Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (40 page)

“Men and women have two different universes? That is some kind of story,” said Gavin. “Those pagan cultists must have had some hot wedding feasts.”

“It makes you wonder what people would do,” Farfalla said, finding a blouse, “if we
all
believed that Love was the only, true, divine power.”

Gavin examined the winged bronze statue in the light of the desk lamp. He lifted his small tourist camera and took a few careful pictures.

“You know,” he said, “I think... I think maybe you and I need to make very sure that we keep our hands on this sacred idol.”

“I was thinking the very same thing,” said Farfalla. “I wanted to ship it to that old professor in Virginia because, she said she would give me a lot of money for it, or at least a big reward. But, I think about that now, and I’m think
why?
Why would I ever do that?” Farfalla stepped into a skirt. “After all that effort I put into getting my claws on this thing? Some nutty romance writer is supposed to get the creation of another nutty romance writer? That’s not what this is about. This is
powerful
.”

“I would worry,” said Gavin crisply, “about what this very powerful sacred icon might do in the hands of the wrong people. I mean, it could warp reality. Especially, in the hands of people who lack our... uniquely foresightful qualities.”

“That is so true,” nodded Farfalla. “I never thought about that part, but obviously, you’re right.” He looked into her face. “What are we to do, Farfalla? I mean, this matter is serious. We need to be responsible.”

“Maybe,” Farfalla suggested, “we should hide it from everybody. And take care of it
,
very privately. As our special secret. We tell just a few people, or, well, maybe not anyone. Just you and me, baby. Forever after, like we said at our wedding.”

“That’s a very sweet thing to say, but I’m feeling a little weird about keeping this statue here in a hotel room,” said Gavin. “It’s not practical, it doesn’t make sense. I love this Futurist hotel, but... what if Brazilian intelligence agents decided to search our room? I mean, that door lock is just a cheap computer chip. Those clerks downstairs can make thousands of pass-cards.”

“We should put the Cosmic Cupid in the hotel safe, maybe?” said Farfalla, bright-eyed with sudden worry.

“Same issue there, really,” said Gavin. “This hotel has a safe — but why is the
safe
, ‘safe’ from the hotel itself?”

“Oh my God! You always have such a smart way of putting things!” said Farfalla, jumping to her feet. “What if we lost the statue, like everyone else lost it? We would never forgive ourselves!”

“You’re right,” Gavin agreed. “We really have to think this through logically. Let me get my notebook.”

“Gavin, you would never believe who had this statue in the past hundred years! I know the Church had
It.
I know that the Mafia had
It
.”

“Very interesting,” nodded Gavin. “Maybe they had some kind of rental time-share.”

Farfalla found her slender heritage wristwatch, examined its face, shook it limply and held it to her ear. “You won’t believe how clever I was to find it.”

“Cookie, trust me, I believe every word of how clever you are.”

“First, I had to scan all the old American photographs in that Capri museum,” said Farfalla, putting her watch aside. “You wouldn’t believe how much sexy nudity there was in those hundred-year-old pictures.”

“You don’t say,” said Gavin, raising his brows.

“Which shoes should I wear? These, or these?”

“Wear the sexier ones,” Gavin judged.

“She was the wife of a painter,” Farfalla said. “So, even though she was a novelist, he always needed a model. His wife was just sitting there writing her novels. So they made a hundred nudes. Maybe a thousand. Everybody always says they will clean up the old photographs. But people get busy, they get bored.”

“They had photographs of the...” Gavin inclined his head sideways.
“It?”

“Oh yes. Many pictures with
It
.”

“Nude
photographs with
It
?”

“Those were no use to me,” said Farfalla, slipping into her shoes. “I had to use the photographs where I could identify the locations. The locations from a hundred years ago.”

“A location-sensitive photo-sharing service on the Web?” Gavin suggested.

“FlickR.”

“Great minds think alike,” nodded Gavin. “You are the Internet witch-queen.”

“The collective intelligence in FlickR found the locations for me,” said Farfalla, “but that was just the start of my quest. That part was
easy
. For the rest, I had to
suffer.
”

“Cookie, you’re always ‘suffering.’”

Farfalla thought this over. “Yes. I guess I am. I love you and I’m happy with our marriage, but I do have a dark side. I’m Cassandra, I suffer, I worry, I fret. I can’t let it go.”

Gavin rooted around in his shoulder-bag. “’
Sottozero
,’” he told her.

Farfalla smiled.

“Less ‘suffering,’ cookie, and more Sottozero supervanilla. Sottozero Brazilian-Italian ice-cream gelato. Two scoops in a big waffle cone. Just for my little darling.”

He deftly produced a laptop security cable. Gavin slid the cable through the leg of a bed, through a hole in the tarnished bulk of the Cosmic Cupid, and into the security slot of his laptop. He slid the entire bulk under the bed and disguised it by smoothing the bedspread.

“That’ll do for now,” he said. “Practical problem solved. Let’s go.”

They strolled, tenderly, arm in arm, to the hotel elevator. They shuttled down the floors.

Farfalla’s brow wrinkled as the number-lights flashed by. She looked up at him. “Gavin, do you love me?”

“What?”

“What we just did. In the bed. Do you even like me?”

“Baby, I still don’t get it.”

“My body! I gave you my body! In bed.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Your ‘body’? You don’t even
have
‘a body.’ That was
my
body. Mine, mine, mine.”

The elevator doors opened. They walked across the chilly golden gilt of the hotel lobby. The female desk clerk gave Farfalla a womanly, hateful stare.
So. Sleazy girl. Up in the room with that American tourist. I hope he paid you well.

Farfalla stopped in her tracks. She grabbed at Gavin’s arm. She looked up at him in panic.

“Sometimes,” Gavin admitted. “I’m a little slow to catch on. What the hell just happened to us?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“It’s that cosmic
thing
up there,” said Gavin. “What is with that statue? What a trick of fate!”

Farfalla began to sob.

“Did we just have sex together with that statue of Cupid in our room? Oh my god we
did!
”

Farfalla wailed in dismay.

“I was calling you ‘cookie’ when I was up there,” Gavin mused. “I never called you ‘cookie’ before.”

“What do you mean?” said Farfalla, staring up at him.

“’Cookie,’ you know, a cookie is like ‘biscotti.’ It’s a sweet handy thing that you eat.”

“That doesn’t sound very dignified,” sniffed Farfalla.

“You don’t like being my ‘cookie’?”

“I never thought about it,” said Farfalla. “I never heard you say ‘cookie’ to me before.” She thought it over. “It sounds so funny... I think I like it! Yes, I love being your ‘cookie.’”

“You know what?” said Gavin. “I think I know what happened just now! We experienced
our future.
We were living
in the future
, up there, just then. I mean, just now. In the past, whatever. Because that was us, the two of us, maybe eight or ten years in our future. In a hotel room, as married people. You were my wife, and I think we even had kids! And of course, we had sex. It was sweet. It was easy. I loved it! It was just what I like.”

Farfalla scowled. “You found me in the street here, and you took me up to your hotel room, and then, you had sex with me.”

“Get over yourself, cookie. You were on top.”

Farfalla stared at the carpet and glowered.

“Stop that! Knock it off with that shame and blame story, stop doing that,” said Gavin. “I
refuse
to feel bad about us being married and loving each other! You know what? We have had a prophetic vision! Us, both of us, together, as a couple! We were granted a vision of futurity! And you know what else? We were
happy
in our vision. In our future, we were
living happily ever after.
In our future, we were
together and happy
, and that’s true, and I
know
that is true.”

“It felt true… I don’t know. It’s too strange to be good.”

“But it was true! I mean, sure, maybe we were kind of busy in our lives, obviously, we were up to some business together… But that was
us,
that was really and truly us. We were living together as a happy married couple.”

“Why is this happening ? It’s scary! I don’t like it.”

“Well, you’re the one who dragged the Cosmic Cupid from Italy to Brazil. That Cosmic Cupid has the mojo, cookie. The Cosmic Cupid is bigger than both of us.”

“
It
is like a curse.”

“I’m thinking that its curse is more like a
promise
,” said Gavin. “On some deep level of philosophy, maybe every promise
is
a curse, but since I just experienced this great vision... Well, I
believe
in my vision. I’m a man, and it’s my vision! I’m a man and I am willing to
work
for my vision. My
beautiful
vision! My vision of happiness with the only woman I love!” His face was alight.

“But what about
me?
” sulked Farfalla. “That is
your
stupid, man’s, happy love story! Where is my romance story? Where is my Big Kiss? Where are my magic words from my One?”

“Oh, come on, not that old business again.”

“But, that is my story! Where are my fireworks and my ecstasies? I’m in a hotel room with some guy and I had sex with him with a wet towel on my head!”

“Oh, come on, relax! You looked cute.”

“We didn’t even use any protection!”

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Whoa.
That
could get a little weird.”

Farfalla’s eyes went round. “Are you
sick?
Do you have syphilis, herpes, AIDS?”

“Look, knock it off with that, Cassandra! Just stop that right now! Put the kibosh on the mourning and panicking! You always see the future in the worst possible light!” Gavin rubbed his chin, guiltily. “Although... Yeah. There should have been a lot more violins and mood music for the first time we ever made love. Where is our first kiss? That wasn’t our first kiss, obviously. Those kisses up there were like our millionth kisses. What gives with that? That’s kind of messed-up! Should I apologize to you? I’m confused.”

Gavin turned on his heel. “Let’s go right back to our hotel room right now, and try that all over again. Let’s try it again from the beginning.”

“No! We can’t do that!
It
is up there.”

“That’s true, but... whoa. Why did we ever leave that room in the first place? We’ll never get back to that future time and space where we’re happy and married... Not unless we... Wait a minute. How did we get up there in the first place?”

“I’m afraid of your hotel room! It has a magic idol in it with paranormal powers.”

“Well, we have to go back to our own room at some point. I mean, all our travel stuff is in that room. Our passports are there.”

“That’s not my room, that’s your room. I didn’t come to Sao Paulo to sleep with you in a hotel room.”

“Well you did, and it was great. Why did we ever leave?”

“You said you would get me a Sottozero supervanilla.”

“What is that?” said Gavin.

“It’s this very sweet, nice... never mind, come on, I’ll show you.”

They left the Futurist hotel. They walked down the tree-lined avenida, and entered a mercado. Farfalla spoke to the gelato vendor at his glassy case. She bought them two waffle-cones.

Farfalla took a few well-considered licks. “I just can’t be unhappy when I eat a supervanilla,” she said. “They just make life so good! I used to eat these when I was five years old!”

“They’re okay if you like sweets,” said Gavin, shaking melted ice cream from his fingers.

“I feel much better now,” Farfalla admitted. “I can’t even say that I’m sorry that I had sex with you. I mean, at least that part is over and done now! Now that I’m your girlfriend, I can face the future. I’ve betrayed Pancrazio. Also, your beautiful blonde ex-girlfriend is my enemy forever. And also, you have to tell your family all about me now. Also, I may be pregnant.”

“You really are a handful,” said Gavin.

“What?”

“Even my goddamn vanilla ice cream has a cloud of black pepper when you are around!” Gavin lifted a forestalling hand. “Never mind, never mind! I’m sure after five or six years of being your guy, this will become second-nature to me.”

“Anything would be all right, if you were my One. But Gavin, you’re not my One. You can’t be. The real One would have told me his special words before any of this ever happened to me.”

Gavin’s sweating face began to redden in the summer heat. He looked from side to side in the jostling sidewalk crowd. “Look,” he said, “I love you and it’s great that we’re really together now, but let’s get one thing straight, between you and me, now and forever, okay? It
doesn’t matter to me
if I am your One. I don’t
want
to be your One. That’s not what my story’s about! I don’t believe I am this One guy, and I’ve heard too much of him from you, and I’m starting to get mad at him! It’s insulting that you keep comparing me to him! You think there’s some sacred guy in your broom closet who’s gonna put up with all your witchy crap? He doesn’t exist!”

“He exists here in Sao Paulo,” said Farfalla, boldly. “This is the town where they told me that my One existed. He is real. He is as real as we are.”

“So, what am I supposed to do about that? This magic fairy creep of yours! Am I suppose to just hand you over to him? There’s no way! I’m going to kick his ass. I’m going to break his tiny magic elf bones.”