Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  It felt good to be under her headphones again, snug in her booth. There was hard work ahead for her, but to do a real job was reassuring. Farfalla was accustomed to translation work. A translator was a nameless voice in the center of events. A ghostly voice that told the truth, and could not be seen.

  The jostling crowd picked up their plastic headphones and took their seats. Portuguese-to-Italian was on Channel 1, Portuguese-to-English on Channel 2.

  The Brazilian speaker tapped at her podium mike. She launched straight into her presentation. Farfalla was impressed. This stern, middle-aged woman was talking sense. She was nobody’s glamour-girl. This Brazilian woman was speaking about Brazil’s future in a very earthy, matter-of-fact, don’t-mess-with-me way.

  So, the 2014 World Cup soccer matches, in Brazil. The 2016 Olympics, in Brazil. Brazil was improving the airports and the hotels for the future hordes of global visitors. Soon the whole world would gather in Brazil. All the South Americans, the Chinese, the South Africans, the Indians, and the Indonesians. Everybody.

  The Brazilian official went into specific detail about the maneuvers required to satisfy all these world tourists. The Indonesians, Chinese, Indians and South Africans. Such-and-such about Brazil’s Ministry of Defense. This-and-that about the nine Brazilian regional governors. She had a very punchy presentation. Full of facts and figures. Nice graphics, too.

  Filtering all this from Portuguese to English took intense concentration from Farfalla. Adriana was clearly having a lot of trouble keeping up, but Farfalla was right in the zone.

  After twenty minutes of hard labor, Farfalla realized that this Brazilian Futurist had not said one word about Europe. The United States had never been mentioned, either. Europe and the USA did not seem to matter to the Brazilian official. To hear her tell her story of tomorrow, the next Olympics was all about a fresh, exciting world of young, eager, sporty Brazilians, Indians, Chinese, and South Africans.

  Farfalla found herself missing Brazil. There was something so loose and roomy about a country big enough to contain twenty-eight Italys. Farfalla’s tender memories of Brazil made her insanely upset with Italy. Having two fatherlands was like having two men in your life.

  Stunned by her translator’s trance, Farfalla thought back to the golden idol of her childhood. One of the greatest heroines of world history. Anita Garibaldi. Anita Garibaldi was the world’s most famous Brazilian-Italian woman.

  Ever since her childhood schooldays in a raucous Sao Paolo public school, Farfalla had idolized Anita Garibaldi. In her girlish, Italian-Brazilian heart, she secretly wished to be Anita Garibaldi, boldly roaming the world with her handsome lover, and also a whole lot of swords, flags and guns. People who annoyed Anita got chopped down and burned in the flames of revolution.

  Farfalla’s thoughts were wandering. Live translation took a serious toll on her brain. When she was translating, she had only a patch of brain left to think for herself. A small, exotic patch of her brain, like a Vatican City postage stamp.

  A latecomer arrived for the Brazilian speech. He was hasty, overdue, and out of step. He grabbed up a leftover translation headphone set. Good-looking blond guy. Tall, and with such shoulders.

  Oh, Madonna. It was Gavin. If not for the glass of the translation booth, Farfalla would have lunged out of her chair and grabbed him by the belt.

  He hadn’t seen her, hidden there inside her booth. Nobody ever looked inside a translation booth. Translators were invisible in there, like Superman changing clothes.

  Gavin did not know that she was staring at him. So, for once, she could have her fill of him, just take him in. Without being seen, without him knowing.

  Gavin had showered, combed his hair, and put on a suit and tie for his speech. His clumsy American suit was so like him. He was who he was. The lost traveller...

  A hot surge of chaste, nurturing tenderness swept over her. This suffusing wave of deeply felt, tender emotion rose from the basement of her being. She felt for him, this man. She wanted to take care of him. She longed to take care of him. She prayed that the world would take care of him, even if she died.

  Farfalla dropped two sentences. She struggled to catch up with the speech.

  Gavin worked his way through a crowded row to find an empty chair. He slipped the headphones on.

  At once, he recognized her voice, inside his ears. He twisted in his chair and stared back at her.

  He offered her a pale, unhappy smile.

  She kissed her fingertips and blew them at him.

  Just one little gesture, instant, spontaneous, throwaway, but it hit him like an anvil. That blown kiss whizzed through the glass and across three rows of conference seats. It knocked him into next week.

  You kissed me, his look shouted at her.

  She looked back at him. You have accepted my kiss.

  That was a dark, occult and fateful act and you and I can never take it back!

  We can’t help it.

  Probably, she should not have done that. She should not have given this Futurist that sexy premonition of a loving kiss. Oh, heavens. What a fatality. Her life had changed forever.

  Farfalla squeezed her eyes shut, and jumped back into the flow of spoken words.

  In the intimate darkness of her closed eyelids, her heart was hammering. She felt her heart drum under the headphones.

  What a strange, strange feeling this was. This was a tremendous, lofty sensation, more than a mortal woman could bear. Divine exhilaration. This is it, she thought, this is the feeling of belonging that was prophesied to me. Love has me in its power. Be kind to me, Love. I know that you are divine.

  And yet, she was safe, safe behind her glass, with her eyes shut tightly.

  When she opened her eyes again, Gavin was no longer looking at her. Her One was sitting there in the crowd, just some random guy, like everyone else. The Brazilian woman’s speech rumbled on, in its sharp, methodical way. Then, she finished it off. Thunderous applause.

  A break. The crowd dispersed for snacks. Farfalla left her glass booth.

  He rose and came to confront her. “So, we seem to have a little problem,” he told her, smiling politely.

  “So, you heard about our keynote speaker, then?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Our final speaker can’t get here. He quarreled with security in Rome. He missed the last flight to Capri.”

  “Oh, no! Hell! I know that guy,” Gavin said. “I really wanted to see him do his pitch! He screwed up at the airport? I thought he had more sense than that.”

  “That means you are the final speaker. We had to re-schedule you.”

  Gavin’s sunburned face went pale. “Oh, I see. That is a problem.”

  “I read the speech that you sent me in email,” Farfalla told him. “I took notes, and we have your slides loaded. We will finish on time.” Farfalla laughed. “You’re the only man here who will ever finish on time.”

  She had meant to give him a compliment. He was taking it badly, though.

  “How do you know that I will finish on time?”

  “I can foretell that.” She looked into his troubled, forlorn face. “You have stage fright! Don’t worry! Let’s get a glass of spumante.”

  Gavin tagged along behind her, as she led him toward the refreshment table. “I hate my speech,” he grumbled.

  “Why? It’s fine, it’s about accounting! You know everything about accounts. You know all about venture capital.”

  “But that speech is not about the future! That speech is a phony lie! I know what is going to happen. And I can’t tell any of these people the truth. The future doesn’t even speak their language.”

  “All right,” she said brightly, “then throw away that speech you hate. Say what you want to say! Say something from your heart.”

  “Well, I can’t. I just can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. If you want to.”

  “No, truly, I can’t do that. That’s a bad idea.”

  “You could say it to
me,” she said.

  He leaned down to confront her. So close that his breath warmed her face. “The best-educated, most creative, best-financed people in the world have lost all control,” he told her. “We have panicked. We are losing our minds in public, and what about all the other people in the world, for God’s sake? What about them? What about the guys who’ve already lost their jobs? The ones who have lost their investments? The homeowners underwater?”

  He was hissing in prophecy: “The abandoned, the disrupted and the disbelieved, the decayed and surplus flesh, the obsolete, the vanished and the worthless, the hollowed-out and crashed-out? And the de-monetized, the failed and the unsustainable, the market externalities, the shameful collective insanity, the dead mechanical hand that kills every chance at happiness that we have?”

  Farfalla drew in a breath. People were jostling all around the pair of them, so she had to speak low. In a secret whisper, from her lips to his ears: “Ne trahite, uestros ipsa praecedam gradus. Perferre prima nuntium Phrygibus meis propero: repletum ratibus euersis mare, captas Mycenas, mille ductorem ducum, ut paria fata Troicis lueret malis, perisse dono, feminae stupro, dolo. Nihil moramur, rapite, quin grates ago: iam, iam iuuat uixisse post Troiam, iuuat.”

  Gavin Tremaine jerked upright. He blinked at her in amazement. “Okay, I am not surprised to hear you say that,” he told her, at last. “I totally knew that you got it.”

  “Gavin, I know. I can foretell the future, and I mean I really foretell it. So, I knew that you knew.”

  “Well, you don’t surprise me there, either. Because I can predict the future. And I mean I can really predict it. So I knew that you knew, before that you knew that I knew.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “Because I knew that you would show up in my life when I was twelve years old.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. That’s the truth. I promise you, it’s the truth.”

  “Boys are late starters,” he admitted.

  Touched by this, she reached out and gripped his hand. Her small fingers latched on between his big thumb and his forefinger, and this light caress, this dainty consoling feminine touch, was instantly welded there. Blasted into place by lightning. Two carved hands from a slab of iron could not unite so solidly.

  Romance was not a soft, weak, mushy-headed feeling. Romance was a diamond-hard, rock-solid, clarifying feeling. True romance was a breakthrough to the highest level of being.

  Romance was pure. Romance was meaning and reason. Meaning and reason to live. A living heat came over Farfalla. A raw desire to be a living woman. Desire climbed from her thundering ribcage and shot up the pulsing column of her neck. A searing, burning blush. A blush like a lighthouse signal blaring over oceans.

  She dropped his hand.

  They were surrounded by dozens, hundreds of other people. She stood stranded there among the jabbering crowd, sweating and flaming-faced and trembling in her heart-piercing tumult, and not a one of them took any notice. A complete explosion in her private world, and not a one of them knew.

  Yes, the people saw their own reality, but they knew nothing of love. Her inner cosmos had exploded with meaning, and bright stars were pin-wheeling out of her every pore, and they couldn’t have known or cared less. All they saw was what their own ideas let them see. Hmm, look at that translator talking so seriously to that conference speaker. They must have a lot to discuss.

  They stood like two bronze statues among the wandering crowd. People routed around them respectfully. Very keep-a-distance, very do-not-disturb.

  She glanced up into his eyes. Oh, he knew what was happening. His face, his whole body was glowing all over with awareness. She knew that he knew. He wanted this to happen. And he wanted more to happen. Because he wanted her. Hungrily. It could not have been more obvious if they were peeling each other’s clothes off.

  Then — confused and harassed, as always — Lust awoke. Lust arose from the tangled nest of dirty sheets in Farfalla’s mental basement. Lust rose bleary-eyed to her feet and she thundered up the stairs, making a frenzied, pounding rush against the door of the control-room.

  GET INTO BED WITH HIM RIGHT NOW! Lust screamed. Farfalla’s Lust had flaming yellow eyes and hungry teeth and a rather flat head, but Lust was screeching her very best common sense. GET HIM! GRAB HIM! RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW! YOU’RE ALWAYS MISSING THE PERFECT MOMENT, Lust howled.

  Not here and now in front of everybody. I’m shy.

  You stupid cow, you ALWAYS tell me that! I am BIGGER than you, and I am OLDER than you, and if you miss out this time, I WILL KILL YOU! You think your Rage and your Jealousy are scary, just wait till I get my hot, drippy hands on you! I will tie you up in knots inside! You will never know another night of peace! If you don’t satisfy me, I will shrivel you into a cricket!

  “The problem is, tomorrow morning, I have to leave this island,” Gavin told her, and it was such a coldly foresightful thing to say that Lust shrank back, as if Lust had been slapped.

  Oh, what a torment, that true prediction he had just uttered to her. What an awful man, to say such a hateful and very true thing. To cage her in the hateful jail of space and time. Crushed in the iron cage of her mortal existence. Oh, oh, just to be free. Just to be free, not to think, but to be free to love.

  Just one night without the taint of sorrow and oppression that so clearly awaited them.

  Capri, Capri, Lotus Island. No wonder the place was such a haven!

  “I don’t want to say one word to these goddamned people,” Gavin mumbled. “Can’t we please get away from here? These fools around here, maybe they’re doing their best... but you and me, we can’t even help it! That speech of mine is a fraud. You know it, I know it!”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Anything but a stupid speech about market forecasts! What about me, what about my future? My future doesn’t have one single thing that I want! My future is nothing but more of the same, always the same, only worse!”

  “Not all of your time,” she told him. “When you were with me, our time was good.”

  His look of desperation faded. He had heard her, he was thinking about what she said. “Well... Yeah, you’re right about that. Of course that’s true. When you and I were hanging around, together... I was totally thrilled to be here. To be here with you, I mean. I was having the time of my life.”

  “Gavin, my life is bad. I have a hard life. But not with you. When you are here, my life is different.”

  A gentler, more thoughtful look touched his face. “Well, why is that? Why is that happening to us?”

  “We belong together.”

  “I can see that, too — but why do we belong together?”

  “Because people love us together. That’s why. People jump when we walk down the street. Did you see that?”

  “I did see that,” he said. “I didn’t want to mention it to you... Because, well, I tend to bump into people.”

  “I have to dodge people. I have to hide from people. People step on me.”

  “Did you see how everyone around here asks the two of us for directions? They stop us in the street to beg us for help!”

  “Well, you always have that map...”

  “Once they asked us four times in five minutes! What are the odds of that? None of them asked me, they only ask the two of us! That phenomenon is off-the-charts! That is a futurist harbinger, that is. That really proves there’s something going on with us!”

  She looked into his glowing face. She could not believe the joyful torment that was pouring through her soul and body. Here he was at last. Her One. And she knew, and he knew! What a triumph! What a perfect, beautiful moment! Radiant Destiny!

  Yet, the sacred moment passed them by. It felt eternal to her panging heart, yet it passed. The world was stealing all their precious moments from them, hour by hour. She could not help but know that. The future, the future...

  So much time... Think of all the wasted years they had lost from their lifetimes, already! And thin
k of the bitter years that would succeed this sweet perilous moment, this tremendous burst of emotional light...

  “We are two doomed lovers,” she said. “We are star-crossed.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Of course, I already know that we love each other, and we are doomed. That is so obvious.”

  “Our love is a disaster. I’m so happy right now that I want to die.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about that! Look at all these clowns... I’m about to give a speech that’s a disaster! I’m about to step up on that stage and make a total ass of myself! Just blathering nothing at people... Empty lies and hypocrisy... There is no way! Get me out of here. I refuse to do it.”

  Ferocious rebellion struck her. “I hate this! I won’t do it either! Let’s forget how doomed we are! Let’s tell everybody how great we are! I don’t want to be doomed like Cassandra! I want to feel alive and beloved and beautiful. Let’s change the story!”

  “We’ll write a new speech?”

  “You recite it, and I’ll translate it. If I say it and and you speak it, then I’m not Cassandra, perfetto. We’ll write our own speech here and now.”

  “You want me to throw my script aside, and jump into this blind? What are you saying to me? I’m an accountant! There’s no way.”

  “You are my One! You are my hero! You are my pride and joy! You are my prince, you are my Futurist god! The future belongs to you!”

  Her rush of passion blasted him out of his rut. “I get what you’re saying,” he said. “Let’s just do this Italian-style — ‘devil-may-care slap in the face of dark fate,’ and all that? I love that idea! It’s genius!”

  “Let’s be Futuristi! Like Marinetti said to do it! ‘Courage, audacity and revolt!’”

  “Okay, but... well, wait a second. Realistically, look. I’m not an Italian Futurist. Those guys are a hundred years old, they’re all dead. That’s not me at all, that’s surely not my future.”

  “Our future. Our beautiful, wonderful future, together. ‘Danger, energy, and fearlessness.’”