Summary

In Chapter 6, San Francisco mourns for the death of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, and Simon begins dating Robert from the ballet company. Robert tells Simon that he was on the football team in high school, and that he got caught being intimate with a teammate named Dante after practice. Robert ran away, but the other players tied Dante to a fence and beat him to death. Robert asks Simon to move in with him, and Simon agrees.

It is 1980 as Chapter 7 begins. Klara and Simon meet for dinner, and she shows him an envelope full of information about their maternal grandparents that she has discovered. Klara Kline, Gertie's mother, was a dancer who came to America from Hungary, and met Otto Gorski, Gertie's father, a horseman for Barnum & Bailey. Klara Sr. was famous for a trick called “The Jaws of...