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?”
“The square root of negative one is an imaginary number.”
“Is that all?”
"Any number that was once the square root of a negative number becomes an imaginary number. Square root of -4 becomes 2i, square root of -100 becomes 10i."
“Is infinity an imaginary number?”
“No.”
“Is it a real number?”
“No. It isn’t a number at all. It’s a concept of endlessness, unreachableness.
“I knew it. See? You are just a figment of my imagination.”
Finn laughed, a quiet chuckle that didn’t travel farther than my ears. “A real number is just a value that represents a quantity on a continuous line. But that doesn’t mean it shows the value of something real. Almost any number that you can think of is a real number. Whole numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers.”
“And infinity can’t be measured.” I thought I understood.
“Yeah.” Finn grasped my fingers that played against his lips. “There is no point that marks infinity.”
“But it still exists.”
“It exists, but it isn’t real,” Finn countered, obviously enjoying the word play.
“I hate math,” I said. But I smiled and he leaned down and kissed me, forgiving me, making me love math. Very much.
“Math is beautiful,” he murmured.
“Math isn’t real,” I argued, just for the sake of arguing.
“It isn’t always tangible, but some of the best things in life aren’t tangible. Love isn’t tangible. Neither is patience. Neither is kindness or forgiveness or any one of the other virtues people talk about,” he said.
“I’ve been looking for what’s real for the last few years,” I confessed wistfully, the sound child-like, even to my own ears. “But reality is usually ugly. Beauty? That’s harder to pin down. It’s like a sunset. It’s beautiful, it makes you feel something. And that’s real. But the feeling only lasts as long as the sunset. It’s so fleeting. So it’s easy to believe it isn’t real.” I sighed, wondering if I was making any sense.
“Fame and fortune seem like that. Like they can’t be real. And then suddenly they are. You are . . . rich and famous. But you don’t feel any different. So it doesn’t feel real. So you keep looking. And before long … it becomes so easy to just give in to the ugly. Because it’s everywhere you look. So you take from it what pleasure there is to take. Because there is pleasure in it. And it’s real,” I insisted again.
“But the pleasure gets harder and harder to find, and you have to dig deeper and deeper into the cra
p, so deep you’re covered in it, and you get coated in the ugly.” I felt despair rising in my chest, and Finn seemed to sense it because he kissed my forehead and then my eyelids and then my lips once more, demanding that I pause, just for a moment.
“I get it, Bonnie Rae,” Finn said, holding my gaze. “You think I don’t get that? Prison is full of all that is truly ugly. I was surrounded by it for five years. I think sometimes I’ll never be able to scrub off the stench.”
“What I feel for you, Finn? It’s not like anything I’ve felt before. It’s better than real. So maybe the challenge in life is not letting what is real convince us that that is all there is.”
Finn didn’t respond, and I didn’t know if I’d gotten through to him. But I needed him to believe me, and the turbulence in my chest had me peering up at him, entreating him to hear.
“Maybe I’ll stop looking for real,” I whispered, just making out his eyes as he stared down into my face, his features softly illuminated by the hushed light of the moon that bathed the world streaming past the bus windows. “Maybe I’ll stop looking for real, now that I’ve found Infinity.”
THE BUS STOPPED in Gallup, New Mexico, about two hours into the trip, but we stayed on the bus. When the bus resumed the journey, we slept for a while, the little sleep we’d gotten over the last week, along with the soothing hum of the bus making it easy to drop off. We kept our hats pulled low over our faces, and Finn traded me seats so he could lean against the window, and I could lean against him.
When the bus made a stop in Flagstaff, Arizona, about three hours later, and halfway into the trip, we stayed in our seats again, deciding that the less attention we drew to ourselves getting on and off, the better. While we waited for the journey to continue, I dug through my bag until I found the Sharpie I’d used to sign the janitor’s one hundred dollar bill.
“Who carries a marker in their purse?” Finn shook his head.
“Tools of my trade, Clyde. I never leave home without one.”
“Please don’t start signing autographs on this bus, Bonnie Rae. We still have hours to go, and it’s broad daylight. No concerts, no signings, no entertaining the troops.” There were a handful of soldiers on the bus, which I had pointed out to Finn, telling him about my work with the USO.
“Hold your horses, Infinity,” I teased. “Give me your right hand.”
Finn did as I asked, crossing his hand over his body so I could hold it in mine. I pulled the lid off the fine-tip marker with my teeth, and very carefully, added a dot to his tattoo. There were still four dots comprising the “cage”—but instead of one man in the cage, now there were two. Two dots, that is.
Finn looked at my handiwork and then looked at me, his eyebrows raised in question.
“You aren’t alone anymore. Neither am I. We may still be in a cage . . . and I know that’s my fault. But we’re together.” I felt a lump rise in my throat and looked away. Damn my feminine emotions.
“Do you know that two is an untouchable number too?” Finn said after several long minutes, his eyes on his hand.
“It is?”
He nodded slowly and traced the dots which now numbered six. “And six is what is known as a perfect number. The sum of its divisors—one, two, and three—all add up to six. The product of its divisors are also six.”
“So what you’re telling me, then, is together we are perfect and untouchable?”
Finn’s eyes shot to mine, and the yearning in his face made me long to be anywhere but where we were. I leaned in and pressed my lips to his, needing his mouth, even if only for a heartbeat. I pulled away immediately, not wanting to draw the eyes of the other passengers.
Finn took the Sharpie from my hand and turned my right arm so my palm was facing up. Then, on my inner wrist, he drew the sign for infinity, a slumbering black eight, about an inch long.
“I’m guessing you’ve always been perfect and untouchable. But now you’re mine. And I’m not giving you up,” Finn said quietly, but his expression was fierce. It sounded to me like he was trying to convince himself.
ALMOST ELEVEN HOURS from the time we ditched Albuquerque, the bus came to a squeaking, shaking, gasping halt outside a huge casino right on Fremont Street, the epicenter of old, downtown Las Vegas, north of the strip. Fremont Street was still glitzy and neon encrusted, but she was showing a little tear in the fishnets, and her pancake makeup didn’t hide her age.
The bus made two more stops, and Finn bribed a little, Hispanic woman on the seat in front of us, in broken Spanish and hand gestures, to buy herself and us water and sandwiches and to keep the considerable change. We hadn’t gotten off the bus a single time in the whole trip, even using the onboard bathroom (ugh!), and I was stiff and shaky-legged as I descended the steps of the bus. I was used to taking buses, but my tour bus was a far cry from the Greyhound that smelled like exhaust, stale cigarettes, and too many people. And we were going to have to get back on another bus to get to LA, a fact that made me groan inwardly and think of the millions of dollars I had made in the last few years with angry longing.
We immediately purchased bus tickets to Los Angeles, fearful of not making it now that we were so close. We were in Vegas. We were here. The original destination. Now, we had just a little bit farther to go, and maybe the craziness would end.
The bus we were on was heading in another direction, but there was a bus to LA at eight o’clock that night. It was three o’clock now. And I needed a dress worthy of the Oscars and a tux worthy of Infinity Clyde. Tall orders when I was trying to keep a low profile, wearing dusty jeans, a ball cap, and granny glasses. Finn had combed his hair with his fingers and tied it back again, the miles and the travel making him look none the worse for wear. In fact, he just looked like Finn—big, blond, and beautiful. It made me want to smile and cry simultaneously.
Finn caught my expression and cuffed my chin. “What?”
“I’m feeling especially Hank Shelby-ish at the moment, Clyde. Mean and ugly. I need a miracle makeover, and I don’t think I can pull one out of a Wally bag.”
“We’ve come this far, Bonnie Rae. We can find a dress in a party town like Vegas with our hands tied behind our backs. We have five hours, and we’re in walking distance of everything. Don’t cry, Hank. We’ll find you a pretty dress.” He winked at me, and I gave him a smile, but Finn had no idea what he was getting into. I decided not to even try to explain.
I hadn’t been to the Oscars before, but I’d been to the Grammys and the CMAs, and it was flash bulbs, air-brushed people, glowing skin, million dollar necklaces, and designer dresses. I would have Finn on my arm, which was better than any diamond bracelet, but I needed to sell a story, a love story, our love story, and I couldn’t do it if I looked like I was hanging on by a thread . . . or wearing threads.
I couldn’t walk into a store and throw around my celebrity status—even if I could, I didn’t have the funds to buy a designer dress. That meant I had to find a store that had a decent selection. I cringed at the thought of going to the Oscars in a sparkly cocktail dress, like I’d just been asked to the Homecoming dance. I knew what I needed, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to find it, and if I found it, it had to fit perfectly. Finn’s tuxedo had to fit him perfectly too, which might be an ever harder proposition. Finn wasn’t built like the average guy, and though I was secretly thrilled that he wasn’t, it made our mission all the more difficult.
I didn’t want to wander up and down the streets. I was too tired for that. Finn and I found a couple of chairs in the hotel lobby, and I started googling dress shops like a mad woman. I eliminated all dress warehouses because I figured we would need a little more help than a warehouse could provide, and then I nixed hotel boutiques because they were too pricey and too intimate. I was wearing red cowboy boots and a black tank top beneath my fluffy pink coat, and I would draw way too much attention.
I stifled the urge to cry again. I felt hideous, and Google wasn’t helping. I needed a woman’s referral. I needed to ask q
uestions. Somehow, I didn’t think any of the women at the nickel slots behind us would be able to help me.
I looked around desperately, and my eyes landed on the concierge desk. A slight man with glossy, swept-back hair, a dapper bow-tie, and an impeccable suit was busy polishing the counter in front of him. I told Finn to sit tight, and I walked toward the fussy little man, hoping he loved fashion and hated gossip. I almost laughed. There was no such thing. Gossip was the lifeblood of the fashion world. They were as inseparable as Bonnie and Clyde. My stylist knew everything about everyone. And she made sure I knew it too. I had often wondered what she told people about me.
He saw me coming, and he eyed my stupid ball cap briefly. I yanked it off and ran my hands over my flattened, hat hair. Damn. I left the glasses on though. Vanity would get me nowhere.
I set my purse on the counter, and his eyes widened a little. The buttery, yellow leather screamed expensive, and he met my gaze with a tad more approval. His nametag claimed his name was Pierre. I was sure it wasn’t—but then again, my name was really Bonita.
“I need a dress. Think Oscar-worthy. Sleek, full-length, no bling, size four. And I need it today. Now. I also need a suit that will fit my friend over there without alterations,” I drawled, the Tennessee more noticeable than ever. It was like that when I got nervous.
Pierre’s eyes widened even farther as he looked beyond my shoulder to where Finn was sitting.
“You mean Thor?” he gasped.
I laughed. Finn did look like Thor. “Yeah. Thor.”
“What’s your budget, sweetie?” he said conspiratorially. Oh, yes. This man could help me.
“Two thousand for the dress. A thousand for the suit. Another five hundred for shoes, socks, underthings, everything. I’ll throw in another couple hundred for jewels, obviously fake, but they need to look real. And I need discreet.”