Infinity + One

by Amy Harmon

  She had thrashed angrily when she fell but she’d only cried when he’d handed her her hat. Her hair looked like someone had attacked her with a pair of pruning shears. If Finn needed more proof that this girl was in trouble—beyond the suicide attempt—the hair solidified it. So he’d eagerly left her when she’d demanded he go. But then he’d sat on the Blazer’s rusted bumper, torn between his own survival and the survival of the weeping girl he’d walked away from. When she’d suddenly stepped out of the fog in front of him, he had felt a rush of relief, followed quickly by a flood of dread.

  She had pulled herself together. She wasn’t crying anymore, and her voice was steady, and after a minute of hesitation, she’d seemed determined even. She wanted a ride. With him. A complete stranger. Finn grimaced inwardly. Now, here they were.

  Just two hours ago, he’d been heading across the bridge into Chelsea to say goodbye to his mother before he left town. Alone. Now he was on his way to Vegas with an unwanted passenger huddled against the door, sleeping like he’d shot her with a tranquilizer gun. He should pull over, wake her up, demand some answers, and insist that she let him drop her somewhere. But he just kept driving, like a man in a trance, each mile taking him farther from Boston and deeper into the mess he was sure he’d gotten himself into. And she slept on beside him.

  I WOKE UP before I hit the water and swallowed the scream that was still trapped in the dream. I was cold, stiff, and I didn’t know where I was. I jerked upright, and a thin, wool blanket fell from my shoulders. I took in the dusty dashboard and the broad windshield that revealed a rest area littered with tired stragglers, benches, and businesses, poorly lit in the pre-dawn darkness. And then my eyes found him—Clyde-who-didn’t-look-like-a-Clyde—and I remembered.

  He was slumped behind the wheel, his arms folded, his legs stretched out into the footwell where my own rested. It was colder than snot inside the car, and he’d fallen asleep with his hat on. I patted my own, making sure it was still there. We were twins in our snug caps, a pair of cat burglars staking out a hit. But that’s where the similarity ended. His hat was slightly skewed, and I could see clumps of blond hair peeping below the edge of the cap at his neck. He had a strong, squared off jaw beneath the bristle of beard that looked more careless than cultivated. His nose was marred, or maybe improved, by a small bump on the otherwise smooth ridge. His lips were neither full nor thin but slightly parted in sleep, and I noted with surprise that all together, this catalogue of features combined to make an appealing face. He was handsome.

  Gran would not approve. She was always more suspicious of the “pretty ones,” as she put it. Gran got pregnant at fifteen with my dad, and I don’t think she ever forgave Grandpa for that, though she was married to him for thirty years before he was killed in a mining accident the year Minnie and I turned ten. Gran moved back to Grassley, into our already crowded excuse for a house, and I started singing for my supper. Gran had big plans, even then.

  I felt the bubbling anger that had become a gossipy, new friend wake up in my chest, viciously listing all of Gran’s sins. I pushed the thought away before I got too caught up in her faults, my eyes finding Clyde’s face again in the dark. I should call Gran and let her know I was okay. But I wasn’t going to. I didn’t care if she was worried. I didn’t care if she was upset. I didn’t care what she wanted. She’d gotten everything she wanted up to this point. She could deal.

  I should have been afraid, sitting in the dark with a stranger named Clyde. No one knew where I was—hell, I didn’t know where I was. For that matter, I didn’t really know who I was, and for the first time in years, I didn’t care very much. I felt a shifting and a settling inside me. My plan had gone all wrong, but maybe it was okay. I had let go and now found myself in a new dimension where there was just me, the sweatshirt on my back, and whatever money was in Gran’s purse. I was in a different world, and in this place there was possibility and peace. And it felt liberating. I felt free.

  Plus, Clyde had obviously put a blanket around me. And he hadn’t groped or killed me while I slept. Two points for Clyde. Three, if you counted the episode on the bridge. I found myself smiling stupidly out into the darkness, the smile banishing the angry resident in my heart and the Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder, pestering me to make a call and turn myself in.

  “You’re scaring me a little,” Clyde said suddenly, his voice thick with sleep.

  I jumped a foot in the air and my hands gripped the dash like I was in the front seat on a roller coaster, heading downhill.

  “I apparently just scared you too,” Clyde muttered, lifting his feet back to his own side of the cab and pulling his hat back down over his forehead.

  “Why am I scaring you?” I asked, and my voice cracked.

  “You’re sitting there smiling at nothing. It’s creepy.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. It was something.” I shrugged. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A while. By the time I got off in Chelsea, turned around, and came back across the bridge into Boston, you were dead to the world. It took me almost an hour to get out of Boston—there was some big event getting out at the TD Garden, I guess. Traffic was horrible. I drove for another couple of hours, and I pulled off here about an hour ago to close my eyes.”

  I tried not to wiggle in my seat. That traffic jam around the TD Garden was all my fault.

  “Where’s here?” I asked.

  “We’re just off the Mass Pike just about to cross into New York.”

  “So we’re still in Massachusetts?”

  “Yeah. But not for much farther.” He was silent, staring forward. And somehow I knew what he wasn’t saying. We were still in Massachusetts, so I could still turn back.

  “I’ve never been outside of Massachusetts,” he volunteered suddenly, surprising me. “This will be a first for me.” He turned his head toward me slowly. “How ‘bout you?” And he waited, holding my gaze.

  “A first for me too. I mean, first time in Massachusetts.”

  “How long were you here?”

  “What time is it?”

  Clyde checked his watch, tipping the clock face this way and that to catch the paltry light from one of the street lamps rimming the rest area parking. Nobody wore watches anymore. But Clyde apparently did. “Four a.m.”

  “Well, then I guess I’ve been in Massachusetts about twenty-four hours.” We had rolled into Boston early yesterday morning in our cavalcade—a bus for me and Gran and all the people necessary to make Bonnie Rae Shelby beautiful, a bus for the band and the sound crew, a bus for the back-up singers and dancers, and two semis filled with the sound equipment and all the staging. The Bonnie Rae Shelby Come Undone Tour was a huge undertaking. And I’d managed to come undone with just a sweatshirt, boots, and a pair of jeans. And Bear’s hat. Don’t forget that. I could have told my record label that we didn’t need all that other stuff.

  Clyde swore long and low, making the one syllable word into several. “What in the hell happened in the space of twenty-four hours to make you want to take a plunge into the Mystic River?”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have jumped,” I said after a long silence, not knowing what else to say without spilling my whole life story.

  “You did jump. But that wasn’t the question, Bonnie,” Clyde said softly.

  “That’s the only answer I’ve got, Clyde.”

  “Then you and I are gonna have to part ways.”

  “Say that again.”

  “You and I are gonna have to part ways,” Clyde repeated firmly, his gaze steely in the murky light.

  “I like your accent. You don’t say part. You say pat. Say it again.”

  “What the hell?” Clyde sighed, throwing his hands in the air.

  “Now that, that didn’t sound very cool,” I said. “You say it just the way I say it. What the hell!” I yelled. “See? Exactly the same.”

  “I don’t need this,” Clyde muttered under his breath and ran his big hand down his face. He wouldn’t look at me, and I knew I’
d blown it. When would I learn to just shut up? I always tried to lighten things up and change the subject when things got uncomfortable or I was nervous. It was how I dealt. When Minnie got sick, I spent my days trying to make her laugh. Trying to make them all laugh. And when I couldn’t make them laugh anymore, I let Gran talk me into “helping out” in a different way, making money. Which reminded me. I held up Gran’s purse.

  “I’ve got cash. I can pay you to take me to Vegas.” I pulled a wad of bills out of Gran’s wallet and waved it toward him, fanning his face, and his eyes widened.

  “There’s no way you’re twenty-one,” he said, pushing my hand away. “What are you, twelve?”

  “I was born on March 1, 1992,” I said, my voice rising with his. “There’s an answer for you. What other answers do you need?”

  “Nobody who’s twenty-one years old would wave a stack of cash like that in front of a stranger’s face. You are completely vulnerable, you realize that, don’t you? I could take your money, push you out of my car, and drive away. And that isn’t the worst thing I could do! What you just did, there? Not smart, kid. Not smart!” He was flabbergasted, angry even. I knew he was right. I’d never been smart. Gran said so. That’s why I sang, because singers didn’t have to be smart.

  “You’re right. I’m not smart. I’m as dumb as a fence post. And I need a ride.” My voice wobbled pathetically and that seemed to work much better than trying to distract him or make him laugh.

  Clyde groaned and rubbed his hand down his face once more. “You have money—plenty of it from the looks of it. Why don’t you rent a car?”

  “I don’t have my driver’s license with me or my credit cards.”

  “So take a bus!”

  “Someone might recognize me,” I answered immediately and then wished I hadn’t.

  “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?”

  “And the cab driver let you get out on the bridge?”

  “He didn’t have much choice when I opened the door and told him to stop. He slammed on the brakes pretty quick, and was glad to see me go, I think.”

  We sat in silence while Clyde seemed to mull it all over. The fingers of my left hand fingered the strings, finding chords and sliding up and down the frets. But I didn’t play. I just let Clyde be until he sighed and sat back in his seat.

  “That doesn’t prove anything, Bonnie. I don’t know anything about Bonnie Rae Shelby. You could still be seventeen for all I know.”

  I sighed. “You’ve got a phone, right? Look me up
.” I really wished he didn’t have to. I just wanted to drive. Drive, drive, drive. And never look back. And odds were, as soon as Clyde figured out I was Bonnie Rae Shelby, he was going to see dollar signs just like everyone else did.

  Clyde reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was a flip phone. Ancient. “I’m not going to be able to do that with this, am I?”

  “Uh. No. Where did you get that phone? A museum?”

  “My mom insisted I have a phone on this trip. So she hooked me up.”

  “Does your mama hate you?”

  Clyde shoved the phone back into his pocket, and his eyes met mine. I instantly felt bad. I was joking. I hated my big mouth. There was something about his expression that made me pause. He had sad eyes and a tired face. Too tired for a young man. I wondered if my eyes were as weary.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Twenty-four,” he answered.

  I nodded, as if I agreed. Which was stupid. I would have nodded if he’d said twenty-three or twenty-five.

  “Are you going to hurt me, Clyde?”

  His eyebrows shot up, and he drew back, as if I’d surprised him.

  “Are you going to cut me up in little pieces or make me do disgusting things?”

  Shock widened Clyde’s eyes, and then he laughed a little and ran that hand over his face. It must be what he did when he didn’t know what else to do.

  “No?” I persisted.

  “You are a very strange girl, Bonnie,” he muttered. “But no. I’m not going to hurt you, or cut you, or anything else.”

  “I didn’t think so. Guys who do things like that don’t play the hero and talk strangers down from bridges. Although you didn’t really talk me down. You knocked me down. Thank you, by the way.” My throat closed, and I pushed through the sudden, surprising emotion. “I’m not going to hurt you either, Clyde. I just need a ride. I can help with costs and keep you company and even spell you when you need a break.”