Page 80 of Angel of Thursdays

Today had worked. May had worked. Most everything he set out to do, done, remembered. He could list every moment. He had not used anyone or anything to measure his reality against. His reality was a train car.

The reflection in the dark glass blinked when he blinked. It had his face. It was wearing his clothes. He tested one eye and then the other, then couldn’t quite tell if it was the reflection lagging or him. He tugged at the tip of his nose, then pulled at his bottom lip with his finger and there was a delay, half a second maybe, like audio dragging behind the video track in a bad export.

He closed his eyes and dropped his hand.

The train came out at West Portal where the fog and the city were waiting, same as every other ride home from every other good day. He would write this down later when the saturation came back.

* * *

May turned on the space heater and stood in front of it until he felt it in his shins, then kicked off his pants and crawled under the decorative-but-not-decorative throw blanket on the couch. At one stage he almost fell asleep, only to be jolted upright again by a foghorn his body should have learned the timing of but never did.

He felt for his phone and pulled it out, closed out a bunch of tabs while he tried to summon some courage, then muttered “Fuck it,” and locked the phone again. He’d do it tomorrow. Then he stood up and made his way to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face.

He looked at his reflection—or tried to. The I VOTED sticker sat, half-ripped, in the center of the mirror. He scraped at it with his thumbnail, revealing more paper, more residue. The thing was stubborn. So was May.

When it was mostly gone, he could see himself again and he looked about as bad as he felt, dark circled and gaunt and his hair too long. He could only do something about one of those.

May wandered into the kitchen to find some scissors and a few minutes later there was hair in the sink.

Once the hair had been swept up and the sticker had been finally defeated, May sat back down on the couch and dialed Kevin Chao.

Kevin answered on the second ring. Something blender-like was going in the background.

“Wu!” Kevin hollered. “What’s good?”

“Hey Kevin!” May yelled back. The blender noise stopped and he dropped his voice. “I want to talk about Wong Suet Ying.”

“Oh, yeah? So the collector was a dead end. Box was mostly Mandopop, years didn’t overlap. Ben emailed me yesterday—he’s dug up a photo of his grandma backstage in ’72. Could make nice episode art. No record.”

“Right.” May rubbed at his eye. “So… I want to take it over.”

Pause.

“As a producer,” May added. “Let me chase the leads. I’m at a Cantonese restaurant five days a week. Auntie’s been in Chinatown since the seventies, she knows shit. And the Cantopop stuff, I can keep looking. You’ve got other episodes going. Let me give it a shot.”

“Hell yeah, dude. Producer Wu.” He could hear the smile in Kevin’s voice. “That’ll be better than ‘we couldn’t find anything.’”

May exhaled at the ceiling.

“I’m your guy,” he said, jabbing his thumb at his own chest like Kevin could see him.

“Send me whatever you find. Don’t ghost me.”

“Wednesday. I’ll text you Wednesday.”

“Bet, dude. Get it.”

* * *

Just as May was crawling back under the throw, his phone buzzed again. Then again. The sibling group chat was alive once more, only ever in use when Louis had a parental grievance that had to be debated or⁠—

Anna

OK~ So Will and I get in friday night, dinner saturday? Lou you can pick the place~

Louis

bet