Chapter 13 #3
Cassiel found him by the USED COOKING section, appearing at his shoulder with a book about octopuses. Octopi.
“An octopus has three hearts,” he said.
“That’s just showing off,” May replied.
“Two pump blood to the gills. One pumps it to the body. When they swim, the third heart stops.”
May thought about that, tried to imagine it. Did he know how cephalopods swam? Was it head-first? It was wriggly. He’d watched a documentary, probably, but forgotten most of it.
“So they have to choose between moving and feeling?”
Cassiel looked at the book, turning it to inspect the blurb on the back.
“I don’t know if it’s a choice,” he said.
They walked back out onto the street and got bánh mì from the Vietnamese place around the corner, eating on the sidewalk because the fog was sitting on the Richmond and there was nowhere to sit anyway.
A rainbow flag in a window two doors down was bright despite the overcast. Cassiel had a piece of cilantro on his lip and May removed it with his thumb and kept it there longer than necessary, because he was allowed.
The record store was four blocks from May’s apartment, on Balboa.
He’d been coming here since before the accident, back when he was Wuyue and bought vinyl without a turntable to display in his room as art.
Now he was May and he had a turntable his boyfriend had given him, and those other vinyls were in his childhood home and he had no budget to feed the machine. But browsing was free.
The clerk nodded at them as they came in.
Cassiel moved past a man clad in full denim to begin a methodical flip-through of one of the bins.
The speakers were playing something jangly from further down near the end of the store.
May slotted himself between the denim guy and Cassiel, glancing up at the nearest speaker.
Cassiel didn’t seem to care, so May made himself busy pretending that he, too, was interested in the New Arrivals.
Cassiel pulled a record and held it at arm’s length, scrutinizing the liner notes.
May kept on flipping, eventually arriving at the World section, imagining for a moment—what if he just stumbled upon the missing grandmother record, right here?
He looked for a young Chinese woman whose face he knew as a picture of a picture, still somehow clear in his memory despite its tendency to drop things.
He didn’t find her. Instead he found an Anita Mui record with a cover he liked and imagined owning it.
Imagined playing it in his living room and swaying to whatever was on it.
Imagined saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m a huge fan,” and acting like he hadn’t just been drawn to it for the red dress and the fierce eyebrows.
He checked the sticker. Twelve dollars. May put it back.
Walking the four blocks home, they passed the Little Free Library box on the corner of Balboa. Small, purple, paint chipping.
“Purple,” May said, and pointed at it like Cassiel needed to know, and when Cassiel did not react like this was world-shattering information, May leaned in and pecked him on the cheek.
He had a book in his bag now. He was going to read this one. For real.
The wind came in off the ocean and May inhaled the smell of salt, adjusted his scarf, rubbing the cashmere between his thumb and forefinger.
He wore the scarf two weeks a year when January got serious, stashed it in a ziplock bag the rest of the time.
It was Anna’s gift to him from two Christmases ago. Red for fortune.
“So,” May said. “I’m not going home for New Year’s. Uh, Chinese New Year.”
Cassiel looked at him.
“Why?”
“My mom and I aren’t—Well, that’s not fair, we’re—” He waved a hand, the gesture standing in for a whole spiel he wasn’t ready to give. “Anyway, I’m not going. I wanted to… uh. Seollal’s the twenty-ninth. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come?”
Small. He made it small on purpose. His hands were in his pockets and his thumbnail was pressing into his index finger hard enough to leave a mark but the walls weren’t going up. He was still here.
“My mother has been planning the menu since the twelfth.”
May’s step faltered. “She—already knows?”
“She assumed,” Cassiel said, placing a little emphasis on the word ‘assumed’ that rang dangerously close to amusement, “that you would be there for at least some portion of it.”
That was a classic Asian mom move. A classic Miss Mary move, actually, to assume that he was going to make it out to Fremont, possibly on the same night that he was expected at his own parents’ place.
They walked the last few blocks quietly. May’s apartment was around the corner, the mint-green stucco pretty in the golden light. The beautiful window that was not his glared down at them as they approached, every day a reminder that he did not live where the window lived.
Inside, Cassiel went to the turntable. Adjusting something, always adjusting something. May found Louis’s cartridge still in the Switch. He turned the TV on, said, “Hey Cassiel, you wanna see something cool?” and didn’t wait.