Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (53 page)

“It’s about me and this other man. This man who let me sleep in his apartment.”

“You are gay?” said Farfalla. She put on the bravest face he had ever seen. “It’s all right to be gay here in Brazil! Being gay is very different here. They don’t even call it ‘being gay.’”

“Look, I’m from Seattle, okay?” said Gavin, opening his eyes in irritation. “We’re also very keen to pretend that being gay doesn’t matter. That’s not the problem. This thing I have to confess is worse than that. It’s
much
worse. It came to me in a psychic rush as I reached this great spiritual height.”

“Look how pretty Sao Paulo is when the sun sets,” Farfalla hedged.

“I wanted to speak his name to you, and I can’t speak his name aloud. Because his name cannot be spoken. My host in Sao Paulo has no speakable name. I mean, he has no name that is distinct from my own name. Because I’m him. That Brazilian guy, who was so kind and supportive to me, and knew so many things about this place — that guy is me.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“That would mean that there are two of me, somehow,” said Gavin. “It means I have a spirit-double in Sao Paolo. Something about me was always Brazilian, all along. I’m not an American guy who loves Italy, I’m also Brazilian. And I was always Brazilian. In fact, I’m more than just Brazilian, American and also Italian. Clearly, I’m some kind of global phenomenon.”

“How can another man be you?” said Farfalla. She bent and kissed his cheek where he sat. “See, when I kiss you, I don’t kiss him. You should relax.”

“Baby, I’m having a major mystical insight. I’m a little new at this New Age stuff, but I’m getting the hang of it now. In mysticism, things hang together thematically, instead of connecting logically. Magic is always stuff like, ‘As above, so below.’”

“And, ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ Gavin.”

“Baby, I think this Brazilian guy, this guy who is me, is your One. He is your One. Because this guy would be perfect for you. He’s this rich, well-to-do, well-educated, handsome Brazilian. He and I, we’ve got all kinds of things in common... So much so, that we’re like, mystically identical.”

“Gavin...
cara
, sweetie... You’re not the magical adept type. Not every mystical revelation is... Well, frankly, a lot of them are crap.”

“I was going to say to you, that this great warlock is my Brazilian shadow double, but you’re right. Now, that I think it over, it’s even more obvious. Here in Sao Paulo, I am
his
shadow double. He’s the real man here. I am just his phantom. Because he lives here. He’s rich and he’s powerful and he knows what is going on here. And I’m some kind of crazy ghost American tourist who is having a mental breakdown while I am stuck halfway up a dead skyscraper.”

“Gavin, you are not a ghost. I know ghosts. Big bears eating fish in the woods are more like ghosts than you.”

“But it all makes sense! That’s why I can’t tell you your magic words! It’s because he’s your One, and not me! He’d tell you those magic, mystic words in one minute! He’d speak them in Portuguese! I’m like his cheap American knock-off replica! I don’t even have a soul!”

“Oh, come on, Gavin, you have a soul! Everybody has a soul. Come with me, come on, get up, stop doing this to yourself. We are almost there.”

“The truth is,” Gavin babbled, as she led him on, “that we’re all supernatural entities! Human beings are supernatural. Why? It’s because we have souls! We think, and that’s why we exist. We’re all spirit immortals, encased in human flesh. We’re all the larvae of ghosts.” Farfalla rolled her eyes. “So what? Everyone knows that already! That’s what everyone believes.”

“Yeah. Of course, I believe that, too. I’m devout. I’m a Swedish Methodist. It’s just, that until I climbed way up into your voodoo pagoda here, I never realized what that implies. If human beings have immortal souls, then we’re living in a magic universe.” Gavin stumbled, and gripped at her arm. “And I say that, and it terrifies me, but then I look at your sweet little face in my gathering darkness here, and it’s like — why do I care? She’s here with me! I love her! There she is, she’s as real as my own life! If I have a soul, then she’s my soul mate.”

“Enough mystic revelations, Gavin. Stop that, you’re not any good at it. We’re almost there. We have to go down one more stairwell.”

“We go
down
?”

“Yes, to reach the temple, we have to go
down
one flight. There’s no other way to reach the temple. Sometimes intruders can climb up this far, but to go down again, that’s the simple trick they never figure out. That’s why they always die.”

They clumped down the last stairs, and out onto the concrete beams. They clutched at rusting guidewires for support.

Gavin stopped, reeling. “So, this is it? We’re finally here? That’s your great temple of forbidden voodoo knowledge? Where we get married?”

“Yes. You have to take your shoes off now. This place is holy.”

Rain-catching tin sheets led to ranks of water-buckets. Worm-filled compost barrels and window-sill troughs were full of vegetables. The temple was mostly made of cast-off materials: halfed and quartered truck tires, particle-board, shingles of flattened aluminum cans. Vegetation dangled from it in every direction.

“That is some kinda place, huh?” said Gavin. “This is your Hansel and Gretel favela church. It looks like it was built by airborne cannibal hobbits.” Gavin patted the empty pockets of his cargo pants. “I sure wish I had my camera. This should be in my Windows Live Photo Gallery. I don’t even have words for how freaky this structure is.”

“Not many people come here,” Farfalla told him. “Very few who are alive.”

“Too scared to show up, huh? I gotta admit that this place is terrifying. It’s the scariest, cheapest home-made building that I’ve ever seen.”

“Nobody in Brazil is scared of spirits,” said Farfalla. “It’s just, they’re so old-fashioned now. Umbanda Terreiro doesn’t get many worshippers any more. All the great séance spiritualist Brazilian religions have been losing the younger people to the Protestant evangelicals. My Nana Hepsiba and her Great Houngan... Well, they are both getting old. They won’t be here with us, much longer.”

“I’m eager to meet them,” said Gavin, brushing at his shirt-front. “Does my hair look okay?”

Gavin and Farfalla removed their shoes at the plywood alcove of the temple. Then, they stepped inside in sock feet.

“Nana, this is him,” said Farfalla shyly. “I’ll have to translate what he says, because he’s an American. He doesn’t speak any Portuguese.”

“É verdade,”
nodded Gavin,
“eu não falo sequer uma palavra de Português. É muito embaraçoso para mim. Eu espero algum dia poder falar um pouco melhor.”
¹⁸

“Well, he’s just like you said he was,” judged Hepsiba. “He’s so cute! He looks just like some hero in a Hollywood TV show.”

“A decoração daqui é incrível!”
Gavin marvelled, looking around.
“É como alguém que construiu uma discoteca dos anos 1970 e foi remodelado por psiquiatras Amazônia.”
¹⁹

“Gavin, stop speaking languages that you can’t actually speak. You can’t impose your narrative on my narrative.”

“You can’t blame
me
for this,” said Gavin. “I can’t speak Portuguese, and I never said I could.”

“Ask your nice young man to sit down here,” said Hepsiba. She dug into the straw in a tin tub and fetched a bright pink bottle of “Gasosa Don” soft drink. “We keep this around when we have our services for alcoholics.”

Gavin sat on a gaudy scrap of carpet in the temple’s darkest corner, near the Great Houngan. “Hey,” he said to Farfalla. “I think this shrunken-head guy is still breathing.”

“He is a wizard,” said Farfalla. “Don’t forget, he’s subtle and you don’t want to make him mad.”

Gavin picked up the Houngan’s bamboo chalice. “Your maestro here has been smoking marijuana,” he said. “Not exactly my bag, but I’m cool about that. In fact, in these specific circumstances, I should probably toke up majorly.”

“No, Gavin.”

“Cookie, it’s a little late for being fussy. Look around us. You can’t box me in as some guy who’s bound to conventional behavior. If that was ever true about me, that’s, like, over forever now. I’m inside a freaked-out voodoo temple. And I can handle this. I get it. Bob Marley has always been huge in Seattle.”

“Oh, Gavin, please...”

“Baby, check this out. I’m sitting next to a gentlemen who like, ranks with the Emperor Haile Selassie. Fine. Bring the drugs, bring the drums, bring on the ritual. Let’s have at it.”

“What is your boyfriend babbling to you?” asked Hepsiba.

“He says that, to perform that magic ritual that you promised me, you’re going to make us take drugs.”

“Oh yes, I almost forgot the soothing herbs,” said Hepsiba. “Your boyfriend could certainly do with a tonic! With that Italian rubbish you’ve been feeding him, he’s never had a decent meal! He looks so nervous! Did you ever give him something for worms?”

“Is he my One, Nana?”

Gavin’s phone rang. He squinted at the screen and began tapping out messages.

Nana Hepsiba squinted at him as she fetched out a Chinese aluminum saucepan. “Maybe he is your One. But, I see no aura around him. I don’t think your boyfriend has an aura.”

“Gavin has an aura!” Farfalla protested, though she failed to convince even herself.

“I think he’s one of those walking and talking machines,” offered Hepsiba. “I see those on American television, all the time. I don’t much like those
ficção científica
shows, but there sure are a lot of them.”

“Gavin is not a robot!” said Farfalla, scandalized. “Gavin just needs coaxing and support! Then, he’s a very warm, exciting man. He is full of fire and conviction! People love Gavin! Even when he’s talking nonsense, everybody think he’s great!”

Hepsiba had another thoughtful look at Gavin. “Yes,” she said, “but I can see that’s not him, who does that. That is
you.
That is you, giving to him of yourself. Without you in his life, your robot there could live in a small closet with no windows. He would do his sums all day, until he died. If he has any soul, it’s a very small soul. So, I foresee, he will steal your soul. His need will get bigger and bigger, and your soul will get smaller and smaller. Until one day, in your marriage, you won’t have any soul left.”

“Is that true? You wouldn’t tell me witchy lies just to scare me, would you? You’re not saying that, just to sound awful.”

“My dear, listen to me. He’s not one of us, he is a foreigner! He doesn’t share your religion, he doesn’t speak your language... What do you want from him? His money? He doesn’t have any money! I can see that for myself! He just has the gentleman’s appearance of having money. His pockets are empty! You can tell fortunes, can’t you? You should see all that with one look!”

“But, he’s going to give me children! I feel certain of that.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes, he did! He predicted that! And it will come true, too. He’s always predicting things to me. And they do come true! He’s a prophet of the future.”

Hepsiba looked at her in astonishment. “But he has no magic! No mortal man can foretell the future, unless he has divine power and the help of discorporated spirits.”

“Well, he does that, even though he’s got none of that.”

Hepsiba sighed. “Now, I know for sure that he’s not human.”

“I don’t care! I’ll give him half my soul. He can have
all
of my soul. I have
plenty
of soul. I’m not even using it.”

Gavin answered his phone. He engaged in a rapid conversation in Italian. Agitated by the incoming news, he jumped to his stocking feet and crossed the temple. He bumped his blond head on the smoke-stained, cobwebbed rafters.

Gavin put his phone away with a grunt of pain. Then, he wiped his eyes, and examined the voodoo pantheon against the temple’s far wall, where it squatted in occult glory.

“You don’t need advice from me,” sniffed Hepsiba. “Just look how rude he is to the immortal gods. He’s blowing the dust off of them. That is never a good sign, my dear.”

“But Gavin is a force for good in the world! I’m sure that the gods must smile on my Gavin because his heart is so pure!”

Hepsiba set her lips. She busied herself at the chopping board. She set to on a set of dried herbs with a plastic-handled Chinese cleaver. Then, she passed Farfalla a garlic-crusher and a poisonous cactus. “Mash this up for me, will you? Not all of it! Half of it.”

“You don’t want me to marry him,” Farfalla said sadly. “You won’t give me your blessing, you are warning me against him...”

Hepsiba was rattling her kitchen junk inside a brightly-colored plastic drawer. She pulled out a whole set of cheap metal debris.

“I can never tell a young woman not to love any young man,” said Hepsiba, “because young girls have long hair and short brains! But oh, what a dreadful price girls pay tomorrow!”

Farfalla spotted one sharp gleam amid the rusty kitchen mess.

“That ring belonged to my cousin,” said Hepsiba at once. “Her name was Maria, and she was as good as bread. But, she married a man who she loved... and she did love him — but he was wrong! He was the wrong man for her. When she needed a kind word, he was silent. When she needed an embrace, he was gone. He wasn’t even a fool, he wasn’t cruel to her... He was just, not of this world.”

Hepsibah dipped a plate into a bucket of sand. “Every day,” she said, scrubbing away, “she struggled to make that man happy! He never understood her heart... Her best efforts made him angry, and he was only pleased by stupid, dirty things... And their house was divided, and they were accursed, and she had to pick ragpaper to live, and he drank pinga all day, and they rendered the bones of pigs and goats in a dirty butcher shop, and she ruined her whole life that way, and then finally he died and, for the sake of his soul, she came and gave me that cursed ring that you’re holding now. Put that ring back.”