Chapter 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.
From the front desk, Lamaria’s voice confirmed Mr. Waters’s three o’clock.
Cassiel’s mother called on Tuesday and asked about his jacket inventory for fall, as if he didn’t have his jacket rotation down to an art by now.
Lauren sent a single text—saaauuuuurrrr…
? He did not reply. She sent a follow-up in the form of a gif of a man shrugging, which he had no response to either.
On Wednesday night he couldn’t sleep. The muscles between his shoulder blades pulled tight, which he attributed to his posture at the bench. He attempted to resolve this with some Poy-Sian oil that David had brought back from a Thailand trip.
Smelling like menthol, he started a video about the world record history of something called Wii Sports Resort Golf.
The stakes were enormous to the people involved and all Cassiel could focus on was the concept of chasing a smaller and smaller number to no meaningful end.
At some point the video ended and the phone sat on his chest with the STDY icon visible, and the room was completely dark, and he was still not asleep.
THE FIRST THURSDAY
Cassiel arrived at the café on Irving at a quarter to ten because arriving at ten would have meant potentially arriving at the same time as May H.
The café was called Sparrow and it was his choice of location. He’d been coming here since Peter recommended it to him off-hand two years ago. It was a narrow hole-in-the-wall with a plum purple storefront.
Orders were placed at the front and a few minutes later a barista in the back passed the coffee through a window cut into the wall.
This was an arrangement Cassiel had found on the first encounter to be efficient and pleasing, and his opinion had not changed since.
The lighting was appropriately warm, the espresso machine far enough from his chosen seat that its noise stayed firmly in the background, and the music they played often had no lyrics.
Cassiel ordered the house chocolate mint latte and took the bench seat against the back wall, sight line to the door. His headphones were stashed in his messenger bag, for once not around his neck.
His shoulders were practically at his ears again.
He discovered this when his next breath came up short.
He corrected the posture but it didn’t last. The muscles climbed again, confirming the problem was not his posture, and that unsettled him.
He shifted his gaze to the clock above the door—cheap, white, battery-powered, likely inaccurate.
The door opened at eight past. The fog came first, then the person.
May H, three exclamation marks, located the table with a wave and a smile that was immediately going to be a problem.
Wide, with a slight gap in the front teeth that hadn’t been visible in his profile picture, canines sharp, a little pronounced.
Cassiel had been looking at the mouth too long.
He made himself track outward to the dark eyes, double-lidded.
A mole on the left cheek. Hair more dark brown than black, slightly wavy.
The man was wearing a brown flannel over a red tee, with sneakers that had once been white. He was slighter in person than in the photograph, and looked younger than twenty-five.
The man pulled out the stool across from him with a scrape and sat.
“Hey—Cassiel?” He said it the way Cassiel said it, with the emphasis on the last syllable. Most people went for the first. “May. Sorry, I know I’m late. The bus was a whole… ride.”
“That’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. He should have messaged if he was running late. But Cassiel was not making it an issue.
May smiled, which showed the teeth again, and Cassiel wasn’t sure what to make of that. May dropped his elbows onto the table, hands held together.
Sparrow’s energy had been low and private, and Cassiel had liked it, chosen it for exactly that, but now there was someone in it whose frequency did not track. Cassiel could not be annoyed by this because he was the one who’d asked that someone to be here.
“So,” May said. “Hi, nice to meet you. Have you already ordered? Wait, yeah, of course you have. —Do you mind if I order before we go over the thing?”
A greeting, a question, a correction, and a second question, and Cassiel had not been given time to answer a single part of it.
He watched May cross back to the counter where he said something to Jonas the barista that Cassiel couldn’t hear.
Whatever it was, it earned a smile. It was the kind of thing he had watched people do his entire life and could not reproduce even if he wanted to.
May’s coffee appeared at the window. He was up and back with it before any more silence could build up.
He held the cup in both palms, his fingers thin, nails trimmed short.
There was a small scar on his hand, a line of white against the skin.
Cassiel looked at it for a beat before returning to May’s face, which was watching him back.
“The dinner is on September 17th,” Cassiel began. He had notes on his phone just in case, but in reality had no need for them. He did not need notes for his own family. “It’s Chuseok, the Korean harvest holiday.”
“Oh—yeah, I’m Chinese, it’s the Moon Festival,” May said quickly, mid-sip. He set the cup down. “Mid-Autumn Festival. My family does it too.”
He didn’t follow up with and that’ll be a problem, so Cassiel carried on.
“It’s at my parents’ house in Fremont. My mom, my dad, my sister, her husband, and their two children. Extended family might come; no one will know until the day of. My mom will ask where you’re from and what you do. If you stop eating at any point during the night she will take it personally.”
“I can eat,” May said.
“My dad won’t say much. He’s quiet, but friendly. My sister is nice. She’ll make it easy for you.”
He’d texted Minju the week before—might bring someone to Chuseok—knowing that telling Minju was telling his mother on a delay he didn’t have to manage.
“She knows you’re bringing someone?”
“She knows.”
May nodded, moving on. “Dress code?”
“Smart casual,” Cassiel answered. He had almost said ‘business.’
“Nice, like an intern at a tech startup.”
Cassiel blinked at him slowly. May flicked at a button on his flannel and carried on. “How much do you guys talk in Korean?”
“My sister and I speak English. My dad will speak English. My mom will accommodate because you’re there, but she might forget and start talking past you in Korean.”
“I can probably handle that,” May said. “I’ve watched a lot of K-dramas.”
Cassiel looked at him.
“What? That’s not realistic?” May grinned.
“Korean from K-dramas is not going to help you.”
“Don’t count me out before you’ve seen my one-man show, Variations on Ottoke.”
Cassiel’s ring clicked once. He took a sip of his latte to occupy his mouth, which was threatening to smile.
“Quick question,” May said, leaning forward. “Is your family expecting someone Korean? Is a random Chinese guy showing up going to be a thing?”
“My mother will be so pleased I showed up with another human being that any other details will be secondary.”
May’s laugh erupted out of him, showing the gap in his teeth again.
“Okay,” he said, nodding sharply. “Okay. That’s helpful intelligence.”
They moved through the remaining logistics.
Duration had been stated by the form. Food restrictions: none on May’s end, which was fortunate because Cassiel’s mother did not believe in them.
The rate: May named the number, and Cassiel agreed because negotiating a person’s hourly value was something he wanted no involvement with.
Then May set his cup down and the cup was empty.
“Okay, all that’s settled,” May said. “I guess let’s not beat around the bush. What am I, exactly, at the dinner?”
“A companion,” Cassiel replied.
“Right, but that’s like… what old rich people have when they’re lonely. A companion could be a cat. I’m going as your date, right?”
Cassiel’s thumb stilled on his ring. He nodded.
“Cool. Is this a coming-out situation? Because if it is, not an issue, just—”
“I’m out,” Cassiel interrupted, a touch irritated, but mostly at himself for not specifying earlier. He was good at specifics and this one was obvious. It was necessary information. “Like I said. Secondary.”
May’s eyebrows lifted as he thought, then he clicked his tongue against his front teeth. The sound should have irritated Cassiel. He merely heard it.
“Not to tell you that you shouldn’t give me money, but I’m not seeing the big picture here. What’s the scam? You don’t look like you’d need to hire a fake date.”
The assessment was reductive. It assumed the problem was what Cassiel looked like rather than what Cassiel was like. The difference between those two things was the entire reason he was sitting in this café paying someone to be here. He was well aware of what he looked like.
“My mother always asks if I’m bringing somebody,” he said. “The answer has been no for a long time. A friend told me about the app, and hiring someone seemed simpler than trying to find a real date.”
May leaned back and gave him a lopsided grin.
“…Yeah, the apps are a nightmare, I get you. Okay. Fake date rules. We need to be on the same page about how we met. What’s believable? If your sister’s like mine it’ll need to pass the smell test.”
“I don’t go anywhere.”
“Anywhere at all?”
“I go to work. I go home. Sometimes I go to my friend’s place.”
“That’s three places.”
“That’s comprehensive.”
May shook his head, smiling. It was different now from the smile he’d entered with, though if Cassiel were to be quizzed on precisely how it was different, he wouldn’t be able to articulate it.
“Then we met at work,” Cassiel offered. He was not good at fiction. “I fix watches. You…?”
“…don’t own a watch. Kind of you to diagnose me with employment outside of the gig economy, though, if that’s what you’re doing. I work at a restaurant in Chinatown. So… maybe we go with that. Unless you’re not a Chinatown type of guy?”
It was feasible that Cassiel could have been there. It was feasible that he’d walked into a restaurant and seen this man with his big eyes and wide mouth and over the course of weeks decided to invite him to Chuseok. It might not hold up under scrutiny, but it was not impossible.
“I’m a Chinatown guy,” he said, absurdly. “—I’ll be a Chinatown guy at Chuseok.”
May snorted, then produced a small battered yellow Field Notes notebook from his pocket, along with a rollerball. He jotted.
“Chinatown connection, Sept 17, Fremont, smart casual,” he muttered as he scrawled.
Cassiel leaned over very slightly to inspect the handwriting. He found it wanting.
May looked up. “That’s a few weeks away. Did you want to meet up again?”
“Yes,” Cassiel said. “Next Thursday, if your job permits.”
“It’ll permit,” May confirmed. “We could actually meet there, if you wanted to go method. Lau Kee, next to Zeke’s Crystals.”
Cassiel considered the merits of this. It would add some textural realism to the story if he knew, tangibly, what the restaurant felt like, but it was a shift in location that would involve charting a different transit route and Cassiel did not want to deal with that.
“I’d prefer to stay here.”
“That’s cool, too. I like this place.” May smiled easily. “Okay, well, I think that’s me.”
He stood, unfolding from the stool casually, and put his hand out. It was awkward, neither professional nor personal, but Cassiel took it. The hand was warm, the palm callused.
“Thursday,” said May.
“Thursday,” confirmed Cassiel.
“I’ll text you a normal amount. Like, a professional number of texts. Minimal typos.”
“Your track record suggests otherwise.”
May snorted again, then turned, crossed the café, and pushed the door open. The fog was there at the threshold, grey and patient. May stepped through it, walked past the front window, and was out of sight.
Cassiel stayed and looked from the now-empty stool to the front of the shop where a man in the window seat was glaring at a tablet. There was only light and shapes beyond the glass. He took a sip from his mug.
He sat in the room a while longer, then picked up his phone and looked at his notifications. Lauren had sent him five messages, and David had sent him two.
He swiped to check in on whatever the latest Lauren Briar Heineken emergency was, and heard it—he had been humming again. Three fragmented notes, heard only because the room was quiet and the man with the exclamation marks was gone.