Infinity + One

by Amy Harmon

  He and Bonnie waited as the seats emptied around them before they disembarked. Bonnie joked that they could tell the tabloids they had spent their honeymoon in Primm riding the roller coaster, but Finn was pretty sure that like him, her thoughts were narrowed in on the car. When they climbed off the bus, they headed, without a word, in the direction of Whiskey Pete’s and the “death car.”

  It was a pale, yellowy-grey Ford V8—a color that only made the bullet holes more glaring—and it looked as if someone had driven it right off a gangster movie set. They couldn’t touch it or look inside. It was enclosed behind a glass wall on every side, just sitting on the plush carpeting outside the main cashier cage. A sign made to look like it was blood spattered and bullet riddled claimed that the car was “The Authentic Death Car of Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “Those two don’t look much like Bonnie and Clyde,” Bonnie slipped her hand in his and nodded toward the two mannequins posed, gangster-style, beside the car inside the glass barricade. The mannequins were holding automatic weapons and looking very little like the two lovers from the pictures in the little book Bonnie had bought. The mannequins looked like they belonged on the streets of Chicago in the roaring twenties, not driving through the dust bowl during the Great Depression

  “On May 23, 1934, law officers killed Bonnie and Clyde in a roadblock ambush, piercing their car with more than one hundred bullets,” Bonnie read from the plaque in front of the display. She knew all of that—they both did—but she still seemed awed by it—especially now that they were looking at the actual car where the two had died.

  “It was almost eighty years ago,” Bonnie whispered, her gaze trained on the driver’s side door, which seemed to have the highest concentration of bullet holes.

  The account he and Bonnie had read said there were fifty-four bullet holes in Bonnie Parker, and even one through her face. Finn didn’t like that. He also didn’t like how people had gathered to gawk at the bloody ambush site before the gun smoke had even left the air. And before the police could run them off, people were trying to claim souvenirs, cutting pieces from the clothing of the two lovers who had yet to be taken away and still sat, slumped and filled with lead, in the front seat of the Ford. One person had tried to cut off Clyde’s ear, another had wanted his finger. Someone had gotten away with locks of Bonnie’s hair and a piece of her blood-soaked dress.

  Couldn’t they have just killed Clyde? Nobody could ever prove that Bonnie had hurt anyone. She was just in love with a piece of shit. They’d taken pictures of Bonnie Parker in the morgue, naked. He didn’t like that either, and felt a flash of outrage that in death, the world got to see her bare breasts which were full and unmarked, youthful. No bullet holes to see, but they’d still taken pictures. People just loved pictures.

  “Let’s get a picture,” Bonnie insisted, proving his point, and pulled out the disposable camera from their shotgun wedding.

  “Bonnie Rae,” Finn warned, but she was already looking around for someone who could take their picture. An Asian couple strolled by, and Bonnie waved the camera in the man’s face, apparently the universal sign for “Can you take my picture?” The man instantly smiled and nodded agreeably, taking the camera from Bonnie’s hand, though Finn suspected he didn’t speak any English. Which was probably good. Safe.

  Finn stood behind Bonnie, his arms folded around her, and he posed obediently for the picture. He was sure she was beaming, but he didn’t smile. The car behind him gave him the creeps, and he could only imagine what the tabloids would do if they ever got their hands on a picture like that. His unease rose another notch, and he hurried Bonnie out of the casino and back into the darkness, away from the ghosts of another couple who’d finally run out of luck.

  It seemed only fitting that their roller coaster journey should include an actual roller coaster ride, and when Bonnie protested, telling him that she got a little motion sick, he promised her he would distract her. He wanted to distract himself. Not from what he’d just done or the promises he had made, but from the fear of what was to come. The roller coaster promised flight, speed, and a suspension of time. And he wanted all of those things. Her proximity would taunt him all the way to Los Angeles—sitting by her, his ring on her finger, lust in his veins, and not a damn thing he could do about it.

  So they stood in the line, keeping their faces averted, their eyes on each other, and waited to ride the roller coaster. They sat on the very back row—Finn had plotted exactly where they needed to be in the line to slip into the last car, and when the coaster began to collect speed, he pulled Bonnie’s face to his, and kissed and cradled her through the loops and turns, ignoring the ride and the wind whipping around them, his lips and tongue mimicking the climb and plunge of the ride, the pounding of the rails echoing the pounding in his chest, the squealing of the brakes on the final stretch reminding him that the ride was over, for now, and another was just beginning.

  THIS JUST IN. We have confirmation that Bonnie Rae Shelby and Infinity James Clyde were spotted in Las Vegas on Saturday, and that a marriage license was issued for one Bonita Rae Shelby and Infinity James Clyde, putting to rest speculation that the singer was an unwilling accomplice in the crime spree that spreads across the US. It’s not surprising that Bonnie Rae Shelby’s album and download sales have hit record-breaking levels as people are tuning into this story. Reports of sightings of Infinity Clyde and Bonnie Rae Shelby have started to pour in from literally all over the country. Everyone is transfixed with this story, and no one seems to know what to believe. Is this a case of a beautiful young superstar being kidnapped and held against her will? Or is this a scenario where a captive falls for her captor?

  BONNIE’S EYES WERE wide and trusting, watching him. Studying him. For all her sass and her salt, she could be very sweet. Very tender. Very serious. She was perfectly still, abnormally so, and there was a flush to her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. He could see her pulse. It thrummed wildly, and somehow that settled his own nerves, knowing she was afraid. She shouldn’t be afraid. He would take care of her.

  He walked toward her but stopped two feet in front of her, suddenly not eager to rush. Miraculously, a new bus had arrived in Primm, and they had boarded her without incident. In fact, the final four hours of their trip had gone seamlessly, contradicting Finn’s rising certainty that they would never make it to LA. But it had been the longest four hours of his life. He and Bonnie had both been vibrating with the rumbling bus the entire way there, adrenaline, lust and eager anticipation making the final stretch of their journey almost unbearable.

  There had been no police waiting at the end of their journey, no Bonnie and Clyde style ambush outside the venerable hotel. Bonnie had called ahead, giving the concierge the name Bear had instructed her to give. Their cab was directed to a special entrance, and a doorman was waiting to escort them in a private elevator to the top floor. He hadn’t blinked or looked twice at either of them, his face as expressionless as a royal guard, and he took their garment bags with the utmost care and even bowed as Bonnie tipped him with a practiced hand. And then he’d left them in their suite, the most opulent rooms Finn had ever seen, and closed the double doors quietly behind him. They’d each taken a minute to freshen up in separate, luxurious bathrooms, and amazingly enough, Bonnie had finished before him and now stood in the center of the room as if she stood in the center of a stage, waiting for the music to begin.

  It was after three o’clock in the morning, in a suite in a very famous hotel, the balcony doors slightly open to welcome in perfumed air to brush their fevered skin, and they were alone. Finally. Two feet apart and about ten feet from a huge, beautiful bed. Finn reached for Bonnie’s hand and twisted the little band that circled her finger.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, the question almost inaudible it was so soft.

  Her eyes rose from their hands and held his, a small smile lifting one corner of her mouth. The she stepped forward and stood on her tiptoes placing her cheek to his, smooth a
gainst rough, and he kissed her neck, making her shiver.

  “Mirrors,” she said in his ear.

  “Mirrors?” he asked.

  “Reflections,” she said.

  Finn lifted his head, raising his eyes to the ceiling above the entire pedestaled sleeping area, to the mirrors that made the ceiling a reflection of the room below. He’d noticed them immediately when they’d walked into the well-appointed room. He was sure Bear hadn’t known about that feature when he’d booked the room for the two of them. He was quite sure he’d booked the suite because there was a fold out bed in the private sitting area and a door in between. It was a room fit for a rock star or a princess, or someone who was a little bit of both.

  “Remember what I told you about mirrors? How sometimes it’s hard to look at my own reflection?” Bonnie asked.

  “Yeah.” Finn caught his own gaze in the overhead mirrors as if he were looking down on himself. Bonnie lifted her eyes as well, and they stared at each other, at their upturned faces and clasped hands.

  “When you’re with me, beside me, in front of a mirror, I don’t feel that way. When I’m standing next to you, I know exactly who I am. I don’t see Minnie. I don’t lose myself in memories of her. I just see us.”

  Bonnie stopped as if she couldn’t continue, and he saw her chest lift and release, a steadying inhale and exhale, before she finished. “At the boutique, I saw you standing behind me, beside me, and I felt whole. Not a piece, not a half, not a part. Whole.”

  It was her turn to twist the ring on his finger. “So now . . . I’m thinking about mirrors. And watching you make love to me.” And she looked away from his reflection above her head and met his gaze, and Finn had to close his eyes and concentrate, committing himself to care so that he didn’t toss her bodily onto the bed and ruin the only first time they would ever have. He must have worn an intensely focused expression because Bonnie smoothed the groove between his scowling brows with her fingertips.

  “You aren’t thinking about numbers are you?” She spoke only inches from his lips, and he closed the brief distance so he could feel her smile in the curve of the kiss, teasing him, and he left his eyes closed and enjoyed the sensation of the barely-there touch of her mouth.

  “I’m thinking about subtraction,” he murmured, moving his face gently from side to side so that his lips brushed hers softly, back and forth.

  “You are?” he could hear the smile again and nipped at it with his teeth.

  “Yes. I am.” His hands slid up beneath her shirt, the silk of her skin warm against his flattened palms. She caught her breath, and Finn paused, waiting for her to release it, the flutter of air tickling his tongue when she did. Then he moved his hands higher and pushed her tank top up and over her head. He didn’t open his eyes, but he took her lips again, his hands spanning the smooth length of her back as he kissed her, open-mouthed.

  He slid his hands from her back to her hips, to the waist band of her jeans and found the button, releasing it and pushing it aside as he unzipped them. He slid her jeans around her hips and felt her shift, sending them down her legs and pooling at their feet.

  “See? Subtraction,” he whispered.

  “I think I like math,” she breathed, and she stepped fully against him, away from her clothes, away from the dainty pile of lace he had fingered sightlessly, only to discard because he longed for what was beneath.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he murmured, and opened his eyes slowly, unable to resist any longer, filling his vision with dark eyes and parted lips, with rosy skin and slender shoulders. His eyes clung to the hollow at the base of her throat before he drank in the rise and fall of her breasts, of her belly, the softness and the slope of her hips and her thighs, and he fell to his knees before her, pressing his mouth to the curve of her stomach, wrapping his arms around her trembling legs.

  Her hands gripped his hair and splayed across his back, pulling his shirt from his shoulders, briefly separating his mouth from her skin as she tugged it over his head, and then she was on her knees as well, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. And so Finn held her, rising to his feet as he swept her up and laid her on the pale duvet that made her look like a fallen angel languishing on a cloud. And she opened her body to him, entreating him to lay with her. And he humbly obeyed.

  Above their heads, the mirrors bore silent witness of a man and his wife engaged in the pulse and pull of passion, in the warmth and weight of wanting, in the falling away of fear and forever to a moment so ripe with the present, with now, with need, with never let me go, that there was no before, no after, no tomorrow or yesterday.

  And it was perfect and untouchable.

  A FEW FEATHERS had escaped from the duvet and Finn pinched them between his fingers, setting them gently on my head.

  “I’m making you look like an angel,” he said sleepily.

  “An angel who has been rolling in the hay.”

  “In the feathers,” Finn corrected.

  “The feathers,” I amended. “An angel who has been rolling in the feathers all night long.” Which wasn’t far from the truth. Which was why I couldn’t keep my eyes open. “Whenever I think of angels, I think of Minnie. And now, I think of Fish too.”

  “Fish wasn’t an angel.”

  “He’s your angel. Your guardian angel,” I whispered. “And Minnie’s mine. They brought us together, Finn. I’m sure of it. You and me? We couldn’t have happened without divine intervention, and you know it.”

  Finn sighed, but it was more a chuckle than a groan, and I smiled sleepily with him.

  “If I weren’t so tired, I would make myself a headdress and a little costume out of those feathers and dance for you. I didn’t get the chance in Vegas. And I promised Minnie.”

  “You promised Minnie you would dance for me?”

  “Ha,” I yawned the word. “I promised Minnie we would dance topless in Vegas.” I was drifting off, the feel of Finn’s fingers making circles on my bare back, so soothing I could no longer stay awake.

  “Bonnie Rae?”

  “Hmm?”

  “There will be no topless dancing in Vegas, baby.”

  “Yes, there will be, Huckleberry, my handsome husband. But you can be the only one in the audience, okay?”

  “Deal,” he murmured.

  And I burrowed my head into his chest and fell asleep, wondering how I’d ever fallen asleep without him.

  And I dreamed of mirrors and angels.

  THE CARNIVAL CAME every year. It traveled through the Appalachians to small communities like Grassley, offering cheap entertainment and spun sugar to ease the summer doldrums. We looked forward to it like Christmas. The operators—we called them carnies—were usually as toothless and filthy as the worst hillbilly stereotype, but we didn’t mind as long as they came and brought the carnival with them. I got motion sick, but Minnie loved the rides, so I endured the spinning tilt-a-whirl and the rocking boat for Minnie’s sake, and though the mirrors always scared Minnie a little, she didn’t complain when I insisted on spending an hour in the fun house.

  I was mesmerized by the fun house—the mirrors morphing me into someone different with each angle. A giant, a dwarf, a stick, or something worse. I would grow dizzy and a little disoriented looking at all the ways my body and face could be stretched and contorted, but it was funny, and Minnie and I would howl with laughter as we made our way through.

  When Minnie lost her hair, and I shaved my head in support, it was August, we were fifteen, and the carnival was in town. Minnie was too nauseated for the rides, which was a relief to me, but she still wanted to go to the fun house. We bought a caramel apple and a bag of cotton candy that neither of us ate, as well as a couple of brightly colored bandanas to tie over our smooth heads so we wouldn’t “scare” the carnies—we thought we were so funny—and made our way into the ramshackle house of mirrors. It creaked as we walked through, and for the first time I felt the uneasy prickle of a hundred distorted images staring back at me and Minnie, as if we we
re surrounded by the very worst of ourselves, our fears, our faults, our ugliest features, in living incarnations.

  “This is a depressing place,” Minnie said softly.

  “Yeah. It is.” I said. I tried to poke fun at one of my reflections to scare away the gloom, but my humor fell flat, and we moved on quickly. Toward the final hallway, we found an attraction that hadn’t been there in previous years. Or maybe in other years we were more innocent and less observant, more eager to run to the next delight. Whatever the reason, as we neared the exit we were caught between two giant mirrors that faced each other, reflecting the image between them back and forth ad infinitum.

  We had dressed alike as we often did, or as often as cheap clothing and Goodwill bags would allow. We had on pale colored shorts and plain pink T’s, our heads covered with the fluorescent green bandanas we’d purchased, and flip flops on our feet. I was browner and a little heavier than Minnie—the chemo made her more susceptible to sunburn and killed her appetite, but other than that, we were still identical.

  Minnie and I stared at the rows of twins that had no end, one behind another in smaller and smaller replicas of the original. Bonnie and Minnie forever . . . and ever and ever. I reached for Minnie’s hand, and all our reflections joined hands as well, making the hair rise on my neck. Maybe it should have been comforting, the thought of the two of us going on forever, but it wasn’t.

  “There are twins, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, right? But what do you call that?” Minnie said, her eyes glued to the mirror in front of us.

  “Scary as hell,” I answered.

  “Yeah. It is. It’s freaky. Let’s go.” Minnie let go of my hand and stepped out of the frame. She was closer to the exit, and she turned and hurried out into the sunlight that beat down beyond the flaps that covered the makeshift door. And I was alone between the mirrors. All by myself, into eternity. I spun, trying to find an angle that made the phenomenon disappear. Instead, all the Bonnies spun with me, looking for a way out.