Page 71 of Angel of Thursdays

The apartment was quiet. No piano through the wall, no traffic, nothing to fill the space between them.

May’s face was wet again. They’d dried on the step and they were back. The disconnect was back—tears tracing down from the corners of his eyes, breathing unchanged. May was crying and his voice was level, his hands on the bed still, as though the crying was happening to somebody else.

“I should go,” May said.

“Stay.”

“No.”

“May—”

“This is me telling you.” May stood. He was already moving for the hallway, already reaching for his shoes. “I’m not up and disappearing. I’m going home before I make it worse.”

Cassiel stood in the doorway and his fingers were gripped tight around his thumbs and the word stay was in his mouth again.

May put on his shoes. Zipped the jacket. He straightened up and looked at Cassiel from the hallway, tired and lucid. Choosing this.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” May said.

The door closed. The lock turned—May’s hand, from outside, pulling it shut gently, slowly, like a teenager sneaking out of the house or a thief quietly escaping. Or like Cassiel’s boyfriend who had something wrong with him and didn’t want help and didn’t want to stay.

Cassiel stood in the hallway. Then he walked into the bedroom and picked up the mug from the nightstand. Lukewarm. He carried it to the kitchen and poured it out. Washed it and set it on the shelf where it still belonged, a house within a house.

He walked back through the bedroom, through the doors, into the living room. The bay windows held fog and the faint orange of the streetlight, and the fire escape was a black skeleton against the glass.

He sat on the couch and slumped back into it. On the table beside his elbow, the Midori notebook sat with the cat sticker facing up. Two lists on the inner page, only blank pages after.

He closed his eyes and waited for the text.

17

MAY

The record had stopped again. May didn’t know when, but he could guess. He could time his days against the record now.

The needle had reached the run-out groove and the arm had lifted and the turntable was spinning nothing, the platter going around and around, waiting for something. The blanket was over his legs and the ceiling still was above his head, so the sky wasn’t falling and that was some comfort.

May pulled the blanket up to his chin and stared upwards.

He knew he should flip the record or stop the player. He knew he should eat something. He knew he should check his phone, which was somewhere under the blanket or between the couch cushions or on the floor, buzzing occasionally.

Instead he pulled the blanket over his head and breathed into the warm cave of his own chest and thought about how he was now smelling his own breath.

The light through the window told him nothing. It was the color of every afternoon in the Outer Richmond, so it could be noon or four o’clock or worse. The light in this apartment had been a problem since he’d moved in and he’d solved it by sitting in the dark or bulk-buying candles.

The pill organizer was on the kitchen counter when he pulled the blanket back down for air. It was on the kitchen counter before that, too, but now he was gazing at it.

Wednesday’s compartment sat open and empty, everything after it still closed. He’d forgotten Thursday. Then Friday he’d thought about it and concluded, because a guy who had been horizontal for two days was making good decisions, that the pills hadn’t stopped what happened. He’d been medicated, totally compliant, and January 29th had still happened. The color grade had still gone blue-grey and he’d still walked out the door. So what were the pills for, actually? Maybe the flatness was the pills. Maybe the pills were a leash that had snapped and the thing on the other end of it was just May.

He slumped back and turned away. The turntable was still making the sound. Tk tk tk tk tk.

The calendar on the wall was wrong. That was the other thing. He’d taken it as a freebie the year before from Lau Kee—2024, Year of the Dragon, big old 福, still sitting on the twelfth month.

He’d brought a new one home on either Thursday or Friday. Auntie Tsang had pressed it into his hands. Year of the Snake, propped against the toaster where he’d left it, because putting up the new calendar meant taking down the old one and taking down the old one meant the Dragon year was over and the Dragon year was⁠—

Everything. Better. Everything better. Sparrow and Thursdays and the first time Cassiel’s face did the thing and the turntable and the kissing and the word boyfriend and Christmas morning and all of it happened under the Dragon calendar. Snake year was a few days old and it had already eaten it all.

The Snake year could eat shit. He wasn’t changing the calendar.