Beautiful Ruins (54)

That night, Joe led Pat to his show—up a street, down an alley, through a crowded bar into another alley, to a narrow, high door with an ornate knob in the middle. An uninterested woman with a clipboard led Pat to his greenroom, a closet of standpipes and mops, Joe explaining that crowds often started slowly but built quickly in Edinburgh, that there were dozens of influential reviewers, and once the reviews came in—“You’re a bloody lock for four stars”—the crowds would soon follow. A minute later, the woman with the clipboard announced him, and Pat came around the corner to a smattering of applause, thinking, What’s less than a smattering? because there were only six people in the room, scattered out among forty folding chairs, three of the six being Joe and the old couple they were staying with.

But Pat had played his share of empty rooms, and he killed in this one, even riffing a new bit before “Lydia”—“She told our friends she discovered me with another woman. Like, what—she’d discovered a cure for polio? She told people she caught me having sex, like she’d apprehended Carlos the Jackal. I mean, you could catch bin Laden if you came home and he was fucking someone in your bed.”

Pat felt the thing he’d noticed before, that even the appreciation of a small crowd could be profound—he loved how British people hung on the first syllable of that word, brilliant, and he stayed up all night with an even-more excited Joe, talking about ways to market the show.

The next day, Joe presented Pat with posters and handbills advertising the show. Across the top was a picture of Pat holding his guitar—under the heading Pat Bender: I Can’t Help Meself! along with the tagline “One of America’s Most Outrageous Comedy Musicians!” and “Four Stars” from something called “The Riot Police.” Pat had seen such flyers for other performers at the festival, but . . . “I Can’t Help Meself”? And this “One of America’s . . .” bullshit? Every act had to put up such handbills, Joe explained. Pat didn’t even like being called a “comedy musician.” He wasn’t some Weird Al novelty act. Writers were allowed to be irreverent and still be serious. And filmmakers. But musicians were expected to be earnest shit-heels—I love you, baby and Peace is the answer. Fuck that!

For the first time, Joe was frustrated by Pat, his pale cheeks going pink. “Look. This is just how it’s done, Pat. You know who the fuckin’ Riot Police are? Me. I gave you the four stars.” He threw a handbill at Pat. “I paid for this whole bloody thing!”

Pat sighed. He knew it was a different world, a different time—bands expected to blog and flog and twit and fuck-knew-what. Hell, Pat didn’t even own a cell phone. Even in the States, no one got away with being a quiet, brooding artist anymore; every musician had to be his own publicist now—bunch of self-promoting twats posting every fart on a computer. A rebel now was some kid who spent all day making YouTube videos of himself putting Legos up his ass.

“Legos in his arse.” Joe laughed. “You should use that.”

That afternoon they went around handing out flyers on the street. At first it was as demeaning and pathetic as Pat had imagined, but he kept looking over at Joe and being humbled by the fevered energy of his young friend—“See the act what’s blown ’em away in the States!”—and so Pat did his best, concentrating on the women. “You should come,” he’d say, turning his eyes on, pressing a handbill into a woman’s hands. “I think you’ll like it.” There were eighteen people at his show that night, including the reviewer from something called The Laugh Track, who gave Pat four stars and—Joe read excitedly—wrote on his blog that “the onetime singer for the old American cult band the Reticents delivers a musical monologue that is truly something different: edgy, honest, funny. He is a genuine comic misanthrope.”

The next night twenty-nine people came, including a decent-looking girl in black stretch pants, who stuck around after the show to get stoned with him. Pat banged her against the standpipe in his greenroom closet.

He woke with Joe across from him in a kitchen chair, already dressed, arms crossed. “Ya fooked Umi?”

Disoriented, Pat thought he meant the girl after the show. “You know her?”

“Back in London, ya daft prick! Did you sleep with Umi?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Pat sat up. “Does Kurtis know?”

“Kurtis? She told me! She asked if you’d mentioned her!” Joe tore off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “Do you remember, after you sang ‘Lydia’ in Portland, I said I was in love with my best mate’s girl—Umi. Remember?”

Pat did recall Joe talking about someone, and now that he mentioned it, the name did sound familiar, but he was so excited by the prospect of a UK tour that he hadn’t really been listening.

“Kurtis bunks every bird in the East End—just like the daft prick in your song—and I haven’t told Umi a fookin’ thing about it because Kurt’s me mate. And the first chance you get . . .” His face went from pink to red and his eyes welled. “I love that girl, Pat!”

“Joe, I’m sorry. I had no idea you felt that way.”

“Who did you think I was talking about?” Joe snapped his glasses back on and stalked out of the room.

Pat sat there awhile, feeling genuinely awful. Then he dressed and went out in the packed streets to look for Joe. What had he said, like the daft prick in your song? Jesus, did Joe think that song was some kind of parody? Then he had a horrible thought: Christ . . . was it? Was he?