Page 93 of Angel of Thursdays

May came first—that never happened—the tension cresting and breaking, his whole body curling inward, Cassiel’s name squeaked into the air between them. Cassiel followed against him, hips stuttering, hand tight enough to bruise on May’s thigh, and what came out was closer to an exhale than a moan.

They lay there. May’s chest was sticky with sweat and fluids and he didn’t care. His unsticky hand found Cassiel’s fine hair, fingers moving slow, tracing the shape of his head.

“Tissues,” Cassiel murmured.

“In a minute.”

“The sheets. Your⁠—”

“In a minute,” May groused, shifting up to nip at Cassiel’s chin. “We can get messier.”

Cassiel exhaled through his nose, meaning he was allowing it, that the mess could exist for sixty whole seconds before the need to address it became an issue. May smiled at the ceiling. He rolled onto his side. Cassiel’s face was right there, flushed, hair mussed. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth was soft. May traced his cheekbone with two fingers.

“Put the CD on?” he asked. “From the start.”

Cassiel looked at him. The desk was four feet away. The CD player was in the bedroom, the mixtape still in the tray. May watched Cassiel do the math—get up, cross the room, press play, come back—and decide it was worth it.

The first notes filled the room through the speakers, a song about a small city. It wasn’t sex music. It was settling music. May’s eyes fell on his mug still on the nightstand, the little pink house inside a room singing about a city inside a house and May was a body in the house watching the⁠—

He exhaled as Cassiel came back, the warmth of his body returning to May’s. They were two bodies.

May lay in the afternoon light in a bed that smelled like both of them and sang along to the song.

22

CASSIEL

A knock came at 7:48 a.m. on a Tuesday while Cassiel was fixing his hair. He exhaled and stalked through the apartment to the door and looked through the peephole.

Indigo bomber jacket, hands stuffed in pockets, uneven haircut.

Cassiel was dressed but not ready. He’d been up since six. The ring his nephew had traded him, that had lived on his finger through almost two years, had not returned and was not going to. The week he’d lost it, he had gone back to Amoeba and checked every bin in World Music, the floor around the singer-songwriter section, the counter. Asked a guy at the register if anyone had turned in a ring, a small one, metal or something like it, with five colored beads. The guy had checked a drawer and said, “Sorry, man.”

He had walked back up the street, eyes scanning the ground as if that would in any world produce what he was looking for, and had predictably come up with nothing. He had gone back to Lauren’s place and searched every room he could have walked through as well as several he knew he hadn’t. Nothing.

Two weeks later, his thumb still went looking for it. The absence had become something he was learning to live with, but the learning process was irritating.

He opened the door.

“Hi,” May said, brightly. “I had a question.”

“It’s seven forty-nine in the morning,” Cassiel told him.

“Okay, so I should have called.” May bounced once on his heels, then slowed. He was still smiling. “Ben—the grandson. He found a document from an old immigration thing—with her actual Chinese name on it. And it’s Wong for Huang, like mine, not Wong for Wang. That’s what Ben thought it was too, so we all just assumed.” He said this quickly, the way he did when he’d had too much instant coffee and clearly hadn’t slept. “I talked to Auntie at work last night and she knows someone at the Wong association in Oakland. The, uh—family association. She says this lady’s been there since the seventies. So I thought—Oakland. Chinatown. Huang. It’d be something to chase.”

Cassiel’s thumb dragged across his bare finger and he had to consider the actual words. This was a real lead, an interesting one. One that would make for what May called ‘good radio,’ and he was clearly excited. And Cassiel wanted to feel something other than tired and unsettled. Not toward May.

A little toward May.

May was looking at his hands. The finger had been bare since the night they’d swapped jackets. May had not asked about it then. He didn’t ask now.

“So you’re going to Oakland,” Cassiel said.

May shifted. “Well, yeah. You don’t have to come, though. I just got excited, I know you’ve got work. I’ll head to the station, we can talk about it tonight or⁠—”

“Stop.” Cassiel knew what this was and hated it more than the idea of a vague daytrip to Oakland. He didn’t want to go, but he didn’t want May to leave.

May looked… something. Taken aback, or apprehensive. Worried.