Page 47 of Angel of Thursdays

He was here for the box on the shelf above the parts drawers, where it had been sitting since the twentieth, wrapped in brown kraft paper.

The box weighed twenty-three pounds and contained an Audio-Technica AT-LP120X. Quartz-locked direct drive, die-cast aluminum platter, the stock AT-VM95E stylus swapped for the VM95ML microline; fourteen minutes at the bench with a jeweler’s screwdriver and the alignment template. The counterweight came pre-set from the factory at 2.0 grams. The anti-skate matched. He’d packed his bag with the rest: the replacement RCA cables, a digital stylus gauge, an anti-static brush, and the record. He was aware this was unhinged, but as usual this didn’t mean it was the wrong course of action.

Cassiel carried the box out the front door. Clement Street was empty—shuttered bakeries and a cat watching imperiously from a second-floor window. He glanced up and their eyes briefly met.

The train car held only six people, none near him, so the turntable box sat on the seat beside him, too large for his lap and too expensive for the floor. He kept one hand on it through the curves.

May made this trip. Not BART from the avenues to Fremont with a turntable—but the transit equivalent. The 29 to Sparrow, the bus-to-BART combination for Chuseok, for the other dinner, for every Thursday that required crossing the city on a schedule built around a dishwashing shift and a bus that came when it came. May made this trip carrying containers, egg tarts, whatever the morning demanded, and arrived smelling like soap and rush and five-to-eight minutes late with a gap-toothed grin that made the room whole.

Cassiel had never calculated the route before. It hadn’t occurred to him. May always showed up.

The East Bay opened up beyond the window. Brown hills, freeway, the light widening. Fremont in twenty minutes.

* * *

At the house, the bulkhead light was on despite the hour, daylight in daylight. There was a wreath on the door now—artificial pine, red ribbon, a single pinecone wired to the bottom that had been spray-painted gold. His mother’s handiwork. She painted pinecones gold every year. He’d forgotten that.

He slipped off his shoes at the entryway. His mother’s slippers, his father’s house shoes, Minju’s ankle boots, David’s oxfords, Jaewon’s sneakers. And at the end of the row, blue canvas shoes, recently scrubbed clean. Cassiel arranged his loafers beside them.

His mother opened the door in her peony apron and a garishly floral hot water bottle was tucked against her lower back. This had May all over it. She peered at the box.

“What is that?”

“May’s present,” he answered. The family’s presents had been arranged beneath the tree by proxy the night before. This was too large.

She looked at the box, then at him, then at the box again. The hm that followed was the approving one. She stepped back. He carried the box inside and set it against the wall beside the shoe rack.

Jaewon sat on the living room floor with a shoe. A bright red low-top slip-on, cheap canvas, certainly unbranded, but on the side in vinyl was an iron-on transfer of Foxy the Pirate. The cut was clean. Cricut work made by someone with a steady hand and the right machine.

“Uncle Cass!” Jaewon held the shoe aloft like a grail. “May-hyung got me FNAF shoes.”

“I see that.”

“They’re limited.” He rotated the shoe so Cassiel could appreciate every angle. “That means it’s the only one in Earth.”

“That’s technically true.”

It wasn’t, but it was Christmas. Cassiel wasn’t correcting his nephew on a technicality.

“May-hyung said it means special.”

“In this case, he’s correct.”

Jaewon looked at May. May looked at Cassiel. The grin was enormous.

“Did you hear that?” May said. “He said I’m correct. Someone mark the date.”

“The other one’s got Freddy,” Jaewon said, already reaching for the box. The second shoe had Freddy Fazbear on the outer side, the vinyl slightly thicker than the Foxy transfer—a second pass, maybe, or a different sheet. Whoever had done it had matched the placement on both shoes. The eye-lines of the characters faced forward at the same angle.

Jaewon let out a small roar and shoved both shoes on. They were slightly too large. He didn’t care. He stood up and walked in a circle, Foxy on the left foot, Freddy on the right, and Hayoung watched from David’s lap and gurgled.

“Jaewon-ah, don’t forget to thank your uncle,” called Minju from the next room.

“Thanks!”

His nephew spun around, bumping against Cassiel’s leg briefly, grinning up at him. Cassiel’s gift to Jaewon this year was slime encased in plastic dinosaur eggs. This was nothing compared to limited edition FNAF shoes, he knew, and did not resent the fact. He reached out and patted the boy’s hair. Said boy immediately ran away and launched his body directly onto the floor.

May was wearing a blue oxford, sitting on the carpet beside Jaewon with his legs stretched out. The collar of the shirt sat evenly, and the shade of blue was good against his skin.