My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

by Davy Rothbart

  *

  In Cleveland, around three a.m., our bus coasted down a highway exit ramp, wound its way through desolate downtown streets, and turned a corner into a wide Greyhound station parking lot, bright with pinkish fluorescent light. It was the middle of the night, but the lot was a hive of activity, where ghostly throngs waited and roamed, smoking, eating, playing dominoes, and kicking a soccer ball back and forth, while others flopped on the sidewalks, jackets pulled over their heads, using each other as pillows. The overall effect was of a refugee camp.

  As soon as we pulled in, a cry went up and people grabbed their backpacks, duffel bags, and suitcases and began to crowd toward us, lurching like zombies. Reflected in the rearview mirror up front I could see our driver swiveling his head, taking the scene in with visible fright. Before allowing the bus to come to a complete stop, he thought better of it, and instead laid on the horn, gunned the engine, and cranked the wheel hard to the right. The crowd parted as we rumbled through, into a wide alley, and with a jolt we dropped off a high curb, emerging onto a tiny side street behind the bus station. A few fleet-footed hopefuls had given chase, hammering on the flanks of the bus as they ran alongside us, dodging hydrants, newspaper boxes, and telephone poles. The driver cut left onto a wider street, and floored it for several blocks until those in pursuit had fallen away. He swung a right, rolled through a maze of side streets, and finally pulled into an empty warehouse parking lot and killed the engine. “This is Cleveland,” he said over the loudspeaker, a bit rattled. “Anyone getting off?”

  A scattered few came awake and shuffled up the aisle, and the driver climbed outside and helped them wrestle their bags free from the luggage compartments beneath the bus. Then he scampered up the steps again and said, “I’ll be back in fifteen,” and I watched as he guided the disgorged passengers away in the direction of the bus station. I dozed for a few, and when my eyes fluttered open again, the driver was back, tramping through the warehouse lot, followed by a ragtag band of five or six new riders, surging after him with pained, desperate faces, lugging duffel bags and steamer trunks behind them. They loaded their stuff under the bus, came aboard, and settled down into the few remaining empty seats or any vacant real estate they could find in the aisle.

  Laquisha shifted around and squinted at me with one eye. “Are we there yet?” she asked.

  “Cleveland,” I said.

  She gave a cute little harrumph, settled back, tugged her headphones back over her ears, and pressed play on her Discman. Soon we were off again, back on the turnpike. I watched the moon rise over an open field and couldn’t help but think of my favorite Simon & Garfunkel song, “America.” I’d always dreamed of finding the right girl and running away with her on a Greyhound bus to somewhere new and thrilling, like the young Michigan couple in the song. But everything had been turned upside down—as much as I had Laquisha’s back and felt that she had mine, there was no romantic energy between us, and we were headed to New York not because a new part of our life was beginning, but because the world, for all we knew, was ending, and we were determined to be there to see it fall.

  *

  The next morning was cool and bright, and at the Highspire Rest Area in central Pennsylvania, I found myself strolling out of the men’s room, zipping up my jeans, and blinking in disbelief as the Greyhound bus—with my backpack, recording equipment, and everything else still aboard—rolled away through the parking lot, down the entrance ramp, and back onto the turnpike, before disappearing around a distant bend. Laquisha came galloping toward me, breathless. “That crazy fucker ditched us!” she cried.

  It took about half an hour and a round of excitable discussion with the other two dozen passengers who’d been left behind for some kind of explanation to emerge. The dude from Halifax had noticed around dawn that one of the old-timers from Wilkes-Barre kept roaming up the aisle to talk to the driver. Someone pointed out that the entire retiree contingent, all trying to get home from Vegas, had remained on the bus when we’d arrived at the rest stop, while almost everyone else had gotten off to hit the john or see what kind of breakfast they could scrounge together out of the vending machines. It wasn’t hard to guess that the gang of seniors had bribed our driver for a direct trip home to Wilkes-Barre, two or three hours north through the Pocono Mountains.

  As we all stood around, still trying to make sense of things, a shy ten-year-old Amish boy, who was traveling with an older teenage brother, piped up: “The bus driver, he came and told me to get off the bus, right before they left. He said, ‘Tell everyone I’m sorry and I’ll be back for them.’ He said, ‘Make sure you tell everyone I’ll be back.’”

  So there it was—we’d been ditched all right, but perhaps only temporarily. A gruff older man who’d refused to let me interview him the night before folded his arms across his chest and said, “Well, I’m sure as shit not gonna spend the day hanging around, hoping he comes back for us. I’ll find another ride.” He stalked away, toward a line of semis waiting to refuel. A handful of others, muttering curses, headed back inside the rest area to call rental-car companies or try to hitch with strangers. As for me, I wasn’t going anywhere without my brand-new, top-of-the-line audio gear and all of the tapes I’d recorded the day before, and everyone else seemed equally reluctant to leave without their stuff, so we all decided to just dig in for the day and make the best of it.

  The woman with the black coat and the pink scarf, who’d been standing at the fringes of our huddle as we tried to understand why we’d been left behind, cupped a hand over her mouth, hustled off on her own, and settled onto a picnic table at the edge of the woods fifty yards away, while the rest of us sat close together in the shadow of a towering, moss-covered elm. We read tourist brochures. We slept. We chatted in the grass. To other travelers we must’ve looked like the oddest group ever, our affiliation impossible to decipher—young, old, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian, with a pair of Amish boys tossed in for good measure.

  The young Amish kid uncovered a chewed-up green-and-orange tennis ball in the grass and started a game of catch with his older brother. A few others joined in, someone grabbed a sturdy stick, and soon enough the game of catch had morphed into a full-on game of stickball, with two teams of six or seven, sweatshirts and jackets as the bases, and an old Somali lady from Queens as the home-plate ump. Others who’d pulled into the rest area to take a leak or walk their dogs rotated in for an inning or two and then subbed out and headed on their way. The short baselines and shallow outfield favored the offenses—if you poked the ball into the gap, it bounded into the parking lot, underneath cars, for an almost certain inside-the-park home run. Shouting, laughing, and moving our bodies seemed to be exactly the release everyone had sorely needed, though every ten minutes or so I’d eye the woman in the black coat, posted at her picnic table, eyeing us, and feel a simmering splash of guilt for having too much fun.

  At one point, a Sikh man with a heavy beard in white robes and a magenta turban stopped to watch us, along with his two teenage sons, who wore jeans and Tshirts, and after Laquisha extended an invite, the boys asked their dad if they could play. He nodded, and the boys joined the team at bat and waited for a turn at the plate. With the bases loaded, the younger of the two, who was maybe fourteen, picked up the stick, took a couple of mighty practice cuts, and crowded the FUBU-hoodie plate, making playful boasts in Punjabi to his dad and his older brother. The guy pitching for my team was a retired cop from Long Island who’d made no secret of his freshly hatched hatred for Arabs when I’d interviewed him during the long haul through Indiana the night before. “Yeah, those Japanese internment camps during World War Two?” he’d said. “Maybe that seems wrong now, but I’ll tell you one thing, who knows what would’ve happened if we hadn’t locked them all away? We should be doing the same thing right now with the Arabs.” He might’ve been more intense and outspoken in his anger than anyone on the bus, but his general sentiments weren’t unique, especially among the older, white, Wilkes-Barre crew, who’d s
ince abandoned us. Now, his eyes flashed as he checked the runner at third, squeezed the tennis ball in his right hand, and peered in toward home.

  “Hey, man,” said the hippie from Halifax, making a quick move toward him from first base. “Mind if I toss a few pitches?”

  The retired cop waved him away, growling, “I got this.”

  Laquisha, at second base, glanced over at me, and seemed to glean my growing concern—I’d already given her a rundown on which passengers I was entranced by and which ones saddened and spooked me. “Let’s go to the bullpen,” she called. “Let’s give someone else a turn on the mound.”

  But the cop was already going into his motion. The whole game, he’d served up nothing but juicy batting-practice lobs, but now he reared back and fired a fastball right at the Sikh kid’s head. The kid ducked and the ball sailed harmlessly past. “What the hell, man?” cried the kid’s older brother, jumping to his feet from the picnic table where he waited on deck.

  I took a few steps toward the mound, but the guy from Halifax had already raced over to confront the cop. “What was that about?” he demanded.

  “Take it easy, bud,” the cop said, waiting for someone to retrieve the ball and toss it back to him. “It just got away from me. The thing’s slippery. It’s a dog’s old chew toy.” He smirked and rubbed his palms together. “Come on, let’s play ball.”

  Warily, I repositioned myself at third. The Sikh kid stepped back to the plate and hunched into his stance with a sad, fierce look in his eyes. The old cop glared at him and kicked the dirt at his feet. He wound back, and unleashed another whistling burner. The kid ducked hard, dropped the stick from his hands, and tried to turn inward, away from the pitch, but it caught him right in the side of the face. He let out a little cry and crashed to the ground with a thud. His dad rushed to his side and knelt over him, and his older brother dashed over, picked up the fallen stick, and took one menacing step toward the mound. This was exactly what the cop seemed to be hoping for. Puffing out his chest, he strode forward, shouting, “You want some of this? Come get some of this!”

  “Fuck you,” the older brother said, hurling the stick in the opposite direction, where it disappeared onto the roof of the little brick building that housed the women’s restrooms. He turned and helped his brother—who was more stung than actually hurt—get to his feet.

  I hurried over to them to urgently apologize, but the dad hissed at me to leave them alone. He put his arms around his boys’ shoulders and guided them swiftly into the parking lot, where the three of them clambered into a yellow Ford Focus hatchback and wheeled away.

  The game instantly disbanded. The cop commiserated with the few passengers who believed he’d made a heroic stand, while the rest of us put our hands in our pockets and wandered away, crushed and dispirited, aware of the ugliness and divisions of our new reality, but seeing no point in talking about it. Laquisha and I found another spot in the grass to kill the rest of the afternoon. “It smells like dog doo-doo,” she said. “I don’t even have my Discman.” She leaned back, wrapped an arm of my sweatshirt over her eyes and ears, and heaved a troubled sigh. “This sucks,” she said. “I’m missing my shows. I’ll tell you what. Terrorism can suck my dick.”

  *

  Around six in the evening, our Greyhound bus groaned into the lot beside the shady grove where we’d spent the last few hours dozing and mashing mosquitoes, and the bus driver opened the door and sat fiddling with a pair of nail clippers as everyone filed silently aboard—what was there really to say to him? Once we hit the highway, though, the guy from Halifax went up to give him a piece of his mind. It was wrong, he said in a loud, pitched Canadian accent, for the driver to have gone off-route and stranded us for most of the day. “I appreciate you coming back for us,” he said, “but for some of us, it’s very urgent to get home as quickly as possible.” He nodded toward the woman in the black coat in the front seat.

  “Where you from?” the driver asked.

  “Halifax.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Nova Scotia.”

  “Canada?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, look,” said the driver, “this is America. Money talks. I’ll get everyone home in good time. Anyone that makes it worth my while, they get home first. Wilkes-Barre’s not off-route—this whole bus is off-route. You know what my route is? Vegas to Phoenix and back. Look, I’m on injured leave. I’ve got metal rods in my spine. Tuesday morning, they call me in, pull this bus out of retirement, and tell me to get people where they need to go. So here’s my advice: sit down, shut up, and just be happy that our country’s a target, not yours.”

  Defeated, and still steaming, the guy turned and made his way slowly back down the aisle. His shy, dreadlocked wife said, “Lee, I told you it wouldn’t help to—”

  “I know,” he said, cutting her off with a raised palm, and swinging into the row behind her. Now that all the old fogeys had been chauffeured home, and a few other folks had foraged off on their own, the bus was two-thirds empty. There was enough space for me and Laquisha to each have our own row, but I was grateful for her quiet fellowship, and the fact that she still made a point of holding down the seat next to me.

  Night fell, and I found myself, predictably, gushing to Laquisha about Susannah Cotton for an hour, dissecting every phone call and sort-of date we’d had the past couple of months, explaining why some moments had given me hope while others had drained me of it.

  “Guys play too many games,” Laquisha said. “If you like her, you don’t have to keep it a secret from her. It’s like you’re trying too hard not to show your hand.”

  “You know, I’m probably the furthest thing from her mind right now,” I said. “When things are this fucked up, you just want to feel safe. I bet you anything she’s gonna get back with her ex-boyfriend. In fact,” I said, dropping to a hush, “I bet he’s behind this whole World Trade Center thing. All part of his plan to win her back.”

  Laquisha slapped me on the arm. “That’s not funny,” she said, laughing. Then she tugged on my elbow. “Why don’t you call her?” she asked. “Just call her and say hi and tell her you’re thinking about her.”

  That was a bad idea, I said, and defied the whole point of going on this trip—to give Susannah space and make her realize how much she missed me when I was gone. But the idea of calling her had now been planted in my mind, and it raged liked an infection until at last I gave in, dug out my cell phone, and punched in Susannah’s number. My heart hammered with each ring. Laquisha leaned close so she could hear, grasping my sleeve with a terrified look on her face, like she was at a midnight horror flick at the drive-in.

  Finally, Susannah picked up, but there was no “Hello,” just the rowdy, unmistakable din of a Thursday night at the Gold Star, the hipster bar on Division where she and I had first met. I could hear her voice, talking merrily to someone over the ruckus, but I couldn’t make out any of her words, only the crash of glasses, the squeaks and squawks of the people around her, and the heavy chords of the Fugazi song “Waiting Room” and its grinding chorus blasting from the jukebox: “I don’t want the news, I cannot use it. I don’t want the news, / I won’t live by it.” What had happened was clear to me—she’d seen who was calling and had tried to duck the call, but had pressed the wrong button before dropping her phone back into her purse.

  “It’s okay,” said Laquisha. “She’s partying. Who’s gonna answer their phone when they’re out at the club?” She sat back. “What’re you doing? Aren’t you gonna hang up? Hang up!”

  “I’m just gonna listen in for a while,” I said. “See if I can figure out who she’s with, or if she says anything about me.”

  “You’re weird,” Laquisha said. “But I guess I’d do the same thing.”

  I leaned against the window, the phone clamped to my left ear, the right side of my face pressed to the cool glass. It was strangely wrenching to be transported inside the Gold Star, through sound alone, and be at Susannah’s si
de, while out my window green mile markers ticked down toward Philadelphia, and red lights on distant radio towers flared and faded in mute code. I appreciated that everyone back in Chicago was having a fun night, but a part of me also felt repelled—didn’t they know what was happening in the world? Didn’t they know that festivity, for now, was tasteless? And why hadn’t Susannah at least answered her phone and said hi, that she was at the bar, and that she’d call me back later? There were male voices around her and there were female voices, but it was impossible to tell who she was with or if a hand was resting casually on her hip or her thigh, though I guessed that one was. I listened for twelve full minutes, with creeping heartbreak; then my phone made a low bee-bee-beep, which meant we’d passed out of cell-tower range and into roaming mode—often responsible for a monthly kick in the nuts on my Sprint bill. I hung around on the line for another forty-five seconds, and finally, heavyhearted and full of an unnamed sorrow, dropped my phone into my lap, and our bus pressed on through the night.

  *

  “Wake up,” Laquisha said. “We’re getting close.” It was almost dawn on the morning of September 14, and the eastern sky had filled with shades of purple and red. “We just passed Newark,” she told me. “We’ll be in the city in like half an hour.”

  I rubbed my eyes, still caught in a web of unsettling dreams, and as we floated in stop-and-go traffic, I began idly counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, watching people handle their morning routines—eating bagels with cream cheese and sprouts, brushing their teeth, putting on makeup, and singing along to the radio. The normalcy of it all was movingly reassuring—the terrorists had wreaked horrific havoc, no doubt, but they sure as hell hadn’t won.