Page 45 of Angel of Thursdays

CASSIEL

THE THURSDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS

A gingerbread latte was already in a to-go cup when May walked in at 10:02 a.m., a whole gingerbread man balanced on the lid.

Cassiel had ordered it without deliberating. May’s drink on the table, his own chocolate mint in a tumbler, both ready for them to walk out. Cassiel wanted the park, the air. The morning was clear enough, and clear December mornings in the avenues had a half-life measured in hours before the marine layer reasserted itself.

May’s brown corduroy jacket was unzipped, revealing a green flannel beneath. His hair curled past his ears and the cold had put color in his cheeks, giving him a Hallmark movie effect against Sparrow’s half-hearted holiday decorations.

He’d been sitting on the same side of the booth since Cassiel’s birthday as though the table was a formality they’d outgrown, and Cassiel had not objected, so by now the arrangement had solidified into just what they did. May’s knee bumped against Cassiel’s thigh. Two months ago, the same contact area at his mother’s dinner table had been an event.

“I’m early,” May said.

“You are.”

“Three minutes early. Do I get something?”

“You get a gingerbread man.”

May blinked, only now noticing the cookie on the to-go cup’s plastic lid. He picked it up in one hand, then turned the cup to read the handwriting on the side. “You ordered for me?”

The specials sign read: GINGERBREAD LATTE: IT’S ALWAYS SEASONAL.

“You were going to order the seasonal thing,” Cassiel said.

He remembered an image of May wearing an atrocious attempt at a Betelgeuse costume at Halloween, quietly drinking his pumpkin chai while Cassiel stewed.

“Oh, yeah? How many seasons have we Thursday-ed through? What if I was in a cortado phase?”

“Are you?”

May bit the gingerbread man’s head off, and whatever retort he had prepared dissipated as he took his first sip of the drink. He let out a happy sigh and Cassiel was vindicated.

“—Okay,” May said gravely. “So, I’ve met someone.”

Cassiel’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

“A crow,” May continued. “His name is Uriel.”

The cup completed its arc.

“He was on the same bench three days in a row in the park,” May said. “Same time. He watches me. Just me.”

Corvids did, in fact, recognize individual human faces. They held preferences. They had been documented holding grudges across generations and bringing gifts to people who fed them. The claim was scientifically defensible, which was the worst kind of May claim, because it left no clean angle of correction.

“It could have been a common raven,” Cassiel said. “They’re difficult to distinguish at a distance.”

“It was a crow.”

“The size difference is the main indicator, but without a direct comparison⁠—”

“Cassiel. I know my own crow.”

Uriel, the angel of light. “Lily” was track four on the mixtape and so Kate Bush’s voice invoked the name in his head, accompanied by the angel wings doodled in the margin of the liner notes next to May’s handwriting—we gotta watch the red shoes sometime.

Cassiel had listened to the album version and then the live version and then the album version again. He’d found The Line, the Cross and the Curve—the short film’s proper title—and hadn’t watched it, because May had written ‘we’ and Cassiel was holding him to it in a version of the world where he said things like this out loud.

May sat on his left.