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Leopold

T he dime rolled off the counter, bounced on the tile floor, and rolled under the bakery case.

Ignoring the glares and aggrieved sighs of the people in line behind him, Leopold fished around in his jacket pockets in search of more coins.

“You can just tap your phone right here to pay.” The short blonde barista pointed perkily. She was the type who did everything perkily. Leopold was willing to bet she even managed to be perky when she was asleep, which for some reason annoyed him to no end.

“I’d rather not.” He didn’t find another dime, but eventually he unearthed a nickel and five pennies, along with an expired light-rail ticket, a crumpled but probably unused Kleenex, and a metal screw-looking thing that looked as if it was probably an important part of something but he didn’t know what.

He set down the coins and shoved the rest back into his pockets.

“We have an app,” chirped the barista. “You can download it for free and use it to pay for your orders. And you earn points! Which you can use to get free coffees and stuff.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

She blinked at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a few extra heads.

And although it wasn’t really any of her business, Leopold shrugged. “It broke.”

“Oh!” She looked relieved, her world suddenly tilted back onto its proper axis. “Well, when you get a new one then.”

He nodded curtly before shuffling aside to wait for his order.

He shouldn’t have splurged on the fancy coffee; he could have caffeinated himself more cheaply at a fast-food joint.

But what the hell—broke was broke, and he might as well enjoy a lot of sugar and whipped cream with his last bit of pocket change.

The coffee shop was busy. People typed at laptops, chatted with friends, or scrolled on their phones.

In one corner, a young woman with dark braids swayed to the music from her headphones while she drew in a sketchbook.

A couple of tables over, two men in suits and ties were having a lively discussion about autonomous vehicles.

The espresso machine and blenders whirred, the sound system played a woman singing in what he thought might be Portuguese, a toddler burbled an incomprehensible monologue to his father.

It was a comfortable place. If Leopold chose, he could no doubt park himself in an empty chair and nurse his overpriced frothy concoction as long as he wanted.

He wouldn’t, though.

“Leonard!” called another of the baristas, this one a tall young man with a nicely shaped beard and one large silver hoop earring. He set a plastic cup down in the pickup portion of the counter. “Leonard! Order’s up!”

Nobody came forward. Three more names were called in quick succession, these with prompt responses, and then Leopold realized that all three of those people had been behind him in line. He approached the counter and peered at the remaining cup.

“Leonard?” asked the barista.

“Leopold.”

The barista shrugged. “’S probably yours.”

It probably was. And Leonard was somewhat of an improvement over the last time he’d treated himself to coffee, when he’d been called Leopard instead.

Honestly. Who would call themselves Leopard?

At other times he’s been Leslie, Leeann, Leland, Leon, Leofric, and once—memorably—Legolas.

Which was, well, yeah, kind of awesome, but clearly a mistake of epic proportions.

He was fairly certain he’d never once been Leopold. Maybe he’d get there if he could afford fancy coffee more often.

Clutching the drink that might or might not have been his, Leopold exited the shop.

Early February in Sacramento wasn’t really winter, at least not as most people would measure it.

In fact, from what he’d heard, the area had been in drought for several years, with the Februaries dry and unseasonably warm.

But that was before he’d moved here, and this winter had broken records for the amount of rainfall.

By now, people had shifted from thank goodness all the way through well, we really need it and were now settled into I’m so sick of this miserable weather .

Leopold didn’t blame them. Gray skies. Flooded homes.

High heating bills. And, as he stepped off the curb, a deceptively deep puddle that swallowed his entire left foot.

He yelped and lost his balance, and although he managed not to fall on his face, the cup went flying. It landed on the hood of a parked BMW, spattering sweet expensive coffee onto the windshield—and onto the nicely dressed woman who had just emerged from the driver’s seat.

“I am so sorry!” Leopold said. Or started to say, anyway, because before he could get the phrase out, the woman was screeching at him as if he’d attempted to murder her.

Yeah, coffee stains were not going to do her cream-colored wool coat any favors, but at least it had been iced coffee, so she wasn’t burned or otherwise injured.

She was wearing Leopold’s pick-me-up and he couldn’t afford another, and his left foot and lower leg were soaked and thoroughly chilled, and now a guy in a lifted pickup was honking at him, and it had suddenly started to rain again, and dammit, Leopold was just done .

“I’m sorry!” he yelled at the woman, who didn’t pause her tirade. Then he glanced at the pickup driver, who was now flipping him off, and Leopold hobbled across the street.

His apartment was only a few blocks away, on the upper floor of a house that had been pretty nice a hundred or so years ago but had long since sagged into despair.

His place—a cramped bedroom, a living room with a closet-sized kitchen, and a Lilliputian bathroom—was in a converted attic reachable by two flights of rickety outdoor stairs.

The climb had been miserably hot in summer and was now cold and damp, making the ascent both dangerous and uncomfortable.

Today he walked up the stairs more slowly than usual because his ankle was sore from the puddle incident, and he somehow managed not to fall to an untimely death on the cracked and weed-infested pavement of the parking lot far below.

In addition to the rickety exterior stairs, two of the windows were cracked, the floors were uneven, and the electricity went out whenever the people downstairs used their microwave. The house was a firetrap and couldn’t possibly be up to code. God help them all if there was an earthquake.

But still, Leopold liked it. He found it charming that none of the walls were plumb and none of the corners formed perfect right angles.

His landlord had seemingly used the dregs of several paint cans, resulting in walls that had large patches of varied whites and beiges.

Leopold liked that too. He loved it when the floors and rafters creaked and when the pipes made noises like dying ancient sea monsters.

Also, it was cheap.

As soon as he was inside, he stripped off his jacket and let it fall on the floor, then kicked off his sodden shoes.

Next came the socks and wet jeans, and he rummaged around in his pile of clean but unfolded laundry until he found a pair of gray sweatpants and two socks—one white and one navy. He didn’t care that they didn’t match.

What he should do, he knew, was sit down and calculate his finances.

Rent was coming due and he didn’t think he had enough to cover it.

He should pick up some extra hours at work.

He had been holding two jobs to make ends meet, but after the forklift incident at the warehouse he was down to one employer, a bus company.

And if his record held, something dumb would happen there while he was on duty and then he wouldn’t be detailing buses anymore either.

So he should also be looking for a new job right now.

But thinking about numbers made his head swim, and the idea of filling out employment applications and going to interviews made him shudder.

The weight of all those shoulds made him just want to fall into bed and sleep for a week, at which point he might awaken to find he’d won the lottery and all those shoulds could go to hell.

Except that he didn’t have the money for a lottery ticket, and even if he had, the effort to go out and actually buy one was beyond him at the moment.

So instead, he curled up on his lumpy couch—of indeterminate original color but now a rather dull and uninspiring chocolate-milk brown—and started channel-surfing.

He didn’t watch anything in particular; he rarely did.

What he enjoyed was viewing a few minutes of a show, trying to guess what was going on, and then flipping to the next and the one after that.

Sometimes he made up storylines that tied the fragments together, so that the people bickering in the old sitcom diner became pals with the mechanics fixing up the sports car, and the cartoon girl with the pet monkey taught Spanish to the elderly congressman.

Today he watched a few minutes of a reality dating show followed by a snippet of a sport he thought might be rugby and then a bit of an old cop show.

Then a nature show involving squirrels—apparently there were squirrels on every continent except Australia, where there were pseudo squirrels, and Antarctica, which in the summer was almost as cold as Sacramento on a rainy winter day.

Shivering, he cranked up the thermostat, which responded with a very convincing death-rattle but nevertheless spat out a bit of warmer air. Perhaps its final exhale.

He’d just clicked over to a sci-fi space battle when the television sizzled loudly and the screen went blank.

He thought at first that it was simply Todd and Krys zapping a frozen burrito downstairs, but then he realized the power wasn’t out completely, which meant the problem likely lay in his television. Great. Just what I needed.

He was still slumped on the couch, trying to decide whether to get up and… do something, when someone knocked on the door.