#30: Sunshine

John felt the slither of sunlight as it snuck between two apartment buildings and paused. He tilted his face to take in the warmth. Plumes of white breath illuminated the sunlight into a golden hue before it dissipated. Jenny was scouring, and that made her happy. Holding the hot coffees had been his only saving grace until he found that shaft of direct access to the sun.

It saddened him the light was eight minutes old and this run down market was the last thing it would see before extinguishing into nothingness.

Jenny bounced up and over to him, almost spilling some of the coffee.

"What do you think?"

She assumed he'd been listening to her negotiate or the peppering of probing questions.

"I say yes," he said.

"For five quid? Don't you think I should tell them?"

He pivoted to see a wicker chair, the white paint peeling away as if it were dying of some toxic exposure.

"But," she whispered, "I think it is a Moser. Koloman Moser."

The name rang a bell in the tundra of John's mind. She was forever dragging him to galleries and museums and things after a while melt into one another.

"Should I tell them? It's not worth five quid."

"Then make an offer."

"Like what? One hundred?"

"No," John hissed into her ear. They didn't have a hundred quid. "No, you pay them the five quid they are asking. We'll take it home and —"

"Okay," she said in her sing-song voice.

He gulped at the hot coffee, knowing that he'd have to walk the chair on his back.

As Jenny paid the man, John turned to face his ray of sunshine, but a cloud had smothered it.