Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (28 page)

Like a lot of men who claimed that they “cared nothing for money,” Pancrazio was amazingly stingy. After she blew a few hundred of his Euros on lingerie, perfume and shoes — strictly to please him, and for no other reason — he set Farfalla a very strict household budget. His budget for his live-in girlfriend was a dreadful budget. It was an impossible budget. It was like a hateful Communist Five-Year Plan.

But the factory’s kitchen had a nice big budget. Pancrazio’s factory kitchen was always his soft spot. As soon as Pancrazio’s business was thriving, his factory’s kitchen grew sleek and high-tech. Spotless white ceramic cleavers, gleaming copper-bottomed saucepans, and golden bamboo spoons. Three gas ranges, a spectacular stainless fridge, large whirring blenders. A monster, killer, gorgeous cappuccino machine.

Her Italian geek boyfriend fussed like a maniac about every cent that anybody spent, but he never fussed about the sacred altar of the Italian kitchen. The cappuccino machine was the hearth of the factory. It was the ultimate meeting-place, covered with Post-It Notes. As the mistress of that kitchen, Farfalla drank more of this superb coffee than anybody else. She swam in that coffee. It was like living in fifth gear.

This regimen had her sweating and scolding and screaming at people, but Pancrazio was okay with that. Pancrazio liked people around him who were, as he put it, “hard core.” Pancrazio was an Italian man’s man. Pancrazio loved Italian heavy metal bands. He howled at Italian soccer games on Italian television. He liked loud, fast, Italian motorcycles, planes and speedboats. He liked Italian stereo equipment and precision machinery and FIAT rapid-prototype machines. That was Pancrazio Pola. The future of Italy. Take him or leave him.

Farfalla had tried leaving Pancrazio. She had left him for America, to work for almost three years, translating computer games into Italian. She’d been living in Seattle, and New York, and San Francisco, too. Translating computer games into Italian was very “of the future,” just like him.

But, that translation work was pretty boring, compared to Pancrazio. So, she came back to Ivrea. It was like she had never left. To tell the truth, it was like Pancrazio had never noticed.

Farfalla pedaled over to Pancrazio’s factory on her parents’ bamboo rickshaw. As usual, Pancrazio was out of town again. Pancrazio had gotten world-famous for being so artistically futuristic, so he traveled all the time.

Farfalla hauled her luggage into her private room. The factory had one hundred and eight empty rooms in it. This one precious sanctum was all hers.

Farfalla’s private factory room held every single thing that Farfalla owned in the world. Farfalla’s sanctuary had blacklight posters, astrology charts, incense burners, and rosewood rosaries. She had amulets, crystal bath salts, and brass candelabra shaped like human hands. She had Tarot cards, horror fumetti comics, and a complete Dario Argento DVD horror-movie collection.

Most of Farfalla’s precious things were remaindered bargains from Milanese New Age stores. Once Farfalla had been very proud of all her cool little occult treasures, and how wonderfully magic they were. She wasn’t proud any more, though. Of course, they were magic, they were ‘real magic,’ but so what? Farfalla’s magic always worked. Magic disgusted her. Her room was like a taxidermy shop for the dead dreams inside her own head.

Exhausted from her long rail trip and her noble effort to be nice to her parents, Farfalla dragged out her lonely futon. She sprawled on the dusty floor of her factory room. Her lonely room was silent, haunted, and reproachful. Her room smelled of mysticism, of hopeless illusion, of bitter self-deception. Of heartbreak and eventual death.

Farfalla lay there marinating in her own sour mood. Pancrazio was not there to greet her, or chuck her chin and at least wink at her, or make her feel any better about anything in any way. Pancrazio was in Brussels, testifying to the European Parliament and getting some fancy European innovation award. Pancrazio left Ivrea even more often than she did, and she left the place as often as she could.

So, she lay there – alone, bitter, neglected, wistfully hoping for a peaceful sleep. No chance of that, of course. No peace in this sour darkness, just her dark future. Her waiting. Her foreboding. Her terrible, primal foreboding. Her dark Cassandra dread. Her certainty that the future was falling on her like a black avalanche, and that she deserved the worst from her future.

She had done something bad and wrong.

Love. Pangs of love. The torment of love. Love had no pity on her. Love should had killed her off in one moment. Love should have pierced through her heart and flicked out the far side of her body like a shotgun wound. She could endure a few bloodied heartbeats of love, a few dizzy moments of hot, carnal passion... The Cupid arrow of time flying through her, here yesterday, gone today... That arrow had not passed through Farfalla. She was stuck on that arrow. Pinned like an insect in a box on a shelf. Her fate was impalement.

Love was not a flying arrow. Frustrated love was frustration. Frustration was cold iron, solid iron. She could feel it there, a colossal presence.

This new feeling was solid,weighty, and terrible. No mere words could ever chase this ghost away. This was not a dead, dry leaf from the past. This was a heavy, suffocating burden. It was full of inertia. A monster on her bleeding heart, cold and unyielding, like a black anvil.

This was Regret. Regret did not screech or bluster at her, like Lust, Rage, or Jealousy. Regret said nothing to Farfalla. Regret was a huge, solid, implacable presence. Regret was indestructible, fit to outlast her life. Every attempt to evade Regret, or forget Regret, or ignore Regret, bounced off its dark bulk like a spark. Regret meant decades of silent misery. The sorrow of her Regret could outlast seven generations.

Her tears were coming now. Her tears came thick and fast, and each one left one tiny, tiny trail of rust on her Regret. A river of them wouldn’t wash it away. Not a sea, not seven surging planetary oceans.

***

In the morning, Farfalla woke in complete bewilderment. Then, reality dawned like a rising sun. Capri was over. She had returned to real life. The cold reality. The romantic dream of Capri was two thousand years gone. It would never return.

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.