Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  Farfalla took two steps to Gavin’s side. Gavin had casually fetched the Cosmic Cupid down from its mahogany shelf. He was juggling the metal statue, examining it from every angle.

  “I’ve got this knicknack right here in my own hands,” Gavin mused, “this goofy idol. That some dead artist created. For his dead wife, the dead novelist.”

  “Yes,” said Farfalla. “Yes, they are both very dead now. This is a temple of the dead.”

  “They were nutcase people, too. Pathetic. Long-forgotten. Objects of ridicule now, for a thousand good reasons, but... Love. That was it. Their love was the one true love. He was a bisexual manic-depressive Russian, and she had syphilis and a morphine addiction, but their love was way beyond those details. This statue is the divinity of their love. It represents the holiness and the sanctity of their love. And now, I can see that. It is obvious to me, blunt and strong, like a tire iron.”

  Nana gently took the Cupid from his hands and replaced it reverently on the pantheon shelf. “He belongs here with his mother.”

  “Is that one his mother?” said Farfalla.

  “Yes, this spirit. She has many names. She is Erzulie, the goddess of love. She is Love’s mother, she is jealous of him. Because he is not her little boy. He married. His wife is called the Soul. See, this piece of glass, she is the Soul.”

  “I’m not following this,” said Gavin. “That sounded like Greek mythology.”

  “She says that the Cosmic Cupid has a wife, this piece of glass.”

  “Sure, Cupid and Psyche. That’s Greek to me, but even I get that much. Piece of metal, piece of glass, great.”

  “These spirits have a story,” Nana confided in a low voice. “A pretty woman doesn’t care to be a grandmother. But Love and the Soul had a child. This is the child. Pleasure.”

  Pleasure was scarcely visible on the altar shelf. Pleasure looked like a lowly, humble dripping of candle-wax. Farfalla touched the puddle of wax with one wondering fingertip. Pleasure was a blob, polymorphous and gooey.

  She wondered why Professor Milo had never mentioned the existence of Pleasure. Was pleasure something ladies did not speak of? Despite his cryptic, even secretive form, Pleasure had tremendous premonitory presence for Farfalla.

  Pleasure was just a gushy puddle of candle wax, yet he looked a lot like his dad the Cosmic Cupid but even more soulful.

  “I totally never heard of a story like that,” Gavin marvelled. “Cupid sired a demigod called ‘Pleasure?’ Really? Where are the ancient temples of Pleasure? You and I should go there right away, Farfalla. Hey, we should live there.”

  “Pleasure will become the motif of our married life,” Farfalla prophesied. She reached our for him left-handed, still clutching the wedding-ring in her right. “I can’t foresee pleasure, because I’m too gloomy. And you can’t foresee pleasure, because you’re too methodical. But when we see pleasure together, as a married couple, both of us united, oh my God in heaven, wow! Pleasure is our sweet release, pleasure is youthful and ever-renewing!”

  Gavin gripped her fingers. “I thought the magic in Capri was pretty heavy-duty, but Brazilian mysticism is colossal! It’s all out in the open around here, they’re very feel-good about it.”

  “Why is this knowledge of pleasure so esoteric?” Farfalla said indignantly. “I can’t believe I had to leave Italy and go to Brazil to learn that mystic revelation.”

  Nana spoke up. “Don’t tell the gods how to make you a wise woman, my dear.”

  “But why did Professor Milo send me running all over ther world?” Farfalla demanded. “All she had to do was tell me, was ‘I’m the Goddess Venus! That statue is my son!’ I would have believed her!”

  “Wait a minute,” Gavin objected. “What? Are you saying that Professor Milo, that romance writer from Virginia, is a goddess? She’s the mother of this piece of bronze here? That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Gavin, Venus is the mother of Cupid. Don’t be so stupid and literal-minded. We’re in Brazil, the home of syncretic religion. Narratives work in metaphor. Myths are powerful.”

  Gavin thought this over. Then he took her arm and drew her away from the pantheon, where Nana was busying herself.

  “Look,” he told Farfalla, “given what we’ve been through lately, I’ll suspend judgement. But that’s just for here and now, all right? When we’re married, and we get back to Seattle, we’re both going to have a little newlywed chat with my lesbian pastor.”

  “Your pastor will tell us that a pagan god is just a piece of metal,” Farfalla predicted, with a shrug. “I have another piece of metal for us.” She opened her clenched fist.

  “That’s a wedding ring,” nodded Gavin. “An old one.”

  “I stole it from her,” said Farfalla, glancing over her shoulder. “Quick. While she’s not looking, jam this ring on me. Ram it on my finger! Don’t worry if it hurts, I can take it.”

  “Cookie, you just stole that nice old lady’s wedding ring.”

  “She’s a witch. She’s evil, like me, but much more evil, because she’s older. She was tempting me to become the mistress of Satan.”

  “That’s awfully broad-minded of the old gal,” said Gavin, narrowing his eyes. “This syncretic thing has definitely got its downsides.”

  Farfalla stuck her left hand out. “Gavin, let’s do it your way, for once, all right? I’m sick to death of all this romance mumbo-jumbo! I finally know why you can’t stand this stuff! Sure, I’ll live in silk with my One who is the Evil One, and with you, my Mr. Wrong, I’ll have to pick rags and bones, and I’ll drudge in a hot kitchen, and my hair will fall out in clumps and I’ll have tapeworms and radiation poisoning. So what! I need to know the worst -- but once I learn the worst, I’m brave. I am Cassandra, I’m brave! I’m brave enough to deserve you. For better or worse. Put the wedding ring on me, let’s just steal it, and let’s run away.”

  Gavin casually slipped the ring into his pocket.

  Farfalla dropped her hand in despair. “You are not going to do it, are you? You could do it, and you won’t. You’re insisting on the mystic mumbo-jumbo, just to get back at me.” She lowered her voice. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go. I’m your woman, I know what you like! I’ll give you my special backrub. With hand-warmed coconut oil.”

  “My darling, your sweet appeals to pleasure cannot move me. I’m far above that low carnality now.”

  “Oh, why not, why not, for God’s sake! All men ever want is one thing and here I am offering it to you, and you’re all full of mystical crap!”

  “We should build our future home on a foundation of the sacred,” Gavin intoned. “Because my love for you is sacred. Between you and me — that space is sacramental. The abyss between the sexes is the one true holy ground. I swear to you, I vow to you, that our love will always be a cosmic, holy gift. You are the priestess of the meaning of my life.”

  “What?”

  “I need a magic ceremony! I want the occult ritual! Can’t you see that, for God’s sake? Our love is holy to me, it’s our divine love! You can’t profane my deepest feelings for you! That is not even possible! Sorry, my phone is ringing.”

  “Gavin, don’t answer that phone! Please talk to me. You were so close to saying it. Really, you were going to say it and be my One, and we would run away and love each other forever and everything would be perfect! Please, Gavin...”

  “Sorry baby, we’re global people, we will always have to answer the phone... Cosa? Non esiste! Cos’ha fatto? Perché! Non ne ho mai sentito parlare. Non pensavo nemmeno che fosse possibile!”20

  Farfalla took four steps back to Hepsiba. The old woman had left the altar and was silently laboring with her mortar and pestle.

  “Nana.”

  “What.”

  “Nana, I forgive you for lying to me, and trying to make me the mistress of Satan. Because I know that you were only trying to help me. I’m really in big trouble, aren’t I? This is terrible. Can you put a curse on his phone and make him stop ignori
ng me?”

  “Why would I curse phones, even if I could? I talk to all my clients with phones.” She glanced up at Gavin. “He is talking to your brother.”

  “He’s talking to Rafael? Why? What do they have in common?”

  “They have you in common, of course! How can you call yourself a fortune-teller? You are so blind, Farfalla! I can tell that without even speaking Italian. Anyone can see that he is speaking to a member of your own family! Open your eyes and ears! Then, the future will speak for itself!”

  Farfalla trudged back to Gavin’s side. “You were speaking to Rafael, just now.”

  “Yeah. How did you know that?”

  Farfalla said nothing.

  “Just because you can’t stand Rafael, that doesn’t mean I don’t like him,” Gavin said, sheepishly. “I enjoy creative European tech-artist types! Rafael is just a cool, Italian hipster kid, and that’s why he was filling me in behind the scenes about your former boyfriend, over there.”

  “You mean Pancrazio.”

  “Don’t say that name. I’m so jealous I can’t even speak his name, all right? That guy should go into that married-couple memory-hole of former boyfriends whose names are never spoken aloud. But, well, I stole his girlfriend. I did that. I injured him, that was an insult. And now, Pancho’s paying me back by screwing up my big Brazilian business deal. Pancho Pola is a very Italian guy. Pancho doesn’t get mad, he gets even.”

  “And you’ve got a spy, who spies on Pancho?”

  “Yeah, I do. Your little brother, he’s my favorite spy. To tell the truth, I’m Brazilian, American, and also rather Italian. I do great with Italians. They complete me somehow, I belong with them. Just look who I’m about to marry here. Italian life is full of weird intrigues, and that’s not their bug, that’s their feature. I love Italy. That’s the truth. I really wish I was in dear, old, sunny Italy right now, having a vintage Barolo, instead of twenty stories up in some rotting Brazilian skyscraper about to take voodoo drugs.”

  Farfalla looked around the cobwebbed temple. “We live in a world where you can be connected in a moment to faraway people, to people you forgot, to people you remember, just like that...”

  Gavin brandished his mobile handset. “This wondrous device is all about the collapse of space and time. To collapse space and time, that always feels just like magic.”

  “It is magic,” she said. “It’s our magic. That’s the magic part of the world that brought us together. It’s the one kind of magic you and I will always have. Together.”

  “Baby, you are right. Right now, all around the world, people are doing everything they can to make computers feel just like magic. Although, computers aren’t really magic.”

  “No,” she agreed, “but on the very deepest level, they are magic.”

  “Well, no, precious. On their deepest, deepest level, computers are just electrons and circuits and logic.”

  “I mean the level below the logic.”

  “There is no level deeper than the logic. It only feels that way.”

  “Well, a feeling is a fact.”

  “Why do we argue about this? Hey, that reminds me,” said Gavin. “I just asked your brother what the date was, and he told me the date. For him, the date was two days ago. That means these plots of Pancho’s that he was warning me about? Those things have already happened. I mean, they’ve happened to me, anyway — I don’t know if they happened to you yet, because you are living ten days behind me.”

  “Tell me the date,” she said.

  Gavin drew a breath. “It’s February 14. It’s Valentine’s Day. It’s your birthday.”

  “But that is today’s date. It is my birthday. You finally got it right, Gavin.” She smiled in triumph. “So you can marry me, now, today, on my birthday, and you should never marry anyone else! I’m the only one in the world who can manage your crazy schedule.”

  Hepsiba brought over a steaming teacup. “Porque o seu amado robô está tão preocupado?”21

  “He’s had a setback in a business deal,” said Farfalla.

  “This herbal tea will calm him down,” said Hepsiba.

  Gavin accepted the brimming cup of poison with a philosopher’s resigned smile.

  “Let me make sure I’m completely with the program here,” he said. “I drink this witch’s potion, and then I start hallucinating. I go completely out of my head.”

  “I’m drinking it, too,” she said. “We’ll go on a sleepwalk, Gavin. And I will sleepwalk with you.”

  “No. Forget that. No way that you are drinking this crazy stuff. Let me drink it first, and you can wait to see if I drop dead. I’m sure there are weird Amazonian alkaloids in this booze that spaced-out William Burroughs beatniks could only dream about.”

  “It’s just herbal tea.”

  “Yeah, sure it is. The point is that I drink this poison, and I go into a space I can’t reach. But then, then, I finally tell you your magic words. I finally say this magic thing that totally proves I’m your One, the magic words you’ve been waiting for me to say, ever since I met you. If we can do that, then it’s all worth it.”

  “Gavin, it’s just herbal tea. It’s a ritual. It’s all about faith.”

  “Cookie, drugs don’t scare me. Drugs are just chemistry. It’s the idea that drugs make you a better person. That’s pretty bad. That is a lie and a snare. To live a lie is against my principles. I refuse the path of self-deception. I am doing this now, because I want to see you happy and for no other reason. But never again, no other time will I do this, all right? I don’t want a life where we’re we’re both strung out, just so we can be together.” He looked moodily into the teacup.

  Farfalla wiped at her eyes. “What a sweet thing to say! I know you’ll never be a junkie, my darling. I’ve met plenty of junkies, and you’re not the junkie type.” She leaned closer, to whisper to him. “This is all just a silly ritual, all right? Voodoo is all about the power of suggestion! No one is going to poison you. It’s a placebo. Voodoo has no real power over you. Not unless it can trick you into believing in the power of voodoo.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I knew that all along.”

  “Drink it, just to make our hostess happy. They’re going to all kinds of trouble for us.”

  Gavin held the cup steadily, but did not move it to his lips. “There’s another thing first. I’m expecting an important phone call. It’s about my family’s business. It’s a phone call from my Dad.”

  “Your Dad will have to wait.”

  “No. He can’t wait. That is not in his nature. It’s a critically important business deal that’s worth thirty million dollars. It can make all the difference between the survival and collapse of my family. This is a deal I’ve been pursuing since before I ever met you. It’s based on an important secret that my father has guarded for thirty years.” Gavin sighed. “Responsible men do not take narcotics when they are patching together top-secret Italian-Brazilian-American techno alliances.”

  “I’ll talk to your father.”

  “No, don’t joke about that. My father might really call me. We have a very serious family crisis going on. Deadly serious. It’s top-secret, there’s a lot of money and military power involved, and it’s... Well, you know about that. You were there. You were translating that.”

  “Yes. I was there.” She took the phone from his hand. “Gavin, try to be here for me now. If we are ever going to make our life work, even though we are Futurists, we will have to be together in the moment.”

  Gavin thought this over. “Right.” He gulped the teacup.

  Then, he waited.

  “It’s not bad,” he said. “It’s just like that weedy junk that hipsters drink in Seattle health-food joints. So, now what happens?”

  “Now, we have the ceremony,” said Farfalla. “A ceremony can’t be rushed, it will take a while. There is incense, repetitive trance music, voodoo chalk outlines on the floors... We have to anoint ourselves in the sacred blood of the Lamb...”

  “Fantastic,” said
Gavin, belching politely into his hand. “I mean, our hosts are true professionals. This is a ceremony, and they mean to do this up brown.”

  “Yes. They are the magic people, the voodoo people. They exist, and I am one of them.”

  “And I’m marrying you. You know what? I will never understand this, but I can get behind this. For your sake. Farfalla, I feel such a sense of tenderness and devotion to you now… Because our marriage is like pagan warpaint, it’s a Burning Man freak scene. So, listen. Since it’s like that, I am going to get naked. That’s what! I’m going to cover my flesh with mud and body-paint! I’ll be naked! A naked spiritual warrior!”

  “No, Gavin.”

  “Oh yeah! Heck yeah! Occult Futurity! Sleepwalking naked! Bare-ass naked, sister! Orgiastic! Eyes like two dinner saucers!”

  “Gavin, no. Put your shoes back on.”

  “Why not? I want to do it! If a woman throws off her robes in a magic ceremony, it’s like, look, she’s nude, ooh, everybody look at the spiritually heightened atmosphere... What about me, what about my naked male sexuality, where is my naked truth, where is my freedom?”

  “Gavin, this place is a church.”

  Gavin looked at Hepsiba, who gazed back at him with stern, judgmental eyes. “Why are women always such pills about all this?” Gavin grumbled. Then, he swooned.

  “He certainly is gullible,” Hepsiba observed.

  Farfalla sighed. “He just trusts me. That’s all.”

  “Well,” said Hepsiba, “at last, we have him helpless. He is silent now, and he is helpless. His robot story can end right here. Now, his narrative becomes a horror story. One hour from now, and he is dead as a stone. The eyes are gouged from his head, and the heart is cut from his body. He is dangling from his heels from bloody ropes in a concrete cellar fifteen stories in midair. Rats will eat his flesh and maggots will drip from his carcass. He is there beside the other bodies of people who will never, ever be seen again. The vanished people. The disappeared people.”