Infinity + One

In addition, a rental car loaned to Mr. Clyde on February 26, and not returned as contracted, has now been reported as stolen by the rental car company, adding to the growing list of charges being leveled against the ex-con, and possibly Bonnie Rae Shelby, as well.

THE BUS WAS only half full, if that, and we slid into two seats about two-thirds back on the left-hand side. We hadn’t even had to wait. The bus rumbled in ten minutes after we purchased our tickets from the tired cashier, who happily took cash and didn’t ask for ID, though she told us to have it ready when we boarded, along with our tickets. For the first time in my life, I was thankful that my name was Bonita, and my license said so. Finn’s name was pretty memorable, but we bought his ticket under Finn Clyde, figuring nobody would recognize the name Finn anyway, seeing as every news report shouted out his full name, complete with his middle name, like he was John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, or John Wayne Gacy. It was four in the morning, and the tired bus driver took our tickets, ripped off the top portion without a comment or a second glance at the tickets or at us.

I wore the glasses I’d purchased at Walmart—one of the only things I still had from the second Walmart shopping spree, besides my makeup—and Finn had snagged two ball caps sporting the telecommunications logo of the business we’d traipsed through with the surprisingly helpful janitor. He’d had a change of heart when he’d seen the small tattoo on Finn’s hand. Finn said it was a symbol of the scumbag brotherhood—another prison tattoo, easily recognizable by other ex-convicts.

He might have been less helpful if he’d seen Finn take the hats from the shelf, but Finn had stuffed them in his jacket and informed me on our walk back to the convenience store that if we got caught with the hats on, the company would be thrilled with the free publicity.

With the hat and glasses, I felt fairly safe, but the moment Finn dropped into his seat beside me, I found his hand. My bravado was gone, as was the adrenaline from the stage. The euphoria from having Finn’s eyes on me, from his hungry mouth pressed to mine, from running from the police, all of it had worn off. We stayed silent, hands clasped, until the Greyhound pulled away from the convenience store and rumbled out onto the freeway, taking us away from yet another fiasco.

I was scared again, reality almost too much to take at the moment. I’d had too many of these moments, teetering between disbelief and elation at the twists and turns our days had taken, and I felt more alive than I’d ever felt before, but reality could be a trip.

We were running out of time. We needed to get to LA. We needed to make our grand statement. And then it would all go away. It would be over. But that’s not why I was scared. When we reached LA, when we openly contradicted the media craze, would we be over too? And how many cars were we going to abandon on the way? What the hell were we doing?

“What the hell are we doing?” Finn sighed next to me, his words mirroring my thoughts so exactly I jerked, staring up at him. And then I started to laugh. A few people turned toward us, and Finn cursed and pushed me down on his lap, and I pressed my face into his thigh until I could control the semi-hysterical giggles.

Finn bent his head over me, and rested it against the seat in front of him, his upper body at a forty-five degree angle above my head where it lay in his lap, creating a dark, triangular cocoon where we could converse without being overheard.

“Why did you do that, Bonnie? Why did you sing? Are you so hungry for attention that you couldn’t resist?” His voice was soft, but confused, like he didn’t get me at all. My bubbling laughter fizzled immediately, tamped down by the gulf that separated me from his understanding. I wanted that understanding. I desperately needed it. Without it, he was lost to me.

“I wanted to sing to you,” I said. “I needed to tell you how I feel. I needed for you to believe me. And you listen best when I sing.”

“But it was foolish. And you know it.”

I felt tears prick my eyes at his censure. He’d been angry with me all night. And I didn’t know why. “I thought you liked it. You . . . you kissed me.”

“I kissed you because it was beautiful and you make me feel . . .” he bit out, his voice a harsh whisper. “You make me feel . . . crazy things. Desperate things. Impossible things. You make me feel. And feeling that much is irresistible sometimes. You are irresistible sometimes.”

I reached up and touched his face. I couldn’t see his expression, and I wanted to smooth away his displeasure. My fingertips crept along the ridge of his nose and smoothed the furrow between his brows, and danced down the line of his jaw.

“That’s why I sing, Finn,” I whispered. “It makes me feel. It’s so real. And so raw. And it’s the only thing in my life that is real anymore. Except you. Although sometimes I think you’re imaginary.” My thoughts ran back to the conversation I’d had with myself about what was real in the bathroom at the little park, the six hundred pound woman weighing heavily in my thoughts.

“Did you know that in mathematics they determined what was real by what was not imaginary?” Finn’s voice was just a soft rumble beneath my fingertips that had found his lips

“What?”

“When mathematicians came up with imaginary numbers, accepted them, defined them, they had to come up with a name for everything that wasn’t imaginary. Everything that wasn’t an imaginary number from that point on became a ‘real’ number.”

“What’s an imaginary number?”