Page 7 of Angel of Thursdays

His phone lit up with a message from his brother. A photo of a steak dinner, no caption; how Louis often deigned to communicate with him. To go back through their chat would reveal many such check-ins and a concerning amount of potatoes.

May typed nice and then deleted it and flipped open his green notebook and wrote: say something nice to your brother NOT LITERALLY NICE. Then he drew an empty checkbox next to it. Actionable. He’d do it tomorrow.

Next he checked his bank balance, because he needed to keep his mood consistent somehow. It was a number that kept him where he was. STDY wasn’t fun money.

The TV was already on. It was always already on or he turned it on without remembering the turning. He’d left some show streaming, a C-drama with fifty-thousand episodes. Costumes, hairpieces, people in courtyards staring severely at each other as one of three approved songs played over the intensity of their stares. The woman on screen opened her mouth.

“How could His Majesty leave me so destitute⁠—”

May mouthed the words. He’d watched this episode or an episode from this drama, or an episode from a different drama with the same actress. She’d been in everything for a decade and May had absorbed it all. His Chinese came from her and from women like her, so often when he spoke he sounded less like a Chinese-American guy from the Bay and more like a scorned concubine.

His father was a man of few words in all his languages. His mother spoke Mandarin when she wanted everyone in the house to understand something and Hokkien when she did not want the children to know anything. May knew exactly enough to know when she was talking about him on the phone, but not enough to know what he’d done wrong.

The drama carried on with the lady in the courtyard and as she wept, May began to see the actress who’d been directed to weep, who had found the tears from somewhere else and poured them out so the lady in the courtyard could have her sadness. And May watched her, and May watched himself watch her.

One moment he was on the couch and the couch was his couch and the room was his room and the next moment all of those things were still true but he was seeing them from slightly behind his own eyeballs. A show about watching a guy sitting on a couch watching a show.

His hand moved. Thumb on cheekbone, fingers on temple. Tap tap. The pressure of his own fingers against his own face, checking that the submarine wasn’t leaking.

The drama’s soundtrack swelled as the woman’s monologue reached its climax, which meant the dramatic ending theme would be kicking in soon. He didn’t remember starting the episode, and that made sense, because the TV had already been on when he’d entered the room. His thumb pressed harder against his cheekbone and the room came back for real this time.

* * *

A foghorn honked from somewhere out west. Either the sound or the rattle had woken him. He didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, but he always slept like shit, so whatever impact his impromptu unconsciousness had wouldn’t matter. The lady on TV, now in a pavilion, was crying about some other injustice, not a hair out of place.

May sat on the couch with his phone on his lap. His lock screen told him it was one in the morning. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and swiped to STDY. The booking he’d accepted hours ago in the alley, partly on impulse, before he’d written a word back. The accepted request sat there with an empty reply field beneath it that May should have filled, could easily have filled, on the ride home from work.

Was it weird to reply this late? Probably. But this was San Francisco and the request had been weird, and the app was weird. He tapped the field and started typing.

Hey!!! This is definitely my kind of thing. I’m good at dinners and parents. I once took an improv class and I’m extremely patient. Meeting beforehand is a good call. When works for you? I’m free Tue, Wed, Thurs before noon. May (That is my name, not just saying a month!!!)

May read it back. He added one exclamation mark and then deleted it again, trying to settle on whether three was too many. It was too many. Did he sound too eager?

He glanced back up at the end of the original message, at ‘Thank you,’ and decided eager was appropriate, with three exclamation marks.

He sent it, and then made a mental reminder to write down that he’d sent it.

3

CASSIEL

May H from STDY texted in threes. Three messages where one would have been sufficient. The first usually being a question, the second a hasty clarification of the question, and the third would be resolution of the first two questions without Cassiel’s input, followed by a new question.

Replying required concentration. Cassiel could state what he needed and precisely pinpoint something wrong, but the difficulty was being a stranger responding to another stranger. His first draft read like a shipment confirmation. His second included the word ‘likewise,’ which he considered a low point. The third draft was fine, so he sent it before he tried to start a fourth.

Over the next week came the logistics of the arrangement. The café, the time, confirmation, reconfirmation, a follow-up that read Yeah!! Sidjbds great! followed rapidly by Typo sorry. Sounds great—which Cassiel had stared at for a few seconds before putting the phone away because there was too much to unpack there and he’d rather not start.

He picked up the next movement, a 1960’s Longines with a cracked jewel. Cracked jewels were a problem he could fix with his hands.

Peter leaned into the workspace on Monday to announce that Mr. Waters was picking up his Cartier at three and that the left display case needed dusting, the latter part having nothing to do with Cassiel.

“The dust wouldn’t be a problem if you rotated the stock,” Cassiel said.

“They’re classics, Casio. They age like wine.”

“They age like the displays. Which also haven’t changed.”

Peter pointed a finger at him without malice and retreated. The display would not be dusted. The stock would not be rotated. Peter would return to his counter and his magazine about fishing boats, and the shop would continue to exist in this state in perpetuity.