Male children didn’t read books anymore. It broke his heart to see in the news how children now went on the Internet to broker friendships with strange, older men. He believed in Headloin Love, massive acts of spontaneity propelled by a lightness in the head and a fire in the groin. Being in the moment, being in the flesh. How he missed the boys who’d cover his face in kisses when he brought them ice cream and silk dresses. Modern boys wanted cold, hard cash—or gift cards from Blockbuster or Best Buy. He recoiled at their bluntness, their unabashed declarations that “I’m in it for this, I’m not really a fag.” The boys he loved best from the old days never had the time for grotesque words; they kept their heads down and their knees bent.

Dismayed, he channeled his energies into his house. Moving west from New York in the mid-nineties, Raymond had been in search of his own castle. But with new Hollywood money eating up most of old Los Angeles housing, he never managed to find a compound that was comfortable enough, stylish enough, yet affordable enough. Finally, his realtor sold him on the Craftsman aesthetic, a harmonious beam-exposing, grain-deifying style that was popularized at the turn of the twentieth century by a Wisconsin builder named Gustav Stickley. Classic Craftsman houses were chockablock in Alta Vista, a foothill area as yet undiscovered by the media throng; Raymond was instantly seduced by their shaded porches, shingled roofs and aw-shucks charm. He bought one on Santa Claus Lane, in cash.

Even though his own research told him that Stickley’s prototypes were one-story, one-bathroom models of economy, his realtor insisted that his sprawling, two-story purchase was the only authentic Craftsman on the street. The others, she said, were copycat kit houses from the Sears, Roebuck catalog, pretty but nonetheless nailed together like log cabins.

His was a beautiful house whatever the vintage, and he liked having a space he had to live up to. It was rustic yet regal, hanging back from the street like a diffident suitor. He hoped against hope that a slight boy with bee-stung lips and opalescent eyes, drawn to the amber glow of his mica-shade lamps, would someday prance up his porch, asking to borrow a cup of confectioner’s sugar.

That was the kind of visitor he waited for, not the bedraggled Korean neighbor who was currently waddling toward his door, Lord knows why.

He watched her from his picture window, hoping she’d change her mind and turn back. She was teary-eyed, clutching a bundle of paper. Probably some kind of a petition. Oh, shoo! When she stepped onto his porch with the dull, flat-footed thupps familiar from Jehovah’s Witness church marms, he sighed, got up, and combed his hair in the mirror.

“Hello, dear,” he said, at the door. “And what can I do for you?”