Page 34 of Angel of Thursdays

Oh no.

“Head injury,” he said as if that made sense, pulling his hand back. “Sometimes I just—need to touch something. Grounding. You know. Sorry. Are you—What’s the word. Touch-averse? Sorry.”

Cassiel looked at the place on his arm where May’s hand had been.

“Okay,” he said, which was not an answer to any of the blabbering.

And it was not okay. It was the opposite of okay. It was a situation inside his ribcage and May had just blamed it on his brain damage like a lying liar.

“So,” May said, too loud, shoving his notebook into his backpack vehemently. He yanked the zipper shut. “What’s the plan. For today. We doing—are we doing the thing? The park thing?”

“If you want.”

“I want.” He heard himself say it and the echo sat in his mouth—I want, I want, turning over and over, threatening to break the seal. “Yeah. Let’s do the park thing. Let’s get refills. You wanna try the pumpkin? It’s seasonal.”

He stood. His hand buzzed—not pins and needles, just the memory of warmth through fabric, still humming. Cassiel stood as well, suspiciously tall today, or maybe he was always that height. May narrowed his eyes, then clocked the slight heel on his shiny boots. He was cheating. That solved it.

* * *

The STDY notification arrived while May was elbow-deep in the basin at Lau Kee. His phone vibrated against his thigh through the apron. He didn’t check it. He knew what it was.

He finally looked at it on his break, crouching on the fire exit steps with steam rising off his forearms. The notification was clean and professional: Payment received—$160.00. Client: Cassiel L. Session: Oct 31. Below it, a cheerful Thank you for being a STDY BDY! and a dancing lady emoji which felt like appropriation somehow.

One hundred and sixty dollars. Four hours. Forty an hour. The rate he’d quoted in the app, the rate that was fair and hadn’t changed since the first time. He’d had his hand on Cassiel’s arm this morning. He’d felt the stiff muscle relax. He’d felt his own chest do an uh-oh and now the app was paying him for it, the way it paid him for the nurse’s mixer and the guy’s ex’s gallery thing and the retirement party in the Castro and the one where he watched a man cry about his ex-wife into a bread bowl. Because that’s what the app was for. That’s what Thursday mornings at Sparrow were.

May closed the app and opened the calculator. What Lau Kee paid plus what he had minus rent minus the Lexapro copay minus the minimum payment on the bill on his kitchen counter minus groceries minus the 29 and the 38 and whatever BART cost to Fremont. The number at the bottom was a number that required one hundred and sixty dollars to not be a shittier number.

He shoved his phone in the apron, fluffed up his hair and went back inside. The basin water had gone from hot to warm, which meant his break had been longer than five minutes. Oh well. He ran the hot tap, washed his hands properly because he’d been handling his hair and his phone, then watched the surface of the basin shiver and resettle and didn’t think about anything for a while.

* * *

On the night of November 5th, Louis wanted chicken and boba.

“Let’s get some FUCKING food,” his model citizen of a little brother had texted, “and NOT pay attention to politics,” which was a position May more or less endorsed, having already decided all numbers were bad and he couldn’t handle any of them. He had, earlier in the day, had a moment of unnecessary and all-consuming panic about whether he’d voted, a spiral that went from there’s no way I forgot something like that, to okay but what if I just dreamt I stood in that line, to did I already do this? culminating in: oh shit what if I already had this thought and forgot and tried to do it again and now I’ve committed voter fraud!?

Then he’d gone to the bathroom and saw the I VOTED sticker he’d stuck right where his face should be.

They met at Great Wall on Balboa, a block away from May’s apartment. The chicken was average, but it was cheap and close, and Louis liked the salt-and-pepper wings, and the auntie at the register remembered their order from last time, which made Louis feel like a local celebrity, and at twenty you were still allowed to want that without it being sad.

The boba came from next door. Taro for Louis, Three Brothers for May because it was election night and he needed the pudding and the boba and the grass jelly and one hundred percent sugar. Back at the window counter that faced the street, knees bumping the wall, Styrofoam containers between them, and the fog pressed against the glass, trying to get in. Across the street, someone had left a pumpkin on an apartment stoop, uncarved, and a small Jack Russell was inspecting it like ordnance.

Louis looked like their father in a way that had started bothering May recently—the eyes, the way he held his chopsticks, the squinting concentration when he was dismantling a wing. He was wearing a hoodie that said STANFORD. Louis did not go to Stanford. If his little brother went to Stanford there would have been a parade, and May’s memory was shitty, but there had been no parades. Louis Huang attended SF State, same as his fuckup brother.

“So, I ran into Kevin,” Louis said, through chicken.

“Which Kevin?” May asked absently, like there was a roster of Kevins in their overlapping circle he could select from.

“Kevin Chao from KSFS. He was at the Safeway on Noriega buying like eight cans of chickpeas and I was like Kevin? and he was like Louis? and then we talked.”

“That sounds so romantic. Did your hands brush across the chickpeas?”

“Shut up. He asked about you.”

May peeled the lid off his boba and stirred, the pudding-jelly-boba swirling together. “Yeah?”

“He’s doing this podcast thing. Like a—people send in their problems and he figures them out? Investigates or whatever. He said he’s looking for someone who can produce—like, actually edit and mix, not just talk into a mic. You used to do that.”

“I did used to do that. Were your feelings hurt because Kevin wanted me all along and not you? Because⁠—”