Chapter 7 #2
So Cassiel supervised from the doorway. His father stood beside his chair, and May stood beside him, hands in his pockets and the pregame playing at the volume both Cassiel and his father preferred.
The analysts on screen discussed something about the defensive line.
May nodded along at one point, which was generous given that he almost certainly couldn’t tell a defensive line from a hedge.
His father said nothing. May, who liked to fill silences, said nothing.
Most people couldn’t sit with his father’s quiet.
They would rush to fill it or take it as absence.
May had been in this house twice and now stood in front of a television watching something he didn’t understand, next to someone who hadn’t asked him to do so, and neither person seemed to need anything else.
The ring turned once, his finger flicking over the beads.
* * *
Dinner was mandu and rice and the kkakdugi from the latest batch, which was four days old and reaching its peak fermentation; the sourness sharper, the crunch still holding.
His mother had steamed the mandu in batches and the ones May had made were identifiable.
Cassiel ate two of them and found they were good.
The filling was right. The seal held. May had learned something in an hour that Cassiel’s own mandu still couldn’t match.
May caught him reaching for a third and deposited one onto Cassiel’s plate with chopsticks. “That one’s mine. You can tell by the crimp.”
The crimp was identifiably May’s. Cassiel ate it.
The table was smaller tonight. Four people, the overhead light still the wrong temperature, and the conversation moved at a pace Cassiel could follow without drowning.
His mother asked May about work. May described Lau Kee flippantly—it’s been there since the eighties, my auntie and uncle, well not actually relatives but you know what I mean, anyway best char siu noodles in town, no I’m not biased, okay I’m a little biased.
“Your family?”
“I’ve got a sister and a brother,” May said, dipping a mandu in soy-vinegar. “Anna’s older—she’s over in Sacramento with her husband. My little brother lives at home. He’s at SF State.”
“Sacramento,” his mother repeated, in the tone of a woman for whom Sacramento existed as a vaguely inconvenient elsewhere. “Is she happy?”
“Yeah, she’s great. Her husband’s kind of a—” May caught himself, glanced at Cassiel, re-calibrated. “He’s got a face. They’re good.”
Cassiel’s chopsticks paused over his plate.
May talked about his family quickly, the smile never leaving his face, editing out details even as he spoke.
His mother was a piano teacher. His father liked to cook, just like Cassiel’s mother.
His brother, who he described as the actual devil but—oh sorry are you guys Christian?
I meant goblin, he’s a goblin. His sister worked as a pharmacist.
His mother was asking the questions. His mother was drawing the map.
And Cassiel realized with the dull clarity of a positional error surfacing on a timegrapher that he had never asked May any of this.
His mother had extracted it all. Cassiel had been meeting May almost every Thursday for two months and hadn’t asked once.
He picked up his chopsticks and ate another mandu.
After dinner, May helped clear. His mother tried to stop him.
May did it anyway, stacking plates efficiently, moving between the kitchen and the dining room with a rhythm that was practiced, professional, and entirely wrong for a dishwasher.
He knew how to carry four plates in two hands, how to angle himself around a person at the sink without breaking stride.
He knew how to work a room from the service side.
The question had been forming for weeks, maybe since Chuseok, maybe since the second Thursday. Someone this fluent with people—why was that person in a kitchen, alone, washing dishes three times a week?
While his mother packed the leftovers, May’s phone buzzed on the table. The screen lit up and Cassiel saw it before he could choose not to.
It was a picture of him. His own face, looking down and slightly to the left, mouth open mid-sentence, the white wall of Sparrow behind him.
He was talking; about what, he couldn’t recall.
It must have been taken last Thursday, based on his Ikiji coat.
He did not know when May had changed his lock screen. His mouth felt dry.
May picked up the phone and thumbed away the notification. The lock screen vanished. He winked at Cassiel, the second time.
The cover story. May had either thought of this detail himself, or possibly the idea had been Lauren’s influence. The choice of this photo, to take it without Cassiel knowing—was a choice.
His mother gave May the good containers again. A new set of leftovers, packed tight, lids locked. She handed Cassiel his bag with the same look she always gave, an expectation that he should eat everything.
At the door, his father appeared for the send-off, the ceremonial shoulder grip. Cassiel first, then May, a brief pressure and release.
“Drive safe,” his father said.
“Next time, I teach you japchae,” his mother said, and May said, “Deal, but I’m gonna need the recipe in writing because I’ll forget,” and she laughed, and the street was quiet, and the jets were merely a memory of a city forty-nine minutes away.
They walked to the station in the dark, the neighborhood quiet. May carried his containers in the crook of his arm. He was quieter on the walk than he’d been at dinner, his wattage dimming. He had been quiet after Chuseok too.
Their footsteps were offset—May’s slightly faster, shorter stride, Cassiel’s longer and heavier.
The distance between their shoulders was approximately six inches, and Cassiel was aware of the six inches, functionally the same as proximity, wanting to translate it into something legible.
Seconds gained, seconds lost, fast, slow.
Neither. Just a gap he was choosing, for now, to maintain.
“Your dad’s cool,” May said.
“He doesn’t usually do that. The TV thing.”
“Yeah, I figured.” May shifted the containers in his arm. “I don’t know anything about football. I’ve been beaned in the head with one, that’s my whole credential.” A few steps in the dark. “But I know about standing in front of TVs with dads.”
On the platform, Fremont Station was nearly empty. The board said eight minutes. May leaned against a pillar and closed his eyes.
“Your mom asked me to come for Christmas,” he said.
Cassiel’s finger sat across the beads of his ring, holding them still and silent.
“She said ‘when you come for Christmas,’ not ‘if.’” May opened one eye. “I think I’ve been conscripted.”
“That sounds like her,” Cassiel said.
“Is that—are you okay with that?” Both eyes were open now.
“Yes. Are you?” Cassiel asked back. What he meant was are you not spending Christmas with your family, who you talk about so fondly that it makes your eyes crinkle?
The platform hummed. The time on the board ticked to seven minutes. Somewhere along the tracks, the approaching train sent a vibration through the concrete that Cassiel could feel in the soles of his shoes.
“I’ve got no other plans,” May said, smiling.