Sandy pressed her bulk into the bed. The question wasn't even really a question. Do you want to hang out with this potential psychopathic weirdo if there's actual magic that comes along with it?
Uh, yes please.
"I mean, you can stay at my place, I guess. You wouldn't have to pay for this room. We could save up for..." The aspiration that she would ever be able to save up for something had never really taken root in her and she found she had no idea how to finish the thought.
He sighed. "I'm not sure. I like privacy." That, and he was uncertain about his tenuous hold on this friendship. More contact just meant more opportunities to screw up. This he didn't dare say.
Sandy looked over at him. "I guess it's your call, but, we can do more together than we can apart."
Jonah looked around the room with all of its desolate trappings. The dingy curtains that were never opened. The bed that was made once a week. His clothes seemed to smell for the first time ever.
He put his head in his hands. His need to trust this woman was snowballing out of control.
"Yeah. Okay."
"Don't make it sound like your dog just died," Sandy said. "My couch is great for sleeping on."
Jonah looked up at her.
"I need my own bed."
In the Realm of Sandy Jenkins
The sun crept through the thin crack between Jonah's eyelids and a groan escaped from his lips. His neck complained right along with his mouth as he tried to sit up on the sofa where he had fallen asleep the night before. He had been living in this apartment for nearly two weeks and his body was starting to pay for it.
He was beginning to believe that Sandy had misrepresented its sleepability.
She was gone for work now and judging by the clock on the wall likely had been for over an hour.
He yawned, his voice catching against the pain in his vocal chords. The attempt to swallow the dry film coating his mouth failed miserably as he got up and shambled past the gaudy knick-knacks and bookshelves full of second-hand sci-fi/fantasy novels that populated the small apartment, still half asleep.
The two of them had been up until all hours of the night indulging in Sandy's newly found madness for quarters. Although the strain of being around another person for most of the evening was weighing upon him, Jonah was struck by a newfound confidence that for once he had made a good decision for once. A note lying on the tiny dining room table informed him that she had taken the haul, eighty dollars and some change to the local bank. He bit his tongue, trying to trust that she would remember the cover story about starting up a vending machine business. It was a simple story and maybe not even necessary, but it still caused him to bite his tongue.
He crunched the numbers one more time. At his own rate of twelve dollars it would take three and a half months to save up a down payment on pretty much anything. And that was assuming no other expenses cropped up in the meantime. Worse still, any bank looking at Sandy's (his own was tainted, out of the question) credit rating would deny them a mortgage regardless.
Sitting down at the small dining table Jonah began writing out a long series of phonemes. He tapped the pencil on the pad before tearing off the sheet and writing something else:
Apply for business (vendor's?) licence.
Set up account.
More money.
He frowned at the third entry and turned his attention back to the phonemes. He had felt like when his voice had veered off in one direction the results seemed faster. Maybe there were parts of it that simply weren't necessary. If he could just adjust it in the right place he could increase his yield from the eight threshold. He had the time now. The pressure had eased and he could think straight at last, but he had decided he would have to proceed slowly, remembering the way his recklessness had obliterated the wall in his own apartment. That was something he could not do to his one benefactor.
Tapping the pencil once more he pulled out the chair he was sitting on and sat on the floor instead, wincing at the complaint of his lower back. A quartet of quarters pulled from the nearby coffee table served as his template as he began crossing phonemes off the list and inserting new ones.
Within several minutes he was scouring the apartment for more quarters, carefully avoiding the puddle of molten metal on the floor.
Within an hour he was out of the door and pattering down the stairs intent on changing the five dollars in his pocket into more fodder and escaping from the smell of burning laminate.
With the blistering light of the unforgiving sun he began to perspire almost immediately. A brief thought as to whether he would need sunscreen made his step slow for a moment. He passed within a half a block, down an intersecting street of about half a dozen people holding violent looking signs, asking loudly for funds to support a disgraced politician. He shielded his face upon seeing the two police officers overseeing their barely restrained shouting. Across from them sat a trio of two shaggy looking men and an equally shaggy woman perched beside a cardboard sign whose message Jonah could not read.
Upon seeing the higher than expected traffic on the street leading up to the small commercial area he realized that he had chosen the time when all the office assistants would be out getting morning
