Maybe Roxie's lonelier than I imagined.
Nathan then goes downtown to buy himself a guitar. He's just not himself without a way to play music. After that, he visits the art museum and meets a nice young woman named Ruby, but it's difficult to have a conversation when there is a total creep in a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt standing about two inches away from your face.
I think I went to high school with this guy.
Nathan actually spent all afternoon at the museum, getting lost in the art. As the sun set, he realized he should probably pick up some things he might need to start a new life here. To the consignment shop! He didn't find anything useful, but he did get a wind-up squid figure, a cheap bottle of wine ("nectar"), and a book on martial arts from Ben Affleck.
It was getting late, so Nathan went back to the empty field he'd first been transported to. He figured he should stick around the area in case there was some sort of time-space anomaly there which would allow him to get back to his home dimension. It's boring standing in the middle of an empty field, though. He tried to play with his new mechanical squid, but it didn't actually do anything, it just sat there. All he could do was view it, which he did, disapprovingly, for about a minute.
So he studied martial arts until the wee hours of the morning.
The title of the book is "Wax On Philosophical."
He was about ready to drop from exhaustion, but he didn't have a bed, and he didn't particularly want to go back to Roxie's. She seems like the clingy type, and he didn't want to encourage her. He'd seen a junkyard down the road, so he went to see if he could find at least a smelly old mattress to throw in his field.
After digging through piles of trash -- gigantic, sparkling piles of trash -- for hours, he found "28 units of scrap," whatever that means. I'm sure it'll come in handy later.
The sun was starting to rise, and Nathan still had nowhere to sleep, so I just bought him a cheap bed. I'm not totally heartless. We'll just say he found it at the junkyard and dragged it all the way to the field, making a horrible grinding noise against the pavement all the way.
Our hero -- or rather, our villain -- slept the whole morning and some of the afternoon away. He dreamed about food, probably because he was extraordinarily hungry. He woke up sunburned and bug-bitten and decided that this whole sleeping in a field thing wasn't working out. He didn't have the money to buy a house though, so he started digging a hole in the field to make a cave.
He concealed the entrance behind a big gross-looking tree and surrounded it with hedges. Inside, he decorated it with some.. er... found objects.
There's his bed, and a stolen park bench, along with some things stolen from people's yards -- lawn furniture, tiki torches, a boombox, and a grill. Nathan's obviously not concerned about charcoal fumes. The toilet is from the junkyard, and even though it's just placed over a hole in the ground, it's nice not having to squat, isn't it?
I thought Nathan would be able to make food using the grill, but he couldn't without a fridge. So I bought him a fridge, but then he needed a counter to prepare the hot dogs on. He just couldn't win! Finally I decided to just upgrade his cave a little. It's not as quaint, but it's more practical. Now he has a full-fledged bathroom with a shower, and a sink and counter for his kitchen, and a separate area for his bed. He also splurged and actually bought a bed, because sleeping on that creaky old garbage bed was not energizing in the least. Nathan's pretty proud of himself for fashioning this little getaway, but it won't work for very long. Before he can obtain a legitimate abode, though, he'll need a job. And playing guitar on the street for loose change isn't going to cut it.
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