Leo takes the last few steps up to the flat of the hill, moving into the shadow of the bridge. The Fremont Troll sits squat and ugly beneath. The big iconic concrete statue holds tight to its Volkswagen and eyes Leo with its one visible shiny eye. Too early for tourists to be posing on its knuckles. Leo puts his hands in the pockets of his old leather jacket and curls his elbows forward, stretching out the tightness between his shoulder blades.
It’s the kind of day that could go in any direction, from sun to drizzle to squalls of full-out rain. Typical Seattle. At the moment sunlight reaches under the bridge, angling for the shoulders of the troll. Fine weather so far for a mindless eight AM walk, and from his little apartment on the Wallingford side of the bridge, the troll is a natural destination. Leo walks up to its right hand and stands between its fingers. The dusty, khaki-colored dirt that coats the troll clings to his shoes, but it doesn’t matter. He’s just wearing old sneakers and jeans. He’s lazy about clothes at this hour on a weekend, when he’s not quite awake enough to mind. He’s only going home to spend the afternoon reading, after this. But even on a lazy Sunday Leo needs to get out, breathe and move and keep himself from burrowing into the tiny world of his apartment and missing everything else.
An uncertain noise startles Leo out of his contemplation of the graffiti on the troll’s wrist. A voice, sort of–half breath and half pained-sounding low moan.
Or not pained. Leo’s shoulders tighten up again as he wonders whether to investigate and risk walking in on people fucking behind the troll’s head. But who the hell has sex on the dusty Fremont Troll at eight o’clock in the morning? It sounds totally unappealing to him–though more for the risk of dust in all his crevasses than the hour or the location.
Leo steps past the troll’s fingertips and climbs up around its right side, feet sliding in the dirt. There’s a convenient bridge support blocking his view of the back of the troll. He pauses there and peers around it. If someone is fucking up here, he’d rather not get caught snooping.
He squints, trying to make out what he’s looking at in the dim light. Not sex. There’s someone sitting against the back of the troll’s head, legs splayed out and head tipped back against the troll. It doesn’t look comfortable. The head is angled away from Leo, but as he watches it turns towards him.
“I know you’re there.” Tense and a little threatening.
Leo jerks his head back out of sight and blinks at the sandy darkness where the bridge meets the hillside. That voice has an underlying metallic quality to it, and he just glimpsed something like a tattoo under the jaw.
Android.
