Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  Farfalla smoothed the brightly-patterned skirt over her legs. Her knees were trembling.

  Farfalla gazed at the sullen flagstones under her high-heeled shoes.

  Something dreadful was lurking down there. She could feel the premonition. There was something very big, bad, and heavy inside this place. Just waiting here. Waiting for her.

  “Are you okay?” asked Gavin.

  She glanced up. “What?”

  “You look a little pale, just now.”

  She lied to him. “I’m all right.”

  The Capri museum had been a private home for the rich Confederate dentist and his two spinster daughters. Those long-lost people had lived in here. They had grown old in here, and they had died in here, too. And now, they were gone forever. The little Italian museum had crawled into their empty dream-castle, like a hermit crab into a sea-shell.

  The tiny rooms within the museum were full of industrial shelving. Ugly metal shelves stacked thick with dusty catalogs, relics, and artifacts.

  The director’s office had been hacked, somehow, out of the nooks and crannies of the dentist’s home. You couldn’t swing a cat in a mousetrap that size.

  A young Italian woman lurked inside this cramped and crooked niche. She was ardently fussing with a bulky desktop computer. This Capri museum clerk might have been 25 years old, but with her surfer jewelry, her day-glo plastic skirt and her necklace of popper beads, she looked about twelve.

  The museum clerk looked up at them with a guilty start. “Mi dispiace, la dottoressa Malaparte non è qui. È andata ad Anacapri e per oggi non tornerà.”9

  Farfalla leaned over the museum girl’s desk and spoke in rapid, chummy Italian. “I think we can manage this. I had to bring you these two Americans... and this big tall one, he’s from Microsoft and he’s richer than Berlusconi. As for this other one, she’s just a nice lady scholar. All she wants to do is see some statues that you have.”

  “I’m not in any position to show you this museum’s holdings without my director present. I apologize sincerely, but that can’t be helped.”

  Farfalla craned her neck across the director’s desk. “What’s that you’re playing there? Is that Warcraft?”

  Popper Bead blinked. “I really can’t help you. I already told you that.”

  “I’m Level Eighty on Warcraft.”

  The clerk was stunned. “You’re Level Eighty?! Are you Horde, or Alliance?”

  “What, are you kidding me? I’m Horde, of course! I’m a Level Eighty Undead Priestess. What Guild are you in?”

  “I’m a Horde Blood Elf Paladin. Level 30. I’m in the Blood Roses Guild.”

  “Have you ever seen a ‘Spectral Tiger’ loot card? I bet you never have.”

  The museum clerk thought about her situation. The psychic pressure was mounting on her. She was in a state of moral anguish. “Look, Signora, I’d love to help your American clients there... But if my director knew I was Warcrafting here at work, she’d kill me! Besides, you don’t have the ‘Spectral Tiger’ in your purse, I bet.”

  “What seems to be the problem here?” Gavin said in English, his big hands stuffed in the sturdy pockets of his cargo pants.

  Farfalla scowled. “She can’t let just anybody into the museum stacks. Not without some previous arrangement with her boss.”

  “Tell her that we understand that. Tell her we are not just anybody. Ask her if she has any Troubetzkoy items in her holdings. Then, tell her we can come back later, with the local Minister of Tourism, Health and Culture.”

  Farfalla was doubtful. “Do you know the Minister?”

  “He’s a Congress sponsor. I can get to know that guy. Look, I don’t want to bully her, or anything. Be nice. I’m not making a threat. This is a promise.”

  Farfalla conveyed the information. Popper Bead went gray with fear. She quickly worked her way through the desktop’s database. “Listen,” she said, “I do see something here, but I know that castle basement, and you don’t want to go down there.”

  Farfalla smoothed her hair. “Do you have vampires down there? We’re not afraid of mice.”

  “It’s a total bordello, down there! That basement is a filthy mess! I’m supposed to be archiving that junk, but, truly, nobody ever asks for that rubbish. That American émigré crap is a thousand years old.”

  Farfalla sniffed. “Don’t be silly! America’s not a thousand years old. Italy, yes, America, no. They’re very discreet, these two people.”

  “I don’t want any trouble! This is such a good job, and I don’t want to go back to graduate school.” Popper Bead scratched nervously under her bright plastic necklace. “Talk to my boss about your problem. Professor Malaparte is always very nice to foreign scholars.”

  Gavin diagnosed the situation. “She’s giving us the Italian stonewall treatment. We’re not giving her anything that she needs yet.”

  “Gavin, you understand Italian. You don’t need me. Talk to her yourself.”

  “Her local accent is throwing me. I can’t understand a word she says, but I know what she’s doing. She’s cute!”

  A novel sensation shot through Farfalla. It jumped like lightning through her tender ears and shot to the soles of her feet.

  What was this feeling? What a strange, jolting, new, bitter emotion. It came out of nowhere, overwhelming her instantly. Powerful. Fantastic. Painful.

  A possessive, threatening, burning feeling. Gelosia! Farfalla had never known jealousy. Not before this moment.

  So, this was the evil beast that people had always told her about. This was that famous green-eyed monster.

  Jealousy was a powerful beast. Awful. Painful. Strong. All slithery, boneless and alive in her body’s core, like an electric eel.

  Farfalla struggled to push the strong feeling aside. She failed. Because Jealousy was smarter than she was. Jealousy was very paranoid, very alert and very bright. Jealousy was a smart monster with two big green watchful eyes. Gelosia had two fiery green emerald eyes, and Gelosia only saw things that Gelosia wanted to stab to death.

  “She’s cute,” said Gavin nonchalantly, “in a kind of a punky, dorky, geeky-chick way.”

  Popper Bead looked up at Gavin from under her damp eyelashes. Please, tall, handsome foreigner. I’m only trying to get along here. Please don’t crush helpless, little, tender me.

  Gavin gazed back at her from on high. Your so-called troubles amuse me. You sweet little creature. Don’t you worry! The likes of me has dealt with worse than this.

  I am sure that you have, you handsome guy.

  Oh, you could bet your very life on that, darling.

  They weren’t even moving their lips! It was horrible.

  Professor Milo asserted herself. “This museum’s special holdings are off limits — is that the problem?”

  “I’m sure that she wants to let you roam around here,” Gavin told the professor. “We just haven’t found a compelling reason for her to let us do that.” He offered the Professor a rueful grin. “But, this is Italy, and we’ll get you inside. Farfalla and I are methodically wearing her down.”

  “So, her director isn’t working today? What a shame! Dr. Malaparte is a famous classics scholar. We are particular pen-pals! She knows more about temples of Venus than any woman alive.”

  “Oh, I’m keen to bring in her boss’s boss! That’ll crack this nut for sure.”

  “Young man,” said Professor Milo, “I like you. You didn’t have to help me, but I can see that you are a gentleman.”

  “Professor Milo, it’s like this. We live in a globalized world. Most things change so quickly, but there are some thing we just can’t change so easily...” Gavin paused. “Well, that’s not entirely true. We can definitely change those things, too, because everything changes. Always. But, sometimes, it requires an unconventional approach.”

  Professor Milo sighed. “Yes. I know.”

  “So, it turns out we’re a little at a loss here. Farfalla and I could definitely make this happen for you, if only we had
more time to spare. But we do have the conference. Farfalla has to translate and I have to attend the events.”

  “I understand that, young man. I can see that this is up to me. Hand me that bag, if you please.”

  Gavin gave her the plastic bag of paperback books. Professor Milo emptied the bag across the clerk’s cluttered desk.

  Popper Bead brightened at once. “Oh, I love these books. I read this one, this one here, three times. It’s such a great book! I read this other one, too. But she’s not as good a writer as this first one.”

  “They’re all me,” sighed Professor Milo. “I wrote all of these books. All of those romance authors are me. I’m ‘Virginia Clements.’ I’m also ‘Althea Adair,’ and ‘Jane Woodbine.’”

  Gavin Tremaine was riveted with fascinated interest. “Wow! Are you’re kidding? You write novels, Professor? Fantastic! Tell me all about it.”

  “I’m telling her,” said Professor Milo. “Now, ask her if she’ll take us into her stacks.”

  Popper Bead, trembling with heroine-worship, quickly jumped from her office chair. “I did not know you had brought this great maestra to Capri! Please forgive me for being so stupid!”

  Popper Bead hastily led the way from the office, through high-ceilinged rooms reduced, then down a gloomy, badly-lit set of damp-smelling stairs.

  “Boy, that was pretty easy once you brought out the big guns,” crowed Gavin. “So, are you a really famous novelist?”

  “Oh, I’ve been writing my little books for thirty years,” mourned Professor Milo. “People always make such a big fuss about my New York Times bestsellers. The faculty at the university never knew I write fiction. I am a humanities scholar, you know. Really, my fiction is just a small creative outlet of mine.”

  “Nobody knows that you write novels? I can’t believe that. Nobody has a secret life like that, any more. Didn’t people on the Internet figure out your secret life, right away?”

  “I don’t know. I never look at the Internet.”

  Farfalla could see that Gavin was thrilled by the turn of events. His blue eyes sparkled with glee. He scarcely seemed to notice that they were descending downstairs into a stuffy, airless, deadly, menacing tomb.

  “So, why do you write your novels under three different names, ma’am?”

  “That’s how it works. ‘Virginia Clements’ writes my historical romances, while ‘Jane Woodbine’ writes my modern romances. They are two very different audiences, you know. My historical readers and my modern readers, those ladies hardly talk to each other.”

  “I never would have guessed that. So, what kind of fiction does ‘Althea Adair’ write?”

  Popper Bead banged on the light switch. A naked overhead bulb jumped into fitful life. They were deep below ground now. They were standing in a dungeon.

  Real Italian dungeons were sturdy, simple, practical places, designed to hold enemies. This dungeon was an Edgar Allen Poe dungeon, an American’s twisted idea of an Italian dungeon. It was extremely fake, yet very real. It was, somehow, much older than old, and much scarier than scary. It was like a Gothic stage-set where Americans would go mad with fear.

  Farfalla’s head began to spin with premonitions. Premonitions were boiling out of the walls. Dread assaulted her senses. This dungeon was old and new, foreign and not foreign. The place was timeless, spaceless and completely terrifying.

  It was... she couldn’t get her head around it... there were no words for what was happening to her. She was cracking up, having an episode. This was, somehow, like a pizza. It was like a fake American “pizza,” where Americans were trying hard to make a “real Italian pizza”. Only, somehow, they also believed that pizzas were evil. This dentist’s dizzy dungeon was like an evil, horrible, vampire pizza stuffed with imaginary tortures.

  No, sensed Farfalla, it was even worse than that. It was much, much worse. Because the dungeon was totally fake, but the pain down here was real. Long-dead pain, but extremely real pain. The museum’s past held ghostly aspects of vanished pain. Dusty vistas of long-forgotten human agony.

  Because dentists of the 19th century really, truly tortured their clients. Their patients were in horrible pain from ghastly, infected toothaches. The Confederate dentist wrenched broken chunks of human ivory out of their jaws with his iron pliers, and after that horrible, terrible, blood-spitting torture, his clients were grateful to him. Yes, they were grateful. They were tortured and grateful.

  Tortured and grateful inside this dungeon. That was why this unspeakable place was scaring her so much. Thank you for my awful torture, sir. I really trust you now, after this horrible, intimate torment we have been through together. You have seen me at my very worst — broken, screaming, and debased! You helped me, because you did such dreadful things to me. Yes, sir, I love you.

  Awful scenes of loving, caring torture in this dungeon. Not a little bit of that: tons of that. Not obscure people, either — wonderful, famous people. Brilliant Italian artists who had never even heard of a toothbrush. This artsy dentist tortured his artistic clients for free. Poetic intellectuals with fine, noble souls — of course, they would want a famous, progressive, American dentist. This dungeon had been full of famous, beautiful, romantic, world-roving people, trapped here in their intimate agony. Scream all you like, Princess. You need not worry that anyone will hear you, now.

  Popper Bead was watching her, as Farfalla shook all over in her occult dread. Popper Bead was obscurely satisfied. Popper Bead didn’t know how to talk about what was happening, or what it meant — but Popper Bead knew.

  Farfalla knew, and Popper-Bead also knew. Farfalla knew that she knew, and she knew that Farfalla knew. Farfalla felt no better for knowing this. They understood one another in a real way. Woman to woman. They knew that they were enemies.

  “Look at all this great, cool stuff!” exulted Gavin. “Those are acid-free banker’s boxes! We’ve got tons of these over at the Pioneer Museum.”

  “What is he saying?” asked Popper Bead in Italian, her narrow eyes bright with malice. “I never saw a man so happy to be down here.”

  “He loves your museum.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “We’re married!”

  “Oh,” mouthed Popper Bead Girl, silently.

  “Those are storage boxes for photographs,” said Professor Milo. “Photographs that are one hundred years old. I bet they have never been sorted.”

  “I see that your maestra found those old photographs right away,” said Popper Bead. “Tell her that nobody has ever sorted those.”

  “The maestra just said that,” Farfalla told her.

  “American tourists in Capri,” shrugged Popper Bead. “Always busy taking their pictures.”

  “I love Italy,” said Gavin, pulling out his pocket camera and firing off a few random flash shots. “There’s just so much heritage around here. No place else in the world can match it.”

  Farfalla’s iPhone rang. They were deep under the earth in a stone dungeon, so her ringtone was feeble. However, nothing could stop the demanding calls of Babi Gervasi.

  Farfalla scampered up the stairs for a stronger signal.

  “So,” demanded Babi, “how did it work out for you?”

  “It worked,” said Farfalla. “He hired me and he paid me in cash.”

  “Good. Don’t say I never did you a favor, then.”

  “Babi, I feel bad about this. I said that I would help you with the big conference errands, and here I am stuck in Anacapri with this American guy.”

  “LOXY says that your American guy is a big conference errand.”

  Farfalla thought this over. It was quite a thing to say. It didn’t have to be spelled out in detail. Smart Neapolitans, like Babi, never spelled anything out. “I hear you.”

  “Don’t kiss him,” said Babi, and she hung up.

  Don’t kiss him. If only Babi had said something else. Don’t flirt with him, don’t let him buy you drinks, and don’t go to his hotel room. Don’t be the rich boy’s gi
rl-toy.

  Farfalla did not do such things. Life was too short. But, don’t kiss him? Not even one kiss? Even Audrey Hepburn in her cold, virginal 1950’s movie was allowed one kiss. Or two kisses, or count them, three passionate kisses. With the tall, handsome Gregory Peck.

  Don’t kiss him? Every woman in Italy was allowed to kiss someone! A line of women a kilometer long had kissed the Prime Minister. Don’t kiss him? This was not good advice. This was sneaky and fatal and ominous. This was a curse.

  Farfalla was good at dodging curses. That was the great advantage of foreseeing the future. To make sure that awful things did not happen. Farfalla was good at making dreadful things not-happen. Not-happening awful things were her personal specialty.

  So, she would not do it. Not kiss him. It was like she had already not done it. Not kissed him, not. Never. Never to kiss him. Not throwing her arms around his neck. Not rising up on her toes. No line of sweet tension thrilling down her back, nothing down the trembling length of both her legs... Lips gently not meeting his lips…

  Farfalla looked in wonder at the blank black tablet she held in her hand. Thank you, iPhone! You insanely great machine, you flat black brick of opium! Don’t kiss him, the gabby little machine had just said to her. An iPhone had doomed her forever. Don’t kiss him, because she was dying to kiss him now. She would die like a dog if she left Capri without kissing Gavin Tremaine. Oddio, what a terrible mess.

  Kissing Gavin Tremaine was a calamity. Would he even do that? Would he kiss her? Oh yes, he most certainly would kiss her. Because she would make him do it. There were eighteen thousand ways for her to get him to kiss her.

  Oh please, God, Saints, nice Brazilian voodoo demons, please don’t make me kiss that man, Farfalla thought to herself. There was no force in her meek little prayer. It sounded like a coy invitation.

  Farfalla grew stern with herself. She really, truly, did not have to kiss him. Even if he was her One, she did not have to kiss him. She was not doomed. A kiss was an act of will, and the future was not set in stone. Farfalla had always known that. The future was not made of stone because the future was a story. People who could foretell the future were people who told the future. They didn’t carve the future from a piece of stone. There were no stone futures, the future was a story! A story that people told to people.