Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  “My friend Xavier is being much too modest!” Carlo broke in. “When his fans realized that he was appearing here at my event, they rushed to see him from all over Brazil! Hundreds of fans, from every city! They paid full price at the door!”

  “So, you’re a science fiction writer,” Gavin said.

  Xavier blinked his small, heavy eyes, which bore traces of rubber goggle-marks. “You have heard about ficção científica?”

  “’Heard about ‘science fiction?” Gavin bellowed. “Dude, I’m from Seattle! We have the Science Fiction Museum there! We have the world’s best science fiction writers in Seattle! My home town is crawling with those guys.”

  A woman in sequins and gold lamé tugged urgently at Carlo’s black silk arm. The organizer of an event rarely got a spare moment. With an unhappy backward glance, Carlo had to leave them.

  The crowd was getting drunker. The noise level rose steadily.

  “I have never been published in America!” shouted Xavier, “because translation is so hard! But, I read American science fiction! In English! Especially steampunk writing. My Brazilian steampunk trilogy is the best-selling among my twenty books!”

  Gavin rubbed his chin and shouted back at him. “Hmmm…You don’t say. Tell me all about that.”

  “Well, my Brazilian steampunk trilogy concerns an alternate history in which, instead of a Portuguese Emperor fleeing Napoleon in the year 1807, a Brazilian Emperor replaces Napoleon! So Brazil invades and conquers all of Europe! By 1812, when, in your history, the French would have been invading Russia, in my history, the Brazilians have invaded Europe. Country by country, and industry by industry, all of Europe becomes one huge Brazilian colony! And then, my hero, who is an engineer of course, he builds a giant...”

  “I meant, tell me all about this steampunk thing!” Gavin broke in. “How does that concept work out for you people, here in Brazil?”

  “You don’t know about steampunk?” shouted Xavier, dubiously.

  “Well, I don’t read many novels! Because I’m kinda fully-booked already! But, obviously, you’re a science fiction writer at a Futurist conference! And I can see that you’re all dressed up like some fancy guy from the past, from the 19th century! So what gives with that? What is all that about?”

  Xavier took off his velvet-and-leather top-hat. The novelist had a sweaty, gleaming pate, and he was missing a lot of hair. “I went to all four of your panel appearances,” he said. The roaring crowd was hitting one of those lulls that afflicted drunken crowds. “I was listening to you very closely,” Xavier said, in a quieter voice. “I was taking notes on my laptop. And I knew — I knew that if I managed to meet you, we would discuss that matter.”

  “Looks like your sci-fi prediction came true right away, Xavier.”

  “That can be gratifying,” mused the novelist. “But not all the time.”

  “I can’t read Portuguese,” Gavin confessed, twirling his empty glass. “I know that we Americans should read more foreign writers, but, this is more like a general, global, culture-studies issue. Am I right there? So, tell me, what’s with the top hat?”

  Xavier pounded his pinked gloved fist on the bar. He waved some Brazilian paper money at the overworked hotel bartender. “What are you drinking, sir?”

  “I’m drinking caipirinhas.”

  “The classics are always the noblest choice!” said the Brazilian novelist, ordering some top-shelf alcohol for two. “Now, I’m so very glad that you asked me that question. That question has made me a happy man. Because it is a very abstruse matter! Few of my readers ever understand this. My readers of my science fiction novels, they just want to know from me: ‘Does the lonely hero change the universe? With his weapons and his machines?’ That’s all they ever want to know! If I tell them, ‘No! He does not change the universe with his machines. He just kisses his girl,’ instead? The readers feel cheated! They get very upset!”

  Gavin gazed over the sweating head of the hatless Brazilian novelist. He was bored by literary discussions. He had never seen the point of them.

  Then, his heart stopped in his chest. It stopped for two beats, like a jammed clock.

  She was here.

  Farfalla came straight for him, whipping through the drunken crowd. His beloved was lithe and dainty of build, but she plowed through the conference-goers as if they were topsoil, just ripping a furrow straight through them.

  “Cookie!” said Gavin, beaming at her. “I knew that you would come here. I knew it! I told everyone! I knew you would come. My God, how beautiful you are! Thank you so much for coming to save me from this.”

  “You are drunk,” said Farfalla, scowling.

  “Baby, I’m just unwinding a little, okay? You don’t know what these people have dragged out of me! I’m a wet dishrag now! I was speaking in public, or on some freakin’ television camera, for the past three days! I’m fried now! I’m totally toast.” Gavin raised his fresh glass. “So this is kinda my bachelor party. It’s great in here, isn’t it? I totally love Brazil.”

  “Gavin, how many of those did you drink?”

  “This is my fourth one. I think.”

  Farfalla put her foot, in a plastic zori, into the bar’s brass rail, and launched herself half over the bar. “Aqui! Traga-me quatro drinks iguais ao que ele tomou.”13 She turned to Gavin. “You’re paying.”

  “What happened to your dress? And your shoes?” said Gavin, gazing at her sweaty T-shirt and wrinkled polyester stretch-pants.

  “I had to pawn my Italian clothes for a bus ticket.”

  “Who is this?” said Xavier.

  “This is my fiancée,” said Gavin.

  “Eu estava explicando para o seu marido,” said Xavier to Farfalla, politely, “que as mudanças na linguagem eletrônica estão distorcendo a própria estrutura de tempo.”14

  Farfalla turned on him savagely. “Você acha que eu me preocupo com isso? Eu tenho meus próprios problemas! Sai daqui, seu steampunk geek!”15

  Xavier hastily fled the scene.

  “Cookie, you shouldn’t have been mean to that guy,” said Gavin, mournfully. “He was being perfectly polite to me. I think he had something to say to me. He was trying to tell me that history and the future are the same thing, somehow.”

  Farfalla shrugged in irritation. “You already know that. So do I.”

  “Of course, we both already know it, but he might have said it in some more interesting way! Like, something we could put on a bumper-sticker.”

  Farfalla’s four separate caipirinhas arrived, in their frosty, sugar-rimmed glasses. Gavin pulled fantastic Brazilian paper bills from his wallet, and paid. “Do you really want to drink all of these? Just to catch up with me? Why? You are so stubborn.”

  “I never like it,” said Farfalla, “when I’m behind you, and you’re ahead of me. Or you’re behind me, and I’m ahead of you. We should not do that. We do that all the time.”

  “Why are you scolding me about that? You’ve been gone for three solid days! I thought you would never get here.”

  “It was not three days that I left you here,” said Farfalla, blinking.

  “Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Check the calendar. You said three days ago, that you would come get me any minute, and then you were gone. I was completely alone here, without a translator. I had to wing it with all these Brazilian Futurists.” He belched. “Luckily, I was in top form. In fact, I’ve never been better. I totally wasted those guys.”

  “But it can’t be!” cried Farfalla. “If I am living three days in the future, then I didn’t eat for three days!”

  Gavin silently passed her a cut-glass fingerbowl of Brazil nuts.

  “These are fantastic,” said Farfalla, munching.

  “You’re dressed in rags,” Gavin diagnosed. “And you’re starving.”

  “Well, you’re fat, and you’re drunk.”

  “Cookie, maybe that’s true, but that’s not a logical argument! You can’t just say to me, ‘Well, you’re as bad as me!’ Of course, I’m as
bad as you, but that’s not how we repair our situation.”

  Farfalla hungrily munched more Brazil nuts. “What is our situation?”

  “We are getting married. Till death do us part. I told everybody here. I predicted that to everyone I could see. I staked all my futurist credibilty on that, and thank God, it’s really coming true.” Gavin sighed. “I’m the happiest man in Sao Paulo. No, I’m the happiest man in the entire planetary Google map.”

  “I’m glad you are happy,” said Farfalla. “I wish that we lived in two different worlds, instead of one world — but we don’t. It’s all the same world. And so we are doomed to marry.” She reached for her caipirinha glass.

  “Cookie, tell me something, while I still remember this. What did you do with that supernatural entity? You know, that bronze statue. The Cosmic Cupid. ‘It.’”

  “I hid the Cosmic Cupid in a sacred voodoo temple, where no one from your world will ever find It.”

  “Well,” said Gavin, “I sure would have liked to, um, subject that statue to some more scientific study, but, well, never mind! I trust your judgement. I’m sure that burying that awesome thing in some spooky basement somewhere was probably the perfect thing to do... Out of sight, out of mind, that solves a lot of my problems, that’s just great. Let’s blow this town, book a flight to Seattle and get married right away.”

  “Just like that,” said Farfalla. She snapped her fingers.

  “Yeah, I know, I know, I was gonna make this big fuss about my Swedish Methodist church and the proper costumes and the big occult ceremony... but I changed my mind about that. You and I, we should grab a cab right now. For us, ‘getting married right away,’ that might be too late to get married. We probably should have gotten married years ago.”

  “To fix all our troubles, you mean.”

  “Cookie, listen. I can see you’re upset about something. I know that sometimes I hurt your feelings. I see things in the wrong way, or I say the wrong things to you, or I can’t say things that you need to be said. But listen, I promise that once we’re married, we will never part. Only death will part us. I promise. I’ll be with you, at your side, and you’ll be with me, and maybe we’ll quarrel or struggle sometimes, but we’ll be together in the same world. We’ll be a comfort to each other. This will all work out. Somehow. Have faith.”

  “I’m pregnant,” Farfalla said.

  “That figures.”

  “I am expecting a baby. Your baby is kicking me, Gavin. A week ago, I was not pregnant, and today your baby is kicking me, right here, inside my stomach! I thought it was hunger pangs.”

  “You’re haunted by an unborn baby?”

  “That is not funny, Gavin.” Farfalla began to weep. “It’s happening inside my body! It’s scary and weird! To be kicked by a baby hurts so much!”

  Gavin sighed. “Cookie, that is one weird omen. Only you could pull an awesome stunt like that. You’re haunted by someone who doesn’t even exist? I never even heard of such a thing.”

  “I knew you would get mad at me if I told you I was pregnant.”

  “Baby, some weird omens are good omens. Weird can be good. That is the truth. Life happens. How can the promise of renewed life be an evil thing for a man and a woman? We need to find it within ourselves to rejoice at a miracle like that.”

  “Well, you’re not a woman.”

  “Nevertheless, I rejoice.” Gavin leaned to his right and sharply poked the posh Brazilian businessman at the next barstool. “Hey. Fatso. Rich guy in a suit. Get the hell off that chair. This woman in rags here is pregnant.”

  The Brazilian looked up, startled, and faded into the crowd.

  Farfalla sat down on the barstool. She smiled. “Well. This is a nice bar. It’s like you said. They make a good caiparinha.”

  “You shouldn’t be drinking that thing, not in your tender condition,” said Gavin, gently lifting it from her fingers. “I’ll have to put away all eight of these myself.”

  “Stop that. You’ll get too drunk.”

  “Baby, it’s true. I am drunk, but I am also entering a state of mystic exaltation. In vino veritas. I understand my life now. I accept my destiny. Marriage, children, weird and difficult foreign spouse, I am saying ‘yes’ to the Cosmos. I feel totally great about everything.”

  “You know,” said Farfalla, “for a married woman, maybe a baby is not the worst-case scenario. It certainly seems that way, but first impressions can be deceiving.”

  “Now you’re talking,” nodded Gavin. “Loving this new, positive attitude.”

  “Everyone lies to us women about babies,” said Farfalla, wolfing her Brazil nuts. “They tell us we should want, want, want a baby, for some reason. They make such a fuss about that! Then, what happens? A mother has to be a slave for eighteen years!”

  “I am totally down with the parental-slavery angle,” nodded Gavin. “You and me, we’ll have to maintain our reality because of our kids. We’ll get ourselves a roof, diapers, baby food, all that good stuff. Maturity, and responsibility. Those are good things for two married people.”

  “Maybe our children will be born mentally retarded and horribly deformed.”

  “Oh yeah, ‘say yes to life,’ cookie!” Gavin nodded, clutching his drink. “Yep, that acid little remark was you all over! I don’t want to belittle your major concerns there — but I’m pretty sure that no other man in this world can survive being with you. I need to make sure you’re kept under wraps. I should be thinking hard about the safety of other people.”

  Farfalla swirled her glass. “I hate it when you make fun of me.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t hate that at all. To tell the truth, you kinda like it. Because I’m the only man who knows how to do that. I’m the only man who gets it that you can be hilarious. You know why? Because I am Cassandra’s boyfriend. That’s why. That’s why I get it about you. And as soon as I realized that, a whole lot of things became very clear to me.”

  Farfalla said nothing.

  “I thought hard about it. I thought: so, what is it about Cassandra? What gives with her? What is it that Cassandra needs from life, that she never gets, that she’s so upset about? Is it the poetry? No, because she’s a poet. Is it some sex, or religion, or money? No way, because Cassandra is a sex-slave priestess and she lives in a palace!

  So, I had to hack that issue from whole new angle. I thought, what’s the least Cassandra-like thing in the whole world? Comedy. That’s what. It is slapstick comedy. It’s Cassandra giggling uncontrollably, while her boyfriend tickles her feet. It’s just goofy teasing, raw affection, and a complete loss of womanly dignity. It’s some intimate, silly, rough-house fun from the guy in her life, that’s what Cassandra needs. If Cassandra only had some of that stuff, there wouldn’t be any of that shrieking, axe-murders, and the Medea-like burning on pyres.… Cassandra would thrive like a weed in the garbage. Cassandra would become indestructible.”

  “You can’t tickle my feet. Nobody tickles me! I am not ticklish. No! I would scream if you tickled my feet. I would die.”

  “Oh, sure, I knew that all along,” slurred Gavin. “Madame’s plantar surfaces are perfectly safe with me. Hey, bartender.”

  “Yes, Mr. Tremaine?” said the bartender.

  “Call up room service, have them bring the missus a cheeseburger and an order of curly-fries. Actually, double that order. I’m about to pass out here.”

  “Certainly, sir. Right away.” The bartender lifted his cellphone.

  “They’ve got such great service at this hotel,” Gavin confided, “They’ve got the kind of food that Americans like. Food that is fast! When I throw my own Futurist event in Sao Paulo, I’m definitely gonna hire these guys.”

  “Was this a good conference? You liked it that much?”

  “Yeah, it was totally a great conference. I was in my element, I could live in a scene like this. You shoulda been here. You missed a lot.”

  “I could run a conference like this one,” said Farfalla, turning on her barstool to l
ook at the chattering crowd. “Italians and Brazilians never understand each other, but I do. I know how these gigs get arranged, behind the scenes. I could do work like this. I would be good at it.” She sighed. “I’d need some fool to raise the funds and do the dirty work.”

  “That would be me,” said Gavin.

  “He’d have to be polite to people. He’d have to make them feel good about doing that.”

  “That would be me, too.”

  “I could be the queen of a conference like this,” said Farfalla, “and when rich, smart people showed up, they would leave with their brains in small pieces.”

  “So,” nodded Gavin, “to continue on this subject of you and your emotional needs. Very compelling topic. This is all about what people really need. From the opposite sex. What we need is not what we want. It’s all all about what we don’t know we need. That’s what it’s all about, between men and women. Love is all about the absences, the mysteries. Love is about the Abyss.”

  “Gavin, you are babbling. You are talking nonsense. You are drunk, Gavin. We need to go now.”

  “I just ordered us a couple of burgers. Now, listen to me. It’s true that I’m drunk, but I’m also really, really close to saying what you need me to say to you. I know that I haven’t said it. I know that. I know that tortures you. But, I’m finally getting way outside of my own shell here. Brazil is doing it for me. Brazil and you. I think. You know what? I was here, alone, in Brazil, and I was alone in this big hotel with a crowd of total strangers. I thought, what the hell am I doing here? She has deserted me! I’m all alone here, she’s never coming back to me! And then, I thought, you know what? I’m going to say — I’m going to say the things that will make me deserve to have her. Because these are her people. This is her world here, and I am going to say the things to them that only the man who loved her could possibly say. And I knew how to say them. Then, I really said those things. And they went wild for that. They ate it up with a spoon. Because then it came easy, because it wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from us.”

  She gazed at him in astonishment and dawning hope. “Yes! Yes! You are! You are getting much closer to saying it! You are saying much too much, but that was almost it!”