"Can I take a look?" Peter turned out to be naturally curious. He had an easy
style and never appeared self-concious, like a kid. Bill liked him.
"Sure. Come on in" he got off the ladder and put down the brush: "and make me an
offer I cannot refuse."
Through the open garage Peter strolled in, passed the kitchen, and came under the
pitched roof of the living room. "I like those huge panes." He pointed to the
triangular gables above: "They light up the whole place. My roof is flat and I
had to install skylights."
Those giant panes impressed Amy and Bill hunting for their first home. The
couple had little cash but the Great Recession of 2008 gave them some options.
And they liked this sunny house the best.
"You can see flights signaling SFO through them at night." Bill looked up and
said. He used to do that, curling up in the sitting room sofa and staring into
the star-lit deep blue beyond the glass as if it were an oceanarium and tiny
mystic fireflies scuttled by, flashing red, amber, and green, heading to their
destination across the bay.
"The previous owner was Irish." Peter continued: "They sold it around 2006 and
bought another house in Palo Alto plus a gas station. I used to dog-sit for them
when they were away and I remembered a short wall here." Peter pointed to about
four feet behind the front door.
"I hated it." Bill thought it ridiculous to open the door and walk into a wall
and knocked it down soon after he moved in. He loved to see his boy's glee while
toy cars zooming across the new floor.
It made sense. After the lucky devil good-neighbor Paddy, the next owner bought
it at a ridiculously high price and soon defaulted on his mortage, and after
being neglected for months, if not years, the house was taken over by the bank.
It was a typical story during the financial crisis led to by years of easy money
and lending standards. Then Bill came.
They used to drive up from north San Jose every weekend to work on the house
they just bought. Lacking experience, Amy painted one bedroom deep blue with
high-gloss paint. Bill nailed a good layer of plywood onto the concrete after
ripping off the dirty old carpet but, fearing expansion, he left ugly gaps at
the edge of the floor which even baseboards couldn't hide.
Looking back, however, he saw these as the "right" mistakes (as opposed to Yogi
Berra's "wrong mistakes"), valuable lessons hard to come by any other way. Home
improvement wasn't computer software. Plumbing, e.g., might look straightforward
on paper but one couldn't just copy and paste and fix the kitchen drain once he
worked out the diagrams in the book. What one understood he often failed to
apply, not without first making mistakes and learning from them.
"Have we made a decision yet?" Bill continued with the joke.
"I've tried to get my daughter to buy." Peter's face lightened up: "We'll make a
hole in the shared wall, push a button when dinner's ready, and she can come
through. Not to mention she'll save money."
Next he sighed: "But she said no. She said she had money, didn't mind the rent,
and would rather spend on traveling."
"Young people. They don't think the way we do." Bill was sympathetic.
He was also alarmed by what he had just said: he had become one of the older
people (and it didn't matter he was the same cheapskate 20 years ago). That
might be why others seemed nicer to him these days. The woman opening the door
of the yoga studio greeted him with a smile as he passed by. Kevin at the bike
shop tested his battery for free. Angela from the Starbucks in the nearby mall
refilled his cup and once even brought him a croissant. (He thought he should
return the favor with something more than a thank-you but didn't know what. So
he stopped going there for coffee.) It all made sense now.
