Chapter 14
CASSIEL
Gingerbread Latte: IT’S SEASONAL.
The specials board had been redone over the weekend.
The ALWAYS from December had disappeared, replaced by a fresh problem.
The serif on the letter g curved inward like a fishhook, making Gingerbread look like Ginyerbread.
Cassiel considered mentioning it to Jonas for two reasons.
The first was the serif, which would make him sound more insane than Jonas already thought he was.
The second—more reasonable—was that it was nearing the end of January, and IT’S SEASONAL was still stretching definitions, ALWAYS or not.
But Cassiel decided to say nothing.
He sat at the bench seat against the back wall, where the brick met plaster and the draft from the pass-through window couldn’t reach.
His mug was his favorite and the latte was still too hot to drink.
The integrity of the chocolate chips was going to be a concern but he held it anyway. His hands happened to be cold.
Sparrow on a Tuesday had a different demographic than Sparrow on a Thursday.
A woman in her sixties with reading glasses on a beaded chain had taken the window table.
Mochaccino, crossword, ink pen. Cassiel respected the conviction of ink.
A stroller blocked the bathroom hallway, its occupant asleep with one sock on. Jonas wiped the counter in long arcs.
Cassiel slipped his headphones on.
The Midori notebook sat closed on the table beside his elbow.
He’d written in it once since Christmas.
To be precise, he’d drawn a straight line down the first page, creating two empty columns.
He titled one, but not the other. Nothing else.
And nothing else today either, it seemed.
Ink required conviction and his Pilot Custom 823 was still clipped in the breast pocket of his blazer.
* * *
Peter had left a Breitling Navitimer on the intake shelf with a yellow tag that read CUSTOMER SAYS “RUNS WEIRD.”
The shop was cold, so Cassiel kept his blazer on as he sat down at the bench. Peter kept the heat low until noon; the display case glass fogged otherwise. Fingers stiff, Cassiel turned on the lamp.
The Breitling first. Caseback off—Valjoux 7750 underneath, dusty and dry. Oil migration across the train. Third wheel pivot with lateral play. Six seconds fast per day, within COSC tolerance, outside what the movement should do when properly serviced. He jotted the diagnosis down and set it aside.
The Hamilton had been on the bench since Monday. A Khaki Field, mid-sixties—the owner’s uncle had worn it in Vietnam, and the kid was graduating in May and wanted it running. Cassiel was close to done. What remained was slow, careful, and entirely his focus.
He liked this watch. It was overbuilt for what it was, but someone at the factory in Lancaster had finished these bridges knowing they’d be opened under worse light than Cassiel’s lamp, by hands less steady than his, and had done the work properly anyway. He respected that.
He found the tweezers and got to work.
“Casio,” came Peter’s voice from the front, after a while. “Lauren’s calling the shop.”
“She doesn’t need to call the shop. She can call me.”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not calling the shop. Called the business line to ask what time you take lunch. I told her twelve thirty.”
“I eat at twelve fifteen.”
“I know.” Peter had appeared, leaning on the doorframe, coffee in hand. “I was buying you time.”
“I’ll be taking my break at twelve thirty,” Cassiel replied.
Peter’s answering “Okaaay” faded toward the front of the shop.
* * *
Lauren arrived at 12:30, coming through the door, already mid-sentence.
“—and I told him, like, to his face, ‘you have the aesthetic sensibility of a mall cop,’ and he said, ‘that’s actually what we’re going for,’ like, what? Who? Hi Peter.”
“Hi Lauren.” Peter didn’t look up from his newspaper.
“Love the vest.”
“Thanks. Mandy got it for me.”
Peter’s daughter had purchased him a new vest for Christmas, having allegedly told him, “Daddy, you’ve been wearing that ratty thing since I was born,” and took it upon herself to upgrade it. It was deep green and a decided improvement.
Lauren pulled up the stool and sat. She glanced at the Okaeri wrapper beside his mat and rolled her eyes, then dug into her bag, a minuscule thing, and somehow produced an unspilled iced coffee from it.
“I went on a date Tuesday,” she said. “With a man who brought his own salad dressing to the restaurant in a teeny tiny mason jar.”
“Why.”
“Ranch. He didn’t trust restaurant ranch.”
“That’s not unreasonable.”
“Don’t side with the ranch man.” She bit her straw. “He also doesn’t believe in breakfast. Not like a dietary thing—a philosophy. He wrote a post about it on LinkedIn.”
Cassiel’s tweezers moved a jewel into position. She told him about the parking garage project at work, about a podcast she’d heard on the bus about how love languages were bullshit, about whether her roommate’s cat was plotting something.
“Oh—Minju sent me a photo of Hayoung’s outfit.” She swiped her phone and held it at him. His baby niece in a pink hanbok, resolutely looking at something off-camera. “Look at this. I’m gonna eat her hands.”
Cassiel glanced up from the movement. “When did Minju send you a photo?”
“Like, last night?” Lauren wiped condensation off her cup. “She’s coordinating the kids’ outfits. Jaejae wants to wear his Christmas shoes with his little boy dress.”
“He can wear the shoes. And it’s hanbok.”
“Cass, they clash.”
“It’s his Seollal,” Cassiel said.
Lauren looked at him for a beat, lips pursed and eyes squinted. Then she grinned, wide and sudden. “You’re different.”
Cassiel lifted a brow and waited for the conclusion.
“I don’t mean—” She gestured with the iced coffee. “I mean you’re the same, but you’re different. You’re like… one degree to the left.”
“That’s not a meaningful unit of measurement.”
“Oh my God, it’s a compliment. Take it.”
He took it.
“So is May coming to the—what is it, Lunar New Year?”
“Seollal. Yes.”
“Is his family not doing anything?”
Cassiel set the tweezers aside and looked over. “He and his mother aren’t close right now.”
“That’s it?” Lauren was waiting for something more, something that constituted gossip.
“That’s what he told me,” he replied.
“What about his dad?”
Cassiel opened his mouth then closed it.
May had said everyone’s doing their own thing at Christmas.
He’d said my mom and I aren’t great on a walk home from their outing on Clement Street.
He’d mentioned her name was Teresa in January, casually, when Cassiel asked about the abundance of mandarins in his kitchen. May’s father was—
May’s father was an unknown quantity. May had talked about Anna, about Louis, about Teresa’s piano teaching and her feelings about ‘fire qi.’ About his father, May had said almost nothing, which Cassiel supposed meant there wasn’t anything May considered interesting about his father.
“I don’t know about his dad,” Cassiel said.
Lauren shrugged, picked up her straw wrapper from the bench, then walked it to the trash can and dropped it in.
As she came back, she sat down on the edge of the workbench and said, “Oh, I forgot the best part. The ranch guy wanted me to subscribe to his fucking Substack. Like, what are we doing here? Is there something wrong with me?”
Cassiel picked up the tweezers. She had moved on. When Lauren moved on, you moved on.
* * *
The apartment was dark when he unlocked it. He didn’t turn on the overhead because he didn’t hate himself. The hallway lamp came on first, then the bedroom lamp through the French doors, then the living room. Three switches in sequence, a perfect circuit he could walk without sight.
In the kitchen, the sesame oil sat on the shelf beside the rice vinegar.
He’d never bought sesame oil before December.
On the counter behind it, May’s mug: a vintage Otagiri ceramic in the shape of a Victorian row house, the Painted Ladies in pinks and creams, a chimney for a handle.
May had found it at a thrift store and carried it home in his backpack, cradled in his arms.
Cassiel had looked it up later: Otagiri, Japanese company, 1980s, discontinued. It was too large for a normal shelf and too awkward to put away. It sat there, a house within a house. Cassiel could live with that.
He filled the kettle. Through the wall, his neighbor started. Not Chopin tonight; singing, her voice low and smooth. “How Insensitive.”
They passed each other occasionally, exchanged nods. In two years, they’d had three total conversations, each about mail. Her practice schedule was Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 6:30 to 8:30. Most nights she sang. Some nights it was classical. Cassiel preferred the singing.
The kettle clicked. He poured. Through the wall, the same phrase repeated, adjusted, repeated again. Working something out.
His phone buzzed on the counter. Minju.
He picked up. His thumb found the ring on his index finger. The five colored beads were smooth and worn from all his fidgeting by now, the thin wire of the ring perhaps having a year left in it before he would have to find a replacement or—create something new out of what remained.
“Oppa. Did you see the family chat?”
“No.”
“Check it. Appa made a sign for the shop.”
Cassiel pulled the phone from his ear and opened the chat. His father had sent a photo of a printed sign—full color, landscape, centered text in two fonts. CLOSED 29 30 31 JANUARY. Below that, larger: KOREAN NEW YEAR—SEOLLAL. In the bottom corner, a clipart snake.
“I have no opinion,” Cassiel said.
“Silence is enabling,” Minju said. “But speaking of—Seol is Wednesday. I need to—Jaewon-ah, no—I need to go over the plan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Menu’s locked. Umma said tteokguk, japchae, jeon, galbi-jjim. I’m doing the japchae because she wants to ‘supervise.’”
“She wants to correct you.”