Your Perfect Year(59)

“Amazing!” he told his new acquaintance.

“Thank you.”

“Where did you learn to cook like that?”

Leopold grinned. “Scrambled eggs are hardly the pinnacle of culinary genius.”

“These taste like it.” He nodded in confirmation. “Yes. Exquisite, if I may say so.”

“When you live on limited means, you learn to make the best of what you have.”

“Understood.”

“Besides, I’m a trained chef.”

“That explains a thing or two.”

“Here.” Leopold held out a basket containing a few slices of mixed-grain bread. “Have a piece; it’ll taste even better.”

“No, thanks,” Jonathan said. “I don’t eat carbs after six o’clock in the evening.”

Leopold almost choked on his eggs. “Are you serious?” he wheezed, holding a napkin in front of his mouth as he spoke.

“Totally serious. Foods containing starch eaten in the evening are a veritable poison for an organism.”

“Says who?”

Jonathan shrugged. “It’s common knowledge.”

“Oh, really?”

“Well, I read it somewhere and it seemed to make sense.”

“Fair enough.” Leopold picked up a slice of bread and took a hearty bite. “Here’s to common knowledge,” he said as he chewed.

“However, I can offer you something else, something that’s very digestible at this time of day.” Jonathan rose and went into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of red wine and two long-stemmed glasses. “A Bordeaux—an excellent wine for special occasions,” he announced as he sat back down, setting a glass in front of each of them and beginning to uncork the bottle.

“I feel very honored,” Leopold said, looking a little sheepish, “but I’m afraid I have to be a spoilsport. I don’t drink alcohol.”

Jonathan paused with the corkscrew. “But this is only wine!”

“I’m sorry. I’m a complete teetotaler, and that includes wine.”

“Hmm.” Jonathan looked at him helplessly, unsure whether or not to open the bottle anyway. At the same time, he realized how surprised he was that a homeless man, of all people, didn’t drink. It might be a cliché, but he’d always been firmly convinced that everyone who lived on the streets brightened up their lives with liquor. And a chef, to boot! He thought they were all on the bottle. Half a bottle of wine in the sauce, half inside the man making it. “Have you always abstained?” he asked.

Leopold laughed. “No, not always. On the contrary, I used to love drinking. Too much. That’s why I don’t touch a drop now.”

“Ah.” Jonathan was still paused, the corkscrew twisted halfway into the cork, with no idea what to do with his hands. Or the bottle.

“Not a big deal,” Leopold said. “You go ahead and enjoy your wine. It doesn’t bother me.”

“You sure?”

“Totally sure.” He smiled. “If I couldn’t bear to see people drinking in my presence, I’d have to move to a desert island. And even there I’d probably run into some shipwrecked soul with a hip flask. So go for it!”

The cork slid from the neck of the bottle with a loud pop. Jonathan poured himself a small measure, swirled it around the glass, and finally brought it to his lips.

He held back on any words of appreciation, since he already felt like a criminal drinking a drop in front of a recovering alcoholic. If he’d had the slightest idea, he would have stuck to the water he’d already poured for them.

“It’s not long behind me,” Leopold said, leaning back in his chair.

“What isn’t?”

“The drinking.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “I ended up back in the clinic six weeks ago. The police hauled me in from the Reeperbahn, where I’d settled down for the night in the doorway of an amusement arcade. My blood alcohol was over 0.3 percent when I woke up in the rehab clinic.”

“Over 0.3 percent?” He almost added a breathless “Respect!”—but managed to suppress it.

“Yes.” Leopold’s expression betrayed an uneasy blend of remorse and belligerence. “After a week, my head was so clear that I swore it would be the last time I ever ended up in an institution like that, and I’d immediately take back control of my life.”

“But you’re still living on the streets?”

“What do you mean, ‘still’? Things don’t move that quickly,” Leopold said. “I’ve only just begun.”

“Doesn’t everyone get welfare assistance?” Jonathan wasn’t too familiar with the welfare system—why would he be?—but as far as he knew, no one in Germany who didn’t want to was forced to live on the streets.

“Now there’s a subject that could drive me back to drink,” Leopold said, raising his hands to make it clear he was only joking. “It’s complicated. Homelessness is a vicious circle that isn’t so easy to break out of. It takes time. Time and staying power.”

“Can I . . .” Jonathan hesitated just in time to stop himself from finishing the sentence with “. . . help in any way?” He instead blurted a somewhat awkward “. . . hear more of your story?” It was nice sitting here with Leopold, but he wasn’t about to let a spur-of-the-moment emotional impulse compel him to offer to take the man in.