Page 68 of Angel of Thursdays

The car was quiet except for the engine and the road. Cassiel’s ring was still. Not long ago, his father had driven him and May to the station, the weight of a turntable on their laps. The drive was routine. But this was the two of them on the 880 and forty minutes of highway, and the last time Cassiel had been driven alone by his father for this long was high school.

Cassiel had been in the kitchen when May left. Or somewhere else, he’d dipped into his old bedroom at one point and—he couldn’t reconstruct it precisely. He’d been somewhere else in the house, and May was playing with Jaewon in the living room, and at some point between 4:30 and 5:00, May had stood up, walked to the door, put on his shoes and left.

He tried to think of where May would go and what came up was bordering on worthless. He knew May’s apartment; he knew his own. He knew Sparrow and Linden & Pratt. He knew the Lim house, because the Lim house was his. He knew the shops along Clement Street that May liked, the dim sum place he raved about. He knew the restaurant in Chinatown where May worked and where Cassiel had never set foot.

He flicked the beads back and forth as his father took the exit toward the avenues.

May’s apartment was dark. No light in the window, no movement behind the curtain. Cassiel tried the side gate. Locked. He called again. Straight to voicemail. He stood on the sidewalk and looked at the building, and it occurred to him that he didn’t have a key to this place. May had his spare—January-new, on the ring with his Ninja Turtles keychain. Cassiel had never asked for one in return, assumed whoever May’s landlord was would not allow spare keys.

“He’s not here,” he told his father through the car window.

“Where else?”

Cassiel reached for an answer. This place should have been the answer.

“His parents. Outer Sunset, near Taraval.”

“You know the house?”

He didn’t. He’d never been given the address. My mom and I aren’t great. Heard and never thought about.

His father drove south. The fog thickened past Nineteenth Avenue, the streetlights gaining halos. The Outer Sunset at night was block after block of row houses, all identical from the street. Cassiel looked for something he’d recognize and found nothing. He didn’t know which house. He didn’t know which block.

They drove Taraval for four blocks but he couldn’t tell his father where to stop. Another chasm, because he didn’t know where May went and didn’t know who his people were. He didn’t know what his boyfriend did when he wasn’t around.

Kevin Chao, the podcast guy. May had mentioned him, the episodes, the editing. Cassiel didn’t have a number. Lauren, his friend, not May’s; May wouldn’t go to Lauren’s. Louis, May’s brother, his best shot at reaching him, but Cassiel didn’t have a way to contact him, had never met him, and Louis lived in one of these houses.

“Chinatown?”

“Closed,” Cassiel said. “Chinese New Year.”

His father turned east anyway. They drove past the avenues, the park on their left, the city assembling itself in the windshield. Grant Avenue was shuttered, steel gates rolled down, red lanterns dark. He knew that. He’d said it and his father had driven there anyway, because checking was better than not checking.

They drove west through the park. The trees were dark overhead, the fog thinning on this side. Neither of them spoke. The route to 4th Avenue was the route home—back to Cassiel’s place, and they took it because there was nowhere else to go.

* * *

May was on the step.

The streetlight caught his silhouette and Cassiel knew the shape of him instantly. How could he not? He knew the shape his hair made, the jut of his ears. The exact width of shoulders hunched in a jacket that didn’t fit. It was too broad, too long in the sleeves, a style that May would never purchase. Not his. May hadn’t worn a jacket on the way over, and none had been missing from the house. This had come from somewhere else.

May had a spare key and had not used it. Instead he’d sat down on the concrete in January with a working key and chosen the step.

His father stopped the car. The engine idled.

“He came to your door,” his father said.

Cassiel opened the car door.

“Go drink something warm. Both of you.”

“Okay,” Cassiel answered, and got out, pulling his coat around him. A few steps toward the building, then he heard the car pull away behind him. His father driving back to Fremont, back to the house alone.

He looked over his shoulder, watched the taillights turn the corner. Red, then gone.

May looked up. His eyes were slightly bloodshot in a way that suggested he’d been rubbing at them. His pupils were slightly dilated from the dark, but no more than that. They were his eyes, the shadows beneath them heavy. Another trick of the light, or something Cassiel should have noticed at any time during the day.

“Hey,” May said. His voice was hoarse.