In a shaky voice, he said, “Listen, please, you don’t have to go. I am so sorry.”

He sounded sincere, but my nerves were raw.

“I can’t talk to you now,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.

He fled into the kitchen. A moment later, Mr. Chu boxed my lunch for me and when I asked for the check, grunted, “On the house.”

As soon as I was out of eyesight of the restaurant, in a burst of delayed fury, I tossed the takeout bag into a trashcan.

7.

7.

The second time Bill slept with Michael, he learned Michael’s last name was Vega and that he came from a Mexican-American family (“Chicano,” Waldo automatically corrected him) in Riverside from which he too had been banished for being gay. On their third date, Michael told him that Dennis—the older man he had called his boyfriend—actually had another lover and was seeing Michael on the sly. After their fourth date, Michael said there was something he wanted to show Bill, a surprise. The two of them took the number 21 MUNI to Alamo Square Park and hiked to the top, above Steiner Street. Just before they reached the summit, Michael told Bill to shut his eyes and led him by the hand the rest of the way. They came to a stop and Michael said, “Look.”

Below them was a row of seven restored Victorian houses. The body of each house was painted a different color—sky blue, emerald, cinereal, apricot, wheat—but the fretwork, lattices, columns, pediments, bas relief, were white- or gold-leafed. Behind them the city calmly unfurled itself in the cantaloupe-colored light of late afternoon.

Bill managed a stunned, “Wow!”

Michael said, “They’re called the painted ladies.”

Bill squeezed Michael’s hand. “They’re beautiful.”

“Can you imagine living in a house like that?” Michael asked, returning the pressure. “You and me?”

“Yeah,” Bill said, eagerly, throwing his arm around the other boy’s shoulder and squeezing him close. “I can.”

On their fifth date, Bill blurted out, “I love you.”

Behind those words were a thousand nights of lonely fantasies and a notion of love formed by his observations of the dating rituals in Eden Plains. There, when a boy and a girl were going steady, he displayed his ownership by giving her his letter jacket and escorting her to classes. With these and countless other small intimacies—passed notes, shared lunches, hasty kisses at classroom doorways—they created a closed world in which, having found each other, they had no need of anyone else. At the junior prom, they slow danced in the corner, even though a fast song was playing, moving to a music only they could hear. Bill’s declaration of love to Michael was an invitation to separate themselves from the gyrating crowd and slow dance forever.