Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (32 page)

Gavin did not say any of this. When a politician said a rude, ugly truth like that, that was called a gaffe.

“Martin,” he said, “I am not a City Hall insider. I’m in the tech business. I just want to see our city back on its feet.”

“Could be that we need a young guy on the city council. This city needs a forward-thinking guy. Someone not implicated in the old mistakes that got us in this mess. You know what kind of candidate would really fly in this town? A young, fresh, world-changing, techno-green guy — except with a budget.”

“Anybody can do the budget for a City Council campaign,” Gavin said. “My family’s not interested in that level of financial sacrifice.”

“We have a few friends in the VC scene who might find that problem of interest.”

Gavin was warily silent. He could see what Martin was suggesting. Were the Seattle VC geeks so feeble, so pathetically on the ropes, that they would rather take over Seattle politics than take over the technology biz? Had things in technology reached such a miserable state? Yes, they had. He could see it on Martin’s face. The truth was awful.

“I think I need to brief the firm today about the scene in ‘urban informatics’,” said Gavin. “I mean software for cities. Not software
in
cities. Software that
runs
cities. The Europeans are all over that concept, lately. Nokia, SAP, all the heavies.”

“Urbanware,” nodded Martin. “Lotta hot buzz around urbanware. Urbanware might have some legs. I’m thinking, an internal white-paper. A heads-up for investors. Could you do that for us?”

“Martin, I’d love to help out there. That’s a big topic. But maybe this isn’t the time. I’ve got a few personal issues... I have some things I need to get in order first.”

Martin nodded sagely. “I’m thinking that might be advisable.”

“I came back home with some big ideas along that line.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You keep me in the loop there.”

Gavin went back to work. Then, he went out for lunch with his colleagues from the office. They were all brilliant people who wanted to change the world. They didn’t go into the world as often as he did. They were local boys and they had become the talent scouts for Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon. That was the standard story around here. That was about as blatant as his future was going to get.

There was just one seemingly insurmountable stumbling block in the grand Futurist story there, and her name was Farfalla Corrado. He could waste his time dithering about that, maybe write a Beatlesesque love song about his romantic crisis, or he could take decisive action. He needed to be the kind of guy that Beatles songs didn’t happen to.

He’d done something about that already. He had done it today. Farfalla ought to be pretty happy about that — the noble, gallant gesture he had made, in regard to her boyfriend Pancho, and his good work... But no, Farfalla wouldn’t be happy about that. No. He knew her too well already. She would be bitter, unreasonable and perverse.

He could already outguess her view of the situation. He had given her more work. Translation was hard work! He was squeezing a bunch of extra free work out of her.

He was a cold-hearted accountant with no poetry in his soul. He was exploiting her. That was what she would think about what he had done. Maybe it wasn’t entirely untrue.

When it came to her, he was sure to make a mess of it. This matter was serious. He really had to think hard about it. He could not dump Farfalla Corrado, as if she had never existed. Here yesterday, gone today, “only Capri”... No. It had never been like that. Because she
did
exist. She was as real as he was. Realer, probably.

Of course, he had to break off their affair for good and all, that part was inevitable. But, he had to find some decent way to finish it.

Not his kind of decent —
her
kind of decent. They were over, but they had to be over in a way that made her feel
better
about it being over. He knew it was over, and she knew it was over, but it had to entirely over.

A decent goodbye. Something to help her move on. A parting gift, that was it. He had to give her a parting gift, without showing his hand too much. Without any begging. No begging, no pleading, no Beatles-style please, please, please.

How could you show a woman that you cared about her, and that you would always care, but that it was dead between you — dead, dead, dead, in the remote past, beautiful yet dead? What things in the world were beautiful and dead?

How about some old books?

***

Gavin rolled over in his girlfriend’s bed. He drew in the first cool breaths of the aftermath, and he looked at the ceiling.

My God, how beautiful life was.

It was always good with Madeleine, but he had forgotten how good it was. Sex with Madeleine was so simple, pure, and satisfying. She was a necessity for him, like food and breathing. The low light of her lamp and the aroma of her perfume. The crisp sheets, the gentle music from another room. The sweet generosity of her tender body.

He had come there almost desperate. Like a starving man confronting a very wise and sympathetic gourmet cook. Just “Baby, don’t waste time, I am so starving, please, just some meat and potatoes,” and her warm, heartfelt response was, “Right away, just for you,
good
meat,
fresh
potatoes!” And then, fast and furious: delicious bacon-wrapped filet mignon and golden Yukon potatoes.

She was so sweet to him, and so completely in the moment. My God, it was good, that moment.

She was still caressing him, in her tender, lingering way. Her body heat against his own. She’d pulled him drowning from a jagged hole in broken ice, and blown her sweet breath into his lungs. Her kisses chased another world away, knocked it two thousand years gone. The taste of her lips, the aroma from the crease of her neck. The tremendous physical beauty of this comprehensive act had killed a thousand phantoms.

“Baby, there is no one like you.”

“We don’t see enough of each other,” Madeleine told him.

“That trip to Italy really took it out of me. I’m a mess... I travel too much.”

“You’re jet-lagged,” said Madeleine. “You sure were in the mood, though. That was nice. I liked that. It’s lovely when you’re here with me, but not quite all there yet. It’s like misty roses.”

Gavin said nothing. Madeleine really knew how to say things like that. It was like Madeleine lived in that place.

Madeleine slid out of bed, naked and tousled. Polished marble was less lovely than Madeleine’s pretty skin. The low light of the lamp gave her paleness pearly tones of ochre and purple. “Just take a nice little nap now,” Madeleine told him. “I am going to cook you a nice dinner now, just the things you like. You are going to eat every bite.”

“Life is so good right now,” said Gavin, “that I don’t even know what to say.”

She caressed her brow and left him. Gavin collapsed back into bed.

Gavin had an ugly, head-swirling dream. A sleepwalker’s dream. But, when he came out of it, he felt purged of something dark and bitter. He rooted in Madeleine’s closet, and pulled out some of his old clothes. A Princeton jersey and some cargo shorts.

He followed the enticing smell into Madeleine’s kitchen. She had whipped something up for him. Nothing less than fried liver and onions, sliced carrots and cauliflower.

That splendid food sat on his plate like a little tonal symphony in brown and white and orange. And a beer, too. Not some sissy Italian beer in a little glass. A big, dark, cold-sweaty, Elliot Bay microbrewed stout, in a big bottle. The kind of beer a man could never get anywhere else.

She had put this on the table for him with her own hands. She delighted in doing it for him. He devoured the food she had made. It vaporized under his knife and fork.

Madeleine looked up at him, surprised. She was still tenderly dismembering the brainlike lobes of her cauliflower. “You sure were hungry.”

Gavin thumped his empty beer on her little breakfast-nook table. “Yes, definitely.”

“Nothing too fancy.”

“Some things are
better
than fancy. What you need, just when you need it, that’s
much
better than fancy.”

“How about some peach pie?”

“No, that was pretty much perfect, and I...” Gavin toyed with the empty bottle. “You have peach pie?”

“I knew that you were coming,” she said, getting up.

Nothing to do but to sit down with a hot slice of peach pie. Gavin had an intense relationship with peach pie. He adored peach pie. He had loved it since he was four years old. His last meal before being executed would involve peach pie. Other people failed to understand this fact about him. Madeleine had hunted down every commercially available peach pie in the Seattle region, until she found the pie that he liked best. This pie was piping hot on his dessert plate. Here. Now. Madeleine was like that.

He had two servings of peach pie. He knew, as soon as he took the last bite, that the peach pie had cured him. That hot, flaky, gooey peach pie was a precious herbal remedy. His pain and sorrow and doubt had been blown out of his being. Just chased down and killed with that golden pie.

He could laugh at how bad he had felt, before. Never again. Really.

“Baby,” he said, “you and I need to take steps.”

Madeleine took off her rimless glasses. She aimed a warm, affectionate look at him. “What’s on your mind, handsome?”

“Well, I just had this big talk with my dad...”

“Your dad’s not being reasonable,” said Madeleine. “Your dad is a liberal moonbat.”

Gavin paused. He drew a breath. “You know what? I completely agree with that. My dad is not a well man. I mean, there were days when he would posture politically, but when it came to cutting a deal to make something happen, my dad could cut that deal. Not any more. Seriously, my dad is badly off. His prognosis is not good, he’s has this bad kidney thing, and he’s sick... He needs to do something else with what’s left of his life.”

“Something besides quarreling on Facebook with my dad.”

“Yeah,” said Gavin. “Totally.” It was great how Madeleine cut to the chase in these things. She had always been like that.

Gavin cleared his throat. “We need to make them stop fighting,” he said. “It’s like an Italian vendetta, and this is Seattle. We need to do some forward-looking things, here where we live, in our own town. We need to get on with real life.”

“We have to do that, baby,” nodded Madeleine.

“That’s great to hear,” said Gavin.

“The whole country’s gone off in the wrong direction,” said Madeleine. “We need our country back. We need leadership. We need to get back to the foundations of the real America. We need to get back to the bedrock of the American Constitution.”

“That’s interesting. What part of the Constitution?”

“All of it,” said Madeleine. “I mean, all Americans can agree about
that
. The Constitution is our American Constitution. We need to get back to the gold standard, we need to bear arms, and we need to audit the Federal Reserve before they can do any more damage. Also, we need to stop immigration. Right away. That immigration thing is crazy. Those people are all over our country now, millions of them, and they’re not even Americans.”

“I like historical documents,” said Gavin, “but if we go back to the
original
Constitution, you wouldn’t even be able to vote.”

“Americans don’t vote,” said Madeleine. “Because they’ve lost confidence in the system! We need a leader with integrity. We need someone who can live her values. We need someone who believes in faith, and family, and hard work, and who proves herself and suffers for her values. The
real
values. Of real people.”

Gavin said nothing.

“Did you read her book?” said Madeleine. “’Going Rogue’? It’s such a great book.”

“Sarah Palin,” said Gavin.

“Sarah’s from the Pacific Northwest, just like us,” said Madeleine. “She’s not some Beltway insider, or some crooked New York banker. Sarah’s a small-town girl, who took on the big boys and the liberal media establishment... And the people love Sarah Palin. The people
love
her, Gavin. I went to three of her rallies... The way people love her, it’s like a miracle.”

Gavin looked at his girlfriend’s flushed and impassioned face. It had never struck him until this moment, but Madeleine looked quite a lot like Sarah Palin. She had the same square jaw, bright eyes and alert, head-lifting perkiness. The same sturdy, moose-killing, snow-shoe and carbine body. She was a pretty woman, Sarah Palin.

“This is the Carla Bruni factor,” he said. “This is the Carla Effect.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen this before, I know this already. It’s happening here, exactly like it did in Europe. It’s the same tremendous fit of love for a pretty woman, who never belonged in politics in the first place. This is pure divine charisma. Wow, John McCain sure knows foreign affairs! He knows what Sarkozy did for the French right-wing, when Sarkozy pulled that amazing move with a beautiful woman... This is that same Carla Bruni phenomenon, but it has an American face now.”

“I don’t trust John McCain.”

“Nobody trusts Sarkozy, either. You’re in love with Sarah Palin. It’s fantastic.”

“I’m going to work for Sarah’s campaign,” said Madeleine. “You should join me. There’s a lot of good work to do. It’s a grass-roots rebellion to rebuild the real America. To take our country back.”

“What campaign? Sarah’s not campaigning! Sarah’s campaign is over, she lost the election! She even resigned her governorship! Sarah Palin doesn’t have any campaign. Sarah doesn’t want to be elected. All she does is run around writing her bestsellers and making people love her on TV!”

Madeleine laughed. “That’s what all the lefties say! You really have no idea! Boy, are you ever in for a surprise.”

“I admit it,” Gavin said. “I’m surprised.”

“We’re going to have to organize,” said Madeleine, “and take the whole country back. America, saving America from itself. City block by city block.”

“I see that your dad is pretty serious about this.”