Page 32 of Angel of Thursdays

“Your brain’s not broken,” Cassiel said. “It has a limitation that you’ve built a mechanism to accommodate.”

May stared at him. Then the laugh came—sharp, startled, bent shoulders and a flash of canines.

“That’s—I like that, like I’ve rigged up a Rube Goldberg machine.” He shook his head, his eyes bright and wet, and he pressed the heel of his hand against one of them. “And the marble gets stuck.”

They stayed at Sparrow another forty minutes. The conversation found its way back to the stationery woman. May made a joke about organizing his notebooks aesthetically, like the lady from the video, and Cassiel told him he would need significantly more notebooks to accomplish that. May laughed again, and this was the sound Cassiel had organized his Thursdays around. More precisely, it was the production of this sound. The same laugh as last week and the week before. Knowing what the notebooks were for changed nothing about the laugh.

He did not know where that fit other than here, in the gap between Wednesday and Friday, in the time between nine and noon.

Cassiel slid the beads on his ring, one by one, from one side to the other.

Then, in a gap between topics, he asked, “What were you going to say?”

May blinked. “When?”

“Earlier. Before I asked.”

“Oh.” May’s mouth twitched. “I was… gonna ask if you wanted to go to the park.”

The scale of the thing—head injury, broken brain, the structure of a life rebuilt, and May’s original question had been do you want to go to the park—was almost enough to make him laugh.

“Maybe not today,” May said. He was grinning now, sheepish, aware of the disparity. “But next week? I could come early-ish and we could grab our drinks to go. If you wanted.”

“I’d want,” Cassiel said.

Outside, the N-Judah passed on Irving and the café windows rattled once in their frames, a vibration that reached Cassiel’s latte and broke its crema into a tremor—circular, expanding, gone.

9

MAY

THE EIGHTH THURSDAY

The week was leaking. As leaks went, it wasn’t a catastrophe. It was more like when the washer had given up in July, and now produced a slow, rhythmic drip that cost him on a bill he didn’t pay close attention to and worked as a free white noise machine. That kind of leak. Eventually going to be a problem, but someone else’s problem.

The leak in the week was Cassiel’s name in his phone on days that weren’t Thursday. Like when ink bled through on a page.

Tuesday: a screenshot of a keyboard with keycaps that looked like mahjong tiles. No context. May had replied OMG I love her and then, lol wait is that a keyboard followed by 340 DOLLARS???????

Cassiel’s response arrived eleven minutes later, which May knew because he’d checked: For the build quality, inclusive of the keycaps, the price is reasonable. And the switches are hand-lubed. To which May had typed and deleted You know what else is hand lubed? three times before sending That’s nice for the switches and putting his phone away.

Wednesday: a photo of a sandwich. Not even a good photo. May had never considered whether a sandwich had bad angles before but Cassiel Lim found one. Cassiel had sent it, again, without commentary, and May had to work out if this was a bit or if he had simply decided May needed to see his lunch. He’d replied with a photo of the Lau Kee alley dumpster—lunch—and Cassiel had sent back a single period.

Thursday fell on Halloween. May brushed his teeth. He then checked the green notebook and found nothing urgent. Then the yellow, even though he was sure he had no other STDY things lined up. Finally he checked the purple notebook—Thursday. Purple time. Everything in its place.

His costume was already on—black-and-white striped shirt (horizontal, not vertical, but it was the thought that counted), black tie, black jeans, and a pair of vegan leather Docs he’d saved for in college that were now cracking, because vegan leather and general neglect. The wig was from a dollar store and it sat scratchily on his head like a crusty white dog without the heft.

May caught the bathroom mirror again on the way out.

“Morning, Shitty Betelgeuse,” he greeted the mirror. He didn’t wait for a response.

The 29 was late, which was fine because May was also late, which happily meant he was on time for the bus that was late. The universe had done the math and decided to cut him a break for once. Golden Gate Park’s canopy hung overhead, the light going golden-brown. He drummed his fingers on his thigh.

It was Thursday and it was Halloween. Across the aisle, a guy in a red hoodie and a ski mask with Sharpie-drawn eyeholes spotted the wig and the shirt and asked, “Betelgeuse?”

May flashed him a grin. “Deadpool!”

“Hell yeah.”