Bill had never forgotten the afternoon Michael showed him the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square. Until then he had thought of houses, if he thought of them at all, as mere shelter. Nothing in Eden Plains’ cookie-cutter tract houses had given him any reason to think differently. But the Painted Ladies were like no houses he had ever seen and he returned to them again and again. They were alive with distinct histories and personalities. They spoke to him of a gracious and placid past when there was time to dwell on small, ornamental details that served no purpose other than to be beautiful. They spoke to his longings for home and family and a place in the world that was solid and tangible and unchanging.

One afternoon, he walked past a real estate agency at the corner of Market and Church Streets on the fringe of the Castro district. In its windows were photographs of Victorian houses, most in need of rehabilitation, that were for sale in the neighborhood. At that moment, Bill was floundering at school, taking a course or two a semester without any clear notion of where this education would lead. He sorted through the possibilities—lawyer, doctor, teacher—but these were mere clichés, the sort of thing he offered up when someone asked him about the future, not professions in which he had any actual interest.

He stood at the window of the realty company studying the photographs of the Victorian and Edwardian bungalows, cottages and demi-mansions. None of them looked remotely like the Painted Ladies. They were in various states of ruin, neglected, weather-worn, denuded of their ornamentation, slapped with vinyl siding and cheaply painted in white or gray. He grazed the windows with his fingertips as if to comfort the old girls from whom he seemed to hear a plaintive cry of Save Me. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a small, handwritten sign taped to the inside of the window: Help Wanted. He went in and inquired. The position was for an office assistant, someone to answer phones, file and do light typing. Ten minutes later, Bill walked out with the job.

He soon proved to be so industrious, curious and eager that the four owners of the agency began to take him with them when they went out to look at properties. They had him take notes at their meetings with prospective sellers and buyers and sent him to City Hall where he negotiated the labyrinthine bureaucracy to obtain title records and permit histories. They trusted him with keys to the properties and he would often go alone to some nineteenth-century wreck and walk lovingly through its rooms, imagining what it had once been and what it could be again. Invigorated, Bill returned to City College with new purpose and graduated with a degree in real estate. Two days after he turned twenty-one he passed his licensing examination and became a real estate agent.