Infinity + One

“I can’t help if, Fish.” Finn said honestly. “They’re everywhere.” He threw the ball to his brother as high as he could, and Fish positioned himself beneath it, perfectly judging where it would fall.

Curved lines. They were everywhere. Finn stretched out on the sleeping bag, resting his head on his hand, caught between the memory of his brother and the woman who lay beside him, the curve of her rounded hip drawing his eyes the way the ball, curving into the sky, had caught his attention and caused the wheels in his mind to spin, taking him away from his brother and the game at hand. Fish had asked the same question Finn had asked Bonnie earlier. Where are you?

Is that how Fish had felt when Finn went inside his head? Where are you? Why can’t I come with you?

Finn touched Bonnie’s cheek, another slope, a sweet curve, a quadratic equation that he could easily solve.

“A curve is just the conjunction of many straight, infinitesimally short, lines,” Finn whispered, as if the mathematical definition of something so lovely would lessen its allure. It didn’t.

Everything about Bonnie called to him. He wanted to peel off her clothes and answer that call, pressing his skin against hers from thigh to chest, sinking into her, consuming her so there was no more room, no more space, no more distance.

He knew they were moving too fast, yet he worried they would never get there. He didn’t mean sexually—although the fear that that would be denied them too was very present. The almost desperate need to have her was something he had never experienced, but sex was as fleeting and infinitesimal as his longing was infinite and never ending, and he didn’t just want a million infinitesimal lines stitched together to create a curve that they would both simply slide down. He wanted something beyond the rise and fall of physical satiation, he wanted a moment that stretched out long and straight, where it was just Bonnie and Clyde, where fate released them from the rollercoaster they were on. And that moment seemed unattainable.

He felt like Achilles constantly pursuing the plodding tortoise, unable to close one gap without a new gap springing up between them. The distances were growing smaller and smaller, but so was time, and Finn feared they would run out before he could solve the paradox.

In spite of his morose thoughts, the reminder of the paradox made him smile again, and his eyes found the boys once more, now racing to the playground, the older brother easily out in front.

Instead of stories at night, Jason Clyde would tell his boys paradoxes—the Greek philosopher Zeno had written many of them, all seemingly simple yet filled with mind twisting questions. They were stories, but not. Fish had come to hate them and wrote his own endings, the philosophical musings and mathematical conundrums irritants to a boy who craved action, motion, and uncomplicated solutions.

Fish had listened attentively to the paradox of Achilles, declared it ridiculous, and promptly challenged Finn to a race, giving him a head start just like the tortoise, eventually overtaking him, just as he always did. Fish was faster, just like Achilles.

“See?” Fish had said to Finn and his father. “Stupid. Achilles would have passed that dumb turtle before the turtle could even create another gap between them.”

“It’s not about speed, Fish,” his father had explained. “It’s supposed to challenge the way we think about the world versus the way the world actually is. Zeno argued that change and motion weren’t real.”

Finn had puzzled out the paradox all night long and had written his own solution and proudly presented it to his dad the next day, complete with ideas about convergent and divergent theory. His dad had been so proud, but Fish had just sighed gustily and challenged Finn to another race.

The paradox reveals a mismatch between the way we think about the world and the way the world really is, his father had said.

Finn had no illusions anymore about the way the world really was. It had shown itself too many times—and it always worked against you. They were running, the gap was closing, but he feared the paradox of Bonnie and Clyde might be insolvable.

I AWOKE TO darkness and the feel of Finn beside me, his body large and warm, the air on my cheeks cool and crisp. We were still in the park. I could see stars through the pine needles above us—tiny, sharp pieces of broken glass. I stared at them for a while, and the song, “Nelly Gray,” tiptoed into my head—the line about the moon climbing the mountain, and the stars shining too. Minnie and I would sing it to each other, changing the name from Nelly Gray to Bonnie Rae or Minnie Mae, depending on who was singing it.

Oh, my poor, Minnie Mae, they have taken you away

And I’ll never see my darling, anymore

I’m sitting by the river and a weeping all the day

For you’ve gone

From the old Kentucky shore.

Now my canoe is under water, and my banjo is unstrung

And I’m tired of living, anymore

My eyes shall be cast downward, and my songs will be unsung

While I stay on the old Kentucky shore.

I hadn’t stayed on the old Kentucky shore. I was somewhere in New Mexico, and I had no idea what time it was. I had been so tired, but now I was wide awake, and not nearly as tired of living as I’d been just days before. I rolled carefully from beneath the sleeping bag Finn had obviously pulled over us. He needed all the sleep he could get, but I had to visit the little girl’s room. Or the little girl’s concrete out house, which was what the bathrooms at the park were, but they had running water and a toilet, which was all I really needed at the moment.