Page 50 of Angel of Thursdays

May knelt across from him and unwrapped the kraft paper, then pulled the cardboard flaps open. He looked into the box, then up at Cassiel, eyebrows climbing.

“I—Dude, this is too much.”

Cassiel didn’t meet his eye, just shook his head both at the assertion and at being called dude. He set his phone on the table surface, opened the level app, and watched the bubble. Two degrees off. He reached into the open box, folded a piece of the inner packing, and shimmed the rear left leg.

He lifted the AT-LP120X from its foam cradle and set it on the now-level table, connected the power, removed the transit screws, set the platter on the spindle. The counterweight went on. Pre-set to 2.0 grams, but he checked it with the digital gauge from his bag, because pre-set meant factory and factory meant approximate.

2.02 grams. He adjusted. ‘Close enough’ was not a standard he applied to anything, but the purpose of a machine was to be used. The use would be up to May.

May had climbed up on the couch.

“You know,” he said, “you didn’t actually need to buy me a turntable to get into my apartment.”

Cassiel’s hands paused on the anti-skate dial. It was a joke. Eighty percent of what came out of May’s mouth were jokes.

“Didn’t I?”

“No, idiot,” May answered, voice soft.

Cassiel exhaled and carried on, set the anti-skate and connected the RCA cables to the composite inputs on May’s flatscreen—not ideal, but the signal path was clean. He’d look into powered speakers later. This was a continuing project, a promise like the promise of a sequel to the mixtape.

Finally, he reached back and took the record from his bag, slid the vinyl from the inner sleeve, and placed it on the platter. The cue lever lowered and the needle found the groove.

“Are We There” began to play. Guitar and piano, followed by Sharon Van Etten’s voice, low and melancholy. The overhead light was still wrong, but the rightness of the sound made the wrongness of the light bearable.

“You picked this for me too?” May asked.

Cassiel flicked the beads on his ring. “I followed what you like.”

May looked at him. The look lasted longer than the answer warranted and the brightness in his eyes was a different kind of bright. It could have been the light, but it wasn’t.

He unfolded from the couch and disappeared down the hallway, through a red curtain pinned across the bedroom doorway. A drawer opened and shut, the sound loud beneath the music, and he came back holding something wrapped in newspaper.

“So, my thing is not a turntable,” May said. He sat on the floor beside Cassiel, cross-legged, their knees almost touching. “It’s much… okay, it’s smaller than a turntable. Spoilers, no electricity. I don’t know if you even⁠—”

“May.”

May grimaced a smile and handed it over.

The newspaper came away to reveal a notebook. Midori MD, A5, the cotton cover smooth and pale under Cassiel’s thumb. The paper was heavier than Tomoe River, not as slippery as Rhodia, a thickness he liked. He owned few notebooks since leaving college, more jotpads, meant for numbers and specifications and the odd note.

A cat sticker adorned the front cover, clearly bespoke. Orange tabby with one paw raised, beady eyes round. It reminded him of a cat he’d taken a picture of a few weeks ago.

“I know a guy from—you know, the SF Pen Show?” May said, when Cassiel hadn’t spoken. He did know. It was an annual fountain pen convention he’d occasionally attended. Why May would have been there is another story. “I figured watch guys are pen guys, and pen guys are notebook guys. So I texted him, I said ‘he fixes watches and he’s kind of intense about quality,’ so he asked if you use fountain pens and I said ‘yeah probably, he’s got that energy.’”

Cassiel nodded, still looking at the cat sticker. A track ended on the album and a new one began.

“I was looking at the ones with the colors and the pleather and the real leather and whatever and then he said it’s the paper that matters.” May put his fingertip where the cat’s cheek puffed out. “So I deferred to expertise. And the girl at the shop said I could pick a sticker.”

Fifteen dollars for the notebook, maybe seventeen. The sticker was free. May had texted a stranger, explained poorly, trusted the judgment, and put a sticker on the cover to show that he listened.

“I know you don’t… journal, or whatever, but. Maybe you could use it for something. I have my purple book for purple things. You could⁠—”

Cassiel opened the cover to the blank first page.

“I’ll use it. Thank you,” he said. The words did not feel enough but it was what he had.

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