Infinity + One (25 page)

“My dad always used to ask us that.” Finn felt strange, unnerved even. “I guess other people may have asked the same question. But it was weird hearing William just shout it out like that.”

“Well, his initials are G.O.D.” Bonnie said softly, smiling. Finn could tell she was trying to ease the sudden tension he was feeling.

And then a memory surfaced. His dad had posed a paradox for the second time in as many days, and Fish had altered the question, inserting their names. He’d said, “Does Finn exist because he’s a reflection of me, or do I exist because I’m a reflection of Finn?”

His father had looked at Fish as if he had no idea what Fish was talking about, and Fish had burst out laughing, enjoying the feeling of stumping his father for once. That night they’d gotten drunk, though, and the question had been posed again, this time with a slightly different paradox.

“Fisher! Wait! You’re going to fall.”

Finn felt the fog in his own brain, in the way his lips struggled to form the words. He was drunk. He hated being drunk. Fish was drunk too. Which was why walking along the roofline was a bad idea. But Finn followed him, just like he always did, climbing the ladder that wouldn’t hold still, placing his feet on rungs that wavered before his eyes.

Fish just laughed. “I’m not gonna fall. What was that thing Dad told us about the arrow in flight? The paradox? Or was it the pair o’ dicks? The arrow isn’t really moving, remember? It’s motionless. If we fall, we aren’t really falling.” Fish laughed uproariously at himself, and Finn laughed too.

Pair of dicks. That’s what they were. They shared the same face, the same room, the same friends, but at least they didn’t have to share the same dick. That was good. Fish liked to put his in some nasty places. He had terrible taste in women.

The paradox Fish was talking about was another one of the Greek philosopher Zeno’s—Dad loved Zeno. Zeno said in order for an object to move, it has to change position. But in any given instant, the arrow isn’t moving to where it is, because it’s already there, and it’s not moving to where it’s not because no time has passed for it to get there. So in essence, if time is made up of instants, and if in any given instant the arrow is not moving, then motion is impossible.

The tangle the paradox created in Finn’s head became a tangle in his feet, and about halfway up the ladder he slipped, proving motion is indeed possible and extremely painful as he hit the ground.

He laid there, stunned, the wind knocked from his chest, his eyes on the sky. It was unclear and the air felt wet and heavy as he struggled to pull oxygen into his deflated lungs. You couldn’t see stars in Southie. He wondered if you could see the stars in St. Louis, where his father was moving. The thought made him angry, the anger clearing the muddle from his head better than the fall from the ladder.

“Since when have you ever listened to anything Dad says, Fish? And you
are
going to fall,” Finn shouted, and struggled back up the ladder, wondering if he was already too late. He hadn’t heard anything.

Fish was sitting on one of the little gables above the two windows that overlooked the front yard. Finn made his way gingerly to the other, straddling it like he was taking a turn on the mechanical bull at O’Shaughnessy’s, and the roofline swam and bucked a little, making the comparison even more apt. The alcohol in his belly sloshed and rose in his throat, and Finn realized that the bull was going to throw him if he didn’t hold on. He lay against the shifting shingles and gripped the edge of the dormer weakly. But instead of getting tossed he did some tossing of his own, throwing up the contents of his stomach, watching as it waterfalled over the side of the roof and down onto the front walk. He was pretty sure he hadn’t made the eight second whistle.

“You throwing up already, Infinity?” Fish laughed. “For someone who soaks up so much shit, it’s amazing you can’t soak up a few shots.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Finn mumbled wishing he could take a shot at his brother, but knowing he probably should just hold still. Very still. “Why are we up here, Fish? You wanna die?”

“Nah. I wanna live. I wanna live!” Fish shouted into the fog, and laughed, raising his arms and throwing back his head, his balance seemingly unimpaired by the alcohol. Finn shut his eyes, wondering how in the hell he was going to get back down.

“You’re trying to kill me,” he groaned.

“Nobody said you had to follow me up, little brother.” Two hours separating their births officially made Finn the little brother.

“Of course I have to follow you. We’re a pair, remember?” Finn sighed, willing the world to settle so he could climb down.

“Are we really? Let me tell you the paradox of the pair o’ dicks, my young friend. If a pair of dicks can piss, screw, and stand up all by themselves, what’s the point of being a pair?”

Fish impersonated their father so perfectly, his tone of voice so thoughtful and serious that Finn couldn’t help but laugh, and he decided to play along.

“If you lose one, you have a spare.” Finn offered a solution to the ridiculous riddle.

“Ah, but that’s the paradox.” Fish stroked his chin just like their father did, as if he had a little goatee. “We’re a pair of dicks, but we’re nothing alike. So are we really a pair? And if you lost me, would you truly be my spare?” Fish shook his head in a very professorial manner, tsking like Finn wasn’t trying—something else their father did sometimes.

Then he answered his own question, but he abandoned the impersonation. “You are Infinity, and I am Infinity’s opposite.”

“Infinitesimal,” Finn said. “Infinitesimal is the twin of infinity.”

“Oh, that’s rich!” Fish replied. “Infinity means immeasurably large, and infinitesimal is immeasurably small—I know that much math.”

“Exactly,” Finn smiled, going in for the kill. “I mean, we are talking about our dicks, right?”

Finn smiled at the memory, the humor banishing the discomfort he’d felt at William’s uncanny question. Fish had laughed so hard he’d almost fallen off the roof, and they had ended up helping each other down the ladder in what could have been a disaster instead of a sweet memory. It was just one of many close calls leading up to the ultimate disaster six months later.

Finn looked at Bonnie and pondered Fish’s question—did Finn exist because he was a reflection of Fish? Or had Fish existed because he was a reflection of Finn? Maybe neither. Maybe both. One egg, two people. Maybe in the beginning they were one, but that day had long since passed. He didn’t dare pose the question to Bonnie. He wondered if she still thought she existed as a reflection of her sister.

William snorted in his sleep and another large, smelly foot found its way onto the console between them.

“He’s a little crazy, isn’t he?” Finn sighed, turning his attention to the problem at hand.

Bonnie shrugged. “I don’t know. What has he really said that’s so crazy? People like to throw words like crazy and emotionally unstable around when people are just . . . different. It’s a way to shut people up. It’s a way to control. Nothing scarier than someone who is bat shit. Nothing more intimidating than someone who is ‘mentally ill.’” Bonnie lifted her hands and made quotations in the air. “Slap that label on someone and it’s over, whether it’s true or not. Their freedoms and their credibility are gone forever—little notations on driver’s licenses, little files that follow them through life, closed doors, suspicious looks, ready medication. I say let William preach. He’s not hurting anyone.”

He’d touched a nerve. Bonnie was a little too vehement and ready in her argument, like she’d had it in her own mind a hundred times. He wondered again about her relationship with her grandmother, about the road that had ended on a bridge a little less than a week before. Bonnie wasn’t mentally ill. Bear had said it right. Her spirit had been broken. Maybe not entirely—she still had more light and personality in her little finger than Finn had in his whole, big body. But she had sustained some pretty serious fractures.

And it was time for a reckonin’.

WILLIAM LEFT US in Joplin with a fervent sermon about taking care of each other and watching for angels in disguise.

“If you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me!” he quoted boisterously before he thanked us for feeding and clothing him . . . well, clothing his feet, anyway. Finn had given him his old boots. Luckily, neither the old boots nor the new ones had been in the Blazer when I’d ditched Finn in Cincinnati and then ended up losing our ride and everything in it.

Before William left he handed me the cardboard sign that had reeled me in and won him a ride to Joplin.

“Here you go, Miss Bonnie. You keep this.”

I believe in Bonnie and Clyde.

On the back side he’d written a new message.

I believe in Bonnie for Infinity.

“Don’t you mean Bonnie
and
Infinity?” I laughed.

“Yeah. That too.” He smiled and waved as he walked away, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders, his eyes on his new (old) boots, like a kid in new sneakers who can’t quit looking at his feet. And I felt like I had missed something important.

OUR HOTLINE HAS received multiple sightings of Bonnie Rae Shelby in the company of ex-convict, Infinity James Clyde, ranging as far north as Buffalo and as far south as Louisiana. We even have what appears to be an armed robbery of a liquor store outside of Chicago carried out by none other than the wanted felon, Infinity Clyde, with Bonnie Rae Shelby herself behind the wheel of a dark colored Bronco, waiting at the curb. Other witnesses claim there was no woman in the driver’s seat, but that there was a woman in the backseat, who appeared to be restrained in some way. Witnesses say she even called out to pedestrians. So far these sightings are unconfirmed and police aren’t commenting on leads. Raena Shelby, Bonnie Rae Shelby’s grandmother and longtime manager, gave a brief interview to Buzz TV about her granddaughter last evening. She claims Bonnie Rae was taken against her will and openly pled with Mr. Clyde at one point, to release the superstar.