Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  This was her reality. She was where she lived. This was just another day in her life. She would do the same things today that she always did.

  She had a sponge bath in the sink of an abandoned factory restroom. She did her face, brushed her hair, threw on some clothes.

  Down in the kitchen, the starving geeks were slurping cappuccino from the giant machine and gobbling cheap butter cookies out of tattered paper bags. Farfalla did a factory floor-tour, to get a head-count of the hungry. There were a dozen of them today. Bespectacled technicians from ten different countries, and every one of them gave her a cheery “Ciao bella!”

  They would never dream of making a pass at the boss’s girl, because their respect for Pancrazio was colossal. But most of them wanted to give it a try. She was the token hot chick in their future-factory, their mascot for whatever came next. She was their slave instead of their queen, but come on, that wasn’t so bad. Slavery for Cassandra? Cassandra was a slave, that was the Cassandra story. At least, they were noticing her.

  These were her guests here. These were her travellers. Farfalla had a deep mystical obligation to all guests and travellers. She herself was a guest and a traveller. This was her duty to tomorrow’s globalizing world.

  So, into the factory’s rusty jeep and off to the local open-air market. It was a pretty day. She had money in her pocket. She bought fresh garlic. Brown onions, green onions, yellow onions. Tomatoes, peppers. Big, round loaves of bread. Spiced sausage. Gigantic, plastic-handled, multi-liter jugs of a cheap but decent Sangiovese.

  This was her work. She was good at it. She was useful to the future, whether the future knew that or not. To be useful to the future was never a bad thing.

  Back to the factory kitchen. The geeks had left it a horrible mess, as they always did whenever she wasn’t around. She slammed a couple of coffees, strapped on her apron, and wrapped on a headscarf. She jammed her iPhone into its slot to blast some music, as she muscled the kitchen into order. Hard-working music, with a heavy beat. Rio de Janeiro favela baile funk.

  Farfalla played Brazilian baile funk in her darkest moods. Baile funk always cheered her up, because it was music from people much more miserable than herself. Penniless, violent, criminal people in monster, urban shantytowns, screaming in bad Portuguese about their drugs and guns. To Italian listeners, baile funk just sounded like cool dance music.

  So, she was cooking lunch for twelve. No problem. She had done it before, she could do it again. Somebody had to do it. Nobody else would. Her life had structure. Pots were boiling. The aroma of onions. Pepper flying. More coffee. More baile funk.

  A tender, crooning song interrupted Farfalla’s groove. Gentle, tinkling night-club piano...

  “If you’re feeling sad and lonely...”

  Astrud Gilberto. What was that cocktail-diva doing in this pop-mix of bellowed threats and gunfire? Oh yes, Eliza Tremaine had given her this song. The Astrud Gilberto classic, “Call Me.” Here it was, popping up on her iPhone playlist.

  Not at random, either. “Call Me” was calling to her.

  Farfalla listened keenly. Their song!

  This was the ghostly voice of her rival. The Other Woman was oozing into Farfalla’s factory kitchen! Straight out of Farfalla’s iPhone. Well, of course. How else could such a thing happen?

  What a classy, lovely, beautiful song that was. It was so pretty and sweet that it filled Farfalla with shame. That song had such a romantic story. “Call Me” was a beautiful fantasy narrative.

  This sweet story was sung by a woman with amazing erotic self-confidence. Her song for her man was prayer-like, a kind of sexy blessing. Every line of her song was a warm promise, or a faithful assurance, or a tender, womanly condolence. To listen was like being kissed.

  The “Call Me” woman asks nothing for herself. Her only wish is to be called by him, because she knows he needs her. Her only wish is to look after him, to be trusted by him, to be there for him.

  The “Call Me” girl is painlessly available to her lover at any moment. Day or night, any weather, any reason, any season. She will walk across the city naked in her bathrobe to embrace him, apparently. She will never vex him with any problem or a sorrow of her own. She is a golden jar of honey.

  It was agonizing to hear “their song.” Farfalla was in torment as she listened. She and her boyfriend Pancrazio didn’t have a song. Pancrazio’s song (if he had one), would have been one of those annoying macho rock ballads where some hippie tells his girlfriend that he has to be “rambling on.”

  With a deliberate fingertip act of self-torture, Farfalla set “Call Me” onto repeat. She could not hammer out evil gangsta Baile Funk when this lovely, enticing song was scenting the air in her kitchen.

  What a fantastic song “Call Me” was. It was so amazing! Every time she heard it again, its magic unfolded more deeply. No wonder Golden Honey Girl had picked out this song for Gavin. Obviously, she had picked “their song” — because it spoke for her. Her song was marvelous. Just listen to that brilliant organ solo. It was like some gorgeous, barefoot duchess dancing in a sarong.

  Farfalla poked a long, wooden spoon into her pot of boiling brown beans, feeling the full height, depth and width of her humiliation. This song excluded her, totally, utterly, from the life of Gavin Tremaine. She could not offer him anything remotely like this dazzling song. It had never once in her life occurred to her to behave like the Golden Honey Girl.

  Golden Honey Girl was like a princess from an ivory tower on Venus. That sweet, stealthy, patient way that she sang those first two verses at him... And the way her song ended, without ending at all. Ending in a silent, sensual invitation. Of course, he is going to call her! He is going to call her right away. How could he not call her?

  She hadn’t left him anything else to do.

  Their “song” was over. It immediately began again. Like all great pop songs, “Call Me” only lasted three minutes. Three minutes for Golden Honey Girl to be “at your side forever.”

  So, well, strictly speaking — she is not ‘at his side forever.’ She is at his side for three minutes, nineteen seconds.

  Farfalla bloodily hacked her way through half a dozen fresh tomatoes.

  At the next repeat of “Call Me”, more hairline cracks appeared in the fantasy romance narrative. Given that this is a Brazilian samba song — and it certainly is a samba, one of the greatest sambas of all time — why is Golden Honey Girl singing to her man in English? How is that even possible? She’s singing American English, at that. Maybe a Brazilian samba girl can love some American guy — of course, she can love him. But then, how can he “call her,” and have her come right over? She’s in Brazil, while he’s in America!

  Is Golden Honey Girl’s boyfriend an American living in Brazil, a foreigner who speaks no Portuguese? He speaks only English? And lives in Brazil? No wonder he’s feeling “sad and lonely.”

  Maybe... Maybe, he really is sad and lonely. Maybe, Golden Honey Girl has him completely isolated from other people. Just listen to what she is telling him in these lyrics. These suggestively sinister things that she is singing to him. “You’ve got to trust me...” Why? Why doesn’t he trust her already? “Don’t be afraid...” Maybe he has some good reasons to be afraid. “I’m the one who’ll never hurt you...” How much does she know about these people who are “hurting” him so much?

  Farfalla pulled the rice-pot from the stove. Was the rice burning? No. That was a distinct smell of something on fire, though. Nothing inside her kitchen. Something really nasty. Inside the factory building.

  Farfalla put lunch on low heat. She followed her nose. What an awful stench. Like burning feathers mixed with marijuana.

  Up on the third floor, in a white-tiled, dusty room that had once been a corporate bathroom, there was a thirteenth guest.

  Rafael looked up as she walked in on him. Rafael wore black denim and steel-toed boots. He’d put on maybe five kilos, and he had a ridiculous soul-patch beard on his chin.

  Other th
an that, her little brother was just the same as her brother always was. Maybe even worse.

  “Rafael! What are you burning in here?”

  “I’m rendering these chicken feathers,” Rafael said. “I need the keratin, so I can blend it with this acrylated oil.” Rafael adjusted a bunsen burner. “You wouldn’t understand that.”

  “But Mom and Dad are expecting you at home!”

  “Oh well,” he said, wiping his hands on his black jeans, “I thought I’d postpone that ordeal... It’s not like Mom and Dad are ever going anywhere. So, you’re finally back from wherever you scrammed, is that it? What was it this time, Brazil?”

  “Capri.”

  “Capri is great! Why do you look so awful?”

  Farfalla didn’t know what to say to him. She had never known what to say to Rafael. When she told him the truth, he used it against her. If she lied to him, then he cheerfully called her a liar.

  He had littered the room with chemical glassware and tubing. He’d turned the place into a bomb lab.

  “Can’t you do something about this smell?”

  “I never know how to tell you about these things,” said Rafael. “But the substrate of circuit boards is made of petroleum. In the future, Pancho will need some green, organic, future-style material for his circuit boards. So I am taking these chicken feathers, and the refined ingredients from this soybean oil, and I’m creating an organic plastic.” Rafael paused. “I’ve completely lost you already, haven’t I? You’ve been hanging out around here for years now, and you’re still a technical moron.”

  “Does it have to stink so badly? Burning feathers are the worst smell in the world!”

  “That’s why I’m working way up here on an abandoned floor,” said Rafael, rolling his eyes. “None of the men around here are nagging me about the smell.”

  “Look at all this broken glass! You could set fire to this place!”

  “I can see I’ll get no peace from you, to get my work done,” said Rafael. “Typical! Fine! Great! It’s time for a smoke break.”

  Rafael shouldered past her. He kicked open the rusty doors to a balcony, a handsome place once built for corporate executives. The Space Age balcony was damp-stained and blotchy now, but it had a fresh breeze.

  Rafael dug into his jeans and pulled out a metal pipe. He stuffed a crumb of hashish onto the pipe’s copper screen.

  “Don’t you dare smoke your drugs up here! Pancrazio would kill you.”

  “Would you shut up, just for once, please? What a pest you are! Listen, I live in Holland! I grew this marijuana in my own apartment. Legally.”

  “That’s hash. That’s not marijuana.”

  “Well, I refined this hashish myself. From my own hemp. That was a very interesting technical process. You should look it up on the Internet.”

  “You are a crook, Rafael. You’re breaking the law.”

  Rafael plucked a cheap plastic lighter from another pocket. “Oh, sure, sure I’m a crook! Of course, I am! We’re all waiting for the Carabiniere to rush in here, and raid the last working factory in this town! Like the Italian cops can’t find the Italian mafia? I swear, Farfalla, you live in such a fantasy world! Whatever comes next from you? You want me to do my Italian income taxes now? Would that make you happy?”

  “Why are you always like this? You are so evil! I hate you.”

  “You’ve been saying that to me since I was five years old! Can’t you think of one new, clever thing to say to me? Let me tell you something really new and cool. I built a home-made robot that was four stories high. It ate East German cars. In Saint Petersburg.”

  “Did you make any money? Doing that?”

  “Well, no, I’m broke again now. But really, that rave in the Russian forest was legendary. You should see all the YouTube clips.”

  “So,” Farfalla sighed, “Pancrazio took pity on you. And let you come back here. Again.”

  “Pancho needs me!” Rafael said. “Not many guys are willing to make a thousand mistakes, cooking chicken feathers into plastic. I don’t mind! I love Pancho’s research work.” Rafael thumbed his cheap lighter and torched the hash in his metal pipe. “To tell you the truth,” he said, coughing gleefully, “I prefer to do it wrong. I’d like to do technology wrong a million times. When technology works, and it makes some profitable product that corporate creeps can sell, I’m disappointed.”

  “After what you did here last time, I can’t believe Pancrazio let you come back again.”

  “I can’t believe that he lets you come here! Pancho and I see eye to eye on everything. You are the miserable creature who is the curse of our lives. And there you go with that sour look on your face again! You’re like the mop-and-bucket drudge girl, Cinderella! This world is so full of fun, and so many great, cool ideas... Things to do, exciting things to make... It’s a privilege to work in an awesome hackerspace like this! And here, you’re all doomy and whining and bitchy! All you ever do is pout and mope!”

  “That’s not true! I can be happy. I can be overjoyed.”

  Rafael’s eyes went glossy with disbelief. “You were happy? Am I stoned?” He examined the pipe, then looked in her face. “I’m not stoned. You were happy. How did that happen? I can’t believe it.”

  She said nothing.

  “I didn’t know that happiness was possible for you,” said Rafael in wonderment. “You weren’t scolding anybody? You weren’t bitter and shrewish? You weren’t beating up the geeks with your soup ladle? So, what happened to you, then? Did your worst enemy die? Who is your worst enemy? Besides me.”

  “I have to finish making lunch now.”

  “Oh yes. Sure you do. Hey, wait, I know! You were up to something! In Capri. You were having ‘a good time in Capri.’ You can’t hide that from me. So, what happened down there in Capri? Give me a hint.”

  Why was it always like this with him? Farfalla had to flee.

  She returned to the endless spool of “Call Me,” downstairs in her kitchen. She finished lunch. She went personally to every geek in the factory, and yelled into his ear that food had magically appeared. She had learned from long experience that there was no other way to compel the attention of the hackers.

  Some of these men didn’t speak Italian, or Portuguese, or even English. Some yelled back at her that they were “too busy” to eat. They were sitting in a litter of candy bars.

  But the rest of them came right along. They chowed down on their brimming bowls. They swigged red wine together. They tore hot bread apart and smeared cheese on it. The food at Pancho’s art-factory was great. These geeks were having the time of their lives.

  No sign of her brother sucking up any lunch. Rafael was the world’s best fridge-raiding scrounger, so that was a bad sign.

  Farfalla could not eat anything. She was too upset to eat.

  She found Rafael alone in the smaller computer lab, with his feet up in a tattered office chair. He was pounding away on a borrowed Linux laptop.

  “I figured you would show up here,” Rafael smirked. “Have you looked up ‘Farfalla Corrado’ on Google Blogsearch?”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve got paparazzi.”

  Farfalla had to have a look. Rafael had found a snapshot of her. In Capri. A picture of her, together with Gavin Tremaine.

  Farfalla was stunned. The two of them looked wonderful together. Healthy and confident and shiny-eyed and full of... Full of dignity.

  “That scandal blog is full of lies,” she blurted.

  “You’re full of lies. How long have you been dating this American guy? Look at you two! You’re practically sitting in his lap! You’re having an affair with him.”

  “I hardly know him.”

  “Oh sure, of course!” Rafael snickered and rolled his eyes. “Why do you lie to me like that? Do I care if you have some fling in Capri? I’m not the Pope.” He shuffled a few screens, then he looked into her eyes. “Look, I can see that you’ve known this guy a long time. ‘Gavin Tremaine.’ He’s from Seattle. You used to
live in Seattle.”

  “But that’s not true! It’s all made up! It’s just Internet gossip, it’s not real at all! Look, they Photoshopped my picture. That’s my favorite dress, and they made it look blue. My Futuristi dress is not blue at all! I can show you that dress! It’s downstairs in the laundry.”

  Rafael squinted at his laptop screen. “Are you wearing a wedding ring in this pic? Look, you have a ring on your hand.”

  Farfalla leaned way in for a closer look at the screen. Gavin looked so handsome. And wow, did she ever look glamorous in this grainy, gossipy, weblog picture. She looked sleek and gorgeous and sexy and totally sure of herself. She looked like a movie star on the prowl. As if Audrey Hepburn would have to say “I look a little bit like Farfalla Corrado.”

  Farfalla couldn’t get over herself. She had never seen herself looking so chic, attractive, and glorious. She could almost forgive the sarcastic, sleazy caption under the photograph, because, come on, with any girl who looked that great, who wouldn’t?

  “I had a silver fork in my hand,” she said. “They Photoshopped my fork away. So it looks like I’m wearing a wedding ring.”

  Rafael shook his shaggy head. “You are pathetic! If you’re going to lie to me that badly, this affair of yours must be serious. So, who is this guy, ‘Gavin Tremaine?’ Wait a minute, I’ll find out.” Rafael pounded eagerly at the keyboard.

  “I can’t believe that you believe a bunch of stupid lies on gossip websites! That’s not reality! Look at that web page! Who cares who Miley Cyrus is dating?”

  “So, your boyfriend’s speech in Capri was a big hit,” Rafael observed. “He got linked on TechCrunch Europe... and Mashable... ReadWriteWeb, even... Your cavaliere here made a classy presentation.”

  “Yes, he did. Gavin was great. Gavin was fantastic.”

  “I see. How nice for you.”

  “I never even kissed him! He’s not my lover, I swear, it’s not true! His golden honey can be sure I never touched him with my dirty mop and broom...”