“H-hey! Hey! Don’t you want my insurance information? You can’t just leave! I messed up your car!” he cried.
We backed out, gliding by the dumbfounded man who had pulled the bill I’d given him from his pocket and stood staring down at it, holding an end in each hand. A police cruiser turned onto the street that led to the enormous Walmart parking lot, passing us without a glance just as our light turned green, and we merged into the traffic headed toward the freeway nearby.
“Doesn’t drive any different,” I said optimistically.
“You’re the one who’s telling Bear,” Finn said.
“I CAN’T GET a hold of him. I texted and left a message. I think I’m going to be buying Bear a new car when it’s all said and done. Do you think we need to find some new wheels?” I chewed my lip, and Finn reached over and pulled it from my teeth with his middle finger, making me forget, momentarily, about conspicuous license plates and missing bumpers.
“Where? I’m sure the guy in the Suburban gave the license plate to the police. But he was the one at fault, and judging from what we saw, he’ll take full blame. The police might run the plates, but that will just lead them to Bear. Which is why we need to give him a heads up. He’ll handle it.” Finn was playing the role of the optimist now, apparently. It made me breathe a little easier.
“So what next?”
“Vegas.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know exactly. We’ll be dropping into the northern edge of Texas, and we’ll make New Mexico tonight, but I’ve got to get some gas. We’ll get some things from the trunk and make a plan and figure out how far we’ve got to go.”
Finn used my new phone for a quick Mapquest check, and reported that we still had fourteen hours to go and another four after that to get to LA. We fueled up at a truck stop, using the bathrooms to change into clean clothes. We didn’t eat inside or even go in and out at the same time, trying to lower the odds of being recognized together. We were both nervous and were eager to be away from people, now that the story seemed to have garnered national attention. I’d been on the covers of magazines before, but Finn hadn’t, and I didn’t want him seeing them at every turn. Even as crazy as I knew press coverage could be, I didn’t understand what was happening. Why was my life of such interest? And what could have possibly prompted any magazines to run a story on me and Clyde? And that brought the fear back. How could I be so afraid of losing someone who I’d just found? In less than a week, he had become the only thing that mattered.
We drove for four hours, the day clear and sunny, the temperatures climbing into the low 60s, signaling February was almost behind us, and that we had officially arrived in the desert. Finn listened to all of my albums, remarking on this and that, and he seemed intent on every word, like he couldn’t get enough. He skipped through the songs with heavy instrumentation, perky melodies, and flying fiddles. He seemed drawn to the ballads, the stripped down vocals, and the songs that told a story. It was a little strange for me, listening to myself sing for hours on end, but his intense focus on my voice was almost erotic, and I leaned my seat back and watched him quietly, letting my thoughts wander.
I’d been with Minnie this time last year. I’d gone home for our birthday. Minnie was going through chemo again, and had lost all her hair for the second time. I’d felt guilty that I hadn’t shaved my head with her, like I’d done before, and she’d told me I was ridiculous.
“You’re not required to be my twin in every way, Bonnie. Looking alike is a pain in the butt. Plus, you look a whole lot better than I do right now, so the fact that I look like you, but not nearly as good as you, is a little painful for me.
“It is?” I don’t know why that hurt my feelings. But it did. Minnie must have seen the hurt in my face, because she grabbed my hand and smiled.
“I’ve always loved that we looked alike. I thought it was fun. And I thought you were beautiful—which comforted me. Because if you were beautiful, I must be too,” Minnie soothed.
“I would tell you that you are indeed very beautiful, but that seems a little self-serving.” I lay back on the bed beside her, still holding her hand. We lay quietly for a minute.
“Why are we spending our birthday in Grassley?” I whined abruptly. “I have loads of money, and we’re twenty-one. We should go to Atlantic City!”
“Nah. Let’s go to Vegas. I’ve always wanted to go to Vegas.”
“You have?” I immediately started to plot how I could get us there as soon as possible.
“Yeah, I have.” Minnie nodded thoughtfully. “I want to dance in one of those shows where the girls wear feathers on their heads—”
“And nothing on their chests?” I interrupted, sitting up so I could grin down into her face.
“I think it would be very freeing!” Minnie protested. “Just dancing and kicking my legs—”
“And shaking your ta tas,” I interrupted again and jumped up on the bed, kicking and shimmying and bouncing her around.
“Everyone looks exactly alike under all that makeup and all that bling. Nobody would know which boobs were mine.” She giggled, flailing helplessly as I jumped as high as I could.
“I would! Your boobs look just like mine!” I shrieked, laughing.
“Ha! Not anymore.” Minnie lifted up her shirt and looked down at her shrunken chest, and I stopped jumping, my legs suddenly weak, my laughter gone. I fell down beside her on the bed, horrified and grief-stricken and unable to hide my reaction. I looked at her. At all of her. And I saw what I’d been refusing to see. She was right. Her breasts looked nothing like mine. Her body looked nothing like mine. Even her face, impossibly angular with her weight loss, looked different from mine. And I wanted to cover my eyes and break every mirror so I could keep the image of us the way we were fresh in my mind. She was being ripped from me, piece by piece.
“Minnie. Oh, Minnie May.” I put my arms around her, and I couldn’t stop the tears. “I’ll take you to Vegas, baby. I’ll take you when your ta tas grow back, and you and I will dance topless with feathers and high heels, and Gran will be so scandalized.”
Minnie didn’t cry with me—she just let me hold her, and she laid her head on my shoulder as I rubbed her back.
“She’ll be scandalized. But if we’re any good, she’ll be the first to call the press. Anonymously of course,” Minnie whispered, and I laughed wetly, the truth simultaneously hilarious and tragic. Minnie let me hold her for a few minutes longer, and then she pulled away and met my eyes seriously. Hopefully.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, Bonnie Rae. I actually feel pretty good. You’ll see. I’m getting better. The next time you come to Grassley, I’ll have the biggest boobs you’ve ever seen. You’ve got Dolly hair, but I’ll have Dolly boobs. And I forbid you to get them too. No twinner boobs! I want everyone to be looking at me and only me when we go to Vegas.”
I would be in Vegas tomorrow. And Minnie wouldn’t be with me. I wouldn’t be dancing topless with a feathered headdress alongside my sister. I would be dancing sister-less, like a feather in the wind, a spinning top, the world around me like a colorful stream of nothing.
I closed my eyes, suddenly impossibly dizzy. And Finn reached out and touched my face.
“Where did you go, Bonnie Rae?” he said softly.
“What do you mean?” I liked the way his fingers felt on my skin and leaned into his palm. The dizziness abated instantly.
“Sometimes you’re right there, right on the surface, full of life and so crazy and beautiful that it makes me ache.”
His deep voice was melancholy, and I hated that I had caused it.
“Then there are times, days like today,” he continued softly, “when you’re buried deep, and your beautiful face is just a house where you live. But the lights aren’t on, and the windows and doors are locked down tight. I know you’re in there, but I’m not with you. Maybe Minnie’s with you. But I don’t think so. You’re alone. And I wish you would let me in.”
I climb
ed over the space between our seats and slid into his lap, laying my head on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around him as tightly as I could, breathing him in. I lifted the blinds on my metaphorical house, the one he described so well, and I gave him a glimpse inside. He continued driving, left arm wrapped around me, right arm on the wheel, and he settled his lips on my forehead.
“Our birthday is tomorrow,” I said, placing my mouth by his ear so I didn’t have to speak up. “Sometimes I miss her so much, that dark corners and locked doors are all I can manage.”
“Ah, Bonnie. I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Are birthdays hard for you too?” I asked.
“Fisher and I were born two hours apart. Fish was born first, on August 7th, at around eleven pm. I was born on August 8th, a little after one am. So we each have our own birthday. But, yeah. Birthdays suck.” Finn was silent for several heartbeats. “So when you’re sad like this . . . and quiet, it’s because of Minnie?”
“Today is hard because I’m thinking about tomorrow. And I’m thinking about what I’ve lost. But I had days like this even before Minnie died. Days I just checked out. Gran says it’s just the blues. Everybody gets the blues. Maybe that’s all they are. But they feel more like grays than blues, and more black than gray sometimes. It’s always worse after I’ve been working too hard, singing night after night, pouring myself out all over the stage so people can lap me up. I love it, the singing, the performing, the people, the music, but sometimes I forget to save something . . . the something that is essentially me, and my light goes out. Sometimes it takes a while to get it burning again.”
“I see.” Finn’s hand stroked up and down my back, soothing me. His fingers traced the line of my jaw and dipped into the whorl of my ear and down across my lips. I turned and pressed my lips into his neck in response and felt an easing in my chest and a corresponding tightening low in my belly.
“But you have a key, Finn, and I give you permission to come on in,” I said. “Even if it’s dark, and you don’t know what you’ll find, you come on in, okay?” I felt an ache in my throat that grew as I spoke. “I want you in here with me, even if it isn’t pretty, even if I don’t invite you.”
Finn’s arm tightened around me, and he nuzzled my cheek with his, pulling me so close I could barely breathe, and I pressed my face into him and closed my eyes, and willed him to join me there behind my lids. Within minutes he pulled off an exit that led to somewhere else, pulling into a gas station that had long since closed its doors. A sign that lied about snacks and cold beer hung loosely on a pole, see-sawing back and forth in the brisk February wind, the ancient advertising almost illegible, the sun having stolen its color, leaving it faded and on the brink of extinction. I wondered if the bright lights would eventually do the same to me.
With the heat billowing out around us and inside us, the lights of the dash our only stars, Finn let his hands slide over me, breathing life into me, letting his colors flow through me, his mouth call out to me. And I met him at the door.
MALCOLM “BEAR” JOHNSON, long time body guard to singer Bonnie Rae Shelby, was the apparent victim of a carjacking at a gas station between St. Louis, Missouri and Nashville, Tennessee some time yesterday. Sources tell us he was unconscious when paramedics and police arrived at the scene and his wallet and phone were taken, as well as his vehicle, making identification difficult, but police have confirmed that it was indeed Malcolm Johnson, that he was shot at close range, and that he is in critical condition at an area hospital. There is no word on whether there are any witnesses or possible leads to finding the perpetrators of this vicious attack, and the police are not commenting further at this time.
Bonnie Rae Shelby was believed to be in the company of ex-convict Infinity James Clyde in the St Louis area around the same time, leading to rampant speculation about a possible meeting between the star and her bodyguard, Bear Johnson, which may have turned violent. At this juncture, police still aren’t willing to say definitively whether Miss Shelby is being held against her will. But the similarities between the attack on Mr. Johnson and another crime committed by Infinity James Clyde are hard to ignore. Infinity Clyde served time for the 2006 armed robbery of a Boston convenience store. One person died and another was seriously wounded.
THE BLANKET BENEATH them was actually an unzipped sleeping bag, purchased earlier that morning. Another sat nearby, still tightly bound, waiting for use. It wasn’t cold, but the sun was setting, and it would be soon. Finn considered pulling it over Bonnie, where she lay nestled beside him, her head burrowed like she was hiding from something, the way she always slept, but he waited, not wanting to make them look like vagrants.
They were about sixty-five miles outside Albuquerque, New Mexico in a little town that claimed it was the nicest place on Earth, which didn’t say much for the planet.
They had found a city park and backed Bear’s car into a spot, the trunk hugging the curb, hiding the plates as best they could. Finn didn’t think they were being chased through the southwest, but in the same breath wouldn’t have been surprised if an entire brigade of Texas Rangers were bearing down on them. It had been that kind of journey. They spread a blanket in a far corner of the park beneath a few scrubby pine trees, far from the playground and the empty ball field and hungrily consumed a Walmart picnic.
Bonnie had curled up after their meal, sleepy and satisfied, and he’d stroked her hair, needing to touch her, even if it was only that, a hand in her hair. Her breathing had eventually slowed, until he realized she’d given in to the exhaustion that had pursued her since he he’d seen it flicker across her face a lifetime ago, when he’d found her braced on the metal railing of an enormous bridge. A lifetime ago. A week ago.
A father with two small children, a girl and a boy, had crossed the park a half an hour before, not too far from where they lay, and was now pushing his kids on the swings in the opposite corner of the park. He’d noticed them, no doubt about it, but he didn’t keep looking their way and seemed intent on his children.
Two boys—brothers, he would guess from the way they fought—were throwing a baseball to each other nearby. One boy, obviously the superior athlete, threw the ball up and tossed out suggestions with each pitch. The younger boy seemed distracted, and his attention kept wandering as if he found other things more fascinating.
“Catch it, Finn. Man! Pay attention.” Fish’s voice rang in his head, echoing the boys as they argued nearby.
“Watch out!” Fish hollered as Finn stared at the ball curving toward him, not lifting his mitt at all. At the last minute he raised his glove and the ball smacked his palm with a satisfying thwack, as if he’d been faking Fish out all along.
“Where are you?” Fish grumbled.
“I was thinking about parabolas,” Finn answered, his mind still pondering the curve the ball made, as Fish threw it high in the air, thinking about how it climbed slowly only to fall in ever increasing speed as it found its way back to Earth.
“Ah, man! You and Dad. It’s bad enough that he’s always thinking about that stuff. Why do you have to too?”
“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.