“Yeah, okay,” Bill said, sullenly.

Michael stood up and said, a little sadly, “Billy, you are the straightest gay boy I ever met. I wish you would loosen up.”

“You sound like Waldo, now,” Bill said.

“That’s because we both love you and we want you to be happy.”

“Then come and live with me.”

Michael shook his head. “I’ll see you at three.”

After Michael left, Bill threw himself into the bed and shed some tears. In the back of his mind, however, he wondered if the reason he wanted Michael to move in was not only that he loved him but also because, with Michael there, Bad Bill would disappear once and for all.

Two years after he got his realtor’s license, Bill started his own agency with money saved from his commissions and a surprisingly large investment from Waldo. He scanned the obituaries, visited the residences of the newly departed old people and, if the houses were Victorians, contacted the heirs who were usually only too glad to rid themselves of these white elephants. Then he found buyers, usually gay men, who were prepared to put the time and money needed to restore the old ladies to their former glory. He bought a small apartment building in Hayes Valley and restored it himself. When property taxes and upkeep became too much for Mrs. Donohue, he quietly bought her duplex, stipulating she could live there for the rest of her life, rent free. Well before he turned thirty his assets amounted to half a million dollars, a fact he never disclosed to anyone.

He still thought of his family from time to time. He wondered how his grandmother was, if his eldest brother had finally married his college girlfriend and whether he was an uncle. Memories and imaginings were all he had of Eden Plains. No photographs, no high school friends, no family, not even a yearbook. It was as if that life had never existed except as a dream. Nonetheless, he sent Christmas cards, Mother’s Day cards and birthday cards to his mother and his grandmother, sometimes with the circular for a house he had sold. He heard back only once when he received, from his mother, an obituary clipped from the Eden Plains newspaper for his grandmother. No note or message. He wept like a child.