Doors are always open

Second door. Chapter seven. Breakfast in the hotel.

Three friends took a table in the corner of the restaurant, at a large window overlooking the courtyard of the hotel. In the courtyard, the janitor waved languidly with a broom, raking the yellow-purple beauty of autumn into heaps. The sun was hiding in the clouds, but the day was warm, calm, promising the last tourists pleasant leisurely walks along the embankments and stalls.

There weren't many people in the restaurant. Muffled voices sounded, forks clinked softly, the coffee machine hummed.

- Chiro, why aren't you eating anything? - Raphael asked.

Chiro indeed had been sitting over a plate of untouched omelet for about five minutes, staring somewhere in the center of the dining table covered with a white tablecloth embroidered with red rosebuds. Chiro was looking at one of these roses, as if expecting the flower to bloom under his gaze.

Chiro looked at Rafael, didn't answer, hooked a piece of omelet with a fork and popped it into his mouth. After chewing, he froze again, this time looking out into the yard.

- What's the matter with you? Not enough sleep?

- I slept well. It's okay.

- You don't look like okay. You're kind of lethargic today. Problems with Alice? Something went wrong?

- Not. It's okay.

- Problems with Lola?

- Not. It's okay.

- Chiro, that's enough! - Raphael could not restrain himself. - I've known you for ten years. Not all is okay. What's happening with you?

- You see, - Chiro said thoughtfully, - this is a little strange. To live to the age of twenty-five and not know anything about yourself.

- What do you mean?

- Don't know who you are. What do you really like. What do you want.

- Ah, the aftermath of tonight, - Christian guessed. - What did she do to you that you are so the philosopher today?

Chiro snorted.

- I will not tell, you will betray me again.

- We'll be dumb like fish and will make stone faces, - Christian promised.

- Nothing special. Just seems...

At pocket Chiro phone rang. He took out his cell, glanced at the screen... and reseted the call.

- Is this Lola calling? - Raphael asked quietly. - What are you doing in general?

- I... no, everything will be fine. I'll just call her back later.

Alice came up, greeted, sat down in an empty seat by the window. Christian and Raphael looked at her with wide eyes.

- Again?! - Alice was indignant. - Did you gossip about me again?

- He didn't tell us anything, - Christian said quickly. - He only said that he learned something new about himself. He did not explain what exactly.

Alice glanced at Chiro.

- Are you okay?

- Yes, everything is fine, - he answered in an exaggerated cheerful tone, without looking at the girl, and began to slice the omelette as carefully as if he were performing a surgical operation.

- Alice?! - someone loud exclamation made her flinch and turn around.

Looking up, Alice saw a handsome slender man who stopped two steps from their table and looked at her with astonishment.

- Alice, is that you?! And they told me that you died. From the coronavirus.

Alice smiled. The first acquaintance she met in Bulgaria turned out to be her former patient, whom she was pulling from the abyss of depression. A handsome Frenchman, a dancer of a ballet troupe, had already lived in Russia for several years, and, apparently, had become too much saturated with its dreary fogs and hopeless centuries-old despair. Mikael was extremely cute, polite and... emotionally closed. Already after half an hour of their first conversation, Alice was sick of his boring, standardly correct answers to her questions, of his ability to analyze and sort out his psychological problems. The impression was that Mikael had learned, carefully rehearsed the role of the ideal patient at a psychoanalyst's appointment and was playing it in front of Alice. She had to make a lot of effort to break through this barrier of super - restraint and political correctness.