My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays Read Online Free Page A

out their drink orders. She leaned back toward me and hollered, “I’m sorry, Monday nights are always like this, and we’re short a guy. Can you come back later? It’ll be less insane.”
    “Sure, no problem,” I said, putting both hands up idiotically for another slap of hands, but she’d already turned and was cranking the caps off a row of Yuengling bottles. I slowly lowered my hands, waited another fifteen seconds or so until she happened to glance my way, and gave her a little wave. She flashed a polite smile in return, and I whirled and slunk out the door, utterly defeated, making a promise to myself not to come back later in the night unless she called my phone in the next few hours and begged me to. It was just past eight o’clock. I’d give her till midnight.
    *
    “Should we come inside?” Chris asked as I climbed in the backseat; Vernon had made it back to the car and was up riding shotgun.
    “It’s kind of busy in there. Let’s get some grub and come back later.”
    “Well, how’d it go?” asked Vernon, once we were moving again.
    “Not too bad. I don’t know. Not too good, either.” I told them what had gone down. They both tried to reassure me that Lauren was probably really excited I was in town, but that it’s always hard when someone pops in to see you and you’re busy at work. I granted them that, but it still seemed like she could’ve maybe flipped me the keys to her apartment, in case I wanted to take a nap or chill out and watch a movie until she got home. Or really done anything to give me the sense that she was happy I’d rolled in.
    “Don’t worry, man,” Vernon said. “Trust me, it’ll be cool.” This from the guy who was now using Chris’s cell phone—and had been the whole time I was in the bar—to try to reach his great-granddaughter, to no avail. He was hoping we could stop by her house, which was on the west side of town, about a twenty-minute drive.
    “I’m down,” I said. “Chris?”
    “Rock ’n’ roll,” said Chris. “We can take the Kensington.” He pumped up the Green Day song on the radio, zoomed through side streets to the on-ramp for an expressway, and looped the Explorer back toward the lights of downtown, slapping the steering wheel along to the music. Vernon tore off a few scratch tickets for himself, passed me the rest of the roll, and we both went to work.
    Each losing ticket I scratched out socked me a little blow to the heart. I couldn’t help but feel that trying to find the right girl was like trying to get rich playing the lottery—both were games for suckers. And why didn’t scratch cards just have a single box that told you if you’d won or not? Why the slow build, all the teasing hoopla of Tic-Tac-Toe game boards and Wheels of Fortune? You kept thinking you were getting close and then, once again: Loser. All of the unanswered questions made my head hurt: Had I blown things by coming to Buffalo and putting unfair pressure on Lauren Hill? Should I have simply come on any day other than Valentine’s Day? Had she meant all of the things she’d said in her letters? Some of it? None of it? And what would be the best way to salvage the night when I went back to the bar? (Because, face it, I was headed back there later whether she called me or not.) A small heap of losing tickets gathered at my feet.
    “Holy shit!” cried Vernon from up front. “I think we got a winner!”
    “How much?” said Chris, suddenly alert, punching the radio off.
    “Wait a second. Did I win? Yeah, I did. Ten bucks!”
    “Not bad.” Chris nodded enthusiastically. “That’s yours to keep,” he told Vernon. “You guys just keep on scratching.”
    “You bet your goddamn ass,” said Vernon, still believing a bigger payday was near.
    His minor stroke of glory made me glad, but to me, winning ten bucks instead of ten grand was like getting a drunken kiss on the corner of the mouth from a stranger at the bar that you’ll never see again. What I really