“Oh, I didn’t realize that.”

  “A lot of songs are like that. They apply to everyone. You know, love is love.”

  The way she said it made me wonder if she was being sarcastic. There was a moment of silence between us, and it felt unexpectedly intimate. Although we were in a restaurant with plenty of other people around, it suddenly felt as if we were alone. Her eyes were brown with flecks of green in them.

  I took a breath. “Mel told me you used to be in a band?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What made you decide to . . . go solo?”

  Steph glanced over at the bar, where Lisa and Mel were still waiting for their drinks. “It just wasn’t working out. The other band members were in San Francisco, and I was up here, and there was just too much driving involved. I couldn’t fit it around my job and stuff. I’m trying the solo thing to see if it works better.”

  Her answer sounded mechanical, like a story she was telling herself rather than the truth. “How do you think it’s going so far?” I asked.

  She fidgeted with her napkin-wrapped flatware. “I don’t know. I’ve only done a couple open mics.”

  “I’d love to hear more of your stuff.”

  “Yeah?” Steph didn’t seem to believe me.

  “Absolutely. You’re really talented.”

  She smiled almost shyly, and a buzz went through me.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s just hard to find the time to focus on my music.”

  “You have to make the music your priority, or you won’t make it.” I spoke before I knew what I was saying, and as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I froze. My mom had said that to me. I was visiting her in New York, and we’d had a fight. I was suddenly back in my mom’s concrete-and-stainless-steel kitchen with the crushing realization that I was not her priority.

  “Priorities can be complicated,” Steph was saying.

  I blinked. She was picking at the edge of the menu, a slight furrow developing on her forehead.

  And then the server plunked down two glasses of ice water on the table between us. “Sorry about the wait,” she said. “Is it just the two of you?”

  The sounds of the restaurant seemed to swell in my ears. I had almost forgotten what we were here for.

  “There’s four of us,” Steph was saying. “They’re at the bar, but I know what they want.” Steph gave her Lisa’s and Mel’s orders, then asked for a Marin burger and Diet Coke for herself.

  When it was my turn, I realized I hadn’t decided what to get, so I said, “I’ll have the same.”

  After the server left, I looked at the bar, where Mel and Lisa were partially hidden behind a group of guys in Giants shirts. “How did you and Lisa meet?” I asked.

  “Mel and I snuck into a gay bar during senior year of high school,” Steph said. “It was our first gay bar. Lisa was playing pool with some other women. When their game finished, Lisa challenged me and then she beat me.” She seemed amused by the memory. “She wanted me to buy her a drink because I lost, but I wasn’t sure if my fake ID would work on the bartender, so I asked if she wanted to get pizza instead. I thought she’d turn me down, but she didn’t, and the rest is history.”

  I knew I was supposed to think the story was cute, but instead it disappointed me. “So you’ve been together for what, a few years?”

  “Three and a half years. What about you? You have a boyfriend?”

  Before I could answer, Lisa and Mel returned.

  “Did you order?” Lisa asked, pulling out her chair.

  “Yeah,” Steph said. “Just now.”

  “I’m starving,” Mel said, and sat down with her beer.

  “Baby, you have to see this,” Lisa said, holding her phone out to Steph. “Look what Joey sent me. There’s a street party in the Castro right now to celebrate the decision.”

  She handed her phone to Steph, and I could hear the tinny sound of dance music and cheering.

  “Wow, that’s a lot of people.” Steph turned the phone around to show me and Mel.

  I leaned forward to look at the video. Thousands of people were packed onto a long street that rose up a hill in the distance, many waving flags with yellow equal signs. Their bodies moved like waves as dance music blared, and then the camera jerked upward and showed a red neon sign that read CASTRO before the video abruptly ended.

  “Looks like Pink Saturday,” Mel said.

  “Without the straight people,” Lisa said.

  Steph gave the phone back to Lisa. “Sorry we couldn’t go down there tonight.”

  “No, I’m glad I saw your show,” Lisa said. “You were so good.” She pulled Steph to her and smacked a big kiss on her lips, and then turned to Mel with a grin. “Wasn’t she great?”

  Mel nodded. “You been holding out on us. Was that a new song? You need to play your own show sometime. We could get people there.”

  “I don’t have enough songs yet.” Steph glanced at me. “I’m still working on a few before I can do a solo show.”

  “Maybe you can rework some of the songs you wrote for Madchen,” Mel said. “You should talk to Roxy about it on Saturday.”

  “You made plans with her?” Steph asked, surprised.

  “Not plans plans, but it’s Dyke March, so she’ll be there.” Mel turned to me. “What about you? What are you doing Saturday?”

  “Um . . . not sure,” I said.

  “You should come,” Mel said.

  Lisa began to smirk.

  “Come to what?” I was confused.

  Mel grinned. “The Dyke March.”

  “Uh, I’m not . . .”

  “It’s a party,” Mel said. “In Dolores Park in San Francisco. It’s free. All our friends will be there.”

  “Mel,” Steph said, “she doesn’t know our friends.” Steph gave me a look like, You don’t have to come.

  “You’re right,” Mel said, and then she turned to me. “Let me tell you about our friends. There’s Roxy, my ex, and probably the rest of the band will be there, too. The band is called Madchen. They’re all great. And Joey, Lisa’s best friend, who’s a real sweetie. A thousand—no, ten thousand—queer women, all of them gorgeous, hanging out at the park all afternoon. Then we march through the streets of San Francisco from the Mission to the Castro, for Pink Saturday. It’s a street party, like tonight on Lisa’s phone, but bigger. But no pressure—you can think about it and just let me know if you want to go. I’ll text you.”

  It was nice to have someone be clearly interested in my company. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”

  Finally the burgers came. As I picked mine up, warm juice oozed down the side of my hand, and the avocado was cool and creamy against the grilled edges of the beef. I remembered I had ordered the same burger as Steph, and when I looked across the table at her, she raised hers in a silent toast.

  Hazel, I thought. The color of her eyes is hazel.

  “Be careful,” Joan called. “I don’t remember the last time I went back there.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, and pulled the dangling string to turn on the overhead bulb.

  A harsh white light washed over the back basement. The hill sloped inside the house here, held back by a knee-high brick wall. Cardboard boxes were lined up on top of the wall, and behind the boxes lay a musty darkness I wasn’t eager to explore. Overhead, insulation erupted from plastic sheeting in dirty pink clumps. The room smelled of dirt and disintegrating cardboard and something disturbingly organic. I hoped to find what I was looking for quickly.

  Joan was behind me in the storage room, which opened into the civilized part of the basement, including the laundry room and an old darkroom. She was currently searching through boxes looking for the last of Grandpa’s files from his time at the University of Colorado. She had asked me to help look in the back basement.

  So far I’d found dusty boxes of children’s clothes, old costumes, and books. I pulled out a dog-eared copy of The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and saw my dad’s handwriting in the margins. I pulled out a few more: Orientalism; Distinction; Being and Time; Gender Trouble. At the bottom of the box, there were several volumes of poetry. Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich. A slip of paper poked out of the Rich volume. It looked like a photo, and I tugged it out to see a photo-booth strip of two people laughing at the camera.

  They were my parents. My mom looked barely older than me, and there was kind of a baby softness to my dad’s face. They both looked so happy to be pressed together in that photo booth, my dad’s arms encircling my mom as she leaned against him, her eyes bright.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I slid the photo strip back into the Adrienne Rich book, feeling as if I had glimpsed another world. I took out my phone to find a text from Mel.

  Checking if you wanna do dyke march Sat? Still planning but we’ll probably leave together from my place in San Rafael. Hope you can make it

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked down at the box of my dad’s books again, wondering what else was hidden in them. That was when I saw the rectangular black case tucked behind the box. There was something familiar about it, and as soon as I pulled it out, I realized it was my old telescope.

  When I was ten years old, Grandpa had given it to me for Christmas. It came unassembled, but he told me I could put it together myself to build the same kind of telescope Galileo had used. Grandpa had ended up helping me, but afterward I had taken it apart and put it back together several times. I’d brought it to Woodacre when we visited in the summer, and he and I would go up to the roof at night to look at the moon and some of the planets. I must have left it here.

  A big crash sounded from behind me, and I straightened up. “Joan, are you okay?” I called.

  I went back to the storage room and looked through the doorway. The room wasn’t very large, and boxes had been stacked precariously high along one of the walls. One of the boxes must have fallen, because it lay smashed open on the floor. Books and papers were spilling out, and Joan was using her foot to nudge them together.

  “I’m fine,” Joan said. “This box broke. Can you help me?”

  “Sure.” I started to round up the items that had skidded across the floor. One of them was a reddish-brown faux-leather photo album. It had rigid pages where photos were stuck beneath sticky plastic film. I glimpsed old pictures of my grandparents, and I brought it over to Joan. “Look at these,” I said.

  Joan set the album on top of a stack of boxes and opened it. “I’d forgotten about these,” she said. The first page had a couple of snapshots of Grandpa as a young man, dressed in a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts, standing on a beach with a little boy.

  “Is that my dad?” I asked.

  “Yes. These are from our trip to Hawaii.” Joan pointed to an image of herself in a flowered dress, the photo faded with age. “I was pregnant with Tammy then but I didn’t know yet.”

  She flipped through several pages, past photos of my dad in the ocean with Grandpa or building sandcastles with Joan.

  “Dad looks just like Grandpa did back then,” I said.

  “He does,” she agreed. She turned another page and paused on a picture of four men wearing fur-lined parkas on a snow-covered mountainside. “Here’s Russ and Peter and—I can’t remember their names—Joseph, I think?”

  “Where is this?”

  “Still Hawaii. They’re up on the mountain, Mauna Kea. I remember that day. Your grandpa knew some of the people who were working on building the observatories there. They drove us up to the site. It was so cold, and coming up from the beach, it felt like we’d traveled to another world.”

  On the next page was a small square photo of the mountaintop, surrounded by clouds. “That looks like something from Instagram,” I said, leaning over to get a closer look. The colors were faded, but the perspective was dramatic—as if the photographer had been hovering above the earth and looking out on a sea of roiling mist.

  “I took that one with your grandpa’s Instamatic,” Joan said. “That was a kind of camera. Everybody had them.” She closed the photo album and surveyed the mess on the floor. She picked up some of the papers and shuffled through them. “I think this is what I was looking for. It’s not exactly what I remembered, but my memory’s not what it used to be. Will you help me take these things upstairs?”

  As we gathered up the box’s contents, I thought about Mel’s text. “I was wondering,” I said, “are you using your car on Saturday?”

  “I don’t have any plans right now,” my grandmother said. “Do you need it?”

  “I was thinking of going to San Francisco.”

  “You’re welcome to use the car.”

  “Thanks.”

  I picked up the box to carry it upstairs, and Joan followed with the photo album. In the living room, Analemma raised her head from where she’d been napping in the corner of the sofa, her tail thumping against the cushions.

  “I need to take her for a walk,” Joan said. “Do you want to come? We can go for a hike in the hills.”

  “Sure. Give me five minutes? I have to close up the back basement.”

  “Take your time.”

  I went downstairs again, taking out my phone on the way. I texted to Mel: I’d love to come, thanks

  In the back room, I started to put Dad’s books away and spotted my old telescope on the floor beside the Adrienne Rich book. I decided to take the telescope and the book upstairs with me. As I closed the basement door, my phone vibrated with Mel’s response: a thumbs-up.

  Mel lived in a little white stucco house on a residential street in San Rafael. There was a shiny black Jeep in the driveway, so I parked Joan’s Honda on the side of the road just past the address.

  Before I got out, I checked my makeup in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. I’d gone for a beachy, sun-kissed look with a glossy lip, and I wondered if my makeup was all wrong—and my outfit, too. White shorts, a loose teal blouse, wedge-heeled sandals, dangling silver earrings. I had bought this outfit for Martha’s Vineyard, and after that got canceled I packed it to bring to California. This was my first opportunity to wear it, but I was suddenly sure it was totally wrong for a Dyke March.

  I had tried to arrive a few minutes late so I wouldn’t be the first, but I didn’t see Lisa’s white Golf on the street. Maybe Steph drove the Jeep. I checked the address Mel had sent me for the hundredth time, then forced myself to get out of the car. Halfway up the path to the house’s front steps, I almost turned around. I could go back to Joan’s and tell her I was feeling sick. I could text Mel an apology, say my grandmother needed her car unexpectedly. I still had my phone in my hand and I even unlocked it, my thumb poised over the text messages icon, when I heard a car come down the street. I turned to see Lisa’s car pulling over. I was both disappointed and relieved.

  Steph climbed out of the passenger seat, wearing ripped jeans and Vans and a black T-shirt. She saw me right away and waved before going to open the trunk. Lisa got out a second later, dressed in cutoff jean shorts, purple Converse high-tops, and a white ribbed tank top that was kind of see-through. Beneath it she wore a rainbow bikini top that tied around her neck. She had gotten her hair done; now it was blonder and sleeker, pushed back behind her sunglasses, and she looked good.

  She gave me a once-over and said, “Your shoes are gonna kill you.”

  “They’re pretty comfy,” I said. “I like your rainbow bikini.”

  Lisa seemed a little surprised. “Thanks.” She pulled a tiny messenger bag over her head, and the strap fell between her breasts. I felt uncomfortable noticing, so I looked at Steph, who was pulling a backpack out of the trunk.

  “What did you bring?” I asked. “Was I supposed to bring something?”

  “It’s a blanket and some stuff for the park. You didn’t need to bring anything.” She shut the trunk, and she and Lisa headed toward me.

  I waited for them to catch up, and then we all went up the stairs to the front door. I got to the top first and pressed the buzzer. It didn’t take long for Mel to open the door, her face breaking into a broad grin. “Welcome! You’re all here! Awesome, come on in. I’m almost ready.”

  The front door opened into the living room, which was sparsely furnished, as if Mel had just moved in. Lisa plopped herself down on the squishy-looking beige sofa and started scrolling through her phone, while Steph asked, “Is Dani coming with us?”

  “Nah, Dani went down already,” Mel said, going into the next room. “We might run into her.”

  Steph followed Mel, and I followed Steph through the doorway into the kitchen. This room was the opposite of the living room. Where the former had felt barely inhabited, this one was lived in. Three of the walls were painted butter yellow and covered with photos of fruits and vegetables; the fourth, which contained the window, was turquoise blue. A narrow table beneath the window held a long planter full of herbs. Pots and strainers hung from a rack over a mini island, and built-in shelves were packed with cookbooks that were bristling with Post-it notes.

  Mel was putting a few things into a backpack and asked, “You want some water before we go?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “This kitchen is great.”

  “Yeah, I love it. It’s why I rented the place. Also Dani never uses it—she’s my roommate—so I get it all to myself.” Mel zipped up her backpack. “All right. You need the bathroom before we head out? There will only be porta potties down there.”

  “I’ll use it,” Lisa said from the living room. I heard her footsteps crossing the wooden floors, and then a door closed.

  Mel was wearing long, baggy blue shorts and a short-sleeved yellow button-down printed with pineapples. “I’m glad you decided to come,” she said to me.