‘What’ll it be?’ asks Simon.

He rummages around in the tiny pantry, which is really a closet on whose jutting beams they keep an assortment of nonperishables: boxed cereal, cans of soup, alcohol. ‘I can do a vodka tonic, Jack and Coke . . .’

October: brisk silver-gray days, pumpkins on Academy’s front steps. Someone put a men’s dance belt on a fake skeleton and propped it up in the reception area. Simon and Robert have hooked up at Academy – kissing in the men’s bathroom or the empty dressing room before class – but this is the first time Robert has come to Simon’s apartment.

Robert leans back in the turquoise armchair. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘No?’ Simon pokes his head out of the closet and grins, one hand on the door. ‘I know I’ve got some dope around here, if that’s your trip.’

‘Don’t smoke, either. Not that stuff.’

‘No vices?’

‘No vices.’

‘Except men,’ Simon says.

A tree branch waves in front of the living room window, blocking the sun, and Robert’s face goes out like a lamp. ‘That’s not a vice.’

He gets up and brushes past Simon to the sink, where he pours himself a glass of water from the tap.

‘Hey, man,’ says Simon. ‘You’re the one who likes to keep this shit quiet.’

In class, Robert still warms up alone. Once, Beau saw Robert and Simon leaving the bathroom and whistled with both pinkies in his mouth, but when he asked Simon about it, Simon feigned innocence. He senses that Robert would disapprove of any disclosure, and his moments with Robert – Robert’s low, murmured laughter, his palms on Simon’s face – are too good to give up.

Now Robert leans against the sink. ‘Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I keep it quiet.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Simon puts his index fingers through Robert’s belt loops. He never dreamed he’d have the confidence to do such a thing, but San Francisco is a drug. Though he’s only been here five months, it feels like he’s aged by a decade.

‘When I’m at the studio,’ says Robert, ‘I’m at work. I stay quiet out of respect – for the workplace, and for you.’

Simon pulls him close, until their hips are pressed together. He puts his mouth to Robert’s ear. ‘Disrespect me.’

Robert laughs. ‘You don’t want that.’

‘I do.’ Simon unfastens Robert’s jeans and shoves his hand inside. He grabs Robert’s cock and pumps. They still haven’t had sex.

Robert steps back. ‘Come on, man. Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cheap.’

‘Fun,’ Simon says, correcting him. ‘You’re hard.’

‘So?’

‘So?’ repeats Simon. So everything, he wants to say. So please. But what comes out is different. ‘So fuck me like an animal.’

It’s something the Chronicle reporter once said to Simon. Robert looks as though he might laugh again, but then his mouth twists.

‘What we’re doing here, you and me?’ he says. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with it. Nothing.’

Simon’s neck grows hot. ‘Yeah, I know that.’

Robert grabs his jacket from the back of the turquoise chair and slips it on. ‘Do you? Sometimes I really don’t know.’

‘Hey,’ says Simon, panicked. ‘I’m not ashamed, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

Robert pauses by the door. ‘Good,’ he says. Then he pulls the door shut behind him and disappears down the stairwell.

When Harvey Milk is shot, Simon is in the dressing room at Purp, waiting for a staff meeting to begin. It’s eleven thirty in the morning, a Monday, and the men are resentful of coming in during their off-hours, even more resentful that Benny is late. They have the TV on while they wait. Lady lies on a bench with cold tea bags on her eyes; Simon is missing men’s class at Academy. The mood is somber, done in: one week before, Jim Jones led a thousand followers to death in Guyana.

When Dianne Feinstein’s face fills the TV, her voice wavering – ‘It’s my duty to make this announcement: Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed’ – Richie cries out so loudly that Simon jumps up from his chair. Colin and Lance are silent with shock, but Adrian and Lady are crying thick tears, and when Benny arrives – harried, pale; traffic is stopped for blocks around Civic Center – his eyes are swollen pink. They close Purp for the day, hanging a black scarf of Lady’s across the front door, and that night, they join the rest of the Castro to march.

It’s late November, but the streets are warm with bodies. The crowd is so large that Simon has to take a back route to Cliff’s to buy candles. The clerk gives him twelve for the price of two, and paper cups to cut the wind. Within hours, fifty thousand people have joined them. The march to City Hall is led by the sound of a single drum, and those who weep do so quietly. Simon’s cheeks are slick. It is Harvey, but it is more than Harvey. This mass, grieving like fatherless children, makes Simon think of his parents, both gone from him now. When the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sings a hymn by Mendelssohn – Thou, Lord, Hast Been Our Refuge – Simon hangs his head.

Who is his Lord, his refuge? Simon doesn’t think he believes in God, but then again, he’s never thought God believed in him. According to the Book of Leviticus, he’s an abomination. What kind of God would create a person of which He so disapproved? Simon can only think of two explanations: either there’s no God at all, or Simon was a mistake, a fuck-up. He’s never been sure which option scares him more.

By the time he wipes his cheeks, the other Purp dancers have been carried along in the swell. Simon scans the crowd and snags on a familiar face: warm, dark eyes; a glint of silver in one earlobe, bobbing above a bright white candle. Robert.

They’ve barely spoken since that October evening in Simon’s apartment, but now they push against the crowd, reaching for each other, and meet somewhere in the middle of that sea.

Robert’s studio is nestled in the steep, winding streets by Randall Park. By the time he unlocks the door and they stumble into the hallway, they’re pulling at each other’s shirts and fumbling with belt buckles. On a double bed beside the window, Simon fucks Robert, and Robert fucks him. Soon, though, it doesn’t feel like fucking; once the initial frenzy gives way, Robert is tender and attentive, pushing into Simon with such emotion – emotion for whom? For Simon? For Harvey? – that Simon feels unusually shy. Robert takes Simon’s cock in his mouth and sucks. When the pressure inside Simon builds to the point of bursting, Robert looks up from below, and their eyes meet with such startling intensity that Simon keels forward to cradle Robert’s head as he comes.

Afterward, Robert turns on a bedside lamp. His apartment is not spartan, as Simon expected, but curated with objects Robert found during Corps’s first international tour: painted Russian bowls, two strands of Japanese cranes. A wooden shelf across from the bed is filled with books – Sula; The Football Man – and the galley kitchen is hung with an assortment of pans. A cardboard cutout guards the entrance to the bedroom, the life-sized image of a football player mid-catch.

They sit propped up against pillows to smoke.

‘I met him once,’ Robert says.

‘Who? Milk?’

Robert nods. ‘It was after he lost his second campaign –’75? I saw him at a bar down the street from the camera shop. He was being propped up in the air by all these guys, and he was laughing, and I thought: That’s the kind of person we need. Someone who doesn’t stay down. Not a bitter old man, like me.’

‘Harvey was older than you.’ Simon smiles, though he stops when he realizes he’s used the past tense.

‘Yeah, he was. He didn’t act like it, though.’ Robert shrugs. ‘Look, I don’t go to the parades. I don’t go to the clubs. I sure as hell don’t go to the bathhouses.’

‘Why not?’

Robert eyes him. ‘How many people do you see around here that look like me?’

‘There are black guys here.’ Simon flushes. ‘Not a lot, I guess.’

‘Yeah. Not a lot,’ says Robert. ‘Try and find me one that does ballet.’ He stubs out his cigarette. ‘That cop who picked you up? Think about what he’d have done if you looked like me.’

‘Worse,’ says Simon. ‘I know.’

He likes Robert so much that he is reluctant to face the obvious difference between them. He wants their sexuality to be an equalizer; he wants to focus on the discrimination they face in common. But Simon can conceal his sexuality. Robert can’t conceal his blackness, and almost everyone in the Castro is white.

Robert lights a new cigarette. ‘Why don’t you go to the bathhouses?’

‘Who says I don’t?’ asks Simon. But Robert snorts, and Simon laughs. ‘Honestly? They scare me a little. I don’t know if I could take it.’

Is there such a thing as too much pleasure? When Simon imagines the bathhouses, he thinks of a carnival of gluttony, an underworld so endless it seems possible to stay there forever. What he’s said to Robert isn’t a lie – he is afraid he wouldn’t be able to take it – but he’s also afraid he would, that his greed would have no edges and no end.

‘I hear that.’ Robert wrinkles his nose. ‘Nasty.’

Simon props himself up on one arm. ‘So why did you come to San Francisco?’

Robert raises an eyebrow. ‘I came to San Francisco because I didn’t have a choice. I’m from Los Angeles. South Central – neighborhood called Watts. You ever heard of it?’

Simon nods. ‘That’s where the riots were.’

In 1965, when he was four, Simon went to the movies with Gertie and Klara while the older siblings were in school. Though he does not remember the film, he does remember the newsreel shown directly before it. There was the cheerful tootle of Universal City Studios and the familiar, rhythmic voice of Ed Herlihy, both of which were markedly unlike the black-and-white footage that appeared next: dim streets clouded by smoke and buildings billowing with fire. The music turned foreboding as Ed Herlihy described brick-throwing Negro hoodlums – snipers shooting firefighters from rooftops, looters who stole liquor and playpens – but Simon only saw police officers with flak jackets and guns walking through empty streets. Finally, two blacks appeared, but these could not be the hoodlums Ed Herlihy mentioned: handcuffed and flanked by white officers, they walked with stoic nonresistance.

‘Right.’ Robert stubs his cigarette out on a small blue dish. ‘I did okay in school – my mom was a teacher – but what I really had was physical power. Football was my game. In tenth grade, I was starting for the varsity team as a safety. My mom thought I’d get a scholarship to college. And when a scout came out from Mississippi, I started to think that way, too.’

Other guys haven’t talked to Simon like this. Actually, with other guys, Simon hasn’t talked much at all, and certainly not about his family. But this is how it is with most of the men in the Castro – men suspended in time as if in amber, men who don’t want to look back.

‘So did you get the scholarship?’ he asks.

Robert pauses. He seems to be gauging Simon.

‘I was real close with this other guy on the team,’ he says. ‘Dante. I was on defense. Dante was our wide receiver. I could tell there was something different about him. And he could tell there was something different about me. Nothing happened until my junior year, last practice of the off-season. Dante was supposed to leave that summer; he had a scholarship from Alabama. I figured it was the last time we’d see each other. We waited till everyone else had left the locker room, took our time putting our street clothes on. And then we took them off again.’

Robert takes a drag and exhales. Outside, Simon can still see the light of the march. Each candle marks one person. They flicker, white, like grounded stars.

‘I swear to God I never heard anyone come in. But I guess somebody did. Next day, I get kicked off the team, and Dante loses his scholarship. They didn’t even let us clean our shit out of the locker room. Last time I saw him, he was standing at the bus stop. He had his hat pulled down low. His jaw, it was shaking. And he looked at me like he wanted to kill me.’

‘Jesus.’ Simon shifts on the bed. ‘What happened to him?’

‘A group of guys on the team caught up with him. They caught up with me, too, but they didn’t get me so bad. I was taller, stronger. Defense – that was my job, you know? But it wasn’t Dante’s. They bashed his face in, broke his back with a bat. Then they took him to the field and tied him to the fence. They said they left him breathing, but what kind of dumb-ass motherfucker would have believed that?’

Simon shakes his head. He is nauseous with fear.

‘The judge. That’s who,’ Robert says. ‘I knew I’d go crazy if I stayed down there. That’s why I came to San Francisco. I started taking dance classes ’cause I knew that was one place they wouldn’t kick me out for being queer. Nothing gayer than ballet, man. But there’s a reason Lynn Swann does dance training. It’s tough as shit. It makes you strong.’

Robert scoots down to rest his face on Simon’s chest, and Simon holds him. He wonders what he can do to protect Robert, to soothe him – whether to squeeze Robert’s hand or to speak, whether to stroke his newly shaved head. This responsibility, newly gifted, is nothing like fucking: more intimidating, grown-up, so much wider margin for failure.

In April, Gali calls Simon and tells him to come to the theater, fast. Simon splurges on a cab, his dance bag in his arms. Gali meets him outside the stage door.

‘Eduardo went down in rehearsal,’ Gali says. ‘He rolled his ankle on a saut de basque. A freak accident – terrible. We hope it is only a sprain. Even so, he’s out for the month.’ He nods at Simon. ‘You know the choreography.’

It isn’t a question; it’s a job offer for Birth of Man. Simon’s heart clenches. ‘I mean – yeah, I know it. But I . . .’

What he wants to say is, I’m not good enough.

‘You’ll be at the end of the line,’ Gali says. ‘We have no choice.’

Simon follows him down the long corridor to the dressing rooms. Eduardo sits on the floor with his leg propped up on a crate, a bag of ice on one ankle. His eyes are pink, but he cracks a smile for Simon.

‘At least,’ he says, ‘you won’t need to be fitted for a costume.’

In Birth of Man, the men wear nothing but dance belts. Even their ass cheeks are exposed. In this regard, Purp has been good training: onstage, Simon feels little self-consciousness and can instead focus only on his movements. The lights are so bright that he can’t see the audience, so he pretends they don’t exist: there are only Simon and Fauzi, Tommy and Beau, all of them straining to support Robert as he navigates their man-made canal. They bow as a group, and Simon squeezes their hands until his own hurt. Afterward, they cab to the QT on Polk in their stage makeup. In a surge of ecstasy, Simon grabs Robert and kisses him in front of everyone. The other men cheer, and Robert grins with such bashful indulgence that Simon does it again.

That fall, Simon is given his own role in The Naughty Nut, Corps’s Nutcracker. A write-up in the Chronicle doubles ticket sales, and Gali throws a party at his house in the Upper Haight to celebrate. The rooms are filled with brown leather furniture, and everything smells like the clove-pricked oranges that sit in a gold bowl on the mantel. Academy’s pianist plays Tchaikovsky on Gali’s Steinway. The doorways have been hung with mistletoe, and the party’s hum is periodically interrupted by shrieks of delight as odd pairs are forced to kiss. Simon arrives with Robert, who wears a maroon button-down with black dress pants; he’s replaced his silver hoop earring with a diamond the size of a peppercorn. They mingle with donors by the hors d’oeuvres before Robert pulls Simon down the hall and through a glass door that leads to the garden.

They sit on the deck. Even in December, the garden is lush. There are jade and nasturtiums and California poppies, all hearty enough to grow amidst fog. It occurs to Simon that he would like to have a life like this: a career, a house, a partner. He’s always assumed that these things are not for him – that he’s designed for something less lucky, less straight. In truth, it is not only Simon’s gayness that makes him feel this way. It’s the prophecy, too, something he would very much like to forget but has instead dragged behind him all these years. He hates the woman for giving it to him, and he hates himself for believing her. If the prophecy is a ball, his belief is its chain; it is the voice in his head that says Hurry, says Faster, says Run.

Robert says, ‘I got the place.’

Last week, he applied for an apartment on Eureka Street. It’s rent controlled, with a kitchen and a backyard. Simon went to the showing with Robert and marveled at the dishwasher, the washing machine, the bay windows.

‘You get a roommate?’ he asks.

The nasturtiums wave their festive red and yellow hands. Robert leans back on his forearms, grinning. ‘You want to room with me?’

The thought is bewitching: a tingle runs across Simon’s scalp. ‘We’d be close to the studio. We could get a used car and drive to the theater together on performance days. We’d save gas.’

Robert looks at Simon like he’s just said he’s straight. ‘You want to live together to save gas.’

‘No! – No. It’s not the gas. Of course it isn’t the gas.’

Robert shakes his head. He’s still smiling when he looks at Simon. ‘You can’t admit it.’

‘Admit what?’

‘How you feel about me.’

‘Sure I can.’

‘Okay. How do you feel about me?’

‘I like you,’ says Simon, but it comes out a little too fast.

Robert throws his head back and laughs. ‘You are a bad fucking liar,’ he says.