Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (16 page)

The cafe’s waiter — a solemn, brainy, good-looking guy in his forties, who could have been a rocket scientist — arrived from the kitchen, his white-sleeved arms laden with plates. Without missing a beat, he swiftly deployed an aromatic banquet. Then, he took his leave.

Farfalla stared at the cafe’s brimming tabletop, with its bounty of gourmet nibbles and its gently fizzing drinks. “Babi, are you still there?”

“
Sì, certo.
”

“Babi, I feel so happy now. Babi, I’m so joyful. I’m having such a good time here! I never want to leave this beautiful island! Capri is like paradise!”

“Women say that all the time,” Babi warned her. “I used to hear Eleonora saying that.”

“Babi, why did Eleonora stay in Capri? I never asked her.”

“Her boyfriend parked her here in Capri. Her
married
boyfriend. Eleanora got her car, her apartment, and all her pretty clothes. She won! Eleanora still thinks that she won.”

“You are right. That stinks. I’ll never be that kind of woman. When do we leave this crazy place?”

“We leave the day after tomorrow. The event crew is always first in, last out.”

“Yes, great, please be sure to give me a wake-up call.”

Babi hung up. At that moment, Professor Milo waltzed past Farfalla’s café table. To Farfalla’s intense surprise, the old woman dropped a handkerchief.

Farfalla leaned down from her squeaky café chair and plucked up the dropped square of fabric. Dropping a handkerchief? How strange. She had never seen this ancient, feminine gesture performed by anyone.

But, when a lady needed to leave a discreet signal, and a lady had never used a computer, never even owned a cellphone... what else was a lady to do?

Tucked inside the handkerchief — it was scented, made of sleek peach-colored cambric, and embroidered, too — was a lined strip of torn notebook paper.

Come and meet me at the bookstore around the corner.

Farfalla braced herself with a gulp of white wine and hastened to obey the summons.

“What are you doing here in Anacapri?” said Professor Milo, shifting from foot to foot, as if her red stilettos pinched her corns.

“I was shopping here,” Farfalla told her, meekly.

“Who is that girl dressed like the Angel of Death?”

“That girl is Gavin’s sister! She’s just a kid.”

“Did that girl see me here? Did she see me with
him?
You mustn’t say that you saw us together here.”

“Look, Eliza doesn’t know about you. Eliza never notices anything,” Farfalla said. She lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?”

Professor Milo said nothing.

“He has a wife, is that the problem? Why are you so worried? This is Capri!”

“It’s because I have a husband,” mourned Professor Milo, in an anguished whisper. “My love life is such a tragic story... You see, my husband is in technology...”

“Is it
that bad?
” said Farfalla.

“He’s in a wheelchair!” said Prƒofessor Milo, hot tears staining her wrinkled face. “Really, I did not invent that, it’s not romance fiction! It is my own personal tragedy! Sometimes, in the real world, real women have disabled husbands! I am not inventing some wild story, just to have my tawdry love affair!”

Farfalla silently returned Professor Milo’s dainty handkerchief.

Professor Milo mopped at her wrinkled eyes. “I swear, between men and women, it’s so strange,” she muttered. “Since the beginning of time! Even the people who know the most about it can never make it work!”

“Your General is very handsome,” Farfalla consoled her. “He must have the world at his feet!”

“You think
that
helps me? Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re very young, aren’t you?” Professor Milo rummaged inside her clutch-bag. “Look, there isn’t any time left. Something has come up now — he’s
very
insistent... so I’m leaving Capri. I have to go, right away. Today. But I need that statue. That little bronze statue, I need you to find it and get it. I’ll give you a big reward.”

“Who, me?” said Farfalla. “I can’t do that!”

“Yes you certainly can! I know that you can do it, you are just the type. Here.” Professor Milo handed over a crisp paper rectangle. “This is the business card of my literary agent. She works in New York. She’s just like you, because she has a lot of computers. So, call my agent, and have her put you on a retainer. Find the Cosmic Cupid. No matter how long it takes.”

Farfalla gaped at the business card. “So, you want me to steal that old suitcase inside the museum? I guess, I can try, but...”

“No. The Cosmic Cupid is not in that suitcase. He was, but he got out somehow, and now he’s loose in the world.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Look, of course, I know! Can’t you see my emotional pain? I have to leave right now, before he gets suspicious again! Don’t you dare look at our faces. Don’t look at us, and don’t tell anybody about our affair. You don’t know me. You never knew me.” Professor Milo began to sidle off.

“Wait, wait, you said there was some reward...?”

“If it’s about money, talk to my agent!” yelped Professor Milo. She hurried back toward the cafe. Farfalla’s phone rang.

It was Eliza. “Farfalla, where are you? Our lunch is getting cold!”

Farfalla returned to the table. Eliza was eagerly crunching through the cafe’s arugula salad.

“Wow, I adore these leisurely Italian lunches,” gabbled Eliza, guzzling from her wineglass. “It’s so great that under-eighteens can drink around here! Order us another bottle!”

Farfalla adjusted her spindly chair so that her back was turned to the Professor’s café table. She looked Eliza up and down. “You look better in Prada. But your buttons are wrong.”

“This little Prada suit top is kind of asymmetric.”

“Yes it is, but it can’t be like
that.
”

“Okay,” squinted Eliza, “okay, so what
else
is so wrong with me? Go ahead, just tell me! Anything to get that look off your face.”

“Well, your big ugly boots are very bad, of course... but, please, Eliza, that hair.”

Eliza patted her snarled and matted head. “What, my ‘Black Ruin’? Whatever could be wrong with my hair, darling?”

“Everything. But we can fix that. The conference hotel has a wonderful salon,” said Farfalla. “It is one of the best salons in Italy. Two hours, three hundred Euros.”

“You want me to spend
three hundred Euros
on my
stupid
hair?
What, are you crazy? That’s more money than I spent on all these clothes! And the suitcase, too!”

“Some things are worth three hundred euros. It is worth it to
be free of your parents,
” Farfalla told her. “You want your parents to leave you alone, in the future? Never look like ‘their little girl’ again!’”

“I thought I had that kinda handled, since I am covered with skulls.”

“No. You don’t. To be free of your parents, you have to
make your parents feel old
. That’s the magic secret.”

“I have to
make my parents feel old
?”

“Yes. That is the secret. That’s when a child is grown-up. That is when your parents finally let you go.”

Eliza understood this truth, but she was stubborn. “But my hair, my black hair looks exactly like your black hair!”

“No, no, no, no, no! I have Brazilian beach-girl Ipanema hair, and you have Gothic punk hair that was dyed in your sink!”

“Come on, come on, do I really look that bad to you? I don’t look bad! Because I have my own look! A look that is me! All the Seattle kids think I look awesome.”

“You don’t look
bad
, but you look like a Seattle kid! Your parents
know
how you look! You look like a kid! You are not trying.”

Eliza’s thin face wrinkled as the truth struck home, but she hadn’t run out of fight yet. “So, what are
you
going to do? I
hate
salons. You get to have all the fun.”

“I am translating for your brother while he talks to the Culture Minister of Brazil.”

“Okay. So, that was a pretty cool, grown-up thing to say to put me down with,” Eliza admitted. “So, tell me. What color am I, when I get out of your big, fancy salon torture chamber? Am I red? Am I green? Am I blue?”

“You are blonde.”

“No way! I’m
already
a blonde. Blonde is my natural color.”

“Not
your
kind of blonde. Not teenage Seattle girl blonde. Viking Goth blonde. Blonde like Karin from ‘Fever Ray.’”

Eliza’s eyes widened. “You know about Karin from ‘Fever Ray’?” She paused. “Uh, I didn’t think you’d much like Karin from ‘Fever Ray’.”

“I can’t stand that woman. I hate her music. But this is Europe! Every European Goth loves Karin from ‘Fever Ray.’”

“But, how do you know that?”

“Because I am a Futurist, of course! Karin from Fever Ray is a
global fashion trend.
Her trend is
strong, and your parents don’t know that.
They already know about
your
Goth, but when you hit them with
that
Goth, a high-fashion Goth from Viking Sweden, they won’t even know you’re still Gothic! Then, you win.”

Eliza thought this over. A new world dawned in her young mind. “Wow. Now, I get it. Of course. That is so amazing! That could be, like, my new motto in life. ‘What Would Karin From Fever Ray Do?’”

“You can do that, but you need to learn to do what you want, Eliza. Stop acting dead.”

“Farfalla, please tell me something. You have useless, awful parents, just like me, don’t you? I mean, you must have some parents.”

“Probably.”

“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.