The Hundred-Year Flood Read Online Free

replaced. He pointed to her cheek. “You have something there.” She ran her finger along her nose, and without thinking, he licked his thumb and pressed it to her skin. He lifted off an eyelash. Before he could pull away, she held his wrist and blew on his thumb.
    Pavel stomped, and his brown hair flopped over his craggy brows. He puffed it aside. He said these were the last touches and Tee should shut his eyes if he couldn’t stop.
    Tee felt like a child, but he did shut them. With his eyes closed, he realized how tired he was. Though he’d done nothing all day but pose. He heard Katka start a new legend, about the hill Blaník, as if nothing had changed, at least for her. In the darkness, he became terrified of losing them, of losing that gaze on him and the stories that contextualized the city. He didn’t realize yet how much he needed them to contextualize him. He squeezed his eyelids tighter and the room expanded and then contracted. He pictured his father with a camcorder, taking one of his home videos: Pavel Picasso painting furiously, Katka narrating some deeper mystery, Tee a stranger in a strange land. His father, who had slept with his aunt. That had nothing to do with Tee. Heat pressed his thigh, and he opened his eyes. His leg was touching Katka’s. She put a hand on his knee, to reassure him or to question his alarm.
    “Close eyes,” Pavel said again.
    Tee didn’t make any move until Katka’s palm lifted. When he had broken up with his ex in Boston, she had said he was the same as his father. “You will only ever want the wrong woman,” she’d said, meaning she should have known they weren’t right for each other.
    Katka stood and went to her husband’s side. She hummed some Czech tune, and Pavel’s frown faded.
    After lunch, Pavel again tried to hand over the thank-you painting. “Why stop now?” Tee said. “You could do a bigger series. You could try a gallery in New York.” Without the sessions, Tee might simply return to New Year’s, trying and failing to explode. Pavel clamped his hands in his armpits and said Tee’s suggestion was what his closest friend, a Czech with an American name, Rockefeller, had been advising for years.
    Katka turned Tee gently by the shoulder. “Wait a second. Do you mind?” she asked. He hesitated, then stepped outside beside the big maple tree dusted with snow. He walked around it several times, until he lost count. He made a snowball, but had no target. His hands grew numb. Finally he held the snow to his face, the cold waking him up.
    When Katka called him back, the smell inside the kitchen still thick with meat and cabbage, she said he could return tomorrow. She pulled apart a knot in her hair and grimaced. He didn’t know who had wanted him and who hadn’t.
     
    That night, he lay in bed picturing Pavel’s hands curled into claws. Could , Katka had said, not should. Though she was speaking her second language. Tee hadn’t even looked at the thank-you painting. He didn’t know what exactly Pavel had been trying to give him. Maybe it wasn’t a painting but one of the puzzles Katka had hung around the house. Tee was intrigued by her puzzle-making, the things about her that didn’t make sense with her legends. Once every other week, she went to the cinema, but she only watched documentaries. She looked up the story beforehand. She wasn’t interested in the mystery of what happened but in its representation, in how it was put together by someone else.
    After that could , Pavel had said the subject should choose the next pose—that was why Tee couldn’t sleep now. He had thought this was a serious request. He had spread his fingers across his chest, and then he hadn’t known what to do with his other hand. He hadn’t known whether to sit or to stand. He held his palm stiffly over his heart, as if to pledge allegiance. For the first time, he heard Pavel laugh. When Tee woke, he couldn’t find pants to match his shirt, though he had worn that