Then Pat did something he hadn’t done in years. Walking back to Kurtis’s flat, he saw a funky music store, a big red storefront called Reckless Records, and after pretending to browse awhile, Pat asked the clerk if they had anything by the Reticents.
“Ah right, yeah,” the clerk said, his pocked face sliding into recognition. “Late eighties, early nineties . . . sort of a soft-pop punk thing—”
“I wouldn’t say soft—”
“Yeah, one of them grunge outfits.”
“No, they were before that—”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t have anything by them,” the clerk said. “We do more—you know—relevant stuff.”
Pat thanked him and left the store.
This was probably why Pat slept with Umi when he got back to the flat. Or maybe it was just her being alone in her underwear, Joe and Kurtis having gone to watch a football match at a pub. “Okay if I sit?” Pat asked, and she swung her legs around on the couch and he stared at the little triangle of her panties, and soon they were fumbling, lurching, as awkward as London traffic （Umi: We mightn’t let Kurty know about this）， until they found a rhythm, and eventually, as he’d done so many times before, Pat Bender fucked himself back into existence.
Afterward, with only their legs touching, Umi peppered him with personal questions the way someone might inquire about the fuel economy of a car she’s just test-driven. Pat answered honestly, without being forthcoming. Had he ever been married? No. Not even close? Not really. But what about that song “Lydia”？ Wasn’t she the love of his life? It amazed him, what people heard in that song. Love of his life? There was a time when he thought so; he remembered the apartment they’d shared in Alphabet City, barbecuing on the little balcony and doing the crossword puzzle on Sunday mornings. But what had Lydia said after she caught him with another woman? If you really do love me, then it’s even worse, the way you act. It means you’re cruel.
No, Pat told Umi, Lydia wasn’t the love of his life. Just another girl.
They moved backward this way, from intimacy to small talk. Where was he from? Seattle, though he’d lived in New York for a few years and most recently in Portland. Siblings? Nope. Just him and his mother. What about his father? Never really knew the man. Owned a car dealership. Wanted to be a writer. Died when Pat was four.
“I’m sorry. You must be awfully close to your mum, then.”
“Actually, I haven’t talked to her in more than a year.”
“Why?”
And suddenly he was back at that bullshit intervention: Lydia and his mom across the room （We’re worried, Pat and This has to stop）， refusing to meet his eyes. Lydia had known Pat’s mom first, had met her through community theater in Seattle, and unlike most of his girlfriends, whose disappointment was all about the way his behavior affected them, Lydia complained on Pat’s mother’s behalf: how he ignored her for months at a time （until he needed money）， how he broke promises to her, how he still hadn’t repaid the money he’d taken. You can’t keep doing this, Lydia would say, it’s killing her—her, in Pat’s mind, really meaning both of them. To make them happy, Pat quit everything but booze and pot, and he and Lydia lurched along for another year, until his mother got sick. In hindsight, though, their relationship was probably done at that intervention, the minute she stood on his mother’s side of the room.
“Where is she now?” Umi asked. “Your mum?”
“Idaho,” Pat said wearily, “in this little town called Sandpoint. She runs a theater group there.” Then, surprising himself: “She has cancer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Umi said that her father had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Pat could’ve asked for details, as she’d done, but he said, simply, “That’s tough.”
“Just a bit—” Umi stared at the floor. “My brother keeps saying how brave he is. Dad’s so brave. He’s battling so bravely. Bloody misery, actually.”
“Yeah.” Pat felt squirmy. “Well.” He assumed that enough polite post-orgasm conversation had passed, at least it would have in America; he wasn’t sure of the British exchange rate. “Well, I guess . . .” He stood.
She watched him get dressed. “You do this a bit,” she said, not a question.
“I doubt more than anyone else,” Pat said.
She laughed. “That’s what I love about you good-lookin’ blokes. What, me? Have sex?”