Matchmaking for Beginners(35)

“Oh, that’s no excuse. They have stuff for that now. At the drugstore. And you could be having sex, you know. You know you could.” I can’t resist saying it. “And speaking of which, how come you’re not telling me about that guy who comes and picks you up? He would sleep with you in an instant.”

“Oh, him.” Her face goes cloudy. “You sent him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. Not him, per se. I don’t even know who he is. I just put out in the universe that you needed somebody to love again. So tell me why you’re so secretive about him.”

“You want to know the truth?”

“Yes, damn it. You tell me everything, except now suddenly you’re keeping this man all to yourself. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how mean you’re being.”

“Well, I haven’t told you this because I don’t want you making a big deal out of it. Putting all your magic dust all over it. He’s a friend, okay? From the past. Nothing more than that.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. The truth is, I did concentrate real hard on having her find someone who could win her trust, someone she’d perhaps known from before, because Lola is a little bit cowardly when it comes to meeting new men. I wrote journal entries; I did chanting; I threw the I Ching coins. I did a couple of spells just for good measure. And I sent prayers out into the universe. It’s all a mix.

“See? There you go, doing it again. Matchmaking when there’s nothing there. Sorry. Just wishful thinking this time, Blix.”

I simply smile.

Just before the wake starts, Patrick sends word that he can’t come. He’s feeling pugly, he says.

Pugly. This is code for Patrick thinking he’s too ugly to be in polite company. It’s the word we use between ourselves. Patrick isn’t just shy, it’s that he has a disfigurement, you see—a scarred face and a jaw displacement. He was once in a fire when his kitchen exploded due to a gas leak, and in one instant he went from being relatively handsome and well-adjusted, he said, to being a hideous beast. His word for himself, not mine, because the light that shines out from Patrick’s eyes transforms his face. You see that light, and you don’t even know about his jaw and his skin, which is stretched so tight in places that it’s almost translucent. His light makes you forget all that.

But that’s how he describes himself, as a hideous beast because he is the only one who can’t see that light, and periodically I have to go down to Patrick’s apartment, which he keeps dark and musty smelling, and also it’s filled with old computers and one grouchy cat, and I sit down there with him and try to tell him about the light that other people see in him and also that he has a soul that anyone would love.

He breaks my heart, Patrick does. He promised he would come to the Blix Out.

“I’m going down to see him,” I tell Houndy and Lola, and they exchange a look, but nobody tries to stop me. I put on my long spangled skirt, and Lola helps me zip it up over Cassandra, and then I put on the purple tunic and the shawl that has the lace and the mirrors sewn everywhere, even on the fringe. Lola fluffs up my hair, which is sticking up everywhere—and off I go, trundling down the stairs, down to Patrick’s lair.

“I can’t do it today, Blix,” he calls from the other side of the door when I knock.

“Sweetie, I need you to come to my wake,” I say. “Just open the door a little crack. I have something I need to tell you.”

After a while, I hear about five locks being unlatched, and then he lets me into the apartment, and I go tromping around, and I open all the shades and turn on lights. He’s standing there in the darkness, wearing what he always tells me is his work uniform: baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt, way too big. He’s a thin, waifish guy now, somebody who would barely leave a shadow, and that’s what he intends, I think, to waste away until he’s just a smear in the world, as small as a piece of gum you’d see on the sidewalk. He can’t be loved anymore, he told me once, so now he doesn’t want to bother anybody. He has some horrible job, writing about diseases and symptoms, and so he’s steeped in troubles and doesn’t want to bother the people of the world with his yawning, gaping need. I get this, I do.

“Patrick,” I say. “Honey.”

“I can’t do it. Listen, I love you and I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing this amazing party—”

“It’s not just an amazing party, as you call it. It’s a wake. An Irish wake.”

“Whatever it is, but you don’t want me there having a panic attack. I’d ruin the whole mood.”

“We’ll stick together. We can do our dance, and then you won’t need to panic.” One time, when it was just the two of us, we made up a dance in which we wore hats that we pulled down until they nearly covered our faces, and then we threw them up in the air. We might have been drunk when we invented that dance, but we could be drunk again, I tell him. I pick his Hawaiian shirt out of his closet, which contains exactly three shirts, all meticulously hung up and evenly spaced.

“You look devastating in this shirt, and you know you do. So you can put on that and your straw hat, and we’ll dance and drink. People need you there. If you’re not there, I’ll have to answer the question all night long: Where is Patrick? Where’s Patrick? Think of how that’s going to be for me. It’s going to ruin my whole evening having to explain your absence.”