Late spring on Hell Block. The kind of day that gets hot enough that you can smell the trash and piss and river but theres still a little chill in the air once the suns been down. If Grace Street was the main event , Hell Block was the box office.

I rounded the corner onto North Lombardy, sun in my eyes, and nearly trip over one of the regulars that stride the Grace Street gauntlet like lords of the urban savanna. Ronald Astrauskas, aka The Lithuanian, aka "yo Ronald you alive inside that bush?" His thousand yard stare doesn't even flinch. "Shit, sorry man" and I get kind of a half acknowledging grunt as he lifts his bottle arm gesturing in line with gaze. My eyes follow the bottle of rotgut Old Crow settling on today's discovery. I am face to face with a large painting of a large naked man, seated in a not so very large recliner. Late afternoon light bracketing the graphic detail of folds and dangles and textures of the human form aboard a barcalounger adrift in the black void background of canvas. Perched on top of a trashcan like it was hung at the Louvre.

"Reckon they stole it." His gaze never breaks. "Who are 'they' and what the hell makes you think 'they' stole it Ron?" Finally his eyes peel away and he looks at me, lifts the bottle to his mouth, whiskey dribbling down his gray stubbled chin, doesn't blink, and like a deranged tour guide he gestures me around to the back of our new found conversation piece. We stand side by side and in tiny block print it reads "Property of Library of Virginia Main Branch" across the top of the canvas.

We can speculate. We do. We can speculate why they had it. We can speculate whether it hung on a wall in the back stacks next to dusty classics and ancient municipal schematics. We can speculate that in fact it was never even there at all and we were both pulled into a shared hallucination, a little slice of the world peeled back like the corners of so many of the old fliers on the light posts. The backstage of perceived reality. We can speculate because for a minute we're just two men , untethered from that late afternoon sun, a million miles away, sitting naked in a recliner of our own reflections while the sun sets on Grace Street.