Cam’s mouth breaks into the widest, most all-encompassing smile I’ve ever seen on him. He looks at the other pictures in the scroll.
“The bear, the snake, the octopus.The Three Shades.The two boys in the sailboat hats. The head in the sink. The eagle. The woman in the dress. And the clockface. Oh my God.” He looks back at me. “You said the piece is calledTwelve Faces?”
I nod.“Twelve Faces, No Hands.”
Cam points at the scroll. “There are twelve faces here, V.”
All the pieces are connecting.
I don’t know if I have ever felt so giddy in my entire life.
We each take a quick photo of the article on the microfilm reader with our phones. Then we gather up the collection of reels from theChroniclearchives and turn them back in. As we step outside, it’s already nearing four. We arrive at the rail station just as a train is leaving.
“Want to walk home?” Cam asks me. “I’m too antsy to wait for the next train.”
I’m antsy too. I feel like I’m floating in the strangest dreamlike way that’s both insanely cool and maybe a little bit terrifying. Cam offers me his arm, and because it feels like it is the only possible thing to tether me to this Earth, I hook mine through his. We walk down Market Street. We walk through Duboce Park. Every single tree waves. Every building window glitters. It’s like San Francisco knows we have a secret. Ormaybe it’s the other way around, and at long last we finally know what this city has kept hidden away for so long.
When we get to Divisadero Street, Cam pauses. He cranes his neck and looks north, in the exact direction of the Legion of Honor.
“You want to catch a bus over?” he asks me, grinning.
“Absolutely not,” I say, feeling more like his tether now. “We have to bring this to the whole group, remember? We need them to like you.”
“Ah.” Cam nods, barely concealing his dejection.
We cross Divisadero and reach the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park.
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” Cam says as we cut past the entrance and walk through the greenery.
“What’s funny?”
“That Golden Gate’s not part of the solve.”
I look up at the sea of trees in front of us. “Maybe it was too big to be a part of the solve. You know, too obvious or something.”
“What an oversight.” Cam shakes his head. “See, I think it’s too bignotto be part of a treasure hunt about gay history in San Francisco. In the 1970Chronicleissue on the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, there was a full-page article about a ‘gay-in’ at Golden Gate Park.”
“What’s a gay-in?” I ask. “Like a sit-in? Except everyone is gay?”
Cam blushes a little. “The article made it look…slightly more titillating than that.”
I let out a guffaw. “Did you, of all people, just use the word ‘titillating’?”
“It was in the article!” Cam yells, but he’s laughing too.
“So, what in particular was titillating?”
He waves a hand. “Nope. Absolutely no comment.” The blush spreads farther across his cheeks. I feel the heat rise in my own face. The “titillation” seems to be contagious.
We smile shyly and duck around the various sections in the park until we close in on the music concourse. A live jazz band is playing in the outdoor band shell. Couples are pressed together on the surrounding benches bolted down between the trees, nodding and bobbing their feet to the tune. Cam and I stand at the very back. He looks at me and extends a hand.
“Shall we?”
I take hold of his hand, and suddenly we’re swaying and spinning to the music. The clouds in my head are swirling into the most beautiful concoction. Cam dips me once, low, and holds me there. We look at each other for a long time before he pulls me back up to standing. The song ends, vibratos eventually fading to quiet.
There’s too much silence between Cam and me right now. I don’t want to go back to that moment in front of the microfilm readers. I don’t want to talk about the day from two years ago.
“Sunny said she has feelings for me,” I say instead. The words come out by accident, like a glove tumbling from a coat pocket.
