Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (51 page)

“We are mortal,” said Farfalla patiently. “It’s getting dark.” She lifted her phone to call ahead.

17
“Is this really her? I thought she would be much sexier than this.”.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Holy Matrimony

The first three floors of the skeleton skyscraper were just big flat plazas of cement. Heaps of weeds, some rubbish, and chasm-like elevator holes. No kind of building for flesh-and-blood mortal people. A parking garage that might house machines, maybe.

And above that third level, it got much weirder. Much less plausible. Just much more architecturally out-there. Like Russian Constructivism with stray Brazilian weeds.

The fifth level and no sign of humanity at all. A tough climb inside dark narrow stairwells. Black passages with intense stenches of damp rat manure. Batty rustling. Dripping echoes.

“I’m finally glad that I left my laptop behind,” said Gavin. “I haven’t seen one pixel of the Internet in two long weeks. That makes it a lot easier to handle this situation. Losing the Internet is just like moving to another country. They do things differently, here in non-Internet world. It’s a magical place, that past world that had no Internet at all. It’s fading from human memory, like a fairyland.”

Gavin shifted his shoulder bag. Nothing much inside it now. A first-aid kit, spray deodorant, mosquito repellent, latex gloves, a hip flask of cheap rum, and an English-language guide to the Brazilian martial arts.

From below , some happy laughter. Then, shrieks of hysterical glee. Then, feral howls. Then, gunfire.

“They found that drug money,” Gavin observed.

“It is raining soup,” said Farfalla, “and the poor were born with forks.”

“So exactly what have you been up to, in this zombied-out tower, Farfalla? Why did you leave me? Why did you flee here?”

“I gave you the chance to escape me,” said Farfalla. “I didn’t want you to be like me — doomed. You could have gone home, Gavin. That road was opened to you. You could have been a free man. Free of me. This place was never meant for you. You should never have to think about a place like this.”

Gavin enjoyed a cheery laugh at this remark. The gunfire grew a little louder. Gavin was getting used to the sporadic gunfire in the Sao Paulo favelas. Sao Paulo was the murder capital of the planet, as everyone knew, but it took a lively town to seize a major world title like that.

Gavin knew that he should be more morally upset about the murder-capital business. But, to tell the truth, he felt at ease in the favela. From a futurist’s perspective, favelas were great. There wasn’t anything remote or exotic or intellectually difficult about the favelas. They were all about abject poverty, huge blocks of drug cash, and completely disposable human beings outside any legal or property system. And tons of guns. Favela futurism was easy to figure out.

Farfalla led him trudging upward through yet another abandoned stairwell. This one smelled of the bloody excrement from vampire bats. Gavin never smelled this specific reek before, but his body sensed, on a cellular level, that this dark stony space was full of small flying sharp-toothed things that ate people. No human being should ever occupy such a space, and yet, it existed on the Earth. And he was inside it now.

“Baby,” he said to Farfalla, “normally, I have a pretty good feeling for the logic of a situation. I just know the way something is going to play out... You understand that about me, right?”

“Yes, Gavin,” she said, kindly, “I do. I understand you as you are. I know that is your way.”

“I can’t make any sense of this now. How on Earth did we find ourselves in such a bizarre situation? Wouldn’t we be much, much happier almost anywhere else?”

“You are here because you chose to come here,” she said.

“Yeah,” he told her, “because you were running off to ‘protect me.’ Man, only a woman would think like that!”

“I will never, ever protect you like that again,” Farfalla swore.

“That promise is good to hear. I like your promises. Every time you make one, they always come true.”

“In the future, you will pay me back for what I did to you here,” Farfalla prophesied. “When we are married, and you get angry at me, you will vanish. You will run away into the forest. To ‘do your philosophy.’ That’s what you’ll say to me. But I’ll know that you are mad at me. I’ll know that I am being punished. And for me, in the future, that will feel just like this feels for you.”

The gunfire down at street-level was getting more eager. Police helicopters had shown up. Random bullets began panging into the skyscraper skeleton.

The bullets interested Gavin a great deal. Bullets had a very guy-thing feeling about them. Real bullets didn’t make any exciting, phony, Hollywood ricochet noises. Real bullets made tense, quirky, sullen noises. Bullets were pointy pieces of metal flying with the force of sledgehammers.

“You must be right about that,” said Gavin. “I do have a temper, and I guess I always will. I want to do the right thing, I want to be true to myself… But, I’m not an angel. I’m a man, and I have my flaws. I am flawed to the core.”

“It’s good that you can admit that,” said Farfalla. “I agree. I can also foresee you’ll never change, not in that way. But then, neither will I. Not about anything that matters. Not when it comes to loving you.” She sighed.

“You can frame it that way, and maybe it sounds pretty bad,” he said. “But who cares? It doesn’t matter that we’re not perfect, that we’ll never think the same way. What matters, is that we think together.”

“We are together,” she agreed. She gripped his hand.

“This is such a marvelous town,” Gavin said. “Seattle is so foggy, mystical, and magical, while Sao Paulo is so honest, hot, and straight-up. Everything’s right out in the open here. Just look at that vast horde of marching skyscrapers, surrounding this ghetto. I’ve never seen the like, but it sure makes me feel right at home. The inside of my head has always looked like Sao Paulo.”

“I love it here, too,” Farfalla said. “Sao Paulo is beautiful. It’s a great city. It is full of truth.”

“So, you know where I’ve been all this time? I was living right over there.” Gavin pointed helpfully. “Up there on the twentieth floor. I could have leaned off that terrace and waved at you.”

Farfalla glanced at the local skyscraper. Golden lights were appearing at its windows. It was a fine, sturdy building.

“Well,” she said, “I believe in us. I want us to be together. I want us to be together, from now on, as long as we live. I want your arms to be my true home.”

“I had an exciting adventure, searching for you,” Gavin told her. “My story was full of intrigue, conspiracy, and lots of daring.”

“You can tell me your story later,” said Farfalla. “Right now, this is all about you being my One.” She paused. “I love you, and I’m going to marry you. But — every omen says you’re
not
my One. If you were my One, you would surely have told me that, by now. Even though you tell me all kinds of strange things, you have never told me
that.
So we need to discuss what we are going to do about that. In the future.”

“Why are we always ‘discussing’ your side of our story?” said Gavin. “My story is amazing! I have such an incredible story to tell! I just spent two weeks with a high-tech real estate developer. Very with-it, local honcho guy. He’s an accountant, like me. He taught me all kinds of astonishing things about this city. He even knows the story of this building — this haunted wreck we’re stuck inside, right now.”

Farfalla fell silent as they worked their way up the echoing tomb of an empty stairwell. This one was strung with rusty razorwire that could slash their heads off. They had to count their steps, bow, and duck.

As Farfalla led him upward — counting to herself, threading her classic labyrinth... the skeleton of the dead unbuildable building grew ever more abstract. It was like a failed political system fading away into partisan insults.

It was also a very tall building. Gavin fancied himself as a guy in good shape, but the endless pitch-dark staircases were wearing him out. Farfalla had a little rhyme to get one to the top, a prayer or mantra. Voodoo as a spiritual practice was always full of death traps that you couldn’t see.

“It would be just like my life,” said Farfalla, breathing heavily, “if you died in here now. Then, I would
never
know
if you were my One. If I never get to
know
... I swear that would kill me by itself!”

“Baby,” said Gavin. “We’re alive. Get over it.”

“I’m so happy to see you that my heart is bursting,” said Farfalla. “I could die from joy, to see you here. My father designed this building. It was a bad place that failed, and I am bad like that, too. This place is the world’s promise to me, that I’m the badgirl from badworld. It would be easy for me to live in this bad way, always, until I died. But, not with
you.
”

“Cookie, even though we have our differences, I know, as a proven fact, I can promise you, that —”

A phone chirped in Gavin pocket. Irritably, Gavin pulled it out. “In Brazil, everybody wants to help me! Those posters of you are plastered up all over town. I put my phone number on them.” Gavin shook his head. “Just now, I was about to explain something important to you. It was all about our relationship. I had a great plan. How we would work things out just, from now on. Then this phone yapped and now I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say. It was brilliant, too. I was gonna, like, win our big argument, just for once.”

“I know that I will marry you,” said Farfalla. “I can’t face another day without you.”

“So, we’re definitely getting married.”

“Yes. We are. Tonight.”

“I don’t have to call Eliza back on this cellphone, and have her convince you to do it? Because Eliza just sent me an SMS. Eliza’s very keen on the subject of our marriage. She even wrote you a speech on why you should join our family. She’s all ready to arrange a formal Seattle rave wedding with Brazilian electronica.”

“That’s sweet of dear Eliza, but I already made up my mind. I am marrying you tonight.”

“Okay. Me, too. Same here. I totally concur with your assessment. So we are formally engaged to be married. What a relief! Let’s shake hands on that, so it’s a done deal.”

Farfalla extended her hand and allowed it to be shaken.

“You know something?” said Gavin, dropping his hand. “This is a moment of triumph for us. You and me, by getting engaged like this, we’ve achieved something great. For us, an engagement is practically the same as marriage in itself, since, because we’re Futurists, we’re sure to go through with the ceremony.”

“That’s just how I feel about it, too,” nodded Farfalla. “Like my parents say, the marriage is just the empty formality. We could do that silly paperwork while we’re asleep.”

“Exactly. High time we get that formal marriage hurdle out of our path ahead. Because — as two serious Futurists, you and me? — we need to look right past theso-called ‘happiest day of our lives.’ Rice, flowers, a rapturous wedding night, that kind of hokum is strictly for amateurs. We need to get ahead of that curve and work hard on our ‘living-ever-after’ angle. You can’t compare the brief period of one wedding day to whole decades of our life together.”

“That’s just what I was going to tell you!” said Farfalla. “Now, that we’re formally engaged, well, we’re practically married already. See — just because you marry me... that doesn’t
prove
that
you are my One
.”

“Oh ,” said Gavin. “Yeah. That’s always the core for you, huh? Marrying some guy just because he loves you. That’s for the loser girls.”

“It’s because,” said Farfalla, “in a voodoo curse story, it always seems that life will be fine... beautiful, wonderful, the happy ending... a wedding day, songs, flowers... But then, there is some twist of words, and that’s when the awful tragedy strikes!”

“Can’t
you
be
my
awful tragedy? Maybe this story is all about
my
tragedy. Did that possibility even occur to you?”

“Yes, yes, of course, I foresee your tragedy!” Farfalla yelped. “I worry about you all the time — I obsess about you! While you were lost, and wandering around this town... doing whatever silly thing you think you were doing... and taking forever to find me... I had so much time to worry and fret! Is my story my tragedy? Your tragedy? What about
the One who really loves me? What about him?
That’s the part
you
never understand! Because my One is
sure
to show up, in our future life! That is fated, it’s certain, it’s foretold! But, I will be married to you!”

“Oh, come on, come on,” scoffed Gavin. “What kind of lousy creep shows up out of the blue, and breaks up a nice, long-term relationship?” He paused. “Mmm. Yeah... Well...”

“I always thought I would marry my One,” said Farfalla. “But, I’m probably much too wicked to marry my true love. Instead, I will live with
you
. Because, well, I have a devil inside, and I
sure
have a
lot more dirty fun
with
you.
If I married my One, I’d just be living ‘happy ever after’. With you around, I’m like a witch with jet engines.”

“Interesting image there,” said Gavin.

“Maybe that sounds silly.”

“Not at all. ‘A witch with jet engines,’ that sounds precisely like Carla Bruni in Italy, Sarah Palin in the USA, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. I’m figuring you’re one of a type there.”

“That’s because I am marrying you. I will be paranormal. And you’ll be my husband.”

Gavin watched a set of dirty pigeons scull across the maroon-colored, polluted urban skyline. “I like this new, inventive, farsighted way you’re approaching our issues,” he said. “Weird stuff like this never even occurs to me, when I contemplate our married life. Mostly, I just forecast our fantastic newlywed sex.”

“Gavin, we need to make plans. If you’re not my One, then my One will appear, in the future. You and I, we’ll have to fix that emergency. We will have to get rid of my One. Somehow.”