The rest of Finn’s coffee landed in his lap as he gripped the wheel and maneuvered the galloping Blazer to the side of the road. He spent an hour changing the tire, thankful that he had a spare, even though the spare was really just a donut, and he would have to stop and buy a new one as soon as possible. The only way to Cincinnati from Portsmouth was on an old highway that wound in and out of little towns, making the going slow and the services limited. The spare got them as far as a town called Winchester, and at that point, Finn was wishing he had a Winchester to put himself out of his misery. Bonnie had been very quiet throughout the long morning, and surprisingly, the silence hadn’t been welcome.
She hadn’t complained or groaned when they’d blown the tire, and she’d stayed beside him while he’d changed it, though he’d barked at her to get back inside the Blazer. She’d ignored him and huddled in a squat as the traffic flew by them, handing him this tool and holding that one, not saying a word. He preferred the Bonnie that told lame jokes about his name and poked and teased him, non-stop. This Bonnie made him think of the girl perched on the bridge, surrounded by mist.
They were in Winchester for two hours, awaiting service. The tire cost $200, and he and Bonnie fought about who should pay for it, resulting in a few stares and unwanted attention, reminding him again about the fact that the police were looking for them. Looking for her. Because they believed he had “taken” her. But maybe the people in the service station just stared because his crotch was stained with coffee, and his hands were smeared with grease. Nobody approached them, though, and in the end, Finn let Bonnie pay cash for the tire so he wouldn’t have to show his ID or hand over his credit card with his very memorable name engraved along the bottom.
When they were on the road again, he reminded her that when they reached Cincinnati, she had to call her gran. The longer they let things lie, the worse it would get for both of them. Especially him. She just nodded, but didn’t commit to anything, and Finn resisted the urge to scream. Her moody silence was killing him. And scaring him. He reached for the radio and flipped it on, needing something, anything to occupy his thoughts.
“The tattoo on your hand. The five dots. What does it mean?” Bonnie asked, her eyes drawn to his hand by his sudden motion. He flipped off the radio once again.
“If you connect the four outer dots, they make a square. See?” he held out his hand so she could see what he meant.
She nodded, her eyes on the dots. “Yeah?”
“That represents a cage.”
“And the dot inside?” Bonnie asked.
“The man in the cage,” he answered stiffly. “You’ll see a lot of guys who’ve served time with this tattoo. But I actually wanted to get this one.” Finn smiled humorlessly and felt the slice of nausea in his stomach that always accompanied thoughts of his other tattoos.
“Why did you want this one?” She reached out and touched the small grouping of dots on the back of his right hand between his forefinger and his thumb. The touch made him want to grab her hand and hold on, but he pulled away and gripped the wheel instead.
“There are five dots. Five is the only odd, untouchable number . . . as far as we know,” he said, trying to ignore his reaction to her brief caress.
“Odd and untouchable?” she asked, not understanding.
“You know what odd numbers are. Five is odd, but it’s also untouchable—meaning it’s not the sum of any of the proper divisors of any positive integer.”
Bonnie stared at him blankly. “I could ask what an integer is, but I’m not sure that would help me understand what you just said.”
“Integers are the natural numbers—one, two, three, four, etc., as well as the negative of the natural numbers. Negative one, negative two, negative three, negative four, and so on. Zero is an integer too. Integers aren’t fractions or decimals or square roots,” he explained easily.
She nodded as if she understood. “Odd and untouchable. Is that what you are then, Finn?” He could tell she was trying to tease him, but he didn’t feel like laughing.
“In prison I wanted to be untouchable. I’ve always been odd.” His eyes shot to hers and then returned to the road. “But, yeah. I wanted to be different than the rest of the prison population, and I wanted to be left alone. Interestingly enough, eighty-eight is also an untouchable number.” He rubbed the double eights on his chest through his shirt.
“What was it like, the day you got out?” she asked suddenly.
“Of prison?” Finn found he didn’t mind the personal questions as much as he’d minded her silence.
“Yeah.” Bonnie said nodding. Her dark eyes were probing, and her usually smiling mouth curved down at the edges.
“Terrifying.”
“Why?”
“It was almost as scary as the day I went in.”
Bonnie looked stunned and waited for him to continue.
“When you go in, everybody is counting the days ‘til they can get
out . . . if getting out is even an option. The strange thing is, the longer you’re in, the less you want to get out. It starts feeling safe. It starts feeling like the only option.
“One guy, five years older than me, had been in since he was seventeen too. Ten year sentence. He got out a few months before I did.” Finn looked over at Bonnie, making sure she got what he was about to say next. “But he was back before I was released. And he was relieved. Being out here, in the real world, living? It scared him shitless. He didn’t know how to be on his own. He didn’t have any skills. The world had left him behind, and he crawled back in his hole the only way he knew how—he hurt somebody, stole their wallet. Problem solved. And you know what? I felt sorry for the bastard. I understood his thought process. I didn’t like it, but I understood it.”