Chapter 17 #2
When his next break came, he trudged out into the alley.
Ah-Keung was already there, leaned against the wall, cigarette going.
May sat on the milk crate. The crate was cold through his jeans and the ridges dug into his ass.
Ah-Keung’s lighter clicked. The end of the cigarette flared and smoke went up into the alley air, which smelled like piss and grease so the smoke was, for once, appreciated.
May stared at the wall across the alley. It had a new tag on it in silver paint: YUNG.
“Yung what?” he asked.
Ah-Keung had no answer, just shrugged. A few minutes later he finished his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and went back inside.
A dark bird landed on the dumpster lid across the alley. Big, black, watching him with its head tilted. Crow or raven—he’d been told once that one was bigger than the other, but that was useless information. It took two birds to compare.
* * *
The brain zaps started on Tuesday. Or maybe Monday night—he’d been watching something on his phone, moved his eyes to check the time, and his skull went tssss, a half-second jolt like someone had flicked the power off and on inside his head.
Then it happened again when he turned over on the couch.
And again when he looked at the ceiling.
And again, and again, every time he moved his eyes too fast, a tiny electrical hiccup that left him blinking and disoriented and deeply annoyed.
He didn’t need to look it up. This was SSRI withdrawal. It got him every time he tried to be non-compliant. It was the reason you didn’t cold turkey the Lexapro. It was the reason he bought the pill organizer in the first place.
He’d held out for one more day on principle.
The principle being that he was committed to the bit now and the bit was suffering.
But you couldn’t commit to a bit while your skull was shorting out every few seconds.
You couldn’t even wallow properly. The zaps weren’t painful—just wrong, the neurological equivalent of someone poking you in the shoulder over and over, not hard enough to hurt, hard enough that you’d eventually do anything to make it stop, like taking responsibility for yourself.
THURSDAY
The alarm went off at nine.
Gay Angel, every Thursday
May was in bed. He’d migrated at some point, probably around the time the zaps started. Tssss. The bed was better than the couch. The bed was where people slept. It was an improvement, he’d decided, and not at all a lateral move.
He picked up his phone. The screen was too bright but his eyes adjusted. 9:00 a.m., Thursday, February 6th. The alarm kept pulsing and singing. Cheerful, dumb, faithful. His.
He silenced the alarm and lay there.
Then he got up, because what the hell else was there to do?
The shower was short and too hot. He stood under the water and pressed two fingers to his cheekbone, which was still in his face, so that was a start.
His fingers felt it—May felt it. This wasn’t the glass, the submarine, the bubble, the whatever.
This was just standard depression in a shower that needed re-caulking.
He got dressed in jeans, a green hoodie he’d stolen from Louis, the jacket he’d borrowed from… somewhere, and the greying sneakers he usually wore to work.
The pill organizer was on the counter. Tssss. Thursday’s compartment, purple. He flicked it open and took the pills with the cold dregs of some tea he’d left sitting on the counter. He closed the lid. Friday’s was still full. He’d do Friday on Friday.
The 29 came and he got on it and the bus carried him through the avenues and the park, through the fog that was thinning on the other side.
Sparrow was the same as he’d left it. The plum storefront was brown in the overcast, the way it always was until the sun came through and made it pretty again. Someone had replanted the window box.
May pushed the door open, the little bell on the door jingling above him. The warmth hit him first, then espresso, then the butter from the bear claws and muffins and cronuts and whatever he couldn’t afford in the displays.
The specials sign stopped for no mortal. That aspect hadn’t changed. It declared in pink chalk: CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY MOCHA: YOU KNOW WHY.
And he did know why—Valentine’s Day was impending. He ordered it because he’d been working his way through the menu since August and stopping now would mean admitting defeat. And because it meant nothing, it was even more important.
He didn’t take their spot, the bench seat against the wall where Cassiel planted himself every time. Instead he sat down in the front window, the place he would have chosen for himself. It was light and nice and kept his back to everything else.
May drank his sugar, ignoring the static in his head in favor of the rush.
He took the purple notebook out of his backpack and flipped through it.
Not looking for anything. Just flipping.
Pages of his own handwriting, sloppy and inconsistent, doodled shapes and spirals he made to keep his hands busy.
Eventually he made his way to August, to the cover story they’d devised and barely needed:
Met at LK on break I SPOKE FIRST obv. CHARMED INTO DATE.
Their whole fake relationship, all in May’s own writing.
Where they met, how long they’d been together, what they did on weekends.
Two guys who got coffee and went for walks and shared food and were taking it slow.
He’d written it sitting across from Cassiel, who hadn’t existed yet as anything other than a booking and an argyle sweater and a funny name.
May closed the notebook. The chocolate strawberry sugar rush was gone, doing its work inside him now along with the cold tea and the medication.
Behind him, Cassiel’s seat was still empty, and he knew that, because that seat was uncomfortable and no one would ever choose the spot when better ones existed.
He could call Cassiel. He should call Cassiel.
That’s what people did when something mattered.
Texting was what they did when they wanted to give themselves credit for doing the bare minimum without risking something like hearing a voice that sounded too polite, too correct, pauses in the right places, sentences meaning jack shit.
He opened their texts instead and started on a message:
Hey!!
No. Absolutely not.
Hey. How’s it going? I know things are weird. Are we okay?
Well, that was nothing. Months of Thursdays and a turntable and a Christmas and a fight and a mug of tea he’d left on a nightstand, and the best he could do was things are weird. He tapped his foot under the table a few times and tried again.
Hey. Are we okay? No pressure
Backspace, backspace. He stared at his mug for a minute, then tried again.
Typed Are we and stopped because finishing that sentence required knowing what came after and the options were still together or done or okay and each one of those was a potential explosion his already-exploding brain couldn’t handle.
May locked the phone and shoved it in his pocket, then packed his things and stood up. He exited Sparrow, stepping out onto Irving Street. Walking distance from Cassiel’s apartment. May looked in the direction of the building and couldn’t see anything through the fog. Cassiel wasn’t home anyway.
May turned and went to catch the bus.