Page 38 of Angel of Thursdays

Cassiel looked at the pendant light overhead. The last time he’d been here, two of the bulbs had been cold white and one had been warm. Today, all three looked to be 3000K.

“It’s good, Lauren.”

Minju and David arrived at quarter past seven. David carried a bottle of wine and something under his arm Cassiel was sure would be an item from the Preferred Gifts spreadsheet. Minju rushed up, hugged Cassiel efficiently; his little sister knew the hug tolerance (two seconds), and released.

“Happy birthday,” she said. “Your hair-part looks good.”

“Thank you.”

David raised the wine in greeting and meandered away to speak to someone he’d spotted.

Minju had also brought a card—Jaewon’s work. Thick cardstock, markers, a drawing of Cassiel with rectangular glasses he did not wear, and a speech bubble that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE CASS I LOVE YOU AND FOXY. Cassiel looked at it longer than he looked at most things.

Lamaria from the shop was talking to one of Lauren’s roommates near the bookshelves. She’d been at Linden & Pratt a year. Front desk, ran a successful Etsy store selling her illustrations and handmade jewelry that Peter didn’t know about and Cassiel did. She was wearing a pair of her own earrings tonight, brass wire bent into intricate geometry. She caught his eye and raised her glass. He raised his back.

Cassiel found his corner, the window seat by the harlequin fireplace, which had lines to both the parlor entrance and the kitchen doorway.

The doorbell rang at 7:40.

Lauren answered it. Cassiel heard the voice before he saw the person—bright, loud, already saying something that would start on the porch and end somewhere in the parlor. Then May was in the doorway. He was wearing the navy button-down, the singular formal garment in what Cassiel had identified as a wardrobe organized by which clothes were closest to grab from the floor rather than occasion. The same one he’d worn to Chuseok, to the other dinner, and the same blue canvas shoes. No coat, which was wrong for December yet consistent with everything Cassiel knew about May Huang’s relationship to preparation.

He was carrying a plastic bag with three bottles of Tsingtao visible through it.

“Happy birthday.” May smiled. The gap, the canines, the eye crinkle. “I brought beer and a secret.”

“I don’t drink beer.”

“The beer’s for Lauren. The secret’s for you.”

May handed the bag to Lauren, who examined the bottles. He crossed the parlor to Cassiel’s corner, close enough that Cassiel could smell the cold still clinging to the button-down, and something faintly citrus underneath. May’s left hand went to the back of his own neck, a brief, hard press, and dropped.

“I’ll come find you for the secret later,” he said, and then he was off, making the rounds as if this was his party. Cassiel watched him walk into the kitchen, saw him standing with David and Minju.

Cassiel was talking to Lauren’s roommate about the fireplace—the flue and the tile work, whether the harlequin pattern was original or a later addition—when he looked up and saw May across the room with Lamaria. May was peering at one of her earrings while Lamaria found something on her phone. Her prints, probably. Cassiel couldn’t see the screen from his corner, but he could see Lamaria’s posture change, how she leaned in, her free hand moving as she talked about her work.

When May paid attention to you, it changed you. A panoptic effect, only not so sinister. Cassiel had felt it. He was watching it happen to someone else.

A while later, near the bookshelves, Lauren and May found each other. Cassiel couldn’t hear how it started—something about the shelves—but May’s voice carried.

“—I mean, everyone’s seen a Star War. It’s not even a nerd thing anymore.”

“You’d be surprised.” Lauren tilted her head toward the window seat. “Cassiel’s only seen one.”

“I’ve seen four,” Cassiel said.

Lauren didn’t look at him. “You’ve seen one, four times.”

May’s laugh carried across the parlor.

Cassiel looked out into the night, still in his window seat, the ring’s beads clicking. May moved through the room and the distance between them varied—ten feet, twenty, three, when May came back to check on him with a “you good?” and a tap to the side of the window seat that vibrated through the wood into Cassiel’s thigh. Duration: 0.3 seconds, negligible pressure, the vibration lasting longer than the touch.

* * *

He went outside at 9:15 because he needed it. Lauren’s back deck was wooden-planked, narrow, overlooking a shared garden that in summer had tomatoes and in December had mud and ivy and the bare skeleton of someone’s raised bed. A stone bowl with rainwater sat on the railing. The backs of neighboring Victorians were lit: kitchen windows, bedroom windows, implications of other people’s evenings. The fog was close but not down, hanging above the rooflines.

He leaned on the railing and breathed. The cold was good. Forty-four degrees, he’d read on the forecast. Inside, the party’s noise dulled to a hum, and the December air sat in Cassiel’s lungs and needed him for absolutely nothing, because cold air had no sentience, no need to congratulate him on time passing.

Then, the kitchen door opened behind him and closed with a squeak, followed by soft footsteps on the planking.