Chapter 17
MAY
The record had stopped again. May didn’t know when, but he could guess. He could time his days against the record now.
The needle had reached the run-out groove and the arm had lifted and the turntable was spinning nothing, the platter going around and around, waiting for something. The blanket was over his legs and the ceiling still was above his head, so the sky wasn’t falling and that was some comfort.
May pulled the blanket up to his chin and stared upwards.
He knew he should flip the record or stop the player. He knew he should eat something. He knew he should check his phone, which was somewhere under the blanket or between the couch cushions or on the floor, buzzing occasionally.
Instead he pulled the blanket over his head and breathed into the warm cave of his own chest and thought about how he was now smelling his own breath.
The light through the window told him nothing. It was the color of every afternoon in the Outer Richmond, so it could be noon or four o’clock or worse. The light in this apartment had been a problem since he’d moved in and he’d solved it by sitting in the dark or bulk-buying candles.
The pill organizer was on the kitchen counter when he pulled the blanket back down for air. It was on the kitchen counter before that, too, but now he was gazing at it.
Wednesday’s compartment sat open and empty, everything after it still closed.
He’d forgotten Thursday. Then Friday he’d thought about it and concluded, because a guy who had been horizontal for two days was making good decisions, that the pills hadn’t stopped what happened.
He’d been medicated, totally compliant, and January 29th had still happened.
The color grade had still gone blue-grey and he’d still walked out the door.
So what were the pills for, actually? Maybe the flatness was the pills.
Maybe the pills were a leash that had snapped and the thing on the other end of it was just May.
He slumped back and turned away. The turntable was still making the sound. Tk tk tk tk tk.
The calendar on the wall was wrong. That was the other thing. He’d taken it as a freebie the year before from Lau Kee—2024, Year of the Dragon, big old 福, still sitting on the twelfth month.
He’d brought a new one home on either Thursday or Friday.
Auntie Tsang had pressed it into his hands.
Year of the Snake, propped against the toaster where he’d left it, because putting up the new calendar meant taking down the old one and taking down the old one meant the Dragon year was over and the Dragon year was—
Everything. Better. Everything better. Sparrow and Thursdays and the first time Cassiel’s face did the thing and the turntable and the kissing and the word boyfriend and Christmas morning and all of it happened under the Dragon calendar.
Snake year was a few days old and it had already eaten it all.
The Snake year could eat shit. He wasn’t changing the calendar.
He imagined calling Kevin Chao, because the podcast, too, had been the Dragon. The work, the slow crawl back to himself. He practiced the bit in his head:
Hey Kev. Quick question. My life fell apart on Chinese New Year because three years ago a fucking PONY CAR scrambled my brains and now my boyfriend’s either my ex or possibly still my boyfriend and I can’t check because checking requires asking and asking requires the will to go on.
Unrelated: can you help me identify a cartoon theme song based on a two-second hum? Here it goes—
May pulled the blanket back over his head.
* * *
His phone surfaced eventually because he sat on it and had to fish it out. Battery at six percent. The lock screen was eye-searing and notifications stacked up—old at the bottom, new at the top, same as it had been on January 29th, only nothing was the same as it had been on January 29th.
Ten unread messages in the family WeChat.
His mother sending an article in Chinese about some composer from the sixties he’d never heard of.
His mother sending an animated sticker of an old man in red with Happy New Year!
on a glittering banner. His mother asking Anna to send her pictures of her Chinese New Year spread.
His mother sending another article about a big rock.
His mother, his mother, his mother. A red water bird with a blue top-hat, pecking and pecking and pecking.
May closed the app, held the icon until it trembled and the little X appeared in the corner. He tapped it.
Delete “WeChat”? All data associated with this app will also be deleted.
He tapped again.
The icon vanished. The home screen rearranged itself, the remaining apps shifting to fill the gap.
Then there was Louis in his Messages. Seven texts, starting the night of January 29th.
Louis
what the fuck is wrong with you
you showed up looking fucking strung out and left
are you ok. are you on hard drugs
that was a joke
may
dude
DO NOT FUCKING AVOID ME
Newer, from Thursday and Friday:
Louis
***
***
PICK UP THE PHONE
May rubbed his eyes and thought about flinging his phone out the window but didn’t have the arm strength and also he needed his phone.
He typed Heyyyyyyy and deleted it. Typed Sorry!
just saw this! and deleted it. Typed I’m not dead just dramatic lol and stared at it and deleted it because it was guaranteed to piss his little brother off in the way that would end up with him banging on his door, and May could not deal with that.
Louis would see all the shit and misery and try to make May do something about it.
He sent a thumbs-up emoji instead. The text thread with Cassiel was below Louis’s. He exhaled for longer than necessary, then opened it. The last exchange:
May
I’m home
OPPA
Okay. Get some sleep.
Then nothing for a day. Then it was May again, mid-afternoon the day after. He didn’t remember sending it.
May
Hope work was okay!
And Cassiel:
OPPA
It was fine. Peter says howdy.
May knew Cassiel’s texts by now. The single-word replies meant amusement, the lone period meant You’re annoying but I like you. This was less than nothing. This was Cassiel choosing to give nothing except ‘howdy.’
The fact that Cassiel’s nickname was still set to OPPA was beyond stupid now, but he couldn’t summon the will to change it.
He typed What did you tell your mom and watched the cursor blink, then deleted it slowly, letter by letter, each backspace a tiny surrender.
May wanted to apologize to the Lims. He needed to.
It wouldn’t be difficult, he knew the route.
He would take BART to Fremont, walk the walk from the station, see the kumquat plant on the porch.
Cassiel’s mom would see him arriving, probably, if she was in the kitchen.
He remembered her smiling in the hazy golden light.
He remembered her hands were soft and warm when she pressed the envelope into his hands that morning. Would she answer the door?
And Cassiel’s dad. SUNNY SUNGHO LIM, OWNER & PROPRIETER.
He had the address for the dry cleaner’s on a business card in his wallet or maybe between the pages of the purple notebook.
Then he remembered the car that had dropped Cassiel off that night while May was sitting on the step, remembered “My father drove forty minutes from Fremont,” and his heart was pounding again.
Then—he could text Minju, except he didn’t have Minju’s number, after months, after holding her baby and playing with her son who loved his red shoes and called him ‘hyung’ and God, just thinking about Jaewon—
He had to leave it. He couldn’t do anything until he was good again.
* * *
Lau Kee reopened on the Tuesday after Chinese New Year. Auntie and Uncle had come back from Philly with hats. May showed up because his body needed to leave the apartment, and for the usual reasons that never changed.
The kitchen was steam and noise and it felt oddly calming to be with his friends the industrial sprayer and the scalding water.
The rhythm was old, far older than Cassiel, older than the accident, and the sink didn’t care what his week was like.
It cared whether the woks were clean, and they weren’t.
Close to lunch time, Auntie Tsang accosted him with a plate of cheong fun and said, “No standing.”
May grabbed the plate and went to find a tiny stool to sit on while he stuffed his face.
The radio was playing something different, not Andy or Hacken or Leslie or even Faye Wong.
Something not on the playlist. It was a woman’s voice, a ballad he half-recognized—maybe something his mother used to sing while grading theory homework.
His hands trembled around the chopsticks as he tried to place the tune.
He knew what this was. The beta-blocker had been out of his system since Friday and his heart was messing with him—pounding when he bent over the sink, skipping when he stood up too fast, reminding him it was there.
His body was pissed at him, because he deserved it.
Uncle Lau wandered through, brow furrowed.
“Ah-Mui,” he said gravely, using May’s Lau Kee nickname that he was not-so-secretly very proud of. “Auntie changed the CD.”
“Oh,” May said around a mouthful of cheong fun, trying for interested, though his heart wasn’t in it. “It’s nice though?”
“Old-fashioned,” Uncle Lau said, shaking his head. “I told her. She said, ‘You have same CD in there for twenty years!’ Then I can’t say anything. Ah-Mui, we change it back next week when Auntie’s busy.”
“Old-fashioned,” May repeated. “Uncle, I…”
Uncle waited for him to finish, but May couldn’t find the end of the bit. After a few seconds, the man sighed, gestured at the radio, and then moved back out into the front of the shop.
May finished off the plate and put it in the sink to wash, then got back to work.