When the novel begins, Pat Peoples leaves a mental hospital with his mother. He believes that he is 30 years old. He does not know that he has been institutionalized for nearly four years for committing a crime he does not remember. Throughout the novel, Pat’s goal is to reunite with his wife, Nikki, although he does not know that she has divorced him. Pat is relentlessly optimistic. At first, his insistence on a happy ending for his story is touching. As the novel progresses, and the reader sees how other characters react to Pat, his optimism begins to look naïve. When Tiffany—posing as Nikki—tells him that she will never see him again, he doubles down, telling her that, because he believes in happy endings, he knows that he can still win her back. At this level, his inability to accept what appears to be Nikki’s desire never to see him again looks aggressive and even threatening. 

Once the reader learns that Pat beat Nikki’s lover so badly that she divorced him, the quirky aspects of his mental illness—his hatred of Kenny G, for instance—no longer seem playful or humorous. He says that he “can control [his] mind pretty well” (24) when there is no indication that he has control of his mind.