Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (5 page)

Sprinkled with fairy dust, Gavin slept in peace.

At length, the ring of his phone blasted him from sleep. Gavin pulled dead headphones from his head, flailed them wildly across the hotel room and grabbed his mobile.

It was Eliza. “What, what?” he barked.

“Are you awake?”

Gavin lowered his voice. “What is it, Eliza?” He checked his watch. Five in the morning, central European time.

“This weird old hotel has a ghost,” his sister told him.

“Oh. I see. Right. What kind of ghost is it, exactly?”

“There’s a cold spot in the corner by the drapes. I heard it moaning. And it’s all foggy over there. Like, with some spiderwebs.”

“Great,” Gavin said. “Use your iPhone. Turn on the video. If you take video of a real ghost, the evidence is worth a Nobel Prize.”

“No, it isn’t!” Eliza complained. “YouTube has
tons
of ghosts caught on video! Nobody ever looks at ghosts! Nobody even
cares
about them!”

Eliza was pitifully afraid. Gavin’s annoyance faded. His sister was just a kid in trouble. “Look, sis, it’ll be okay. Don’t be scared. You have a room that’s safe — right over here with me. Just go downstairs, and tell the concierge to call you a cab. You’ll be back here, right as rain, in ten minutes.”

“You can’t come over here?” Eliza whispered.

“What do you expect me to do, go hit your ghost with a flyswatter? Just cancel the rest of your reservation, and remember not to leave any power adapters behind.”

“You don’t believe me!” she protested. “You think I’m making this up!”

“Did you try getting out of the bed? Turning on all the lights? Maybe opening a couple of windows? Throwing some cold water on your face?”

“No,” Eliza said, in a small voice. “No, I didn’t do any of those things. “

“Take the iPhone over to your ghost, and let me have a few words with the gentleman.”

“That is
mean!
Sometimes you just
spoil everything,
Gavin! What is with you? You’re
stupid,
Gavin! You think I would get scared over
nothing?
You leave me alone in this strange room with the undead. Fine, I’ll do it! I’ll take care of it all by myself, some help you are!” Eliza hung up.

Gavin looked at the wallpaper of his room, then called her back.

“Go back to sleep,” she grumbled. “You boring accountant creep.”

“Wait, there’s another thing,” Gavin said. “All those CD’s you brought with you. Who’s that French girl, not Goth at all, but a folk singer with a great acoustic album? She’s just super, I love her, she’s so real! I can’t seem to find the slipcase just now. She was Charlotte something.”

“Charlotte Gainsbourg?”

“No. That’s not her.”

“Carla Bruni?”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Yeah, that was Carla Bruni. They’re giving away her new record over at the Futurist Congress. You do know Carla Bruni, right? She is
the
Carla Bruni, the ‘best-dressed woman in the world.’ The rich gorgeous supermodel who married the President of France.”

“No way. That can’t be Carla Bruni. This was, like, a sweet little French waif with a guitar.”

“That’s her, all right. She’s Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. She’s the First Lady of France.”

“That’s just not possible.” That reedy, sensual, husky creature who had crawled into his lap as he slept — that was the wife of the President of France? That was France’s First Lady, the
Premiere Dame
? This tender, confiding songstress was married to a national leader with nuclear weapons?

“Carla and Sarkozy had a famous love affair,” Eliza insisted. “The President of France dropped everything he was doing, and he chased Carla Bruni all over the world. They went to the Pyramids. They even went to the Taj Mahal. They had a tremendous romance.”

Gavin could not believe a word of it. As a Futurist, Gavin was at ease with some unusual possibilities. A story like this, though, was more than he was willing to accept.

After hanging up, Gavin found the cover of the Carla Bruni album. Somehow, Carla Bruni had crawled under his bed to snuggle with Mark Twain.

It was all true. It had really happened. Love was that strange, and that strong. This was contemporary reality.

What kind of world allowed such a thing to be possible?

Chapter Four: The Secret Statue of the Princess Amelie Troubetzkoy

Farfalla stealthily left her couch in the apartment of the former Italian TV spokesmodel. Eleonora was busy in the bathroom, examining her plastic surgery scars and chain-smoking.

Farfalla walked downhill across Capri, back to the conference hotel.

Since Babi’s conference translators were off the Congress payroll, nobody had arranged to feed Farfalla. Farfalla was willing to go along with a lot to keep Babi happy, but starvation was never on Farfalla’s menu.

Farfalla invaded the posh, shiny conference hotel. The concierge in the gilded dining room asked Farfalla for her room number. Farfalla simply lied to him, speaking English: “My husband and I are in suite four-five-one.” Nobody would check. Nobody in Capri hotels ever checked about husbands.

Farfalla heaped her lovely china plate at the big hotel buffet. She silently stuffed her purse with spare blueberry bagels. She found a nice seat at a tiny table in a corner of the breakfast room.

Farfalla was cheerfully devouring here salmon omelette when the concierge reappeared. “Here is your husband, madame,” he announced in English, with a happy flourish of his hand.

Farfalla’s husband was the One. The One had re-appeared, sure as her doom.

“So,” said the One, dropping his computer bag from his solid shoulder. He stood at her tiny table, bumping her shoes with his huge feet. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Tremaine.”

Farfalla placed her fork on the table. She gazed up at the enormous blue-eyed American futurist. He certainly was tall. “I know you, don’t I? I know we have met.”

“Yeah, you’re from room 451, just like me! So, is that bacon any good?”

“I don’t know your name — but I know you. I
know
that I know you.”

“Hey, I know you, too, signorina. Because I saw you yesterday. That was quite an outfit you were wearing. You must hear that a lot.”

“I am Farfalla Corrado.”

“What a nice name! Great! So, are you American?”

“Yes, I’m American. And Italian — and Brazilian.”

“Oh ho,” said the One. “Wow. Cool.” He pulled out a chair. He sat down in the chair. He looked at her. She looked back.

They said nothing for a while. He just sat there, in the hotel chair, gazing at her, placidly occupying her time and space. It was as if he had always been there. Close to her, but never in a way she could see.

“I come from Ivrea,” Farfalla told him. “A small town in the north of Italy. I’m sure you’ve never heard of Ivrea.”

“I love Ivrea! I know Ivrea very well. Very trendy, Ivrea.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Absolutely not! Ivrea is gorgeous! That park, the cool post office, that giant subterranean Modernist bunker... Ivrea is my favorite place in Italy.”

“But
you
don’t live in Ivrea. I would have seen you, in Ivrea.”

“No. I’m from Seattle.”

“I know Seattle,” said Farfalla. “I lived on Capitol Hill, in Seattle.”

“You’re from Seattle? No way! When did you live in Seattle?”

“Almost three years. I worked for a computer game company that folded. They never launched their game.” She sighed. “I got my Green Card, though. I love my Green Card. That’s why I am American.”

“Where in Capitol Hill?”

“I had a flat with another girl in Mercer Street. We lived over the cafe. The ‘Purple Duck’.”

“Then you must have seen me. The Purple Duck is just a couple blocks from my house. I used to go in there for their pulled pork sandwiches.”

“They had good sandwiches,” Farfalla admitted. Her poor American roommate had put on ten kilos of fat, from the Purple Duck’s overgenerous sandwiches.

“My name is Gavin Tremaine,” said the One.

“Oh! You?
You
are Gavin Tremaine? I’m your translator! You’re a speaker at the conference!”

“Aha! That explains it, then. I’m speaking, and you’re translating... No wonder these Capri people think we’re married.”

A waitress appeared.
“I signori desiderano qualcosa da bere?”
⁵

“Coffee?” begged Gavin Tremaine.

“American coffee for you,” offered the waitress, in English.

“Oh no,” said Farfalla.
“Per favore, porti a mio marito un vero caffè italiano. Doppio. E una colazione all'americana. Bacon e waffle.”
⁶
She patted the back of Gavin’s hand.

The waitress wrote the order and left them alone. “Good work there,” nodded Gavin Tremaine. “A double espresso is just what I need. I’m jet-lagged to hell. I’m glad to meet a fellow traveller who knows the ropes here in Capri. So, do you work in fashion? You must. Who do you work for? Are you with LOXY?”

“More or less,” Farfalla lied.

“My venture firm, Cook, Bishop & Engleman — we were start-up investors in LOXY. That’s why LOXY flew me over here — so I could speak about Italian start-ups.”

“Oh,” said Farfalla, stabbing a fried tomato with her fork. So, Gavin Tremaine was a technology investor. A rich, Seattle geek. That was no surprise, Seattle had hordes of them. No wonder he looked so familiar.

Of course, her fantasy husband had to be a tall, handsome, rich, American computer guy. He had nice American manners, too. Farfalla found this keenly irritating. She wasn’t quite sure why this annoyed her so much, but it made her heart ache.

Her appetite gone, she poked at the pink ruins of her fluffy salmon omelet. Farfalla had strong premonitions about a lot of things, especially men.

This romance wasn’t going to work. Even if this was the One – the only One she would ever love – how was a penniless girl like herself going to stand a chance with this rich, good-looking, foreign guy? It was like he’d piled her woes and humiliations onto her stolen breakfast plate.

What was she going to do? He had a kind, trustworthy face. He smiled at her, indulgently. He knew she was up to something — but he liked her.

What a nightmare. Anybody but him! Her story wasn’t about a calm, smiling foreigner. She needed a man in her life just like herself. Someone who was hard-scrabble, tough-minded, street-smart. A man aware of all the dark forces in the world... a dark force himself.

Tragically, there wasn’t any such man in the world who could ever be her soulmate. She’d always feared that and now, that she had met her One, she knew it was true. Farfalla Corrado had her One, but she had no soul mate. Farfalla Corrado was a monster.

A bitter silence blew through the mild, flower-scented air.

The One was looking troubled. “So, Mrs. Tremaine,” he said to her at last, “I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but I have a girlfriend. She’s my Significant Other. We have a very settled, solid relationship.”

These words were spoken gently, but they struck her like the final nail in the coffin of hope. “Well,” she told him, glancing up from her stained fork, “I
also
have someone, who is very special
to me
.”

“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “You are so full of charm.”

That was a rather warm and well-considered thing to say, and it lay there between the two of them like a big, dead fish.

Gavin bit a semicircle from a piece of toast in a basket. “Is he American, Brazilian, or Italian?”

“What? Who?”

“Your boyfriend.”

“Oh. My boyfriend is Italian.”

“He’s a lucky guy.”

Coffee arrived. In Capri, the arrival of coffee was a ceremony. Gavin tried the espresso that Farfalla had ordered for him. He clearly didn’t like it much, but politely gulped it down anyway.

Farfalla spoke up, because she had to break their uneasy silence. “Can you send me the text of your speech? It helps translators to have a printed text.”

“Oh that, sure! No problem! I can send you my PowerPoint. Let’s trade email addresses.” Gavin Tremaine handed over a crisp linen business card. His card was crowded front and back with business websites and social-networks. Linked-In, Facebook, Ning, Ryze, Plaxo, Xing, Twitter...

Farfalla slipped the card into her purse. She was disappointed. Farfalla been hoping that maybe her One was an evil impostor. A fake and a hustler, someone like herself. A monster in deep disguise.

But no, Gavin Tremaine was entirely real, as real as a live bear. His clumsy American shoes were huge — they kept bumping into her shoes, under the table.

Farfalla scribbled her Gmail address onto a rumpled breakfast napkin. “So, tell me all about your futurist speech!” she chirped.

“Oh, my presentation’s boring. It’s very technical.”

She laughed. “I’m sure it’s not boring!”

“I call it ‘Tomorrow’s Web-based Financial Software For the Start-Up.’” Gavin Tremaine narrowed his bright blue eyes. “It’s a briefing about cash flow, inventory and the purchase process. And Sarbanes-Oxley, because Sarb-Ox is changing the whole landscape for tech startups.”

Farfalla’s heart shriveled at once.

Then his phone rang. “Pardon me.” He rose from his chair and left their table to speak privately. What a strange, gentlemanly, old-fashioned thing to do.

At length, Gavin returned to the table, picked up his fork, and carefully dribbled golden syrup over his plate of fake American waffles. “That was my sister,” he announced. “My sister had a kind of rough night last night.” Gavin reached down into his shoulder bag and retrieved a folding tourist map. “You do know Capri, right?”

“I don’t know
all
of Capri...”

“My sister, her name is Eliza... I think Eliza needs to get out of her gloomy hotel. She’s a teenager, she has jet-lag, you know how that is... She’s never been to Italy, before.… Eliza needs to go shopping here, maybe. I mean, ‘Capri pants,’ right? Capri is world-famous for shopping.”