Infinity + One (8 page)

“POSSIBLE SIGHTINGS TODAY of country singing sensation, Bonnie Rae Shelby, who reportedly left the stage without finishing her concert at the TD Garden Arena in Boston, Massachusetts last night and disappeared into thin air. Police were called in several hours later after her manager and security team were unable to locate her. In a statement made early this morning, police reported there were items stolen from her dressing room, prompting them to get involved, although it is still too early to file a missing person’s report on the twenty-one year old singer.”

FINN CALLED IT a day about five o’clock that afternoon. He was drooping at the wheel and promised we would get an early start the next morning. We pulled into a simple, roadside motel, one with a six or an eight on it . . . I didn’t pay much attention to the name. I was too busy worrying that he was going to sleep for a few hours and cut loose of me. I was ready for a shower and clean sheets myself, but not if it meant being alone somewhere between Boston and Cleveland without a friend in the world. I told him as much, and he sighed like he was getting a little tired of my insecurity.

“We’ll get adjoining rooms, okay? We’ll leave the door between them open for as long as you want,” he said.

“Done.” I jumped out immediately, grabbed my two duffle bags, and headed inside. The desk clerk looked like she’d had even less sleep than Clyde and I, the bags between her eyes dusky and plump, and she hardly looked at me as I made the request for two adjoining rooms and plunked down Gran’s card. I didn’t want to use the cash if I didn’t have to. Having it made me feel less vulnerable. Maybe it was my hillbilly blood, wanting to stick it somewhere safe, or maybe it was just the tangibility of the bills, but I wasn’t parting with it.

I signed the receipt with a granny flourish, our names were almost the same, after all, and had the keys to the two rooms in my hand before Clyde even made it inside. He looked like he wanted to argue about the fact that I’d paid for both rooms, but then he sighed and took his key from my hand. He shot a glance at the desk clerk and was visibly relieved when she seemed oblivious to us, already tuned back into the TV in the lobby. A pair of skaters twirled across the screen, and I realized she was watching the Olympics. I’d forgotten they were even going on. We left the desk clerk to cheer for the red, white, and blue, and made our way to the second floor.

True to his word, Clyde opened his door between our rooms, and the little bilious knot in my stomach eased immediately.

I didn’t want to turn on the TV because it would drown out the sound of Clyde moving about in his own room, a sound that was comforting to me. I realized part of my problem was that I wasn’t especially good at being alone. I rarely was, and rarely had been since I’d been crowned America’s sweetheart and had hit the road running . . . or singing. Before that, I’d lived in a double-wide trailer with six other people, and there had been no such thing as solitude. I wondered if it was an acquired taste. I thought maybe I could learn to like it, and I definitely wanted more of it. But not now.

FINN ORDERED PIZZA, keeping his promise to himself that he wouldn’t let Bonnie buy his dinner, though she’d paid for his room, which had cost a whole lot more. He heard the shower in her room start up and relaxed a little, knowing he was as alone as he was going to get for the near future.

She was the most peculiar girl he’d ever met. Sad, sassy, temperamental, introspective, funny . . . and all of that in the space of ten minutes. She was troubled. That much was obvious. But she wasn’t scared of him, surprisingly. He wasn’t sure what to do with that information, and he felt a flash of guilt that she might be afraid if she knew his story as well as he knew hers, which was fairly well considering he’d done a lot of listening throughout the long day. After she’d told him about Minnie she seemed spent. So he’d asked her to sing to him, thinking she would roll her eyes and refuse him, or give him some line about being on “vacation.” Instead, she’d been happy to oblige, and he’d marveled at her lack of artifice, considering she was who she was. She’d plopped one red boot up on the dash and regaled him with one ridiculous song after another.

She sang a song called “Little Brown Jug,” which was apparently about moonshine, and one called “Goober Peas,” which was about, well, goober peas, whatever the hell they were. Another song, “Black-eyed Daisy,” wasn’t too bad. Bonnie said her dad changed it up, singing Black-eyed Bonnie, because her eyes were so dark. Something about Cherokee blood back in her mother’s line, and she and Minnie got what was left of it. There was a song called “Nelly Gray” that seemed to make her sad, and she’d stopped singing it abruptly, half-way through a verse about a girl being taken away in chains. He was sorry she stopped. He’d liked the story in that one.

Bonnie said the songs were the ones she grew up singing, the songs of Appalachia that her dad had taught her and that had been passed down through the generations. She could apparently play several instruments, some of which he’d never heard of, like one she called a mouth bow, which was basically a stick, rounded like a bow, with a guitar string strung from one end to the other. Bonnie said folks hadn’t always used a guitar string. They used to use a stick and a cat gut.

“A cat gut? You mean like an intestine?”

“Yep.”

Clyde was pretty sure she was lying. Fairly sure. Not really sure at all.

“You don’t like these old-timey songs, huh, Clyde?” she had asked. Funny . . . he had told her his first name but she’d kept calling him Clyde.

“This isn’t what you sing at concerts, is it? People don’t still listen to these songs, do they?” he’d asked, incredulous.

“Sure they do. But, no. I sing new country. Cross-over country. Some of it sounds like pop music—in fact it’s so close the only difference is a few steel guitars and a fiddle. And me. I add my own whine and twang to give it that down home feel.” She had winked at him then, and Clyde found himself smiling with her like he was an idiotic fan. “I get lonesome for these old songs, though.”

Finn didn’t especially like the old songs, and he was pretty certain she enjoyed the fact that he didn’t. Bonnie Shelby was a tease. But he liked hearing her sing. And Bonnie could sing, no doubt about it. It was as effortless and sweet as cold water sliding down his throat on a hot day. And she seemed to love doing it. She was a performer, a storyteller, a commanding presence even in the front seat of his old Blazer. He could see why she’d been so successful. He could see how America had fallen in love with her.

He remembered her now. He’d seen her on TV many years ago.
Nashville Forever
had been one of the only shows they had been allowed to watch when they earned a little recreation time. They all complained because it was country music, not exactly the popular preference among the guys.

She’d been a wisp of a girl—all hair and eyes. She’d grown up since then. He remembered thinking, watching her sing, how young she was. But she had seemed absolutely fearless. And when she’d smiled, everyone in the audience had smiled with her. She’d even won over some of the hard asses who complained about her song selection but found themselves rooting for her anyway. Finn had only seen the show a couple of times. But he remembered her. He hadn’t realized she’d won. It seems she’d not only won, but she’d gone on to be a big star, apparently. A big star who wanted to kill herself.

Finn grabbed a quick shower and was just pulling on a clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans when the pizza arrived. He shot his head through the open adjoining doors to tell Bonnie and could still hear the shower running. It sounded like she was singing in there too. He stopped, wanting to hear her again, and realized she wasn’t singing this time. She was crying. He backed out of her room like he’d inadvertently seen her naked, and realized he would be less embarrassed if he had. Naked, he could deal with. Naked he would even enjoy. Tremendously. But tears? No.

She stayed in her room for another hour. He heard the shower cease, heard her pad through her space, riffling through bags, flipping through the channels, and then turning the television off again. Finally, she popped her head into his room and asked if she could “have a slice?”

Finn inclined his head and searched her face for signs of tears. There were none. He smiled with relief, and she returned the smile, the flash of dimpled cheeks and white teeth framed in pink lips made his heart lurch in his chest. He immediately stopped smiling. She was too pretty. Especially now that her hair didn’t look like she’d survived the apocalypse. She was too pretty, he was a lonely man, and the combination scared him, for her sake and for his.

“You look different without the shag.” She was talking to him now, perched on the edge of his bed, enjoying her pizza. Clyde pulled his attention from her pretty face and settled his eyes back on the fascinating sport of curling on the screen in front of him.

“Shag?” he asked. Wasn’t shag another term for sex? God help him.

“You know, the scruff,” Bonnie reached out and touched his clean-shaven cheek with the knuckles of her left hand, and the Olympics didn’t stand a chance. “You look younger. And I’m jealous. You have more hair than I do.” Finn saw the slight quiver of her bottom lip and then watched her take a huge bite of pizza as if to make it stop.

Finn ran his hands through his damp, shoulder-length hair and shrugged. “It’s coming off when I get to Vegas. It just felt good to let it grow.” Dangerous territory here. He stopped talking.

“You haven’t always worn it long?”

“Nah. It’s been short my whole life, up until the last couple of years, or so.” He fidgeted, pretending he was interested in a commercial for car insurance, but mostly he was hoping she would change the subject.

“I look like a boy, don’t I?” Bonnie burst out suddenly, the quivering of her lower lip back in full force. She set her pizza down abruptly and grabbed a napkin, wiping her hands and face with agitated motions.

“What?” Finn asked, stupefied.

“I was getting in the shower . . . and I caught my reflection from the corner of my eye, and I screamed! I screamed ‘cause I look like my brother Hank! I look like Hank, and I always thought he was the homely one in the family.”

“What the . . .? Is that why you were crying? Because you think you look like Hank?” Finn tried not laugh. He did. He tried. But he was not successful.

“It’s not funny, Clyde! I didn’t want angel curls anymore, but I didn’t think about the consequences of short, brown hair on this square, Shelby face. But now I know.” Bonnie hung her head and her shoulders shook as she dissolved into noisy sobs. She seemed almost as alarmed by her tears as he was, and she shot from the bed and into her room without another word

He didn’t go after her. He wasn’t her mother, her twin sister, or the guy she was sleeping with. He was just . . . Clyde. And he didn’t have a clue what to say. He could say she didn’t look like a boy. Because she didn’t. At all. Her hair was short and that was where the similarity ended. But he didn’t think he could support his argument without pointing out her more womanly attributes, which was a very bad idea. So he stayed on his side of the door and worried. He had no wisdom where women were concerned, especially a woman he hardly knew, who had literally fallen into his lap, and who he now felt strangely, infuriatingly, responsible for.

He scrubbed his hand down his jaw, immediately missing the feel of whiskers against his palm. The friction against his fingers eased the friction in his head, and he wondered what he’d been thinking when he’d shaved it off. Stupid. He knew what he’d been thinking. He’d been thinking that he should show Bonnie more of Finn and less of Clyde. He’d been thinking maybe he could shed some of the old skin and become a little more suitable for someone like her.

She didn’t come back through his door, though he left it open, just like he’d said he would. He ended up turning off the television and staring up at the ceiling in the dark, the way he’d done a million times in his young life. He wished he had some colored chalk. He wanted to write on all that empty white space. His fingers clenched and stretched, imagining how it would feel to scribble an equation across the expanse, something he could stare at and puzzle over until the numbers blurred and sleep lifted him up and away, where he could merge with the universe, a place rife with endless formulas and figures transcribed across the heavens.