Infinity + One

“Oh, that makes me feel better!” he shot back. “Look, you gotta give me somethin’ kid. Not money,” he cut me off with a look as I lifted my cash as an offering. “Information! I am not taking you any farther if you can’t convince me that it wouldn’t be a huge mistake.”

“I would really rather you didn’t know who I am.”

“Yeah. I got that when you told me your name was Bonnie.”

“It is Bonnie.”

“And your last name?”

“What’s your first name?” I countered.

“This is my car. I ask the questions.”

I bit my lip and turned away. I supposed I didn’t have much choice. “Shelby,” I said softly. “My last name is Shelby.”

“Bonnie Shelby,” Clyde repeated. “And how old are you, Bonnie Shelby?”

“Twenty-one!” I ground out. I was starting to reconsider my desire for a ride.

“Well, unfortunately for you, Bonnie Shelby, you can’t prove that.”

“Turn on the car.”

“We’re not going anywhere, kid.”

“Just turn it on. I can prove it. You just need to promise me you aren’t going to get all weird on me.”

“I’m not the one who jumps off bridges, smiles like a lunatic, talks a hundred miles a minute, and wants to drive to Vegas with a total stranger.” Clyde said, but he twisted the key, and the old Chevy roared to life. I flipped on the radio and spun the dial until I found a country music station. “Do you ever listen to country music?” I asked, hoping mightily that he didn’t.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Hunter Hayes was singing about making a girl feel wanted, and I listened as the song ended. I’d met Hunter last year at the CMAs. He was cute and nice, and I thought maybe at the time he might be a good artist to open for me on the Come Undone tour. But Gran had other plans, so I never followed through on the idea.

Carrie Underwood immediately followed Hunter, and I sighed. It was too much to hope one of my songs would just conveniently be in the line-up when I needed one to be. I spun through the dial once more and then flipped it off.

“That’s not gonna work. I need your guitar. It’s got all its strings doesn’t it?”

Clyde looked at me blankly. “Yeah. But it hasn’t been played in ten years. And it wasn’t played well before that. It’s way out of tune.”

I scrambled over the seat to the back, tugging the guitar behind me as I crawled back to the front. I could have climbed out the passenger door and walked to the back of the Blazer more easily, but I was afraid Clyde would drive away as soon as my feet hit the pavement. He was looking more wary by the second.

I pulled opened the case on the backseat and lifted the guitar free, hoisting it into the front seat and positioning myself around it so I could play. I plucked and tightened for a minute. It was so out of tune the strings moaned and whined as I coaxed them back into place.

“You can do that by ear?”

“I may not be smart, but Jesus gave me perfect pitch to compensate,” I said matter-of-factly, and Clyde just raised his eyebrows. I didn’t know if he was doubtful about my perfect pitch or the fact that Jesus was my benefactor.

“There you go, old girl,” I crooned, as I strummed a series of chords, “not too bad for a girl that hasn’t been touched in a while.”

Clyde said a bad word under his breath.

I ignored him and picked my way through the intro of my most recent number one hit. Even if Clyde didn’t know country music, he had probably heard this song. It had been on the soundtrack of last summer’s big action blockbuster and had been my biggest crossover hit yet. It had been played so often even I was sick of it.

The movie was called Machine and so was the song. In the film, Earth had fallen to invaders—part machine, part human—from another planet, and one of these invaders falls in love with a human girl and has to choose which part of himself he’s going to embrace. The song is bittersweet and filled with longing, a perfect counter-balance to the high-paced action sequences that built to a fiery crescendo as the machine sacrifices himself for the girl who thinks he’s incapable of feeling, and she finds out too late that he was so much more than she had thought. America had eaten it up. I hoped Clyde would.

“Just a machine,” I sang, “Too cold to run, expired and numb, call it love. You don’t mind it, like I mind it, your hollow kindness. I should leave.”

Clyde was watching me, his body still, his hands resting on the steering wheel. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking so I kept singing, swinging into the bridge that launched the chorus.

“I’ll cover your feet and kiss your hands. By the morning you’ll forget who I am. Love is charity, but you’re not an orphan, so I’ll stay white noise that helps your sleeping. And if I’m useless, why do you use me, like a rusty machine, for your saving?”

“I’ve heard that song.” Clyde didn’t seem impressed.

“And do you know who sings it?”

Clyde shook his head.

“Bonnie Rae Shelby,” I said.

“And you’re telling me that’s who you are?” I could tell he didn’t believe me.

“That’s who I am, although my family just calls me Bonnie.”

“So what was Bonnie Rae Shelby doing on the Tobin Bridge last night?”

“I sang at the TD Garden last night. Last stop on my tour. I was finished.” I rushed on, realizing that whatever I said wouldn’t make much sense. “I took a cab. Told him to drive. I just needed some space, you know?”