Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (2 page)

Whenever he talked to Eliza, there was always some moment where she jumped into a kinky flight of fancy. He just couldn’t follow her there. He couldn’t speak that language. The paradigm there was all wrong. It came straight from the heart of Elizabeth, but it just wasn’t about anything that Gavin himself was about. This was another one of those unhappy, broken moments.

All that he could do was try to show her that he loved her.

“Eliza, I’m very glad we’re having this discussion. I know that you have some strong concerns in this direction. I, just, never heard you frame them quite like this.”

“Can you talk to Dad about this for me? I mean, about me and my big plans to save the vampire soul of music?” Eliza kicked at the rocky path with her combat boot. “I know my life, as, like, a Goth-music princess... Well, I know, we Goths are not, like, realistic.”

“Well,” Gavin hedged, “we’re here in Capri to attend a futurist conference. We’re here to plot and scheme about the future, and learn all about the world of tomorrow! So, if you can show me that you’re serious about your plans... sure, I’ll talk to Dad for you.”

Elizabeth raised her eyes. “Dad will hate my ideas. Dad wants me to mind my grades and study law. If I tell Dad that I love music more than anything else, he’s gonna start yelling at me again.”

“Listen, never mind that. Dad should have come out here to Capri
himself.
Dad really needs a vacation. This finance crisis has got Dad all keyed up.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Gavin said. “I agree with you there. That’s a fact. Just take Detroit, for instance. Because I studied Detroit in detail. Over at Cook, Bishop & Engleman, we just held a big futurist workshop about contemporary issues in American urbanism. Detroit is totally broke, and yet Detroit’s a great city for music production. That’s a vital data-point.”

“Gavin, you
do
sort of understand all this, don’t you? I mean, you understand some parts of it. In your own way.”

“In some ways, I do,” he said. “Yeah, sometimes I do really understand the future.” That didn’t mean that he was happy about it.

“Gavin, everybody knows that you’re way ahead of your time. You started Fettlr and sold it to Yahoo for 20 million dollars. Our Dad is like this so-called ‘great businessman’ — but Dad never did anything like
that.
”

Gavin silently looked at his Omega wristwatch. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“We have maybe an hour before the conference opens. Let’s grab a couple of sandwiches.”

They hiked up the steep, scaly pavement, which wriggled over rugged Capri like a snake. An old hotel stood on the peak of the stony ridge.

The hotel commanded a view of Capri that was divine. Capri was insanely gorgeous in the way that Apple products were insanely great. This mystical, timeless island had divine beauty the way lesser islands had oysters. Not just Roman Emperors, but Roman gods and goddesses would drop here on their vacations. Pan, Venus, Mars, would forget their overloaded calendars to hole up here in Capri, and never age, never know mortal sorrow.

The azure sea surged and sparkled like imperial jewels. The sky hovered over Capri like a dome of sapphire art glass. Paragliders swooped and fluttered in the celestial blue. Angels, sprites, daredevils, graceful and fearless, free of all gravity, immune to harm.

The old Capri hotel housed a somber, crooked dining room. A grandmotherly Italian led them to a creaky, wooden table tucked away in the darkest corner, as to hide Eliza and her kinky Goth attire from the other customers.

This hotel had nothing to eat that was fast. Patrons of majestic, old Capri hotels were supposed to eat thoughtfully, in a civilized, European fashion — to start, an appetizer and drink; then, the first real course, followed by a good, solid second course; next, a sweet, and finally, some brandy, nuts and cigars.

After a polite debate in his college Italian, Gavin managed to order them a couple of salads, an overpriced bottle of mineral water, and nothing else.

Gavin spread the hotel’s linen napkin over his cargo pants. The hotel’s old parquet floors were spotty and warped. The inner walls had been rebuilt so many times that they leaned at odd angles, like a stage set for a silent film. Everything in this old hotel had been patched or painted over, re-wired, re-furbished, or re-polished.

Eliza busily flicked at her iPhone, her burgundy fingernails skidding across the screen. “An arms merchant built this hotel. He was this rich German guy who made cannons in World War One. His company killed a million people.”

“Welcome to Europe, Eliza.”

Eliza glanced up at him, her blue eyes full of wicked satisfaction. “A million ghosts! This old place has got to be haunted.”

Gavin had a bite of his hotel salad, a leafy construction that featured capers, olives and anchovies. He’d expected a quick tourist salad to be pretty mediocre, but this was a magnificent salad. It was the best salad Gavin had ever eaten in his life. It was like an opera in a bowl. Miracles could happen on an island that had such salads.

Gavin sloshed pink vinegar from a cut-glass cruet. “Capri is like paradise, but it’s got war and guns and ghosts. That’s Europe. ‘There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.’ Marie Antoinette said that.”

“’Marie who?’”

“Marie Antoinette, Eliza. The Queen of France. A European princess,”

“Oh, yeah, Marie Antoinette! Marie Antoinette was in that Sofia Coppola film with the techno soundtrack. I loved that movie, it had great music! And I love this hotel! Can we check out of our lame modern hotel, and move into this cool, old hotel? This cool, old,
haunted
hotel? Please, Gavin, just for me, please, please?”

Chapter Two: The Convent of Crossed Destinies

Farfalla had jumped the train without a ticket from Milano all the way to Napoli. Six and a half hours of dodging the conductors. After that, she jumped a bus to the ferry to Capri. She paid nothing for that, too.

She had no way to sneak aboard the hydrofoil to Capri. The ferry had only one gangplank, with two sailors watching it. So, Farfalla had to pay.

When she finally arrived in Capri, lugging her rolling suitcase, Farfalla had nothing.

Well, almost nothing. Farfalla found a stray two-euro coin stuck in the lining of her purse. And in her cardboard pack of Tarot cards, one twenty-cent euro coin. A coin with a beautiful statue created by an Italian Futurist.

Farfalla told herself that a Futurist coin meant good luck. It was a sign.

The Capri Trend Assessment Congress was a paying gig for Farfalla. She was there to translate for the foreign conference speakers, and to run errands for Babi, one of the organizers. The work would pay cash, but Farfalla wouldn’t see any of it until the event was over.

That meant that Farfalla had to survive for three days in Capri with two euros and twenty cents.

Farfalla had her iPhone, her conference badge, and a couch in a stranger’s apartment. Farfalla could manage with that. She had managed with less, in places worse than Capri.

Beautiful, gorgeous Capri! Lovely Capri, charming Capri! The island of romance! Capri could be a very romantic place, if you were a princess in disguise, like Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
. Italian men hitting on Farfalla often told her that she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Farfalla Corrado was nobody’s Audrey Hepburn.

Farfalla dragged her luggage through the narrow Capri streets, which reeked of fried fish and boutique cologne. Wobbling on heels over the cobblestones, Farfalla hiked to her accommodation – a spare couch in the small, cigarette-hazed apartment of one of Babi’s many friends.

Farfalla’s hostess, Eleonora, was a washed-up Italian television showgirl. Eleonora gave her a spare key to the flat, and then talked at her for half an hour. Eleonora’s one-sided conversation was just like Italian television- loud, colorful, sexy, a vacuous tube.

Farfalla abandoned her rollaboard next to the couch, grabbed her purse, and left the apartment. The Capri Futurist conference was being held in two different buildings, both downhill, both five blocks away.

One building was new, tall and imposing. The other building was old, low and ruined. The future had joined them together and nothing could pull them apart.

Farfalla took a breath and entered the shiny five-star conference hotel. Towering palms and undulating balconies rose above spas, gyms and swimming pools. With glass elevators, brass staircases, and a cellar full of fine wine and fine luggage, this glorious Capri hotel was a mousetrap for wealthy foreigners. The cheapest room in the place cost 220 euros, exactly one hundred times as much money as she had.

Farfalla snagged two perfect apples from a hammered silver bowl in the hotel. She stuffed her purse with the hotel’s soaps, shampoos and body lotions. Farfalla would eat and have a good hair day. Here in the future, her life was already improving.

On her way out of the conference hotel, Farfalla saw a local cabbie harassing an old lady.

Old Lady Tourist wore a sturdy houndstooth coat and Anne Klein gloves. She looked close to tears. “He won’t accept American Express,” Lady Tourist lamented in English. “He wants to drive me to a bank machine to get euros.”

Farfalla confronted the cabbie at once.
“Che accidenti ti prende, razza di truffatore? Cosa sei, albanese?
”
¹

“Me, Albanian? I’d rather be dead!
” the cabbie protested.

“You Rumanian vampire, you steal fares from these people and cheat your blessed grandma here? Get lost or I will call my old man at the Tourist Board, and he will break both of your legs!”

The driver ducked behind the wheel, slammed the door, and fled the failed scene of his crime.

Tourist Lady had hastily removed her heavy bag from the taxi’s trunk. She watched the taxi roar down the tilted street. “Miss, you seem to have saved me thirty euros.”

“Ma’am, the trip from the ferry costs ten.”

“Well then! I don’t think my driver was entirely honest!”

“He is a
clandestino
, an illegal alien. Not like you, our honored guest!” Farfalla spread her hands and gave the Tourist Lady her best big American smile. “There’s your little train, to go back to the Grand Marina. It’s over there, see the signs?”

Farfalla helped Tourist Lady lug her ungainly bag up the broad, stone stairs. The bag was very old-fashioned- solid and square, brass buckles and leather. No wheels. How old did a lady have to be, to own such a travel bag?

She hauled the ancient bag to the hotel’s registration. Farfalla had warm, protective feelings about all tourists and travellers. Guests should always be treated kindly, because you never knew who they really were. Billionaires maybe. Saints, angels, vampires, a guest could be anybody.

Farfalla herself was a wandering guest most of the time. Nobody knew who she really was, either.

Especially, foreign little old ladies — helpless old ladies were the most sacred guests in Italy. Old ladies needed to be watched over, comforted and protected at all times. Because Italy had more than a thousand dark surprises for nice little old foreign ladies.

Tourist Lady announced herself at the hotel desk. She was an American professor from the University of Virginia, and had a reservation in a room for two.

“So, Professor Milo,” said Farfalla to Tourist Lady, “you must be here for my Futurist Congress!
Benvenuta!
Let me show you to our venue.”

“No, thank you,” said Professor Milo, removing her hat with a prim little nod. “I came here to Capri for private reasons.”

Farfalla blinked. “For private reasons?”

“Yes, very private reasons.”

“How private could her reasons be?,” thought Farfalla at once. Was this stout, blue-haired American professor checking into this fancy Capri hotel for some frolic with a secret lover? Why not? She was old, but love was strange.

Farfalla politely shook the professor’s little gloved hand and left.

Farfalla ventured past the soaring glass panes of the Capri tourist traps. The streets swarmed with housecats while the shops peddled odd-shaped limoncello bottles and island necklaces of ragged, red coral. She walked a narrow, winding lane between walls overhung with dark, crooked, odorous fig trees.

The site of the Futurist Congress was a wreck. The venue was a former medieval convent. The convent had tumbled down onto the stony ruins of an even more ancient Roman structure. Southern Italy was full of such layer-cake buildings. Italian earthquakes made that a inevitability.

Babi claimed that the convent had once been a brothel. Babi was from Naples and had incredible street-smarts. Only a woman from Naples would argue that a brothel and a convent were basically the same enterprise. As Babi pointed out, as long as big stone walls locked out the men, you could make a pretty good business of it, either way.

This convent had a broken forest of marble columns in its inner courtyard. The columns towered over the crumbled ruins of many small cells. Here the wimpled nuns had passed their sunlit days and their starry nights in prayer. Quietly reading Holy Scripture and tending gardens of pretty flowers. Italian women, free of the bellowing demands of Italian men.

Farfalla had to envy this quiet life of female spiritual contemplation. Farfalla had always lived out of a suitcase, a multilingual world traveller, a woman without a patch of Earth to call her own. Farfalla was also very spiritual, but never in any simple, classic, Roman Catholic way. Farfalla’s intense spiritual life was Futuristic- hot, and loud, crowded and eclectic, polluted and beset with voodoo, and thoroughly Brazilian.

This convent possessed a large stone chapel, which had stood the test of time among the ruins. The chapel was the speaker’s venue for the Capri Futurist Conference. The government of Capri was an official sponsor of the conference, and it stuffed conferences into any empty buildings that Capri had handy.

Farfalla knew that she would have to work hard inside in this futuristic-medieval venue, so she took a good look around the place. The chapel’s cold stone walls featured half-decayed sacred plaster murals and its ceiling swarmed with cherubs, or rather
putti.