Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (42 page)

“My dad would
wig out
if he thought his daughter-in-law was the child of the great Enrico Menotti. It’s like, debate over! That debate doesn’t even
start.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Farfalla,” Gavin said, at last, “there’s something tremendous about all this. This is scaring me. We are turning the world inside out, we are literally
bending space and time
. I was all ready to
fight
with my father about you. I was going to passionately have it out with him. I was going to assert myself against him, and yell at him that I was going to possess you, no matter what he said or what he wanted. I was finally going to get on my own two feet and face down my old man.”

Farfalla blinked at him. “Why? If your father likes me, then I would be happy.”

“But, that is my whole life story, since I was a little kid! And that very important part of my story is, like, turned to mush now! If my dad
adores
you, where does my
problem
go? If my father is all thrilled to meet you, he loves you, like a daughter.… Well, I never expected that to happen! I never predicted that, expected that, not at all! I don’t like it! There’s something
eerie
about that.”

“Now you know how I feel,” said Farfalla. “I feel eerie all the time.”

“It’s like something in this world is forcing us together. If love is this powerful, where is our free will? It’s
worse
when we like it.”

“Every time you say something like that, it hurts me,” said Farfalla. “Sometimes you’re mad at me — and that hurts me. And sometimes, you’re sweet to me, and that hurts me more, because it makes me guilty. Then sometimes, just sometimes, you say something terribly weird, and I know it is true. And that destroys me. It kills me that you understand the weirdness of the future. It kills me that you understand me, sometimes. God knows, no one else ever has.”

“We can work our way out of this,” said Gavin. “I promise — we can analyze this problem, we can think about it, we can pick it apart, and figure out how to fix it.”

“That is not true,” she said. “You can’t do that to me. That is not in your power.”

“Well! What
can
I do, then, if I can’t do that? I’m not your One, so I’m less than dust to you.”

“It’s so true,” she said sadly.

“Is our story together just a cruel, tragic hoax? Are we a wreck when we’re together, and dying when we’re apart? How could that be? Does that make any sense to you? Is that the cruel world we live in? Is the world that bad?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Did you ever consider that philosophically?” Gavin insisted.

“Why? I hate philosophy.”

“Maybe,” said Gavin, “the universe really is divided between male and female principles. Maybe those two cosmic principles can never really unite. Maybe, men and women, because of their love for one another, are doomed to tear each other apart.”

“You never used to talk like this,” said Farfalla.

“I can only talk like this
to you
. We paranormals really have issues. There isn’t anyone else who remotely gets it about my life.”

“Why do you always say horrible things to me? You are a happy man! You are rich, you are handsome! You have a nice body. You are kind. Women desire you.”

“I say it because I suffer. I suffer because the woman I love cannot love me. Even if she cares for me in some kindly way, she cannot ever be mine. We are star-crossed lovers, with quarrels no one can resolve. Our Universe is an Abyss. It’s Abyss before we are born, and it’s Abyss after we cease to be. All we can do is tear each other’s flesh like animals in the brief period not of the Abyss. We know Love for a few brief moments, but our natural state is Abyss. We are both nothingness, waiting to happen.”

“I never heard anyone tell me that,” said Farfalla, her face crumbling into despair. “I always knew that I would die someday. I always foresaw that. I’m a weak, frail thing with wings. I have wings like paper. I live for one summer and then, I fly away into dust.”

“I suffer because of you,” said Gavin. “Nothing else means anything to me. My life has no meaning without you. Without you, I still go through the motions of living, but I become a phantom in my own life. Without you, I hate the look of my own face in the mirror.”

“I am a drudge,” said Farfalla. “Without you, I pine away, day by day. I’m rags and bones, with a snarl of hair on top. The only thing that keeps me alive is one thought. One thought, one bare, naked hope that I might wake up some day and think, ‘I am his!’ Not even that I’m happy! Happiness is too good for me! Just that someone needs me to exist!”

Gavin looked stunned. “Are you really that miserable?’

“I’m so miserable without you that I can’t go on living. I have no future without you!”

“I think I have a much more
searing
unhappiness than you do, Farfalla.”

“You are
lucky
to have a nice, hot, searing unhappiness! I have a cold, wet, rotten unhappiness.”

Gavin looked at his watch. “You know something? Not three hours ago, we were both really happy and completely pleased with ourselves. And here we are, at the point of joint suicide. I’m so totally miserable right now that death would come as sweet relief.”

The limo pulled to a stop.

“Well,” said Gavin, “we’re here at last. Here comes my important business appointment, where I have to play the talking-dog again.” He snagged her by the wrist. “Don’t sit there sulking. Come on, we’ve got to fake it. Pull yourself together.”

Farfalla trudged along behind him, too listless to resist.

Gavin followed the pair of thugs, who were making phone calls in Portuguese, as they gazed through the factory razor-wire.

“Wow, look at the size of this place,” Gavin marveled. “This is just like those assembly plants that Boeing used to run, back in the Space Age.” He gazed around the host of sun-baked metal-sided sheds. “You know, you always hear about ‘globalization,’ and the ‘massive export of American jobs’, but look, that’s really real. Here it is, all around us. I mean, aviation was an American heavy industry, and here it is, relocated to Brazil. My grandmother used to work in an aircraft plant just like this.”

The rippled doors of a hangar slid open, and a chattering army of young women left the huge, air-conditioned structure. These women wore identical overalls and industrial hairnets — and, rather strangely in the Brazilian heat — brightly patterned sweaters. Nice, warm sweaters tied round their tapered, womanly waists, or draped coquettishly over their shoulders.

“So many woman here,” said Farfalla.

“Women are perfect for detailed assembly work,” said Gavin, approvingly. “Especially, electronics.”

Farfalla gazed at the vast marching harem of electronics workers. Some of them were very pretty women. Prettier than herself.

“I never realized that my dad’s old Brazilian associate ran such a thriving enterprise,” said Gavin. “He’s supposed to be semi-retired.”

They entered a second security barrier. They had to have their faces and fingerprints photographed. Then, they were given plastic radio-badges with their names in block letters.

“This old guy was a big wheel in the Brazilian Air Force, back in the ‘70s. He trained in the USA, though. He used to hang out in Seattle with my dad and all his Boeing pals.”

“In the 1970’s,” said Farfalla, “Brazil was a dictatorship. The military made people vanish in Brazil. They turned living people into ghosts. My parents knew some of those people.”

“What, are you trying to freak me out here? This is a courtesy call!”

Their host was still manning his factory office, although it was late in the day. A cloud of model plastic aircraft dangled from his lofty ceiling, like a host of cherubs.

The general-turned-industrialist was courtly and silver-haired. He wore a stiff civilian blue suit.

The general offered Gavin a Brazilian cigar. Gavin accepted it cheerfully, made a mess of cutting it, and pretended to smoke it.

Farfalla said a few cordial words in Portuguese. The general stared at her. He had not expected to meet her. Gavin Tremaine, he had fully expected to see, but he had no idea what to make of her. Not a woman like her, here in his factory, inside his own realm. Her Milanese clothes and her Italian accent seemed to bother him quite a lot.

The general and Gavin began discussing Brazilian military aviation imports. Also, complex technology transfers from the French Dassault aviation works.

“The French make very cute, delicate warplanes,” said Gavin. “That ‘Dassault Rafale’ is the Carla Bruni of fighter aircraft.”

The general laughed through his cloud of cigar smoke. This remark had amused him.

He decided to show Gavin something confidential — from a bound photo-album. The two of them retired into a corner of the office.

Abandoned, Farfalla sat in a padded office chair. She stared at the towering office wall, which was crowded with industrial awards and framed photographs of international business celebrities.

There was a particularly large, gold-framed photograph behind the general’s desk. A very distinguished and handsome old man in full military uniform. Farfalla had seen that man before. She’d seen him sitting in a café, in Capri. He seemed to be looking at her through the picture in the glass. His eyes were following her.

The General and Gavin were going at it hammer and tongs, speaking English. Their negotiations were not going well, though. Gavin was being stubborn and polite, while the general was being scornful and insistent.

Gavin was refusing to do what was asked of him. Or else, he was not in a position to do it. Gavin was in trouble.

Farfalla climbed to her feet. “Excuse me,” she trilled. “Could I have a glass of ice water, please?”

A silence fell. The general turned his angry, gimlet eyes her way.

Farfalla stared back at him. “It’s so hot in here. I’m thirsty.”

“Perhaps,” the general said in English, “the little lady would like a glass of sweet lemonade.”

“That would be perfect,” Farfalla simpered.

The general stepped to his mahogany desk, pressed a metallic button, and barked orders. Some uncomfortable time passed. The two men puffed combatively at their cigars.

A muscular goon arrived with a glass of lemonade on a silver tray, on a delicate cloth doily.

Farfalla put a lipstick stain around the straw in the lemonade, then, insolently left it untouched, staining the perfect wood of the general’s highly polished desk.

This tiny gesture seemed to tip something over in the general. The business meeting was suddenly at an end. Gavin and the general knocked back and forth some boilerplate formalities — “This was indeed a constructive meeting, I will convey your sentiments on this issue to my associates,” that sort of thing. Lies.

Farfalla and Gavin left the compound. “Don’t take that limo,” said Farfalla. “Stay away from that car. I know Sao Paulo. We’ll take the tram back into town.”

“Excellent,” said Gavin shortly. They silently stalked the broken pavements down to a heavily crowded tram stop. A crowd of the blue-collar girls from the factory were hanging around there, gossiping in Portuguese about clothes, booze and boys.

Gavin was taller than everyone there, paler than everyone, and sweating profusely in the summer heat. Farfalla clung to his arm.

The Brazilian electronics women looked on Farfalla kindly. She was the only one there who had brought a boyfriend.
Oh, look at the big white elephant you’ve brought to show us! How cute he is!

They waited for a nerve-racking while. This being a Brazilian tram, nothing happened.

“Do you know where the next tram stop is?” said Gavin. “We had better get walking. If you can manage in those heels.”

“Go,” she said.

Gavin kept gazing behind them as they walked.

“Stop acting afraid,” she told him. “That encourages them.”

“You know,” he said, “this is one very complicated business deal. It is a super-intricate global deal. It is crazy, in fact. And it suddenly it occurred to us — to him, and me, too — that if I wasn’t around any more, that deal would become a whole lot less complicated.”

Farfalla nodded. “No people, no problems.”

“That evil guy has made people disappear. He has. He made real people vanish into thin air. Without a trace. He has that paranormal power.”

“The vanished people fell out of his airplanes,” said Farfalla. “They put the people into Air Force planes, flew them off the coast, and dumped them in the ocean. That’s not a secret. It’s only a secret to
you.
”

“Not exactly Brazilian voodoo magic, then.”

“Oh yes, that is exactly voodoo magic. When people turn into ghosts, and nobody asks why they died, and people are too scared to talk about that, even when they know... That is real voodoo, and that was always real voodoo.”

Gavin wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, “Maybe America is turning into Brazil even faster than Brazil is turning into America. Do you suppose that could be true? A totally voodoo America would be an interesting global dynamic.”

“They passed an amnesty in Brazil. No one gets to ask about what generals did in the past. Because it’s the past. It’s forgotten.”

Gavin sighed. “That old guy has
been to my house.
I remember seeing him around, when I was a kid. It looks like he’s made his peace with the powers-that-be, around here. He settled right down as their captain of state industry. He’s making jet airplanes and providing labor-union jobs. He’s sitting pretty. He’s in favor.”

Farfalla said nothing. She looked longingly at the revolving doors of an air-conditioned shopping mall. She felt hot.

“You know something, Farfalla? I am truly a prize idiot. I charged down here on a wild impulse, trusting crap that I read in my email, knowing nothing about the real-life situation on the ground! I’m not an impulsive fool, though — am I? I’m careful, I’m methodical! I’m not a young, naïve know-nothing.”

Farfalla held his arm. “Well... if you are, then I went with you. I was there with you, wasn’t I?”