Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (38 page)

But Pancrazio, you can’t go and lecture to Microsoft in Seattle! You always said that Microsoft was big and bad and wrong! You told everyone about that! It’s the elephant’s graveyard of great ideas- Microsoft! Microsoft has hired everybody important to make sure they never do anything! Their research labs are the giant dungeon of tortured, imprisoned computer ideas!

Well, yes, my dear — I said that, but that was then, and this is now. Now, I have to say something else to you. My English is faulty, my English embarrasses me. The Americans in Seattle love your English, they used to hire you to work there. So, we must both go to Seattle, together. I need my trusty little translator. We are going to Seattle. No debate. They sent first-class tickets already. Get packed.

To be attacked in this sinister way... Love hurts! Because Pancrazio, your boyfriend, is not a bad man. He is just the man that you chose when you were lonely and you knew no better. And he is boyishly eager to cruelly find out in Seattle, that you love another man, instead of him.

As a fact, you have not betrayed Pancrazio. You did not even kiss the man you loved. But you are a woman, so you already know in your heart that you are a sneaking, dirty traitor. Not that Pancrazio wouldn’t betray you with some other girl. Pancrazio would do that in a minute. But that’s not how it works. Not with men and women.

So, you have to quickly invent a lie to explain your frantic need to shun Seattle and avoid Gavin Tremaine. Your desperate urge to dodge your fate there. So, you tell him-I can’t go to Seattle. Because I have another job.
I’m too busy, I can’t possibly go. I am trying to find an antique bronze statue of Cupid. It’s an important magical quest, more important than Microsoft. I must go back to Capri to pick up the trail.

What? You’re engaged in some childish, hopeless treasure hunt, while the great Pancrazio Pola has been granted an audience with the world’s most profitable computer company?

Yes, Pancrazio. I know that the Cosmic Cupid is just a sentimental bronze statue of some stupid winged fairy. Compared to the almighty Microsoft, my humble quest and my destiny as a woman shouldn’t even be mentioned. But I have found some good leads, because I have the Internet. Just like you, just like everyone else.

When fate sticks voodoo pinss into me, I can stick them back. I am pretty sure I can really find that bronze statue. Because I know the woman for whom that statue was made. I have studied her life, and I have read her work. I have pored over her writings, each page, each word. I have entered into the dark spirit in which she committed these literary crimes, and I have learned to sympathize and to forgive.

I have put on the long-dead husk of the author’s skin and I have seen the world through her occult and sidelong eyes, and yes, I have even wept over her pages and stained her ink with my tears.

So, I am not pretending, I am not lying, I am not deceiving myself with any fantasies. I can track it down, I can find it. I can bring the Cosmic Cupid out of the shadows and into the light. Yes, me.

I know, I know, that I can really, truly find it.

Chapter Twenty-One: Looking for a Factory Girl

It was unlike Gavin to take a 6,479-mile trip on impulse. Then, he heard from his Microsoft contacts that Pancho Pola was coming to Seattle.

The word around Pancho Pola was out on the street. Why? Because in fate’s perverse irony, Gavin himself had put that word there.

The word had spread to the Microsofties. This Italian guy’s a big circuit-bender, they told him. This Pola guy is publishing a ton of open-source electronics. It’s totally out there, it’s some freaky stuff. And it’s in English.

Something new has come out of Pola’s archives, every day, for a solid month. We surfed that stuff. He’s weird, man. He’s into stuff we’ve never seen before. Not those big, old-school, hot-as-a-frying-pan integrated chips. Something new in the world. Elegant, artsy circuit boards. Portable ones. Lightweight, handheld, and pervasive.

So, we had better have the genius over to the lab. We’ll have a word with him, maybe make him an offer. We love to make Intel sweat!

His girlfriend? Why ask about her? Why, of course, she’s coming along! His so-called Italian translator? Certainly! Of course, we’ll bring Pancho’s girlfriend along to Seattle. We’re the biggest tech company on Earth! We’re the Big Blue Monster, we have a travel budget!

So, here she was. Almost at his doorstep. Farfalla Corrado, invading his home town.

Thanks to the consolations of philosophy, he had found some bedrock on which to balance his life. Scarred, bare bedrock, something like cooled lava, but bedrock. He had survived his romantic heartbreak, and he had his sanity and the ability to maintain. And now? Now, she was on her way to see him. The fateful woman.

The very act he’d invented, to tell her goodbye forever, had brought her straight to his door.

Farfalla was supposed to be translating her boyfriend’s technical documents, at Gavin’s expense. Specifically, to make it totally clear, finally clear, that his flirtation with her was a thing of the past, all over.

Here she came, anyway. Despite all those gestures of his. No, not despite of what he had done, but
because
of what he had done. The witch on a broom, the creature in the overhead bin. On her way to trample his heart again.

Oh yes. What Futurist couldn’t predict the bitter
irony?
What confluence of events could fail to provoke such a total, agonized mess
?
When the best, most decent thing you could plan to do, brought you the very opposite of what you intended? Was there even a word for that? If there was, that word was “woman.”

Well, he should have known it would happen. To tell the truth, in his heart, he had indeed known that it was coming. How could it not happen? The thing he fought against with all his power was a certainty. No, not “it,” for God’s sake. Her.
She
was coming.
She
was happening.
Her
. Across the planet, she was coming to him. Farfalla.

How could it be made any clearer to him that he had no power of foresight? No control of events? No ability to make a decision, and stick to a plan? He was too weak and foolish to survive. It was shameful.

How often he outguessed future events, and how rarely he changed them. The Golden Boy was a straw in the wind.

So now what? Whatever came next? Gavin knew what would come next, because the scenario was obvious.

This is the scenario, the future story. He goes to Pancho Pola’s lecture, in the Microsoft Research Lab. Because he was cordially invited by important Microsoft people, so he has to go. Everyone knows that Gavin Tremaine does tech business in Italy. They know that Pancho Pola is his personal friend.

How could he not go? Pancho Pola was not just a friend, but also a business partner. So what happens after that, in the future scenario story? Farfalla Corrado is there, that’s what happens. She is in the room. Translating, as usual. A warm, womanly, irresistible presence. A shapely bundle of Italian dynamite. Would he have the presence-of-mind to ignore her? To lie about what she meant to him?

No. Gavin couldn’t possibly do that. What came next was obvious. Events would spiral out of control. He would lose it. He loved another man’s woman.

He would end up decking Pancho Pola in the hallowed high-tech chapel of the Microsoft Research Lab. He was going to wallop that guy, because he frankly couldn’t handle the rage of his loss, and the pain of his jealousy.

He would throw Farfalla’s lover over a couple of lab benches and toss him through the interactive whiteboards. Then, security would be called. This meant complete shame and degradation. Come on, how on Earth could anybody ever hush up a disaster like that? Two guys have a frenzied punch-up over a woman inside the Microsoft Research Lab? That was a colossal, life-wrecking, Italian opera. No one would ever hear the end of that scandal.

So, that future scenario wouldn’t do. He had to avoid that situation at all costs. What would work?

Well, let’s be logical. Whatever, or whoever, could arrive on a plane, could also depart on a plane. If Farfalla Corrado was flying to Seattle, then, at the same time, he could fly somewhere far away. Somewhere else, anywhere else that wasn’t Seattle. Where on Earth could he go? Logically, some place that was very, very not-Seattle. The most not-Seattle place that the world could offer.

Sao Paulo. Yes. That ought to be far enough. Futuristic Brazil. Brazil in his story, again and again, coming in from the edges of his narrative, distant yet insistent. Brazil was an “emergent power,” jumping into the narrative mainstream of history.

Sao Paulo was beckoning to Gavin Tremaine. One woman versus a mighty nation of one hundred and seventy million people. What had his mentor, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante, told him about Brazil? In the long run, the story was bound to be about Brazil.

Suppose then, that he seized the initiative and boldly went to Brazil. Why not? That future scenario story was more like it. This was a future counter-move of chess-master genius.

Look at the laptop screen here: the Sao Paulo Trend Assessment Congress. It’s January 2010. It’s summer in South American, and it’s the sister event of the Capri event! The very event where he had first met Farfalla Corrado. Except the polar opposite, now, because, instead of being held in Capri, the second Trend Assessment Congress was hosted in Sao Paulo. This time around, the Italians were the guests and the Brazilians were the hosts. Everything is reversed, upside-down. Yet, everyone was just as futuristic as before!

The Brazilians very much wanted him to go to their Trend Assessment Congress, because he had done so well in Capri. They’d been pestering him over email about it, and even calling his Seattle office when he failed to answer them. The Brazilians had even gone through the hassle of arranging a Brazilian visa for him — along with their other star foreign guests.

He could go, and they’d be glad for him to go. So, he would attend the Trend Assessment Congress in Sao Paulo. As far away as a jet could carry him.

Just one possible snarl to this brilliant scheme, however.
She
might, somehow, show up there, in Brazil, at the Trend Assessment Conference. No normal woman would ever pull a paranormal stunt like that, but this was Farfalla Corrado. So she might.

Still, if she was in Seattle, coming there to ruin his future life, then it was physically impossible for her to also be in Brazil. She would probably
know
that he was there in Brazil, because she had the Internet, but she couldn’t possibly
be
there.

She would likely even figure out that he had gone there to
avoid seeing her.
Because she was a futurist. But then again, so was he. She would know, but he would know that she knew.

A futurist could be in two times at once, but even a witch couldn’t be in two places at once. Could she?

Was Farfalla Corrado on the list of attendees, on the handy website of the
“São Paulo Congresso Avaliação das Tendências”
? No, Farfalla Corrado was not on the list of attendees. Thank goodness. Was she on the staff of the Congresso somehow, as a paid translator, perhaps? No, the entire staff was listed on the website. Farfalla Corrado was not on that list either.

What else could he do — look for hotels in Sao Paulo, where Farfalla might be have booked a room? That was not a reasonable precaution. That was simply paranoid. If she wasn’t going to Sao Paulo, then she wasn’t going there. So that is where he would go.

He booked a ticket to Sao Paulo. Tourist class. Then, he left.

Gavin had never been to Brazil before. He knew certain things about the electronics of the Brazilian aviation industry, but he knew next to nothing about the nation itself. Gavin had only vague, malformed, American folk-legend notions of what went on inside that other giant of the Western hemisphere. Carmen Miranda, for instance. Coconuts. Shapely, topless Ipanema babes. Carnaval feather costumes.

It was not prudent to plunge into a complex situation when one was poorly prepared. Gavin chose to do this anyway — to plunge into Brazil. Because of Farfalla Corrado, of course. She had left him with no better course of action. He was doing something crazy, but it was much crazier to stay in Seattle and confront Farfalla Corrado, with clouds of dry-ice pouring off of her, radiating occult fatality.

Gavin endured his twenty-five-hour planetary trip. Seattle-Atlanta, Atlanta-Sao Paolo. This was a long, dreamy, mind-numbing excursion. An endless flight, among an oxygen-starved crowd of people, exposed to an endless number of romantic comedy movies.

During his day-long trip, strapped into a tourist seat, like a victim meant for slaughter, Gavin had time to think about important issues in his life. The battery of his laptop had run out, and without the Internet to distract him, he was forced to meditate.

Gavin thought about the issue of marriage. He also thought a lot about sex, because young men who were strapped down and unable to move had wandering thoughts. But mostly, yes, he thought about marriage.

Sex was not a mystery to Gavin, because he had enjoyed a lot of it, but marriage was truly a mystery. Gavin had always wanted to participate in a serious, full-scale marriage ceremony. Elaborate, formal and huge. With costumes, music, and crowds.

But
why
? It had never occurred to him to ask himself why.

During his twenty-five hours stuck in his tight airline seat, an answer slowly emerged for Gavin. Marriage appealed to him because marriage was a mystical experience. That was why he desired it. A marriage ceremony transcended rationality, practicality, or common sense. Marriage was all about mystery. The sacramental mystery of men and women.

A marriage ceremony was an occult ritual. Marriage was a supernatural act. Divine power was directly invoked, during a marriage ceremony. A living, mortal man and woman were publicly welded into one flesh. Sacred emblems were exchanged. The man and woman exchanged holy vows. Stern, absolute vows of life and death.