Chapter 16
CASSIEL
SEOLLAL
Cassiel counted six.
He counted them at the door as he passed by because he counted everything.
Seven pairs of shoes at four o’clock, the row neat against the wall in the order his mother enforced.
He counted again now and got six. The gap was at the end, two widths of bare floor where May’s blue canvas had been. Cassiel’s own shoes still there.
He checked the bathroom. Empty. Hand towel folded on the ring. He checked the hallway, the back porch. He took out his phone and called.
Four rings. Voicemail. He called again—four rings, voicemail. The third call went to voicemail after two. The phone had been silenced.
“May’s gone,” he said.
His mother’s hands stopped. She’d been plating—dinner at five, and it was seven minutes past, and the kitchen was in the final stage where every burner was occupied and every surface held something that needed to go to the table. She looked up at him.
“What do you mean gone? He’s probably playing with the kids. Call him for dinner, Minseok-ah.”
“His shoes aren’t at the door, Umma. He’s not here.”
She stiffened, then concentrated, sorting through moments in a day that had a million moving parts for her.
“He told me he was going to the bathroom. That was half an hour ago.”
“Yeobo,” she called. His father appeared in the kitchen doorway, still holding the remote. Behind him, the TV murmured trot music. Minju stood up from her seat on the couch, joining their father.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“You haven’t seen May.” It didn’t come out like a question.
“No… I thought—He’s not here?”
Cassiel shook his head, looking at his phone. No response.
“You don’t have Find My Friends or whatever?”
He didn’t. They had never set that up. He always knew roughly where May was. May was always sending updates, couldn’t stop himself, and Cassiel only went so many places.
“No, we—” His jaw tightened. He turned around to face his mother, who had halted her preparation fully. “He didn’t say anything else?”
She shook her head.
David appeared at the other entrance to the kitchen with Jaewon at his side, Hayoung still asleep in the living room. David’s eyes went to Minju, then Cassiel. He stepped back, clearing the doorway.
“Uncle Cass.” Jaewon’s voice was loud in the crowded kitchen. “Did May-hyung go home without saying bye to me? We were making a tower.”
“I don’t know,” Cassiel said, trying to think. A tower. Blocks. Living room. Bathroom. Then out the door.
“That’s rude,” Jaewon said.
His father set the remote on the counter, walked to the bowl by the front door where the car keys lived between a stack of coupons and a ceramic dish Jaewon had painted at school, and picked up the keys.
“I’ll drive,” his father said.
Cassiel followed him. His mother’s voice came from behind—“Bring him back for dinner!”—and the door closed.
* * *
His father pulled out of the driveway without adjusting the mirrors. The route to 880 was automatic: left on Paseo Padre, right on Mowry, the on-ramp.
Cassiel sat in the passenger seat and tried to build a map.
May’s apartment. Outer Richmond, Balboa Street. The mint green stucco, the in-law unit around and below and behind. He’d been there enough times. He knew the building. He’d entered through the side gate that May had propped open. He’d walked him home twice.
He gave his father the cross streets. His father merged onto 880.
The bay was black to the left. The flat absence of light where the water should be. The bridge came and went: toll plaza, suspension cables lit from below, the city ahead in orange sodium and white LED, two color temperatures that had no business coexisting.
The car was quiet except for the engine and the road.
Cassiel’s ring was still. Not long ago, his father had driven him and May to the station, the weight of a turntable on their laps.
The drive was routine. But this was the two of them on the 880 and forty minutes of highway, and the last time Cassiel had been driven alone by his father for this long was high school.
Cassiel had been in the kitchen when May left.
Or somewhere else, he’d dipped into his old bedroom at one point and—he couldn’t reconstruct it precisely.
He’d been somewhere else in the house, and May was playing with Jaewon in the living room, and at some point between 4:30 and 5:00, May had stood up, walked to the door, put on his shoes and left.
He tried to think of where May would go and what came up was bordering on worthless.
He knew May’s apartment; he knew his own.
He knew Sparrow and Linden May wouldn’t go to Lauren’s.
Louis, May’s brother, his best shot at reaching him, but Cassiel didn’t have a way to contact him, had never met him, and Louis lived in one of these houses.
“Chinatown?”
“Closed,” Cassiel said. “Chinese New Year.”
His father turned east anyway. They drove past the avenues, the park on their left, the city assembling itself in the windshield.
Grant Avenue was shuttered, steel gates rolled down, red lanterns dark.
He knew that. He’d said it and his father had driven there anyway, because checking was better than not checking.
They drove west through the park. The trees were dark overhead, the fog thinning on this side. Neither of them spoke. The route to 4th Avenue was the route home—back to Cassiel’s place, and they took it because there was nowhere else to go.
* * *
May was on the step.
The streetlight caught his silhouette and Cassiel knew the shape of him instantly.
How could he not? He knew the shape his hair made, the jut of his ears.
The exact width of shoulders hunched in a jacket that didn’t fit.
It was too broad, too long in the sleeves, a style that May would never purchase.
Not his. May hadn’t worn a jacket on the way over, and none had been missing from the house. This had come from somewhere else.
May had a spare key and had not used it. Instead he’d sat down on the concrete in January with a working key and chosen the step.
His father stopped the car. The engine idled.
“He came to your door,” his father said.
Cassiel opened the car door.
“Go drink something warm. Both of you.”
“Okay,” Cassiel answered, and got out, pulling his coat around him. A few steps toward the building, then he heard the car pull away behind him. His father driving back to Fremont, back to the house alone.
He looked over his shoulder, watched the taillights turn the corner. Red, then gone.
May looked up. His eyes were slightly bloodshot in a way that suggested he’d been rubbing at them.
His pupils were slightly dilated from the dark, but no more than that.
They were his eyes, the shadows beneath them heavy.
Another trick of the light, or something Cassiel should have noticed at any time during the day.
“Hey,” May said. His voice was hoarse.
“You left without telling anyone.”
“I know.”
“I called you eleven times.”
“I know, I—” May’s hand came out of the pocket. The key was in his palm. He looked at it like he was thinking about giving it back. “I didn’t—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was—I was going to go inside, and call you, and then I didn’t.”
Cassiel sat down on the step. The concrete was cold through his slacks. Six inches between them—distance they’d held at Sparrow, the measurement that had been narrowing for months into insignificance and tonight needed to be precisely where it was.
The fog moved through the streetlight in slow shifts. Somewhere down the block, a car door slammed shut and a bus rumbled in the distance.
They sat there, listening to traffic. Cassiel’s hands were on his knees. He could feel the questions piling up behind his lips—where, why, how long, what happened, are you okay, why the hell—
“What happened?”