Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  “How did you ever get free of your parents?”

  “I used the future on them,” said Farfalla, warming to the topic. “I went to high-tech conferences. I made big owl-eyes at the geeks. I learned to talk about tomorrow, the same as the geeks. My parents could never talk that way. They can’t fight with me anymore, because I make them feel so old. They can’t tell me their big important grown-up stories. They can’t even speak my future language.”

  “I see. Yeah. Wow. I bet that works great. Were they all upset about that?”

  “My parents have ideals. So, my parents are always upset about something. They’re not upset about me. They don’t know what to say to me. Not any more.”

  Eliza put her fork down. “You know what? You rock! Stuff happens around you. I really like you a lot.”

  Farfalla didn’t know what to say to this sweet confession. She felt very touched. “Eliza, listen to me. You think you are a sad girl — but you are a lucky girl. You have a nice brother who is kind to you. He loves you. I have a brother, too. My brother is an idiot. He’s high on drugs and dangerous and crazy. You should be happy to have such a good, kind brother.”

  “You think that your brother is ‘dangerous and crazy’?”

  “Rafael ran away from home to build robots with Dutch atompunks.”

  “Farfalla... Don’t let me hurt your feelings, all right? But I kind of have an idea here. Because, I think maybe your ‘crazy brother’ is actually a pretty normal guy. I mean, your brother has got to be normal, compared to you. Because I am normal, too, compared to my brother. Maybe I look paranormal on the outside, but Gavin is paranormal on the inside. Do you get what I mean?”

  Farfalla topped off her wine glass. “Oh, never mind, never mind... Men are impossible! They just can’t help it! Nobody can help the way they are in their heart! Let’s order dessert.”

  Eliza was silent for a long moment. Then she lifted her iPhone. “Listen. I’m sending you a music track. It’s a gift from me to you. All right? You don’t mind if I send you some music, do you?”

  ***

  After two bottles of wine, the balky, snarling Lancia was much easier to drive. Now, that Farfalla felt so well-fed, and cozy, the sports car whipped out of Anacapri like a bolt of lightning.

  A horn-stab or two, and the Capri tourists flicked out of her way like raindrops from a windshield. Some days, everything fell into place.

  Farfalla delivered Eliza to her brother’ hotel. Eliza scrambled from the car and ran, bumping her rolling luggage up the hotel’s steps.

  With that errand accomplished, Farfalla wound through Capri’s crooked streets for her appointment with Gavin Tremaine. A rare parking space was waiting for her, just outside the hotel lair of the Brazilian Minister of Culture.

  The Minister must have had a genius travel agent. The Brazilian voodoo cannibal Prince of Music was staying in a secluded, artsy, swoopy-roofed hotel. This crumbly space-age hotel was like a piece of Brasilia that had been sawn off and dropped on Capri from a helicopter.

  Farfalla entered the hotel’s garish and angular lobby. Gavin was waiting for her there, awkwardly perched in a chair of chrome and Naugahyde.

  Gavin’s face was taut, but he quietly shook her hand and said something mild and polite to her. Farfalla had rehearsed a little speech to give him, something cheerful and efficient, like an American secretary would say to her employer, but she forgot her speech instantly. Because Gavin was in trouble. Awful trouble. He was like a knight in armor about to confront a dragon.

  There was a strong, feral mood of tremendous male intensity. The way he felt swept through her like a whirlwind. Are you with me?

  Yes I am. Here, I am. They were comrades on a mission. Life and death. Better or worse. Shoulder to shoulder.

  Gavin’s audience with the great man lasted only fifteen minutes. The Minister of Culture looked just the way that he always looked. He was a jolly, old Brazilian hippie with a dark face and short, gray dreadlocks. He wore an artsy dashiki and baggy, white cotton pants and big, flat, slappy Havaiana sandals.

  The Minister smiled at her. He was entirely polite and gentlemanly. He had met her three times already. He did not remember her, of course.

  This voodoo priest and Gavin Tremaine wasted maybe one minute being cordial — Thank you for meeting me about the issue of such-and-such, and Yes, I understand that you came here about the this-and-that. Then, suddenly, they got technical.

  They got extremely technical. Horribly technical. Their meeting concerned specialized electronics. Aviation electronics, the circuits for controlling jet airplanes. This meeting was about the Brazilian aviation business, French aerospace companies, Boeing, and Italy, too. It had a lot to do with intellectual property, patents, copyrights, and a big, cloudy, multi-national business deal.

  There were some NATO components, state of the art electronics for aerial warfare. And something older, too. At that point, the conversation — or rather, the military briefing — zoomed into a different space that was strange and delicate.

  Gavin Tremaine and this Brazilian musician-politician were talking about something that, officially, nobody was ever supposed to talk about. Because it was secret. It was a serious, world-class secret. This secret was so totally taboo that they couldn’t even admit to each other that they were discussing a secret.

  Farfalla had never heard two men engage in such closely-studied non-talking. Obviously, they were talking about some great source of hidden power, worth a lot of money. A major fortune — tons of dollars, Euros and Brazilian reals.

  The discussion was incredibly difficult to translate. Farfalla struggled so much to catch on to what they were not saying that she lost all sense of herself. Words poured through her like a spirit medium.

  Finally, they had tiptoed through their ghostly international spiderweb to confront the Big Question. The big, futuristic question about what to do next. Given that they had achieved some sort of understanding — what about tomorrow? Where was Gavin to go, who was he to talk to next, where, how? What was to be done?

  Gavin posed this question in a very tactful and respectful way, but obviously it was the whole point of this meeting. This question was why Gavin Tremaine had flown halfway across the world.

  The old man thought about the big question. This was the one part of the discussion that caused him to ponder. He was not making any final decision about the matter himself. But, he had to tell this younger man: green light, yellow, or red. Go forward, try again later, or just stop.

  After mulling it over, the Minister of Culture did not say any of the three obvious things. Instead, he said a fourth thing. He spoke about the future of Brazil.

  A slight, pained shadow crossed Gavin’s face. But, he understood why this had to be said.

  Then, the two men shook hands, and finished their conversation with some more polite nothings. The encounter was done, it was all over. One of the Minister’s staffers gave them free tickets to a nightclub show. She was very nice about that.

  Then, they left. They departed the hotel together.

  Gavin Tremaine looked hugely relieved. Farfalla felt wrung-out. She wanted to forget this awful meeting as soon as she possibly could. Because it smelled— it smelled of war, and trouble, and power, and crisis, and blood, and money, money, money. Especially, it smelled of money.

  Yet, now she knew Gavin Tremaine so much better. They were comrades of a dark and twisted experience. It was as if they had survived a hurricane.

  She knew that Gavin had never done this before. He hadn’t wanted to undergo this trial. He feared and hated doing this. How had he found the courage to try? Because he did have the courage.

  Oh yes, she thought, looking at his troubled face. His father did things like this. Gavin had grown up seeing work like this done. This story was another man’s story. This was his family’s story. Gavin was a young man who was loyal to his family heritage. He was loyal to his history.

  “You did such a great job in there,” Gavin told
her. “I didn’t know that the negotiation would break in that direction, but... well, thanks to you, I got through that. I feel hopeful, now. I’m thinking, maybe I can pull this thing off. It’ll take me a while, because it’s a very complex situation, but... I have new options for action now. And that’s good.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Well, the project’s not done. But, I don’t have to worry any more, about the parts that don’t matter. I can concentrate. Can you get me a cab back to my hotel? I need the landline for some phone calls.”

  “You can’t use your iPhone?”

  “I don’t have an iPhone. iPhones aren’t secure,” he blurted. “Forget I told you that. Look, I’m all right now. And you are all right. That’s what’s important to me. You are more than all right, you are great. I could never have done this without you. I’m really grateful for what you’ve done for me.”

  That was the truth, and it was wonderful. Those few words changed everything, about him, about her. She was his helpmeet, his confidante and his guide through dark places. He was about to tell her all about this, how much it meant to him, and how important she was to him. She wanted to stand on the sidewalk and bask in his praise.

  But, he wasn’t saying that to her. Why not? Why wouldn’t he say it to her? She would listen to it. Joyfully. She very much wanted to hear it.

  Because, he was her One, and when he said it, he would kiss her. That was why he wasn’t saying it yet. Farfalla knew that suddenly. She felt that premonition in her flesh and her bones. A hot, heart-pounding, physical conviction. He was bound to confess what he felt about her, and then give her a passionate kiss.

  Farfalla realized that the kiss was coming. Their moment of true communion. A tremendous, total, passionate, life-changing kiss. Not here yet. Not yet. Almost here. The kiss was coming.

  He was her One, so it would happen. He was certain to do it. Their kiss was fated. He would kiss her with his life-changing kiss. He could grab her at any minute and kiss her. He was one hair’s breadth away from grabbing her, right now. Look at his blue, hungry, lustful, male eyes. He was blazing with raw need for her, as a woman. The air between them was crackling with electricity. He was going to lunge for her and crush her into his arms. A scarlet whirlwind of heart-throbbing passion that negated all female resistance. She could pound his chest with her fists, no. Oh no! No kissing! Not right here, not right now! Not on this sidewalk in front of this weird hotel. With all those strange people wandering in and out. Oh, please don’t kiss me!

  “Way too much going on today,” Gavin muttered, and then, they had to part.

  Chapter Eleven: The Return on Investment

  Gavin decided to hike back to his hotel. He had his paper tourist map to guide him across the island. He needed a good long walk to help him purge his jitters.

  There was no way he could tell his dad about the new twist in the Brazilian business deal. Not just yet. Not when he was feeling so jumpy, so raw and impulsive.

  For a minute there, elated by hope, he’d almost told the Italian girl something fatal. He had wanted to tell her to forget all about the Futurist Congress. Forget all of that, the plans, duties, panels, speeches, reputation, forget everything. Rush off and get drunk together. Stay together, be with each other. Throw their clothes off, get into bed. A charming idea, obviously. Also, the stupidest idea in the world.

  Some alone time, hiking across the island, would get his head on straight.

  Tonight, he had to deliver his big Congress speech. Gavin hated giving presentations to crowds. All those hundreds of eyes, focused on him. A nerve-wracking public ordeal. Gavin didn’t exactly suffer from stage fright — because he always tightly scripted his speeches, with the whole routine plotted-out carefully, point by point, minute by minute. Gavin knew how to survive a public speech. He had done that before.

  But, he could always sense his listeners politely suffering, as he repeated all the words from his PowerPoint slides. He couldn’t face a trial like that. Not in his raw, disturbed condition. Not without fresh air in his lungs. Not without a chance to mentally breathe.

  The hilly path across the island was crooked and rambling. Capri’s smaller streets were like crevices in rock. But, all in all, Capri was a small Italian island. No mountains around here could scare a guy who’d hiked Mount Saint Helens.

  Nobody else walked through these quiet stony lanes. The posh homes of aristocrats and rich retirees were hidden behind iron gates. Gavin was all alone.

  When he reached the hotel, he would have to pick up a phone and try talk to talk sense into his father.

  It felt strange to have such pained thoughts here, thoughts that anticipated distant, faraway Seattle. Somehow, Seattle still haunted him in Capri, in this beautiful Italian maze. This narrow Capri street was lined on both sides by mossy walls topped with bright festive flowers. Enormous, blind, rock-solid barriers. Elegant, pretty — but like a medieval jail.

  He had learned something today. His father’s property still mattered in this world. It mattered because it had never been “property” — instead, it was a fishline snarl of a thing, half military secret, half patent. A Cold War aviation secret that dated back to the long-lost days of Senator Scoop Jackson. A magic artifact. Historical, yet still futuristic.

  Boeing wasn’t even in Seattle, not any more. Boeing had relocated to Chicago, fleeing the unions. Seattle’s Space Age had dwindled into a corny curiosity, like a fifty-year old rerun of The Jetsons.

  But, a Space Age circuit board didn’t die like that. A circuit board was a structure, like sheet music. You could hide sheet music inside a dark closet for years. Then, when you played that grid of black and white notes, the same secret power came out. Music became old-fashioned, but music never wore out.

  Technically, there were only so many ways to move an electric pulse across a circuit board. Just like there were only so many ways for a lonely man to walk the crooked streets of Capri.

  He had some good news for his father. At least, he had constructive news.

  So, he would call the house in Seattle. He would do that soon. He would force himself to do that duty. He would face that music. Complicated, difficult music. Three governments, two rival aerospace companies, and a chip business in Ivrea — that kind of music. Music like a basket of crabs.

  That so-called “real world,” thought Gavin. How “real” did any world turn out to be, once a man got old? “Real estate” — his father’s legacy. The real world’s most solid, most conservative business investment! How had “real estate” become so vaporous, so treacherous, so ghostly and so haunted? A “real estate bubble.” To be “real,” and yet a “bubble” — so fragile, so transient. The great, new, tragic story of the 21st century.

  It took time to ruin a real world. But, time was all it took.

  “Kidney nephrosis” was not a virus, or a bacterium, or a cancer, or an infection. “Kidney nephrosis” was a prediction. A stark prediction about his father’s life.

  Mr Norman Tremaine’s kidneys were nephrotic. In the future, his kidneys would deteriorate further. Mr. Tremaine’s future life would be about low-sodium diets and dialysis. There would be a lot of intimate pain in the future of the aging Mr. Norman Tremaine. The pain was especially predictable.

  Nobody lives forever, thought Gavin. This was the single most important lesson he had ever learned from Futurism: that people were temporary. Human beings were future ghosts.

  Even a lucky man — a rich, successful, handsome, dynamic man, who finds the love of his life and “lives happily ever after” — doesn’t live happily forever after. Happily, perhaps. Forever, no way.

  Gavin was losing his father, day by day. That handsome, go-getting, bounding overachiever. That big Viking hulk of a guy. A hard-charger, an Alpha Male. A natural leader. He gave the men and women around him a lot more trouble than they had ever given him. A man with a heart of gold and an iron head.

  His father was a mortal human being.

  Gavin couldn’t
even call that story a tragedy. For a man to die at twenty, that was a tragedy. To die well over sixty, with two grown kids and a wife who adored you, that was just life.

  Love kept his father alive. Nothing more, nothing less. Strange, but true. It was the love of Gavin’s mother. His mother kept his father alive, really, through her heartfelt faith that he was somehow bound to get better. Her passionate devotion to him had the fairy-tale proportions of a castle in the clouds.

  If his mother somehow died, his father wouldn’t last six weeks. Gavin knew that. He knew it was true, but he had never told anybody about it. Inside their stately home, his parents were propped up together like two dominoes.

  Who was there to tell about such a dreadful future prospect? His sister? His girlfriend? Nobody.

  Nothing much to tell- just, a man’s grown-up duty to pick up the work at hand.

  Generations of Tremaines, in their long Seattle history, had done all kinds of work. Many useful, lively and worthwhile things. They’d been in lumber, in fishing, in import-export, in aviation, in military contracting, and in high technology.

  Times changed. People moved money out of the stuff that was old-fashioned, and they moved money into the cool new stuff. The future had all the cool, new stuff. To make progress, you had to figure that out.

  That was the subject of Gavin’s big speech to the Futurist Congress, the speech that he was delivering, in public, tonight. Because that was what they wanted to hear from him. The Italians wanted to hear all about American-style, high-tech venture capital. That was why they admired him as they did. That was why they made such a fuss about him.

  He was from famous, high-tech Seattle. Seattle had Amazon, that mighty river of consumerism. Seattle had the Big Blue Monster, Microsoft. Microsoft, the ultimate planetary operating system, the ultimate international business machine. The computer mega-corporation that spewed millionaires like Mount Saint Helens spewed ash.

  Even the shadow of Microsoft oozed money. Once, there had been a certain obscure piece of software. Nothing to get excited about. Unless, like Gavin Tremaine, you were a fan of tech press releases, SEC filings, court documents and Seattle tech bloggers. Then, you could foresee that Microsoft, the Big Blue Monster, was planning to eat Yahoo!