Chapter Twenty-Nine
I pull away from Cam on instinct. Self-preservation kicks in like a backup generator.
“The truth about what?” I bite into the last word so hard that he has to know I’m shutting down his question more than asking my own. I’m not doing this again. I’m not opening myself up to Cam just so he can smash my feelings to bits and then pretend like the whole exchange was a silly game.
The dial clicks.
“Holy shit.”
Cam sighs next to me. “Don’t pretend like you found something great just to avoid saying you don’t want to talk to me.”
I pull away from the microfilm. “Oh, I’m not avoiding it. I don’t want to talk to you. But it turns out I also found something pretty great.”
He stares at me, trying to decipher my expression. I shift the view over from the microscope to the front screen on the reader. “See for yourself.”
The article takes a moment to come into focus.
Twelfth Year of Legion of Honor Installation by Mystery Vandal
“Holy shit,” Cam breathes.
I smile. “Told you.”
Under the headline is a grainy photograph of what looks like a clock growing right out of the ground. Each slice looks like a different kind of green plant. The clock numbers stand at the edges, spelled out in flowers.
Twelve Faces, No Hands, the caption reads.
I look back at the photo and realize it’s not just the title of the piece, but a description of the clock itself.
There are no clock hands or arms, nothing to signify the time.
It’s just an empty clockface out in the middle of a field.
Gilbert could have found it and buried the treasure right outside the raised circle.
He might even have been the mystery artist behind the entire thing.
But where exactly would he have buried the treasure, then? There are no markings, nothing that points to one particular spot.
“A clockface in the grass?” Cam asks from beside me. “That’s a little strange, isn’t it? You would think this would have matched up with the grandfather clock in the scroll.”
I think about the drawing of the grandfather clock. “But that clockface wasn’t empty,” I say. My brain does a double take, and I suddenly pop up out my chair. “It wasn’t empty! There was a time on it!”
“Well, yeah,” Cam says.
I reach into my bag and pull out the wooden box. “No, you’re not getting it. There’s not a time on the clock in the installation. It doesn’t have any hands. But the clock in our picture does!”
I peel the scroll open. Cam looks over my shoulder. “What time is that? 9:20?” he asks.
“I think so,” I say. “But that still doesn’t give us a specific place to look for a treasure. The arms are pointing at nine and four. So which one is the right one?”
“V. Look.” Cam brings his finger from the grandfather clock down to the woman in the long dress. “Look at her arms.”
I gasp. I don’t know how we didn’t see it before.
The woman’s two arms, outstretched in either direction, are in exactly the nine and four positions.
Same as the grandfather clock hands. The left arm points at the edge of the page, where the paper cuts off.
But the right arm, the one holding the strange glasses, is pointing directly at The Three Shades sculpture.
Right where the clock installation used to be.
“Four o’clock,” I whisper.
I look at Cam. “Gilbert must have buried the treasure right outside the four o’clock section.”
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 called Twelve 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 the Chronicle archives 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.
Or maybe 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 big not to be part of a treasure hunt about gay history in San Francisco. In the 1970 Chronicle issue 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.
“Oh.” Cam’s eyebrows jump. He takes a step back. “Oh, wow, that’s—that’s pretty huge, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She told me yesterday. I don’t know what to do.”
The band starts up their next set, but the urge to dance again is gone. Cam and I look around awkwardly. He motions toward the park entrance next to our neighborhood, and I nod.
“She’s really attractive,” Cam says as we walk.
I side-eye him. “Go sweep her off her feet, then, Casanova. You’ve stolen every other girl from me.”
Cam stops the both of us. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not trying to steal anyone from you. I’m saying you should go for it.”
I cross my arms. “So you want me to go for it?”
“If it’s what you want.”
“Why wouldn’t I want that?”
Cam throws his hands up. “Jesus, Ivy! Don’t twist this into something complicated. I’m just trying to be a supportive friend.”
“Oh, is that what we are again? Sorry, I didn’t get the notice that we’re officially resuming our”—I make air quotes—“ ‘supportive friendship.’ ”
We glare at each other.
“Forget it,” Cam says.
“Already forgotten,” I say, turning out of the park.
I march ahead of him, crossing the street before the signal so I can go straight home. I’m fuming the whole time—mostly at Cam, but maybe a tiny bit at myself too. Why did I have to tell him about Sunny? What was the point of bringing it into that moment? What was that moment, even?
I already have my front door unlatched before I realize Cam’s standing directly behind me.
“Ahhhh! Why are you following me?”
“I want my book back,” Cam says.
“What?”
“We didn’t end up needing it! And it’s my book.” He’s fuming even more than I am, which really isn’t fair. I feel like I should get all fuming rights between us from now until eternity.
“Well, it was my flyer,” I say. “And you went right ahead and stole that anyway.”
Cam makes a face. “And I gave. It. Back. When are you going to stop holding that against me?”
“Um, probably never.”
I scowl at Cam until it’s clear we’re in some kind of standoff.
He is right, though, I remind myself. We don’t need the book anymore. And at this point, I just want him to leave me alone. I sigh and hold the door open.
“Fine. Take the book. It’s in my room.”
Cam squeezes in between me and the doorframe. He storms across the living room and down the hall. Sometimes I forget that he used to be here all the time. I forget he knows everything so well. I follow him into my bedroom.
“Where is it?” he asks.
I point to the nightstand next to my bed. Cam reaches over and scoops up Gay Treasures under his arm. He turns and looks at me, his eyes flashing with anger.
“What?” I motion to the book. “You have what you want now. Aren’t you happy?”
I can see Cam’s nostrils flare as he takes his next breath. “No.”
“No, you’re not happy?”
“No—I don’t have what I want,” he says.
He tosses the book onto my bed and reaches for my waist.