Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (23 page)

“It’s all scientifically proven fact! But you tell some idiot that, and that it matters, stardust is important, stardust is cosmic, it’s us, it’s the truth… And she’s like, ‘Why don’t we drink a ‘Sex on the Beach’ and go have sex on a beach?’ Which may be, like, the practical thing to do, actually. Maybe that’s the only sensible thing to do.”

Farfalla glanced in fear at the darkening dome of the sky. “I’ll never see the stars the same way again. Not after this!”

“Well, what did you think the stars were doing up there?”

Cursing me from the moment of my birth,
Farfalla wanted to say. Because this was her One, the Man of her Destiny, she was certain of that now. He was pouring his heart out to her. He was telling the deepest truth about how he really thought about his life, and she would
never
think like he did. Never, ever. It would be easier for her to stop being Farfalla Corrado and go become an asteroid.

The things he had just said to her were so stark and awful. “Thirteen billion years.” How could you kiss your “one true love” and live “happily ever after” – and instead of that, get “thirteen billion years?” A terrible, monstrous, head-spinning number, when mortal people only had the precious fractions of some wakeful moments when they could live, and love, and be human and beautiful, and that slim careening moment of the present, this one tiny sliver of existent being, between the eerie chasm before birth and the ghostly darkness after death...

“Let’s have a prosecco?” she said.

“Great idea!”

The tallest mountaintop of Capri had courting couples littered everywhere. These lucky people were passionately necking and nuzzling, unlike her unlucky self. Romantic people, newlyweds, first dates, married people (married, but not to each other)... She could have read the palms of their hands, their futures, like so many cheap paperbacks. Like graffiti on the temple of Venus.

Farfalla knew what was going to happen to these mortal people.

Look at that blissful tourist couple sitting over there, gobbling their ham sandwiches. German, blond, plump and glowing with youth and health. She could go to the zaftig bride there and tell her, “You are going to live fifty years with this man and be so happy with him. You know why? Because you’re both stupid. You will eat cheese. And have kids. And then die.” A simple story, but simple people had simple stories.

Farfalla found them a cafe table. Everything on the menu was overpriced. Paradise had to overcharge everybody.

“So,” said Gavin, “what are you going to do, when you get home?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I want to know who you are. I
have
to know who you are.”

“All right. I will tell you all about my tomorrow. Tomorrow, I do what I always do. I’ll go back to the atelier in Ivrea. I live in a factory. They used to make typewriters there. Now, it has studios, and I have to look after it. My parents, they live in Ivrea, too. They have a garden... I have to look after them, too, because they’re old now... I cook in Ivrea. I clean. I like to play
Warcraft.
I translate for websites. Sometimes, I work in Milano... Soon, an email will come, with some travel job for me. Then, I will leave. I travel. I travel a lot. I always travel.”

“You’re not ambitious? You don’t have big career plans? Someone as attractive and bright as you? Someone with your many unusual talents?”

“No.”

“You can foretell the future, Farfalla. You don’t... what? Bet on racehorses?”

“That never works. I
feel
the future. Sometimes, I smell it and I can even taste it. Sometimes, pieces of it rise up inside me, like ugly monsters, and grab me. I can know the future, but not
all of it
. Nobody knows all of the
present
. Nobody ever knew all of the past. We
forget
the past. We forget the
most important things
in the past. They are gone, they are ghosts now.”

“All right. Thank you. Thank you for telling me that. Thank you for being so honest with me. I needed to know that. It’s the same with me, too... but in a different way. I’m in business, you know. It’s amazing how much of business is just fantasy! The business world is never ‘real.’ It’s all folktales and myths. ‘The invisible hand of the market.’ That is a ghost story. Straight out, that’s a ghost story.”

“You don’t want to make a million dollars?”

“I made twenty million dollars. It all went away, like the dew in the morning.”

“You’re rich. You are from a rich family. You are happier than me. You are fortunate.”

“Oh, people always say that about us rich guys... All that ‘rich’ means is that you are responsible for something. I know the very richest guy in the world. The very richest guy, ever, in all of human history. I’ve met his wife and his kids. I’ve been to his house parties. You know what he talks about? He talks about malaria.”

“Malaria?”

“Yeah. That’s one of your nice Italian words, ‘
malaria.
’ People die from that.” Gavin looked at her. “Rich people are mortal. We have a time to be born, and we have a time to die. I know some idiots who have a pretty good time, being rich. Those clowns are making sure that their grandkids will be poor.”

“You don’t want your grandkids to be poor.”

“I am a grandkid of rich people. My grandkids don’t even exist. And I work for them every day. I know a lot about their future. You want to hear all about it? What I know about my grandkid’s world? You,
you,
I can tell all this to, right?”

Gavin’s eyes were narrowing and his face was growing red. “My country is an empire in decline. You’ve been over there, so I’m sure you know that. A tiny minority owns most of everything in America now, and we rich Americans are driving everyone else into poverty. We are wrecking our heritage, destroying our soil, air, and water, cheating each other, and ourselves... I’m a visionary. I live in a ruined castle. The plumbing broke in my castle. My castle stinks every day.”

Gavin’s phone rang. He yanked it from his pocket and glared at the cracked screen. “That is my dad calling me,” he said. He set the Blackberry on the tabletop, as if it were a live spider. “That waiter’s sure taking his precious time with our drinks! You know where the bathroom is?”

“There must be a bathroom inside the café,” Farfalla offered. Gavin stood up and stalked off.

A bored waiter arrived with a bottle and two dusty glasses. He ceremoniously topped them up, not bothering to meet her eyes. Then, he vanished.

Farfalla stared at her dusty, sparkling goblet. She had never felt sadder in her life.

Gavin’s phone rang yet again, buzzing angrily on the cafe tabletop. It rang insistently, again, again, tearing at her nerves. Global people always had to answer phones. Farfalla picked up the phone.

“It’s me,” said Eliza. There was a tremendous party racket in the background. “How are you doing?”

“
Molto bene,
” Farfalla growled.

“You’re speaking Italian, Gavin! You sound pretty happy!”

“
Così così
,” said Farfalla.

“Farfalla is with you, that’s why you sound so happy.”

Farfalla said nothing. Her heart bled a little with every beat.

“Gavin, everyone here is asking about you. I’m telling them you’re at this party. I just tell them that you are lost in this crowd. They believe me. There’s a huge mob packed in here. All these party moochers are like a zoo.”

Farfalla continued to say nothing.

“Gavin, don’t worry. Please. Just be happy, I have you covered. I
knew
you would be with her,” said Eliza. “I won’t tell anybody!
Never
, I promise! If Madeleine asks me, I’ll lie.”

Farfalla set the phone on the table.

Gavin returned. He had splashed water on his face, combed his hair, and recovered his composure. He plucked up his prosecco glass. “Well,” he said, “the night is young!”

Farfalla began to weep.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what on earth can it be now?” he demanded. “Come on! A broken heel is not a broken heart!”

“I can’t believe I’m so miserable,” she sniffled. “I can’t believe I’m so scared.”

Gavin twirled the wineglass. His face was clouded. “What future prospect seems to trouble the pretty signorina?”

“Why are we are so stupid? We should have gone to that party! We should be drunk now! Take me to your hotel room! Do anything you want to me, I don’t even care! We should steal our one sweet little night, then run away from each other! What is wrong with
that?
A million people do that!”

“Oh, I agree with you,” he said. “That can be beautiful. But only while it lasts.”

She looked into his face. It was like looking at a wall of bricks.

“I knew,” he said, “that your pretty scenario wasn’t going to happen for the two of us.”

“You knew?”

“Oh, yes. I knew it as soon as you said that we were climbing up this mountain. And look, here we are. It’s just like you said. We’re on a mountaintop. Amazing horizons all around us. This is the top of the world. It’s just like you promised me. This is where we belong. Because we’re visionaries.”

“I meant my promise to you. I want you to be happy. I’ll do anything for you.”

“You foretold that I could ‘have whatever I wanted from you.’ Now, your words are coming true.”

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“’Whatever I want’ is the truth. I want the truth. I want some moral sincerity, some integrity, and some free will.
That
is ‘whatever I want.’ I want it so badly. Because I don’t have any. Maybe you can give me some of that... Because of who you are, you’re a seer, a prophetess... You’re a goddess.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“All right, you’re as human as I am, but you’re like a woman touched by a goddess. You’re like the favorite of a goddess, blessed by a goddess. You’re radiant with divine grace, you’re like a beautiful, supernatural priestess.”

Farfalla knitted her brows. “Why do men always talk that kind of rubbish to women? We never ask for that! I’m not your ‘goddess,’ I’m not even your girlfriend, you haven’t even kissed me... This is terrible.”

“Well, yeah. You’re right again. We don’t have a lot of options here. You and I are in a lot of trouble.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“I’m angry with this situation. Look, I could
marry
you. I
adore
you. I don’t think I even
lived
until I met you. And don’t look at me with scared eyes when I say a thing like that! I am serious about you — I am completely,
deadly
serious about you. No one else in my life has ever made me feel this way. Just think about what that implies! For the future, of course.”

“Would you really
marry
me?”

“If we were free to do it? If we could make it work out? Of course! I would marry you in a heartbeat! We would have six kids!”

“People in Capri get married. People have weddings in Capri.”

“We wouldn’t get married
here in Capri
, for heaven’s sake! We would get married back at home in Seattle. In a Swedish Methodist ceremony, like my parents, and my grandparents. That’s how we Tremaines do these things.”

Farfalla loosened her aching foot in her damaged shoe. She should have known to expect the unexpected when it came to the One. Somehow, just “giving up and doing whatever he wanted” wasn’t even the easy way out. Even abject erotic surrender couldn’t help her.

Should she play ‘hard-to-get’ with him? But, she
was
hard-to-get. There was supposed to be only One in the world who could touch her heart. Here he was, what was wrong with him? “I’m not a ‘Tremaine.’”

“Well, that’s why I would marry you. You would be ‘Farfalla Tremaine.’” The prospect of this made Gavin grin. “That sounds so fantastic! Your new name has some kinda rhythm, doesn’t it? Far-FALL-a Tre-MAINE. It sounds like a good old-fashioned bossa nova.”

“But I don’t like Seattle! The sun never comes out there. It’s cold there, and everything smells like fish...”

“You’re still telling me the truth. That’s great. Let’s just lay all our future factors here, all right? Because I have been thinking hard about us. It’s hard to do, it hurts our feelings... so, let’s pretend that we have a marriage counselor. Someone to give us good advice about our future. He starts telling us what you and I have at stake here.”

Gavin drew a deep breath. His eyes grew distant with calculation. “We’re not from the same country. We’re not of the same ethnicity. We don’t have the same religion. We’re from different economic classes. We surely don’t have the same temperament. I have a steady girlfriend now, and you have a boyfriend, too.
Where would we live
? I’m completely attached to Seattle. I’m not going to run off with you to Italy — my family would be ruined if I left Seattle! How would we make a go of our future life? I give us credit for being two good people. We need to find the right thing to do.”

“The love songs say that love will find a way.”

“
Our
love needs to find a whole global map. Not for one weekend in Capri, but
until we die
. Imagine, it was not you and me here, okay? Imagine, it was some Italian guy and some American tourist girl. Imagine that situation! What would you tell them to do?”

“You want me to play make-believe with you now, here on the top of the world, just like that?”

“This is not make-believe. We call this ‘scenario work.’ I’m serious.”

“Oh, well, perfect. I love to play make-believe. You’re the American
girl
, and I’m like me, but I’m an Italian
man
? Oh! Perfect! I
know
what would happen. I would ask if you had any condoms.”

“And I would say that I didn’t. American girls have common sense.”

Farfalla closed her eyes and opened them again. She really couldn’t get any more brazen than the amazing thing she had just said to him. She could feel a hot blush welling up.

This was so pathetic. She had never been some kind of party girl who jumped into bed with men. She had no idea how to be such a person. She led a life that was modest, bitter, guarded, and threatened. She looked into his face. “You are so angry with me.”