“Yeah, I said that, I guess. Even a Futurist can’t keep track of everything in the world.”
“Well, I’m still pretty far from being a ‘princess of music.’ But some people think that I’m a ‘countess.’ Because I have an accountant.” Eliza offered him a girlish smile, although the subject was no joke to Eliza. Eliza was in deadly earnest about her strange ambitions and he could easily foresee a lifetime of struggle for her. A few queenly, glamorous victories against a general background of squalor and oppression. That was the music scene, anywhere in the world, accountants or not.
Gavin looked his sister over. “Eliza, you look great. Being of voting age has really matured you. I’m impressed. That’s an awesome... silk tunic, or whatever it is.”
“Really?” said Eliza, brushing at her fabric. “Pablo gave this to me. It’s from Sao Paulo.”
“Pablo,” said Gavin.
“Yeah, Pablo’s this Brazilian veejay. He’s been helping me a lot with the music plans for my birthday party. Pablo’s an interaction designer who knows augmented reality. He’s a big pal of Sonja Khalecallon.”
“So, you’ve got a Brazilian boyfriend now? I should have guessed that.” Yes, thought Gavin silently, he had been warned about that subject. He had been briefed. Brazil was coming. He had agreed with that scenario. He even believed it. He just... couldn’t make Brazil fit into his future. A big place, Brazil.
“Sonja is planning a West Coast tour. Sonja’s coming to Seattle. Sonja has all kinds of plans.”
“No doubt,” said Gavin. “Well, I’m going to wash my hands.” He went back to his meditation shack and dabbled his hands in a tin basin of water.
Eliza blinked, intimidated, as she looked around his gloomy wooden cell. “You sure have been living in a tiny place. It’s dirty. And freezing, freezing cold.”
“It’s all the same to me.”
“You’re not very clean, Gavin. I mean, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you haven’t shaved in about a month, and your clothes really smell. You’re like a wild animal.”
“’To live without society, a man must be either very like a god or very like a wild beast,’” Gavin quoted. “To live outside the law, you must be honest.’”
“Gavin, can’t you please come home now?”
“For a while, before I go to Brazil,” he said. “Yes. I will go home.”
Chapter Twenty: Seattle Voodoo
A pin through a butterfly was good-old-fashioned voodoo. One fatal steel pin, straight through the butterfly. To nail the butterfly. Inside her dry cigar box. Stored there, perfect and dead. Dead in darkness. A pretty trophy for futurity.
But, in a world of global networks, the steel pins came from all directions. When you lived on the Net, you left vulnerable traces everywhere. A picture, an address. A lock of hair, a drop of blood, a look, a touch. A blown kiss.
Suddenly, after weeks of silent suffering, a gloomy Christmas, a cheerless New Year’s Eve... The new year comes for you. The new decade, the year 2010. It brings a reason for you to go to Seattle.
Yes, to Seattle. Not to New York, not Capri, not Rome, or Rio — fatal Seattle. You don’t want to go to Seattle. You don’t need to go to Seattle. Avoiding Seattle forever is what you most want to do.
Hiss, whiz, here comes a voodoo pin of email, to pierce your aching heart: “Come to our computer-game conference in Seattle! We need you, we miss you, Farfalla. Happy New Year!”
You crazy people miss me? When I last heard from you, you were conducting a fire-sale at your dead console company. Now you’re trying to drag Italian gamers to your pricey, future-of-games event in Seattle?
Is this an insult? This is an insult. My voodoo doll has tender skin. The skin of my voodoo doll has been stretched taut across the whole planet. A silent voodoo pin has pierced me, and though there’s no visible wound, I’m limping, I’m hurt, I’m bleeding.
I’m home talking to my mother, over the vegetarian spaghetti. I’m dealing rather successfully with Mama’s forty-year-old counterculture eccentricities, and then Mama says... Not so much a voodoo pin, as a motherly mortar attack... she says, “Cara, have you thought of going back to Seattle?”
But mother, why, why would I go to Seattle? And mother says, quite casually, without a blush of shame, that she is following the Facebook page of Madeleine Lindholm.
Mama, no. Why, Mama? Mother, why why are you a Facebook “friend” of the insanely evil Madeleine Lindholm?
Mother says because she is there on Facebook, that’s why! If you followed her, that would be too obvious! On Facebook, Madeleine Lindholm is “Single.” Madeleine is “Looking.” Mama knows what that means. Even the wife of a retired Italian architect on a state pension in rural Italy has heard all about Madeleine’s romantic condition. This elderly woman, who uses her computer once a week to keep up with her lists of human-rights victims on Amnesty International. But mother knows.
Dear, don’t you think you might go to Seattle? If you have no money, we understand. Your father and I have a little money put aside for emergencies like this.
Well, that’s bad. But at least it is not the boyfriend’s fault. Whatever it is, this dreadful thing that has happened, it was not the boyfriend’s fault. The boyfriend is Pancrazio Pola, he’s the same Pancrazio Pola that he’s always been. Whatever has happened is not because of the boyfriend, because he has always been who he is.
If he neglected you, then, he always neglected you. If he was selfish, he was always selfish in that same, predictable way. You knew what you were getting when you started with him. This is all your fault, not his. He was perfectly happy with his soldering irons. He tolerated you because, well, men are men. Any guy is going to be pretty happy with a pretty woman who insists.
But now the boyfriend also wants a big talk with you. He’s all thrilled about the way events have twisted. For him, this new year brings exciting promise of the future! It’s his big break! And he’s like, “Cara, Microsoft! Microsoft in Seattle!”
And you respond, naturally, “But Pancrazio, Microsoft is evil! Microsoft is the source of all evil in the world of computing!” And he responds, yes of course, of course Microsoft is evil, but I didn’t realize that Microsoft would be reading what I wrote on my website! Those web documents you were translating about my microcontroller circuitry! An all-expenses first-class trip to lecture at Microsoft Research Labs! In Seattle!
But Pancrazio, you can’t go and lecture to Microsoft in Seattle! You always said that Microsoft was big and bad and wrong! You told everyone about that! It’s the elephant’s graveyard of great ideas- Microsoft! Microsoft has hired everybody important to make sure they never do anything! Their research labs are the giant dungeon of tortured, imprisoned computer ideas!
Well, yes, my dear — I said that, but that was then, and this is now. Now, I have to say something else to you. My English is faulty, my English embarrasses me. The Americans in Seattle love your English, they used to hire you to work there. So, we must both go to Seattle, together. I need my trusty little translator. We are going to Seattle. No debate. They sent first-class tickets already. Get packed.
To be attacked in this sinister way... Love hurts! Because Pancrazio, your boyfriend, is not a bad man. He is just the man that you chose when you were lonely and you knew no better. And he is boyishly eager to cruelly find out in Seattle, that you love another man, instead of him.
As a fact, you have not betrayed Pancrazio. You did not even kiss the man you loved. But you are a woman, so you already know in your heart that you are a sneaking, dirty traitor. Not that Pancrazio wouldn’t betray you with some other girl. Pancrazio would do that in a minute. But that’s not how it works. Not with men and women.
So, you have to quickly invent a lie to explain your frantic need to shun Seattle and avoid Gavin Tremaine. Your desperate urge to dodge your fate there. So, you tell him-I can’t go to Seattle. Because I have another job. I’m too busy, I can’t possibly go. I am trying to find an antique bronze statue of Cupi
d. It’s an important magical quest, more important than Microsoft. I must go back to Capri to pick up the trail.
What? You’re engaged in some childish, hopeless treasure hunt, while the great Pancrazio Pola has been granted an audience with the world’s most profitable computer company?
Yes, Pancrazio. I know that the Cosmic Cupid is just a sentimental bronze statue of some stupid winged fairy. Compared to the almighty Microsoft, my humble quest and my destiny as a woman shouldn’t even be mentioned. But I have found some good leads, because I have the Internet. Just like you, just like everyone else.
When fate sticks voodoo pinss into me, I can stick them back. I am pretty sure I can really find that bronze statue. Because I know the woman for whom that statue was made. I have studied her life, and I have read her work. I have pored over her writings, each page, each word. I have entered into the dark spirit in which she committed these literary crimes, and I have learned to sympathize and to forgive.
I have put on the long-dead husk of the author’s skin and I have seen the world through her occult and sidelong eyes, and yes, I have even wept over her pages and stained her ink with my tears.
So, I am not pretending, I am not lying, I am not deceiving myself with any fantasies. I can track it down, I can find it. I can bring the Cosmic Cupid out of the shadows and into the light. Yes, me.
I know, I know, that I can really, truly find it.
Chapter Twenty-One: Looking for a Factory Girl
It was unlike Gavin to take a 6,479-mile trip on impulse. Then, he heard from his Microsoft contacts that Pancho Pola was coming to Seattle.
The word around Pancho Pola was out on the street. Why? Because in fate’s perverse irony, Gavin himself had put that word there.
The word had spread to the Microsofties. This Italian guy’s a big circuit-bender, they told him. This Pola guy is publishing a ton of open-source electronics. It’s totally out there, it’s some freaky stuff. And it’s in English.
Something new has come out of Pola’s archives, every day, for a solid month. We surfed that stuff. He’s weird, man. He’s into stuff we’ve never seen before. Not those big, old-school, hot-as-a-frying-pan integrated chips. Something new in the world. Elegant, artsy circuit boards. Portable ones. Lightweight, handheld, and pervasive.
So, we had better have the genius over to the lab. We’ll have a word with him, maybe make him an offer. We love to make Intel sweat!
His girlfriend? Why ask about her? Why, of course, she’s coming along! His so-called Italian translator? Certainly! Of course, we’ll bring Pancho’s girlfriend along to Seattle. We’re the biggest tech company on Earth! We’re the Big Blue Monster, we have a travel budget!
So, here she was. Almost at his doorstep. Farfalla Corrado, invading his home town.
Thanks to the consolations of philosophy, he had found some bedrock on which to balance his life. Scarred, bare bedrock, something like cooled lava, but bedrock. He had survived his romantic heartbreak, and he had his sanity and the ability to maintain. And now? Now, she was on her way to see him. The fateful woman.
The very act he’d invented, to tell her goodbye forever, had brought her straight to his door.
Farfalla was supposed to be translating her boyfriend’s technical documents, at Gavin’s expense. Specifically, to make it totally clear, finally clear, that his flirtation with her was a thing of the past, all over.
Here she came, anyway. Despite all those gestures of his. No, not despite of what he had done, but because of what he had done. The witch on a broom, the creature in the overhead bin. On her way to trample his heart again.
Oh yes. What Futurist couldn’t predict the bitter irony? What confluence of events could fail to provoke such a total, agonized mess? When the best, most decent thing you could plan to do, brought you the very opposite of what you intended? Was there even a word for that? If there was, that word was “woman.”
Well, he should have known it would happen. To tell the truth, in his heart, he had indeed known that it was coming. How could it not happen? The thing he fought against with all his power was a certainty. No, not “it,” for God’s sake. Her. She was coming. She was happening. Her. Across the planet, she was coming to him. Farfalla.
How could it be made any clearer to him that he had no power of foresight? No control of events? No ability to make a decision, and stick to a plan? He was too weak and foolish to survive. It was shameful.
How often he outguessed future events, and how rarely he changed them. The Golden Boy was a straw in the wind.
So now what? Whatever came next? Gavin knew what would come next, because the scenario was obvious.
This is the scenario, the future story. He goes to Pancho Pola’s lecture, in the Microsoft Research Lab. Because he was cordially invited by important Microsoft people, so he has to go. Everyone knows that Gavin Tremaine does tech business in Italy. They know that Pancho Pola is his personal friend.
How could he not go? Pancho Pola was not just a friend, but also a business partner. So what happens after that, in the future scenario story? Farfalla Corrado is there, that’s what happens. She is in the room. Translating, as usual. A warm, womanly, irresistible presence. A shapely bundle of Italian dynamite. Would he have the presence-of-mind to ignore her? To lie about what she meant to him?
No. Gavin couldn’t possibly do that. What came next was obvious. Events would spiral out of control. He would lose it. He loved another man’s woman.
He would end up decking Pancho Pola in the hallowed high-tech chapel of the Microsoft Research Lab. He was going to wallop that guy, because he frankly couldn’t handle the rage of his loss, and the pain of his jealousy.
He would throw Farfalla’s lover over a couple of lab benches and toss him through the interactive whiteboards. Then, security would be called. This meant complete shame and degradation. Come on, how on Earth could anybody ever hush up a disaster like that? Two guys have a frenzied punch-up over a woman inside the Microsoft Research Lab? That was a colossal, life-wrecking, Italian opera. No one would ever hear the end of that scandal.
So, that future scenario wouldn’t do. He had to avoid that situation at all costs. What would work?
Well, let’s be logical. Whatever, or whoever, could arrive on a plane, could also depart on a plane. If Farfalla Corrado was flying to Seattle, then, at the same time, he could fly somewhere far away. Somewhere else, anywhere else that wasn’t Seattle. Where on Earth could he go? Logically, some place that was very, very not-Seattle. The most not-Seattle place that the world could offer.
Sao Paulo. Yes. That ought to be far enough. Futuristic Brazil. Brazil in his story, again and again, coming in from the edges of his narrative, distant yet insistent. Brazil was an “emergent power,” jumping into the narrative mainstream of history.
Sao Paulo was beckoning to Gavin Tremaine. One woman versus a mighty nation of one hundred and seventy million people. What had his mentor, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante, told him about Brazil? In the long run, the story was bound to be about Brazil.
Suppose then, that he seized the initiative and boldly went to Brazil. Why not? That future scenario story was more like it. This was a future counter-move of chess-master genius.
Look at the laptop screen here: the Sao Paulo Trend Assessment Congress. It’s January 2010. It’s summer in South American, and it’s the sister event of the Capri event! The very event where he had first met Farfalla Corrado. Except the polar opposite, now, because, instead of being held in Capri, the second Trend Assessment Congress was hosted in Sao Paulo. This time around, the Italians were the guests and the Brazilians were the hosts. Everything is reversed, upside-down. Yet, everyone was just as futuristic as before!
The Brazilians very much wanted him to go to their Trend Assessment Congress, because he had done so well in Capri. They’d been pestering him over email about it, and even calling his Seattle office when he failed to answer them. The Brazilians had even gone through the hassle of arranging a Brazilian visa for h
im — along with their other star foreign guests.
He could go, and they’d be glad for him to go. So, he would attend the Trend Assessment Congress in Sao Paulo. As far away as a jet could carry him.
Just one possible snarl to this brilliant scheme, however. She might, somehow, show up there, in Brazil, at the Trend Assessment Conference. No normal woman would ever pull a paranormal stunt like that, but this was Farfalla Corrado. So she might.
Still, if she was in Seattle, coming there to ruin his future life, then it was physically impossible for her to also be in Brazil. She would probably know that he was there in Brazil, because she had the Internet, but she couldn’t possibly be there.
She would likely even figure out that he had gone there to avoid seeing her. Because she was a futurist. But then again, so was he. She would know, but he would know that she knew.
A futurist could be in two times at once, but even a witch couldn’t be in two places at once. Could she?
Was Farfalla Corrado on the list of attendees, on the handy website of the “São Paulo Congresso Avaliação das Tendências”? No, Farfalla Corrado was not on the list of attendees. Thank goodness. Was she on the staff of the Congresso somehow, as a paid translator, perhaps? No, the entire staff was listed on the website. Farfalla Corrado was not on that list either.
What else could he do — look for hotels in Sao Paulo, where Farfalla might be have booked a room? That was not a reasonable precaution. That was simply paranoid. If she wasn’t going to Sao Paulo, then she wasn’t going there. So that is where he would go.
He booked a ticket to Sao Paulo. Tourist class. Then, he left.
Gavin had never been to Brazil before. He knew certain things about the electronics of the Brazilian aviation industry, but he knew next to nothing about the nation itself. Gavin had only vague, malformed, American folk-legend notions of what went on inside that other giant of the Western hemisphere. Carmen Miranda, for instance. Coconuts. Shapely, topless Ipanema babes. Carnaval feather costumes.
Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) Page 29