"Oh, hi," he said. "Would you like to come up?"

He was struggling. The problem, I gathered, was that he believed in camaraderie in principle, but the principle was at odds with his personality.

"We'd love to," Rosie answered.

Blindly, as if walking through a cave or tunnel, Patrick led us past gleaming surfaces, sandstone sculptures, an indoor fountain, humid clay pots of cyclamen on blue-and-orange ceramic tiles. This is the house that Vera built This is the house that Vera built: a house made of marble and polished wood, satin and silk, a house designed for creature comforts. Yet somehow it all fell flat. Dr. Moore had courageously chosen the furniture, the tiles, the plants, but the end result was someone else's set-a set that was as recalcitrant in its way as the Michaeli home, and as disjointed.

We followed Patrick to the kitchen, where, to our confusion, he walked into a pantry. There was an unpainted wooden door inside, camouflaged by shelves of a.s.sorted jars and tin boxes. Patrick opened the door and disappeared up a narrow, unlit stairwell. Once upon a time, these must have been the back stairs to the maids' quarters. Rosie and I held on to the walls as we climbed up after him. "What is this, the secret lair of the Marquis de Sade?" I asked.

"Oh, is it too dark for you?"

"No, no, we love not being able to see two inches ahead of us."

"Maya's a riot," Rosie said, protective of both me and Patrick.

"Sorry. Here..." He pushed open a door at the top of the staircase and a shaft of light filtered down on us. Like his mother, who had shut both entrance doors to prevent us from escaping, Patrick needed two barricades to prevent people from entering.

We stepped into the kitchen of an attic apartment. There was no foyer or hallway, and the rooms opened onto one another like cars in a train: kitchen, bedroom, living room-not ahead of us, but to our right.

The kitchen was in a farcical state of disarray. The floor was strewn with several strata of empty takeout containers, muddy pizza flyers, alleyway bottles, discarded cigarette packs. There were only two items of furniture in the room other than the fridge: a gla.s.s-topped table and an exceptionally ugly high-backed chrome and vinyl chair, its yellowish brown padding tacked into place by rows of metal studs. Tall mounds of coagulated coins rose from the table like hills in an architect's table model; no doubt they'd come into being by way of the big bang, or little clink, of the male pocket-emptying ritual.

"I see you're really into housekeeping," I said. "But then, you don't have Bubby Miriam to tidy up."

Rosie smiled. She understood that I was deliberately trespa.s.sing, understood that the preliminary plat.i.tudes which served as safety nets for most people made Patrick nervous. The only solution was to charge through intimacy as if through some cosmic black hole and emerge on the other side. A foreboding of what might come to pa.s.s was replaced by the fiction that everything had already taken place.

"Is it that bad?" He looked around dubiously.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen a chair this ugly," I said. "You could have nightmares about a chair like this."

Patrick gazed at the chair as though he were noticing it for the first time.

"Where did you find it?" I asked.

"The builders left it behind. Some builders came to change the windows or something ... I don't see what's wrong with it."

"Liar," I said, and Patrick laughed. A voiceless, breathy sort of chugging sound, but unmistakably a laugh.

Forging a path through the trash on the floor, I entered Patrick's bedroom. A piece of black fabric, cut at a slant and reverting to threads along the sides, had been fastened with thumbtacks to the window frame, and there was also, I realized, a dog with long fleecy ears on the bed, partly concealed by the rumpled blankets. The dog peered at us with expressive eyes.

The bedroom was in the same state as the kitchen. The bed didn't have a headboard, and I noticed a dark patch on the wall where Patrick presumably leaned his head while reading. The desk looked like a rummage-sale table a la Miss Havisham: under a coating of dust lay a ship in a bottle, the Eiffel Tower in a snow globe, a pair of Buddy Holly gla.s.ses, a broken radio, a backgammon set, a model airplane and I can't remember what else. The only articles apparently in commission were a harmonica and a bottle of painkillers. The bottle had been tucked inside the airplane, on the pilot's seat.

"Codeine..." I examined the pills. "I take codeine for migraines. Sort of migraines-I don't know exactly what they are. Is that why you have them?"

"No-those are from when I fell off my bike and bashed my knee."

"How did you fall?" Rosie asked.

"A car backed into me."

"How awful!"

"Yes, very awful," Patrick echoed satirically, detaching himself from everything-the accident, the pain, Rosie's commiseration.

"I see you have two pillows," I said. "You have girls up here?"

"No, no ... well, once..."

"Once, you had a girlfriend, or once, someone came here?"

"Once, someone came here. She got locked out of her apartment..."

"Who was she?"

"Comrade Cynthia," he said. "She hates me now."

"Comrade Cynthia! What are you, some sort of communist?"

"Yeah, I'm a Party member." His tone was skeptical, though whether he was being skeptical about himself or the Party, or both, I couldn't tell.

"Why does Comrade Cynthia hate you?" I asked.

"Oh, it's a long, humiliating story."

"And what about this harmonica, do you play?"

"Not really ... but Woofie likes the sound, he sings along. One of the few things he still does, other than eat and sleep. Isn't that right, Woofie?" And without warning, he stepped into another persona. He stroked Woofie, murmured endearments without a hint of inhibition. Then it was over, and he was flung back like the rebel angels into the th.o.r.n.y human world. He rose from the bed and suggested we move to the living room.

Patrick's living room was an extension not of the unholy mess but of the soulful cuddle with Woofie. Here, in who knew what surge of duty and hope, he'd a.s.sembled a sofa with wooden armrests, two matching armchairs, a braided rug, bookcases, a stereo system, and, near the window, three thriving floor plants with enormous jungle leaves. These gestures, like the cuddle, modified but did not entirely negate the general atmosphere of edgy, fatalistic solitude.

"Who chose this furniture?" I asked.

"I guess I did."

"That's kind of heartbreaking," I said.

"Very heartbreaking. What can I get you to drink? Coffee-something stronger? Vodka?"

Rosie and I burst into childish laughter, which made Rosie snort accidentally, which made us laugh even harder. I wasn't allowed to drink coffee at home, and our Friday-night bottle of wine usually lasted several weeks. There was a prehistoric bottle of whisky under the sink at Rosie's; we once poured a little into a gla.s.s, tasted a drop, and yelped hilariously as we spit it out.

"What is it?" Patrick asked.

"I'll have what you're having," I said.

"Are you sure? I'm having vodka. I could make you a screwdriver."

"What's that?"

"Vodka and orange juice."

"Why do drinks have such weird names?" I asked him.

"Do they?"

"Any sort of juice or cola for me, please," Rosie said.

"What was so funny? Why were you laughing just now?"

"We were remembering when we tried some whisky. We don't usually drink," I said. "We're too young."

"You don't have to. I mean ... if you don't want to."

"Patrick! Don't drive us crazy."

Rosie handed him the plastic bag we'd brought with us. "By the way, you left your stuff at Daddy's."

"In case you're wondering why we're here," I added.

"Oh ... thanks." He dropped the bag carelessly on the floor and left in search of drinks. He returned a few minutes later with a bottle of vodka, a jug of vodka and orange juice, a carton of pear juice, and three somewhat greasy gla.s.ses.

Patrick sat on the sofa, and Rosie and I settled into the armchairs. He poured pear juice into one gla.s.s, the vodka and orange juice mix into another. "' I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,'" Rosie sang softly. "' But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear.'"

Patrick downed his vodka, which he was drinking straight, in one shot.

"That was fast," I said.

My strategy of trashing small talk was working, as was the vodka: Patrick smiled and a measure of strain moved away, improving his appearance. His smile was unexpectedly sweet, a smile left over from childhood, trusting and happy. "Sorry about the mess. I'm not used to guests," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Why don't you have more friends?"

"I don't like situations I can't control."

"'I who abandon what I can't control, first the people I know, eventually my own soul,'" I quoted. I swirled my vodka and orange juice; I was finding it difficult to overlook the greasy residue on the rim.

"Well, you have nothing to fear from us!" Rosie a.s.sured him.

"Yes, we're very ordinary," I said. "How about some music?"

"Sure." Patrick sprang to his feet, glad to have a task. "Anything in particular?"

"You choose."

He dropped a Santana alb.u.m into place, and Rosie curled up in a fetal position and shut her eyes, lost in the music. Patrick was the first person I'd come across who was completely immune to Rosie; he was immune to everyone. She accepted his self-imposed quarantine, but I didn't. I wanted to nudge a few nuggets of sociability out of him. There was something about Patrick that made it seem worth the trouble: a talent for humanity, for humour-all that trapped brilliance. You felt it would come bounding out if you could only tap into it somehow, if you could free him from whatever it was that was binding him to his Promethean rock.

"I see you read a lot," I said, scanning the crammed bookshelves.

"Oh no, I hardly read anything."

"You're just saying that. You're just saying that so no one can accuse you of anything."

Patrick grinned. "No, no, I really don't read much. I hardly read at all."

I picked up a paperback from the side table. "The Harrad Experiment. I've seen this somewhere. Is it good?"

"I didn't finish it."

"Why?"

"I got bored."

"Then I won't borrow it."

"No, no, take it-that's just my opinion."

"If you hated it, why would I like it?"

"Good point."

Close to my feet, on the braided rug, a newspaper was folded to the story of the Kent State shootings. Ordinary students gunned down, just like that. "Sick, sick, sick," I fumed. "What is wrong with that country?"

"As opposed to which country, exactly?" Patrick asked, hoping for a political debate.

But I only shrugged. "If you think about everything, you might as well kill yourself ... Hey, I almost forgot. I know your mother. You won't believe this-I saw her once. As a patient, I mean-when I was twelve. My mother decided I needed a shrink. But we never went back, after that one visit. She's Czech, isn't she?"

"Yes."

"Is Czechoslovakia still around?" I wondered.

"What?!"

"Well, you know how countries keep changing."

Patrick was amused. "Yes, remarkable as it may seem, Czechoslovakia is still around."

"Well, you never know."

"That's right," he nodded. "You never do know. Here today, gone tomorrow."

Rosie, who had been half-listening to our conversation, roused herself from the Santana spell. "Was your mother also in the camps?" she asked.

"I guess."

"Which one?"

"I don't know. She never talks about it."

"Poor her! Was that where she met your father?"

"My father isn't even Jewish. He doesn't live with us."