Your Nihilistic Tea House by Kyler Doss

Author:Kyler Doss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new adult, gay boys, cult, solo_travel, czech republic, bohemian, punk, eastern europe, american overseas, foreign love, gay dating, ritual, queer angst, offbeat, gay kiss, gay loner, gay crush, straight acting, clean language, don't tell, roughhousing
Publisher: Kyler Doss
Published: 2019-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

3

Prague

THE WAITER said goodbye to me and Charles and Sergei. The street below offered the impression, block after block, that candles were missing in the world.

We walked Sergei across the bridge, a bridge you wouldn't know for one unless someone had pointed it out to you. Sergei went ahead of us. A boy always ready for the snow, he took practice strides up the hill, then turned.

"You should be here," he said, "when they burn the witch of winter."

I figured he was talking to me. "Okay," I said.

I looked at Charles, his smile the missing candle in the night.

"It comes on the last day of April," he said.

We were still talking about religion, it was obvious. Sergei left the sidewalk for the dark building he stayed in, not without one last sign of the cross. He must have known where the doorway was. He was gone.

"Is it fun," I said, "the last day of April?"

"I like it."

"How do they burn the witch?"

"It's made of straw."

The bridge came up again that divided the city, the low point in the valley. We were going to the Brass Leopard but I didn't know whose room.

"I'm sorry about that question," I said, because I had asked Charles in the tea house if he was the one that was possessed.

Now you could see the questions tick off in his mind by way of his eyes, first the witch, then the deeper names. His lips evened out under the weight of his sadness. Finally he spoke.

"Jakub says it, too."

My last candles were out, Charles and Sergei. It was Jakub's fault. On Moskevska, the neon painted everything like the moon did on Halloween. Charles went as a fallen angel. I was a pirate or something.

There were no letters for either one of us at the front desk. The lady who watched us climb the stairs was the same one that was usually there. She worked 24-hour shifts unless she was really somebody else in a sweater approved as the hotel uniform. We got to the landing.

"I don't want to be alone," Charles said.

"Okay."

He turned the key and pushed the door open in a room where he had left the light on.

"You're late," Jakub said. He was sitting in the same chair I had sat in.

"You don't run my life," Charles said.

"Yes, I do."

I wanted to leave, or I wanted to hit Jakub in the face.

Charles took the other chair. "Eli does not fear you," he said.

I was still near the door. Jakub looked at me over his shoulder.

"Is that true?" he said.

"Yes."

When he got up and fell on me, it was either because he wanted to or because he tripped.

"I'm not going to send a letter to you," he said, "if you live in the same town."

We were already standing on the threshold. I put a hand on the doorjamb to stop our exit, then looked at Charles.

"I can stay with you," I said.

"Go with Jakub."

Charles was never hard to read except in the presence of his brother.

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