Infinity + One (38 page)

IT WAS SURPRISINGLY easy. Stunningly easy. Effortless. Monique’s wasn’t just a boutique—it was a full service wedding center—rings, ceremonies, flowers, photography, all in an hour. With one call, Monique had us in a limo, which took us to the license bureau, where we walked inside, presented ID, signed our names, paid the $60 license fee, and were out again without a blood test, a long wait, or even an autograph request. Monique had taken care of that too. The woman seemed to know exactly who I was and had made sure we were brought in a side entrance and whisked back out again, and the bureau clerk didn’t seem surprised to see us or give two cents if our faces were in the tabloids. It was Vegas, I reminded myself. I had the feeling Monique and her contacts had seen it all. The limo then hurried us back to the chapel, where we were squeezed into a fifteen minute window between previously booked appointments.

I didn’t want Elvis at my wedding. I loved him, but not that much. Little Ritchie was out too. No music. No fake flowers. No walks down the aisle on the arm of a dead rock ‘n’ roll icon. Instead, we were escorted to a little room with an actual minister and a row of tiny candles, and side by side, in a couple of words, we said we would.
Richer and poorer—
Finn
flinched at that like he didn’t like that he was the latter.
In sickness and in health—
it
was my turn to wince. I knew Finn thought I was a little crazy. My gran thought I was a lot crazy. Or maybe that was just how she liked to make me feel. And finally the words ‘”Til death do us part”—and we looked at each other then, knowing exactly how death could part us from the ones we love.

“I do,” I said.

“I do,” he said.

All done.

They provided a witness, we exchanged simple rings—I wouldn’t have been surprised if our fingers turned green beneath our cheap bands, but as long as Finn wasn’t turning green, I couldn’t care less. Monique threw in the slim, gold bands with the $500 I paid for the rush wedding package, and the $3,800 I laid down for our fancy duds, which included everything from our underwear to the diamonds in my ears, along with a few extra pieces of silk and lace that Monique was sure I would need, and which I gladly agreed to.

I added a tip for her and another $100 tip for Pierre. They had both saved—and made—my day. If we ever made it out of the mess we were in, Monique was going to be my new go-to girl for dresses. I was good to people who were good to me, and I told her as much. Plus, I was going to be hiring my own people from now on. Gran would not be calling any more shots, starting today, starting now, starting with the man who I’d just pledged to love all the days of my life.

He was sober and serious, silently observing it all, like the process was an elaborate equation he hadn’t yet solved, but when he said “I do,” I believed him. And when I said, “I do,” I meant it with all my heart. And considering that my heart had swollen in size, filling my chest so I could hardly breathe, that was saying something. I was surprised I wasn’t floating, the sensation of helium in my head was so pronounced that I clung to Finn’s hand to hold me down.

We posed for some pictures, but made them use a disposable camera, which we took with us, not eager to see our wedding pictures splashed everywhere before we even made it to LA. It was our secret, our moment, and we would tell the world when and if we felt like it.

We retreated to the boutique and changed our clothes, though I kept on the lace panties and pulled on the matching bra. We relinquished our finery to Monique, who packaged it carefully in garment bags that were constructed like padded cells, complete with reinforced compartments and straight jackets. We walked out of the boutique three hours after we had arrived, bags over our shoulders, rings on our fingers, and a five hour bus ride before us. No romantic honeymoon for Bonnie and Clyde.

We stopped at a deli, and Finn bought us sandwiches and cupcakes with frothy white icing and sprinkles, the closest thing we would get to wedding cake on our big day. When Finn stuck a thick candle in mine, I started in surprise.

“Did you steal that from the ceremony?” I asked, laughter making me wheeze.

“Yeah. I did. I grabbed it and snapped it off at the top and shoved it in my pocket in case I didn’t have the chance to buy birthday candles.” His mouth twisted in a small grin. “I think I got hot wax on my tuxedo pants.” The smile faded, and he leaned forward and kissed my lips gently. “Happy Birthday, Bonnie.”

“I forgot,” I said with wonder. And I had. The last time I’d thought about my birthday was before Finn pulled off the highway in that dumpy little town and rocked my world behind a run-down café that had seen much better days, but never a better make-out session.

“No more hard birthdays. Only happy anniversaries. Deal?” Finn entreated sweetly.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and licked at the frosting around my giant candle. It had been the best birthday I’d ever had—the best day I’d ever had, no contest. I sent a little love note skyward, hoping Minnie could forgive me for making new memories on our day.

“Deal,” I said, my eyes holding Finn’s.

“You wanna shake on that, Bonnie Rae Clyde?” He grinned widely at my new moniker.

I laughed and nodded, extending the hand that wore his ring. Gran was going to crap her pants. I laughed even harder. Yes, indeed. It had been a very good birthday.

THEY BOARDED THE bus without hassle or second glances. Finn made Bonnie put her hat back on and her glasses too. She was beautiful enough to receive second looks for that reason alone, and the more they could play down her looks, the easier it would be to keep her identity hidden. The bus departed right on time, and Finn breathed a little easier, knowing they would be in LA, even with another stop, in roughly five hours.

He had felt a slight but ever-increasing drum beat of trepidation since they’d left St. Louis, the pitfalls and problems at every turn creating a sense of unavoidable disaster that even the ring on his finger could not completely drown out. He was happier than he’d ever been, and he was more terrified than he’d ever been. He was madly in love, yet he hardly recognized himself. And he should have known the final stretch would go no smoother than the rest of the journey had.

Forty-five minutes outside of Vegas, the bus broke down. It started to cough and shimmy, and the bus driver babied it along to the closest exit, which fortunately was not in the middle of nowhere, though Primm, Nevada was the strangest town Finn had ever seen, plopped down like a tiny island in the middle of the desert—an island so small it made Vegas seem like a continent. A strip mall that was built to look like an old western town, several hotels, and a roller coaster that ran between manufactured rock mountains were the main attractions, and in the darkness, he felt a little like Pinocchio visiting the island where all the boys turned into donkeys. What was it called? His mom had read Pinocchio to him and Fish when they were little, and it had struck a chord in him. Fish loved the story and asked for it every night, but Finn wasn’t as entranced. He related a little too closely to poor Jiminy Cricket trying to keep Pinocchio in line.

Pleasure Island. The answer popped into his head. That was it. The island that bewitched boys and turned them into asses. He hoped Vegas hadn’t done the same to him. Initially the driver asked the passengers to stay seated and remain on the bus, but after a half hour of conferring with his supervisors, he informed the passengers that another bus was being sent to their location to take them to Los Angeles. The driver gave them an hour and reiterated that the journey would resume on the new bus at ten thirty, and to please be prompt so they wouldn’t be left behind. He gave them a quick tour-guide style run-down of the available restaurants and sites to see in Primm, including a huge Buffalo shaped pool at Buffalo Bills Hotel, and the roller coaster that Finn was suddenly determined to ride. But when the bus driver mentioned that the bullet riddled car of the infamous outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde, was on display at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel and Casino, he and Bonnie looked at each other in wide-eyed wonder.

Finn had started to laugh, almost choking on his disbelief.

“Now that, Infinity, is a sign,” Bonnie drawled, and immediately scowled. “William’s sign is still in Bear’s car. I’ve got to get it back. If I only come out of this trip with one souvenir, that’s the one I want. A cardboard sign and a big, blond husband. That’s all I ask.”

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.