead of scrapping together something from the apartment.
    That was the only major downside to working from home; you rarely got to leave it. As much as people complained about work, it got them out of the house and in a completely different environment everyday. Some days Jonathan thought his drawings were going to climb in from the ceiling and the walls and swallow him whole. Mostly he'd learned to go for a walk before that happened, no matter the weather of the day.
    So as quickly as he could, deliberately avoiding all the clocks in case it was only 10:30 a.m. or something ridiculous, Jonathan pulled on his light jacket, stuffed his feet into the black chukkas sitting by the door, and slipped into the almost-busy rush of weekday New York. He had maybe twenty bucks in his pockets. Jonathan detested wallets, too much important information in one, easily-identified location. It was a prime target for pick pockets and police alike. So Jonathan didn't carry one. Most days his driver's license didn't see the light of day, tucked and locked away beneath his sock drawer.
    Stacy called him paranoid.
    Pausing at a taco truck, Jonathan negotiated two chickens with the works and a water for ten dollars. The other half of his twenty he thought might go towards an ice cream on the walk back.
    Pico de gallo dripped around his fingers as he scarfed at his lunch outside a day school. Private children's schools were always built on the nicest streets. Some kind of willow or flowering tree grew in intervals down the sidewalk and provided cool shade from the sun and petal-rich air floating down the branches.
    Jonathan looked around idly, thinking maybe he should have brought a sketchpad. Kids were his enemy in drawing. They just didn't have normal proportions. Not to be a creep, but what better place to practice his live people sketches. He'd be like a street artist.
    There was a strip of old warehouses on Fourteenth Street. The rusted sheet metal and old winding staircases gave it an atmosphere of abandoned gangsters. Uncontrolled ivy crawled through crevices and found homes in the smallest bits of dirt and dust that saw sun. Again wishing he'd brought his sketchpad, Jonathan strolled through the abandoned back street. It was a long way to get home, but he wasn't ready to face the desk again quite yet.
    A quiet mewling drew his attention to a decrepit storage building. It looked to be an add-on to the original structure, and not very well done either. The roof was only a few feet above his head, and he could see windows lining the sides, blacked-out with grime and age. Jonathan waited a moment, but when he didn't hear anything more, he started to cross the street. An almost-human cry stopped him again, and he turned to look at the building more critically. Probably it was just some animal that had snuck into the old building at night and couldn't find its way out. But still.
    Low sirens wailed a few streets over, near where Jonathan had been eating. Briefly thanking that he hadn't got caught up in whatever commotion had happened, Jonathan reluctantly slid into the alley between the storehouse and its neighbor. A few pallets and an old trash can boosted him high enough to grip the wide ledge of one of the windows near the back. Jonathan pushed himself up until he could crouch on the ledge, balanced on the balls of his feet with his hands braced on the frame.
    The window swung open with a shedding of rust and old paint flakes when he nudged it with his foot. Glancing inside to be sure it was clear, Jonathan slid his feet in first, dangling, precariously as he