Chapter 20
CASSIEL
Third Street moved past warehouses and construction fencing, the T-Third tracks catching the last of the light.
Dogpatch at dusk was not Cassiel’s idea of beautiful—an expanse of concrete, corrugated metal, and converted loft spaces.
Through the gap between two buildings he spied a white crane reflected in black water, skeletal and distorted. He’d never had a reason to come here.
On his phone, a man in front of a bookcase was discussing the queer fascination with horror films. This did not apply to Cassiel, but he liked hearing about the topic.
People who watched horror explaining why they watched horror was a different activity to watching it, and to him, usually more interesting.
The car stopped. He paused the video and removed his headphones. The sign over the door read ITAMESHI in sans-serif—unmissable. He thanked the driver, got out, and stood on the curb for four seconds before going in.
Cassiel found the table by finding May.
Three people seated, mid-conversation, at a round table near the window, already cluttered with water glasses and a bread basket and a menu someone had opened.
May was in the seat facing the door, which could have been intentional.
He was wearing a sage green sweater—Uniqlo women’s section, it’s called souffle actually, feel how soft—and the red scarf he’d worn in January was looped around his neck.
The shadows under May’s eyes had deepened since Seollal, or maybe the light above their table carved hollows where they didn’t need to.
His hair was the most dramatic change. He had cut it himself—this much was obvious.
There was a piece on the left an inch longer than the rest. Cassiel suppressed the urge to touch it. Fix it. Both.
A familiar jacket was over the back of May’s chair.
Brown canvas, zip front, collared—workwear, old enough that the fabric had softened.
It was too broad in the shoulders, wrong hue for its wearer’s complexion.
Cassiel recognized it from the night he’d found May sitting on a concrete step with a working key he hadn’t used.
He knew the woman next to May was his sister. The resemblance was in the eyes and the mouth, the cupid’s bow the same shape. Her light brown hair in a tidy ponytail, dainty gold studs in her ears. The cream sweater she wore looked to be cashmere.
And at the end, closest to the wall: Louis, the younger brother.
May talked about him often, though never in terms that felt entirely honest. He wore a distressed black zip hoodie over a black Palm Angels shirt.
His hair had the same wavy quality as May’s, though it was longer.
He looked up at Cassiel with dark eyes and a blank expression.
May saw him. The shift was immediate—a straightening, a false brightness that spread across his face in the span of a breath.
“Hey! You found it.” May half-stood, caught between sitting and rising, stalling in the middle.
Cassiel had nothing to do with his hands but to pull out the empty chair.
“Hello,” he said, sitting.
“This is Cassiel.” May gestured to him, a simple perfunctory gesture like someone introducing an acquaintance. “Cassiel, this is my sister Anna. And Louis, the little one.”
Anna leaned forward. She had a dimple when she smiled, the same side as May’s.
“Hi, Cassiel. I’m really glad you could come.”
“Thank you for the invitation,” he said.
“My husband was going to come, but…” Anna rolled her eyes at the empty seat beside her. “Exhausted with a migraine from the drive. He’s holed up at the Airbnb with a compress.”
Louis picked up his glass of sparkling water and looked at Cassiel over the rim.
“You’re taller than I thought,” Louis said.
“Compared to what?”
“The lock screen.”
A foot connected with something under the table. Louis didn’t flinch.
Cassiel scanned the menu. Miso brown butter bucatini. Yuzu carbonara. Shiso pesto with hand-cut pappardelle. A section labeled SMALL PLATES included something called ‘dashi arancini’ which Cassiel lingered on before moving on.
The hand-cut pappardelle was twenty-six dollars. Either reasonable or offensive depending on the pasta. The font was sans-serif, well-kerned; someone had cared about the menu design and someone else had not cared about the lighting.
Louis ordered the uni pasta—the most expensive item on the menu. Anna had a credit card on the table next to her water glass, and Louis had chosen this restaurant, according to May.
Cassiel ordered the shiso pesto—these were textures he could handle.
As the food arrived, Anna arranged her meal into small portions while May picked at his plate. Louis ate his food indulgently, singularly focused. He spoke when spoken to and once, unprompted, to tell Anna that their mother had sent another article about a rock.
May’s ginger ale came. He wrapped both hands around the glass the same way he wrapped his hands around the Otagiri mug. Cassiel looked away.
“How long have you worked at the watch place?” Anna asked, when the safe subject of work had come up.
“Two and a half years,” Cassiel said, staring into his pappardelle.
“So people bring you broken shit.” This was Louis, not looking up from his plate.
“Pieces that stopped for whatever reason. I repair them.” He had chosen not to react to ‘shit.’
Louis tilted his chin. “Right. How do you know when it’s fixed?”
The question was direct, so Cassiel answered directly. “You listen to the beat rate. A healthy movement has a specific sound at a specific frequency. If it’s off, you can hear it.”
Louis held his gaze for a second, said, “Cool,” and went back to his pasta.
May was still twirling bucatini around his fork, playing with his food. “Nice hoodie, Lou. Looks like a lawnmower went over it. How much was that, five hundred?”
“You’re just mad because you’re broke,” Louis said.
May jabbed the fork in Louis’s direction. “I’m frugal. I have spreadsheets.”
“You don’t have spreadsheets, dude, you don’t know how to make a spreadsheet.”
“I have a series of notebooks, which is an analog spreadsheet. You wouldn’t get it because you’re an iPad baby.”
“You have a fucking diary.”
“It’s called a system. And anyway, you literally bought another ugly five thousand dollar hoodie last week,” May said.
“Two hundred and fifty. It’s an investment, dumbass. Streetwear holds value.”
“Oh, yeah, like how sneakers held value? Bubbles pop. Clothes are for wearing, clownboy.”
“Because I’m listening to the guy wearing shoes he got from a flea market,” Louis shot back. Cassiel caught Anna smiling briefly before hiding it behind her water.
“—Anyway, where are you staying?” May asked.
“We’re in an Airbnb near Taraval,” Anna answered. “It’s so cute, there are all these cherub paintings in the rooms—”
“It’s five minutes from the house,” Louis added.
Close to the family home but not under the same roof as the parents. Normal, perhaps. Cassiel never wanted to stay overnight at Fremont either.
“Mmhm, really close. Let’s get breakfast tomorrow,” Anna said to May.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“May.” Anna’s voice shifted, stern. “Breakfast.”
“I said maybe!”
“‘Maybe’ is your ‘no,’” said Louis.
The server cleared the bread basket and brought a second round of water. The pendant light above the table buzzed faintly. The one directly over Cassiel’s end had a visible filament that pulsed in a flicker so subtle no one else would notice. He angled his head away from it.
May didn’t say anything, but his hand came up and adjusted the pendant, tilting the bulb away from Cassiel’s line of sight. The flicker moved to the bread basket. May went back to his ginger ale as if nothing had happened and Cassiel’s stomach clenched.
The server brought the dessert menu. Cassiel was staring at nothing, his thumb circling the place where his ring should have been.
After half a minute of looking through the menu with no apparent intent to order anything from it, Louis set his phone face-up on the table with a thud. “So are we gonna talk about New Year’s or what.”
Cassiel looked to May, saw the way his jaw tightened. Cassiel had seen this before—in his bedroom, the night of the fight.
“I had a weird night,” May said. “Wasn’t feeling great. I went home.”
“You looked fucked up. Dad should’ve just given you a ride home. I was telling him that, but he just—”
“Lou, May doesn’t want to talk about it,” Anna cut in.
“May never wants to talk about anything,” Louis said. He looked at Cassiel. “Right? He was supposed to be with you that night. That’s what he said.”
“He is right here,” May said.
Cassiel had been gripping his wrist under the table. Too hard.
Clatter. Sizzle. Noise from the adjacent table. A cook calling out. The pendant light, Edison style, exposed filament, the lumens—
“Yeah? So what happened?” Louis had not looked away. Cassiel stared back at him, held the eye contact, but his teeth were clenched.
What happened? He couldn’t answer. He hadn’t known May was gone for over half an hour. He hadn’t known there was something that could go wrong. He still didn’t know what happened, only how that night ended.
May’s chair scraped. He stood, jacket bunching against the back of it.
“Outside. Now.”
“What—”
“Outside, Lou.” May was already moving around the table, hand at the back of Louis’s neck. Not gripping. Just enough. “Up. Walk.”
“I’m eating—”
“You’re done.”
Louis swore and stood. The chair scraped a second time. Anna’s hand had gone over her mouth and she watched the two of them go, her expression split between alarm and weariness.
The front door opened and closed.
For a long moment Cassiel just sat.
Anna picked up her wine glass, hesitated, then set it down again. She looked at Cassiel with a humorless smile.
“Louis gets like this,” she said.
“Yes.” It was a stupid thing to say, but it came out of his mouth all the same. He didn’t know what the right word was. That was now an ongoing problem.
“Well, I guess they both do. May is—” She frowned and took a sip of wine while Cassiel waited. “—What did happen? Could you tell me?”