Florian (Augarten Book 4) Page 2

  I dashed over just as he was tucking the note back. "Do you have a moment? I'll read it by the time you make it through the line."

  He glanced to the side, like he was ready to bolt.

  Thinking fast, I got some milk steaming and nipped the paper:

  Can I take you to dinner tonight?

  The answer tumbled eagerly out of my mouth before I could catch it.

  "Yes!" I chirped.

  Michel jolted, looking at me like I was a bomb about to go off.

  "When and where? I'm off work in half an hour."

  Michel checked his watch. "Could you come back here at five?"

  "Great." I smiled, then turned my attention back to the customers.

  Once off work, I ran home and tidied my place, just in case I managed to get the owl-eyed librarian through my door. My cheeks burned as I showered and dressed in one of my few outfits that didn't smell like the worn-out end of a café. Intelligence was so attractive—Michel was a dream, and he seemed a bit older than me. Maybe I could finally have an adult relationship, instead of rushed makeouts with other closeted boys after school, both of us too afraid to come out to our Catholic parents. Now that I was out and proud and living on my own, maybe I could finally do all the things I hadn't tried yet.

  I slapped my cheeks lightly. "Focus."

  One last check on my outfit: a button-down black shirt open at the collar, rolled up at the sleeves, tucked into dove grey business slacks with a brown leather belt. I could be working late at the office in a posh building downtown, but instead I probably just looked like a dressed-up teenager on his first real date. Intimidated by the self-doubt reflected in the mirror, I left the dorm before I could talk myself out of it.

  Chapter Two

  Back at work, I found Michel's office by following the low boom of Klaus' voice. Right next door to Klaus' office I found a name plate: Michel Myrddin Emrys Jones. What a name. It made Florian Schwarz feel like child's play.

  I peeked in, only to find stacks of books piled so high that the sound of tapping on a keyboard served as the only signal the room contained a human being. "Michel?"

  He stood, peeking over the stacks on his desk, his hair even more disheveled than this morning. "Florian, you're back."

  "I can wait outside until you're done."

  He stared at me for a moment, then cleared his throat. "I'll be out shortly."

  I paced the courtyard in front of the main entrance to the library, examining the fountain. When Michel came out, he'd managed to tame his wild hair a bit, and he was still smoothing out his rumpled sweater with his palms. "Hi."

  I couldn't help but grin at him, grateful I wasn't the only one feeling awkward and shy. "Hey."

  He cocked his head toward the edge of campus. "Shall we?"

  Michel already had a café in mind. We got on the subway and grabbed hanging straps by the door. His eyes roamed over me and my pulse quickened. Then he caught me watching him and I held my breath.

  Michel leaned close and spoke softly. "There really isn't someone waiting for you back in Austria?"

  "My mum misses me," I stammered like an idiot.

  Michel glanced up, checking my expression for something. I held still under his examination.

  His glass-green eyes searched me. "How old are you, Florian?"

  "Nineteen."

  His face fell and he leaned away, staring at me slack-jawed. "I thought you were done with university. This is just dinner, then, between friends. I'm ten years older than you, when I was thinking more like five."

  My heart leapt to my throat. We weren't even off the subway, and already I was losing my chance with him. "I am young, but I am already an adult. I have been reliant upon myself and out of school for three years."

  He furrowed his brows. "By that, you mean secondary school? You don't plan to go to university?"

  "No," I said firmly, steeling my resolve and meeting him toe to toe. "I graduated a trade school program. I am heir to a coffeeshop in Vienna. I have already run it by myself for two years, plus completed my mandatory military service. I am working class, and young, but I know what I want."

  He sized me up. "That is fair. I apologize for judging you by your age."

  I rushed to make amends. "No need. It's an understandable conclusion."

  We exited the subway and Michel led me to a small café along a strip of restaurants. We took a table on the street-side patio and Michel ordered a glass of wine. I asked for the same.

  He appraised me. "So what brings you to Paris, when you have your own shop back home?"

  I fidgeted in my seat and took a moment to condense the story down to something manageable. "It was my grandfather's shop, but with real estate prices soaring, my father wants to sell it."

  Michel grimaced. "Not a sentimental guy, huh?"

  "My father has shillings for eyeballs."

  Michel laughed and my cheeks burned. He was so handsome…I was way out of my league. The waiter poured our wine and I tried desperately to calm down.

  We clinked glasses and drank. I didn't know what wine Michel had ordered, but it was a rosé, something sweet and smooth.

  "So, Paris?" he prompted.

  "The standoff with my father wasn't going to end, and Mum wouldn't take a side, so I decided to make my own way in the world."

  "And Paris was just 'anywhere but here'? With these rent prices?"

  I chuckled. "Working at a coffeeshop in a library is perfect, plus I took French in school. When things are slow, I can go slip a book off the shelf and read."

  Michel's smile was tender, which made me want to tell him more.

  "My dream is to renovate my coffeeshop to also be a second-hand bookstore."

  Michel's expression was disbelieving. "A renovation so soon after inheriting? Isn't that risky?"

  "Not with the groundwork I've put into it. When I took over, the shop was thousands of euros in the red. Not only did I pay that back, but I built a small savings cushion in two years." My father's response had been that several thousand euros did not purchase the shop.

  He blinked in surprise. "You have a talent for this."

  I blushed. "Thank you, but I feel like I haven't had the chance to prove myself yet. That's why I'm here. I couldn't stand waiting around for my parents to come to their senses, all while putting my life on hold."

  "At least now you're striking out on your own," he supplied.

  "Exactly."

  The waiter returned. I had been so preoccupied with talking about the shop that I hadn't even looked at the menu. Afraid to order the same thing as Michel again, I picked a quick sandwich and hoped that didn't make me out to be immature.

  Michel sat back and took another sip of wine. "Old coffeeshops in Vienna were famous for their intellectualism. Some of Europe's most influential people lived there for that exact purpose. Darwin, Freud, Goethe, Jung—"

  "Yes," I chirped, leaning toward him. "I want to recreate that."

  "—Marx, Lenin, Stalin…"

  I deflated. "Well, ideas were exchanged, both good and bad. Though these days, everyone sits on their laptops."

  Michel watched me with an unreadable expression. I squirmed in my seat. "What is it?"

  He snapped out of it. "Nothing, you just seem very enthusiastic about your shop. Dedication is a rare trait these days."

  "What are you passionate about?"

  He didn't even take a moment to think. "Old books."

  I scoffed. "Sure, but why?"

  He hummed in thought. "I am fascinated by how civilizations rise and fall, and what role forbidden scholarship plays in this process. For example, why were certain texts forbidden, and certain ideas put down so forcefully? To state that an idea was banned or branded as forbidden because it threatened the current reigning power is too simple. The interplay of an idea with the surrounding society is much more complex than that."

  "So, what were you looking for in the basement stacks of the Vatican?" Klaus had commented with snark that Michel had clim
bed up the Vatican's asshole and stayed there all summer.

  Bright green eyes twinkled at me. "Just a book of prayers. Nothing anyone powerful would actually label as the good stuff."

  Our food arrived and we ate for a few moments, our conversation lagging. Then a thought occurred to me. "I bet I know what the good stuff is, the restricted texts the Vatican would never want to show to anyone."

  Michel shrugged. "That's easy. All kinds of demon summoning and black magic manuals. Exorcists use them for training, but otherwise that information can't be allowed to get out. Obviously, since we're in an age of reason, most people don't even believe such things to be possible, but the chances are still greater than zero that someone might try it."

  "Nah, you're totally off."

  Michel froze, his soup spoon halfway to his mouth. "Enlighten me?"

  I finished chewing. "I read a book about same-sex unions in premodern Europe. The author talked about how medieval married couples were painted as holding their hands like this." I held my hands in front of my chest, one up and one down, palms facing each other, with some space between them. "Instead of the husband and wife holding hands any other way, it was always like this."

  "I've seen such paintings," Michel said with a nod.

  I picked up my wine glass and raised it in salute. "That is how Jesus and John were painted all through the medieval period."

  Michel stared at my wine as I drank. "You're saying the biggest secret Catholicism has ever tried to hide was that Jesus and the beloved disciple were an item?"

  I set my glass down and leveled with him. "Go read the Gospel of John and tell me that man was not in love with Jesus."

  "Of course he loved him. It doesn't mean they were having sex."

  "But everything points back to sex with Christianity." I held up my hands to placate Michel when his eyes just about bugged out of his head. "Now just hear me out."

  He scooped some more soup. "I'm listening. Continue."

  I took another sip of wine, needing liquid courage now that I had clumsily steered the conversation to such an embarrassing topic. "I think we can both agree that Christianity holds a ridiculous stance on sex. All the Magian religions do: to a lesser extent Judaism, but Christianity and Islam are bonkers about sex. It's the only topic guaranteed to make people unravel with feverish intensity."

  Michel regarded me with a loaded expression I could not interpret. "Sure."

  "If you walk that in reverse, it makes sense that the most restricted stacks of the Vatican would be books having to do with sex. Maybe there's records in there stipulating that Jesus was not conceived via immaculate conception, or that Mary wasn't for that matter. Maybe Mary Magdalene was an item with Jesus, or maybe Jesus had kids, or was with John, or all of the above."

  Michel sat back, his soup bowl nearly empty. "I need a minute to think."

  I finally ate my dinner while Michel mused quietly. I finished my sandwich and when the waiter came to collect the plates, after confirming with me first, Michel ordered us each another glass of wine. We clinked our glasses together and drank, our eyes meeting as we did so.

  "I think we underestimate the power of the Vatican," he said at long last. "The Church has no reason to allow such texts to remain extant. They would be cultivating an Achilles Heel in their own basement. Whatever is in there, one has to assume that the Church could not afford to lose that knowledge. If there are manuals of black magic, then keeping them means they can use that knowledge to develop countermeasures to protect against them. That is also why I have never bothered petitioning to see a text too far into the restricted stacks. All that would do is put me on a watch list."

  I mulled that over. "I don't think you're wrong, but I don't think that's the whole story, either. Maybe texts documenting that the Son of God didn't die a virgin could have been completely eradicated, but if I were on the inside, I think it would make sense to keep such information around, to fully see how this religion came into the world. These things show what Christianity was made for, and why people still believe in it two millennia later. But if you burn the book, you're gaslighting your congregation. You claim that they just have to believe what you tell them—or else—and that's when people start to walk away in droves. It's not human nature to swallow stuff like that and not try to understand why."

  Michel swirled his wine. "How does sex play into the formation of a religion?"

  "It doesn't have to, but it does in the case of Magian religions, because sex is what would cause everything to fall apart."

  Michel steepled his fingers and squinted at me. "You keep using Oswald Spengler's term of Magian for the Abrahamic faiths, as if you have read Decline of the West."

  "Of course I have. He wrote it in German."

  Michel barked a laugh and launched back in his chair, slapping his leg with unadulterated joy. "Of course you have. A nineteen-year-old barista, with no plans to go to college, who's read Oswald Spengler. I can't believe it."

  The waiter walked by and Michel snagged him for the bill. I pulled my wallet out, but Michel grabbed my wrist. "Please let me pay for this. I haven't had such interesting conversation in a long time."

  "But—"

  "Please, Florian. I got two PhDs thinking I'd be able to use them to find people who actually read books, but tonight has shown me I've been looking in all the wrong places."

  "Well, thank you."

  Michel paid for dinner and we stayed after to finish our wine.

  "Continue. I want to hear the rest of it."

  I had no idea how he expected me to be able to think while he watched me so closely. "Now it's just a theory, since I really haven't read enough to formulate a valid hypothesis."

  "That's fine."

  I huffed. After building it up this much, there was no way anything I said could hold its own against a librarian with doctorate degrees. I wanted to impress him, but that just made me feel like an idiot.

  "My guess is the early Christians needed a way to make Jesus' message different from all the others out there, to give it the power to spread to other people looking for answers. There were resurrection cults in Jesus' time, so that was a potent mechanism to use that people would understand. Immaculate conception was another. Combine that with a virginal son of God who died a criminal's death to save even the poorest beggars and downtrodden slaves, and you have a savior who fits a niche for the unrepresented. It's no wonder Christianity spread so fast in the Roman Empire; conditions were perfect for it. There was a need among desperate people, and Christ's story fit that need exactly. That's also why John might agree to keep their love a secret, for the higher mission and purpose of the story."

  "And if any of those stories got out, everything would fall apart."

  "It's just my theory of blasphemy. I mean no offense."

  "None taken here." Michel smiled in reassurance. "The resurrection cults back then had something going for them, though, because it's completely plausible a mystic actually did see someone reappear after death. It's a regular occurrence—gods and goddesses die and come back to life all the time."

  I lost my train of thought. "…what?"

  He set his empty glass next to mine. "Never mind. Come on, let's go."

  We stood, then both hesitated.

  Summoning my courage, I offered my hand. He took it with a toothy smile and clasped it tight as we left.

  Michel pulled me around the corner of the restaurant, pressed me against the wall and whispered in my ear, "Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn."

  My heart just about skipped out of my chest. A shiver ran through me at his proximity. "Oh, good boy. Did you study for me, or is that just to impress Klaus?"

  "I studied hard, Teacher. What is my reward?"

  I laughed and kissed him on the cheek. "Hm, I'll have to think of something. You should study faster, so I can give you more and more."

  He chuckled, his voice husky. "Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch, Donnerstag, Freitag, Samstag, Sonntag."
>
  "You're saving these up!"

  He giggled, sending arousal bolting through me. "You'll have me reading Goethe in no time."

  I trailed my arms up his back and settled them around his shoulders. I kissed his cheek again, even though my heart was fluttering like a bird.

  Michel pulled away, eyes dancing with curiosity. "What would you choose?"

  I could barely catch my breath, must less think straight. "What?"

  "Goethe. You know, Faust's bargain. If a demon offered you anything in exchange for your soul, what would you wish for?"

  "Nothing. I wouldn't take the bargain."

  "Come now," he peppered sweet kisses to my neck and jaw, thrilling me. "You have to take the bargain. There's huge stakes."

  "Huge stakes like what?"

  "Hm. Your closest friend is about to get thrown off a cliff by another demon."

  I huffed. "My best friends Anne and Sarah would go straight to heaven, whereas I can't imagine St. Peter letting me in."

  Michel clung to my shoulders and laughed. "Alright then, your lover is about to be thrown off the cliff. Now what would you do?"

  "I'd suck his dick one last time and let him go."

  Michel glanced at me, disbelieving. "You'd let your lover die, and under no circumstances give up your soul?"

  Feeling the planes of his chest beneath his V-neck sweater, I spoke brave words I didn't feel, trying to impress my older date but actually blowing hot air. "If my soul remained mine, then I'd find him in the afterlife or whatever comes next. If he really loved me, he would understand."

  Michel leaned in close, tucked his thumb under my chin and angled me to look at him. "You, my dear Florian, have never been in love."

  I gasped as he kissed me, swallowing my surprise. His lips were thin and a bit chapped, but when I kissed him back and he hitched a breath in, lust sizzled through me and I longed for more. When he finally let me go, I was breathless and flushed hot enough to hide my shame at him calling my bluff.

  "Come." Michel twined his fingers in mine and pulled me from the wall.