THE STORY

They're futurists in love. They don't believe in romantic happy endings.

Farfalla Corrado is a globetrotting Italian witch, trained in Brazilian voodoo. Farfalla can tell real fortunes, see real ghosts and speak real curses. Farfalla doesn't just know the future – she can feel in in the dark, twisted depths of her heart.

Gavin Tremaine is a high-tech Seattle venture capitalist. He can forecast the future, spot its trends, and invest in its business models. Gavin has a big future ahead of him – unfortunately, Gavin knows what that big future holds for the little people.

When their worlds collide, history itself begins to crumble. They already know how this love story is bound to end – and it's not what the other expects.

BRUCE STERLING

Bruce Sterling lives in Austin, Turin and also Belgrade. He is married to the Serbian feminist and novelist Jasmina Tesanovic.

He is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.

His nonfiction works include The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier; Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years; and Shaping Things.

SHARE

#amReading: “Love is Strange” a paranormal romance by Bruce Sterling

Tweet

LOVE IS STRANGE

Bruce Sterling

Chapter One: The Haunted Hotel

Gavin rubbed the glare from his jet-lagged eyes and stared into the Mediterranean. “Capri is Paradise.”

His sister wiped at her runny mascara. “I guess Capri’s okay. I’ve seen better.”

“Check out the giant rocks in the breakers down there.”

The cliff top loomed over a peacock-blue ocean. The little Capri park exploded in a flower-basket of scarlet, violet and orange. Eliza was dressed all in black-long black sleeves, long black skirt, black eyeliner, black lipstick, black combat boots.

Eliza plucked her black iPhone from her black laced bodice and tapped at her screen. “Those are the Faraglione Rocks.”

“Wikipedia,” Gavin nodded. “Wikipedia on wireless broadband. Wow, what a handy service that is.”

“I keep telling you that iPhones rule! You gotta get an iPhone right away, Gav! They get new apps all the time!”

Gavin smiled and shook his head. He used a solid, dependable Blackberry. Besides, he worried about Steve Jobs. The Apple honcho seemed frail to him, ghostly. ‘Reality distortion field.’ How long could that last? Nobody could distort reality. The very idea was so weird.

Eliza squinted at her screen from under her droopy black hatbrim. “A Roman Emperor built this garden. This place we’re standing in. The Emperor Augustus Caesar. Two thousand years ago.”

“Yeah, Italy is all about wizards and emperors,” nodded Gavin. He stretched his arms out and basked in the dazzling sunshine.

Gavin did a lot of business in Italy — Milan and Ivrea, mostly — but with his little sister at his side, the charm of Italy touched his soul. The past and future wheeled around them, clean, winged and airy, like two island seagulls.

Or, maybe that swooning sensation was jet lag. The past and future, spinning around in his head.

A chattering crowd of tourists trampled the Capri garden. They rambled in clusters, past the marble fountains and the rust-specked iron benches. Sweaty, sunburned foreigners, in baggy shorts and flowered shirts.

The foreign tourists were the livestock of Capri. Like sacred cattle, they roamed wherever they pleased. Some took a stony walkway that zigzagged down to the sea, like the tortured path of a video game. Others vanished uphill, into long green ridges clustered with chalk-white vacation villas.

Down in that foamy, sparkling surf, the Faraglione Rocks beckoned to Gavin. Towering giants of stone-unearthly, primeval, majestic. Like stone ghosts of a past life, or stony promises of a future life. A promised future life that was haunted by a ghostly past life... anyway, a life that was different.

“I wonder,” said Gavin, “how many people, for how many centuries, have looked at those rocks. There must have been millions, even billions, just looking.”

“Whatever. Google gets a billion looks every day.” Eliza tucked her iPhone away. “Gav, watch me now. I’m gonna stare at your giant rocks like nobody else ever has!”

Eliza lifted her sharp chin, took a deep breath and pulled her narrow shoulders back. Eliza had the serious, bone-deep glumness that only seventeen-year-old girls could achieve.

Then, Eliza glared at the ancient rocks with a burning glower of teenage fury. As if she could crack those ancient stone towers with the mystical force of her will.

Gavin watched his little sister in bemusement. Why did Eliza always do things like that? What was she trying to prove? That witchy, sullen, Goth Chick thing.… such a very old look for such a young girl.

Why did she have such a weird look in her eyes? Somebody deserved to look that strange. But never a modern Gothic girl.… An ancient Gothic girl!

A Gothic princess in the garden of a Roman Emperor!

Gavin smiled. He reveled in this insight. Gavin was a techno-futurist. He worked on budgets, statistics, hunches, buzz and VC forecasts. Sometimes, though, an idea just struck him out of nowhere, a burst of intuition. This was one of those moments. It was perfect.

Once, yes, there had been a Gothic girl standing here. Really, truly. Standing, just like them, here, in this very garden. A living human being from the distant past. Gavin could practically smell the reek of pagan patchouli. A Gothic barbarian princess, glaring at those big Roman rocks. As if she could destroy them, just by resenting them.

This Gothic princess of Capri longed to topple the Emperor’s rocks. Because of what they meant. Because of who she was.

A sea breeze whistled up the cliff side and lifted Eliza’s coal-black hair. Suddenly, she looked up at him and smiled.

For once, the beauty of the world had made her happy. Gavin recognized the importance of what was happening. He could feel a change, a transition, but also the sense of something returning. The past as a future that has already happened.

What a pretty smile Eliza had, as pretty as any Capri garden. Up to this moment in her life, Eliza had been... Well, she had just been his little sister, a slouching, petulant, Goth kid. But they were far away from Seattle now, far away from their parents, far away from all the aching pressures of business, the family, the fear...

Eliza was happier already. Something joyful had awoken inside her, now that she was free. A more genuine Elizabeth Tremaine was coming out of her shell.

Eliza suddenly looked so grown-up to him. Maybe this was the last time Eliza would be his kid sister. Still his sister, no longer a kid.

Gavin placed both his hands on the cold iron railing of the overlook. “Eliza, I want to tell you something,” he said. “When I was seventeen — as you are now — I made some big decisions about my life.”

Eliza turned her head toward him. “You found out that you were an accountant?”

“Well, yeah, I am an accountant. But no, that’s not what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I don’t want a business career,” sniffed Eliza. “You know what I want? What I really, truly want from my life? Because I already know.”

“I’m eager to hear this,” Gavin told her.

She looked him in the eyes. “You’re not teasing me?”

“I would never tease you, Elizabeth. I want you to tell me. I study futurism, and I think that I can help.”

“Well, in the future, I want to be a princess.”

His little sister wanted to be a princess. What a fairy-tale notion. A six-year-old would laugh at a fantasy like that.

“I see,” he said.

“No, you don’t see! I need to be a princess! That’s the only thing that will help! I have to be like royalty! That’s the important part! When I make the scene, everybody has to stop and stare. They all just look at me! Just because, wow, it’s me: Elizabeth Aimee Tremaine! Or whatever cool name I have, in the future: Madonna, Shakira. One of those one-name names that only stars can have.” Eliza’s shoulders suddenly slumped. “Every dorky chick in this world is named ‘Elizabeth’.”

“So, uh, you want to be an entertainer? That’s a pretty tough life.”

“No, more like Paris. I mean, Paris Hilton. Paris is famous and powerful, and she gets all kinds of international respect. She’s a girl from a rich L.A. family, but in Seattle we do real work.”

“Look, Paris Hilton is in movies. Paris had her own TV series. Paris cut a record.” Gavin had closely studied the career of Paris Hilton. Because Paris Hilton was trendy. Trends were always important to futurists. “I don’t think that you want to get famous the way that Paris Hilton got famous.”

Eliza opened her furry black satchel. She pulled out a portable CD player. “Gav, look here. Once, I loved this machine. Because it plays all my CDs. But nobody buys music in the stores any more! Even I don’t pay for music, and I’m rich! I’m carrying a zombie in my purse!”

“Well, yes, that platform is obsolete now, but a new business model will arise for music.”

“No it won’t! That’s a lie! Nobody will ever pay! The music business is the walking dead! Don’t lie to me.” Eliza stuffed her doomed device back in her furry purse.

Gavin rubbed his chin. “Your Digital Native generation really has some issues.”

“The music business is dead! And someone has to raise the dead! Me! Why not me? Who else, if not me? Elizabeth Aimee Tremaine, the bride of the music vampire! I would do that, I love music! I’d do anything for music. Without music I’m not even alive.”

Gavin nodded, rocking from heel to toe in his Timberland brogues. “Okay. Sure. I get it.”

Gavin felt pleased to see his sister taking such an interest in technology issues. He’d been afraid that his geeky lectures on those subjects had flown right over her head. Dedicated platforms, Mp3 files, copyright, intellectual property, piracy, bandwidth, it could get a little tedious. But, Eliza understood those things. Just, in her own way.

Eliza pulled at her wind-tangled hair, which was blonde at the roots but dyed the lifeless color of coal dust. “When our music scene dies in Seattle,” she told him, “our town will become a dead city. Everything will be quiet and evil and covered with thorns.”

“Aw, come on, that’ll never happen to Seattle. We’re an inventive, creative city. We love the arts!”

“Well, I love music with all my heart, and I have to watch music walk around dead every day. In the shadows!”

Gavin didn’t know how to respond this lament. He was certain that he should say something. Something upbeat and reassuring, older-brother style. Something that was good, wise and cheerful, that would make everything better for Eliza.

Here was his sister, finally spitting up the source of her misery. Confiding in him, and trusting him. He should do something. Yet, he couldn’t console her. He had nothing to tell her. He lacked a prepared position statement.

“Back home,” Eliza grumbled, knotting her brows, “we have that huge skyscraper tomb thing, that’s like that stupid Rock and Roll Museum that Paul Allen built. But there’s nothing in there now but some science fiction weirdness. That sucks!”

Gavin cleared his throat. “Well, the music industry does have potential revenue models. Subscriptions, touring, merchandise sales...”

“Gavin, every idiot keeps saying that. Are you stupid? That’s not reality! That is a fantasy! When the money walks away, money never comes back! Not by itself! And when all the money’s gone, there’s nothing left but zombies. Zombies and vampires! It’s the truth! It’s so obvious.”

Gavin was completely thrown. He’d been doing pretty well with Eliza on this trip, but now the gears froze solid in his head.

Whenever he talked to Eliza, there was always some moment where she jumped into a kinky flight of fancy. He just couldn’t follow her there. He couldn’t speak that language. The paradigm there was all wrong. It came straight from the heart of Elizabeth, but it just wasn’t about anything that Gavin himself was about. This was another one of those unhappy, broken moments.

All that he could do was try to show her that he loved her.

“Eliza, I’m very glad we’re having this discussion. I know that you have some strong concerns in this direction. I, just, never heard you frame them quite like this.”

“Can you talk to Dad about this for me? I mean, about me and my big plans to save the vampire soul of music?” Eliza kicked at the rocky path with her combat boot. “I know my life, as, like, a Goth-music princess... Well, I know, we Goths are not, like, realistic.”

“Well,” Gavin hedged, “we’re here in Capri to attend a futurist conference. We’re here to plot and scheme about the future, and learn all about the world of tomorrow! So, if you can show me that you’re serious about your plans... sure, I’ll talk to Dad for you.”

Elizabeth raised her eyes. “Dad will hate my ideas. Dad wants me to mind my grades and study law. If I tell Dad that I love music more than anything else, he’s gonna start yelling at me again.”

“Listen, never mind that. Dad should have come out here to Capri himself. Dad really needs a vacation. This finance crisis has got Dad all keyed up.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Gavin said. “I agree with you there. That’s a fact. Just take Detroit, for instance. Because I studied Detroit in detail. Over at Cook, Bishop & Engleman, we just held a big futurist workshop about contemporary issues in American urbanism. Detroit is totally broke, and yet Detroit’s a great city for music production. That’s a vital data-point.”

“Gavin, you do sort of understand all this, don’t you? I mean, you understand some parts of it. In your own way.”

“In some ways, I do,” he said. “Yeah, sometimes I do really understand the future.” That didn’t mean that he was happy about it.

“Gavin, everybody knows that you’re way ahead of your time. You started Fettlr and sold it to Yahoo for 20 million dollars. Our Dad is like this so-called ‘great businessman’ — but Dad never did anything like that.”

Gavin silently looked at his Omega wristwatch. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“We have maybe an hour before the conference opens. Let’s grab a couple of sandwiches.”

They hiked up the steep, scaly pavement, which wriggled over rugged Capri like a snake. An old hotel stood on the peak of the stony ridge.

The hotel commanded a view of Capri that was divine. Capri was insanely gorgeous in the way that Apple products were insanely great. This mystical, timeless island had divine beauty the way lesser islands had oysters. Not just Roman Emperors, but Roman gods and goddesses would drop here on their vacations. Pan, Venus, Mars, would forget their overloaded calendars to hole up here in Capri, and never age, never know mortal sorrow.

The azure sea surged and sparkled like imperial jewels. The sky hovered over Capri like a dome of sapphire art glass. Paragliders swooped and fluttered in the celestial blue. Angels, sprites, daredevils, graceful and fearless, free of all gravity, immune to harm.

The old Capri hotel housed a somber, crooked dining room. A grandmotherly Italian led them to a creaky, wooden table tucked away in the darkest corner, as to hide Eliza and her kinky Goth attire from the other customers.

This hotel had nothing to eat that was fast. Patrons of majestic, old Capri hotels were supposed to eat thoughtfully, in a civilized, European fashion — to start, an appetizer and drink; then, the first real course, followed by a good, solid second course; next, a sweet, and finally, some brandy, nuts and cigars.

After a polite debate in his college Italian, Gavin managed to order them a couple of salads, an overpriced bottle of mineral water, and nothing else.

Gavin spread the hotel’s linen napkin over his cargo pants. The hotel’s old parquet floors were spotty and warped. The inner walls had been rebuilt so many times that they leaned at odd angles, like a stage set for a silent film. Everything in this old hotel had been patched or painted over, re-wired, re-furbished, or re-polished.

Eliza busily flicked at her iPhone, her burgundy fingernails skidding across the screen. “An arms merchant built this hotel. He was this rich German guy who made cannons in World War One. His company killed a million people.”

“Welcome to Europe, Eliza.”

Eliza glanced up at him, her blue eyes full of wicked satisfaction. “A million ghosts! This old place has got to be haunted.”

Gavin had a bite of his hotel salad, a leafy construction that featured capers, olives and anchovies. He’d expected a quick tourist salad to be pretty mediocre, but this was a magnificent salad. It was the best salad Gavin had ever eaten in his life. It was like an opera in a bowl. Miracles could happen on an island that had such salads.

Gavin sloshed pink vinegar from a cut-glass cruet. “Capri is like paradise, but it’s got war and guns and ghosts. That’s Europe. ‘There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.’ Marie Antoinette said that.”

“’Marie who?’”

“Marie Antoinette, Eliza. The Queen of France. A European princess,”

“Oh, yeah, Marie Antoinette! Marie Antoinette was in that Sofia Coppola film with the techno soundtrack. I loved that movie, it had great music! And I love this hotel! Can we check out of our lame modern hotel, and move into this cool, old hotel? This cool, old, haunted hotel? Please, Gavin, just for me, please, please?”

Chapter Two: The Convent of Crossed Destinies

Farfalla had jumped the train without a ticket from Milano all the way to Napoli. Six and a half hours of dodging the conductors. After that, she jumped a bus to the ferry to Capri. She paid nothing for that, too.

She had no way to sneak aboard the hydrofoil to Capri. The ferry had only one gangplank, with two sailors watching it. So, Farfalla had to pay.

When she finally arrived in Capri, lugging her rolling suitcase, Farfalla had nothing.

Well, almost nothing. Farfalla found a stray two-euro coin stuck in the lining of her purse. And in her cardboard pack of Tarot cards, one twenty-cent euro coin. A coin with a beautiful statue created by an Italian Futurist.

Farfalla told herself that a Futurist coin meant good luck. It was a sign.

The Capri Trend Assessment Congress was a paying gig for Farfalla. She was there to translate for the foreign conference speakers, and to run errands for Babi, one of the organizers. The work would pay cash, but Farfalla wouldn’t see any of it until the event was over.

That meant that Farfalla had to survive for three days in Capri with two euros and twenty cents.

Farfalla had her iPhone, her conference badge, and a couch in a stranger’s apartment. Farfalla could manage with that. She had managed with less, in places worse than Capri.

Beautiful, gorgeous Capri! Lovely Capri, charming Capri! The island of romance! Capri could be a very romantic place, if you were a princess in disguise, like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Italian men hitting on Farfalla often told her that she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Farfalla Corrado was nobody’s Audrey Hepburn.

Farfalla dragged her luggage through the narrow Capri streets, which reeked of fried fish and boutique cologne. Wobbling on heels over the cobblestones, Farfalla hiked to her accommodation – a spare couch in the small, cigarette-hazed apartment of one of Babi’s many friends.

Farfalla’s hostess, Eleonora, was a washed-up Italian television showgirl. Eleonora gave her a spare key to the flat, and then talked at her for half an hour. Eleonora’s one-sided conversation was just like Italian television- loud, colorful, sexy, a vacuous tube.

Farfalla abandoned her rollaboard next to the couch, grabbed her purse, and left the apartment. The Capri Futurist conference was being held in two different buildings, both downhill, both five blocks away.

One building was new, tall and imposing. The other building was old, low and ruined. The future had joined them together and nothing could pull them apart.

Farfalla took a breath and entered the shiny five-star conference hotel. Towering palms and undulating balconies rose above spas, gyms and swimming pools. With glass elevators, brass staircases, and a cellar full of fine wine and fine luggage, this glorious Capri hotel was a mousetrap for wealthy foreigners. The cheapest room in the place cost 220 euros, exactly one hundred times as much money as she had.

Farfalla snagged two perfect apples from a hammered silver bowl in the hotel. She stuffed her purse with the hotel’s soaps, shampoos and body lotions. Farfalla would eat and have a good hair day. Here in the future, her life was already improving.

On her way out of the conference hotel, Farfalla saw a local cabbie harassing an old lady.

Old Lady Tourist wore a sturdy houndstooth coat and Anne Klein gloves. She looked close to tears. “He won’t accept American Express,” Lady Tourist lamented in English. “He wants to drive me to a bank machine to get euros.”

Farfalla confronted the cabbie at once. “Che accidenti ti prende, razza di truffatore? Cosa sei, albanese?”[1]

“Me, Albanian? I’d rather be dead!” the cabbie protested.

“You Rumanian vampire, you steal fares from these people and cheat your blessed grandma here? Get lost or I will call my old man at the Tourist Board, and he will break both of your legs!”

The driver ducked behind the wheel, slammed the door, and fled the failed scene of his crime.

Tourist Lady had hastily removed her heavy bag from the taxi’s trunk. She watched the taxi roar down the tilted street. “Miss, you seem to have saved me thirty euros.”

“Ma’am, the trip from the ferry costs ten.”

“Well then! I don’t think my driver was entirely honest!”

“He is a clandestino, an illegal alien. Not like you, our honored guest!” Farfalla spread her hands and gave the Tourist Lady her best big American smile. “There’s your little train, to go back to the Grand Marina. It’s over there, see the signs?”

Farfalla helped Tourist Lady lug her ungainly bag up the broad, stone stairs. The bag was very old-fashioned- solid and square, brass buckles and leather. No wheels. How old did a lady have to be, to own such a travel bag?

She hauled the ancient bag to the hotel’s registration. Farfalla had warm, protective feelings about all tourists and travellers. Guests should always be treated kindly, because you never knew who they really were. Billionaires maybe. Saints, angels, vampires, a guest could be anybody.

Farfalla herself was a wandering guest most of the time. Nobody knew who she really was, either.

Especially, foreign little old ladies — helpless old ladies were the most sacred guests in Italy. Old ladies needed to be watched over, comforted and protected at all times. Because Italy had more than a thousand dark surprises for nice little old foreign ladies.

Tourist Lady announced herself at the hotel desk. She was an American professor from the University of Virginia, and had a reservation in a room for two.

“So, Professor Milo,” said Farfalla to Tourist Lady, “you must be here for my Futurist Congress! Benvenuta! Let me show you to our venue.”

“No, thank you,” said Professor Milo, removing her hat with a prim little nod. “I came here to Capri for private reasons.”

Farfalla blinked. “For private reasons?”

“Yes, very private reasons.”

“How private could her reasons be?,” thought Farfalla at once. Was this stout, blue-haired American professor checking into this fancy Capri hotel for some frolic with a secret lover? Why not? She was old, but love was strange.

Farfalla politely shook the professor’s little gloved hand and left.

Farfalla ventured past the soaring glass panes of the Capri tourist traps. The streets swarmed with housecats while the shops peddled odd-shaped limoncello bottles and island necklaces of ragged, red coral. She walked a narrow, winding lane between walls overhung with dark, crooked, odorous fig trees.

The site of the Futurist Congress was a wreck. The venue was a former medieval convent. The convent had tumbled down onto the stony ruins of an even more ancient Roman structure. Southern Italy was full of such layer-cake buildings. Italian earthquakes made that a inevitability.

Babi claimed that the convent had once been a brothel. Babi was from Naples and had incredible street-smarts. Only a woman from Naples would argue that a brothel and a convent were basically the same enterprise. As Babi pointed out, as long as big stone walls locked out the men, you could make a pretty good business of it, either way.

This convent had a broken forest of marble columns in its inner courtyard. The columns towered over the crumbled ruins of many small cells. Here the wimpled nuns had passed their sunlit days and their starry nights in prayer. Quietly reading Holy Scripture and tending gardens of pretty flowers. Italian women, free of the bellowing demands of Italian men.

Farfalla had to envy this quiet life of female spiritual contemplation. Farfalla had always lived out of a suitcase, a multilingual world traveller, a woman without a patch of Earth to call her own. Farfalla was also very spiritual, but never in any simple, classic, Roman Catholic way. Farfalla’s intense spiritual life was Futuristic- hot, and loud, crowded and eclectic, polluted and beset with voodoo, and thoroughly Brazilian.

This convent possessed a large stone chapel, which had stood the test of time among the ruins. The chapel was the speaker’s venue for the Capri Futurist Conference. The government of Capri was an official sponsor of the conference, and it stuffed conferences into any empty buildings that Capri had handy.

Farfalla knew that she would have to work hard inside in this futuristic-medieval venue, so she took a good look around the place. The chapel’s cold stone walls featured half-decayed sacred plaster murals and its ceiling swarmed with cherubs, or rather putti.

Farfalla despised Italian putti-flying, winged baby heads. Putti were supposed to be the sweetest, cutest, most harmless things in the world, but Farfalla had never trusted cherubs. Never.

Cherubs were horrid baby ghosts. Alien to the past and future, cherubs would never grow, never become men and women. How could cherubs possibly be good? Even vampires and zombies were at least human for a while.

Thanks to her childhood in Brazil, there were aspects of Italy that Farfalla had never accepted. Evil aspects of Italy, mostly. Farfalla had a keen sense of evil because she had so much of it inside herself.

Italy and its swarms of sweet, rosy-cheeked cherubs. Italian cherubs always appeared in the places in Italy where truly dark and awful things had happened. Sites of martyrdom, massacres, torment and hideous slaughter. It took a while to catch on to this fact about Italian cherubs, but it was the spiritual truth.

Farfalla studied the chapel’s faded blue ceiling. The nunnery cherubs, buzzing around like bluebottle flies, circled a king cherub angel — a perverse cherub mafia boss. This decaying angel was obviously very old, older than Italian dirt. Yet, he had a perky, disconcerting, juvenile-delinquent look to him. A boy with a bow, still up to mischief.

Farfalla pulled the iPhone from her knock-off Versace purse. She examined the dozens of applications that she had downloaded and found the one that told her the exact time, atomic time. Local time: ten minutes, two seconds past six p.m. Ten minutes past the start of the big Futurist Congress. It was time to get on with the serious business of foretelling the future.

This Futurist Congress would be a grand event, or so she’d been told. The Congress featured trendy, Brazilian pop-stars, modish European celebrities and high-tech “thought leaders,” mostly American Internet types. A dazzling crowd, fit to do Capri proud. None of them were here yet, though. The future had arrived and no one was here to see it. Farfalla was all alone.

All these futuristic beautiful-people were in Capri already, but none of them were working. Instead, they were off having a Campari somewhere, gossiping with each other, dawdling over the cashews in their five-star hotel bar. Her futurist chapel was as empty as a vampire’s tomb.

Farfalla felt slighted and bitter. Why was her life always like this? Why? Here she was, all the way from Milan after untold risk and trouble.

Her nails were done, her hair was done. She was also dressed to kill, in a creative outfit up to downtown Milanese standards. Farfalla’s gleaming new silk dress featured a vibrant and beautiful Futurist print by the artist Fortunato Depero. Yet, there was nobody there to notice her very apt choice of attire.

Farfalla thought wistfully of her time in the United States. When in Italy, Farfalla often dreamed about distant America. America was a grand, old-fashioned country, where people drove huge cars and ate colossal meals. Americans always showed up on time. If you said six, Americans arrived at six. In Italy, six meant six-thirty. In timeless Capri, “six” was printed on some tourist brochure that nobody bothered to read.

Farfalla stalked across the chapel’s stage, with its translucent podium and giant projection screens.

The niche behind the stage was chaos. The Web people had taken over everything. The backstage was crammed with cascades of multicolored cables, power cords and blinking media boxes. The Capri Trend Assessment conference would be live-streamed over the Web.

The Web people were the worst. Farfalla haunted tech conferences because they paid translators so much to translate computer jargon. Farfalla liked computer jargon, because it was so futuristic, but Web people gave her the creeps. Every year, more people watched conferences on the Web. The Web video made real places go all spidery, until the living audience was mostly distant ghosts, lurking from the Internet. Even undead baby cherubs were pretty wholesome, compared to the Web people.

A pasty-faced Web geek emerged from an unruly heap of glowing hardware. Farfalla put her hands on her hips. “Dove sono finite le vecchie consolle che c'erano prima?”[2]

“I’m from Brazil! Do you speak English?”

“Okay, dude, sure, onde estão os fones para escutar a tradução do grande evento?”[3]

The Brazilian geek grinned in surprise and shrugged. “Eu gostaria de poder te responder. Estou tentando conseguir os projetores para o trabalho!”[4]

With a clouded brow, Farfalla left. After this exchange, premonitions were crawling all over her. A wave of bad vibrations. Why had she ever agreed to come here to Capri? She could have stayed safe in Ivrea, in her abandoned typewriter factory.

Farfalla felt her head swimming. Was a thunderstorm about to break? Had they poisoned the apple that she had stolen from the hotel? Something awful was about to happen. An omen was at hand.

Farfalla trusted her premonitions. She had no choice because her premonitions were true.

A stranger arrived in the chapel. He was the first Futurist from the coming crowd. He sat down in a folding conference chair, in a slanting beam of golden Capri sunlight. The bright glow fell on him like a blessing.

The stranger was tall and handsome, ominous and fatal. He was the One.

Farfalla could not believe her eyes. Here in Capri, the island of romance! Here he was, he was the One! Here he was out of nowhere, like a golden mushroom.

Farfalla had been expecting the One to arrive since the age of twelve. In Sao Paolo, her mentor – the fortune-teller – had read Farfalla’s palm, and told her all about the One.

Every woman’s true-romance story had the One. The world might be full of random men dying to kiss you, but the hero of a woman’s romance story was the One that story was about. When you met the One, he was your only One. That was why he was the One. He was the only One you would ever truly love. He was yours, and you were his. The romance story was the story of your union with him. Romance was destiny.

Romance was the most beautiful story in the world. Romance was believed and beloved by billions-inexhaustible, strong, ancient, divine, evergreen, the ultimate story. Unless you were a fortune-teller, a fortune-telling woman could see her way through any story like that.

As the wise woman told her — after you meet the One, all other men became useless to you. Huge armies of useless men suddenly inhabit your world. That’s a big drag in a fortune-teller’s business, to say the least. The fortune-teller, who had magic powers, understood romance with a terrible, paranormal clarity. Her clairvoyance let her see right through romance.

Because the poor fortune-teller also had a One. She loved her One with an almighty passion, she was the tender-hearted slave of her One, and she had no other One. That was why she was a miserable fortune-teller, instead of having a secure, high-paying job.

Now, the fortune-teller’s prophesy had come to pass, as Farfalla had always known that it would. That feeling that had been ominous, huge, cloudy and fatal. It had lived in the beating core of her heart.

Farfalla turned her back on the One, pretending to study the podium. She turned around again, to sneak another look at the One. The insight of Mother Hepsiba, the great fortuneteller off in distant Brazil, had finally found her here in Italy. No doubt about it, her One was indeed her destiny.

Farfalla’s premonitions of futurity were gone. This wasn’t the future any more, the future had become the here and now. What was foretold had come to pass. Moments ticked by on the clock, and then, the awesome, creepy feeling of déjà vu enveloped her. Déjà vu, cold and numbing, right to the bone. Farfalla was no stranger to déjà vu. Déjà vu was her personal curse. She’d suffered from déjà vu before she even knew how to spell it.

Déjà vu was the feeling that one had been here before, and Farfalla knew in her soul that she had already met this man. He was her One and he had somehow, terribly, always been around her. Her destiny had always been a hidden part of her life, and until this strange moment of revelation, she had never been able to see him.

He had to be her One, because he was so different from other men. A normal woman’s One was some lovable guy that she fell for, and did anything for, and just had to be with. Farfalla had it figured that she could probably manage with a guy in her life like that. Because her One would just be some everyday normal guy, and she was a woman who could foretell the future, so, probably, she would be able to deal with him. Somehow. But this guy wasn’t like normal or everyday. This guy was a futurist.

The two of them were both futurists, and they had a future together, because they shared a past together. Farfalla couldn’t quite remember their very personal history, but it lurked in her like a recurring nightmare. It was buried very deep, an ache hidden within her heart. Deep in her soul like a buried splinter, too deep to get her fingers around.

She and this tall man in his pretty beam of sunlight, they had a future together – and they also had a long, colorful history together. They had a too-long, too-colorful history. They had a history like Italian history.

Thankfully, her One hadn’t seen her. Not yet. Thanks to her spiritual powers, Farfalla had foreseen this trouble before it had happened. The romance hadn’t actually happened yet. Her burning, flaming, abject, passionate love, all heartfelt pangs and spiritual torment, was not quite there yet. Mercifully, she was still being spared.

Her knees trembled with the urge to flee.

The One did not realize that she was standing there, trembling, and sneaking awestruck looks at him. He did not know who she was and he couldn’t care less. Camera in hand, he was snapping shots of the evil cherubs. He looked like any Capri tourist — happy and slightly stupefied.

Farfalla made a move to creep out of the place unseen. But it was too late. Suddenly, like a tide, futurists arrived for the conference. They were crowding through the church doors in a mass.

A damp-faced, gangly Goth girl slouched into the chapel, along with the crowd. She saw the One and moved to join him. She sat down in a shadow, next to his beam of light.

From the tender look on his slightly sunburned face, he worshipped this hopeless Goth girl. His urgency and attention was met with an insufferable, teenage glare. She was a mess.

Suddenly, the two of them looked up at Farfalla. They both took full, surprised notice of her. They were obviously brother and sister, because they had the same fatal blue eyes. Eyes that pierced her like ice picks.

Farfalla’s spike-heeled feet were nailed to the stage.

She found her willpower and ran to hide.

1 “What are you doing, bloodsucker? Are you Albanian?”

2 “What happened to all those old chests that were here?”

3 “Where are the headphones to listen to the event’s translation?”

4 “I’d like to know the answer. I’m still trying to get the projectors!”

Chapter Three: Notre Grand Amour Est Mort

It was two in the morning and Gavin was suffering the fiercest throes of his jet-lag. He rustled and kicked under his crisp hotel sheets.

Gavin was a sleep-walker. He’d been walking in his sleep since the age of two, when he had first discovered walking.

Once his sleepwalking ailment had been diagnosed, Gavin had been fully treated by his anxious parents. Their best efforts had made his problem permanent.

As an adult, Gavin learned to anticipate his sleepwalking episodes. Armed with predictive insight, he took practical steps to avert his troubles. The symptoms were obvious. Gavin suffered sleepwalking episodes when he was too worried to relax. He would close his eyes, most of his body would go to sleep, but the distressed parts of his brain would fire up his hands and feet. He would tumble from his bed with a blind, unconscious need to take action.

Sleeping pills didn’t help him. Sleep medication produced a fake sleep that empowered his inner sleepwalker.

Gavin had to outguess the sleepwalker. He had to get ahead of the sleepwalker, anticipate his actions. This was a challenge but he could do it. The sleepwalker was not a disease. The sleepwalker was a part of himself. Self-knowledge was the key to the problem.

Being a futurist, Gavin knew how to worry. Although he was only twenty-six, Gavin had already served as the financial officer for four high-tech companies in Seattle. Small start-ups needed forward-thinking, tech-savvy accountants, people like himself. This was Gavin’s chosen career niche. He was the realistic, responsible, bottom-line guy inside visionary high-tech companies.

Three of Gavin’s start-up companies had quickly gone broke. That was acceptable, because going broke was a part of Seattle start-up culture. Unfortunately, Gavin’s family was also going broke. That part was not acceptable. Gavin’s family was not a Seattle start-up company. Gavin’s family was old Seattle gentry.

The Tremaines were Seattle old money. They were the city’s conservative core, the city’s safest bet, because they had never been gamblers. The Tremaines were descended from Seattle pioneers, the builders, the people of substance, the pillars of the community.

Generations of Tremaines had built Seattle, ever since the 1870’s, when their city was a village beach, full of clams. The modern Tremaines were “socially concerned community leaders with wealth-preservation strategies for a range of diversified investments.” As of today, in the historical year 2009, the Tremaines were probably worth...

Well, at today’s fire sale prices, the Tremaines were worth less than nothing. The Tremaine family fortune was a financial black hole. Because the Tremaines were in debt: leveraged debt, toxic debt, horrible, inescapable debt. The Tremaine fortune was a ghost.

The banks had not yet foreclosed on the Tremaines yet, but only because American banks were in even worse shape than the Tremaine family.

Gavin had not gotten his family into this dire financial situation. He was too young to have done that. Instead, Gavin was the young, high-tech genius destined to save them. And so, Gavin worried.

Gavin worried a lot, but not just about money. Money was like a baseball card for Gavin, the way accountants kept score. Gavin worried about the crucial things behind wealth: prudence, decency, integrity, and common sense.

Because if his family didn’t have those qualities, then there was none left. Not anywhere. And if those values disappeared, then the world would be set adrift. It would mean that Seattle had set sail on the Sea of Weird.

Knowledgeable, prudent, decent people were going broke. Hordes of them going broke, armies of them losing it all... and the future looked worse. Gavin heard his Futurist pals digging deep into scary, morbid concepts like “dollar hyperinflation”, “Euro collapse” and “national debt default.” These were abstract, brainy financial problems that terrified those who understood them. These were the ideas that made Treasury secretaries and Central bankers go gray overnight.

You could read about it in Business Week, but Business Week was broke. You could read about it in the New York Times, but the New York Times was broke. Since all the smart money was stupid, no one was held to account. This was the stuff of horror movies — a screaming panic at the drive-in, a slasher movie for millionaires.

Problems of this size and scope — these were what made Gavin sleepwalk. But Gavin had found a strategy to pre-empt his sleepwalking, to stop it before it started.

His trick was to concentrate hard, before sleep overwhelmed him, on something that had nothing to do with his real worries. Then his sleepwalking self, who was sleepy and simple-minded, would think about that stuff instead of the future, and all would be well.

The distraction had to be fun, or restfully boring, but restfully boring in a fun way. Some sleepy distractions worked quite well for Gavin, other things not quite so much. Old television movies were generally perfect. Gavin would study these boring, old movies with his full attention, until he passed out.

Then, as a twist to the trick, Gavin left the television running as he slept. The sleepwalker might open his eyes. But the sleepwalker would just see the television. He’d naturally get very bored again, and he’d fall right back to sleep. Problem solved, crisis defeated.

Gavin’s Capri hotel had a TV — a huge, flat-screen TV near the foot of Gavin’s bed. It offered Gavin hundreds of satellite channels and a remote control the size of a French baguette.

Gavin sat up, restless, red-eyed and jet-lagged. He searched for something sure to lull him into slumber — perhaps, a 1950’s romantic comedy. A classic rom-com like Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Classic chick flicks bored Gavin silly, so they were perfect for his needs.

The Capri television offered a cavalcade of global-tourist TV fare. Italian television was famously bad. Japanese flower arrangement shows. Indonesian cooking shows. American televangelists. Gay British comedians test-driving sports cars.

Gavin’s shaking thumb clicked through the endless channels. Girlish Lebanese chat-shows. Weepy Turkish soap operas. Screaming Mexican telenovelas. Booming Brazilian soap operas.

And for the lonely men in the audience, the hotel television offered some porn. Any well-seasoned, male business traveller knew that posh hotels would offer a selection of erotica. Nobody from socially-liberal Seattle would be remotely shocked about that.

But this Capri porn was otherworldly. The island of romance was sucking male desire from satellite feeds orbiting the planet. Vast space-junk trash-heaps of pornography were defiling Gavin’s TV. There was something dry and remote and spooky about all this raw, commercialized, male libido. It felt empty and cold, like the broken peanut shells in an abandoned baseball stadium.

Gavin shut off the haunted television. He needed a distraction of a different sort. He opened his laptop, and found his girlfriend on video Skype. Seattle and Capri had a nine-hour time difference, so Madeleine was at work.

“Oh, things are just the same around here!” Madeleine told him cheerily. Her face filled his laptop screen. Madeleine had broad cheeks and bright eyes, rimless designer glasses and upswept hair. “I mean,” she said, “things are not great. But, they’re the new normal.”

“You’re at your office?”

“Where else could I be? We’re all watching the health care debates. They’re such a train wreck. I know that you warned me this would happen — but what if the Congress passes this crazy legislation? My whole clinic could go broke!”

“I’m not doing too well, either. I can’t sleep, over here.”

“Put down the computer,” Madeleine told him. “Read a book.”

“That’s a good idea,” nodded Gavin. His girlfriend was always full of healthy common sense. Madeleine knew him better than anyone else. “I’ll read a book.”

“You’re flying back, when, Monday? Come over Wednesday night. I’ll cook us something.”

“Great.”

“Spaghetti Bolognese?”

“No, no, no more Italian! I’ll see you next Wednesday. Dinner sounds great.”

“I have to work now, Gav. You need anything else, just Skype me. You know I’ll be around.”

Gavin shut his laptop and gently put it aside. Madeleine was right, as usual.

He walked over to the bookcase. It held a small refrigerator and a steel safe. No books in the bookcase. No books anywhere in his room. No airport bestsellers, no romance, no science fiction, nothing.

Gavin searched his entire suite for books, top to bottom. Two desks with Internet connections, a Jacuzzi, a bidet, and a flower-scented balcony, where the dark and distant sea surged in the moonlight. But no books.

No printed paper of any kind at all. No stationery, not even a hotel postcard. Nothing in print. His handsome suite was one hundred percent paper-free.

Gavin flopped on the high-tech foam bed, stared at the ceiling grainy-eyed, got back up, dressed himself, and took the mirrored elevator down to the deserted hotel lobby.

The hotel’s ground floor had a host of coffee rooms, cozy niches, and funky designer lounges. One of these lounges was done up like an old-fashioned gentleman’s club, with huge leather chairs, little bronze statues, and ottomans. Naturally, this place had a bookcase.

And this antique bookcase had antique books. They were old, dusty, leather-bound books. Books much older than the hotel itself. Gavin felt confident that nobody in the hotel had ever touched these books.

The books were mostly in English, some Italian, some German. They were all books about travel.

Gavin found a musty edition of The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. Perfect. He toted the ancient Mark Twain book upstairs to his room.

Gavin clicked on the bedside lamp. He flipped Mark Twain’s book open and found a warm, restful position against the fancy headboard.

The Innocents Abroad was a book about American tourists travelling in Europe. Written in 1867. Gavin was pleased to have found a book so relevant to his own situation. Gavin’s Futurist guru, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante, was always telling him that the keys to the future were found in the past. All serious Futurists were serious historians, Dr. Svante liked to say.

If you truly wanted to know what was to happen next, then you had to fully grasp what had already happened. Tomorrow was about what had already happened, and why, and how, and to whom. The ghosts of the past united with the phantoms of the future. They belonged together, because they were one and the same. Both were visions of another time.

Gavin flipped the Twain book open and chose a page at random, like a Tarot card.

This was the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open.

With his story in one’s mind, we can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.

Okay, maybe this was not the best place to start reading. A surprisingly stiff, disturbing, historical passage there. Mark Twain must have put the funny jokes in another chapter.

Gavin riffled through the time-crisped, yellowed pages.

I remember yet how I ran off from school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night, concluded to climb into the window of my father’s office and sleep on a lounge, because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed.

Now, this part was pretty good. Gavin, unable to sleep, was reading Mark Twain, talking about the very same problem of insomnia. Great literature was the news that stayed news.

As I lay on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the floor. A cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the wall. That did not answer. I was afraid that that thing would creep over and seize me in the dark.

I turned back and stared at it for minutes and minutes — they seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight never, never would get to it. I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to pass the feverish time away. I looked—the pale square was nearer. I turned again and counted fifty — it was almost touching it. With desperate will I turned again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an awful sinking at the heart—such a sudden gasp for breath!

Okay, wait. Wasn’t this book supposed to be about a nice, European holiday?

I felt — I cannot tell what I felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again. But no boy could have remained so with that mysterious hand behind him. I counted again and looked — the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my hands over my eyes and counted till I could stand it no longer, and then — the pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting posture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare breastline by line — inch by inch — past the nipple — and then it disclosed a ghastly stab!

Gavin closed Mark Twain’s book. He slid the book under the enormous bed. Books were not going to help him tonight.

Sometimes, music did the trick.

Eliza had left stacks of her CD’s scattered around the hotel room. Eliza was no longer staying here, in the Futurist conference hotel. Eliza had pleaded with him so touchingly that he’d checked her into the haunted hotel, where she could stay on her own.

Gavin figured that acts of trust with adolescents commonly had good results. Besides, Eliza always had her iPhone, so he could call whenever he wanted. The existence of cell phones had destroyed all kinds of trouble that teenage girls had formerly enjoyed getting into.

Overjoyed by the freedom he had kindly granted her, Eliza had thoughtlessly pranced off without most of her luggage. Eliza had brought stacks of CD’s to give away to her fellow music fans. She’d already snagged a heap of music demos to take back home, too.

Gavin flipped his way through Eliza’s plastic jewel boxes. Ghostly Swim, read the first disk, quite ominously. Then The Blackened Rose. The Devouring Element. Ghostland Observatory. Sleepy Eyes of Death. Anomie Belle. Were these people real-life musicians? Yeah, they sure were. ‘Anomie Belle’ was from Seattle.

Gavin sampled a second stack of Eliza’s music disks. These disks were all French music. Corpus Delicti. Rayon X. Da Crime Chantilly. Conjure One. Baroque Bordello. Real French bands making real French music in the year 2009? Oh yes.

Finally, carelessly tossed aside, was one lonely album of a different kind. A pretty, long-haired French girl strolling past a peaceful lake in bright sunlight.

Gavin rescued this pretty CD from its airtight wrapper. He tucked the gleaming disk into Eliza’s abandoned CD player. He put on the headphones and crawled back in bed.

Acoustic piano. Acoustic guitar. The French girl was singing in French. She sounded so close that Gavin felt she had snuggled right into his lap.

Gavin understood a little French, nothing to brag about, but even he could tell that this classy chanson-singer had some tremendous, ladylike enunciation. She was breathing life into every French syllable.

This French girl was all about warm, lively breathing. Gavin heard her long fingernails teasing the guitar strings. Obviously, she was singing straight from her heart. Not performing, not hamming it up like a corny pop-star. Just a woman, singing like a woman, about a woman’s feelings. She would have sung just the same, all alone, sitting in a rowboat in the middle of her lake.

A drowsy sense of warmth and well-being stole over Gavin. Dainty little glockenspiels tripped along, a touch of harmonica. Breathy flutes, a refined string quartet. No American singer would have dreamed of putting this velvety glop onto a pop record, but this mademoiselle thought nothing of that. No glitzy showbiz, no phony presentation: she was a sincere French artist, gifted, poetic, just very there in her moment. She would have sung the same songs, fifty years ago or fifty years from now.

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.”

Farfalla nodded. “Sonja de Lennert designed Capri pants.”

“Right, big famous Italian designer, then.”

“Sonja de Lennert was German. Sonja did the Capri pants, and the Capri skirt and blouse set. All those clothes, that Audrey Hepburn wears in Roman Holiday — that was Sonja de Lennert.”

Gavin paused, a forkful of waffles in mid-air. “You sure know a lot about this.”

“I work in Milan. In the business.”

“You’re a fashion model?”

“No. No, I’m not tall enough. Well, yes. Yes, I work for the fashion houses. Sometimes they put me into the shots.”

Gavin Tremaine considered this. He silently placed his waffles in his mouth. He was trying to believe her.

“I translate for the foreign buyers,” Farfalla said. “Because I speak Portuguese and English. During the season, all the houses need help.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said. He set his fork down, and spread his rustling paper map of Capri across half the table. “So, tell me: where is the shopping district around here? Where are all the trendy fashion joints?”

Farfalla was caught flatfooted. She would never dream of paying retail for clothes in some stupid Capri tourist trap. Also, Farfalla really hated maps. She had never been able to tell north from south.

Yet, she was touched. The plight of guests always touched Farfalla’s heart. Look at this nice guy, trying to help out his weird Gothic freak of a sister. The kid dressed like she had fallen off a skateboard. The sister could obviously use a lot of help with her wardrobe, and in his helpless, lost-tourist way, at least he was trying.

A rich American teenage girl, with a credit card, alone in Capri? She would get skinned like a lamb on a hook. A fashion tragedy was waiting to happen. Farfalla could foresee that clear as day.

“Your sister is a Goth,” Farfalla warned him. “Capri doesn’t do Goth.”

“They don’t do Goth at all around here?”

Farfalla soberly shook her curly head. She was having a very good fancy hotel-shampoo hair day.

“So, what does Capri do?”

“Capri does Chanel. Capri has the big Chanel problem.”

“The big Chanel problem?” Gavin Tremaine sat straight up in his chair. He looked at her with frank fascination. “So, like the world-famous fashion house, Chanel? What kind of ‘big problem’ is that?”

“Chanel has been too famous too long! Chanel Number 5 was something Marilyn Monroe would wear. Now it’s something your dead grandmother wears.”

Gavin carefully draped the paper map across the back of an empty café chair. “So, Chanel Number 5 is the official perfume for dead women? Gosh, Eliza needs to know about that.”

“That’s why Chanel launched their new ‘Chanel Mademoiselle’ perfume. They have posters all over Capri for ‘Chanel Mademoiselle.’ Those are the posters where the girls wear no shirts.”

“Yes, I saw those. They’re hard to miss.” Gavin Tremaine cautiously sipped his orange juice.

“Capri is old-fashioned. The trendy young people go to Ibiza and Crete. That’s why the Capri government gave LOXY a grant to arrange this conference. So everybody will know that Capri has a future. That Capri is the future. That Capri is young, and not too old. You see?”

“Yes, I do see that. For the first time, this whole junket makes sense to me.” Gavin Tremaine gazed at her with respect.

Pleased to be such a hit, Farfalla leaned close across the tiny table. “There is this big, fancy consultancy board from Brussels,” she confided. “They arranged this Congress. The mix of fashion, music and technology... Those Europeans, in Brussels, they always meddle with Italy! Those people in Brussels, they always hope that some new thing... something new... that, even though Italy is so old, that somehow — “ Farfalla broke off, startled. Someone was calling out to her.

“Yoo-hoo! Farfalla! Hello there!” It was Professor Milo, the lady tourist from the day before. The American professor looked rested and perky-fresh lipstick, a brown tweed suit and stiff, permed hair.

“So sweet to see you two here enjoying your breakfast this morning!” gushed the professor, approaching their table with a click of her trim kitten heels. “Sir! I must compliment you! Your wife was so kind and good to me yesterday.”

“Oh yes, of course, good morning, ma’am!” Gavin rose from his chair like a gentleman. He grasped the professor’s dainty hand. “I’m Gavin Tremaine.”

Professor Milo beamed down at Farfalla. “’Farfalla Tremaine,’ what a pretty name that is.”

“Farfalla means ‘Butterfly,’” Farfalla offered, because Americans always asked Farfalla what her name meant. Also, Americans called her FARfalla, instead of FarFALLa. To be called “Farfie” by Americans — that was the worst.

“‘Butterfly,’ how sweet, I might have known! And you two have your map of Capri here. Look at that! How clever you people are.”

“We futurists specialize in directions,” smiled Gavin. He gracefully snagged a loose chair from another table, and gently slid the chair under the professor’s tweedy rump. “Let’s get you some fresh coffee, ma’am. If you’re just in from America, I’m sure you need it.”

“I’m Sandra Milo. I’m not a futurist, like you two. I’m just a humble little humanities professor. I came to Capri to do research on American expatriates.”

Gavin beckoned at the waitress. “Professor Milo, please, tell us all about your research project.”

Professor Milo looked doubtfully at Gavin, then at Farfalla, then at Gavin again. “Well,” she said at last, “Americans love Capri. American tourists played a major role in developing this island. Before the tourists arrived – and that was a hundred and fifty years ago – this island was miserably poor. So poor, they’d forgotten their own history! But, the Americans changed Capri, and brought it a past, and a future.”

“So,” said Gavin, gazing at the historian with rapt ice-blue eyes, “you’re researching the history of the Americans in Capri who were researching Capri history?”

“Yes. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Terrific. That concept does not surprise me,” Gavin announced. “Are you surprised by what our friend here is saying, Farfalla?”

Farfalla shook her head. “I’m never surprised.”

“You’re never surprised?” said Professor Milo, blinking at her politely. “Never surprised by anything?”

“Well, Americans never surprise me. Brazilians surprise me sometimes.”

The professor turned back to Gavin. “I admit, I have a special interest in one woman in particular. She was a famous American writer. A writer of romantic novels – Princess Amelie Troubetzskoy.”

“A princess,” Gavin repeated.

“Yes, an American princess. She lived here in Capri a hundred years ago, but she came here from Virginia. And my University has all her literary papers, so...”

The waitress arrived. Gavin, Professor Milo, and the waitress conferred, at length, over items on the hotel’s menu that might suit elderly American ladies with special dietary requirements.

Farfalla watched Gavin in growing amazement as he carefully worked his way through every possible menu option. He was tireless about it: so polite, so persistent. Very ‘puntiglioso’[7].

The waitress left at last, shooting a ‘how-can-you-bear-this’ look at Farfalla, but Farfalla gazed back at her blandly. Yes, waitress, I can bear the craziness of foreigners because I’m a professional.

“So, Professor,” Gavin said, “you were telling us about this writer of romance novels who was also an American princess.”

The Professor basked in Gavin’s male attention. “So, my subject of study was a long-time resident of Capri. I know that Princess Troubetzkoy left some important material here. Now that I’m retired from active teaching, and able to travel, I have the opportunity to search for that material myself. And today, I start my search for the secret treasure of Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy.”

“So, you’re on a quest, then,” said Gavin.

“You have such a perceptive way of putting things, Mr. Tremaine. That is very true!”

“As a futurist, I try to frame things simply, so that they make sense to my clients,” said Gavin. “Your story makes sense to me, because I’m on a quest here, myself.”

“Me, too,” Farfalla asserted. “I have quests every day!” Farfalla translated computer role-playing games for the Italian gamer market. Farfalla had seen quests by the thousands.

“Specifically, I’m looking,” said the professor, “for a statue of Cupid.”

5 “Could I get you something to drink?”

6 “Please, a real Italian coffee for my husband. A double espresso. And an American breakfast. Bacon and waffles.”

7 Punctilious.

Chapter Five: The Bohemian Loves of the Scapigliati

Gavin yanked the laptop from his travel bag. Normally, he never used his laptop when eating with others. He vastly preferred to listen to table talk. Gavin learned a lot about the future from people’s passing, unguarded remarks.

But this business about a mysterious bronze statue had the smell of a hustle to him. Gavin wasn’t the kind of guy who looked around for dishonest people. Still, the tech investment biz had plenty of crooks. Too many to miss.

Gavin felt sort-of okay about the cute, curly-haired Italian translator. Somehow, the translator had managed to marry him before breakfast. That was a freak occurrence. But, it wasn’t hurting anyone.

However, when an older woman also arrived — and these two women knew each other, somehow? They wanted to work together, searching for mysterious treasure statues of Cupid? How likely was a set-up like that? High time for a major fact-check.

“So, professor, I’m sure that Farfalla and I can help you out,” Gavin said smoothly, waiting for his computer to connect to the hotel’s wireless. “In Seattle, we have this Microsoft service called ‘Bing.’ In comparison tests, it works better than Google. Did you ever try ‘Bing,’ Farfalla?”

Farfalla shook her tousled head. Farfalla Corrado had intense, almost frightening dark eyes, but beautiful glossy, black hair. Splendid Italian fashion-girl hair.

“I never use computers,” declared Professor Milo, primly.

“Really? You don’t use computers?”

“I assure you it true, young man. I don’t even own a computer.”

“How do you even survive? How is that even possible?”

“I have a typewriter. It’s a very nice Olivetti ‘Valentine.’ It has worked for me since 1968.”

“Okay, how do you spell ‘Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy?’”

Professor Milo spelled out the name of the female Virginian novelist. This effort took her quite a while. To his surprise, Gavin quickly discovered that the “Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy” had been a real person. She was not a ghost, phantom, or Internet fake. Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy was an actual historical personage.

The Princess had once lived in historic Castle Hill, the home of the aristocratic Rives family near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Gavin tapped at the hotlinks and rapidly clicked on the resulting pop-up boxes.

“There was a soughing rain asweep that night,” Gavin read aloud from his screen, “with no wind to drive it, yet it ceased and fell, sighed and was hushed incessantly, as by some changing gale.”

“That’s the opening line of Amelie’s most famous novel!” said Professor Milo. She turned to Farfalla. “That novel was called The Quick or the Dead? With a question mark.”

“Well,” asked Farfalla, with a practical tilt to her glossy, tangled head, “was the princess quick or was she dead?”

“She’s dead,” said Gavin. “Born in 1863, died in 1945. Her books are in the public domain now. So, Professor, you’re saying this famous novelist once lived here on Capri? Along with this Russian prince that she married?”

“Yes. Amelie lived here, on Capri. But it’s not a simple story. Amelie was a princess, because she married a prince, but Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy was not just any Russian prince. Pierre was Russian and also American, because his mother was an American actress. The Prince’s father was Russian. But in his heart, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy was Italian.”

Gavin thought this over. “So, this charming Prince was Italian, American, and Russian? A hundred years ago? How was that supposed to work? That’s unbelievable.”

Farfalla spoke up. “I’m an Italian-American-Brazilian.”

“You’re not believable, either.”

Farfalla tugged at a lock of her witch hair. “Well, I don’t think you are believable.”

“Come on, I’m believable! I’m plausible, even!” Using his Bing image search, Gavin found a picture of Amelie Troubetzkoy. He turned his screen around to his companions. “Look, here she is, your princess, big as life.”

Professor Milo pulled tortoise-shell bifocals from her handbag. “That tiny little picture isn’t as ‘big as life!’ I saw that painting at the National Portrait Gallery. The painting is four feet tall.”

“But this is a real image of Amelie’s portrait. I just found it on the Internet. This proves that she’s real.”

“The Internet is virtual,” said Farfalla. “The Internet isn’t real.’”

Gavin had to smile. It was fun to get a witty zinger from a pretty Italian girl. Italy was a pretty country, and the prettiest things in it were pretty Italian girls with their look-at-me attitudes.

He caught her eye. She looked back boldly as if to say, “Yes, American guy, you’re looking me over now, so what?” This sexy little exchange woke him up all over. Suddenly, Gavin felt very alive. This was a smart cookie, here. The world didn’t bake any cookies smarter than a smart Italian cookie. Wait a minute, he thought, this is actually happening to me. I’m not at home any more. I’m nine time zones away on the other side of the world.

At last, something refreshing and fun to distract him. His suspicions about a rip-off melted away. That was not what was going on here, they weren’t trying to steal anything from him. Something weird was going on.

The fuel of black Italian coffee hit him. It sent Gavin’s jetlag fleeing headlong. He was in the zone, deep in the moment.

The dining room glowed with Capri sunlight, gleaming off silver and crystal. Life seemed glorious suddenly. Life was sweet, funny, entertaining, and full of the unexpected. The sense of adventure touched him.

“So,” he said, finding his voice, “what did they do, this Princess and her Prince, here on Capri? How did they live?”

“Well,” the professor allowed, “they did so many things! Painting, of course. They were both painters. Writing poetry, playing the piano, riding horses, sailing the Blue Grotto, and exploring all the ruins. Capri was half-abandoned then — very wild and free.”

“Wow!” said Gavin. “That sounds so idyllic.”

“Idyllic and romantic,” said the Professor. “Romance was their way of life. Before they came here, Capri wasn’t romantic, but after they left, it was romance itself. And Capri’s been romantic ever since!”

Gavin glanced at Farfalla. “Do you ever do things like that?”

Farfalla shrugged. “Me? I came to Capri to work.”

“Same here,” Gavin said, glancing at his watch. “And I have an important session I can’t miss today, at half past ten.”

“I don’t work, not anymore,” said Professor Milo, “because they told me that I’m retired! For me, to hunt in Capri for some old statue, that must seem silly to you people, but I have to do it. I feel the obligation! No one else is looking out for it.”

“You could use some help,” Gavin decided. “We can help you out with your quest, can’t we, Farfalla? At least till our future gets started.”

“Maybe. Yes.” Farfalla dug into her chamois-leather purse and pulled out her iPhone. “We can try to help.”

The Professor picked at her bowl of muesli, which brimmed over with nuts, fruits and flakes. “I have to tell you two that the statue has been lost since 1911. The ‘Cosmic Cupid’ was a gift from Prince Troubetzkoy to his wife. They bragged to the press about it, so it’s in the historical record. But, quite likely, that statue never existed. It was all romantic talk. It was never a real object. Not in the real world.”

Gavin consulted his laptop screen. “Bingo! I just found your ‘Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy’! He’s an artist, a mystic, and a vegetarian. He had three brothers and two sisters, all children of this Russian Prince and this American actress. They were all artists, members of the ‘Scapigliati Movement”. Gavin tapped at his keyboard. “The ‘Scapigliati Movement.’ Good Lord, they’re really a ‘movement, ‘ the links lead all over the place.”

The Professor winced. “I can’t believe that computers know anything about the Scapigliati Movement. The Scapigliati were romantics, they hated technology.”

“The Prince’s sister knew Rudolph Valentino. They say she was Valentino’s lover.”

“How do you know about that?” said Professor Milo, blinking.

“Well, it’s right here on Wikipedia! The hotel has broadband.”

“I know about that Valentino rumor, but that took me years!”

“Ma’am, even Wikipedia can’t keep this Scapigliati story straight. These Italian artists were a pack of weirdos. Why is history so complicated?”

“The past is never past,” said Farfalla darkly, “Because the present is always present.” She drained the last drop of her cappuccino.

Gavin gazed at her for a few silent heartbeats. Where had that dark remark come from? What the heck was going on with her? That was not some cute-Italian smart-cookie thing to say. That was a fortune-cookie thing to say. Very out-there and ominous.

Farfalla Corrado suddenly looked feral to him. The triangular head, and those too-bright clothes. She was like a technicolor alley cat.

“Farfalla, have you ever heard of this ‘Scapigliati Movement?’”

“Oh yes, of course, the Scapigliati,” said Farfalla, twitching itchily and scrunching her shoulders. “Their revival show in Milano was a disaster! What a scandal.”

“These Scapigliati artists sound pretty wild and crazy. All kinds of drugs and free love.”

“Sex and drugs are old and boring,” declared Farfalla, rolling her big dark eyes. “The Italian Futurists had cars and airplanes. Not Scapigliati sex and drugs.”

“You like the Futurists, Farfalla?”

“I adore the Futuristi! The Futuristi are exciting! The world is still afraid of them! They were always ahead of their time! They are still ahead of our time. The Futuristi are ahead of our time right now.” Farfalla scratched at the air with flying hands.

Gavin was instantly charmed. What a wonderful Italian-girl attitude. Italians had strong opinions about art and culture — because those things really mattered to Italians. Italians would kill over art.

“Obviously, you’re our local expert, then,” he told her. “So, tell me something now. This is the big question. If you’re this Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, and you claim you are going to make this fancy statue of Cupid for your wife — do you actually create a statue of Cupid? Or do you blow it all off, because it’s just a publicity stunt?”

“Oh, he made the statue,” said Farfalla, at once. “I know that he made the statue.”

“I totally agree with you,” said Gavin, leaning back. “I’m certain you’re right. He had to do both those things. He promised her the moon in public, but then gave her a single red rose.” He turned to the professor, twitching with insight. “Your statue of Cupid existed. Maybe it was just made of clay, maybe it’s long-gone, but I’d bet anything that he made it. That’s the Italian way.”

“You know the Italian way?” said Farfalla. She wasn’t flirting with him. She thought he was being an idiot.

“No, no, I could never claim such a thing! Nobody knows the Italian way. Not even Italians themselves. But, I do have a lot of business dealings with Italians. Practically speaking — cash on the table — the Italians are not all that hard to figure out.”

“I’m Italian,” said Farfalla. “Maybe it’s true... I can never understand Italians. Too much past, never enough future.” She shrugged, and tugged at her bright, patterned sleeve. “I can understand Brazilians.”

“How about Americans?” prompted Professor Milo. “Do you understand the Americans?”

“Oh, the Americans are no problem!” said Farfalla. “Any fool can understand Americans!”

“What a sweet thing to say,” said Professor Milo. “I guess that’s all settled, then. Now, I need to find my museum on that handy map of yours.”

Chapter Six: Modern Dentistry

Farfalla excused herself to find the ladies’ room. The hotel dining room didn’t have one, so Farfalla had to wander around, absurdly, past numerous tall doors marked “Privato,” past emergency exits that led to nowhere, past a limestone wall festooned with flowering ivy, down a half-circuit of a shiny spiral staircase... This hotel was colossal, and its architecture was crazy.

Most attendees at the Futurist Congress would never escape this big posh hotel. It would never occur to them to try to escape.

The pitch-black ladies’ restroom had a hidden light-switch behind the door. When the chilly fluorescents flicked on, the ladies’ room was an icy marble shrine, with stone sinks the shape of jet-propelled kidneys, and faucets like swan’s necks.

Farfalla crept into a stall to call Babi.

“Get yourself over here,” Babi demanded. “You’re supposed to be translating for the 10:00 opening session.”

“I can’t make the opening. It’s already too late. What’s my next session?”

“That’s ‘Italian Historical Guilt and the Somali Relief Effort.’ The speaker is Zeta Starlitz.”

“Which one is ‘Zeta Starlitz’? I don’t remember any Zeta Starlitz.”

“Zeta was the winner of the LOXY ‘Youth Ideals’ website contest. Zeta’s a Swiss altermodern philosopher who works in emergency relief. Twenty years old! I just met Zeta. She’s very sweet and really quite brilliant.”

Idealistic emergency relief. Ugh. This was the most poisonous topic in the world for Farfalla. Farfalla’s parents had worked in emergency relief. Farfalla would rather trudge a hundred kilometers in a burning African desert than listen to lectures about emergency relief. “Listen to me, Babi,” she said, “what’s the deal with this American guy, Gavin Tremaine?’ He’s one of my speakers, and he’s giving me the big owl-eyes. I think he’s coming on to me.”

Farfalla heard the light, swift rustle of Babi’s laptop. “Oh yes, him, Gah-veen Tre-ma-ee-neh,” said Babi. “Did you know he paid full price to get his sister into the conference? He’s either a complete fool or a really nice guy!”

“I don’t think either of those things are true.”

“Let me search for the email he sent us.” A brief pause. “Oh yes,” said Babi, at last. “This is about the Brazilian angle. I’d forgotten about that.”

“Gavin Tremaine has a Brazilian angle?”

“Yes, he does. The Brazilian Culture Minister. Your new boyfriend wants to talk to him. He wants a ‘private audience with the Culture Minister’ while they are both here in Capri. Well, that explains it. That’s why he’s such a big supporter of our Congress.”

“Okay. We can do that for him. It will be easy.” The Brazilian Culture Minister was a sweet-tempered old gentleman. Sixty-eight years old, but he never stopped performing his rocking bossa-nova. He toured the world constantly. Farfalla had already met the Culture Minister three times, without even trying.

The Culture Minister spent his twilight years singing, dancing and promoting Brazilian fashion designers. And messing around with his computers, of course. The Brazilian Culture Minister adored computers. The old man had a lifestyle that Farfalla sincerely envied. All aging, dropout, former hippie Baby Boomers should be like the Brazilian Culture Minister.

“Yes,” said Babi, “it’ll be easy to arrange a meeting, but let’s do this the smart way. You let me handle this. Do you have a phone number for your fidanzato there?”

“Of course, I have his phone number,” said Farfalla, opening her purse.

“I’ll call him right now.”

When Farfalla found her way back to the dining room, Gavin and Professor Milo had vanished. Evaporated, gone like Capri’s morning fog. Without a trace, as though they had never existed.

Farfalla searched for Gavin Tremaine with growing distress. Had Gavin fled the hotel? Was it something she’d done, something she’d said to him? She was known to say some dreadful, ugly things, without intention. Had she scared him away, done something too weird? She missed him already. Capri had been an ordeal for her, and then he was there, and Capri had seemed much better. For a brief time, Capri had been fun, pleasurable. Now, Capri was her ordeal once more, even worse than before.

Had Gavin Tremaine ever existed at all? Was Gavin a phantom, a psychic projection of something she secretly wanted? Something that she would never have? Had she imagined him? Could a man like Gavin Tremaine exist in real life? Handsome, polite, foreign, rich and very, very interested in her? And not in any fake, sleazy way. He listened to what she said. He really wanted to hear her. He seemed to understand. Nobody ever did that.

She spotted Gavin in the grand hotel lobby, his phone to his ear.

Gavin Tremaine seemed to wander when he used his mobile. He careened around the hotel lobby like a sleepwalker.

Gavin took notice of her and slipped his phone into his pocket. Then, he walked over to her.

“So,” he told her, rocking back and forth on his heels, “that was this head honcho of the Congress staff. Signora Babi Gervasi seems to value your services pretty highly.”

Farfalla blinked. “Yes?”

“Signora Gervasi just gave me a talking-to about running off with her translation staffer in the middle of her conference. I was going to invite you to Anacapri, to look for the professor’s museum, because that sounded like fun. I’m not supposed to do that, though.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Where is the professor?”

“The old lady went up to her bedroom to fetch her walking shoes. That was some time ago. I don’t know what’s keeping her.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Farfalla, though she had her suspicions. “So, do we go to the Congress now? I hate to disappoint Professor Milo, after what you said to her. She’s a guest, and doesn’t speak Italian, or even have a computer. She’s not like us, she’s helpless.”

Gavin caught her eye. “Look, tell me something. Do you really know the Culture Minister of Brazil? You know him personally?”

“Eu sei falar Português.[8] Yes, I know him. I worked as his translator. Three times.” Farfalla knew that she should shut her mouth at that point, but she couldn’t do that. She looked up into his trusting, open face. “I can’t tell you that I ‘know’ the Minister. He probably doesn’t remember me.”

“Oh,” grinned Gavin Tremaine, “if you were his translator, I’m sure he remembers. I thought that maybe your boss was handing me a line there... but if you do know this Brazilian honcho, that changes things.”

“What does it change?”

“Well, look, it’s like this. Signora Gervasi just told me, very politely, that if I need your services, then I have to hire you. Because she knows that’s not possible. There’s no way that I can legally hire an Italian, because it takes two months to get through all the Italian paperwork. See, that was her nice Italian way of telling me to buzz off.”

“Do Italians do things like that, Gavin?” It was the first time she had called him “Gavin.” His name tumbled off her lips, as if she’d been saying his name for years. She could almost taste his name. It has a strong American taste, like hot dog mustard.

“Italians pull that stuff constantly! They use their complicated legal system as a trade barrier... It’s impossible to get through, it’s worse than airport security! So I can’t hire you right now — but get this. I can hire you three months ago.”

“How do you do that?”

“Because I’m an accountant, that’s how I do it. You do have a fiscal code, right?”

“My codice fiscale? Of course!” She’d had to memorize all sixteen letters and digits.

“That’s great. Well, you won’t be working for me. You’ll be working for a Seattle venture capital firm – Cook, Bishop & Engleman. They’re my associates. My firm always has some Italian paperwork filed — we call them our ‘ghost employees.’ So, when the time comes that we need somebody local around here, we just file a ‘correction’ on the Italian form that we already filed. Then that ‘ghost employee’ turns into a real person. That real person would be you.”

“I see. You’re very clever.”

“No, I’m not. Not really. I learned that trick from the Italians — from those Web boys over at LOXY. The Italians know all the back doors through their own hiring system — that’s the whole point of being Italian. But that’ll work, all right. And it’s totally legal, too. That’s the best part. There’s nothing crooked going on here, I promise. I am offering you a real, legal job. You can declare the income on your Italian taxes. You can put it on your resume. ‘Farfalla Corrado, Senior Trade Consultant for Cook, Bishop & Engleman,’ that would be you.” Gavin drew a breath, then paused. “If you’d like to help me out, that is.”

“Of course I will help you out, Gavin.” The words tumbled out of her before she had time to think. But, well, there it was. Of course, she would help him. It was her life, to help guests and travelers. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need to have a word with the Brazilian Culture Minister. It’s about electronics. It’s rather technical and boring, but it’s very important for my business in Seattle. I know that the Minister can speak some English, but I need to know, for sure, that he really gets what I’m proposing to him.”

“All right. If you can find him, I can talk to him.”

“I’m sure you don’t know too much about obscure electronic circuit boards...”

“I do,” she said, “I’m from Ivrea.”

“Of course, electronics are huge in Ivrea. Olivetti was there, I forgot about that... Well, wow, that’s so totally perfect! It’s amazing, the caliber of fine people you can meet at Italian tech conferences. There is really a kind of cool synergy happening here. I should go to more of these gigs.”

“I go to too many,” she sighed.

“Well, I came to this one just to meet the Minister. The rest of this gig, I can improvise. Except for my own speech, of course. I sure don’t want to blow that one.”

“I can help with your speech,” she promised. Not in ways he would ever expect — but, well, yes. She could help him.

“I don’t want to break my word,” he said. “Professor Milo needs help, don’t you think? No computer! I can’t get over that. She reminds me so much of my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother never used a computer?”

“Well, my grandma was from Seattle, so she used to program for Boeing. But my grandmother — well, she always doted on me. I mean, my mother’s mother. She just lavished her affection on me. She adored me. I took her completely for granted. When I was eleven, she died.” Gavin sighed. “You know how kids are. Kids can never look far ahead. Just as they can’t look far back.”

Farfalla gazed into his eyes. He was sincere. This strange man felt the loss deep in his heart — true grief — for something that had happened so long ago. “You loved your grandmother?”

“I never really knew her. I found it all out later, researching my family history. My mother’s mom worked on the Seattle World’s Fair. She could program in FORTRAN. She worked for Boeing, building fighter jets. An amazing woman and I never knew any of that! I just thought she was my nice grandma who made me snickerdoodle cookies.” Gavin’s brow was knotted. “I hate it when I overlook the obvious. She mattered, and I failed to see that.”

Farfalla felt her defenses melt away. All four of her grandparents were still alive. And the thought of seeing any of them filled her with dread. Italy was full of miserable, old people. Italians under thirty were fleeing in every direction because of them. She really couldn’t stand the sight of her grandparents, and here was this guy who loved his grandmother so much that his heart was bleeding.

She sensed — she knew — that every promise she made him meant future trouble for her. She should not reach out to this man, because he would reach back. And grip her with those strong, needy hands.

Farfalla could help foreigners in Italy. That was how she lived. It was herself that she could never help. Because she was always a foreigner, and she always would be a foreigner, no matter where she stood. No matter what space, or what time.

Gavin gave her a look of sudden concern. “Look, Farfalla — don’t let me make a lot of trouble for you, all right? I’ll try not to interfere with your regular gig at the Congress. I know that you came here to work.”

Farfalla shrugged. “I am used to trouble.” She was in so much trouble already. More than he would ever know.

“Your Signora Gervasi there might be a tad annoyed when she realizes that I pulled a fast one on her.”

“Oh, I’ll take care of Signora Gervasi,” Farfalla promised, keeping her face neutral.

“Officially you won’t get paid for eight weeks. I’m sorry, but the international money transfer part is just hopeless. So, I’ll just have to front you some cash to get you going.”

“How much?” chirped Farfalla.

Gavin winced. “Oh, Signora Gervasi was very clear about the necessary sums. Let’s have a word with the ATM.”

Two minutes passed. Just one hundred twenty ticking seconds and everything changed. Farfalla’s outlook on Capri brightened like the sun.

Because Farfalla had money. Legal money, a legal salary, even! A nice, thick wad of crisp, untouched bills, tucked in her purse next to the pathetically stolen bagels.

Farfalla glanced up from the secret depths of her purse.

An otherworldly blush had spread over the tourist island. Capri was a very different place for a girl with money. Capri was a romantic island. Seriously romantic. The shiny storefronts smiled at Farfalla, beckoning her, anxious to serve her, eager to please her.

The guests at the Futurist Congress, the weirdos wandering the lobby and gabbling in English and Portuguese, they suddenly became nice, normal people. Not distant, scary, rich people. Her own people. She was not a grifter, a drifter, a gypsy, a loser. She belonged here. With him.

“Oh, there you are, you two!” The professor had arrived. “Are you ready for a little adventure?”

They took a cab across the island to Anacapri. The two Americans shared a lively interest in the Capri landscape, making a happy fuss about the most everyday things... postal boxes, awnings, doorways... Flowers that they found unusual. People in sunglasses who might be celebrities.

The narrow streets of the town of Anacapri were full of bewildered tourists. They exited the cab, Gavin opened his map, and a Spanish couple instantly asked them for directions. Then a French kid also asked them for directions, and then, with comic unlikelihood, two Anacapri locals asked them for directions, to find the way inside their own tiny town.

The locals insisted on poring over Gavin’s English-language map. They corrected it with Gavin’s mechanical pencil. Gavin was extremely patient about this silly ordeal. Gavin Tremaine was keen to adjust every detail.

“Men and their maps,” the Professor confided, falling into step with Farfalla. “I would have just asked for directions.”

“He’s not my husband, you know,” Farfalla told her.

“Oh, I never make a fuss about that. Not here! We’re in Capri!”

“No, I want to tell you, I just met that man. We are together now, but it’s just an accident.”

“Matrimonio all’Italiana, that’s as old as the hills!”

The posh little street had once been a poor island mule-track, narrow, twisty, and wretched. Then, tourism had been invented. Now, the street was jeweled with fancy Italian boutiques. The titans, the great lords of la Moda: Prada, Versace, Bulgari, Valentino.

Farfalla knew every one of these Italian fashion empires. Each one was built on fear and envy and the ghostly bones of sweatshops, but they were genuine marvels of world civilization.

Farfalla knew that they were evil, yes, like a vampire tiara of blood diamonds, but there was no such thing as glamour without evil. Glamour with no evil was like that so-called ‘fashion’ from Finland. Like ‘Marimekko’— clean, bright, terrible, stainless Finnish clothing. Farfalla would rather jump off a bridge than wear Marimekko.

The Professor ignored all the lovely stores and their enticing goods. She headed straight for a beat-up news kiosk.

This grimy popular news-stand carried racks of magazines in Italian, English, French, German, Arabic, and Japanese. The kiosk also offered shrink-wrapped movies, inflatable beach toys, lighters, tissues, and sleazy pin-up calendars.

It also had one large rack of mass-market paperback novels. Professor Milo plucked up a fat Italian paperback. The book’s cover was framed in hot pink, with a comely 1930s-style brunette, smiling in winsome soft focus. “Farfalla, dear, what is this book?”

“That book is a diary. The Intimate Confessions of Claretta Petacci.”

“How sweet! I must have her for my collection! I’ll take a few of these, too.” Professor Milo plucked up a slew of paperbacks.

Farfalla paid the kiosk’s bored proprietor, a hairy-eared local in a stained wifebeater shirt, more intent on watching a soccer game than making a sale. This sullen crook didn’t want to change Professor Milo’s 100-Euro bill, but this was Capri, so he had no choice but to cater to the rich.

Gavin reappeared, the map rustling in his hand. “Did you ladies get lost?”

“Here,” said Professor Milo, saddling him with her bag of souvenirs.

Gavin swung the bag of books around the end of his arm. “I’ve found your museum for you.”

The museum that Professor Milo sought had once been a Capri vacation home built by a dentist. This long-dead American dentist was a Confederate colonel from Louisiana.

This dentist had taken his riches — he must have been a dentist to the Victorian superstars — and built himself a private castle. The castle was unique, because he’d built it from the scattered remains of ancient Capri.

This castle of dentistry was braced together from ancient, battered Greek columns, masses of inscribed Roman masonry, and red Roman classical bricks. Glaring medieval peaked windows were set in the castle’s thick walls, more or less at random.

“So, what style would you call this?” Gavin said to Farfalla.

“It’s called ‘American,’” Farfalla told him.

“I totally love this joint! Let’s go inside!” Gavin bought three tickets.

Like a yawning mouth, the castle looked much bigger within than it did from the outside. Inside, the Italian-American-Confederate castle had a small but pleasant courtyard, with a tiny, burbling fountain and winding stone stairs.

A cluster of Chinese tourists were taking snapshots of the Louisiana Colonel’s kidnapped Capri statuary. These antique statues were ancient Roman women — big, thick-hipped, solid-looking Roman supermodels. They had chipped toga drapery and absurdly small heads.

“I’m on the board of directors of a little museum about this size,” Gavin announced. “The ‘Seattle Pioneers Museum.’”

“You direct a museum?” said Farfalla.

“Yeah, I do the books for three museums. Seattle’s full of museums. And their endowments are an absolute mess! Museums never understand seasonal cash-flow and tangible long-lived assets.”

“Do you like museums, Gavin?”

“I totally love museums,” said Gavin, eagerly swinging his bag-full of cheap paperbacks. “All this consumer junk that we buy and sell every day — here today, gone tomorrow. The precious things from the past, that we store in museums — that’s what the future will see from us. That’s all that the future will ever see from us.”

Professor Milo beamed happily at her surroundings. “So, I’m here, at long last! The Colonel who built this palace was a dear friend of the American exile community. Whenever you read old novels set in Capri, the Colonel often shows up. He’s what they call a ‘roman à clef’ figure.”

“’Roman à clef?’” said Gavin, at once. “I’m not familiar with that term.”

“It means that he was a real person, who appears inside a novel. He’s an actual, nonfictional person inside a work of fiction. ‘Roman à clef means’ ‘romance with a key’.”

“Couldn’t an author be sued for doing something like that? That ought to be illegal or something.”

“Suing someone for her romance novels?” The professor gave a light, little laugh. “Oh, dear me, who would bother, these days?”

Farfalla smoothed the brightly-patterned skirt over her legs. Her knees were trembling.

Farfalla gazed at the sullen flagstones under her high-heeled shoes.

Something dreadful was lurking down there. She could feel the premonition. There was something very big, bad, and heavy inside this place. Just waiting here. Waiting for her.

“Are you okay?” asked Gavin.

She glanced up. “What?”

“You look a little pale, just now.”

She lied to him. “I’m all right.”

The Capri museum had been a private home for the rich Confederate dentist and his two spinster daughters. Those long-lost people had lived in here. They had grown old in here, and they had died in here, too. And now, they were gone forever. The little Italian museum had crawled into their empty dream-castle, like a hermit crab into a sea-shell.

The tiny rooms within the museum were full of industrial shelving. Ugly metal shelves stacked thick with dusty catalogs, relics, and artifacts.

The director’s office had been hacked, somehow, out of the nooks and crannies of the dentist’s home. You couldn’t swing a cat in a mousetrap that size.

A young Italian woman lurked inside this cramped and crooked niche. She was ardently fussing with a bulky desktop computer. This Capri museum clerk might have been 25 years old, but with her surfer jewelry, her day-glo plastic skirt and her necklace of popper beads, she looked about twelve.

The museum clerk looked up at them with a guilty start. “Mi dispiace, la dottoressa Malaparte non è qui. È andata ad Anacapri e per oggi non tornerà.”[9]

Farfalla leaned over the museum girl’s desk and spoke in rapid, chummy Italian. “I think we can manage this. I had to bring you these two Americans... and this big tall one, he’s from Microsoft and he’s richer than Berlusconi. As for this other one, she’s just a nice lady scholar. All she wants to do is see some statues that you have.”

“I’m not in any position to show you this museum’s holdings without my director present. I apologize sincerely, but that can’t be helped.”

Farfalla craned her neck across the director’s desk. “What’s that you’re playing there? Is that Warcraft?”

Popper Bead blinked. “I really can’t help you. I already told you that.”

“I’m Level Eighty on Warcraft.”

The clerk was stunned. “You’re Level Eighty?! Are you Horde, or Alliance?”

“What, are you kidding me? I’m Horde, of course! I’m a Level Eighty Undead Priestess. What Guild are you in?”

“I’m a Horde Blood Elf Paladin. Level 30. I’m in the Blood Roses Guild.”

“Have you ever seen a ‘Spectral Tiger’ loot card? I bet you never have.”

The museum clerk thought about her situation. The psychic pressure was mounting on her. She was in a state of moral anguish. “Look, Signora, I’d love to help your American clients there... But if my director knew I was Warcrafting here at work, she’d kill me! Besides, you don’t have the ‘Spectral Tiger’ in your purse, I bet.”

“What seems to be the problem here?” Gavin said in English, his big hands stuffed in the sturdy pockets of his cargo pants.

Farfalla scowled. “She can’t let just anybody into the museum stacks. Not without some previous arrangement with her boss.”

“Tell her that we understand that. Tell her we are not just anybody. Ask her if she has any Troubetzkoy items in her holdings. Then, tell her we can come back later, with the local Minister of Tourism, Health and Culture.”

Farfalla was doubtful. “Do you know the Minister?”

“He’s a Congress sponsor. I can get to know that guy. Look, I don’t want to bully her, or anything. Be nice. I’m not making a threat. This is a promise.”

Farfalla conveyed the information. Popper Bead went gray with fear. She quickly worked her way through the desktop’s database. “Listen,” she said, “I do see something here, but I know that castle basement, and you don’t want to go down there.”

Farfalla smoothed her hair. “Do you have vampires down there? We’re not afraid of mice.”

“It’s a total bordello, down there! That basement is a filthy mess! I’m supposed to be archiving that junk, but, truly, nobody ever asks for that rubbish. That American émigré crap is a thousand years old.”

Farfalla sniffed. “Don’t be silly! America’s not a thousand years old. Italy, yes, America, no. They’re very discreet, these two people.”

“I don’t want any trouble! This is such a good job, and I don’t want to go back to graduate school.” Popper Bead scratched nervously under her bright plastic necklace. “Talk to my boss about your problem. Professor Malaparte is always very nice to foreign scholars.”

Gavin diagnosed the situation. “She’s giving us the Italian stonewall treatment. We’re not giving her anything that she needs yet.”

“Gavin, you understand Italian. You don’t need me. Talk to her yourself.”

“Her local accent is throwing me. I can’t understand a word she says, but I know what she’s doing. She’s cute!”

A novel sensation shot through Farfalla. It jumped like lightning through her tender ears and shot to the soles of her feet.

What was this feeling? What a strange, jolting, new, bitter emotion. It came out of nowhere, overwhelming her instantly. Powerful. Fantastic. Painful.

A possessive, threatening, burning feeling. Gelosia! Farfalla had never known jealousy. Not before this moment.

So, this was the evil beast that people had always told her about. This was that famous green-eyed monster.

Jealousy was a powerful beast. Awful. Painful. Strong. All slithery, boneless and alive in her body’s core, like an electric eel.

Farfalla struggled to push the strong feeling aside. She failed. Because Jealousy was smarter than she was. Jealousy was very paranoid, very alert and very bright. Jealousy was a smart monster with two big green watchful eyes. Gelosia had two fiery green emerald eyes, and Gelosia only saw things that Gelosia wanted to stab to death.

“She’s cute,” said Gavin nonchalantly, “in a kind of a punky, dorky, geeky-chick way.”

Popper Bead looked up at Gavin from under her damp eyelashes. Please, tall, handsome foreigner. I’m only trying to get along here. Please don’t crush helpless, little, tender me.

Gavin gazed back at her from on high. Your so-called troubles amuse me. You sweet little creature. Don’t you worry! The likes of me has dealt with worse than this.

I am sure that you have, you handsome guy.

Oh, you could bet your very life on that, darling.

They weren’t even moving their lips! It was horrible.

Professor Milo asserted herself. “This museum’s special holdings are off limits — is that the problem?”

“I’m sure that she wants to let you roam around here,” Gavin told the professor. “We just haven’t found a compelling reason for her to let us do that.” He offered the Professor a rueful grin. “But, this is Italy, and we’ll get you inside. Farfalla and I are methodically wearing her down.”

“So, her director isn’t working today? What a shame! Dr. Malaparte is a famous classics scholar. We are particular pen-pals! She knows more about temples of Venus than any woman alive.”

“Oh, I’m keen to bring in her boss’s boss! That’ll crack this nut for sure.”

“Young man,” said Professor Milo, “I like you. You didn’t have to help me, but I can see that you are a gentleman.”

“Professor Milo, it’s like this. We live in a globalized world. Most things change so quickly, but there are some thing we just can’t change so easily...” Gavin paused. “Well, that’s not entirely true. We can definitely change those things, too, because everything changes. Always. But, sometimes, it requires an unconventional approach.”

Professor Milo sighed. “Yes. I know.”

“So, it turns out we’re a little at a loss here. Farfalla and I could definitely make this happen for you, if only we had more time to spare. But we do have the conference. Farfalla has to translate and I have to attend the events.”

“I understand that, young man. I can see that this is up to me. Hand me that bag, if you please.”

Gavin gave her the plastic bag of paperback books. Professor Milo emptied the bag across the clerk’s cluttered desk.

Popper Bead brightened at once. “Oh, I love these books. I read this one, this one here, three times. It’s such a great book! I read this other one, too. But she’s not as good a writer as this first one.”

“They’re all me,” sighed Professor Milo. “I wrote all of these books. All of those romance authors are me. I’m ‘Virginia Clements.’ I’m also ‘Althea Adair,’ and ‘Jane Woodbine.’”

Gavin Tremaine was riveted with fascinated interest. “Wow! Are you’re kidding? You write novels, Professor? Fantastic! Tell me all about it.”

“I’m telling her,” said Professor Milo. “Now, ask her if she’ll take us into her stacks.”

Popper Bead, trembling with heroine-worship, quickly jumped from her office chair. “I did not know you had brought this great maestra to Capri! Please forgive me for being so stupid!”

Popper Bead hastily led the way from the office, through high-ceilinged rooms reduced, then down a gloomy, badly-lit set of damp-smelling stairs.

“Boy, that was pretty easy once you brought out the big guns,” crowed Gavin. “So, are you a really famous novelist?”

“Oh, I’ve been writing my little books for thirty years,” mourned Professor Milo. “People always make such a big fuss about my New York Times bestsellers. The faculty at the university never knew I write fiction. I am a humanities scholar, you know. Really, my fiction is just a small creative outlet of mine.”

“Nobody knows that you write novels? I can’t believe that. Nobody has a secret life like that, any more. Didn’t people on the Internet figure out your secret life, right away?”

“I don’t know. I never look at the Internet.”

Farfalla could see that Gavin was thrilled by the turn of events. His blue eyes sparkled with glee. He scarcely seemed to notice that they were descending downstairs into a stuffy, airless, deadly, menacing tomb.

“So, why do you write your novels under three different names, ma’am?”

“That’s how it works. ‘Virginia Clements’ writes my historical romances, while ‘Jane Woodbine’ writes my modern romances. They are two very different audiences, you know. My historical readers and my modern readers, those ladies hardly talk to each other.”

“I never would have guessed that. So, what kind of fiction does ‘Althea Adair’ write?”

Popper Bead banged on the light switch. A naked overhead bulb jumped into fitful life. They were deep below ground now. They were standing in a dungeon.

Real Italian dungeons were sturdy, simple, practical places, designed to hold enemies. This dungeon was an Edgar Allen Poe dungeon, an American’s twisted idea of an Italian dungeon. It was extremely fake, yet very real. It was, somehow, much older than old, and much scarier than scary. It was like a Gothic stage-set where Americans would go mad with fear.

Farfalla’s head began to spin with premonitions. Premonitions were boiling out of the walls. Dread assaulted her senses. This dungeon was old and new, foreign and not foreign. The place was timeless, spaceless and completely terrifying.

It was... she couldn’t get her head around it... there were no words for what was happening to her. She was cracking up, having an episode. This was, somehow, like a pizza. It was like a fake American “pizza,” where Americans were trying hard to make a “real Italian pizza”. Only, somehow, they also believed that pizzas were evil. This dentist’s dizzy dungeon was like an evil, horrible, vampire pizza stuffed with imaginary tortures.

No, sensed Farfalla, it was even worse than that. It was much, much worse. Because the dungeon was totally fake, but the pain down here was real. Long-dead pain, but extremely real pain. The museum’s past held ghostly aspects of vanished pain. Dusty vistas of long-forgotten human agony.

Because dentists of the 19th century really, truly tortured their clients. Their patients were in horrible pain from ghastly, infected toothaches. The Confederate dentist wrenched broken chunks of human ivory out of their jaws with his iron pliers, and after that horrible, terrible, blood-spitting torture, his clients were grateful to him. Yes, they were grateful. They were tortured and grateful.

Tortured and grateful inside this dungeon. That was why this unspeakable place was scaring her so much. Thank you for my awful torture, sir. I really trust you now, after this horrible, intimate torment we have been through together. You have seen me at my very worst — broken, screaming, and debased! You helped me, because you did such dreadful things to me. Yes, sir, I love you.

Awful scenes of loving, caring torture in this dungeon. Not a little bit of that: tons of that. Not obscure people, either — wonderful, famous people. Brilliant Italian artists who had never even heard of a toothbrush. This artsy dentist tortured his artistic clients for free. Poetic intellectuals with fine, noble souls — of course, they would want a famous, progressive, American dentist. This dungeon had been full of famous, beautiful, romantic, world-roving people, trapped here in their intimate agony. Scream all you like, Princess. You need not worry that anyone will hear you, now.

Popper Bead was watching her, as Farfalla shook all over in her occult dread. Popper Bead was obscurely satisfied. Popper Bead didn’t know how to talk about what was happening, or what it meant — but Popper Bead knew.

Farfalla knew, and Popper-Bead also knew. Farfalla knew that she knew, and she knew that Farfalla knew. Farfalla felt no better for knowing this. They understood one another in a real way. Woman to woman. They knew that they were enemies.

“Look at all this great, cool stuff!” exulted Gavin. “Those are acid-free banker’s boxes! We’ve got tons of these over at the Pioneer Museum.”

“What is he saying?” asked Popper Bead in Italian, her narrow eyes bright with malice. “I never saw a man so happy to be down here.”

“He loves your museum.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“We’re married!”

“Oh,” mouthed Popper Bead Girl, silently.

“Those are storage boxes for photographs,” said Professor Milo. “Photographs that are one hundred years old. I bet they have never been sorted.”

“I see that your maestra found those old photographs right away,” said Popper Bead. “Tell her that nobody has ever sorted those.”

“The maestra just said that,” Farfalla told her.

“American tourists in Capri,” shrugged Popper Bead. “Always busy taking their pictures.”

“I love Italy,” said Gavin, pulling out his pocket camera and firing off a few random flash shots. “There’s just so much heritage around here. No place else in the world can match it.”

Farfalla’s iPhone rang. They were deep under the earth in a stone dungeon, so her ringtone was feeble. However, nothing could stop the demanding calls of Babi Gervasi.

Farfalla scampered up the stairs for a stronger signal.

“So,” demanded Babi, “how did it work out for you?”

“It worked,” said Farfalla. “He hired me and he paid me in cash.”

“Good. Don’t say I never did you a favor, then.”

“Babi, I feel bad about this. I said that I would help you with the big conference errands, and here I am stuck in Anacapri with this American guy.”

“LOXY says that your American guy is a big conference errand.”

Farfalla thought this over. It was quite a thing to say. It didn’t have to be spelled out in detail. Smart Neapolitans, like Babi, never spelled anything out. “I hear you.”

“Don’t kiss him,” said Babi, and she hung up.

Don’t kiss him. If only Babi had said something else. Don’t flirt with him, don’t let him buy you drinks, and don’t go to his hotel room. Don’t be the rich boy’s girl-toy.

Farfalla did not do such things. Life was too short. But, don’t kiss him? Not even one kiss? Even Audrey Hepburn in her cold, virginal 1950’s movie was allowed one kiss. Or two kisses, or count them, three passionate kisses. With the tall, handsome Gregory Peck.

Don’t kiss him? Every woman in Italy was allowed to kiss someone! A line of women a kilometer long had kissed the Prime Minister. Don’t kiss him? This was not good advice. This was sneaky and fatal and ominous. This was a curse.

Farfalla was good at dodging curses. That was the great advantage of foreseeing the future. To make sure that awful things did not happen. Farfalla was good at making dreadful things not-happen. Not-happening awful things were her personal specialty.

So, she would not do it. Not kiss him. It was like she had already not done it. Not kissed him, not. Never. Never to kiss him. Not throwing her arms around his neck. Not rising up on her toes. No line of sweet tension thrilling down her back, nothing down the trembling length of both her legs... Lips gently not meeting his lips…

Farfalla looked in wonder at the blank black tablet she held in her hand. Thank you, iPhone! You insanely great machine, you flat black brick of opium! Don’t kiss him, the gabby little machine had just said to her. An iPhone had doomed her forever. Don’t kiss him, because she was dying to kiss him now. She would die like a dog if she left Capri without kissing Gavin Tremaine. Oddio, what a terrible mess.

Kissing Gavin Tremaine was a calamity. Would he even do that? Would he kiss her? Oh yes, he most certainly would kiss her. Because she would make him do it. There were eighteen thousand ways for her to get him to kiss her.

Oh please, God, Saints, nice Brazilian voodoo demons, please don’t make me kiss that man, Farfalla thought to herself. There was no force in her meek little prayer. It sounded like a coy invitation.

Farfalla grew stern with herself. She really, truly, did not have to kiss him. Even if he was her One, she did not have to kiss him. She was not doomed. A kiss was an act of will, and the future was not set in stone. Farfalla had always known that. The future was not made of stone because the future was a story. People who could foretell the future were people who told the future. They didn’t carve the future from a piece of stone. There were no stone futures, the future was a story! A story that people told to people.

Even Cassandra, that famous, fatal priestess, herself had a story. Cassandra’s story was the famous, dreadful legend of Cassandra: I am Cassandra of Troy, and I can tell you the future. You won’t believe the future, but the future won’t stop. I am your slave, and I hate you. And you will die, and I’ll die too — but I’ll watch you die first. Because I am the prophetess Cassandra.

Farfalla could walk out of this dreadful museum, back into the sunlight. She could do that. That was her choice, her act of will. It was time to make her free decision. Choose the future, right now.

She could leave this scary old, new doomed place. She was almost half-free, from having run up these stairs to talk to Babi. She could run out the door of this awful place. Flee the museum of the painful past, run, run through the winding streets of Capri, to the little train, to the next zooming hydrofoil. There were so many ferries in the Capri harbor. Rushing by like clockwork. Rushing by like the passing hours of a woman’s life.

Off this island in thirty minutes. Gone, vanished from Capri. A ticket in Napoli, a train to Milano, a bus to Ivrea. And she would breathe in peace.

Leave all of this. Leave this space and time. Do it, Farfalla. Disappear. Eight hours of travel up the boot of Italy. A journey of eight hours starts with one single step. One, single, strong-willed step. You can walk away from this destiny, Farfalla. You don’t have to do any of this.

Farfalla stepped up, away toward her freedom, and out of all this, forever... and then, she spun on her high heel and walked back down into the dungeon, into her dark fate.

How strange life was.

In the dead dentist’s dark and dreadful dungeon, everyone reveled in the gloom. Popper Bead Girl was shining in Farfalla’s absence. Without Farfalla around, Popper Bead was perky and charming. This was Popper’s big chance to be the center of attention, to make her fuss over her dead junk that nobody else ever noticed.

Popper Bead, Gavin and Professor Milo had managed to locate something of interest— a suitcase.

The travel case was made of thick, cracked brown leather, with iron locks, brass hasps and reinforced corners, dotted with heavy bronze studs. It was a dignified, princessly traveling case from the age of steamships. Rich people drowning and freezing in the wreck of the Titanic might have clung to a suitcase like this.

“This suitcase has no key,” Gavin told her.

“Is it her suitcase?” said Farfalla. She reached her hand toward the lost suitcase of the Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy. Then she stopped. She didn’t have to touch the suitcase. It was radiating occult certainty.

“There’s no way for us to know for sure, not without opening it,” judged Gavin. “But this is an old Italian suitcase. It’s the proper age, and it has American luggage labels. From New York, from Boston... and look, this one is from the Jefferson Hotel, in Richmond, Virginia.”

“She took the key with her,” said Professor Milo. “She left this case with her good friend, the dentist, because she meant to return here, some day. Amelie Rives was a sly little minx.”

Gavin was on one knee, examining the situation. He glanced up, bright-eyed. “Did you just say ‘minx’? I never heard anyone speak that word before.”

“The Princess Troubetzkoy wrote historical romances. She used the word ‘minx’ all the time.”

“The lock on her case is rusted solid,” Gavin announced. “Her key would be useless now, even if we had it in our hands.”

Nobody seemed to know what to say about that.

“Well, a hundred years ago, this would be a definite setback,” said Gavin. “But this is the twenty-first century! We could X-ray this suitcase. We could put in a CAT-SCAN.”

No one said anything about that, either.

“Maybe a nuclear magnetic resonator...” Gavin awkwardly hefted one of the handles, carved from elephant ivory. “I can hear something moving around in there! Come and listen to this, Farfalla.”

“Why?” Farfalla hedged. She kept a careful distance from the fatal container.

Gavin shook the suitcase violently. The ancient ivory handles squeaked like dying mice.

Popper Bead swiftly got upset about this. Gavin stopped his antics and set the case down, gently. Then he glanced at his watch in the gloom.

“Well,” Gavin said, “we got so close to success here... That case weighs a ton!”

“It could be her books in there,” said Professor Milo. “Just her books and her private papers.”

“Maybe,” said Gavin, “but that would be great news for you, wouldn’t it?”

Professor Milo’s placid face wrinkled in quick dismay. “I’m afraid you don’t understand! My university has tons of paper from Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy. Amelie wrote dozens of books. Thousands of letters. Nobody reads that rubbish now! Nobody will ever read that! Where is the Cosmic Cupid?”

Gavin glanced toward Farfalla. Her eyes met his in the gloom. There was a sudden, surging burst of silent, intimate, flawless man-to-woman communion between them. Without a word, they had agreement, a game plan, and immediate action.

“There’s no need for panic,” Gavin announced.

“We can find your Cosmic Cupid for you,” soothed Farfalla. “It will just take patience and the proper paperwork.”

Gavin raised his hand. “We need to get this American suitcase exported back to the United States. I know ways to do that between working museums. They’re like an Inter-Library Loan.”

“But I don’t want the Cosmic Cupid stuck inside some museum!” said Professor Milo.

“Doesn’t Cupid belong in a museum?” said Farfalla.

“No! No, because I want the Cupid. I want the Cupid for myself, privately.”

“Look, professor,” said Gavin, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe you can figure out some way to own your Cupid privately, but the first step is to figure out if there’s any statue here at all. And I think I know how to prove that. Back home in Seattle, we have some top-notch high-tech facilities that perform ‘non-invasive imaging.’ And I can help you there, because I know all those guys.”

“Can’t you just do that now?” said Professor Milo. “Use your computer, or something.”

“What, how, with my two hands? I’m a Futurist, I don’t have X-ray vision! The Italians are reasonable people when it comes to their heritage issues. We just need to make a good case. So, we all send an email about it, we start a wiki, and we do a Skype conference call.”

“I don’t have any computer,” Professor Milo pointed out.

“Well, that’ll sure slow things down by a factor of ten... But, well, we can put together a Cosmic Cupid coalition. We can find every scholar on the Internet who is interested in Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy. Then, we fill out all the Italian forms, we cross the t’s and dot the i’s. The Italians will come across for us. That’s how museum research gets done.”

“But I’m the only one in the world who is interested!” said Professor Milo. “I am the world’s greatest authority on Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy.”

“She was famous,” Farfalla offered gently. “She still matters to somebody on the Internet.”

“She does not matter!” wailed Professor Milo. “I published five different scholarly papers on her, and they never got one citation! Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy was never important! She was just famous, beautiful, rich and very romantic. That’s all! Even when she was alive, all the critics knew that Amelie was a lousy writer. She was popular, but she was awful! That’s why time forgot her long ago!”

“Maybe people will rediscover her literary merits some day,” Gavin said.

“She never had any merits! Her writing is totally, hopelessly, awfully bad! Amelie was beautiful, blonde and gorgeous... In Capri, she was young, and happy for a while, a little honeymoon of joy... Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough? I want to cry!”

Popper Bead spoke up. “What is wrong with her? I told you not to come down here! This is a terrible place!”

Farfalla still hated Popper Bead, but she had to give her credit. Popper had done her best to warn them against coming down here. Nobody had paid a bit of attention to Popper’s warnings.

Gavin glanced at his wristwatch. “Look, I hate to say this, but I need to leave this place right away. There’s a major panel this morning, sponsored by LOXY. Fabio Mascherati of LOXY is chairing that panel. Fabio’s a personal friend. He would take it badly if I didn’t show up.”

“All those Futurists are sure to start late,” Farfalla told him.

“I’m already late. You ladies can sort this out. I have no choice here, I really have to go.”

Gavin Tremaine vaulted up the stairs, jumping them two at a time. He vanished from the dungeon, as if he had never existed.

Farfalla looked at the other women. Well, here they were. Three women in the dungeon of pain, where no woman ever wanted to be.

Three women? No, four women. Because a woman had owned that suitcase.

8 I speak Portuguese

9 “I’m sorry, but Dr. Malaparte is not here. She is in Anacapri, and will not be here until tomorrow.”

Chapter Seven: Tomorrow’s Trends in Web Couture

Gavin had assumed that preaching in a chapel would be easy. But the acoustics in the medieval chapel were dreadful. It had something to do with the host of display screens.

Gavin sat in the front row, but still couldn’t follow the rapid Italian of the panelists. He slipped translation headphones over his ears. Most of the other Futurists were also wearing headphones. Everyone alone together, in his or her own private world.

Fabio Mascherati was this panel’s moderator. Fabio had personally picked the guests for LOXY’s major panel on future fashion trends. Fabio’s favorite fashion “thought leaders” did not look very fashionable. They wore neat, black European intellectual’s clothes, and looked like cut-out cartoons.

There was a philosopher on Fabio’s panel, because every Italian cultural panel had to have a philosopher. There was a television host who made Italian fashion documentaries. There was a sober female politician from Brussels. Her European committee handed out grants to “centers of regional excellence.” Centers like Milan, for instance, the home of LOXY.

There was also one Paris fashionista, sitting on stage like a hostage. In European high fashion, Milan and Paris had it in for each other. They were like Apple and Microsoft.

Europeans could be scary people. They said such nice, sweet, guarded, phony things about one another in public. Intellectual European panels like this one were about Europeans assuring themselves, over and over, that they wouldn’t massacre each other anymore.

The European Union was a huge empire where the lambs walked around on the lions’ backs. There was a suppressed violence to European life that got on Gavin’s nerves. You never heard Europeans address deep, dark issues in a frank, honest, way: “Hi, I’m from Italy and you’re from France! Remember when you French guys bombed us in World War Two?”

Europeans had their ghosts to remember things like that.

Italians were supremely good at hiding facts. Nobody could match them at this. A ceremonious people, the Italians. The public appearance, the live human presence, gesture and speech, the human breath, the flesh and blood- - that strongly appealed to Italians. Italian listeners were never bored by empty speeches. Italians loved a warm, positive, high-toned performance.

It wasn’t all just pleasant blather, either. Every once in a while, there would be a good stinging insult in an Italian speech. Just one good elbow-swinging zinger, to show that Italian life wasn’t all peaches and lemon meringue.

The Italian philosopher was talking about the loss of middle-class aspiration and the emergence of new forms of material culture. Gavin took this opportunity to open his computer and pretend to take notes. Actually, Gavin was catching up on his Twitter stream. “Twitter” was the web service where the Internet people in the audience were passing their secret messages.

There was a megaton of Twitter secret-messaging going on at the Futurist Congress, but almost all of it was in Portuguese. The Italians were much too busy respecting their Italian philosopher. They hung on his every empty word.

The Italian philosopher wound it up. The French fashion designer was the next to speak. He left his transparent stackable chair, and turned on the big screen with a click of his thumb.

He spoke to the crowd in Italian. An amazing feat for a French guy. Normally, the French assumed that every decent person in the world spoke French.

This French businessman was very lucid and clear. He’d come to Capri with a solid, practical agenda. He was well-rehearsed. He even directly addressed the topic of the LOXY panel: why Europeans would shop for their clothes on the Web of the future.

His detailed PowerPoint presentation highlighted the Web’s advantages for a major fashion house. Market segmentation. Reduced inventory. Integration of production with demand. Customer relations management. The change in user generations.

The children of the Baby Boomers were coming onto the fashion scene and the Web was their way of life. The Digital Natives had never known a world without a Web. They loved the Web. They were its slaves.

Micro-targeted promotion campaigns. Outreach to markets in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Gulf States. Web-savvy Moslem women in Iran could shop for sexy lingerie while never leaving Moslem seclusion.

Gavin sat up in his front-row chair. This was the kind of presentation he really liked: real, red-meat, commercial Futurism.

The French businessman sensed that he was on a roll. Paris had the Milanese reeling. And then he brought out his killer application: high-tech, French augmented reality. Réalité augmentée! Yes! Oui! Si! French women could use augmented reality to model imaginary, cyber-generated clothes. With augmented reality, the fashion house could take the client’s exact proportions (no matter how she lied about her body), and tailor clothing precisely for her. She would be able to see how imaginary clothes, on her own body, in any color, any fabric, and the fashion would never cut a stitch of real cloth until she had ordered and paid.

The French designer displayed his imaginary cyber-clothing. Gavin switched into the Twitter backchannel to see the audience response.

Not too great. The Italians were getting nasty. Spoken Italian tended to whip by Gavin, but he could read Italian just fine. My grandma’s dog wouldn’t be caught dead in that. // Those are cheap rubber clothes for computer-game figures. // It’s like set design for the Smurfs.

The Parisian gentleman was sweating it now, but he then brought out the big finish. The “Carla Effect.”

Carla Bruni. There she was. A virtual Carla Bruni! A golden video of the willowy songbird, strolling around — no, Carla was sauntering, gliding — up on the larger-than-life display screen. Carla Bruni, in her Paris-tailored get-up as the First Lady of France.

Mr. Paris had cold facts and figures on what happened to French exports whenever Premiere Dame Carla Bruni dismounted from a French jet. Fashion earthquakes occurred when Carla alighted upon some primitive, backward locale, say, London. The French called that the “Carla Effect.” And the “Carla Effect” could be measured in euros, dollars, and pounds. For the first time in history, a First Lady’s charm could be monetized.

Mr. Paris had recovered his aplomb. The Italian audience adored Carla Bruni, because Carla Bruni was, in fact, Italian. She was Italian, and French by marriage, and her dad was Brazilian. The Carla Effect promised the future!

Then he sat down to the panel’s only round of applause.

Fabio Mascherati summed up the panel’s remarks, looking cool and crisp. Fabio’s LOXY was a Web retail company, based in Milan, that sold posh Milanese clothes. Fabio, therefore, had practical and informative things to say about tomorrow’s trends in Web couture. On Twitter, though, nobody could care less.

On the Twitter backchannel, it was all Carla Bruni. They were bewitched by Carla Bruni, they just couldn’t get over her. Even the Brazilians were keenly interested in Carla. The Brazilian futurists were asking many innocent questions about Carla — her Carla-ness, her Carla-osity. The Italians were burningly eager to discuss every last little doing of “the Green-Eyed Italian Witch.” They were so proud of her!

What a romantic story Carla Bruni had. Romance fiction was too small for the world-conquering Carla Bruni. Carla’s father was not her mother’s husband. In fantastic, soap-opera fashion, Carla hadn’t known the truth about her own father until she was an adult. Her father was Brazilian. The Italian-French-supermodel-pop-singer First Lady of France was half-Brazilian.

The news of Carla’s Brazilian heritage set off an instant Twitter Carnaval. Linked pictures of Carla suddenly showed up on Twitter. The Internet had never lacked for languorous, sexy photos of Carla Bruni. Carla had been a European supermodel, so there were vast archives of a seminude Carla, in all her slumberous, gym-toned glory. Carla had changed the world by lying on top of it in lingerie.

Here was the basic Futurist scenario. A President of France had his back to the wall, in the worst political trouble of his life. Because his wife was divorcing him, while he still held office. An awful scandal. Disasters like that are simply not supposed to happen in France.

And then this stunningly beautiful girl — a goddess, a witch, an unearthly, paranormal creature — comes by the Elysee Palace with her guitar, to talk about recording policy on the Internet. Carla was worried about her music royalties, like every other doomed musician in the world.

Eight months later, and Carla Bruni is a princess of music. Just like Eliza said, in her artless, hopeful, teen-girl fashion, but for real, in broad daylight. A princess of music whose new best-frenemy is the glamorous Princess Letizia of Spain.

Carla is a princess of music, married to the President of France — she gives away all her music royalties to an orphanage. An orphanage in Haiti. An orphanage in Haiti for the children of AIDS victims.

Fantastic. Unprecedented. Surreal, even. Gavin had heard of Carla Bruni, but he had certainly never heard about the orphanage in Haiti for the children of the AIDS victims. He stared in raw disbelief at his laptop screen.

This showed a mastery of human events that was, frankly, supernatural.

That was European soft-power at its most fierce. That was like being shot from a drone aircraft flying at a vast cultural height. That was terrifying.

Then, Carla’s romance story became even more surreal. And, in some sense, even more romantic. Carla Bruni’s gay brother had died of AIDS. Carla came from a stricken AIDS-victim family. Carla had fled from Italy at the age of seven because bloodthirsty Italian Communist terrorists were trying to kill her. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was an AIDS-afflicted terrorist-refugee supermodel pop-star who married the President of France.

How could those bizarre words appear in newspapers? How could that possibly be the truth? Way, way too true to ever be fiction. Every single word of it true. You could look that up. On Wikipedia.

There were no objective metrics for this kind of contemporary weirdness. Could there be anything more to it, any further leap of fantasy to break the final limits of human disbelief? Yes. Carla Bruni had once been Mick Jagger’s girlfriend.

Gavin shut his computer and shoved it inside his shoulder bag. He wiped his sweaty brow with clammy hands. Then, he left his front-row chair to say hello to Fabio Mascherati.

Gavin knew Fabio rather well. Gavin had ‘discovered’ Fabio Mascherati. That was to say, Gavin had known, for a long time, that some speculative guy like Fabio Mascherati just had to exist. Web e-commerce was destined to move into haute couture, into the world’s most elite consumer goods. Gavin had known about this because his Futurist guru, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante, had told him that the trend was inevitable.

All the Amazon guys around Seattle were also aware of the trend. They all knew that, someday, European haute couture would sell online. The problem was that feat couldn’t be done by anybody from Amazon. Because Amazon guys were hacker geeks and cheesy hicks. Amazon had been invented to sell sci-fi books. The least chic thing in the world.

The European couture biz would never go anywhere near a dorky sci-fi geek like Jeff Bezos. As for Jeff himself, Jeff would much rather conquer outer space with his private rocket than ever dress the First Lady of France.

So, a serious Web retail couture outfit would have to be European. This was pretty obvious. It could be financed with money from Amazon founders, because they plenty of cash to spare, but it had to be run by a European fashion geek. Someone who understood both Amazon and European chic. And, somebody had to find that individual.

Gavin got his VC firm of Cook, Bishop & Engleman to send him over to Milan to sniff around for this hypothetical European fashion geek. And, Gavin found him. He was real.

Statistics didn’t lie. Fabio was not imaginary. Fabio Mascherati really existed. In fact, there were a small tribe of Fabios living in northern Italy. However, Fabio, himself, was the best candidate for the job.

Fabio was the right age for a tech start-up — just under 30. Fabio had website design experience — he had worked with a Milanese marketing firm. Fabio spoke excellent English. And most importantly, Fabio Mascherati just had the look-and-feel of a tech start-up guy. That was a quality Gavin knew well.

So Cook, Bishop & Engleman had hooked deep into LOXY — way before the new start-up was even named “LOXY.” But the Seattle boys had gotten out early, too. Cook, Bishop & Engleman got cold feet about the ugly downturn in Seattle venture capital. So, it had seemed like a shrewd idea to cash out fast from their European adventure, and turn a quick, solid, 35 percent return on the LOXY investment. Especially, when so many other VC houses in Seattle were slamming and bolting their doors.

Gavin had no position or leverage around LOXY anymore. Gavin had to sit and watch from the sidelines as LOXY grew and grew. Gavin was just a Futurist. The guy who had been there for LOXY ahead of the curve.

In Italy, though, that kind of friendship counted for plenty. Gavin dried his sweaty hand on his cargo pants, and hopped up on stage, his hand outstretched.

Fabio Mascherati was genuinely glad to see him. Fabio was not just being business-associate cordial, but was truly happy about meeting Gavin again. It was like meeting an old pal from a high-risk mountain-climbing team.

Gavin cleared his throat. “So, you put together quite a panel there, Fabio. Really eye-opening. The crowd loved it.”

“Thanks! I had my doubt about this strange mix of guests here — a bit confusing, perhaps. But today, this Congress...” Fabio did something odd and Italian with his hands. “The future is opening-up!”

“This crowd is loving the ‘Bruni Factor.’ Oh wait — I mean the ‘Carla Effect.’”

Fabio laughed in delight. “That little songbird! Our angel! You know who else is from Italy? Like Carla? Sonia Gandhi! Sonia married a Gandhi, and now Sonia runs India! The boss of India is a pretty Italian girl!”

“I didn’t know that,” said Gavin. “That is one crazy piece of trivia.”

“Are you coming to this Futurist Congress next year? Because it’s all settled — next year, we’re having another one. Capri loves us!”

“I might very well attend that gig. A lot is happening in Capri. Your venue is quite the happening place.”

“Are you doing LOFT in Geneva? How about ESPRIT in Amsterdam?”

“I heard those scenes were both good.”

“You must go, Gavin. You must! The tech scene in Europe is breaking open this year. You saw that Brussels woman on my panel here? It takes years to get Brussels to act! But when Brussels finally moves, that is an elephant walking the earth! You and I, we need to talk! How are our good friends at Cook, Bishop & Engleman?”

“They’re hanging on.”

“I heard about Puget Ventures.”

Gavin nodded somberly. “It’s way cheaper to sit on the money than put it into tech in Seattle right now.”

“That is so crazy, Gavin. Why? There’s so much tech talent in Seattle! The euro is crazy high, and our website needs programmers... You might be just the man I need for that, because...”

An apparition grabbed Fabio’s arm. She was tall and bony, lean yet busty... She had that look. That fashion-girl look. That plastic look his girlfriend Madeleine called “balloons on a stick.” Madeleine worked in the health-care industry and knew a lot about elective surgery.

Also, Seattle girls were never on very good terms with L.A. girls. This L.A. creature clinging onto Fabio screamed “Los Angeles.” She had the all-over tan, the long straw-blond hair, the cleavage down to there...

She turned to look Gavin right in the eye, and he could tell that she was scary, scary, scary smart.

“This is Brixie,” said Fabio, tenderly. “Our world-famous Brixie the Blogger.”

Gavin liked to hang out at Microsoft, so he knew the look in Brixie’s eyes. Brixie was brilliant. Brixie was off-the-charts-high-SAT-geek-smart. These were Microsoft guys with eidetic memories who spoke in complete sentences, semicolons included. Guys who did algebra in their sleep. And, some of those Microsoft guys were women. This Brixie the Blogger was one of those women. And yet, she was dressed like an airhead.

“Fabio, I loved your gay French friend with his AR,” lisped Brixie the Blogger. “But, he was blowing it on those 3-D registration issues. Any idiot knows you’re gonna get drift and jitter if you overlay fabric on a human form in realtime.”

“Allora, Jean-Luc was just speculating,” said Fabio, patting Brixie’s narrow hand. Brixie’s suntanned mitt had sharp, gleaming talons in five different shades of fuchsia. “This is a Futurist conference. Jean-Luc is ahead of the curve!”

“I just embedded his Vimeo clip in ‘Bad Girls, Great Shoes.’”

A damp, warm, sticky look passed between Fabio and Brixie. Gavin felt his heart souring in his chest. Brixie had just done... what? Brixie had just done his Italian friend some sexy, intimate favor.

Brixie’s blog was huge. That had to be it. Brixie had a monster fashion blog. All those Los Angeles girls with their feet on the pedals of daddy’s sports car... Speedometers twitched in Milan whenever those girls changed their shoes... And Brixie knew how to make the girls in L.A. change their shoes.

Dr. Gustav Y. Svante had warned him about this. This was an Internet thing: “disintermediation.”

As Brixie the Blogger glared like Medusa, Fabio dealt with his fans, associates from the Congress crowd. These Italians were asking Fabio silly questions, and respectfully pressing his flesh. Somebody passed Fabio a copy of a glossy, Italian tech magazine, where LOXY owned a big two-page center-spread. Fabio, with a tight little smile, showed this promo around, and posed for snapshots.

Last time Gavin had checked, Fabio had a very sweet Signora Mascherati and two cute pre-school Mascherati kids. Not that this liaison with Brixie was a deal-breaker or anything, because, this was, after all, Capri... Some people thought that brilliant, geeky woman couldn’t be voracious, vampy sex-bombs. They were ever so wrong.

Brixie the Blogger was all over Fabio like a sunburn. And Fabio was basking in it. Everyday prudence, due-diligence, would tell a smart guy to stay away from a man-eater like that. But, well, no. Not here in Capri.

Until this moment, Gavin had not understood that Italian guys might have a serious yen for American girls. Italian girls were always relentlessly working it. Italian girls were 105 percent hair, heels and fiery lingerie. Everybody on the planet knew that Italian girls were gorgeous girls. So why would Italians go for American girls?

Because Italian men were Italian. That was why. For Italian men, all those Italian female sex-bombs were pushy and the same. They lacked exotic appeal. While Brixie here, who looked like she had a purse full of Viagra pills and had memorized the Kama Sutra — Gavin would rather jump in a deep Los Angeles tar pit than wade-in with Brixie the Blogger — but for an Italian man, Brixie was an It-girl. Italian girls were plain, old Italian orange juice, and Brixie was a big, green, Kiwi-lotus-pineapple Jamba Juice.

As for Brixie herself, she was vamping all over this married Italian fashion web-mogul. She was settling into the crook of his neck for a nice hot feast off his blood.

Nothing was going to save Fabio from this unearthly web-creature, thought Gavin in awe. Except for one thing — Capri. Fabio would leave Capri soon, and Brixie would leave Capri, too. What happened in Capri, stayed in Capri. It had been that way on Capri for two thousand years. The island’s long, sacred tradition.

Gavin stuck his hand out and smiled. “Gavin Tremaine,” he announced. “It’s good to meet a fellow American over here, Brixie.”

“It’s good to meet a YAWN,” smirked Brixie.

“What?”

“You’re from Seattle, dude. You’re a YAWN, ‘Young And Wealthy but Normal.’ Your shirt is from REI, and those pants are from Patagonia. Those are Timberland shoes. You’ve got white Nike socks.”

“You’re impressing me,” said Gavin. “I know I kinda dress like crap but... well, I like to wear stuff where I can... roll around inside museums and brush off the spiderwebs.”

Fabio was pained to overhear this exchange. Italians hated to see Americans being rude to other Americans. Americans commonly blurted rude and awful things that would cause Italians to stab each another. “Gavin, my friend,” Fabio said, “are you enjoying your time in Capri?”

“You betcha!” said Gavin.

“You came a long way to be with us. Thank you for that.”

“I’m thrilled by your get-together here.”

“Perfetto. Let’s do lunch tomorrow, Gavin. Everyone has to eat lunch... A catered event on the LOXY yacht, and the weather will be fine tomorrow... A big, pretty boat, in the Grand Harbor, easy to find... Will you join us? Tomorrow?”

“I would love it, Fabio.”

“Bring a guest! Are you able to make our music events? Beautiful Brazilian music, Gavin! The Minister of Culture is in Capri.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on that situation,” said Gavin.

Fabio blinked at him limpidly. “LOXY wants to see you happy here, Gavin. You’re a true friend of LOXY.”

Gavin’s phone rang. “That’s my little sister,” he told them, and that ended that.

Chapter Eight: Prada Goth

Farfalla’s hostess had gotten all chummy. Eleonora had been stuck on the rock of Capri for ages. She had a ton of petty, local gossip to share. And share she did.

Farfalla took advantage of this fit of confidence to borrow her hostess’s car.

It was difficult to use a car on Capri, as Farfalla soon discovered. Finding any parking spot was a major ordeal. But Farfalla would not let that defeat her – she murmured a prayer, and found one.

Eliza Tremaine was slouching on a garden bench outside her decrepit hotel. The teenage American girl was groggy and half-dozing in the bright sun. Gavin’s sister looked like a black lace lizard. Her pale hands were tinged pink with sunburn.

Eliza looked up, drowsy and red-eyed, as Farfalla stood before her.

“Buongiorno,” Farfalla stated. “Are you ready to go shopping?”

Eliza lurched stiffly to her combat-booted feet. “I left my purse up in my room. Let’s go and get it now.”

“Are you having a good time in Capri?”

“No. I went out last night with those Brazilian electronica guys. We were drinking Guarana Night Owls. I’ve only slept a little, here on this bench. I feel pretty awful.”

“You have jet lag.” Farfalla passed over a pair of brown pills from the depths of her purse. “When you need to sleep, try these.”

They climbed into the hotel’s ancient elevator, which shrieked with iron dismay as it rose two stories. “Are you turning me on to narcotics?” said Eliza. She brushed shreds of lint from Farfalla’s pills.

“Melatonin is not a narcotic. Our grandparents had ‘narcotics.’ Narcotics never work! Melatonin works.”

Eliza thought this over as she shuffled down the gloomy hall toward her hotel room. “What else works?”

“Ritalin, caffeine, alcohol, and ‘meow-meow.’ Vitamins work. Don’t believe what cops and junkies tell you. Those are made-up horror stories.”

Using a rusty key on a wooden tag, Eliza pried open her door. The hotel room stank of fear.

Farfalla stopped at the doorjamb. “What happened?”

“There’s a ghost in here,” said Eliza.

“Where is the ghost?” said Farfalla.

Eliza pointed solemnly at a brightly-colored Capri souvenir beach towel.

“You bought a big towel with pretty rainbows and sailboats? You threw that over the cold spot?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“You had a good idea,” said Farfalla. “What did the ghost do?”

“The ghost just kept moaning,” said Eliza.

Farfalla opened all the windows. She threw back the brocade drapes. The day was partly cloudy. Odd hazes of filtered sunlight ran over the warped wooden floor.

Farfalla removed the beach towel.

“It’s here,” she said. “I see it.”

For the first time, some color touched Eliza’s face. “You can see it?”

“Yes. I can see it.”

“What are we supposed to do about it?”

Farfalla shrugged. “We could get a priest. Here in the South, they have a million priests. Here in the South, they have more priests than cats.”

“What would a priest do?”

“A priest would take all day! This is a haunted hotel! Everyone in Capri knows it’s haunted. Except for the tourists. They just think it’s haunted.”

“Well, I didn’t know any of that! I could rent a priest, maybe. Are priests expensive?”

Farfalla shook her head. “Oh, that’s no good! The hotel staff would talk to the priest, when you weren’t looking... They wouldn’t let him chase away their ghost... We could be here all week!”

“But you could get rid of the ghost. That’s what you said. Isn’t it?”

“Brazilians,” nodded Farfalla. “Brazilians are here in Capri. Maybe, if they brought veve chalk from home... That ritual takes a long time— You have to draw the patterns, you need rum and a sacrifice...” Farfalla spread her hands and shrugged. “Why don’t we leave now? I have four translation sessions today.”

“Wait,” said Eliza, brightening, “I’d much, much rather see you do Brazilian voodoo in my room, than go shopping! I hate shopping. Can you really do voodoo, Farfalla? That just sounds so fantastically great!”

“Bring your brother,” said Farfalla. “Your brother would see nothing here. No more ghosts.”

“Oh.” Eliza thought this over. “I’m sure that’s right.”

“Let’s leave. Never mind your ghost. Don’t tell anyone. Everything will be fine.”

Eliza Tremaine narrowed her blue eyes. She recognized the truth of what Farfalla was telling her, but she chose to rebel. “What if I don’t want to shut up and say nothing? What if I don’t want things to ‘be fine?’”

“You mean you want things to get bad?”

“No, no! Not that! I just... I just want you to tell me about what happens next. That’s all.”

“You want to know about when the future gets bad? You want me to tell you the ‘worst-case scenario?’”

“Yes. Please!”

“I am great at those,” said Farfalla. “I love those. I am the best at those. Worst case scenario? The Brazilian Culture Minister comes here. Have you ever heard of him?”

“Of course. He’s a Tropicalista musician — like Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa — I know all of them. I know more about them than even Gavin.”

Farfalla nodded. “The Brazilian Culture Minister is a high priest of cannibal voodoo.”

Eliza Tremaine showed a twinge of doubt. “My brother knows a lot about him. Gavin never said that he was any ‘cannibal.’”

“That’s real life, it’s not a fake story. He is a cannibal. The Minister of Culture is the music prince of the Antropofago Movement. Those Brazilian culture-cannibals, they want to make voodoo the Brazilian state religion. That Minister would come in here, and he would see this ghost of yours, just like I do... All his bodyguards would come, too, and the band’s girlfriends from Bahia... They’d have a big, cool jam session in here… they’d be throwing chairs out your windows... smoking a lot of pot... they would wreck this hotel. That would cost a fortune.”

“Wow!” cried Eliza.

“Don’t say ‘wow,’” scowled Farfalla. “Brazilian musicians, those people die young every day.” Farfalla pointed at the ghost. “He died young. When you see a ghost like that? That is a big pile of bad, bad decisions.”

“Where did he come from?”

Farfalla lifted the beach towel, and stared at the floor. She tossed the towel aside.

“This ghost is Italian,” she said. “A German black magician built this hotel. He killed the people of Capri, with his cannons, and with his evil, perverted, gay sex in the blue pagan grottos. Everybody in Capri, they all know what happened.”

Eliza’s blue eyes narrowed in doubt. “How do you know things like that? You’re not from Capri.”

“Find out for yourself. I promise, it’s all on Wikipedia.”

“I meant about the ‘gay’ part! I mean, calling evil people ‘gay,’ how do you know he was ‘gay’? I’m from Seattle. Some of my best friends are gay. It’s fascist to call bad people ‘gay.’”

Farfalla sighed. “Can we leave yet?”

“Maybe I should go to my brother’s hotel. I forgot my luggage there, anyway.”

“Oh, that can’t help you now...” Farfalla looked Eliza up and down. “You did this yourself. You asked to come here. And look at the way you’re dressed!”

“I can’t help it,” Eliza muttered.

“Oh yes, you can.”

“Hey, some awful black-magic things happen in Seattle, too,” Eliza grumbled. “Look at all those young dead music guys from Seattle Grunge bands.”

“You want to die young? That is your desire, that is your future?” Farfalla pointed at the crooked stain on the hotel floor. “There it is. You can see that, can’t you? What is wrong with you?”

“A lot of stuff is wrong with me,” whimpered Eliza.

“I can see that,” said Farfalla. “I can tell fortunes! People pay me to tell their fortunes. But for you, stupid girl, your bad fortune is free, okay? It is written all over you!”

Eliza sat meekly on her rumpled bed. Tears escaped through the smeared kohl around her eyes. “Please don’t tell me that... I feel so tired... I can’t sleep here in Italy, I never came here before...”

“Look,” said Farfalla, “Maybe I can say a few words. For you, and for him. Then, we leave. Quickly. Understand?”

Eliza curled up on the bed, but her eyes were open.

Farfalla took a deep breath, confronted the stained floorboards, and raised her arms. “’Tam clara nunquam providae mentis furor ostendit oculis! Video et intersum et fruor! Imago visis dubia infallit meos, spectemus! Sed cur repente noctis aestivae vices hiberna longa spatia producunt mora, aut quid cadentes detinet stellas polo? Phoebum moramur? Redde iam mundo diem!’ Okay, now we go shopping. Get your purse.”

They left the hotel room together. “Leave your door open,” said Farfalla. “The maids are used to the ghosts.”

They took the creaking, carpeted stairs, since the old iron elevator was so slow and wicked. “Aren’t you afraid of ghosts?” asked Eliza.

“Not ghosts like him. I told that ghost I could see him. I made fun of him. They hate sarcasm.”

“You have supernatural powers,” Eliza said, in a small voice. “You are paranormal.”

“Look, are you an idiot? Of course I’m paranormal, but do I look ‘powerful’ to you? You think you want my life? You wouldn’t last one week.”

“Okay, okay, please don’t get mad at me. I’m new at this! I’m really new at all of this.”

They departed the haunted hotel. Farfalla had a hard time remembering where she had parked the borrowed Lancia. Everything in Capri was cunningly arranged for foot traffic — to guide the gullible tourists past the expensive stores. All the parking spots in Capri were hidden with an awful craftiness. These sacred, hidden spots were known only to the local adepts.

Farfalla herded Eliza past cracks in the fig-strewn sidewalk. “Eliza, did you go to the Futurist Congress?”

“Oh yeah, I did go to your Congress! I totally, totally want to go to more of your Futurist Congress. Your Futurist Congress is super.”

“Who did you see there?”

Eliza pulled a rumpled brochure from her tight-laced bodice. “Well, I saw this cool panel, with two women on it. ‘Web-Based Collective Action and Urban Revival’ with Patrizia Kosciusko-Morizet and Nathalie Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.”

Farfalla laughed in delight. “I never heard an American girl say their names!”

“I went up after, to talk to Signora Patrizia. My brother said I should mingle with the European brainy people. Patrizia runs this modern art museum. She has a big cultural center. I would love to do that, myself, some day. Because I want to be cultural, too. I totally want to be cultural. Like, to be the cultural musical princess!”

Farfalla thought this over. “What did Patrizia say to you?”

“She said I had to take responsibility, and build my public credibility. She said that I should go to Torino.” Eliza paused in wonder. “Patrizia was so nice to me. She talked to me like a grown-up.”

“Torino? I hate Torino! Torino — it’s nothing like Milano... You’re from Seattle? Well, Torino is just like Portland.”

“Patrizia is beautiful. She is so dignified and elegant. I have never met anyone like Patrizia. She’s a real lady.”

“The women in Torino dress like laboratory workers! Those little gray witches in Torino are full of occult esoterica! They’re even worse than Prague and Lyons... You know where a little music-scene girl like you should go? You should go to Berlin.”

“Oh yes, totally! Please! I would love to go to Berlin! D J Hell is from Berlin! Ellen Allien lives there. Hey, is this your car?”

“Get in the car,” Farfalla hedged.

Eleanora’s aging sports car lurched forward fitfully, since it hadn’t had an oil change in ages. The Lancia spent its sad, cramped life under canvas wraps in the TV presenter’s garage.

Farfalla put the Lancia’s top down. She busied herself with her hair-wrap and sunglasses. She ground the car into gear. The streets on Capri were as crooked as the Hebrew alphabet.

Eliza poked at the radio’s smoky, plastic buttons. A jazzy beach samba popped out of the Lancia’s dusty speakers.

“I never heard this song before,” said Eliza, cocking her head to one side. “It’s Brazilian. It’s from 1964.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s got a Mark II Farfisa electric organ, and that’s a four-track mix.” Eliza listened some more. “That bassist can’t play samba.”

Farfalla rasped and jolted her way to the next intersection, where German tourists were licking gelato cones. A question occurred to her. “What kind of music does your brother like?”

“Gavin doesn’t really ‘like’ music much. Gavin is a Futurist. So, Gavin mostly plays Brian Eno ambient music about ten-thousand-year old clocks. Where are you driving me?”

“We’re going to Anacapri now.”

“Why? Why would I want to go there?”

“Do you ever play Warcraft?”

“Yeah. Sure. Sometimes.”

“I’m a Horde 80th Level Undead Priestess.”

“Okay, fine, fine, Farfalla. I get it! You go wherever you want to go.” Eliza opened her Congress brochure. She scanned the fine print. “All these freaky lectures make my head hurt... But I want Gavin to think that I’m studying the future here in Capri, because, you know... I have to. Or else he gets mad at me. Tell me what I should see, Farfalla. How about ‘The Visible City and the Dynamics of Mobile Devices?’”

“That is architecture,” sniffed Farfalla. “Nobody can translate that nonsense! That panel stinks.”

“’Emotional Branding in Digital Communities?’”

“Ad men who lost their jobs.”

“’Theoria, Techne and Praxis in the Postmodern Refugee Camp?’”

“Left-wing politicals. I hate them.”

“My dad is a left-wing political.”

“So is mine.”

“Mmmmph,” nodded Eliza. “How about ‘Aggregatable Embeddable Widgets?’”

“Oh. That one is good. Yes, I’m translating that one. Lots of cool iPhone apps.”

“You have an iPhone, too? Hey, I have an iPhone! What other speeches are you translating?”

“I have to do ‘Affective Complexity in Machine-Generated Textiles’ and ‘Trans-Acousmatic Design for Shopping Environments.’” Farfalla sighed. “I wish they paid me more.”

“Okay. I just got a great idea. Why don’t I just go to the panels that you are translating? And, the rest of the time, we can just hang out?”

“I like your plan, Eliza.” Farfalla finally found a clear stretch of road. The road was very narrow, and it twisted straight up a mountain. At last, a chance to move fast-forward, Italian-Futurist style.

Farfalla kicked off her spike heel, and placed her stockinged foot flat on the pedal. The Lancia whipped up the mountain and whizzed down the far side of it.

Farfalla poked Eliza with her elbow. “Guarda! We’re almost there.”

Eliza pulled her white-knuckled fingers from the dashboard. She patted at her wind-whipped hair. “Hey, that song on the radio,” she said. “I know that song. That is Astrud Gilberto. That song is ‘Call Me.’”

Farfalla listened. Astrud Gilberto was pretty old, even by her parent’s standards. “Call Me.” Yes, Farfalla had heard that song before. That song was much older than she was. “Call Me” was a slinky, classy, and timeless bossa-nova standard.

Call Me. The title said it all. It was a romantic song, all about calling. Call Me was an invocation, a cry of supernatural need. A woman is trying to get some strange, remote guy to come across for her. She’s coaxing her guy to call her. She’s reassuring him. She’s promising him all kinds of tender, sexy favors. So that he will call her.

“This is such a good song,” Farfalla said. “Carla Bruni should cover this song.”

“It’s ‘their song,’” said Eliza, wrinkling her nose. “My brother and his girlfriend, Madeleine. I had to listen to her play that song for him a thousand times.”

Chapter Nine: The Disco Volante

This third day of the Futurist conference was hitting its stride. Gavin was pleased with himself. He had done the right thing, flying here to Capri.

Yes, he’d done it mostly to flee the tense, gloomy, stressful scene in Seattle. And to help his sister out, emotionally. And to see if he could light a fire under that long-simmering Brazilian electronic business. He’d had a lot of reasons to visit Capri, but mostly, he did it because it felt right.

The choice was working out for him. The futurists were having a good time, this morning. A lot of new one-day people, in Capri, for the weekend. The conference speakers had loosened up, too — the big panel on Innovative Flat Freak Tipping Points was a circus.

This Congress had magic. This Congress had futuristic buzz. You could see it in the faces of people. You could hear it in their tone of voice. You could sense it in the air.

Gavin had to think it was due to the Brazilians. The visa hassles with Brazilians must have been tremendous, but the LOXY boys excelled at working through kinks like that. LOXY was just plain good at that kind of work. Sometimes, global network culture could sweep the world like a broom.

The Brazilians in the Capri crowd were the bubbles in the spumante. With Brazilians around, the Italians were less guarded with each other, more keen to show themselves off. The whole scene was just hotter. Hotter, stranger, sexier, and louder. Less haunted-castle, more jungle-paradise.

Just a strange, good, warm, intimate quality that Gavin couldn’t quite name. An alert, aroused, let’s-get-it-on feeling... Hope, a voice seemed to whisper to him. Yes, this was an Italian future with the living whisper of hope.

Hope. A feeling commonly associated with the future. A feeling Gavin hadn’t felt much, lately. Not personally, anyway. Hope — were Futurists supposed to have such a thing? Serious, adult Futurists? Hope?

The local Capri people were drinking the Futurist Kool-Aid. But was their Capri really the future? Capri, the goddess island of dead zombie Marilyn Monroe perfume? Well, why not Capri? A great quality of life on a beautiful Mediterranean island!

Gavin networked, he swapped business cards, he was cordial to people. Showing the flag for Cook, Bishop & Engleman. Yes, you may have heard of CB&E. We are in the Italian venture space!

Then, time for Fabio Mascherati’s two-hour ‘lunch on the yacht’. Because Fabio hadn’t been making small-talk about this summit meeting. Polite Italian lunch arrangements were veiled commands.

Gavin caught Capri’s little vertical train down to the harbor. The Grand Harbor was insanely grand, just gorgeous. Landscape painters had infested Capri for centuries, painting every tint in the water.

The LOXY yacht adorned the sea like a jewel in the hair of a water-goddess. The Disco Volante made the pleasure yachts of Microsoft millionaires look like clumsy SUV’s.

Gavin made his way past the Capri cops, who were guarding the dock from Eurotrash moochers and imaginary Arab terrorists.

All the web geeks from LOXY had changed into crisp yachting gear. Not that their pretty boat was sailing anywhere. They did this because Italians always wore yachting gear while standing around on yachts. It was tradition.

A leggy booth-bunny in a scarf, hat and shiny swimsuit handed Gavin a filled plate.

The LOXY yacht was swarming with gorgeous women in scandalous swim attire. These hard-bodied young gals were not swimming. The overworked geeks who sponsored them were not yachting, either. Same story. Same business approach.

These web geeks would drown in a rowboat, and the model showgirls were there to sell. These young women were human eye-candy. A PR harem in designer sandals. The Italians never made a sexist fuss about any of this. Neither did the Brazilians. The all-over-tanned girls without any tops? They were the Brazilian girls.

Gavin ate his fresh fish and radicchio. The LOXY food was superb. It was better food than Gavin knew how to appreciate.

LOXY staffers came around to show off their English to Gavin. LOXY geeks asked to take pictures with him, to adorn their personal websites. ‘Stefano,’ the Python programmer. ‘Riccardo,’ the social-software moderator. They remembered him from their start-up days two years ago, though he sure didn’t remember any of them.

They just knew that he had been there at LOXY first. He’d created a new company, given them their jobs. This paranormal power made him, somehow, their hero. They knew that he had been there with the magic. He brought the start-up money, with funding-structures and a business plan, when nobody else had ever heard of LOXY. When stuffy, aging Italian bankers stared coldly at young Italian cybergeeks and told them to get a real career.

Two years was fourteen years in Internet years. Gavin was 26 years old and yet, to them, he was the godfather of their way of life.

Some of these LOXY guys thought Gavin had created LOXY. It wasn’t his idea, though. LOXY arose like Venus from the deep insights of the Futurist guru, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante.

Dr. Svante was not a mere, 26-year-old Seattle startup hustler, like Gavin Tremaine. Dr. Svante was 76 years old. Dr. Svante was the genuine Futurist article. He was a true 21st-century seer. A major Futurist of Dr Svante’s caliber would never clown around on a gorgeous yacht named ‘Flying Saucer’, swarming with semi-nude models. Dr. Svante had disciples like Gavin Tremaine to do such errands for him.

Fabio Mascherati manifested himself. Fabio insisted on a brief but intense photo session with Gavin. Fabio was obviously not ‘relaxing’ here at his informal lunch on this yacht. Fabio was putting on a two-hour publicity lunch.Fabio was pretending to look chic, relaxed and at ease. He was not. Aboard the Disco Volante, Fabio was ‘cool’ to the point of looking a little coked-out.

Local Italian television had shown up on Fabio’s yacht. “Italian television” meant adult women, not showgirls. These Italian television crew-women were pretty, but no longer young. They were older, vampire media pros who survived by chewing the bones of the younger, nuder showgirls. Oh yeah, some secluded little catered lunch this was.

The Italian TV women got their thirty seconds of glory from Fabio, with the glaring lights and imposing cameras. The ordeal left Fabio looking tense and ragged.

“So,” Gavin said, trying to encourage him, “how about that Carla Bruni, huh?”

“You want to know the truth about Carla Bruni?” said Fabio, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah. Sure I do! You betcha!”

“Can I tell you straight, the American way?”

Gavin thought about this unusual and apparently harsh remark. Gavin wasn’t sure about the tone here. Italian conversations were often about “tones” that no foreigner was going to get.

“Fabio, do I look like I need this ‘the American way’?”

“Yes, you do, Gavin.”

“Why is that?”

“You are wearing the ugliest clothes on this boat. You are shouting ‘American,’ Gavin.”

“Is it that bad?”

“No, it’s not ‘bad.’ You look ‘eco-conscious.’ You look very Seattle. We don’t do that here. I hope our women never dress like that. That would be tragic.” Fabio leaned over the rail of the yacht, like he was trying to spit out an olive pit. “Michelle Obama chooses dress designers from Chicago. From Chicago! And Vogue Italia said she looked great. They have no shame at Vogue Italia.”

“I don’t pretend to be the fashion expert around here,” said Gavin, “but Michelle Obama seems to like Carla Bruni. The two of them get along great. Michelle gave Carla a guitar.”

“Those two women are in a secret war to become the next Jackie Kennedy. They are locked in a ‘War of Looks’ to dominate world culture. It is Europe versus America.”

“Fabio, where are you going with that paradigm? Don’t you think those women know what happened to Jackie Kennedy? Did her pretty dress help her when her husband was shot?” Gavin gazed around Capri’s harbor. “Jackie’s epic story was a horror story.”

Fabio looked startled. “What? I never thought of it that way!”

“Fabio, that story is obviously a horror story. ‘Not ever being Jackie Kennedy,’ that is super-obvious, any politician’s wife would know that. Guys in retail don’t get it that the ‘female consumer’ is a woman.” Gavin rubbed his chin. “There might be a pretty good market opportunity there in women’s wear.”

“Tell me more about that,” said Fabio.

“Dress to avoid becoming Jackie Kennedy,” said Gavin.

“I like this concept of yours. Because it is outside-the-box. To dress like the ‘anti-Jackie Kennedy.’ What would that look like?”

Gavin welcomed this question. ‘What would that look like’ was always a good futuristic question. To take the dry bones of an idea and flesh them out as a story. A human narrative. A scenario. A business plan, a strategic initiative... a future with living flesh on it.

“Maybe Carla Bruni is already the anti-Jackie Kennedy. Because the original anti-Jackie, back in 1963, would have been Joan Baez. A long-haired beatnik protest-singer girl with a guitar. Carla Bruni has that role nailed down, but she’s also the wife of the President.”

“Who is Joan Baez?”

“Joan Baez is a prominent survivor of the Jackie Kennedy era. Joan Baez used to be Bob Dylan’s girlfriend.”

“Gavin — how do you know these things?”

Gavin shrugged. “You could look her up on Wikipedia.”

“Gavin, were you always like this?”

“What?”

“When we first met, you weren’t even out of school. You were running errands for those venture angels. Something has happened to you. What? What happened to you?”

“I just got older, Fabio. So did you.”

“You are a true Futurist now, aren’t you, my friend? I mean — you are paranormal. You are one of the real ones.”

“I just learned how to listen to people,” shrugged Gavin. “To hear their stories. That’s all that I really do. Tell me more about this Carla Effect.”

“The Carla Effect is helping us. Carla is good for Europe. She makes us seem modern and relevant. But, we are working through the Crisis here, and Carla can’t carry Europe on her back. Sometimes, I think that the pretty Carlas are all that Europe has left to offer... the court of Sarkozy... they are so ‘bling-bling,’ but that is what they chose... such strange people now, our leaders in Europe! The French ones are not even French! Carla is Italian and Brazilian, and Sarkozy is Hungarian and Jewish!”

“You need to get over that,” Gavin advised. “Our President is a Kenyan-Indonesian-Hawaiian guy from the Midwest.”

“I am not a Futurist, Gavin. I’m just a businessman. Please forgive me!”

Gavin said nothing. He was aching to ask Fabio about the very strange behavior of the leader of Italy. That was the great unanswered Italian question, in Gavin’s mind. Because Silvio Berlusconi was Italy’s Prime Minister, and he was divorcing his wife while in office, just as Nicolas Sarkozy had done before him. Kind of clear, major, futuristic trend-line there.

But, Nicolas Sarkozy only had one Italian woman. Just one beautiful Italian woman, and Sarkozy had married her. The Prime Minister of Italy, this ancient wrinkly politician who was way well over seventy, had whole hot-tubs and limos full of young Italian girls. Not women ‘half his age,’ but women who were fifty years younger than himself.

And there was no attempt to hide this. It was all in plain sight — all over the newspapers, all over the Internet. It wasn’t even a scandal. There was no “Berlusconi scandal.” Nothing hidden or secret about the Berlusconi “scandal.” Way too obvious to be any “scandal.”

The Italian press had the names and pictures of all the women. Some young Italian women had even written best-selling confession books, with brazen, flaunting titles like “Help Yourself, Mr. President.” It was all about this ageless, powerful Italian guy and his sad hunger for young, female flesh.

Something important was going on there that was hard for Gavin to put into words. A real phenomenon, very now, very modern, but paranormal, bone-chilling, and freaky. Because it was not a scandal, it was a harbinger.

Gavin could draw a clear line on a futuristic graph. Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the United States to Sarkozy and Carla Bruni in France, and then, when that line hit Italy, it shot through the roof. That trend-line went nonlinear, logarithmic. This was not just some wacky Italian thing. This was a world future thing. Anyone paying any attention should be able to see that. Reality was screaming it. Nobody listened. Nobody heard. Nobody saw what was right there.

“They say that Sarkozy had a heart attack,” Fabio confided. “They say that Carla made Sarkozy stop jogging. Carla made him take up stamp collecting.”

“Really? What kind of stamps does Sarkozy collect?”

“Sarkozy collects historical stamps. Carla makes him sit very still every night and study his old, historical stamps.” Fabio shrugged. “I can’t believe that.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s true.” Gavin then said no more.

Something had dawned on him, suddenly: a very simple, direct explanation for events. A very good, strong theory to explain reality.

It was love. Love could explain all of this, because love was strange. Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni were in love. They were a European man and a woman in the grip of an amour fou. Love that was for real, true love between man and woman, the real deal. They were overwhelmed by romance, shot through the heart from a clear blue sky. They were thunderstruck by love.

They were two soul-mates. They were crucial and powerful political figures, with worldwide influence, who behaved as they did because of their love. No other reason for their paranormal behavior. Love, straight out. That simple. And that strange.

“Fabio, how is your business doing? Level with me.”

“My business is fantastic.”

“You seem pretty down in the mouth about all of this, though. Why is that?”

“LOXY is not fashion any more. We are the Web. When the Web eats fashion, it’s not fashion on the Web. It is the Web as fashion. It’s not the same philosophy.”

“That was the business plan, man. It was a great idea.”

Fabio looked him in the eye. “That was the future, two years ago. Now the future has happened, Gavin. The future is reality now. The past is a ghost.”

“I hear what you’re saying to me,” Gavin sympathized. “Your European philosophy has become… damaged.” With a mighty effort, Gavin managed not to laugh.

What was happening here? This Milanese guy — rich, successful, beautifully dressed on a yacht full of gorgeous women — was moaning about his philosophy? Fabio had lost his philosophy, and that was his crying grief?

Was that the lamest thing in the world, or what? Some things about Europe never, ever changed.

“I feel so tired, so full of ennui,” mourned Fabio. He found a pair of wireframe titanium sunglasses in the kerchiefed pocket of his yachting jacket. “We overbooked this conference with that Brazilian music track. All those Sao Paulo princes of music, they party till dawn... Capri needs the young people, they need the lively people, the party people of the night! But, when your parties are your work, every day... Well, I can work hard, but for how long? Every Internet year is like seven years.”

How old was Fabio Mascherati? Fabio was a good looking guy. Suave, charming, bright guy, a devil with the ladies. Thirty-two, thirty-three years old at the most. He was talking like a worn-out man of sixty.

“Well, start-up work can tire a guy,” said Gavin.

“You did it four times.”

“Sure, I did it, but not the same way as you. I was just the accountant.” Gavin sensed that it was his turn to lay some personal cards on the table. “Look, Cook, Bishop & Engleman came out of LOXY with a thirty-five percent return. That was huge, Fabio. You were awesome. But, if you came to those same bozos today, with the same proposal, same staff, same market plan, same everything? They’d go all weak in the knee! VC outfits are shutting up shop all over Seattle! No vision now, they’re all in their fallout shelters! They sit on their cash and they angle for bailout money! It’s bad in Seattle. It’s just not the same on the street.”

This was the right thing to say to Fabio. Because it was a true confession from one wounded soul to another. Italians loved to share bad news. This was the shadow side of all that Italian brio.

Fabio grew serious. “When we took your venture money... we needed that money. Now, we can create our own way. Web Due-Punto-Zero. The Italian web is not the future, the Italian web is here and now. So.” Fabio drew a breath. “Gavin, I’m getting out. After this conference, I am leaving LOXY. I am leaving LOXY, like you did.”

“What?”

“I am leaving LOXY, like you! You showed me the way out! I’m not a manager type, not a boring CEO. I’m a start-up man! I don’t want to manage a big Italian company. I hate big companies. I hate all that Italian sistemazione, where you have the same job your father had, and they give you a gold watch when you die! I always hated that!”

“That’s what you told me, two years ago,” nodded Gavin.

“I found my dream job with LOXY, but two years have passed. So my future dream is over. Reality is here today! So I have to leave the job I loved. I have to be real, Gavin. Real, and now.”

It must have been a hard thing for Fabio to say. Leaving a great, successful job like that? Certainly, never an easy thing for a man with a wife and two kids.

“I have heard that story many times before,” Gavin told him. “That story is the classic high-tech entrepreneur story. It’s the great narrative of modern times.”

“I knew that you would know what comes next for me,” said Fabio, with satisfaction.

“I do. Fabio, I’m an accountant. So let me give you some good advice. Don’t lose your temper and leave a lot of money lying on that table.”

“I don’t want to talk to my stupid Board of Directors. Not anymore. Enough is enough for any man.”

“But that’s the part where they nail you, brother! Look, don’t get hasty! I am serious here. You can wait out the investors for a few extra weeks. Eat the dog food. The payback for that is colossal. It’s never about the salary. It’s never about the hard years you have already put in. It’s all about the deal you get when you leave. That is the whole point of your story. Walk through the manure, eat the cold frogs, but get that money. Do it! Chill out a while, and you can start another company all by yourself. You won’t have to crawl to anybody. You will get your venture angel wings.”

“Why would I do that? You’re not a venture angel.”

“I’m not any kind of angel. I’m just an accountant. I get paid to be the reality check. I sign the reality check. Do not lose your cool, man! Be patient, wait it all out, think ahead. This advice that I’m giving you is worth a fortune. Do not leave that table with a prince’s ransom sitting on it. That is just not looking ahead.”

Fabio was paying no attention. “I’ll think it over.”

“You have to listen to me, Fabio. Don’t screw yourself over! It is no use being a Futurist if you don’t benefit from a future that is totally obvious. They’re gonna pound you into the dirt when you lose control of that company! That’s not some fancy Euro philosophy or something to debate about, it is just, like, stupidly obvious. Don’t make me raise my voice here about something that is fated to happen to every tech clown on this planet. Pay attention to me! This has happened a thousand times already!”

“I hate anything that has happened a thousand times,” said Fabio, as he laughed. “Don’t let me take all your time here. Everyone on the LOXY boat wants to meet the famous Gavin Tremaine.”

Fabio handed his lunch plate to a random curvaceous redhead. Then Fabio left. Fabio just vanished, he disappeared. Gavin shut his useless mouth.

Gavin felt a strange emotion he could not name. Shame? Frustration? Disappointment? A whirlwind of turmoil gripped him.

This bitter feeling was unwanted in his story. This was not his high-tech version of history. This had something to do with horror. Horror, the dark horror of knowing what would happen next — what should, reasonably, predictably, obviously, happen next — and being carried off by ugly human mulishness into a situation of tragedy.

Gavin could see that future coming for his friend. He knew every wrinkle in that ugly fate. Yet, he could do nothing to avert it.

Rage and anger. Bewilderment, bafflement, and fury. A growing, murderous contempt for the nature of human life. He was feeling the ugly sensations in every bone in his body.

He didn’t know any word for this keen and horrible heartache. Nobody had ever told that word for him. He had no words to describe what he felt. ‘Men have feelings too, but who cares.’

“Hey,” said a voice. “Gavin Tremaine. Gavinoski. Can I talk to you for a sec?”

It was Brixie the Blogger. Brixie was fully dressed for the occasion. Brixie was in a psychedelic Pucci wrap, which looked like a skinned lizard. Under her flimsy, scarf-like dress, Brixie was unhuman. Stiff, female curves like a plastic mannequin. Botox forehead and collagen lips. The Girl of Tomorrow.

“Okay, sure, what’s on your mind, Brixie?”

“Just one question. One simple question for you. Because you were at my panel today on ‘One-Click Monetization for Fashion Blogs.’ And when I got up to speak, you walked out on me.”

“Did I?”

“You did!”

“I had to take a phone call. So, tell me all about it. How was your presentation?”

“My presentation was brilliant and it was fully researched with original facts and figures. I bled for that great presentation. It totally rocked. And now you’re saying you walked out from it, front-row center, because of some fake phone call?”

“Look, Brixie. I know you have a lot of readers on your blog. But you can’t force people to listen when you speak in public! If I had to go, I had to go! Look, I like bloggers just fine. My venture firm has a blog. Tell me all about your blog.”

“My blog? My life’s work? I am a whole fashion magazine by myself! I do the work of twenty people. Look at that stepladder over there — it’s where the models keep the cocaine.”

Gavin glanced at the nifty teak-wood stepladder that led into the sleek white hull of the LOXY yacht. Thin, bright-eyed girls had been tripping up and down that ladder in a happy stream.

A cocaine party on a fancy yacht? How hard was that to predict?

“I just did two lines of cocaine down there,” Brixie told him. “Except, it was strong. It was really strong. I think it was crystal meth.”

“You inhaled methedrine?” Gavin considered this statement. He was too well-bred to act shocked about drugs. People all over the world took crystal meth. Doomed people, mostly. Speed-freaks who turned into rattlesnakes. “Brixie, you should do an image search for ‘methedrine user.’ You’ll see people with gray skin and no teeth.”

“Yeah? Well, tomorrow I’ll be all over my meth high, while you will still be a preachy, hopeless square.”

“If you took meth, you should sit down and check your pulse.”

“I’m not dropping dead, Mr. Tremaine. You should drop dead. You don’t like me! You don’t like my blog! So what? What’s so great about you? Whenever you’re with some company — chances are three out of four it goes broke! You venture-capital losers — you are useless! You all are shutting up shop! Your Seattle tech scene is over.”

“Seattle is over? That’s ridiculous. Seattle can’t be over compared to Los Angeles!”

“That is the truth, live with it!”

“Even if that’s true, Brixie — why should you care?”

“Because people saw you leaving my presentation. That was an implicit criticism.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means that you dissed me, stupid! Why do I sweat blood and tears working eighty hour weeks, when rich dorks like you can queer my deal without even knowing about it? I don’t care about you! You’re some Microsoft geek creep! I don’t even want to care about you! I come over here to Europe, paying my own way, and you’re in my face because you got lucky once? I care about serious issues! Because I am like a passionately-committed, citizen, fashion journalist! And you are some dimwitted fat-cat who is here to get in everybody’s way! Why don’t you die?”

Brixie the Blogger was flaming him. Gavin had seen plenty of flame-wars on weblogs, because all weblogs had flamewars. However, Gavin had never been standing next to a real-life person, on the nicely polished hull of a beautiful boat, flaming him publicly.

Brixie wasn’t talking to him, or listening to him. Nothing like that at all. Brixie was off in her own world, flaming away like a blowtorch. She was such an Internet fiend that she had never learned any other way to behave.

Gavin knew what was happening, but he was angry anyway. “Well,” he said to Brixie, “past, present or future, the fashion business sure has some prima donnas. You’re like someone out of that Audrey Hepburn movie. Funny Face.”

“Speaking of the funny face of Audrey Hepburn,” said Brixie, “how about your hooker girlfriend?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I saw you two having breakfast. You gave her cash on the spot. There are pictures. I took pictures of you.”

“You took pictures of me with Farfalla Corrado?”

“I took fifteen great pictures. That took me maybe five seconds.”

“She is my translator. We have a business relationship.”

“Sure you do, pal. That’s why you two meet for breakfast, you give her cash, and then you take her shopping.”

“What are you saying here? That is blackmail! Where are your journalistic ethics?”

“Look, I’m a blogger, you moron! Your privacy is so over! Get over yourself! If you want to hire Italian escorts, you’ll just have to put up with people knowing it! You don’t like that? Sue me!”

“I don’t like that, Brixie.”

“I would love to see you sue me, you loser. All the dirt you tried to hide would be all over the world in ten minutes.”

Gavin drew a deep breath. He slowly counted to ten. It was the sensible thing to do, but didn’t help at all. He stared into Brixie’s deranged eyes. Her eyes were glittering with narcotic battery-charge. “Okay, look here, Brixie. You are insulting me. On purpose. You are high on drugs. Knock both of those things off. Or else, I will throw you overboard. See all that salty water down there? You will be splashing around in there. That’s my prediction.”

“I would love to see you try. My hit counts would go through the roof.”

Gavin looked around himself. The yacht did not lack for people with video.

He and Brixie seemed to be in full strategic agreement. Something snapped in Gavin’s impulse-control, and a half-blind ecstasy ensued. A heave, a scrape, a yelp and then, lots of splashing. A woman down in the sea. Yelling, drowning maybe.

Look at that. How could things like that happen to people? What a disaster.

Look at that. Other girls were jumping off the yacht. Lots of girls. Pretty girls jumping to port and starboard. Pretty girls screaming with glee as they jumped from the beautiful yacht.

Blood pulsed in Gavin’s temples. He rubbed the scraped side of his neck.

Fabio was at his side. Fabio looked crisp, cool, and collected. Fabio looked down, thoughtfully, over the side of the yacht. Then, he looked back up. “So, what happened here?”

Gavin had nothing to say.

“So,” said Fabio. “That was inevitable, wasn’t it?”

Fabio pulled off his shoes. He cast aside his yachting jacket. Since people were watching him, handsome Fabio made a little production of this effort. He waved his white shirt like a sail. Fabio had a nice tanned torso and shaved chest-hair.

Gavin coughed. “Look, man, don’t do this. When a mermaid grabs your ankle, down you go. That’s not how it’s done! You know that as well as I do!”

“Over I go, my friend.” Fabio vaulted from the rail of the boat.

Chapter Ten: Old-Fashioned Bossa Nova

This day was one of those days. A day with too many things for any woman to do. So many events going on, so many people to please and promises to keep, that Farfalla couldn’t keep up.

It was impossible. The clock would burst at the rate she was living. Yet, Farfalla was doing all of it. Every last bit. She was doing it with ease, flair, and grace. Farfalla had a sweet, loose, perfect rhythm, like a bossa nova.

The estate sale in Anacapri went beautifully.

The dead woman owned closets stuffed with Prada gear from the early 1990’s. The dead woman owned dot-com boom clothes. Dark, severe, weird, super-pricey, corporate-psychedelic outfits, in black and gray and silver. These dot-com clothes were going for peanuts. Nobody wanted to touch the relics of that haunted time.

Eliza Tremaine knew nothing about that, though. Eliza was just an innocent, young, foreign girl. So, Eliza was in an Italian auction wonderland.

Farfalla knew better, or rather, Farfalla knew worse. Farfalla’s hostess on Capri, Eleonora, was also a former television star. Just like this dead woman. Eleonora naturally took a cruel, feline interest in the awful fate of her rival. A tall, glossy, willowy Italian beauty, who had once been a TV news presenter.

This woman had died broken-hearted at age 47. In the 1990’s, she had been the living jewel of Channel Rai Due, inside every household in Italy, a goddess adored by the camera and trusted by millions. Then, her pink-slip came, and her glamour faded. Another showgirl versus the clock.

Day by miserable day, this once-svelte TV goddess had become a ghost. A washed-up female relic, a human husk, gone fat, old, ugly, bald, and lonely. Eaten up inside with alcohol and chemotherapy. A ghastly, tragic tale of sordid feminine decay. Vengeful and terrifying, and of course, deeply satisfying to her former fans. As her last days loomed, this showgirl’s glum, sordid nightmare filled the tabloids. Breakfast fare for stolid Italian housewives. “Oh look at her. So pretty once. What a dirty shame. Not like me.”

But, for Eliza Tremaine, that unknown and awful story was a bonanza. It was a brilliant stroke of luck for Eliza. It was life-changing. The dead woman’s clothes fit Eliza’s tall, scrawny build almost perfectly. The clothes were scarcely worn. Some never pulled from their plastic-wrap.

Most of all, these beautiful clothes transformed Eliza. A girl who had looked sullen and ridiculous became a woman who looked fierce.

Eliza Tremaine was a Prada Goth. A scary Goth. The kind of Goth, who could destroy an empire.

They stuffed Eliza’s loot into a new suitcase, a chunky roll-on, also owned by the dead TV star. Then, the estate auction shut down for lunch. In Capri, everyone and everything stopped for lunch.

For lunch, Farfalla sought out a nearby café — she chose a place at random. Of course, this choice was also perfect. For today, everything was perfectly perfect. It was a lovely Capri café, warm, compact and sunny. Everything in it, the awnings, the little storefronts, were just-so.

A civilized woman could live in a place like this, thought Farfalla, perching an elbow on the table. She could lazily wait for the man of her dreams to amble by, to find her, to become her One. If he never came, there would always be this pretty café.

And who else should be here, sitting in this pretty café, in a discreet corner, but Professor Milo. There she was, in an over-sized hat and discreet sunglasses, very tête-à-tête with a silver-haired, mustached gentleman. A soldier, wearing full uniform.

And what a soldier. The sturdy, ultra-dignified general had to be a NATO grandee. He had to be an ultra-high-ranking Euro-Atlantic super-diplomat military brass. He looked powerful, fantastic, even divine. A soldier so high-level that he didn’t even belong to a nation.

Farfalla found great satisfaction in seeing this. What luck to stumble over such a mystery! She had wondered why Professor Milo, a woman clearly pushing seventy, would get hot and bothered over a man. Now, Farfalla understood. Because this old man was the kind of man who could really get under the collar of a woman of seventy. He looked suave, cool, and self-contained — totally accustomed to command. He looked like he’d arrived on Capri on a private aircraft carrier.

The General’s sword-sharp eyes swept over Farfalla. He knew that he was being watched. Ogled by some feeble female civilian. He did not care for that. He did not care for her.

Farfalla dropped her eyes, and shivered.

The waiter arrived then, by more good luck. Farfalla busily ordered lunch for two. Eliza seized this opportunity to leave their café table and scamper to the restroom to play dress-up. Eliza jauntily wheeled her new bag behind her, like a three-year-old’s red wagon.

Farfalla’s phone rang. It was Babi again. “Come over to the conference center when you finish lunch,” said Babi, breezily. “I can pay you.”

“You can pay me?” said Farfalla, stunned.

“Yes! The Archbishop came by our event!” Babi exulted. “His Grace was the surprise guest on our panel on ‘Creative Resort Cities’.”

“That sounds like good news,” said Farfalla. She hadn’t known that Capri had an Archbishop. To have an Archbishop showing up, that seemed miraculous.

“That sounds like good news?’” scoffed Babi. “That is complete victory! There is nobody left to doubt us! When the Archbishop came to see us, the Capri government settled all our bills! Right on the spot, they paid for everything, without another word! So, come on over, and I’ll slip you some of the needful. I know that you can use it.”

What astounding good fortune, thought Farfalla. Was it astrological, was Venus in conjunction with Mars? To be paid in advance was unheard of. Yet, somehow, Farfalla felt no urge to rush across the island to hastily grab her loot. Let the money sit there!

That was very unlike herself, she realized. She could not remember the last time she hadn’t hustled for cash.

What could have happened to her? Was it something in the air here, or the water? Why did she feel so relaxed, so pleased, so useful to the world?

“Is the Archbishop a Futurist?” she said into her iPhone.

“He told us so many wise things!” Babi rejoiced. “About Capri’s spiritual heritage, and Catholic social justice — less shopping and more worship every Sunday! His Grace was the hit of that panel! Everyone was so impressed! I love him.”

The cafe’s waiter — a solemn, brainy, good-looking guy in his forties, who could have been a rocket scientist — arrived from the kitchen, his white-sleeved arms laden with plates. Without missing a beat, he swiftly deployed an aromatic banquet. Then, he took his leave.

Farfalla stared at the cafe’s brimming tabletop, with its bounty of gourmet nibbles and its gently fizzing drinks. “Babi, are you still there?”

“Sì, certo.”

“Babi, I feel so happy now. Babi, I’m so joyful. I’m having such a good time here! I never want to leave this beautiful island! Capri is like paradise!”

“Women say that all the time,” Babi warned her. “I used to hear Eleonora saying that.”

“Babi, why did Eleonora stay in Capri? I never asked her.”

“Her boyfriend parked her here in Capri. Her married boyfriend. Eleanora got her car, her apartment, and all her pretty clothes. She won! Eleanora still thinks that she won.”

“You are right. That stinks. I’ll never be that kind of woman. When do we leave this crazy place?”

“We leave the day after tomorrow. The event crew is always first in, last out.”

“Yes, great, please be sure to give me a wake-up call.”

Babi hung up. At that moment, Professor Milo waltzed past Farfalla’s café table. To Farfalla’s intense surprise, the old woman dropped a handkerchief.

Farfalla leaned down from her squeaky café chair and plucked up the dropped square of fabric. Dropping a handkerchief? How strange. She had never seen this ancient, feminine gesture performed by anyone.

But, when a lady needed to leave a discreet signal, and a lady had never used a computer, never even owned a cellphone... what else was a lady to do?

Tucked inside the handkerchief — it was scented, made of sleek peach-colored cambric, and embroidered, too — was a lined strip of torn notebook paper.

Come and meet me at the bookstore around the corner.

Farfalla braced herself with a gulp of white wine and hastened to obey the summons.

“What are you doing here in Anacapri?” said Professor Milo, shifting from foot to foot, as if her red stilettos pinched her corns.

“I was shopping here,” Farfalla told her, meekly.

“Who is that girl dressed like the Angel of Death?”

“That girl is Gavin’s sister! She’s just a kid.”

“Did that girl see me here? Did she see me with him? You mustn’t say that you saw us together here.”

“Look, Eliza doesn’t know about you. Eliza never notices anything,” Farfalla said. She lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?”

Professor Milo said nothing.

“He has a wife, is that the problem? Why are you so worried? This is Capri!”

“It’s because I have a husband,” mourned Professor Milo, in an anguished whisper. “My love life is such a tragic story... You see, my husband is in technology...”

“Is it that bad?” said Farfalla.

“He’s in a wheelchair!” said Prƒofessor Milo, hot tears staining her wrinkled face. “Really, I did not invent that, it’s not romance fiction! It is my own personal tragedy! Sometimes, in the real world, real women have disabled husbands! I am not inventing some wild story, just to have my tawdry love affair!”

Farfalla silently returned Professor Milo’s dainty handkerchief.

Professor Milo mopped at her wrinkled eyes. “I swear, between men and women, it’s so strange,” she muttered. “Since the beginning of time! Even the people who know the most about it can never make it work!”

“Your General is very handsome,” Farfalla consoled her. “He must have the world at his feet!”

“You think that helps me? Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re very young, aren’t you?” Professor Milo rummaged inside her clutch-bag. “Look, there isn’t any time left. Something has come up now — he’s very insistent... so I’m leaving Capri. I have to go, right away. Today. But I need that statue. That little bronze statue, I need you to find it and get it. I’ll give you a big reward.”

“Who, me?” said Farfalla. “I can’t do that!”

“Yes you certainly can! I know that you can do it, you are just the type. Here.” Professor Milo handed over a crisp paper rectangle. “This is the business card of my literary agent. She works in New York. She’s just like you, because she has a lot of computers. So, call my agent, and have her put you on a retainer. Find the Cosmic Cupid. No matter how long it takes.”

Farfalla gaped at the business card. “So, you want me to steal that old suitcase inside the museum? I guess, I can try, but...”

“No. The Cosmic Cupid is not in that suitcase. He was, but he got out somehow, and now he’s loose in the world.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Look, of course, I know! Can’t you see my emotional pain? I have to leave right now, before he gets suspicious again! Don’t you dare look at our faces. Don’t look at us, and don’t tell anybody about our affair. You don’t know me. You never knew me.” Professor Milo began to sidle off.

“Wait, wait, you said there was some reward...?”

“If it’s about money, talk to my agent!” yelped Professor Milo. She hurried back toward the cafe. Farfalla’s phone rang.

It was Eliza. “Farfalla, where are you? Our lunch is getting cold!”

Farfalla returned to the table. Eliza was eagerly crunching through the cafe’s arugula salad.

“Wow, I adore these leisurely Italian lunches,” gabbled Eliza, guzzling from her wineglass. “It’s so great that under-eighteens can drink around here! Order us another bottle!”

Farfalla adjusted her spindly chair so that her back was turned to the Professor’s café table. She looked Eliza up and down. “You look better in Prada. But your buttons are wrong.”

“This little Prada suit top is kind of asymmetric.”

“Yes it is, but it can’t be like that.”

“Okay,” squinted Eliza, “okay, so what else is so wrong with me? Go ahead, just tell me! Anything to get that look off your face.”

“Well, your big ugly boots are very bad, of course... but, please, Eliza, that hair.”

Eliza patted her snarled and matted head. “What, my ‘Black Ruin’? Whatever could be wrong with my hair, darling?”

“Everything. But we can fix that. The conference hotel has a wonderful salon,” said Farfalla. “It is one of the best salons in Italy. Two hours, three hundred Euros.”

“You want me to spend three hundred Euros on my stupid hair? What, are you crazy? That’s more money than I spent on all these clothes! And the suitcase, too!”

“Some things are worth three hundred euros. It is worth it to be free of your parents,” Farfalla told her. “You want your parents to leave you alone, in the future? Never look like ‘their little girl’ again!’”

“I thought I had that kinda handled, since I am covered with skulls.”

“No. You don’t. To be free of your parents, you have to make your parents feel old. That’s the magic secret.”

“I have to make my parents feel old?”

“Yes. That is the secret. That’s when a child is grown-up. That is when your parents finally let you go.”

Eliza understood this truth, but she was stubborn. “But my hair, my black hair looks exactly like your black hair!”

“No, no, no, no, no! I have Brazilian beach-girl Ipanema hair, and you have Gothic punk hair that was dyed in your sink!”

“Come on, come on, do I really look that bad to you? I don’t look bad! Because I have my own look! A look that is me! All the Seattle kids think I look awesome.”

“You don’t look bad, but you look like a Seattle kid! Your parents know how you look! You look like a kid! You are not trying.”

Eliza’s thin face wrinkled as the truth struck home, but she hadn’t run out of fight yet. “So, what are you going to do? I hate salons. You get to have all the fun.”

“I am translating for your brother while he talks to the Culture Minister of Brazil.”

“Okay. So, that was a pretty cool, grown-up thing to say to put me down with,” Eliza admitted. “So, tell me. What color am I, when I get out of your big, fancy salon torture chamber? Am I red? Am I green? Am I blue?”

“You are blonde.”

“No way! I’m already a blonde. Blonde is my natural color.”

“Not your kind of blonde. Not teenage Seattle girl blonde. Viking Goth blonde. Blonde like Karin from ‘Fever Ray.’”

Eliza’s eyes widened. “You know about Karin from ‘Fever Ray’?” She paused. “Uh, I didn’t think you’d much like Karin from ‘Fever Ray’.”

“I can’t stand that woman. I hate her music. But this is Europe! Every European Goth loves Karin from ‘Fever Ray.’”

“But, how do you know that?”

“Because I am a Futurist, of course! Karin from Fever Ray is a global fashion trend. Her trend is strong, and your parents don’t know that. They already know about your Goth, but when you hit them with that Goth, a high-fashion Goth from Viking Sweden, they won’t even know you’re still Gothic! Then, you win.”

Eliza thought this over. A new world dawned in her young mind. “Wow. Now, I get it. Of course. That is so amazing! That could be, like, my new motto in life. ‘What Would Karin From Fever Ray Do?’”

“You can do that, but you need to learn to do what you want, Eliza. Stop acting dead.”

“Farfalla, please tell me something. You have useless, awful parents, just like me, don’t you? I mean, you must have some parents.”

“Probably.”

“How did you ever get free of your parents?”

“I used the future on them,” said Farfalla, warming to the topic. “I went to high-tech conferences. I made big owl-eyes at the geeks. I learned to talk about tomorrow, the same as the geeks. My parents could never talk that way. They can’t fight with me anymore, because I make them feel so old. They can’t tell me their big important grown-up stories. They can’t even speak my future language.”

“I see. Yeah. Wow. I bet that works great. Were they all upset about that?”

“My parents have ideals. So, my parents are always upset about something. They’re not upset about me. They don’t know what to say to me. Not any more.”

Eliza put her fork down. “You know what? You rock! Stuff happens around you. I really like you a lot.”

Farfalla didn’t know what to say to this sweet confession. She felt very touched. “Eliza, listen to me. You think you are a sad girl — but you are a lucky girl. You have a nice brother who is kind to you. He loves you. I have a brother, too. My brother is an idiot. He’s high on drugs and dangerous and crazy. You should be happy to have such a good, kind brother.”

“You think that your brother is ‘dangerous and crazy’?”

“Rafael ran away from home to build robots with Dutch atompunks.”

“Farfalla... Don’t let me hurt your feelings, all right? But I kind of have an idea here. Because, I think maybe your ‘crazy brother’ is actually a pretty normal guy. I mean, your brother has got to be normal, compared to you. Because I am normal, too, compared to my brother. Maybe I look paranormal on the outside, but Gavin is paranormal on the inside. Do you get what I mean?”

Farfalla topped off her wine glass. “Oh, never mind, never mind... Men are impossible! They just can’t help it! Nobody can help the way they are in their heart! Let’s order dessert.”

Eliza was silent for a long moment. Then she lifted her iPhone. “Listen. I’m sending you a music track. It’s a gift from me to you. All right? You don’t mind if I send you some music, do you?”

***

After two bottles of wine, the balky, snarling Lancia was much easier to drive. Now, that Farfalla felt so well-fed, and cozy, the sports car whipped out of Anacapri like a bolt of lightning.

A horn-stab or two, and the Capri tourists flicked out of her way like raindrops from a windshield. Some days, everything fell into place.

Farfalla delivered Eliza to her brother’ hotel. Eliza scrambled from the car and ran, bumping her rolling luggage up the hotel’s steps.

With that errand accomplished, Farfalla wound through Capri’s crooked streets for her appointment with Gavin Tremaine. A rare parking space was waiting for her, just outside the hotel lair of the Brazilian Minister of Culture.

The Minister must have had a genius travel agent. The Brazilian voodoo cannibal Prince of Music was staying in a secluded, artsy, swoopy-roofed hotel. This crumbly space-age hotel was like a piece of Brasilia that had been sawn off and dropped on Capri from a helicopter.

Farfalla entered the hotel’s garish and angular lobby. Gavin was waiting for her there, awkwardly perched in a chair of chrome and Naugahyde.

Gavin’s face was taut, but he quietly shook her hand and said something mild and polite to her. Farfalla had rehearsed a little speech to give him, something cheerful and efficient, like an American secretary would say to her employer, but she forgot her speech instantly. Because Gavin was in trouble. Awful trouble. He was like a knight in armor about to confront a dragon.

There was a strong, feral mood of tremendous male intensity. The way he felt swept through her like a whirlwind. Are you with me?

Yes I am. Here, I am. They were comrades on a mission. Life and death. Better or worse. Shoulder to shoulder.

Gavin’s audience with the great man lasted only fifteen minutes. The Minister of Culture looked just the way that he always looked. He was a jolly, old Brazilian hippie with a dark face and short, gray dreadlocks. He wore an artsy dashiki and baggy, white cotton pants and big, flat, slappy Havaiana sandals.

The Minister smiled at her. He was entirely polite and gentlemanly. He had met her three times already. He did not remember her, of course.

This voodoo priest and Gavin Tremaine wasted maybe one minute being cordial — Thank you for meeting me about the issue of such-and-such, and Yes, I understand that you came here about the this-and-that. Then, suddenly, they got technical.

They got extremely technical. Horribly technical. Their meeting concerned specialized electronics. Aviation electronics, the circuits for controlling jet airplanes. This meeting was about the Brazilian aviation business, French aerospace companies, Boeing, and Italy, too. It had a lot to do with intellectual property, patents, copyrights, and a big, cloudy, multi-national business deal.

There were some NATO components, state of the art electronics for aerial warfare. And something older, too. At that point, the conversation — or rather, the military briefing — zoomed into a different space that was strange and delicate.

Gavin Tremaine and this Brazilian musician-politician were talking about something that, officially, nobody was ever supposed to talk about. Because it was secret. It was a serious, world-class secret. This secret was so totally taboo that they couldn’t even admit to each other that they were discussing a secret.

Farfalla had never heard two men engage in such closely-studied non-talking. Obviously, they were talking about some great source of hidden power, worth a lot of money. A major fortune — tons of dollars, Euros and Brazilian reals.

The discussion was incredibly difficult to translate. Farfalla struggled so much to catch on to what they were not saying that she lost all sense of herself. Words poured through her like a spirit medium.

Finally, they had tiptoed through their ghostly international spiderweb to confront the Big Question. The big, futuristic question about what to do next. Given that they had achieved some sort of understanding — what about tomorrow? Where was Gavin to go, who was he to talk to next, where, how? What was to be done?

Gavin posed this question in a very tactful and respectful way, but obviously it was the whole point of this meeting. This question was why Gavin Tremaine had flown halfway across the world.

The old man thought about the big question. This was the one part of the discussion that caused him to ponder. He was not making any final decision about the matter himself. But, he had to tell this younger man: green light, yellow, or red. Go forward, try again later, or just stop.

After mulling it over, the Minister of Culture did not say any of the three obvious things. Instead, he said a fourth thing. He spoke about the future of Brazil.

A slight, pained shadow crossed Gavin’s face. But, he understood why this had to be said.

Then, the two men shook hands, and finished their conversation with some more polite nothings. The encounter was done, it was all over. One of the Minister’s staffers gave them free tickets to a nightclub show. She was very nice about that.

Then, they left. They departed the hotel together.

Gavin Tremaine looked hugely relieved. Farfalla felt wrung-out. She wanted to forget this awful meeting as soon as she possibly could. Because it smelled— it smelled of war, and trouble, and power, and crisis, and blood, and money, money, money. Especially, it smelled of money.

Yet, now she knew Gavin Tremaine so much better. They were comrades of a dark and twisted experience. It was as if they had survived a hurricane.

She knew that Gavin had never done this before. He hadn’t wanted to undergo this trial. He feared and hated doing this. How had he found the courage to try? Because he did have the courage.

Oh yes, she thought, looking at his troubled face. His father did things like this. Gavin had grown up seeing work like this done. This story was another man’s story. This was his family’s story. Gavin was a young man who was loyal to his family heritage. He was loyal to his history.

“You did such a great job in there,” Gavin told her. “I didn’t know that the negotiation would break in that direction, but... well, thanks to you, I got through that. I feel hopeful, now. I’m thinking, maybe I can pull this thing off. It’ll take me a while, because it’s a very complex situation, but... I have new options for action now. And that’s good.”

“Are you all right?”

“Well, the project’s not done. But, I don’t have to worry any more, about the parts that don’t matter. I can concentrate. Can you get me a cab back to my hotel? I need the landline for some phone calls.”

“You can’t use your iPhone?”

“I don’t have an iPhone. iPhones aren’t secure,” he blurted. “Forget I told you that. Look, I’m all right now. And you are all right. That’s what’s important to me. You are more than all right, you are great. I could never have done this without you. I’m really grateful for what you’ve done for me.”

That was the truth, and it was wonderful. Those few words changed everything, about him, about her. She was his helpmeet, his confidante and his guide through dark places. He was about to tell her all about this, how much it meant to him, and how important she was to him. She wanted to stand on the sidewalk and bask in his praise.

But, he wasn’t saying that to her. Why not? Why wouldn’t he say it to her? She would listen to it. Joyfully. She very much wanted to hear it.

Because, he was her One, and when he said it, he would kiss her. That was why he wasn’t saying it yet. Farfalla knew that suddenly. She felt that premonition in her flesh and her bones. A hot, heart-pounding, physical conviction. He was bound to confess what he felt about her, and then give her a passionate kiss.

Farfalla realized that the kiss was coming. Their moment of true communion. A tremendous, total, passionate, life-changing kiss. Not here yet. Not yet. Almost here. The kiss was coming.

He was her One, so it would happen. He was certain to do it. Their kiss was fated. He would kiss her with his life-changing kiss. He could grab her at any minute and kiss her. He was one hair’s breadth away from grabbing her, right now. Look at his blue, hungry, lustful, male eyes. He was blazing with raw need for her, as a woman. The air between them was crackling with electricity. He was going to lunge for her and crush her into his arms. A scarlet whirlwind of heart-throbbing passion that negated all female resistance. She could pound his chest with her fists, no. Oh no! No kissing! Not right here, not right now! Not on this sidewalk in front of this weird hotel. With all those strange people wandering in and out. Oh, please don’t kiss me!

“Way too much going on today,” Gavin muttered, and then, they had to part.

Chapter Eleven: The Return on Investment

Gavin decided to hike back to his hotel. He had his paper tourist map to guide him across the island. He needed a good long walk to help him purge his jitters.

There was no way he could tell his dad about the new twist in the Brazilian business deal. Not just yet. Not when he was feeling so jumpy, so raw and impulsive.

For a minute there, elated by hope, he’d almost told the Italian girl something fatal. He had wanted to tell her to forget all about the Futurist Congress. Forget all of that, the plans, duties, panels, speeches, reputation, forget everything. Rush off and get drunk together. Stay together, be with each other. Throw their clothes off, get into bed. A charming idea, obviously. Also, the stupidest idea in the world.

Some alone time, hiking across the island, would get his head on straight.

Tonight, he had to deliver his big Congress speech. Gavin hated giving presentations to crowds. All those hundreds of eyes, focused on him. A nerve-wracking public ordeal. Gavin didn’t exactly suffer from stage fright — because he always tightly scripted his speeches, with the whole routine plotted-out carefully, point by point, minute by minute. Gavin knew how to survive a public speech. He had done that before.

But, he could always sense his listeners politely suffering, as he repeated all the words from his PowerPoint slides. He couldn’t face a trial like that. Not in his raw, disturbed condition. Not without fresh air in his lungs. Not without a chance to mentally breathe.

The hilly path across the island was crooked and rambling. Capri’s smaller streets were like crevices in rock. But, all in all, Capri was a small Italian island. No mountains around here could scare a guy who’d hiked Mount Saint Helens.

Nobody else walked through these quiet stony lanes. The posh homes of aristocrats and rich retirees were hidden behind iron gates. Gavin was all alone.

When he reached the hotel, he would have to pick up a phone and try talk to talk sense into his father.

It felt strange to have such pained thoughts here, thoughts that anticipated distant, faraway Seattle. Somehow, Seattle still haunted him in Capri, in this beautiful Italian maze. This narrow Capri street was lined on both sides by mossy walls topped with bright festive flowers. Enormous, blind, rock-solid barriers. Elegant, pretty — but like a medieval jail.

He had learned something today. His father’s property still mattered in this world. It mattered because it had never been “property” — instead, it was a fishline snarl of a thing, half military secret, half patent. A Cold War aviation secret that dated back to the long-lost days of Senator Scoop Jackson. A magic artifact. Historical, yet still futuristic.

Boeing wasn’t even in Seattle, not any more. Boeing had relocated to Chicago, fleeing the unions. Seattle’s Space Age had dwindled into a corny curiosity, like a fifty-year old rerun of The Jetsons.

But, a Space Age circuit board didn’t die like that. A circuit board was a structure, like sheet music. You could hide sheet music inside a dark closet for years. Then, when you played that grid of black and white notes, the same secret power came out. Music became old-fashioned, but music never wore out.

Technically, there were only so many ways to move an electric pulse across a circuit board. Just like there were only so many ways for a lonely man to walk the crooked streets of Capri.

He had some good news for his father. At least, he had constructive news.

So, he would call the house in Seattle. He would do that soon. He would force himself to do that duty. He would face that music. Complicated, difficult music. Three governments, two rival aerospace companies, and a chip business in Ivrea — that kind of music. Music like a basket of crabs.

That so-called “real world,” thought Gavin. How “real” did any world turn out to be, once a man got old? “Real estate” — his father’s legacy. The real world’s most solid, most conservative business investment! How had “real estate” become so vaporous, so treacherous, so ghostly and so haunted? A “real estate bubble.” To be “real,” and yet a “bubble” — so fragile, so transient. The great, new, tragic story of the 21st century.

It took time to ruin a real world. But, time was all it took.

“Kidney nephrosis” was not a virus, or a bacterium, or a cancer, or an infection. “Kidney nephrosis” was a prediction. A stark prediction about his father’s life.

Mr Norman Tremaine’s kidneys were nephrotic. In the future, his kidneys would deteriorate further. Mr. Tremaine’s future life would be about low-sodium diets and dialysis. There would be a lot of intimate pain in the future of the aging Mr. Norman Tremaine. The pain was especially predictable.

Nobody lives forever, thought Gavin. This was the single most important lesson he had ever learned from Futurism: that people were temporary. Human beings were future ghosts.

Even a lucky man — a rich, successful, handsome, dynamic man, who finds the love of his life and “lives happily ever after” — doesn’t live happily forever after. Happily, perhaps. Forever, no way.

Gavin was losing his father, day by day. That handsome, go-getting, bounding overachiever. That big Viking hulk of a guy. A hard-charger, an Alpha Male. A natural leader. He gave the men and women around him a lot more trouble than they had ever given him. A man with a heart of gold and an iron head.

His father was a mortal human being.

Gavin couldn’t even call that story a tragedy. For a man to die at twenty, that was a tragedy. To die well over sixty, with two grown kids and a wife who adored you, that was just life.

Love kept his father alive. Nothing more, nothing less. Strange, but true. It was the love of Gavin’s mother. His mother kept his father alive, really, through her heartfelt faith that he was somehow bound to get better. Her passionate devotion to him had the fairy-tale proportions of a castle in the clouds.

If his mother somehow died, his father wouldn’t last six weeks. Gavin knew that. He knew it was true, but he had never told anybody about it. Inside their stately home, his parents were propped up together like two dominoes.

Who was there to tell about such a dreadful future prospect? His sister? His girlfriend? Nobody.

Nothing much to tell- just, a man’s grown-up duty to pick up the work at hand.

Generations of Tremaines, in their long Seattle history, had done all kinds of work. Many useful, lively and worthwhile things. They’d been in lumber, in fishing, in import-export, in aviation, in military contracting, and in high technology.

Times changed. People moved money out of the stuff that was old-fashioned, and they moved money into the cool new stuff. The future had all the cool, new stuff. To make progress, you had to figure that out.

That was the subject of Gavin’s big speech to the Futurist Congress, the speech that he was delivering, in public, tonight. Because that was what they wanted to hear from him. The Italians wanted to hear all about American-style, high-tech venture capital. That was why they admired him as they did. That was why they made such a fuss about him.

He was from famous, high-tech Seattle. Seattle had Amazon, that mighty river of consumerism. Seattle had the Big Blue Monster, Microsoft. Microsoft, the ultimate planetary operating system, the ultimate international business machine. The computer mega-corporation that spewed millionaires like Mount Saint Helens spewed ash.

Even the shadow of Microsoft oozed money. Once, there had been a certain obscure piece of software. Nothing to get excited about. Unless, like Gavin Tremaine, you were a fan of tech press releases, SEC filings, court documents and Seattle tech bloggers. Then, you could foresee that Microsoft, the Big Blue Monster, was planning to eat Yahoo!

If the Big Blue Monster was going to devour those Yahoo! screamers, then that obscure piece of software code was exciting. It was a pawn in the chess game of the future Internet. A meek, little pawn, but strategically necessary. People who saw the future coming could build a company on that piece of code.

Then, the Blue Monster or its Screamer victims could legally buy that company. They would make it part of their game.

They did that, too, because they had to. Twenty million dollars on the table. Not a great big deal during a massive hostile stock battle worth $47.5 billion. Twenty million was a line item for Microsoft and Yahoo! But, it was sheer bonanza for the bright Seattle twenty-somethings who had monetized that piece of code. Payday, brother. Success!

Gavin had never explained that business deal to his father. His father didn’t want to know about tech magic. His father was a real-estate guy, an old-school city booster, who hated and feared the eerie geeks in their hacker dens. Or rather, he’d hated and feared them until Gavin’s magic jackpot had rained a heap of fairy-tale money on the family’s real-estate crisis. Then, his father started demanding more of it. And quickly.

Eventually, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal fell apart. Nobody ever used the code that had been snapped up for twenty million. Every geek in the start-up company just pocketed that cash and vanished. Like extras, lavishly hired for some unproduced movie, they were less than ghosts.

As for Gavin’s other daring tech ventures, those three companies were ghosts. Three doomed Seattle start-ups that had quickly swirled into a death spiral. Falling, splashing and drowning in the “deadpool.” Fail early, fail often. Fail, and die. And vanish.

The deadpool was the sewer of startups. The busted flush. Every VC guy knew all about that harsh reality. To lose three poker hands and gain one big pot, that was doing great, in venture capital. He was doing great.

So, Gavin Tremaine, dashing, young high-tech entrepreneur, was still ahead of the game. People claimed he had the golden touch. Especially in the dark and melancholy years since the dot-com bust. He was the golden boy. But...

But, he was an accountant. So, he could do the math. In the past ten years, the entire Seattle venture-capital community, all those brainiacs eagerly inventing progress, had supplied an eight percent return on investment.

Hackers didn’t much bother to think about that stuff. It took an accountant to figure that out. A high-tech accountant was the guy who could peel away the big excitement and look hard at the cold numbers underneath. It took an accountant to see that reality. It took a patriot to understand how sad and bad it truly was.

Over there in Seattle, nine time zones away, there was Gavin’s beloved home, a world-class city with a supreme reputation for technical genius. Those geniuses, the highest-flying of the high-tech flyers — and they couldn’t edge out a fast-food chain.

An eight percent return on investment. Eight lousy dollars of profit for every hundred dollars put in. That was a horrifying business situation. A seven percent return on investment was the minimum required to be in any kind of business at all. The futuristic high-tech scene in Seattle was living off its past reputation. It was starving.

They still went through the glossy high-tech motions in Seattle. Of course they did that, they had to, it was who they were. It was who he was.

Then, the Italians had flown him over here to tell them all about that. Tonight. Yes, tonight. That was his responsibility, what he had to face, tonight. Nobody knew it but him, but that was what he had to face.

Gavin knew how to make money. He had done that. But was that a man’s work in the world, was that the future? You call that treadmill, the future? What a fraud, what a fairy-tale! Not one of those efforts had improved a thing! Nobody was any better off for any of it! No one could claim that “the future” was sparkly, better, new and improved — least of all, Seattle.

The whole State of Washington was going broke!

Tonight, this very night, he was supposed to lecture a crowd of deeply interested Italians about these marvels. Yes, him. He had to stand up in the full glare of the stage lights, talk to them about “the future,” and lie. Of course, he knew what he was going to say. He would explain Sarbanes-Oxley accounting to them. A legal piece of American accounting code, more complicated than a broken cellphone.

Sarbanes-Oxley was the bane of every inventor’s existence. Sarbanes-Oxley was the stake through the heart of the dot-com dream. Gavin felt an honest need to explain Sarbanes-Oxley, because there were maybe ten accountants in the USA who fully understood it, and five of them had clients in prison.

Gavin’s head was aching. He suddenly realized that he had lost his way. No, truly, he had lost it. Right here and now. He had literally lost his way in the world, because, while he was darkly brooding, confusedly, in a panic, about his sorry family troubles, and his city’s failing fortunes, and his ruined industry, and his own hypocrisy, he had forgotten to look at his map.

He’d been absently walking at random, bitterly muttering, drifting along, putting one foot in front of the other, on a stony, crooked road. And now, he was lost in Capri.

That lack of conscious choice had led him downhill. Downhill was always the easiest way for a man to randomly ramble.

Now, he couldn’t go one more step.

His road ahead had ended. Bang. The pavement stopped, with one fatal, wicked twist, at an ornate, rusty, iron gate.

This gate at the end of the road was festooned like a wedding bouquet with hand-wrought iron flowers. A hundred ornate, metallic blossoms, lilies and poppies, all miraculously banged out of cold, forged iron. Gorgeous, voluptuous, sculptural flowers of iron. Cruel, solid, wrought-iron flowers fit to break a man’s skull.

Behind this stern iron gate, strictly forbidden to him, lay a green and luscious ornamental garden. Gavin had never seen, or even imagined, such an alluring, twisted, Arcadian grove. This blooming vision of an unearthly paradise was not so much a landscape as a feverscape. Gardens so luxuriant, so warm and weird, were not supposed to exist in the world.

Any garden like this should have been world-famous. Likely it had been world-famous — once upon a time. A hundred long years ago, maybe. Maybe it was still famous. Maybe, eager cub reporters from modern, glossy garden magazines came rushing up to sneak pictures of this fabulous, ancient garden.

Then, the owner simply shot them and buried them on the grounds.

So much for the outside world. So much for reality. So much for all space and time.

Presumably, this amazing garden at the end of the road had some owner. It just had to. What the hell kind of decadent Roman Emperor, or massive corporation, or evil oil-fueled Third World government, could ever own a fabulous garden like this one?

Gavin placed both his living hands on the tall gate’s cold, rusty iron. He shook the gate till its hinges squeaked in reproach. Yes, he was wide awake. Yes, this was no dream.

Gavin was startled from his dark mood by sheer wonderment. He was in a state of wonder. About himself.

He had just learned something new about himself. This vista before him was proof of something vital and important. It proved to him that he knew nothing. He was a hick.

That truth was simple: he was an ignoramus, a punk-ass kid. The world held things undreamt of in his philosophy.

Gavin had seen some exotic private properties. He’d been to the home of Bill Gates. Twice. But no naïve hayseed geek like Gavin Tremaine had ever visited the likes of this place. This locale was alien. Not ‘old-fashioned,’ not ‘futuristic’, but a completely different, mythological, order of being. Olympian, transcendent, a place outside every category that Gavin had in his block-shaped head.

A distant movement flickered, beyond the dark topiary spires. Here came the owner of the garden. Oh yes. Here he came, transcendent, superb. Gavin’s heart thumped in panic. The garden’s owner was departing his sacred groves, leaving his hidden enclave, his cave, his mansion, his bunker, whatever that weird structure was, way beyond those scarlet blossoming trees and clumps of spiny thorns.

The owner approached the iron gate.

The owner was riding in a car. This ultra-tiny, European smart-car had all the solemn, sober trim of a state limousine. The tiny car was of a snaky slate-green color, with tinted windows, a colorful official flag perched and waving on its miniature hood.

This shrunken car drew to a gentle stop. There he sat — the boss of Arcadia. This unearthly gentleman crouched in a tiny bucket seat beside his uniformed chauffeur.

The supremo was a bald, goaty-looking character, chock full of bristling dignity. He was a supremely ugly little geezer, with a high-collared jacket, a pointy red chin-beard, and tinted designer spectacles. He looked like the dictator of an asteroid.

There was no way to avoid encountering this guy. No place to hide from him. Running away uphill was not an option.

The lordling’s chauffeur, who might have been a revived mummy, climbed from the driver’s seat. With agonizing dignity, he pulled a thick iron key from a watch-pocket chain, and he unlocked the gate. Then, he climbed back inside the tiny car. The car oozed forth like a snail.

This formal ritual was like a sacrament. The mummy chauffeur got out again. He closed and locked the gate behind the tiny car. He ignored Gavin completely, although Gavin, who was trapped within the narrow stone road, was close enough to touch him.

Gavin and the garden’s pocket-dictator sized one another up. Gavin thought for one dizzy moment that the guy was going to offer him a friendly lift into town.

That act was not possible. There was no room for Gavin inside the tiny car. Gavin would have to be strapped to the roof like a freshly-shot American moose.

The owner had huge, slanted, yellow eyes, behind his tinted windows, and his dime-sized smoked spectacles. A clear disdain radiated from this hairy old gentleman. A heavy, deeply-felt regret, a morose sorrow that he had to share his lovely world with hopeless creatures like Gavin Tremaine.

The tiny car motored up the narrow road, electric and as quiet as an eel. Gavin was left standing there. At the end of the road. All alone.

Gavin shifted his laptop bag from his right shoulder to his left shoulder. He turned on his heel, and he marched uphill.

So, he was a hick. Fine. He could accept that reality. His despair was absurd. Fine. To be young and stupid was the beginning of wisdom. Fine. He was also totally lost on the island of Capri. Stupid hick naïve guys could get lost on tiny islands.

His last precious hours, here on Capri, were to be wasted on evasions and lies, on high-tech investor hokum, when there were so many different things that he could have said, that he should have said, that he could have done.

Things to be said — and not to some crowd of idiots. Things to be said to her. That’s right. Said to her.

Because she would understand him. She did understand him, even when he was in trouble. He knew it, he had seen that in her eyes. They had a bond.

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he saw her. She was radiant in his mind’s eye. Her sweet little face, that sharp chin, that forehead, all that glorious hair. He knew her face like he knew his own hands.

He stopped under a stone wall topped with broken glass.

Oh my God. No. Why? What was this all about? How had this happened to him? He was falling for her. The world was so full of women and he had to fall for her!

“Smart cookie,” he had thought. That was not the feeling that burned in him now. Not his cool, wise-assessment judgement smart cookie, there could be some trouble here, better watch out, boy, but his bleeding and needy assessment, delicious cookie, sweet cookie! Can’t I have one bite? I’m starving to death!

Why had he ever left her? Why had her left her, abandoned her to walk alone, when there were so few ticking hours left for him in Capri? Once he left this island, he would never see her again.

He was shambling suddenly. He was stumbling uphill at a run.

Chapter Twelve: Forever Right Now

It was high time for the big Brazilian official to deliver her speech, all about the future preparations for the Rio Olympics. Farfalla had to translate that speech, from Portuguese to English. A difficult feat.

Instead of performing this honest work, though, Farfalla was lounging in the glorious sunshine outside the empty convent church, while Babi Gervasi smoked cigarettes.

Not one single event at the Futurist Congress had started on time. Least of all some big Brazilian speech about the future of Brazil, because Brazil was the country of the future, and always would be.

“That is such a pretty dress that you have,” Babi allowed, tapping ashes, as she suavely nodded at the babbling passers-by. Conference bigwigs were like a herd of sheep for Babi. “That outfit suits you. Nice cut, strong tropical colors. Is it Brazilian?”

“Babi, I am Brazilian.”

Babi tapped her cigarette once more. “Sure you are, Farfalla, be Brazilian. Vai, avanti.”

“I made this dress myself!”

Babi nodded. “Did you? I would never have guessed!”

“Well, I had it copied in a Milanese sweatshop by a bunch of Chinese tailors. But, it’s mine now. This is a Futurist dress by Giacomo Balla from 1914. I found it in a museum.”

“Oh, yes, yes, that’s so perfect. I love all those Futurist boys. Especially the ones who died young. It’s great that you have a strong personal style. Too many Milanese girls, they think they have style, but they’ll wear any rag that Gucci dumps in the Rinascente.”

Farfalla was touched to get this morale-boosting vote of confidence. “You’re right about that, Babi. I think just the same thing!”

Babi casually dug into her beaded purse. She passed over a thick, unmarked envelope.

“Now I’m really having a good time,” said Farfalla, deftly slipping the booty into her bag.

“Farfalla, you deserve it. My dear friend, Eleonora, she likes you. She said you were the perfect house-guest. A ‘very happy, healthy, free-spirited girl,’ she said.

Farfalla was stunned. “Happy, healthy, free-spirited?” This was the last description she would ever have given about herself. She’d scarcely said a word to her hostess Eleonora, because the washed-up TV presenter was constantly moaning and whining about all her dark, imaginary troubles.”Eleonora said that about me?”

“Eleonora understands these things! My poor, darling Eleonora, she wasn’t always like you see her today... Once she was such a wild, clever, pretty girl, with her whole future ahead of her. Eleonora was such fun! You wouldn’t believe all the dirty mischief we got into.”

“Babi, listen to me. You know your way around here... and I need some advice. If you were looking for a statue in Capri — just a little bronze statue, about a hundred years old — how would you find something like that?”

Babi did not even blink at the question. “You’re smuggling antiques? Yeah, I used to do that, too.”

“Well, never mind. First, I have to find this statue of Cupid. I don’t know why, exactly, but I have this rich client who cares a lot about Cupid, and well...”

“Antiques can bring a lot of money in a hurry. That’s a very modern scene, antiques. Do you like gay guys?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, some people would tell you to query all the museums. Check out the old auction-catalogs. Forget that. You’ll have to root out the gay mafia’s antique closet. It’s a lost world in there.”

“I can do that! My geek hacker guys in Ivrea are practically gay guys, they’re just kind of different! How do I start?”

“Well,” Babi allowed, “Maybe I could ask around for you, a little bit, but first... Listen, I may be having some trouble with my final speaker. Do you think it would be a problem if I rescheduled your boyfriend for that slot, instead?”

“Well,” said Farfalla, at once, “Gavin might be unhappy about that, but I’m sure he would do his best. He cares about us, he listens. He wants to help.”

“That would be so good. Our American superstar author had security trouble in Rome. They found something bad in his carry-on bags, and he lost his mind about that. I can’t say that I blame him. These days, the jet-set people get treated worse than the gypsies.”

“Your star author can’t make it here to Capri? That’s too bad!” said Farfalla. “All the geeks worship his business best-sellers! I see his books in airports all the time, he’s just like ‘Harry Potter.’”

Babi sighed. “It’s a dark fate! Every time I run an event like this, I always get a couple of blind pigs! There’s that superstar Yankee prima donna in Rome with his stupid tube of hair gel. Then, there’s that cokehead that your boyfriend threw off the yacht!”

“What?”

Babi tramped her cigarette butt. “I hope you didn’t take that incident too seriously.”

Farfalla laughed. “What is there to be serious about? That rumor is ridiculous! Are you joking?”

Babi raised her brows. “The LOXY boys said that she scolded him — about you. So, your boyfriend just grabbed that blogger gossip-girl and he threw her overboard. Pitched her right into the ocean.” Babi snapped her fingers. “I’d be flattered, myself! It’s been ages since a man did that for me.”

“What on earth are you talking about, Babi? Gavin never does things like that! What a sick, evil fantasy! It’s that Brixie creature from Los Angeles, I bet. It is? I knew it! She’s on drugs! She’s skin and bones! Anyone who takes one look at that crazy broomstick can tell that she’s a stick of dynamite! I hate her.”

“Did you read her blog today? You’re in Brixie’s blog. There are pictures of you, with your boyfriend. Together.”

“Paparazzi pictures on some stupid blog? I could care less!”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Babi nodded. “Nobody believes what they see on the Internet.”

The conference crowd was shuffling into the venue. Farfalla joined them, and climbed into her glass translator’s booth. She shared it with Adriana, a Capri housewife, whose mother had been Portuguese.

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 think 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.’”

He gazed at her in astonishment. “You are some piece of work.”

“You can do it, if you desire to do it. Just for one performance.”

“That is so beautiful.… but I frankly don’t see how that’s possible. You and I, we have no future. In twenty-four hours, I’ll be flying back to my home.”

“That is not true, handsome. You still have one night in Capri.” Farfalla touched his chin with her finger. “I can’t promise you eternity. Because, I am a mortal woman. But I can promise you me. Look at me. Look here, at me. I love you. I am yours. You can have anything you want from me.”

He said nothing.

“That is my promise,” she said, crossing her heart.

“That’s a rather cheering and motivating thing for a woman to predict to a man.”

She said nothing.

“The predictions you make along that line are extremely accurate, aren’t they.”

“I don’t make many.”

“That is the most beautiful thing that I have ever heard. That was the most wonderful thing that anyone has ever said to me. That was a piece of true Futurist poetry. That gorgeous thing you foretold has changed my world forever. Even if I die in the next five minutes, I will die as another, better kind of man.” He cleared his throat. “So, how long do we have to create this fantastic speech that makes everybody happy but us?”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Piece of cake. Twenty minutes is forever.” He yanked his laptop from his bag.

Chapter Thirteen: Translation is Treason

Gavin strode to the podium, his laptop tucked under his arm. He set the machine on the podium, and tilted the mike up. The screen held the first lines of his new speech: “I come before you today as a man of a new generation: a cool, calm, collected, and confident generation. A brilliant generation blessed with global connectivity.”

After that, he was winging it from a frenzied scattering of notes.

However, this situation felt okay. In fact, it felt perfect. It was never hard to talk about a future that was all wild, unpredictable, joyous make-believe.

Gavin didn’t know the way to the end of his speech, but he knew his destination. It was like driving down from Seattle to Silicon Valley. He would get there for sure, if he held onto the wheel and avoided the ditches.

Besides, he could see Farfalla’s eager face, glowing behind the glass of her translation booth. That made every difference in the world to him. There was a beautiful woman, eagerly hanging onto his every word. Any hot-blooded male could find some eloquence in that situation.

A speech requiring translation necessitated speaking at half speed. Half-speed meant a lot of solemn pauses. Thoughtful pauses, which made him seem dignified and deep.

After ten minutes, Gavin realized this was the best speech he had ever given. This was a speech in a league by itself. It might be a fake future, but it was a real speech. He was compelling, when he spoke like this. He was persuasive. He was connecting. He was seductive, even.

It was a pleasure to tell her about the future. Their future, together. All he had to do was promise her the great, golden moon!

Was that so wrong? To promise a woman the moon? Was romantic hokum even a lie? The world was full of millions of men promising glorious happiness to women! Didn’t women fall for that nonsense like ninepins? Vast majorities of women, even? When women finally figured out it was just sweet mushy nothings from an ardent suitor, were they upset about that? Really? Ever?

You didn’t have to be sticky-sweet about it. No, it was great when a young couple boldly faced up to their challenges! Uniting their fortunes! Building a home! Starting a family! “For better or worse!” “Worse” put some skin in the game. “Worse” made love a decision of consequence.

Love cast out fear! For a mortal man and woman to unite as one was the ultimate triumph of hope! Didn’t people marry during wars? Of course, they got married! In wars, people would marry anybody, even foreigners! Didn’t people marry during horrible plagues? Of course, people would marry during plagues! They needed those children to replace the host of the dead!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was what tomorrow was all about! That vital willingness to awake with the new dawn, to join the marching pageant of a vivid world, where only the brave deserved the fair, where the cringing pessimist and the sneaking cynic were properly scorned! A glorious Italian future entirely worthy of the finest moments of its past! As the great prophet Garibaldi had once commanded (in Italian of course), “Women of Italy! Cast away all cowards from your embraces! They will give you only cowards for children!”

It took ten seconds for the crowd to realize that Gavin was speaking in Italian, and also quoting Garibaldi. But then, they just lost it. They were stunned to hear an American accountant utter such an unlikely, off-the wall sentiment. Applause banged off the convent’s stony walls like shotgun blasts.

Everybody in the audience who spoke English was looking askance at him now. Clearly, they had him figured for drunk. But the Italians were totally digging the presentation. Basically, the Italians were cheering wildly for every line Farfalla had spoken into their ears.

Pretty soon, all the English-speakers in the audience were figuring him for a sly dog. A wily character. They envied his suave ability to connect with people from another culture. He had the room in the palm of his hand!

Gavin yanked the mike from the podium and began to ramble the stage. Every eye followed him, their faces like mosaic tiling.

Then, he saw Farfalla urgently waving at him from behind her glass. She held up five fingers. Five minutes left in his speech? No way! That could not possibly have been a hour. He was barely two-thirds through his notes. He still had so many strong, cogent points to make: reassess a sorely discredited financial system, a golden opportunity to clean the global slate, finding the courage the share this world as it is, Euro-American networked cooperation...

He zipped through his computer screen to the bang-up ending. “Let me conclude by praising you as you deserve! Far too often, Italians overlook the high quality of Web Due-Punto-Zero — the World Wide Italian Web! Your superb contribution to that great effort of our world civilization is creating — day after day — the most powerful, influential, and seductive aspect of modern Italian culture! Thank you very much.”

They went ape. Some of the crowd — they must be Americans, because Italians never did stuff like that — were whistling and whooping.

Amazingly, he had ended right on time. He’d killed the Futurist Congress with one decisive, final blow. He had triumphed, he had killed, like pounding a stake through a vampire. A feat worthy of a knight in armor.

This meant that every victim stuck inside this dismal church could immediately rush outdoors, grab a few drinks and do some business deals.

The satisfied audience abandoned their plastic chairs as free human beings. Off they went, in their happy droves. One last blowout in the posh restaurants and the squeaking hotel beds of Capri. Oh, the joy.

Teenage Italian kids were jostling up to the stage. Italians were always big on hauling some college students into their public events, probably to prevent the kids from rioting. The gleeful teens were falling all over themselves. Being kids, they had more at stake in the future than anybody else. “Brilliantly speaking, sir! Forgive me, sir, my English is not too very good!”

Gavin smiled benignly on the scraggly, tattooed students. The youngsters insisted on getting his autograph on their Futurist Congress brochures.

Behind this crowd of kids lurked an imposing stranger. He was a sober guy, professorial, bald, and bearded, with a black silk turtleneck. With a weird formal intellectual’s accent, he said, “Very intriguing and original speech, Mr. Tremaine. A unique presentation. I am the chairman of the forthcoming Futurist event in Sao Paolo. You will have heard of us. I venture to hope you will do us the honor of favoring us in Brazil with your presence there!”

Gavin had to juggle business cards with this over-polite Brazilian honcho. “Well, I’ll check my calendar for you.” he said and was met with a level stare in return. “We will do what we must, to have you join us, Mr Tremaine.” The chairman wasn’t kidding.

Behind the Brazilian — she was tall and bright and skinny as a neon tube — came Brixie the Blogger. Neon-tube Brixie looked a little bent, dim, and flickery. She had come to make peace.

“That was quite a rant you just gave,” Brixie told him. “That was some pretty good stuff. That sorta freaked me out.”

“Thanks, Brixie.”

“I streamed that whole thing live to the Web through my mobile. I hope you didn’t mind me doing that.”

“Um... I guess not.”

“Your pitch was gutsy. I didn’t expect that from you. I mean, jeez, you come across as so dumb and geeky. Now, I’m sorry for what I said about your girlfriend. On my blog.”

“She is not my girlfriend, Brixie. Get your facts straight! That was my Italian translator. She was helping me assemble the speech that you liked so much.”

“You can tell your Italian girlfriend that I’m sure to die young and in pain,” Brixie offered. “Your big warm-hearted speech flew right past most of the meathead schmoes in this audience, but I was totally parsing that. Futurism, futurismo, you really are a Futurist, you’re the paranormal deal there, I get that. You should give me some advice. Can I ask you for some good advice?”

“You want advice from me? Look, if I were you, I’d shoot a moose and eat it.”

“You’re a funny guy, Gavin Tremaine,” said Brixie, unsmiling. “Though obviously you’re not real hip about the intense body-consciousness in the fashion industry.”

“Look, Brixie, I may dress like a nerd, but I can read trends. Yeah, I can tell you what to do. Listen to me. You have to back off and outlast these glitzy bastards! You need to pace yourself, Brixie. Knock it off with snorting speed on yachts. Think Diana Vreeland.”

“Should I look her up on Wikipedia?”

“You don’t know about Diana Vreeland? What kind of barbarian are you? You don’t know your own fashion history! Forget the software uploads! Go home and read Diana Vreeland’s books!”

“Is... is she dead?”

“That makes no difference at all! She’s no more dead than Mark Twain.”

“I’ll think about what you just said to me.”

“You do that. Think real hard, Brixie. Now, where is Fabio? I need a word with the genius behind the scenes here.”

“Fabio is not here,” said Brixie. “Fabio left early. Fabio is heading back to the peace and safety of the sweet little wife and kids.”

“Oh,” said Gavin. He hadn’t expected to hear reality put that bluntly, somehow. Suddenly, the manic high from his rant was huffed all out of him. He was shrinking back toward the dimensions of his normal self. “Well, uh, good luck with all that, Brixie. I mean, you and your future.”

“It was just Capri,” said Brixie, and she vanished.

There were more bouts of ritual handshaking with his dwindling herd of admirers, but the Futurist church was emptying in a hurry. Soon, not a friendly face to be seen anywhere. No Farfalla in her glass translation booth, and no Eliza, either.

Where was Eliza? Eliza was missing! He’d sent her the wrong time-slot for his speech! How could Eliza show up for his speech when his speech was rescheduled without any warning? He’d been neglecting Eliza. Now, he felt guilty.

In the back of the church, men in orange uniforms were stacking the designer chairs. Fantastic how great the Italians were at doing that. In and out of their historic buildings in the wink of an eye. Soon this church would be just as empty, cold and echoing as it had been for the last four hundred years.

Gavin knew pretty well what came next in this situation. Because the future was obvious. Obviously, the smart-guy scheme was to check his Blackberry and see find the event’s “A” party. Attendance would be expected of him. Wherever that big shindig was, it would involve three or four hours of Italian ritual dinner drama. Aperitivos, red and white wines, endless courses of ragouts, octopus and pickled horse-meat, cheek-kisses galore... “An event not to be missed!” as they always said, and the last thing Gavin wanted to do.

His conference stardom hadn’t lasted long. He felt as vacant as a grinning Halloween pumpkin.

Farfalla had vanished. Not one trace of Farfalla Corrado. Nothingness there. A Farfalla-shaped hole. Now, he had to wonder if Farfalla Corrado had ever existed. Everything he had accomplished on Capri had something to do with her.

Maybe there had never been a Farfalla Corrado.

Then she appeared, moving into the waning light, with her high-heeled stride, in that gorgeous, lovely, geometric dress. Instantly, every cell in Gavin’s body — every vital particle, down to the dead cells in his hair and fingernails — cried out for her. A hair-raising, scary fit of male adoration. An abject, romantic swoon.

My God, what a glorious creature! He would set himself on fire to light her footsteps. He was in the grip of divine passion, an emotion beyond human limits. Nothing to cling to in his past, present or future. Nothing to cling to, but her.

Farfalla slithered up to him. “So,” she told him, with a small, chilly smile, “I can see that you need a drink now. Let’s go to the big party.”

“I don’t think so. No, that’s not what I need now.”

“We should find your friends. Your big speech was very successful!”

“Farfalla, let’s have an adult conversation about our situation. Okay? This is serious.”

“You were the star tonight. Your fancy friends will be upset if you waste time with me.”

“What ‘waste of time,” are you kidding me? You know as well as I do that we pulled that stunt off together.”

“I threw up in the bathroom,” Farfalla said meekly. “I ran away and I threw up, because that was so exciting... I always have to go to these events, and I never get to tell them anything.”

“Wow! You have speaker’s nerves!” Gavin had to chuckle. “Well! That is truly classic! Now you know what it feels like, for us clowns who stand at the podium! Never mind, never mind. That’s all over now! It’s history! Your scheme was dynamite! We beat them like dogs! You’re a goddess.”

She brightened. “You mean it?”

“Yes, you’re a goddess, I mean it. I knew it would work all along!” he lied. “And the credit is all yours.”

“Please don’t say that I’m a goddess. I know I didn’t do it.”

“Well, then we did it together. And obviously, you were giving them a speech that was much better than mine. That speech in Italian was much more exciting! Those Italians were knocked in the dirt! The people who heard me in English just thought I was being a show-off.”

“I said almost the words you said to me... I just... I improved a few parts.”

“I don’t care. Everything about that speech was ‘new and improved.’” Gavin paused. “Imagine a future that really is better than today. Maybe you and me, people our age, maybe we really are a golden generation... Nobody else ever tells us that, maybe we have to tell it to ourselves.”

“I brought something for you,” she said, and handed over her iPhone.

She had taken a picture of herself with her mobile’s camera. A woman’s self-portrait, taken inside a bathroom stall. Nude.

“My God,” he said. “This pic is awesome.”

“I threw up on my dress, so I had to take my dress off, and I thought... Well, I have no clothes on now, he’s a Futurist, he’s going to see me, so he should see me right away... Was that stupid?”

“No way! I totally get this,” he said. “This is one of those hot European ‘sexting’ things. Wow! I never saw ‘sexting’ before. What a sweet, tender gesture! It’s like a blown kiss with your whole naked body.” Gavin pressed the screen to his heart. “I will never forget this beautiful message, I promise.”

“Give me my iPhone back.”

“Not just yet,” he said, staring. That naked truth was so touching and precious. What a thoughtful gesture of digital trust. “Our generation is superb at social networking! Look at the amazing things we invent to these days! This is truly a time in history when it’s great to be alive!”

“The lighting is so bad in that ladies’ room,” said Farfalla modestly. “I can take a much better nude picture than that.”

“Forward this pic to me.”

“You don’t have an iPhone.”

“Hardware incompatibility!” He handed her phone back. “We can work our way around that.”

“I had some Milanese photo sessions, when I was eighteen.… Those pictures were good.”

“I have just realized something crucial,” he told her. “It is about truth and beauty. It’s the truth about your beauty. Many women in this world have ‘classic beauty’... But not you, Farfalla. You have the beauty of the future.”

Farfalla slipped the iPhone in her purse and slung the purse over her shoulder. “Oh, you made that up, just to make me happy.”

“You should believe me when I predict that kind of thing. The most beautiful women of the future will look like you do. Multicultural women, very fashion-aware... Wait forty years, and see if that’s not true.”

“I’ll be sixty-five in forty years. I’ll be old and wrinkled.”

“I never said that we would benefit by being there first. It’s just that... well, you know it’s the beauty of the future, and I know it. We know it first, together.”

Farfalla was the picture of flattered satisfaction. His compliments had set her all aglow. Gavin realized that he still had the magic. He was magical because he was talking to her. It was magic, the way she completely believed him when he said outrageous, fantastic, romantically beautiful things. He believed it himself when he said them to her. It was their magic.

Gavin gazed around the empty cavern of the chapel. “There is nobody left here. It’s just you and me and those creepy painted cherubs. Let’s get the hell out of this dive!”

“You don’t want to go to the big party?” she said. “They will miss you.”

“Forget those clowns, they’re not like us! They’re all over, they are the past! We’re leaving. I don’t care where we go. Let’s go anywhere. Someplace peaceful, and private, where we can be together, you and me.”

“I have a car,” she said. “Come with me.”

Chapter Fourteen: Why I Hate You Forever

“I can foretell what will happen,” Farfalla told him, as she deftly drove straight up a cliff. “I can tell people their fortunes. But people never listen to me. So, it’s no use when I say anything to people.”

Gavin was scrunched into the passenger seat. “Just watch the road, Farfalla.”

“I can tell fortunes. Really, I can do it. Cards, Tarot cards, Ouija boards, astrology... They all work for me. I mean, they work if I tell the story.”

“Watch that rear-view mirror, too. You can’t drive a car with a crystal ball.”

“My premonitions are real. They are ‘real’ like the future is real. Because the future is never ‘really real.’ The future hasn’t happened yet, and the past is gone forever. The ghosts of the past and the visions of the future are the same for me.”

“I get that. You’re outside temporality. You’re beyond the narrative.”

“Yes. The narrative,that’s the word. I am the Cassandra of the narrative.”

“I’m the same way, Farfalla. Well, in my own way — but in my own narrative, I’m the same way.”

“Gavin, how did it happen to you?”

“Oh, it happened to me, all right... Once, I went to this little meeting of Microsoft kids. Like, this high-school trip thing, but it was very exclusive. We met the world’s greatest Futurist there. Dr Gustav Y. Svante. Nobody knows who he is. That’s why he’s the world’s greatest Futurist. He told us... He said that the future was already here, but nobody listens to the future. The future is all around us, but we don’t see the future yet. We don’t hear it or see it, so we can’t tell it.”

Gavin was telling her the truth. He was all itchy with the truth, he really wanted her to see and feel this private burden of his. “None of the other kids listened to Dr Svante. They just thought that Dr Svante was some boring, old Swedish guy who — somehow — happened to know Bill Gates. But I listened to him. Because I knew he was telling the truth.”

“Well, nobody ever listens to me,” moaned Farfalla. “Never, never, ever.”

“Look, I listen to you. Maybe it’s my doom to listen to you... You think it’s an accident that I’m here in this car with Cassandra? This is our destiny! Think how many times our paths have crossed already! I’ve been to your town, and you’ve been to my town...”

“Gavin, are you really listening to me? Men never listen to women...”

“Shut up and drive the car! I am telling you, don’t run off the road! You are not listening.”

Farfalla laughed. “Ha ha ha! I know I’ll never die in a car! That’s the truth.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t die in a car! Slow down, or else kill me right now!”

Farfalla slowed the speeding sports car. Since there were other Italian drivers on this darkening, twisted mountain road, driving was that much more dangerous. She had to please him, because he was upset.

“We can park the car soon,” she told him. “We can walk together.”

“Let’s do that. Please. That would be good.”

“Let’s do something beautiful tonight. Let’s go to the top of Monte Solaro. It’s the peak of Capri, the highest spot in the island. We can see the whole world from up there. I can buy you a drink. I have money.”

“Fine, terrific,” he said, “that sounds perfect.”

Farfalla’s luck with parking had deserted her. There was no place to hide the car from the Capri cops. She had to leave Eleanora’s car in a spot that was sure to be ticketed.

Monte Solaro had a chair-lift that lifted tourists up to the mountain peak, but Farfalla couldn’t find the lift. Anacapri never had as many tourists as the town of Capri did. The signage on the streets was useless.

But, the frustration and the worry made Gavin hold her hand, and that was wonderful. To hold hands, and to walk at dusk, with a man who loved you. They were in love. Two Futurists in love. Such a simple, tender thing. So sweet and so good. She would never forget it. Not in thousands of years.

Other couples were strolling around Anacapri, too. Germans, Finns, whatever origin, couples clearly not so attractive and chic as themselves. These dumpy foreign lovers gave them hostile stares, as if they owned the island and a rival couple might steal it from them.

“I’m lost now,” Farfalla told him.

“And I left my map back at my hotel,” he said. “But we’ll get up there. We’ll climb all the way to the top of this island, even if I have to carry you.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t. That big party was important for your venture capital business.”

“I don’t even want to think about ventures or capital.”

They jaywalked across a street. Farfalla’s high heel plunged through a street grating. Gavin stopped. “Good Lord, now what?”

“Now, I’m stuck!”

Gavin examined the manhole cover. “Holy cow! Look at this rusty old iron here. It’s got a Fascist insignia.”

“I can’t move!”

“Well, no wonder. Look at the corrosion on this thing.” Gavin dipped to his knee before her, as if ready to propose. He cupped her shoe-heel in the back of his hand. “I can’t believe this. You’re jammed solid!”

“It went in there,” she said, “it has to come out.”

“We’re stuck in the middle of the street. What if a car comes and kills you?”

“Why are you always worried about cars? I can drive, Italians can drive, stop worrying.”

“You’d better abandon this shoe. I think I could leverage it, if it didn’t have your weight on it.”

“I am not fat!” Farfalla yanked hard at her stubborn shoe, but got nothing but a cruel pang in her ankle. “Questa situazione è ridicola! Dovrei chiamare una squadraccia di leghisti e sguinzagliarla contro il sindaco di questo posto di merda!”[10]

“No need to get all political,” said Gavin. He had an insufferable look of amused superiority. “Give me a crowbar, and I’ll rip this whole grate out.”

“Stop making fun of me.”

Gavin’s phone rang. He pulled it from his cargo pocket, glanced at the screen in irritation, and answered quickly. “Eliza, I can’t talk now, I’ve got a situation here... What? What’s that? No way! Never mind that, it went fine anyway. You did what? No, don’t eat those! You don’t know where they’ve been!”

Gavin clamped his hand over the phone and glanced up at Farfalla. “Where is the big party tonight?”

“Penthouse level, room B, sponsored by Alessi,” Farfalla said.

“The party is up in the penthouse level of the convention hotel,” Gavin told his sister. “You’ll have to take that big brass elevator — not the one in the lobby, but the private one up on the third floor... Don’t forget to take your conference tag with you...”

He threw the phone down and jumped to his feet. “A truck!”

Farfalla twisted, stared, and waved her arms at the driver. The oncoming truck, clumsy, huge, rattling, stupid, accelerated for the sheer pleasure of killing Italian girls.

Gavin yanked her from the street. He tore her loose, swooped her up, and jumped for the sidewalk.

The truck rumbled past and lurched around a corner.

“Put me down, Gavin. Let me go now.”

He said nothing.

“Put me down now.”

“The pavement is dirty.”

“You can’t carry me.”

Silently, Gavin carried her. He carried her twenty-two paces down the street. He set her on an abandoned café table. He then stalked back up the street, and plucked her crushed shoe from the rusty grate.

“My phone broke,” he told her. “I just cracked the case of my Blackberry.”

“Oh, look at my dirty shoe! Oh, my shoes were so pretty, and so cheap, too! I shopped forever to find those.”

“What are your shoes made of, tool-steel? My Blackberry’s a major fail, and all your shoe needs is fresh polish.”

He was lying, for the buckle of the strap had snapped. He had broken her shoe, as he yanked her into his arms. Her shoe was crushed, ruined, smashed by a truck, spoiled forever, and tomorrow, she would have to walk in it.

Farfalla sniffed back her tears. She loved her shoe, but it was just a shoe. “You saved my life. That must be fate.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, scowling.

“He didn’t see me.”

“Of course, he didn’t see you! He’s an idiot with no idea where he’s going! Cars kill a million people every year! Everybody in this world is going to die from damned cars! Cars are destroying the planet with climate change, oil wars, cyberwars, space wars, it’s total armageddon! I want to kill that guy.” Gavin put his hands out, his big hands, his strong hands, his violently trembling hands.

“You can’t kill him. He’s just a truck driver.”

“If I can find him, I can kill him. Maybe he’s on Facebook.”

Awkwardly, she patted his sweaty shoulder. She hopped from the café table and stood in her remaining shoe. “We should have gone to that party... They were expecting us there.”

“Why? You want to do what they expected us to do?”

“No,” she told him, meekly.

“We are Futurists, so we are climbing to the highest peak of this island! To look around the whole world! To have a drink and relax! Everything like we planned together.”

An elderly local couple wobbled by, walking their tiny, nasty, little dog, and sniping at each other in their island dialect. Farfalla asked them for directions to the Piazza Vittoria. It wasn’t far. Just hard for strangers to find.

Monte Solaro was serviced by a chair-lift, from the plaza up to the peak. The lift was a wiry contraption of open wooden seats, like a ski-lift without snow. Farfalla was terrified. Ski-lifts were merciless, uncontrollable, rattling pieces of junk.

These lifts had single chairs. Farfalla had no one to cling to in her fear. No one to scream with as she fell to her doom on the sharp patchy rocks below.

She looked behind herself as the lift cranked and clattered. She feared for Gavin’s composure in this fearful ordeal. Gavin was casually chatting on his Blackberry. He might have been in a booth at an American hamburger joint.

Farfalla clamped her eyes shut in nausea. At last, a clunk and rattle told her she had come to earth. Her broken shoe was a mess. Her ankle ached.

The cold and windy gauntlet of death had restored Gavin’s good mood. “Wow, what a cool ride!” he crowed. “I just straightened things out with Eliza. Can you believe it? She wanted me to go to her hotel and fetch her luggage. Kids!”

“Is Eliza in your hotel room?” Farfalla had some daring ideas about Gavin’s hotel room.

“Yeah. She said she would take a nap there. Somebody gave her some sleeping pills, melatonin... Eliza gets it about drugs. She’s okay, she’s smart about that. She’s smarter than I am, in some ways.”

Yes, thought Farfalla silently. His sister was smarter than Gavin, quite a lot smarter in most ways. Farfalla wouldn’t say that aloud, though. That wasn’t smart.

Besides, her own brother was extremely smart. Rafael was fiendishly clever. Cleverness made Rafael worse, it made him dangerous. Sometimes, with the men in your life, you lost either way.

“Eliza has proved that she can handle herself here in Capri,” said Gavin proudly. “She had a pretty good time here. I knew this trip would work out for her.”

“She loves you very much,” said Farfalla. This was an inspired thing to tell him. A beautiful thing. Love blew the cobwebs off of everything.

Gavin led the way up the slope the the peak. The sun was setting.

The charm of this vista was frightening. Capri possessed magical glamour, it was divine enchantment. Divine Capri had bewitched generations of mortals. Capri had stolen people from their homelands. Capri had broken and reunited the strongest bonds of human nature. Capri had turned scientists into mystics, and turned mystics into saints. Kings of the world had lived on this mountain.

Gavin gripped her shoulder. “Look, far down there, those rocks in the sea,” he said. “The Faraglione Rocks. I saw them when I first came here. Now, they’re so far away.”

She slid her arms around him. This was the most natural thing in the world to do. In those cruel distances of time and space, it was easy and sweet. It was comforting and human. It warmed her. It made her happy.

Another world was waiting in his arms. A future world better than any world she knew. A world in his arms where she was safe and good, where she knew all the things that a happy woman should know. A world she understood, that listened and understood her. A world that loved her.

“This is truly as good as it gets,” he said. “We are like a king and a queen on this mountain. This is the finest moment in my life.” He pulled his glance from the blue horizon. Then, he looked deep into her upturned eyes.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “You are the most beautiful thing life will ever bring to me.”

She pursed her lips for The Kiss.

“Look at those stars coming out,” Gavin said, lifting his chin. “I can’t believe that a divine view like this could get any more fantastic, but I guess I’m wrong. Look at those planets, Mars, Venus, and the darkness behind them! You know what I am looking at right now? Deep Time! It’s cosmic! ‘Cosmic’ means thirteen-point-seven billion years back to the first eruption of spacetime! And every moment of all those eons was real time once, that’s what kills me. That moments were all real moments, just like this passing moment in our life, when I kissed you, or almost kissed you, anyway. Think of all that time!”

“That hurts you,” she said.

“Yeah. Cosmic time hurts my soul. I don’t know why, but it has shaped my whole life. I am haunted by that hurt. Because it’s the ultimate. It’s like, two people, you and me, now – we can tell each other ‘this is our special moment, I love you forever’ — but there is no ‘forever.’ Forever doesn’t exist. The universe goes back to its limit and that is it. When I was a little kid, I saw that. You know when you’re a little kid, almost asleep? And you’re in bed, and staring up at the darkness? Well, I saw that. I saw time to its beginning. Time was clear to me, like those shining stars, it was in my soul, like, like your shining eyes. Before that beginning of time there is nothing. There is the black void. The Abyss. The Abyss has no clock, it is cosmic nothingness.”

“You’ve been waiting a long time to tell somebody that.”

“It is my burden. Because I saw it, I felt it, it is the deep time of being. I’ve never gotten over it, I’m always aware of it, that is the universe, and I’m part of that universe. It’s scientifically proven. Our living flesh is made of star dust. I could go on about that all day.”

“Our flesh is made of star dust?”

“Yes, your beautiful, living body, that I’m touching, that you showed to me, yes, you are stardust.”

What a terrifying thing to hear. Very startling and upsetting. Farfalla couldn’t even speak, because her mouth was all stardust. Her tongue and her lips, unkissed, made of stardust.

“It’s all scientifically proven fact! But you tell some idiot that, and that it matters, stardust is important, stardust is cosmic, it’s us, it’s the truth… And she’s like, ‘Why don’t we drink a ‘Sex on the Beach’ and go have sex on a beach?’ Which may be, like, the practical thing to do, actually. Maybe that’s the only sensible thing to do.”

Farfalla glanced in fear at the darkening dome of the sky. “I’ll never see the stars the same way again. Not after this!”

“Well, what did you think the stars were doing up there?”

Cursing me from the moment of my birth, Farfalla wanted to say. Because this was her One, the Man of her Destiny, she was certain of that now. He was pouring his heart out to her. He was telling the deepest truth about how he really thought about his life, and she would never think like he did. Never, ever. It would be easier for her to stop being Farfalla Corrado and go become an asteroid.

The things he had just said to her were so stark and awful. “Thirteen billion years.” How could you kiss your “one true love” and live “happily ever after” – and instead of that, get “thirteen billion years?” A terrible, monstrous, head-spinning number, when mortal people only had the precious fractions of some wakeful moments when they could live, and love, and be human and beautiful, and that slim careening moment of the present, this one tiny sliver of existent being, between the eerie chasm before birth and the ghostly darkness after death...

“Let’s have a prosecco?” she said.

“Great idea!”

The tallest mountaintop of Capri had courting couples littered everywhere. These lucky people were passionately necking and nuzzling, unlike her unlucky self. Romantic people, newlyweds, first dates, married people (married, but not to each other)... She could have read the palms of their hands, their futures, like so many cheap paperbacks. Like graffiti on the temple of Venus.

Farfalla knew what was going to happen to these mortal people.

Look at that blissful tourist couple sitting over there, gobbling their ham sandwiches. German, blond, plump and glowing with youth and health. She could go to the zaftig bride there and tell her, “You are going to live fifty years with this man and be so happy with him. You know why? Because you’re both stupid. You will eat cheese. And have kids. And then die.” A simple story, but simple people had simple stories.

Farfalla found them a cafe table. Everything on the menu was overpriced. Paradise had to overcharge everybody.

“So,” said Gavin, “what are you going to do, when you get home?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I want to know who you are. I have to know who you are.”

“All right. I will tell you all about my tomorrow. Tomorrow, I do what I always do. I’ll go back to the atelier in Ivrea. I live in a factory. They used to make typewriters there. Now, it has studios, and I have to look after it. My parents, they live in Ivrea, too. They have a garden... I have to look after them, too, because they’re old now... I cook in Ivrea. I clean. I like to play Warcraft. I translate for websites. Sometimes, I work in Milano... Soon, an email will come, with some travel job for me. Then, I will leave. I travel. I travel a lot. I always travel.”

“You’re not ambitious? You don’t have big career plans? Someone as attractive and bright as you? Someone with your many unusual talents?”

“No.”

“You can foretell the future, Farfalla. You don’t... what? Bet on racehorses?”

“That never works. I feel the future. Sometimes, I smell it and I can even taste it. Sometimes, pieces of it rise up inside me, like ugly monsters, and grab me. I can know the future, but not all of it. Nobody knows all of the present. Nobody ever knew all of the past. We forget the past. We forget the most important things in the past. They are gone, they are ghosts now.”

“All right. Thank you. Thank you for telling me that. Thank you for being so honest with me. I needed to know that. It’s the same with me, too... but in a different way. I’m in business, you know. It’s amazing how much of business is just fantasy! The business world is never ‘real.’ It’s all folktales and myths. ‘The invisible hand of the market.’ That is a ghost story. Straight out, that’s a ghost story.”

“You don’t want to make a million dollars?”

“I made twenty million dollars. It all went away, like the dew in the morning.”

“You’re rich. You are from a rich family. You are happier than me. You are fortunate.”

“Oh, people always say that about us rich guys... All that ‘rich’ means is that you are responsible for something. I know the very richest guy in the world. The very richest guy, ever, in all of human history. I’ve met his wife and his kids. I’ve been to his house parties. You know what he talks about? He talks about malaria.”

“Malaria?”

“Yeah. That’s one of your nice Italian words, ‘malaria.’ People die from that.” Gavin looked at her. “Rich people are mortal. We have a time to be born, and we have a time to die. I know some idiots who have a pretty good time, being rich. Those clowns are making sure that their grandkids will be poor.”

“You don’t want your grandkids to be poor.”

“I am a grandkid of rich people. My grandkids don’t even exist. And I work for them every day. I know a lot about their future. You want to hear all about it? What I know about my grandkid’s world? You, you, I can tell all this to, right?”

Gavin’s eyes were narrowing and his face was growing red. “My country is an empire in decline. You’ve been over there, so I’m sure you know that. A tiny minority owns most of everything in America now, and we rich Americans are driving everyone else into poverty. We are wrecking our heritage, destroying our soil, air, and water, cheating each other, and ourselves... I’m a visionary. I live in a ruined castle. The plumbing broke in my castle. My castle stinks every day.”

Gavin’s phone rang. He yanked it from his pocket and glared at the cracked screen. “That is my dad calling me,” he said. He set the Blackberry on the tabletop, as if it were a live spider. “That waiter’s sure taking his precious time with our drinks! You know where the bathroom is?”

“There must be a bathroom inside the café,” Farfalla offered. Gavin stood up and stalked off.

A bored waiter arrived with a bottle and two dusty glasses. He ceremoniously topped them up, not bothering to meet her eyes. Then, he vanished.

Farfalla stared at her dusty, sparkling goblet. She had never felt sadder in her life.

Gavin’s phone rang yet again, buzzing angrily on the cafe tabletop. It rang insistently, again, again, tearing at her nerves. Global people always had to answer phones. Farfalla picked up the phone.

“It’s me,” said Eliza. There was a tremendous party racket in the background. “How are you doing?”

“Molto bene,” Farfalla growled.

“You’re speaking Italian, Gavin! You sound pretty happy!”

“Così così,” said Farfalla.

“Farfalla is with you, that’s why you sound so happy.”

Farfalla said nothing. Her heart bled a little with every beat.

“Gavin, everyone here is asking about you. I’m telling them you’re at this party. I just tell them that you are lost in this crowd. They believe me. There’s a huge mob packed in here. All these party moochers are like a zoo.”

Farfalla continued to say nothing.

“Gavin, don’t worry. Please. Just be happy, I have you covered. I knew you would be with her,” said Eliza. “I won’t tell anybody! Never, I promise! If Madeleine asks me, I’ll lie.”

Farfalla set the phone on the table.

Gavin returned. He had splashed water on his face, combed his hair, and recovered his composure. He plucked up his prosecco glass. “Well,” he said, “the night is young!”

Farfalla began to weep.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what on earth can it be now?” he demanded. “Come on! A broken heel is not a broken heart!”

“I can’t believe I’m so miserable,” she sniffled. “I can’t believe I’m so scared.”

Gavin twirled the wineglass. His face was clouded. “What future prospect seems to trouble the pretty signorina?”

“Why are we are so stupid? We should have gone to that party! We should be drunk now! Take me to your hotel room! Do anything you want to me, I don’t even care! We should steal our one sweet little night, then run away from each other! What is wrong with that? A million people do that!”

“Oh, I agree with you,” he said. “That can be beautiful. But only while it lasts.”

She looked into his face. It was like looking at a wall of bricks.

“I knew,” he said, “that your pretty scenario wasn’t going to happen for the two of us.”

“You knew?”

“Oh, yes. I knew it as soon as you said that we were climbing up this mountain. And look, here we are. It’s just like you said. We’re on a mountaintop. Amazing horizons all around us. This is the top of the world. It’s just like you promised me. This is where we belong. Because we’re visionaries.”

“I meant my promise to you. I want you to be happy. I’ll do anything for you.”

“You foretold that I could ‘have whatever I wanted from you.’ Now, your words are coming true.”

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“’Whatever I want’ is the truth. I want the truth. I want some moral sincerity, some integrity, and some free will. That is ‘whatever I want.’ I want it so badly. Because I don’t have any. Maybe you can give me some of that... Because of who you are, you’re a seer, a prophetess... You’re a goddess.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“All right, you’re as human as I am, but you’re like a woman touched by a goddess. You’re like the favorite of a goddess, blessed by a goddess. You’re radiant with divine grace, you’re like a beautiful, supernatural priestess.”

Farfalla knitted her brows. “Why do men always talk that kind of rubbish to women? We never ask for that! I’m not your ‘goddess,’ I’m not even your girlfriend, you haven’t even kissed me... This is terrible.”

“Well, yeah. You’re right again. We don’t have a lot of options here. You and I are in a lot of trouble.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“I’m angry with this situation. Look, I could marry you. I adore you. I don’t think I even lived until I met you. And don’t look at me with scared eyes when I say a thing like that! I am serious about you — I am completely, deadly serious about you. No one else in my life has ever made me feel this way. Just think about what that implies! For the future, of course.”

“Would you really marry me?”

“If we were free to do it? If we could make it work out? Of course! I would marry you in a heartbeat! We would have six kids!”

“People in Capri get married. People have weddings in Capri.”

“We wouldn’t get married here in Capri, for heaven’s sake! We would get married back at home in Seattle. In a Swedish Methodist ceremony, like my parents, and my grandparents. That’s how we Tremaines do these things.”

Farfalla loosened her aching foot in her damaged shoe. She should have known to expect the unexpected when it came to the One. Somehow, just “giving up and doing whatever he wanted” wasn’t even the easy way out. Even abject erotic surrender couldn’t help her.

Should she play ‘hard-to-get’ with him? But, she was hard-to-get. There was supposed to be only One in the world who could touch her heart. Here he was, what was wrong with him? “I’m not a ‘Tremaine.’”

“Well, that’s why I would marry you. You would be ‘Farfalla Tremaine.’” The prospect of this made Gavin grin. “That sounds so fantastic! Your new name has some kinda rhythm, doesn’t it? Far-FALL-a Tre-MAINE. It sounds like a good old-fashioned bossa nova.”

“But I don’t like Seattle! The sun never comes out there. It’s cold there, and everything smells like fish...”

“You’re still telling me the truth. That’s great. Let’s just lay all our future factors here, all right? Because I have been thinking hard about us. It’s hard to do, it hurts our feelings... so, let’s pretend that we have a marriage counselor. Someone to give us good advice about our future. He starts telling us what you and I have at stake here.”

Gavin drew a deep breath. His eyes grew distant with calculation. “We’re not from the same country. We’re not of the same ethnicity. We don’t have the same religion. We’re from different economic classes. We surely don’t have the same temperament. I have a steady girlfriend now, and you have a boyfriend, too. Where would we live? I’m completely attached to Seattle. I’m not going to run off with you to Italy — my family would be ruined if I left Seattle! How would we make a go of our future life? I give us credit for being two good people. We need to find the right thing to do.”

“The love songs say that love will find a way.”

“Our love needs to find a whole global map. Not for one weekend in Capri, but until we die. Imagine, it was not you and me here, okay? Imagine, it was some Italian guy and some American tourist girl. Imagine that situation! What would you tell them to do?”

“You want me to play make-believe with you now, here on the top of the world, just like that?”

“This is not make-believe. We call this ‘scenario work.’ I’m serious.”

“Oh, well, perfect. I love to play make-believe. You’re the American girl, and I’m like me, but I’m an Italian man? Oh! Perfect! I know what would happen. I would ask if you had any condoms.”

“And I would say that I didn’t. American girls have common sense.”

Farfalla closed her eyes and opened them again. She really couldn’t get any more brazen than the amazing thing she had just said to him. She could feel a hot blush welling up.

This was so pathetic. She had never been some kind of party girl who jumped into bed with men. She had no idea how to be such a person. She led a life that was modest, bitter, guarded, and threatened. She looked into his face. “You are so angry with me.”

“No, no, no! That’s not called ‘being angry,’ that’s called ‘being realistic!’ Weren’t you listening to any of those important things I just said to you? That was a long list of serious relationship problems! Are we joking about our future? It’s our future, it’s not a joke! Marriage is a lifelong commitment! Marriage is a holy sacrament!”

“Gavin... What is a ‘Swedish Methodist?’”

“TheTremaines have always been Swedish Methodists! That’s our family tradition. I’m theologically ecumenical... but yes, I do go to Covenant services. I find that it helps me. My faith helps me within my church community, and within my private life as well. Sometimes, I pray for guidance.”

“My parents are Communists.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry! I hate the Communists. I’m an Italian Futurista. So, I always vote for the Neo-Fascists.”

Gavin gazed at the darkening, star-studded sky. He sipped from his wineglass. Then, he sighed. “This must be happening to us for some good reason. Somehow, we were fated to meet here on this island. There is some vital, valuable lesson for us here... We are two young people. We have our whole futures ahead of us... Well, sometimes, wonderful things pass between a man and woman, beautiful things... that they have to renounce.”

“’Renounce’?” she said at last. “What does that mean?”

“It means that suffering can bring spiritual growth to people. When I was a kid, they taught me the Convenant Prayer. I learned that prayer by heart. Listen to what this prayer says. It speaks to people who suffer, like us.”

Gavin drew a deep breath. ‘Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.’

Farfalla wiped at her eyes. “Oh! What beautiful wedding vows! I didn’t know they were so lovely.”

“You’re not supposed to say that to your girlfriend! You’re supposed to say that to God!”

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

A long silence passed between them. Swallows winged their way over the mountaintop.

“Look,” he said, at last, “don’t feel bad. I’m not offended. I mean, it’s sacred to me, but how were you to know that? Actually, when you said that to me? That was funny. I mean, that was totally funny. I just read a book by Mark Twain that was full of blasphemous stuff like that. I respect Mark Twain. Mark Twain was the funniest depressive guy in America.”

“You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“Honey, how could I be mad at you? I was never mad. You’re too pretty for me to stay mad. That look on your sweet face just slays me. I could die from how pretty you are. Look, we’re just two foreigners. Okay? It’s natural that some things between us are confusing. Now, if you can’t understand what I say to you, right away, don’t think that I must be mad at you, it’s just… It’s just very important, that’s all! We can’t just kiss and part! That is wrong! It’s decadent and cruel! It’s unworthy of two people like us — insightful people, forward-thinking people. We shouldn’t do bad, deceitful things that can hurt us, and hurt the people around us.”

Farfalla silently poured herself more prosecco.

“Even if,” Gavin said heavily, “even if we are both pretty sure that we could get away with it. And that it would be super-hot.”

“It’s like Roman Holiday, with Audrey Hepburn,” Farfalla said. “You talk just like that old movie.”

“Yeah, I know that movie, Roman Holiday. Italians love that movie. That movie’s got their cultural values.”

“I saw that movie. The man loves the woman. He can’t have the woman. She is a beautiful princess with a beautiful haircut. He’s a dirty American reporter, who doesn’t even have a kitchen in his apartment.”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have framed it quite that way, but...” Gavin slowly spread his hands. What nice, strong hands he had. She was dying over his hands. “If you examine that film as a Futurist scenario, well, they were making an intelligent decision. Because that movie is called ‘Roman Holiday.’ It’s not called ‘Reporter Elopes With a Princess.’”

“Princess Elopes with a Reporter.”

“That was your Italian chick-flick version. That film was scripted by an American guy. Dalton Trumbo. He was a McCarthy-era American Communist. It should have been called ‘Communist Subversive Makes Audrey Hepburn a Star.’”

“All right,” said Farfalla, shoving her wine-glass aside. “You always know so much more than me! I loved that sweet romantic movie, it’s my favorite American movie. I will hate it forever now, but it was my favorite. I give up. You win! Just tell me that you love me. Tell me that you are my One, my one true love. So that I can believe it until I die. No matter where I go. No matter that my poor life is full of sad royal duties and ugly 50’s hats. Just say it to me and I will go away, forever, like in your stupid Communist movie. Then, you can go back to your Madeleine.”

“I am going back to my Madeleine. I have a flight out from Naples, and I’m leaving Capri at 7 a.m. tomorrow. That part is totally settled.”

“I am going back home, too. I won’t be lonely without you. I’m going back to my Pancrazio.”

“Your boyfriend’s name is ‘Pancrazio’? That’s an unusual name.”

“He’s an unusual man.”

“’Pancrazio’... Wait a second. Your boyfriend isn’t ‘Pancho Pola,’ is he? ‘Dr. Pancrazio Pola,’ the guy who runs that awesome chip lab in Ivrea?”

“You know him?”

“Of course, I know Pancho Pola! He’s world-famous! He’s one of my business partners. You are Pancho Pola’s girlfriend? Good God, no wonder you know so much about electronics.”

“Pancrazio always works very hard.”

“How come you never show up when I’m taking Pancho out to all those posh dinners in Milan? Pancho never said one word to me about you! If I knew, if I even thought that you were Pancho Pola’s girlfriend... Oh, my God, really. I would never. There is just no way.”

She said nothing.

“I really don’t know what else to say here! We’re not sitting on the top of some mountain. We’re right on the lip of an Italian volcano!”

Farfalla retrieved her prosecco glass and took a measured sip.

“Your boyfriend is a genius! Did you know that? He’s a world-famous inventor! That guy is probably the most gifted circuit-designer in Europe. He is the hardware-head of all hardware-heads! Pancho is an ultimate, stone geek!”

Farfalla said nothing.

“And you really live with him? You must have the patience of a saint.”

“Don’t say any more,” Farfalla muttered. “I am getting angry.”

“Look, I am not angry, all right? Every time you said I was angry, I was not angry. I know that Pancho has his geeky quirks, but... that guy is a personal friend of mine. I’ve known him for years. It’s just that... wow.”

“I am angry. I am angry with you! How can you say that to me? You make me feel like dirt! I hate you! I hate you forever now. I never want to see you again.”

“Sorry. Sorry, Farfalla. Maybe I kind of put my foot in my mouth.”

“I don’t want your stupid foot! Get your foot away from me! Just give me my kiss , tell me my special words, and then, go away forever.”

“What are you on about now? You need me to kiss your foot? I don’t get that.”

“No, no, no! It’s just — the One that I love, he has to kiss me, and he has to say my words! When the words are said to me, then my future Love Story comes true!”

After thinking this over, at some length, Gavin nodded. “Special words, huh? Like a declaration of some kind, like a spell, is that what you’re saying?”

“Just tell me my words, and stop arguing. You are my One, so I know you must know the words.”

“So, is this the traumatic thing that happened to you when you were twelve? This is some sort of Brazilian voodoo prophecy.”

“That was always my future story. Except now, it should be now. Not the future any more, now. Except, now, it isn’t happening. Because you aren’t doing it. I hate you.”

“You realize that sounds completely freaked-out and bizarre to me, right? I mean, I don’t do occult stuff like that.”

“It’s not ‘occult!” It’s only ‘occult’ to you. Because you are stupid!”

“Okay! Fine! I’m stupid! I’m not going to argue with you! Obviously, that’s fruitless. Farfalla, I really want to help you. Seriously, I want to help you live your dream. So, what do I say to you? ‘I love you.’” Gavin looked up expectantly and then, his face fell. “’Yes, you are mine, I am yours.’ ‘I have never loved any woman like this before.’ “Gavin loves Farfalla.’ ‘Gavin Tremaine loves Farfalla Corrado.’”

She said nothing.

“Am I supposed to say it to you in Italian? Ti amo! Il mio cuore è tuo! Fa caldo qui o è la tua presenza?”[11]

“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have such a bad accent.”

“Look, this is not fair at all. Tell me what it is, what you need me to say. Just tell me the mystery. Say it, so I can say it to you. Why is this such a big puzzle? Are you trying to torture me and force me to solve your weird riddle? Are you the Sphinx, sitting there? Just tell me whatever it is! I’ll say it for you, I swear I will! Write it down on a napkin, I’ll recite it aloud.”

Farfalla crossed her arms.

“How can I know what to say, if you don’t tell me what it is? Look, don’t get that sour look on your face! I know I’m not doing it right — whatever it is you expect.”

A falling-star scratched the twilight sky overhead.

Gavin was struggling. “Look, we’re at an impasse here. Give me a break! Don’t get sulky! I am not judging you, I’m not complaining. If we were married, I’m sure you could make me as miserable as any other woman in the world.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, now I get it. Now, I’m finally catching on. It’s not about the ‘words,’ or the ‘kisses’ — you’re unhappy about the sex thing. Isn’t that it? Okay! If we don’t have a wild affair in some Capri hotel, that’s not the end of our story! We are being two decent people, instead of being two sleazy people! Farfalla, I truly love you. Not some temporary Roman orgy kind, but the kind of love that lasts a lifetime! Am I getting closer yet?”

“You are getting closer to the ancient Romans.”

“That’s a start! The Italian language is built on top of Latin structures. All the roads, all the names of the towns... Am I supposed to speak to you in Latin, Farfalla? I know that you can speak Latin. Because I heard you do that.”

“What is wrong with you? I don’t speak any Latin!”

“You do speak Latin! I heard you quoting Latin poetry. It was Latin something. I heard that clear as day.”

“I don’t know one word of Latin!”

“You haven’t been listening to yourself. Look, you are defeating me here. How can I say what you want, if you don’t even know what you’re saying? I know it is very important that I tell, or declare, or admit, or demonstrate, whatever, the hell it is... this thing that I am supposed to say to you. I tried hard. I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m an ape, I’m a bear, I’m a brute, I’m a man and we never get it... Whisper it, okay? Whisper one hint in my ear.”

“You have to feel what you say to me. And mean it! Then you can say it, and mean it, and I will believe it. Then it won’t matter how sad we are.”

“All right. Now I see what you want,” he said at last. “I really have to abase myself for you. Is that it? That is it. I can’t bargain with you, or argue with you, or set any reasonable terms for our relationship. I’m not allowed to have one scrap of decency, or pride, or common sense. I have to be completely desperate with love for you. Just naked. Broken. I have to be abject.”

“Why are you doing this to me? You are making me crazy! Love is love!”

“Look, men have feelings too, okay? If I am desperately in love with you, we won’t survive! Not you, and not me either! Desperate love isn’t warm cuddles and sweet, girly pillow whispers! That kind of love is the gruesome situation of a man obsessed! I will get obsessed! I will stalk you! I’ll spy on you in fits of rage! I will come to your house! I will murder your boyfriend. I’ll set fire to your town. I will carry you off in the trunk of a car.”

“Oh, stop that! Stop lying about the future! You won’t do any of that. You’re too nice.”

“How do you know that? What if you are my curse? God only knows what’s becoming of me! I never felt like this before! I am on the brink of ruin! I could throw away everything I have, everything I own — and all because of you? Why? What am I supposed to get out of this? I do you this magic service you demand from me... I recite this magic spell, you go off happy as a queen... you have exactly what you want! What about me? I’m left with nothing!”

“Then leave with nothing! Go away from me! I won’t stop you.”

“Am I ‘the One’? Nobody ever told me that! Are you my ‘One’? Maybe you are, maybe you’re not! All I can see right now is some ticked-off Italian chick, who’s like a live hand grenade.”

“You don’t love me.”

“But I do love you! That’s the truth! I never talked to anybody like this in my whole life. I’m a quiet, calm, sensible guy! I don’t babble and rave like a lunatic! If I didn’t love you, you wouldn’t be my hand grenade! You’d just be, you know, some cute, pint-sized foreign chick at a tech conference. So what!”

“I hate you forever now. I never have any luck with men! This is the worst! Maledetta, why am I a woman? Why am I cursed like this? I hate Capri! I want to go back to Brazil! I want the deepest, darkest jungle on earth... A place where I will never see a man again! I should go to the Amazon and turn into a lesbian like the Amazons.”

Gavin put both his hands over his face. Then, he looked up between his fingers. “Farfalla, we are never gonna work this out, if you keep cracking me up like that. That is just the funniest thing I ever heard anyone say. You are so adorable. I swear that I would kill myself to see you happy! Please, have some pity on me! Take anything from me! You can have anything you want!”

“I already promised that to you... and that didn’t work! Why is life like this, for us? We must be crazy.”

“Look, we can’t possibly be trapped like this. There must be some way out for us. Look, we both know the future! Maybe we know it in two very different ways, but obviously, we both know the future. I mean, I know you know, and you know I know. We are in complete agreement about that, right? We can’t just stare at each other like a snake and a chicken.”

“You go your snake way, and I’ll go my chicken way.”

“You’re the snake. I’m the chicken!”

“What kind of man are you? You’re a chicken, you’re not a man! We should be lighting candles in the Jacuzzi now! You should be rubbing my feet.” Farfalla began to sob. “All I get all this cold, ugly, future talk, when all I wanted to do was make a fool of myself over you! You have broken my heart! I hate you! My life is horrible! My life is a long, cold, gloomy winter.”

“I’m from Seattle! We live for that kind of weather.”

“Go home.”

“Right.” He nodded. “Well, I expected that from you. I knew it would come to this moment. Because it had to come to this. Sooner or later. Better now, before we make a big mistake.”

“Go home, Gavin. Don’t look at me at me anymore. Go, go now. Go away and never come back here. Save yourself. I love you, but I am poison to you... Get up, leave me, save your life. Please go.”

He did it. He nodded and obeyed her. He clambered to his feet, slung his bag over his shoulder. He left without looking back. He just marched off, steady as a martyred hero, downhill, toward the chairlift and down to the little town, waiting below.

He vanished from her world.

An hour later, very drunk, Farfalla also left the mountaintop. She had to stagger down the hill, down the long, tottering slopes, in the menacing darkness, because of her stark terror about the chairlift.

The wobbling heel snapped from her shoe. Her injured ankle was swollen and blue. She limped and reeled.

Her borrowed car was littered with yellow traffic tickets.

10 “This is ridicolous! I want Lega Nord here, and kill the major of this ugly place!”

11 “I love you! My heart is yours! Is hot in here or is the nearness of you?”

Chapter Fifteen: Consequences Ever After

Gavin caught a cab in the plaza near the base of the chairlift. There would be no sleep for him on this starry, jet-lagged night.

It would take everything he had just to hold himself together, tonight.

Just a few hours until he left the island. He knew those hours already. He could see them in their stark ugliness. They would be bitter, wakeful, grainy-eyed hours of second-guessing, of bitter recrimination... Why didn’t I do this for her? Why didn’t I try for her? Bitter, soul-piercing moments.

Gavin leaned his dizzy head against the taxi window. The hours of anguish would pass. The hours were already passing. The terrible urgency of his crisis was becoming one with the past.

A failed love affair was like almost being hit by a car. At first, you can’t believe it’s happening at all. It’s startling, it’s jolting, it destroys your sense of security. The heart pounding, the hands sweating, the hair standing up on the back of your neck.

Then, it dawns on you that the car did not crush you. Maybe skill, maybe dumb luck, but you remain untouched. The long chain of terrible events that follows being smashed by a car is not happening. It is now trouble that you dodged in your past. It is not your future.

Gavin avoided the gabbling, jostling convention crowd in the hotel lobby. He hustled up the empty stairs to his hotel room. He methodically packed his bags.

Then, he had to venture over to Eliza’s hotel, in the deepest, darkest middle of the night, to assemble and pack her scattered, teenage possessions. Eliza had simply run off, scampered off to her discos, abandoning all of it.

“If you don’t get that stuff, I’m leaving it all behind.” That was her text message. He couldn’t blame her for being so stubborn because, as her brother, he knew where that family trait came from.

Such a cute, funky little place, Eliza’s cool hotel. So full of off-the-wall Old World charm. She had scattered her striped Gothic socks everywhere, thrown a big ugly towel onto the floor by the window... Eliza’s bathroom was cluttered with her leaky cosmetic toys, with unlikely names like “Hard Candy” and “Urban Decay.”

Gavin could have stayed in this hotel room, so happily... Rolled around in the linen sheets on that very bed there, maybe, even — but no. Don’t think about that prospect. That didn’t happen. Thank God.

He was never coming back to Capri. Not ever. That lesson had been burned into him like a branding iron. It was still smarting, and it was still painful, but he could see the future shape of that scar now. It was a spiritual tattoo.

After clearing things with the concierge on the graveyard shift, Gavin called another cab. He could have easily walked the small distance to his own hotel, but he felt a superstitious certainty that he would somehow run into Farfalla Corrado, somewhere on the sidewalk. There was no reason for Farfalla Corrado to be wandering the streets of Capri at midnight, but there was no reason for her to be anywhere else, either.

Thank God that she had lost her temper and told him to leave. He would never have managed to leave her, not on his own. He lacked the willpower to free himself from her. Her power over him had him helpless.

What a strange thing to learn about himself. Farfalla Corrado would always be proof to him that he didn’t know himself. That little Italian girl in her silly high-heel shoes had kicked the foundation-blocks of his psyche apart. Her blinding presence in his life was like a cave-dweller’s one glimpse of sunlight.

Lightning from a clear blue sky. Well, he did not want any more boy-meets-girl scenarios. Boy-meets-girl, whenever that happened, was supposed to be good, cute fun, like a romantic comedy. This event had not been good, cute fun. This was a shattering encounter with the feminine principle. She had spun his universe like a yin-yang.

He could no longer trust himself, his own impulses. Her number was still in his phone, for heaven’s sake. He knew her email. How long before he lost his last scrap of pride, and went begging to her? The Italian opera scenario! Mad love, daggers, screaming, poisons, and stilettos!

Who would be his ally in a situation like this? Who would help him out of this danger? Madeleine — Madeleine could help him, but of course, he could never tell her about this... He could never tell anyone. It would have to be someone who knew nothing about this.

No such person existed! What kind of savior did a man have, a rescuer who did not even exist? Important people, who could save you from yourself, but who did not even exist...

An insight came to him. It rose from within his distress, as a piece of genuine wisdom. A saying from his guru, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante. “Real Futurists have children.”

And that was it. That was the key. That important. That natural. An idea of utter simplicity.

His children were important people who did not exist.

His unborn kids, the future. His father’s grandchildren. A man should live to see his grandchildren. That was right, and that was proper. There were other people in this world who mattered, besides Gavin Tremaine. When he put his self-pity aside, his temptations, his own needs, his own greeds, the answer was obvious.

The son gives his father a grandson. A tremendous consolation prize from life, which only a child can give to a parent. That adult act on his part would transform his father’s wintry suffering. It would temper his father’s fruitless anguish, the real estate crisis, his declining fortunes, his fear, his illness, his many miseries. Good old Granddad would sit in his easy chair with a happy tot on his knee. A new agenda, new players in the game. The people of a transformed world.

It was time for him to do this. That was the great future lesson that events had offered. He could no longer be the thoughtless, footloose young man who had come to this island. Gavin Tremaine had to become a different man.

He could knowledgeably prepare himself for the inevitable.

Gavin left his hotel room. The phone might ring up there, he might be found in that room, that was too dangerous. He hauled the luggage downstairs, checked out at the hotel desk, and hid inside the hotel’s reading room. He had never seen any human soul reading books in the hotel reading room, so he felt safe from any disturbance there. He could brood there, plotand scheme about his future, undisturbed.

Gavin pulled another Mark Twain book from the huge fake-antique bookcase. The great American comic novelist had written heaps of travel books, apparently. Gavin sat in a leather reading chair with the Twain book flopped open in his lap. Gavin took on the studious look of a man in deep literary communion. Just in case anyone dropped by.

Gavin was not reading, but thinking. He was thinking hard about an American girl. Actually, Gavin was thinking about baseball. The two concepts were deeply connected for him.

There had been a time, at the age of seventeen, when Gavin had been pretty good at playing baseball. Great at baseball, because he was so lousy at everything else. He’d been failing at his posh private school, because it was so obvious that the things taught there were not true. The things his teachers said about the past were self-serving and inaccurate. Their corny notions of the future were flabby and delusional.

Being seventeen years old, Gavin had had to point these facts out to his teachers. Not to be combative or surly, but just because he knew better — and his father hit the roof. It was the first time in his life when he and his father were seriously on the outs. The old man had cracked down on him, told him to stop sassing off. Gavin’s grades went to hell. Every day brought ugly struggle. The atmosphere at home was icy, mixed with fury.

So, Gavin changed schools. At his Seattle public high school, he went out for baseball. Gavin Tremaine: the baseball jock. He was a big, strong 17-year-old guy in a uniform, with a club in his hands. Whacking baseballs out of the park was something active he could do that didn’t involve pounding his father.

Gavin played left field. He wasn’t the strongest kid on his team, or the fastest. He did have one supreme talent at the sport of baseball, though. He knew what was going to happen during the game.

Baseball had a narrative. Baseball had a flow. You could listen to baseball on radio, and get the whole game clear in your head, without even seeing the players. “The count is two and two, now the shortstop is closing in...” Narrating baseball games was practically as exciting as baseball itself.

They made him the captain of the team. He was a natural for that role. A polite, good-looking kid, his dad on the city council, from a socially prominent family... He showed up for every practice, stayed in shape, had a good arm, led the league in stolen bases. Who wouldn’t like that?

The captain is the motivator of the team. He’s the strategist, he’s the inspiration. Gavin was the captain of a winning baseball team. A team that traditionally sucked pretty badly, but not when he was the captain. Put him in the dugout, and he could lead a rally. He had a winning season. And every teamloves a winning season. The parents love it. . The school loves it. Everybody loves a winner.

The baseball diamond was the arena in which his troubled life seemed pretty good. A winning team has fans. And one of those fans was a girl even from his own school. She was from a rival school, but she watched all the games.

More to the point, she watched him. Gavin was not the kind of dork to miss a pretty girl giving him the eye, so he asked around. It turned out that this pretty girl was “Madeleine Lindholm.” Madeleine’s dad was his dad’s worst enemy. They made Seattle council meetings raucous, banging heads about their city planning schemes. Council member Tremaine and Council member Lindholm hated each other’s guts.

So, what was with Juliet, sitting up in the stands? Well, Romeo was good-looking. Madeleine Lindholm thought he was cute. She had a crush on the captain of the baseball team. As simple as that, really.

Madeleine Lindholm was approachable. She was a sensible girl. She was given to flat, realistic assessments about things. Straight talk. “Our parents are being a pain.” Stuff like that. “It sucks that our dads fight all the time.” Madeleine was easy to understand.

Gavin enjoyed taking Madeleine Lindholm home to meet his folks. Little Elizabeth loathed and feared Madeleine, but she was just a goofy little kid. His mom was kind and polite to Madeleine. His dad was frankly flummoxed by the situation. His dad was plainly conflicted by it all. His dad couldn’t very well declare, “Son, you shouldn’t be having sex in your car every Friday night with the daughter of my worst enemy.” Obviously, this was the part of the story that his dad secretly thought was terrific.

Madeleine was his peacemaker. Some guy’s girlfriends howled at them, or yelled, or clung, or made crazy emotional demands. Not Madeleine. Madeleine was a supportive and stabilizing presence in his life.

Gavin got along fine with Madeleine’s family. The Lindholms were nouveau-riche right-wingers. Progressive Seattle had so few seriously right-wing people that Madeleine’s family was a broadening source of insight for Gavin. To know them was to know why certain things in America were always the way they were. He cherished them.

It was sweet and comforting to be Madeleine’s steady guy. She was tall, sturdy and optimistic. She was even-tempered and erotically generous. Madeleine had a frank, healthy, sauna-scrubbing, West-Coast-girl approach to making-out. She was cheerfully up for most anything, as long as it didn’t involve jails or clinics.

People admired them. People liked this level-headed pair of high-school sweethearts, who didn’t let their family’s bad-blood get in their way. Their relationship was honest and considerate. Madeleine settled any harsh situations with simple remarks. “I’ll take that new job because it pays better.” “We won’t move in together, because our parents have plenty of room.” “Your sister is just going through a phase.”

Madeleine was a one hundred percent Seattle girl. Their city meant every bit as much to Madeleine as it did to him. Madeleine liked hiking, cycling, canoes, Dale Chihuly glassworks, mocking dumb Canadians, and romantic Seattle date-movies like Sleepless in Seattle, Love Happens and Say Anything. Even shopping for clothes, the ultimate boyfriend trial, was fine with Madeleine. While other girls would freak out over picking out a swimsuit, Madeleine would briskly say, “Wow, I look great in this! Let’s go have sex on the beach!”

The one minor drawback of their relationship was his sleepwalking. That part was his own fault. In a motel once, she’d had some unpleasant pitch-dark encounter with his sleepwalking self. Madeleine didn’t want to talk about that episode. And who could blame her.

Years passed for them. He traveled more, and she worked more. Romeo and Juliet developed an email relationship.

Marrying Madeleine was not a new idea for Gavin. That was the logical idea. They had talked practically about the subject. Madeleine had sound, sensible ideas about getting married. Being who they were, they certainly could not marry until they had their own proper house in Seattle. To buy and furnish a decent house meant a big hassle for them. Of course, they had the money, but when would they find the time?

Then, there was the major issue of the marriage ceremony. It didn’t take genius to predict big trouble there. Her father and his father would lose no chance to put the boot into each other, before, during, and after the church service. As Madeleine aptly put it, what a major drag. Maybe they could elope together, some cheap civil marriage in Las Vegas, but that would humiliate them. They had a standing in the Seattle community. Their marriage had to be a public occasion.

Also, the marriage-tax situation stank. No accountant could overlook that fact. All their friends in Seattle were also unmarried twenty-somethings, basically living in hookups. No compelling reason to undertake the drudgery of lawful matrimony. Just an uncool snarl for everybody.

Maybe, thought Gavin, it was time to cut that knot. Time to tie a fresh new knot. Maybe this was a rebound thing for him, maybe he was being rash — but marrying a woman you’ve dated for nine years? Nobody could call that ‘rash.’

Maybe it was appalling of him to think about marrying Madeleine when he was swooningly in love with someone else.

Or — maybe he was finally learning how to outguess the future. How to duck all kinds of future hell. How to settle down.

Gavin’s phone kept bleeping with incoming SMS messages. Every time he feared that it was an incoming lightning-bolt from her, but no, it was always Eliza. Just like himself, Eliza was jet-lagged. Eliza wasn’t sleeping a wink on their last night in Capri.

Eliza was ecstatic about some wild techno concert that she was attending. She seemed to be blasting out SMS messages to everybody that she knew.

It couldn’t be drugs, because she was spelling the words correctly. Eliza loved music. That was it, that was her story. To love music with an all-consuming passion was her nature. Eliza was having a great time in her weirdo nightclub. Was there any harm in Eliza being so excited and happy about the one thing she loved best in the world? He was glad to see his sister happy.

The planet revolved on its axis. Gavin suffered stoically. No day could ever hold more than twenty-four hours. A bleak blue-pink dawn arrived for him. Gavin assembled the luggage. He took the steep, tilted train down to the Grand Harbor.

The new day had started at the seaside.

It pleased him to see sleepy Capri, a time Capri was not wide awake and busy seducing her tourists. He was abandoning this pretty island, and he would certainly never come back to her, but Capri would get along on fine without him. Capri would never miss him. She’d seen millions of mortal men like him, and she would see millions more. Capri was a beautiful piece of immortal Italian rock.

No sign of the LOXY yacht in the Capri harbor. The Disco Volante was long gone, like some vanished freebie from a nineties dotcom. The morning ferry arrived from mainland Italy. People got off the ferry to deliver the mail, or whatever they did so early, bored and yawning. Just normal life, a morning like any other day. The new day brightened. A café opened. Gavin gulped down two hot cappuccinos and a gooey tourist pastry. He had to stay awake until they boarded the plane in Naples. Then, he would get some sleep. He would sleep in the sky. And he would forget, if he was lucky.

The coffee made him jittery. He sent his sister a text message. Get yourself down here, these hydrofoils don’t kid around.

I’m here now, I C U, Eliza texted back at once.

Eliza could see him? There was no sign of her.

Some tall blonde in couture clothes was waving at him from the dock.

Gavin settled his café bill.

He couldn’t believe it. New hairdo, entirely new clothes — Eliza looked ten years older. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Like you look so great?” she snapped. “Up all night? You didn’t even shave or wash your hair!”

“Eliza, you look fantastic! Who are you, strange woman? What have you done with my grungy kid sister?”

“Oh, well,” Eliza dimpled. “Well — did you get all my stuff from my hotel? Look at my nice, new bag here! I did some shopping in Capri, like you said! Do you like what I bought here?”

“Well... I have to like it. I told you to go shopping in Capri. I didn’t tell you to buy the whole store! How much did you blow on that get-up?”

“Nothing! Not even two hundred Euros. Got it all at a garage sale.”

“You are kidding me! No way! That’s totally amazing! I can’t believe you changed the hair.”

“The hair was three hundred Euros,” she said. “They did the hair, the nails, a pedicure... They locked me up in this skin-peel steam room with hot black rocks piled on my back... They gave me this introductory spa package. I got the works.”

“And you survived that?”

“It felt fantastic! Capri is the coolest resort in the world! I can’t wait to come back here, some day. This was the best vacation I ever had.”

“Well,” said Gavin, “I did predict that, didn’t I?”

A motley crowd was boarding the hydrofoil. The early morning ferry crowd back to Naples. Bargain backpackers, bleary-eyed Eurotrash rave kids. Gavin and Eliza hauled their bags aboard and settled into blue fabric seats.

The Italian crew was crisp and efficient. People mocked the tardiness of Italian trains, but these hydrofoil sailors were pros. The engines roared like a jet at takeoff. The ship climbed up on its skis. Before Gavin’s heart could rise in his throat, they were skipping over the straits like flung rock.

“Gavin, you missed so much last night! You never went to any of the music events! Last night, I saw such a tremendous set. Sonja Khalecallon. Okay, you don’t know who she is... But she’s big in London and Rio. I talked to her backstage, after her set. Sonja was so nice to me.”

“So, my little sister, all dressed to the nines, was rubbing elbows with international rock stars,” said Gavin. “That makes a guy feel pretty proud.”

“Sonja is not a ‘rock star!’ Sonja is a global multi-artist, she does nightclub installations. With live soundtracks! You should have seen what Sonja did to that dirty, old Italian nightclub. It was like another world in there. It was the way forward. It was the way backward and forward, at the same time. It was like the world turned sideways. Like a slum and a castle, at the same time... And I was grooving on that! I totally got that. I felt Sonja.nja is a feeling.”

“Yeah, that’s all great, Eliza. I told you to go mingle with the celebrities. Didn’t I say that? You got the Brazilian pop-star’s email, her website, the MySpace thing, all that? That was gutsy. That shows you’re, like, serious.”

“Music is serious. Music is more serious than me. I can die, but music doesn’t ever die. Every time you hurt music, or steal from it, or cut pieces off of it, music comes back in new shapes. ‘Sonja’ isn’t Sonja’s real name. Sonja has other names. Sonja lives in London and Sonja has a whole lot of friends.”

Gavin was glad to hear his sister rattle on, all bright-eyed and pleased with herself. That made his own dark fate seem less poisonous. At least, Eliza had derived some benefit in Capri... She had changed her hair, even! That was the platinum-blonde lining to his black cloud.

He was glad to have her sitting near him, artlessly gushing nonsense about her precious music. It was silly, but it cut the anguish of his loneliness. Eliza gave their parents so much grief, they were really worried about Eliza. And yet, to tell the truth, Eliza was his consolation. He trusted her.

“Sonja is modern and strong. Sonja makes me want to... leave home, that’s what. She makes me want to grow up, and be brave, and leave home, like her! If she can do it, I can do it! Sonja is a world artist. She’s a moral leader.”

“This moral leader didn’t shake you down for any money, did she?”

“No way! She took me backstage and she told me about quantum physics! Then, she gave me this cool thumb drive! Look at this, I still have it, my Sonja souvenir! It’s got all her live bootlegs.”

“Good for you,” said Gavin, gazing out the hydrofoil window. The slanted porthole was streaked with seagull droppings. “Maybe you can pass along a few of those Brazilian tracks to me. Because I’m, like, very much a global trendster.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand Sonja. Sonja is too intense for you,” said Eliza, loftily. “You know who you should listen to? A straight guy like you should listen to the Beatles. Because you need ‘Help!’ And some ‘Rubber Soul.’”

“Sure, sure. I’ll listen to the Beatles for you,” Gavin promised. “When did I ever disappoint you? When did I ever go back on my word to you?”

“Never,” she admitted, in a smaller, less shrill and fanatical voice. “You never do that, Gavin. You’re always really good to me.”

“So, that’s great. So, we have no problem. The Beatles. They’re great. I like me some authentic, historical, million-year-old pop music. Truck ‘em over in iTunes.”

Eliza slouched in her seat. “What happened?”

“What?”

“What happened to you? You’re so listless! I saw video of that speech you gave. That speech is all over the Net. You were amazing up there. You were so killer. You were sexy. You were teasing that audience like Mick Jagger. Normally, you’re more like Kurt Cobain mumbling into his hair.”

“I’m kind of tired after all the hard work. That’s all.”

His feeble lie did not convince her. Eliza flicked his lie away instantly, as if swatting a fly. She didn’t say anything to him for quite a while. She was too busy getting mad at him.

“Now I get it,” said Eliza. “You and Farfalla. You had a fight.”

“We didn’t have a fight. We had common sense.”

“I see,” Eliza said frostily. She bent her head and busied herself with her iPhone. He couldn’t believe the beautiful clothes she was wearing. Was that Prada? It was Prada. He could see the Prada tag at the back of her bent, skinny, teenager neck.

“What are you doing with that gadget?” he said at last.

“I’m pirating you some early Beatles.”

“You can do that out here in the middle of the damn ocean?”

“I’m good at this,” said Eliza, scowling fiercely.

“Look, it’s all right,” Gavin offered. “Get over it. Twelve hours from now, we’re home safe. Everything will be fine.”

“Gavin, what on Earth is wrong with you? She’s, like, a witch with magic powers! How could you possibly miss that? She’s paranormal! Look at me, she turned me from a frog into a princess! Like, in one night!”

“Are you on drugs now? Did that Sonja person give you pills from London? I told you never to eat those!”

“Oh, don’t you talk to me like that! I’m seventeen years old, I’m not ten! I can read you like a book! You suck! You are ridiculous to me. She loves you! She was falling all over you. She hangs on every single word you say! And you, what, you had to pick a fight with her? You did. I knew it! You moron! She was perfect for you! You glow when she is around! It was the first time in my whole life I ever saw you so happy! You make me want to cry.”

“Look, put a cork in it,” he said. “Do I ever give you any advice in these matters?”

“Oh yes, you do! You warn me constantly. You are like my total big brother.” She sighed heavily. “You blew it. You made a total mess of something that’s fantastic. You stink. I can’t even believe it.”

These insults were too much for him. “You don’t think I’m aware of that? I am aware of that! All of it! What are you saying? I’m supposed to have this crazy fling overseas, when it’s a cruel betrayal of a woman, who never did one thing to deserve that from me?”

“Madeleine deserves it. Madeleine is a fungus.”

“You don’t have to get all punk and nasty. You are totally out of line there. I know that you never liked her. She would never say anything like that about you.”

“Madeleine is a parasite. She’s like mistletoe, growing all over your body. She sucks the life out of you. She has never let you be real, not for one day. She has turned you into what she needs you to be. She makes you stupid.”

“Elizabeth, you are a smart-ass kid. All right? You have dad’s brains, instead of mom’s heart. You think you know my own girlfriend better than I do? Go to hell! Name one time she ever lifted her hand against me. Name one mean or wicked thing that she ever did to me. You think I don’t know who Madeleine is, what kind of life she has? She had to fight her own family to be with me. She still has to fight against you. You kicked and fought against her every step of the way, and don’t think I ever liked that! You get along so great with Farfalla Corrado? Well, you fell for the Italian opera there. Let me clue you in! Madeleine is a Valkyrie from a Wagner opera. So there.”

“No she isn’t. Madeleine would never die on fire for her love of you. Madeleine is not your Valkyrie. Madeleine wouldn’t put you out if you were on fire.”

“Madeleine would never let me catch fire in the first place.”

“You need to wake up, Gavin. You’re a very weird, intense guy. You belong on fire. People think that you’re okay, because you talk like a Microsoft nerd and you wear a business suit. That’s crap! You are super-weird, Gavin. You don’t even live in our time-zone. Not even, Gavin. Nobody else knows that — but I’m your sister. And now I know there is somebody else in this world, someone else who is like you.”

“She’s not ‘like me’ at all, okay? She’s a woman. I didn’t do anything to her! She ordered me to go. Flat out. She told me to beat it. Never look back, she said! She had the right idea, too. She went her way, and I went mine. End of story.”

Eliza thought about this. She hated every word of it. She was struggling. “That was it? ‘End of story’?”

“Yes. The story ends just like Roman Holiday.”

“That movie stinks! Not even an email, or anything? I mean, even some corny 1950’s princess would have Facebook nowadays.”

“No way I would do that. Very bad idea there. Long-distance relationships have all the downsides of screwing around, without any of the benefits. I have some good friends who have been through that. I may be a fool, but I’m not stupid.”

Eliza’s thin face slowly wrinkled in misery. “That’s it, huh? You cut her off like she was dead! She was my friend, and she helped me so much, and she was so good and smart, and now she’s a ghost.”

“Cry me a river, Eliza. We grownups are not teenage drama queens.”

“I’m not like her, you know. And I’m not like you, either. You two are the freaks. I just dress up like a freak. Underneath, I’m a real human being.”

Gavin said nothing. There wasn’t a lot to say to a remark of that kind.

The clock ticked.

Eliza spoke up again, at last. She had a new, sly, cajoling tone. “You wouldn’t even help her find that little bronze statue? You promised that you would help her find that statue.”

“A statue? What statue? Oh wait, I forgot all about that silly thing. Farfalla’s still looking around for that statue? She never said anything to me about that.”

“She got hired to look for the statue. That’s her quest. Farfalla needs the money. Farfalla is totally street. She’s always hustling. Because she’s poor. I don’t think she’s ever held one real, paying job in her whole life! Obviously, she’s not gonna ask some dork like you for any help with statues. Because, boy, that would sure be embarrassing.”

“Look, that statue business was never about Farfalla Corrado. I was helping out this nice little old lady who doesn’t even have email. That old professor is completely helpless in the modern world. As for Farfalla Corrado, she’s a tough cookie who can look after herself. Forget the statue.”

“Great job on ducking the issue there, Mr. Technicality.”

“The Cosmic Cupid is all water under the bridge! The Cosmic Cupid is a minor detail! It’s barely in the story, and anyway, Farfalla was never serious about that. She’s never going to find that thing.”

“Yeah, she’s sure to fail. Especially if you have anything to do with it.” Eliza tucked her white iPhone earbuds in her ears.

She was giving him the silent treatment. She didn’t say another word to him for twelve hours.

Chapter Sixteen: The Chips Are Down

Ivrea was just the same. The same, at least, as Farfalla had always known the town. Once upon an earlier time, in the dolce vita days of the 1960’s, Ivrea had been a thriving city. A wholly-owned division of the almighty Olivetti. The home of a mighty industrial company that made real goods that real people bought. Typewriters, calculators, and analog office equipment.

Olivetti even created the Programma 101 computer, the first commercial desktop computer in the whole world.

Then, other people’s computers stole over the Italian town like some ghostly, invisible tide. Proud, beautiful, analog Olivetti went broke. One third of Ivrea vanished. Slowly and painfully.

Of course, Ivrea’s buildings were still standing upright. There was just no life and no wealth left inside them. Haunted buildings. No industry there. No money. Just hip, chic, with-it 1960’s architecture, while a cold wind whistled through the broken windows.

After their hapless adventures rescuing the proletariat of the Third World, her parents had settled down near Ivrea. Farfalla’s parents were natives of the local Canavese region. Her parents had no money, because they were selfless and idealistic people. They had devoted their lives to creating “appropriate technology” for suffering poor people. Poor people who were not Italian poor people. Brazilians, mostly.

The upshot of their noble, selfless crusade was predictable. Her parents became very poor. Her parents were Italian intellectuals with advanced degrees in architecture. They were alternative dropouts, and poorer than church mice.

Farfalla had been pretty happy in Brazil. Surrounded by poverty, she hadn’t really known what ‘poverty’ was. Once back in Italy, Farfalla was left to become what Farfalla was today: a poor, pretty girl, living in Italy. Italy was full of trapdoors that led straight to hell for pretty girls. The pretty girls in Brazil were just the pretty girls. Pretty girls in Italy were an Italian national resource.

Farfalla went through some of this Italian pretty-girl ordeal, because her parents, and even her very elderly grandparents, really needed the money. So did her little brother, who had arrived late in her parents’ life and was their pride and joy. Rafael was too young to remember Brazil. Rafael was an Italian boy through and through. And he acted it, too. He over-acted it. Farfalla’s parents and grandparents were her burden, but her brother was the bane of her life.

As always, after a trip, the first thing Farfalla did in Ivrea was to dutifully visit her parents. Her parents lived on a tiny organic farm outside of town. They occupied a humble ecological shack that they had built by themselves. Farfalla’s parents were extravagantly proud of this hand-crafted hovel, which had many of the features they had always recommended to poor people. Their toilets didn’t flush. Their roof was covered with dirt. They had no air-conditioning. Flow-through ventilators gave mosquitoes the run of the place. They had a big garden, but since they refused to use any pesticides, most of their produce was eaten by bugs.

Farfalla had a pleasant chat with her parents — pleasant for them, anyway. She could have told them something of serious interest to them — for instance, “I just met an American millionaire who wanted to marry me” — but she didn’t dare to try that. This startling news would surely provoke an earnest debate with her parents. Any serious discussion with her parents always involved much quoting of deep Italian political philosophers, such as Antonio Gramsci and Enrico Berlinguer. The most boring, craziest, stuffiest dead men in the whole world.

Her parents had always been like that. Her parents were politically committed Italian leftists from the 1970’s. When she wasn’t around, they talked about left-wing politics, all day, every day.

Farfalla successfully avoided telling her parents what she had been doing. This had been Farfalla’s family survival strategy since the age of fourteen. And whenever she vanished from her family circle, her brother filled up that empty space. Her parents doted on Rafael. They couldn’t get enough of Rafael, the son of the family. His every gesture of careless contempt deepened their devotion to him. There was scarcely one breath of air, or beam of light, or scrap of bread, in which her brother hadn’t jumped in her way.

Her parents had some big news about her brother. Rafael was coming back to Ivrea, from the distant Dutch town where he was freeloading off the Dutch government — Eindhoven, Enschede, whatever it was. Rafael needed more money. Of course, her parents would provide Rafael with money. They were thrilled to do that. Her mother would do his laundry, feed him tenderly, and sort his dirty socks.

Farfalla left the hovel of her parents and went to her own apartment. Farfalla lived inside a factory. This 1960’s concrete heap had been abandoned, but partially rescued. Italy was too beautiful to have its towns stay empty. Whenever there were empty buildings in Italy, weird oddities would show up.

The oddest thing in Ivrea was the man who owned Farfalla’s factory. He was Dr. Pancrazio Pola. Pancrazio was an Italian electronics engineer. He built circuit boards. This sounded like the dullest, geekiest, most boring activity in the world. It was, too — except when Pancrazio did it. Pancrazio had decided to build circuit boards as an Italian art form.

Pancrazio was an Italian techno-artiste. He was an artist, so he said he cared nothing for money. That was not entirely true. Pancrazio despised money so much that he actively tried to repel money from his life. Pancrazio was bitterly anti-money. He was an alternative, drop-out, open-source, freeware guy.

Pancrazio certainly knew how to build circuit boards. He’d held real jobs as an electronics engineer, so he knew how to salvage machinery from dead Italian factories. Pancrazio installed that junk in his own revived factory in Ivrea. And once he flipped the big switch, his dead factory walked like Frankenstein.

People in the circuit-building business didn’t know what to make of Pancrazio Pola. Nobody in the world had ever built pretty, elegant, highly-artistic circuit-boards. Italian art was always worth some kind of money to somebody, somewhere. The twenty-first century had a big romantic weakness for circuit boards. Circuit boards hid in every cranny of the twenty-first century. Mice were less common than circuit boards.

So, Pancrazio Pola and his atelier were prospering in Ivrea. They were getting famous — very famous, in many different parts of the world. Pancrazio was an open-source rebel. Pancrazio never played by the old rules. He’d forgotten that there were any rules.

Pancrazio and his geeky technical friends — and he had plenty of them — they were much more Italian than Farfalla. They were twenty-first century Italian Italians. They had futurismo written all over them.

That was why Farfalla had decided to set her hat for Pancrazio Pola. She was young, poor, pretty and achingly lonely, and Dr. Pancrazio Pola was the future, and she knew that, because she could see it. Hear it, smell it, and touch it, too.

It wasn’t hard for Farfalla to get close to Pancrazio Pola. Everybody knew that he and his geeks hung out in a local beer bar.

Sometimes, a few local Ivrea girls ventured into the geek bar. They had one good look at the Italian geek boys and ran away as fast at their cheap high heels could carry them. Farfalla got a barmaid job in the beer bar. She brought all the geeks all their beers.

Then, she set siege to Pancrazio. This took her a while. She had a few rivals for Pancrazio’s favors — sort of. Not all Italian girls were afraid of circuit boards and geek guys. Some Italian girls really, truly wanted to build Pancrazio’s circuit boards. There were three of these women. They all had doctorates in electrical engineering. They came from Torino, Bologna and Genoa. They were extremely geeky and weird Italian women. Pancrazio Pola famously had “no time for women,” but he had plenty of time for these women, because they were geeks, like him.

Farfalla was not a geek, and this was why Farfalla had ended up becoming Pancrazio’s woman. And living inside his house. Or, rather, living inside his factory. Because Pancrazio’s house was always a factory.

Pancrazio was a kindly man, to the people who shared his obsessions. Not many people in Europe got it about building futuristic circuit boards that had freakish, bent circuits, in twisted, artistic shapes. One in a million people got it. However, the European Union had four hundred and ninety-one million people in it. That meant four hundred and ninety-one people were burningly eager to show up at Pancrazio’s doorstep. To learn from him. And to sponge off of him.

Farfalla would never build any circuit boards. Pancrazio was the future, so she found some ways to save him time. There were a thousand aspects of Pancrazio’s geeky life that cried out — screamed out, even — for a woman’s touch. A real bed, for a start, instead of an East German canvas cot. And real sheets for the real bed. Pillows. Toilet paper. Drapes on the blank-eyeballed windows. The occasional broom and a vacuum. Laundry.

And, especially, the food. Nobody in the factory every did anything about this vital feature of human life. Pancrazio and his geeks were starving techno-artists. They were ravenous. The crazy techno-tourists would show up at the maestro’s factory to learn all about his artsy circuit boards, and they would slurp “Red Bull” and “Monster” for forty-eight hours straight. They would write “Processing” code and solder light-emitting diodes. And they would starve. Unless Farfalla took pity on them.

Pancrazio’s starving geeks ate anything that she wanted to sling at them. All her favorite childhood comfort-foods. Feijoada, churrasco, caruru, salgadinhos, pasteis, coxinha, forafa, polenta, and chorizo. Farfalla was the Brazilian cook for a mobile horde of ditzy European geeks.

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.

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 than 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...”

“Stop shaking like that,” Rafael said. He reached out with his booted foot and kicked a rusty office chair into her direction.

Farfalla sat down in the rolling chair. Her eyes were stinging.

“Look,” said Rafael, “why don’t you stop inventing these fantasies? I know the score with you. I can see you’re in trouble. I’d like to help you. Even though you never, ever listen to one word of common sense from me! But why don’t you try that out, for once? Because I have a beautiful idea for you.”

“What?”

“Get the hell out of here, and run off with this millionaire! Go jump right into his pocket! Go be his girlfriend! Scram! Run for your life!”

Farfalla said nothing.

“What is stopping you? Is it Pancho? Pancho is forty years old losing his hair! He’s not some big sexy dreamboat, like your other lover here! Leave Pancho! Leave him today! He never misses you! He wouldn’t miss you any more than that castle in Milan misses ivy.”

“The future of Italy is my story. Gavin Tremaine is not in my story.”

“So it’s that again. Eh? It’s that. It’s always that! Farfalla — why do you even have a ‘story’? Nobody else that we know has a ‘story’! Look at me! Do I have a ‘story’? I make my life up as I go along! I am wild and free! I am a free spirit in this world! I am a rebel! Thank God, I have no ‘story’!”

Farfalla said nothing to him. She had saved the life of her brother eleven times. That was why her brother still had any kind of story. Of course, he had never noticed that.

“Your story is evil,” said Rafael, “You are killing yourself with these fantasies! Let me pull down my web bookmark here... See, look at this! See, look how happy you are in this picture! You look great as a Capri party girl who sleeps with some millionaire! That is your story. Look, it’s already your top hit in a Google search!”

“That’s not true,” said Farfalla, sitting up straight. “I have a higher purpose in my life. At least, I have a higher purpose than a Google search.”

“You make me sick! You have a ‘higher purpose’ than Google? With what, your magic wand? Go look into the mirror! You look like a witch now! Because you act like a witch.”

“Being the witch, that is my story.”

Rafael drummed his fingernails on the computer’s cheap touch-pad. “You are doing all this weird, crazy stuff to yourself, you know. You don’t have anyone else to blame. Even though you blame me all the time.”

“If Gavin belonged in my story, he would tell me the words that complete my story. He didn’t tell me my words. All he gave me was a bunch of lectures about nothing.”

“Why don’t you give up?” said Rafael.

“What?”

“Why don’t you give up and join his story? Maybe you are just the cute sex-appeal story in the awesome epic story of the Microsoft millionaire here.”

“That’s stupid! That can’t be done.”

“Oh, stop being such a hypocrite! You can do that! Of course, you can be the sex-bomb girl in this rich guy’s story! Hang on his arm and giggle a lot! Wear a miniskirt!”

“I hate Gavin’s story! His story is sad and cold. He’s in debt. He worries all the time. His friends, his family, his business people, they tear at his flesh like dogs... Gavin is all alone.”

“He’s not rich? He sure looks rich. This website says he’s plenty rich.”

“He has the pretense of wealth, and the obligation of wealth, and the reputation of wealth. That’s all that he has now. That and his beautiful past. That’s all he has. It’s the truth.”

“Well,” said Rafael, “I feel pretty sorry for him, now. Because that’s a very Italian story. No wonder this guy falls for Italian girls.”

“When I am with Gavin, I am very, very happy, but in our hearts... When we are alone... I am in trouble, and he is in worse trouble. We are in terrible trouble.”

“Well,” said Rafael, “maybe that’s even better. When it comes to eating beans in a ditch, you’re the perfect woman.”

“Rafael, I don’t want you to hurt me like this. I love Gavin. I will never love another man like I love him. I am dying.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. Anvils are falling on me. My jealousy is killing me, and my love is killing me, and I never even kissed him, I swear it. I am going to die from this. Maybe I will kill him, too. I could kill all his friends and his family. It’s that bad.”

“All right,” said Rafael. “Thank you for finally, finally telling me the truth. Sometimes I can get the truth out of you, but it’s like pulling rusty nails out of a board.”

“Also, I would really love to kill you.”

“You are such a nuisance,” shrugged Rafael. “When will you get over yourself? You’re just a woman! This stupid business of the ‘One’ , your ‘One True Love’... There never was any such thing! The whole idea is absurd! A billion women love a billion men! That idea is a fantasy.”

“No, it isn’t. Or rather, yes it is, because it’s the biggest, strongest story in all of space and time. It is cosmic.”

“Look, Your Highness, even a nutty ‘witch’ like you with some big special ‘magic story’ can’t be all that special. If you’re so witchy, then do something witchy! Cast your spell on him, or something. Make him crawl back to you!”

“That wouldn’t work on Gavin. Gavin is different.”

“Why did you pick some weird American guy with a weird American name like ‘Gavin’? Can’t you find some superstitious fool who believes your crappy magic? Go back to Brazil!”

Farfalla was weeping. Her nose was running. There were no tissues, no handkerchief, nothing. All she could do was sit, cry and feel bleakly sorry for herself.

“You hit a dead end here, didn’t you?” said Rafael.

She said nothing.

“This situation makes me mad,” he said, at last. “I have tolerated every crazy thing that you ever did, but this is too much. Yes, it’s too much, even for you. I don’t mind that you decide your dinner menus by throwing your Tarot cards. But, you have finally crossed the line here. You say that you ‘love’ this guy? You are lying! If you loved him, then you would make him happy.”

“You don’t understand. What can you ever know about real, true love? Nothing!”

“I don’t know about love? I’m Italian! If your gorgeous guy had a sister, you wouldn’t see me sobbing and crying.”

“Gavin does have a sister.”

“He does? Allora! What’s her name? Never mind!” Rafael typed for forty seconds. “Wow! Look at Signorina Tremaine here! His sister is a hot Seattle Goth rave chick!”

“Leave Eliza alone!”

“Why? Elizabeth here is my kind of little girl!” Rafael stared at the laptop screen. “Wow... Look at those big, blue, hurt-me, emo-girl eyes... Hey, she’s even on Facebook!”

“Stop being diabolical! You know nothing about Eliza Tremaine.”

“I can find out all I want about the sweet little Gothic cupcake here. Wow. Look at all the hip coldwave kids on her Facebook page. I should drop by her favorite all-ages nightclub and buy her a double tequila. I can get to the American West Coast. I have friends who build robots at Burning Man.”

“How dare you! Put down that computer! If you hack into my romance, I will chop you into tiny little pieces! I will burn you into white ashes and bury you in a chalk pit.”

Rafael serenely ignored her.

“Bing search is so business-like,” he said, at last. “Your poor, sad, lost little boyfriend just made twenty million dollars in a big Microsoft-Yahoo deal.” Rafael drew a heavy sigh and shoved the laptop aside. He knotted his hands over his black denim knee. “What a mess you are. You are your own worst enemy, ragazza. You must be the worst, mystical-saint holy idiot in the whole world.”

“It’s no use. Our love is dead. We are dead to each other now. Yes, it was a beautiful miracle, for just one beautiful day... but he frightens me.”

“So, you are feeling scared about the boyfriend?”

“Yes. I’m very, very scared.”

“You really are in love with him. You’re afraid of yourself, not him! Look, your scary lord-and-master there doesn’t look very scary to me. I’ll protect you from big, bad blondie. Get me a shotgun, and I’ll wait till he turns his back.”

“I hate it when you make fun of me! Can’t you see that this isn’t a game? He wanted to marry me. He told me that he loves me, and that was the truth. My God, I wish I was dead.”

Rafael thought this over. He was full of keen personal interest. “Look. Maybe I’m just a simpleminded stoner guy who builds giant flaming robots, but how hard can this be? He says that he loves you? Go marry him! An insane, impulsive millionaire would be the perfect man for my crazy witch of a sister. That would solve every problem we have.”

“Gavin is not crazy. Gavin is a visionary. There is something huge and cosmic and empty inside of him... He is terrifying.”

“Well, go marry him, then. A husband is the most normal terrifying specter you can get.”

Farfalla had gone blind with tears. Her voice was hoarse with rage. “You never help me, Rafael. Whenever I tell you how I feel, you taunt me and you ruin everything. You torture me, I swear it. You are the curse of my life. You are like the evil demon God invented to make my life impossible.”

“Look, you can’t scold me like that any more. Never again. Because I’m all grown up now, and I feel sorry for you. Maybe, I’m stoned sometimes, but you are delusional. You are heading for a mental breakdown. You have never learned the most basic, simple lessons in how to live your life. Show some sense, for God’s sake! If you can never be happy, at least get some antidepressants!”

Farfalla was choking.

“I’ve never seen you so wrecked! You say you are dying from love? Well, I believe that! You are just the kind of idiot who would die! You are locked in the basement of your own fantasies! I need to talk to Mom and Dad about you. It’s time for us to do an intervention. Next thing you know, you’ll be covered with flies and pushing your grocery cart through downtown Milan.”

Pushed to despair, Farfalla squeezed her eyes shut and shrieked aloud. “Cohibete lacrimas omne quas tempus petet, et ipsae vestra lamentabili lugete gemitu funera! Aerumnae meae socium recusant! Cladibus questus meis removete! Nostris ipsa sufficiam malis...”

***

Farfalla opened her eyes again. Skype was loudly ringing on her laptop. A game of Warcraft was open on her screen, with a magic quest rolling right along.

Somehow, Farfalla had swept and cleaned her dusty little room. All of her windows were open, a cold October breeze entering her room. Why was she lying on her futon, fully clothed? These were not the clothes that she remembered wearing... Why was it two in the morning?

She reached out for the pull-down menu.

Eliza flickered into life on the laptop screen. “Hi there,” Eliza said. “I saw that your Skype was open.”

“Hello, Eliza.”

“Why is some creep named ‘Rafael Corrado’ sending me endless YouTube videos of dorky coldwave bands?”

“You look nice, Eliza.”

“Oh, thank you.” Eliza offered a small smile. “You know, you were right about my parents. Every word you prophesied about them came true.”

Farfalla had only the vaguest memory of what she had told Eliza about her parents. Farfalla had only the vaguest idea of what day it was, or why she was awake long after midnight, or why her Level 80 Undead Priestess was in so much trouble on Warcraft. It took a lot of effort to get a level 80 Undead Priestess out of her depth.

“Every word you said to me came true,” said Eliza. “That was so amazing. Except, there was this weird twist... They think I’m great now, but they are totally persecuting my poor brother.”

“Gavin is in trouble in Seattle?”

“Yes. It’s all about money and politics — I don’t care about Gavin’s money or his politics. I only care about my music. But Dad gave him all kinds of trouble about some big business deal in Brazil.”

“Gavin is in trouble with his father?”

“Everybody is in trouble with my dad. My dad only sort of gets the Internet. My dad started looking up all his old enemies on Facebook. My dad picks big flamewar fights. It’s like my dad just discovered that people can talk about politics without his permission. Facebook is like his new drug, he’s getting all sweaty and manic... Farfalla, is Facebook the work of the Devil? Google is ‘not evil,’ but nobody ever said that Facebook was ‘not evil.’”

“I don’t know what to say about Facebook,” said Farfalla.

“Well, me neither, but I figured you would be a good person to ask.” Eliza leaned in toward her web camera. Eliza’s blonde hair was coiffed and she was wearing full makeup. Not her trashy Goth make-up. Sleek, professional make-up.

“My dad gets surprised all the time now,” Eliza said. “He was surprised when Barack Obama was elected. He was surprised when this new mayor of Seattle got elected, too. He never thought those guys had a chance. They never had a chance in his kind of world. This world isn’t his kind of world. Because, you see, my dad got old.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Farfalla, you told me to ‘make my parents feel old.’ But my parents are old. That’s the truth. My parents are old-fashioned people. I know a whole lot more about the modern world than my parents do. From now on, I’ll do what needs to get done.”

Farfalla blinked grainy-eyed at the screen. “Do you know what you want to do?”

“Yeah. I do know. It’s a new set of cultural interventions in a globalized world of non-commoditarian, heavily-networked, popular culture.”

“What?”

“I mean it’s my birthday party. I mean my 18th birthday party. I’m booking some Brazilians into a nightclub in Seattle. I made some very good contacts over in Capri, and I’ve got enough money and friends to make that happen here in Seattle. So, I’m doing that. As soon as I can. Because that work really needs to get done.”

“Oh.”

Eliza toyed with her volume control. “Which makes it kind of a small, minor drag that your sick weirdo brother is sending me Euro coldwave bands. I mean, I am totally over that old-fashioned, futuristic electronica. I’m way into some hot, modern, Abravanista, Brazilectronica.”

“Abravanista,” said Farfalla. “Yes, those are some cool people.”

“He’s kind of immature, your little brother.”

“Yes. He is.”

“I know about a million punky creeps like him. ‘Cause I used to be one of them. He says that he wants to come over here to Seattle. I don’t need him around here.”

“I’ll be happy,” said Farfalla, “to tell Rafael that.”

“Are you happy, Farfalla? You look sort of ragged.”

“No. I’m not happy at all.”

“Gavin can’t talk any sense to my dad. Gavin tried. He gave up. Now, he is going to do something stupid.”

“You called me to warn me about the ‘Call Me’ girl,” said Farfalla. “The Golden Honey Girl.”

“Yeah. You’re right. That’s why I called you. ‘Golden Honey Girl.’ That’s a good name for her. Because she is sticky and slimy.”

“I think,” said Farfalla, “that your brother should never speak to me again.”

“That’s exactly what Gavin said, too. My brother will never call you again. He will never call you. Never. Because he is proud and stupid. Because my brother is, like, the future. Okay? And you know what? Most of the future is stupid.”

“Did you just say ‘the future is stupid’?”

“Yes. ‘Cause it is. Most of the past was stupid, and most of the present is stupid. My poor brother doesn’t know the future, because he is the future. And he’s about to do a very stupid thing. With his future.”

“Gavin is going to marry his girlfriend.”

“She never loved him. Not like you love him. He thinks she is angelfood cake, and he’s hip-deep in quicksand. She’s going to make him much stupider, because that’s her purpose in life. Now, listen. I’m not a witch who foresees the future. I’m not paranormal, like you. But, I kind of have some great ideas about this situation.”

“Your great ideas won’t work, Eliza.”

“Yes, they will. Check out how cool and trendy my great ideas are. Some Brazilians will show up here in Seattle, soon. Because, I arranged that myself. I can get you to fly over here to interpret for them. I can afford to fly you here. Almost. Sort of. I’ll pawn something out of the attic. My Mom does that all the time now, and nobody notices. I know some crazy Seattle steampunk guys who will buy anything.”

“I will never fly to Seattle. Not now that I know that he is there. Never, never. Save your money. I don’t need your money.”

“You’ll have to call him first,” Eliza persisted. “You two had this big, ugly fight, I know about that, but he’s not a mean guy, unless people are hurting his pride. Call him up and apologize to him. Tell him that you love him. Tell him you want to be with him.”

“No. No, I won’t! I won’t do it. I don’t want to be with him. Gavin is a Swedish Methodist.”

“So what? Hey, I’m a Swedish Methodist!”

“We have differences of faith.”

“But, this is Seattle! My church is full of tattooed geeks and lesbians.”

“My parents are Communists.”

“Gavin’s never even met your parents! I’m sure that your parents are very nice Communists.” Eliza blinked. “Are your parents really Communists?”

“And my grandparents are Communists, too.” Farfalla drew a pained breath. “Gavin told me the truth. It’s very hard to marry a foreigner. He was telling me about realities of real marriage. I was acting like a prima donna. I was a fool.”

“Gavin proposed to you? He asked you to marry him?”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s the most romantic thing I ever heard! Gavin? Mr. ‘Due Diligence’? And you got all coy? You did! You got cold feet! You are wicked!”

Farfalla said nothing.

Eliza’s façade of composure cracked. She began to get shrill. “Look, are you as stupid as he is? Are you totally doomed, like Cassandra? You’re smart! You’re pretty, you speak three languages, and you’re a great bargain shopper! I don’t have a lot of time to waste on any more stupid, doomed people! Besides musicians, of course.”

Farfalla said nothing once more.

“Look, you have to make some kind of effort to save yourself! Wake up, be smart, save yourself, save your happiness! I can’t do all of this.”

Farfalla reached for her keyboard.

“Stop that!” Eliza screeched at once. “Don’t you dare turn me off!”

“Make other friends, Eliza. Go away and let me suffer in peace.”

“What an evil thing to say. I can’t believe you told me that.”

“I have my world. He has his world.”

“Oh, just shut up! We should be sisters!”

Farfalla hesitated.

“I know that you have the power to destroy him,” Eliza said, wiping at her eyes. “Because you have the power to save him. You can redeem him. Didn’t you ever think of that? Didn’t you ever hope for that? Can’t you see your happiness is there, when you’re with him? It’s happiness! Why? Why can’t you see that?”

Farfalla was stuck speechless.

“Look here, Internet Witchcraft Girl,” said Eliza. “I am finally getting it about you. You are selfish! Just because you are magic, you are snobby and full of yourself!” “Don’t insult me. You’ll regret it.”

“Put your curse on me! I’m not afraid of you! I may be just a teenage girl, but I’m not nothing! Teenage girls have power in the future. Teenage girls have to carry the future on our backs! What if I curse you for this evil thing you are doing? I could jump off the Washington Bridge, and I could die cursing you, and that curse would be all your fault. Maybe you can forget about him, but you would never forget about me. You would see my ghost every time you closed your eyes, you would see me forever, till the day you drew your last breath —”

Farfalla slapped her laptop shut.

Chapter Seventeen: You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away

Gavin was pleased at the way his father had lost his temper. He hadn’t seen his dad in such a foot-stamping, 1968-style rant in quite a while. All that heat and fury was a sign that his father’s medication was helping him. His attack of radical fever was much better than his pallor, his grayness. His pathetic trembling.

Gavin scarcely minded that the old man was unloading a fury on him. That bullying could no longer touch him where he lived. Not any more — not after what he had been through in Capri. Gavin had been through an emotional upheaval so complete, so total, that this family bluster and hassle was almost homely. Reassuring, somehow.

There was something touching about his dad’s many grievances. His impossible, corny demands for peace, justice, effective government action and vast Apollo Program initiatives to reform whatever-it-was. The complete set of phantoms.

Gavin had already made up his mind about what would happen next. He already knew what had to happen.

He wasn’t even angry. Not any more. He was resolved. The spreadsheet of his life had added up.

Gavin took a long, jetlagged nap. To avoid any attack of sleepwalking, he played the early Beatles. He listened to “Rubber Soul” and “Help.” Old-fashioned music helped him. He slept well.

Gavin woke with dawn and drove his Volvo downtown, early, ahead of the traffic rush. Gavin had his traditional welcome-back-to-Seattle meal. The big oyster omelette over at the Pike’s Place Market. This patriotic ritual made Gavin feel at home.

Pike’s Place Market was a famous Seattle heritage site. It was a pretty, let’s-pretend-Seattle where everyone was still a lumberjack, or a salmon fisherman, or an anarchist dock-worker. Gavin had a favorite booth in the café with a great view of the gray-blue harbor. Also, the Pike’s Place oyster omelette was the greatest meal in the world.

The relic café was playing early Beatles on its jukebox. Gavin was unsurprised by this coincidence. If anything had “synchronicity,” then music had synchronicity. The Beatles were old men, and two of them were dead, but their music was not limited by their mortality. Wherever Beatles music was needed, there it appeared. Ghosting back into daylight with tremendous urgency.

Very young guys, these early Beatles. Tremendously skilled pop musicians. Their artistic gift was supernatural. What well-crafted songs jumping out of the dusty jukebox. Those songs had become global classics. People in Nepal and New Guinea got it about the Beatles. All of the skeptics were dead.

These four fabulous mop-tops had exactly one topic in their classic early songs. Women. The Beatles were young men trying to figure out women. Boy, were they having a tough time of that, too. Women in early Beatles songs were horrifying. The women in Beatles songs were mysterious, perverse, and senseless creatures, bearing nothing but heartbreak and misery for men. Love was in their eyes, but only yesterday, or the night before. Women in Beatles songs hired men to drive nonexistent cars. They gloated over their Norwegian wall paneling, and sent their men to sleep in bathtubs.

Occasionally, the women in Beatles songs had to be threatened, bullied and pushed around some, but fits of male rage helped nothing at all. Leaving the women alone made life even worse. Women in Beatles songs refused to listen to you. They would not even see you. Your days were filled with tears.

Why did the world fall so hard for this fantasy? Why were these Beatles songs so fanatically, screamingly, swooningly, universally popular? Why were there no realistic Beatles songs about what the actual Beatles girlfriends really did in the real world?

The genuine girlfriends of the Beatles were nothing like the romance-fantasy girls in Beatles songs. Real Beatles girlfriends were cute, harmless British chicks modeling in London. At least, until the Beatles globalized, and married some American and Japanese women.

Gavin finished his oyster omelette. He dug into his wallet around some multicolored Euros, and he paid with some plain green dollars. He drove his Volvo from one Seattle parking garage to another, slightly more distant garage. He walked over to the offices of Cook, Bishop & Engleman. He popped the security doors with his plastic ID tag.

Gavin settled into his office within the venture capital firm. Gavin’s office was a modest place, with Ansel Adams photographs of the Rocky Mountains to make his narrow walls look grander. His office had only one window. When Gavin rolled his Aeron chair into just the right spot, he could glimpse the Seattle Space Needle.

Despite the early hour, Gavin was not the first one at work. Sally, the secretary, was already there. Sally had a doctorate in computational biochemistry, but Sally had never found any job in the sciences. Like many other other lost souls from science, Sally had found a job in modern finance. Gavin had never seen Sally outside the offices of Cook, Bishop & Engleman. He had the impression that Sally lived in the office building, maybe sleeping under her desk.

“So, Sally, what’s new around here?”

“Jeff Bezos just sold off two million shares.”

“So, why would our sci-fi paperback bookseller need to sell that much Amazon stock?”

“I think Jeff needs the cash for his private space rocket.”

“It’s great to be back in town,” said Gavin. “So, what can I do you for, Sally?”

“I have some problems with this temp you hired in Capri,” said Sally. “Hiring foreign people is a lot of paperwork for me.”

“Yeah, that’s Italy. Italy’s always like that. Sorry.”

“Did you have to hire this person for an entire month? She only worked for us for two days! How am I supposed to clear that with Martin? You know what a stickler he is.”

Gavin felt a sting of shame. He’d pulled a quick hack in Capri to work himself out of a tight corner. It had seemed like a smart move at the time, but that kind of easy hustle always created another problem in the longer run.

He had to think fast.

“We still have plenty of work for Farfalla Corrado to do,” he said. “We need her to translate Italian tech documents from Pancho Pola’s website. Pancho has a whole lot of cool, Italian open-source stuff going on. Pancho is very out-there. Pancho is disruptive. Pancho’s good work needs to be better known in the world.”

“Who? That Italian circuit-board guy? What has he ever done for us?”

“Plenty of startups use his open-source hardware. We need to give back to the Open Source Movement. The Europeans are super picky about that stuff. So, just write to the translator. Email her today. Tell her to talk to Pancho, and let Pancho choose the documents that he wants her to translate into English. The cost of that translation is on us.”

“That’s kind of a big favor, isn’t it? Are you sure you want to do that for him?”

“Sally, this is pure win! We already budgeted her salary! Don’t waste any more time on this. It’s a minor issue.”

Sally moused off to get that done. Gavin then fired up his Cook, Bishop & Engleman desktop computer. Gavin’s work in the firm concerned due diligence for venture capital proposals.

These proposals generally came in two parts: an awesomely cool technical notion and a hopeless business plan.

Killing people’s dreams was never easy work. But, most of these proposals were not businesses. Frankly, they were high-tech fantasies. People came to venture capital firms with their fantasies, not with their businesses. Gavin’s role in Cook, Bishop & Engleman was to point out, in black and white, that these fantasies would never make any money for anybody.

The Internet this year was crammed full of the ghosts of things that were not businesses. The ghosts of governments. The ghosts of charities. The ghosts of labor unions.

Plus, people uniting on the Internet and sharing things. Photo sharing. Software sharing. Location sharing. Sharing-sharing. Sharing was not paying. Real businesses had people paying, not people sharing. Businesses had customers. Businesses had shareholders, they didn’t have sharers.

Some enterprises gave things away for free, in the hope that people someone might pay for them in the future. “People will never pay for this,” Gavin typed on his screen. “Never. It will get cheaper to give this away, faster than anyone can sell it.”

Gavin did not enjoy his hard work. The optimistic startup guys sending in these crazy proposals were guys who enjoyed their work. Gavin had the solid, old-fashioned idea that work should be painful, so that people would pay you for doing it. If the “work” was fulfilling, then work was a form of entertainment. The workers should be paying people for being entertained.

Or, at least, that had made good sense, once. Nowadays, even entertainment wasn’t working out as a business. Not on the almighty Internet. The Internet had become so fantastically entertaining that nobody, anywhere, wanted to pay for being entertained. So, the people paying for their entertainment were either old or ignorant. Another harsh, modern reality. It was alarming how few people could grasp these simple and obvious facts.

Martin came into his office. Gavin hadn’t talked directly to Martin in over a month. Martin was a chummy, backslapping, golf-foursome, classic VC guy. Martin called himself a “team coordinator,” although he was the boss.

Martin offered a few pleasantries, then edged up to his point. “You gave a dynamite speech in Capri,” Martin said. “You hit that one out of the park. We all had a look at that. We couldn’t believe it. Very Franklin Roosevelt. You don’t know him. He was before your time.”

“Franklin Roosevelt was before your time, Martin. I’m very interested in Franklin Roosevelt’s time. I can see many parallels there. In the New Depression, we have his parallels with switched polarities. We have radical conservatives, and cautious progressives.”

Martin chewed this over for a while. He seemed to like the taste of it. Martin liked to hire Futurists, and was always keen about their seminars and scenarios. “So, what do you make of this strange new mayor of ours?”

“He’s our new mayor,” said Gavin. “He did some nice grass-roots organizing out in the neighborhoods. I don’t know if he can govern the city. Campaigning isn’t governing.”

“A major transition of this kind might be a signal opportunity to re-tune the firm’s strategy,” said Martin, who always talked like that.

“I agree with you there,” said Gavin, “because we’re not making a dime, otherwise. I don’t see one proposal in this heap that isn’t some kind of me-too pitch. I agree that we need to try something. I mean, something besides sending me back to Italy.”

“You’re still sore because we cashed out too soon on that Italian fashion website.”

“I’m not angry, Martin. This is a strategic issue. We need to arrange things so that foreign business comes to us. The Italians have a passionate interest in high-tech. The Italians are highly creative people. They just don’t have our venture infrastructure. Our Seattle scene should be providing that service to them. We ought to be the people the Italians turn to. We ought to be the people they trust.”

“You can give us the debriefing on your big trip to Capri? Up in the council room, three this afternoon?”

“Right. Absolutely. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in the European tech scene. There’s still stuff that we know here, that they don’t know there.”

“Did you ever give any thought to running for public office, Gavin?”

Gavin was jolted by this sudden question. He was tempted to make a smart-ass remark. He wanted to say something sharp and snappy about how Tremaines had been involved in Seattle politics since, well, forever. Tremaines had been running Seattle since the town was nothing more than wooden boards on a marsh, with shovels to dig up the clams.

Gavin did not say any of this. When a politician said a rude, ugly truth like that, that was called a gaffe.

“Martin,” he said, “I am not a City Hall insider. I’m in the tech business. I just want to see our city back on its feet.”

“Could be that we need a young guy on the city council. This city needs a forward-thinking guy. Someone not implicated in the old mistakes that got us in this mess. You know what kind of candidate would really fly in this town? A young, fresh, world-changing, techno-green guy — except with a budget.”

“Anybody can do the budget for a City Council campaign,” Gavin said. “My family’s not interested in that level of financial sacrifice.”

“We have a few friends in the VC scene who might find that problem of interest.”

Gavin was warily silent. He could see what Martin was suggesting. Were the Seattle VC geeks so feeble, so pathetically on the ropes, that they would rather take over Seattle politics than take over the technology biz? Had things in technology reached such a miserable state? Yes, they had. He could see it on Martin’s face. The truth was awful.

“I think I need to brief the firm today about the scene in ‘urban informatics’,” said Gavin. “I mean software for cities. Not software in cities. Software that runs cities. The Europeans are all over that concept, lately. Nokia, SAP, all the heavies.”

“Urbanware,” nodded Martin. “Lotta hot buzz around urbanware. Urbanware might have some legs. I’m thinking, an internal white-paper. A heads-up for investors. Could you do that for us?”

“Martin, I’d love to help out there. That’s a big topic. But maybe this isn’t the time. I’ve got a few personal issues... I have some things I need to get in order first.”

Martin nodded sagely. “I’m thinking that might be advisable.”

“I came back home with some big ideas along that line.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You keep me in the loop there.”

Gavin went back to work. Then, he went out for lunch with his colleagues from the office. They were all brilliant people who wanted to change the world. They didn’t go into the world as often as he did. They were local boys and they had become the talent scouts for Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon. That was the standard story around here. That was about as blatant as his future was going to get.

There was just one seemingly insurmountable stumbling block in the grand Futurist story there, and her name was Farfalla Corrado. He could waste his time dithering about that, maybe write a Beatlesesque love song about his romantic crisis, or he could take decisive action. He needed to be the kind of guy that Beatles songs didn’t happen to.

He’d done something about that already. He had done it today. Farfalla ought to be pretty happy about that — the noble, gallant gesture he had made, in regard to her boyfriend Pancho, and his good work... But no, Farfalla wouldn’t be happy about that. No. He knew her too well already. She would be bitter, unreasonable and perverse.

He could already outguess her view of the situation. He had given her more work. Translation was hard work! He was squeezing a bunch of extra free work out of her.

He was a cold-hearted accountant with no poetry in his soul. He was exploiting her. That was what she would think about what he had done. Maybe it wasn’t entirely untrue.

When it came to her, he was sure to make a mess of it. This matter was serious. He really had to think hard about it. He could not dump Farfalla Corrado, as if she had never existed. Here yesterday, gone today, “only Capri”... No. It had never been like that. Because she did exist. She was as real as he was. Realer, probably.

Of course, he had to break off their affair for good and all, that part was inevitable. But, he had to find some decent way to finish it.

Not his kind of decent — her kind of decent. They were over, but they had to be over in a way that made her feel better about it being over. He knew it was over, and she knew it was over, but it had to entirely over.

A decent goodbye. Something to help her move on. A parting gift, that was it. He had to give her a parting gift, without showing his hand too much. Without any begging. No begging, no pleading, no Beatles-style please, please, please.

How could you show a woman that you cared about her, and that you would always care, but that it was dead between you — dead, dead, dead, in the remote past, beautiful yet dead? What things in the world were beautiful and dead?

How about some old books?

***

Gavin rolled over in his girlfriend’s bed. He drew in the first cool breaths of the aftermath, and he looked at the ceiling.

My God, how beautiful life was.

It was always good with Madeleine, but he had forgotten how good it was. Sex with Madeleine was so simple, pure, and satisfying. She was a necessity for him, like food and breathing. The low light of her lamp and the aroma of her perfume. The crisp sheets, the gentle music from another room. The sweet generosity of her tender body.

He had come there almost desperate. Like a starving man confronting a very wise and sympathetic gourmet cook. Just “Baby, don’t waste time, I am so starving, please, just some meat and potatoes,” and her warm, heartfelt response was, “Right away, just for you, good meat, fresh potatoes!” And then, fast and furious: delicious bacon-wrapped filet mignon and golden Yukon potatoes.

She was so sweet to him, and so completely in the moment. My God, it was good, that moment.

She was still caressing him, in her tender, lingering way. Her body heat against his own. She’d pulled him drowning from a jagged hole in broken ice, and blown her sweet breath into his lungs. Her kisses chased another world away, knocked it two thousand years gone. The taste of her lips, the aroma from the crease of her neck. The tremendous physical beauty of this comprehensive act had killed a thousand phantoms.

“Baby, there is no one like you.”

“We don’t see enough of each other,” Madeleine told him.

“That trip to Italy really took it out of me. I’m a mess... I travel too much.”

“You’re jet-lagged,” said Madeleine. “You sure were in the mood, though. That was nice. I liked that. It’s lovely when you’re here with me, but not quite all there yet. It’s like misty roses.”

Gavin said nothing. Madeleine really knew how to say things like that. It was like Madeleine lived in that place.

Madeleine slid out of bed, naked and tousled. Polished marble was less lovely than Madeleine’s pretty skin. The low light of the lamp gave her paleness pearly tones of ochre and purple. “Just take a nice little nap now,” Madeleine told him. “I am going to cook you a nice dinner now, just the things you like. You are going to eat every bite.”

“Life is so good right now,” said Gavin, “that I don’t even know what to say.”

She caressed her brow and left him. Gavin collapsed back into bed.

Gavin had an ugly, head-swirling dream. A sleepwalker’s dream. But, when he came out of it, he felt purged of something dark and bitter. He rooted in Madeleine’s closet, and pulled out some of his old clothes. A Princeton jersey and some cargo shorts.

He followed the enticing smell into Madeleine’s kitchen. She had whipped something up for him. Nothing less than fried liver and onions, sliced carrots and cauliflower.

That splendid food sat on his plate like a little tonal symphony in brown and white and orange. And a beer, too. Not some sissy Italian beer in a little glass. A big, dark, cold-sweaty, Elliot Bay microbrewed stout, in a big bottle. The kind of beer a man could never get anywhere else.

She had put this on the table for him with her own hands. She delighted in doing it for him. He devoured the food she had made. It vaporized under his knife and fork.

Madeleine looked up at him, surprised. She was still tenderly dismembering the brainlike lobes of her cauliflower. “You sure were hungry.”

Gavin thumped his empty beer on her little breakfast-nook table. “Yes, definitely.”

“Nothing too fancy.”

“Some things are better than fancy. What you need, just when you need it, that’s much better than fancy.”

“How about some peach pie?”

“No, that was pretty much perfect, and I...” Gavin toyed with the empty bottle. “You have peach pie?”

“I knew that you were coming,” she said, getting up.

Nothing to do but to sit down with a hot slice of peach pie. Gavin had an intense relationship with peach pie. He adored peach pie. He had loved it since he was four years old. His last meal before being executed would involve peach pie. Other people failed to understand this fact about him. Madeleine had hunted down every commercially available peach pie in the Seattle region, until she found the pie that he liked best. This pie was piping hot on his dessert plate. Here. Now. Madeleine was like that.

He had two servings of peach pie. He knew, as soon as he took the last bite, that the peach pie had cured him. That hot, flaky, gooey peach pie was a precious herbal remedy. His pain and sorrow and doubt had been blown out of his being. Just chased down and killed with that golden pie.

He could laugh at how bad he had felt, before. Never again. Really.

“Baby,” he said, “you and I need to take steps.”

Madeleine took off her rimless glasses. She aimed a warm, affectionate look at him. “What’s on your mind, handsome?”

“Well, I just had this big talk with my dad...”

“Your dad’s not being reasonable,” said Madeleine. “Your dad is a liberal moonbat.”

Gavin paused. He drew a breath. “You know what? I completely agree with that. My dad is not a well man. I mean, there were days when he would posture politically, but when it came to cutting a deal to make something happen, my dad could cut that deal. Not any more. Seriously, my dad is badly off. His prognosis is not good, he’s has this bad kidney thing, and he’s sick... He needs to do something else with what’s left of his life.”

“Something besides quarreling on Facebook with my dad.”

“Yeah,” said Gavin. “Totally.” It was great how Madeleine cut to the chase in these things. She had always been like that.

Gavin cleared his throat. “We need to make them stop fighting,” he said. “It’s like an Italian vendetta, and this is Seattle. We need to do some forward-looking things, here where we live, in our own town. We need to get on with real life.”

“We have to do that, baby,” nodded Madeleine.

“That’s great to hear,” said Gavin.

“The whole country’s gone off in the wrong direction,” said Madeleine. “We need our country back. We need leadership. We need to get back to the foundations of the real America. We need to get back to the bedrock of the American Constitution.”

“That’s interesting. What part of the Constitution?”

“All of it,” said Madeleine. “I mean, all Americans can agree about that. The Constitution is our American Constitution. We need to get back to the gold standard, we need to bear arms, and we need to audit the Federal Reserve before they can do any more damage. Also, we need to stop immigration. Right away. That immigration thing is crazy. Those people are all over our country now, millions of them, and they’re not even Americans.”

“I like historical documents,” said Gavin, “but if we go back to the original Constitution, you wouldn’t even be able to vote.”

“Americans don’t vote,” said Madeleine. “Because they’ve lost confidence in the system! We need a leader with integrity. We need someone who can live her values. We need someone who believes in faith, and family, and hard work, and who proves herself and suffers for her values. The real values. Of real people.”

Gavin said nothing.

“Did you read her book?” said Madeleine. “’Going Rogue’? It’s such a great book.”

“Sarah Palin,” said Gavin.

“Sarah’s from the Pacific Northwest, just like us,” said Madeleine. “She’s not some Beltway insider, or some crooked New York banker. Sarah’s a small-town girl, who took on the big boys and the liberal media establishment... And the people love Sarah Palin. The people love her, Gavin. I went to three of her rallies... The way people love her, it’s like a miracle.”

Gavin looked at his girlfriend’s flushed and impassioned face. It had never struck him until this moment, but Madeleine looked quite a lot like Sarah Palin. She had the same square jaw, bright eyes and alert, head-lifting perkiness. The same sturdy, moose-killing, snow-shoe and carbine body. She was a pretty woman, Sarah Palin.

“This is the Carla Bruni factor,” he said. “This is the Carla Effect.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen this before, I know this already. It’s happening here, exactly like it did in Europe. It’s the same tremendous fit of love for a pretty woman, who never belonged in politics in the first place. This is pure divine charisma. Wow, John McCain sure knows foreign affairs! He knows what Sarkozy did for the French right-wing, when Sarkozy pulled that amazing move with a beautiful woman... This is that same Carla Bruni phenomenon, but it has an American face now.”

“I don’t trust John McCain.”

“Nobody trusts Sarkozy, either. You’re in love with Sarah Palin. It’s fantastic.”

“I’m going to work for Sarah’s campaign,” said Madeleine. “You should join me. There’s a lot of good work to do. It’s a grass-roots rebellion to rebuild the real America. To take our country back.”

“What campaign? Sarah’s not campaigning! Sarah’s campaign is over, she lost the election! She even resigned her governorship! Sarah Palin doesn’t have any campaign. Sarah doesn’t want to be elected. All she does is run around writing her bestsellers and making people love her on TV!”

Madeleine laughed. “That’s what all the lefties say! You really have no idea! Boy, are you ever in for a surprise.”

“I admit it,” Gavin said. “I’m surprised.”

“We’re going to have to organize,” said Madeleine, “and take the whole country back. America, saving America from itself. City block by city block.”

“I see that your dad is pretty serious about this.”

“Gavin, it’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing we can do. That new bridge the Mayor wants to shut down... My dad is totally committed to the property values on the far end of that transportation channel! My family’s not like your family... We didn’t do that ‘wealth management distributed investment’ thing, like you Tremaines did. Because we believed in Seattle, we were solid boosters for Seattle, and if the city does this crazy moonbat global-warming hoax... Then, the city will shrink! Not grow, shrink! They will kill all the cars, they will make us ride bicycles!”

“I think you’re right about that,” said Gavin, heavily.

“My family will go broke, Gavin. I mean we will really, truly go broke from that. We are not old-money people. We’re just American people. We’ll go rags to riches to rags in three generations. These crazy policies are going to destroy us. They’ll destroy the America we knew, and we’ll be in a socialist America that looks like Sweden. Or something.”

“Baby, America will never look like Sweden. Canada might, maybe. America, there’s no way. Mexico would look more like Sweden than America.”

“Gavin, why do you take Seattle’s money and put it in other countries? Italy, Gavin. Italy, why? Aren’t we good enough for you? You’re never here any more. You’re always somewhere else. You’ve changed.”

“I work in a global investment firm,” said Gavin. “The business opportunities are in other markets. Brazil’s growth rate is eight percent. That’s in black and white. Any accountant can see that.”

“Gavin, why do you look at those numbers? Why would you look at Brazil? What is wrong with us? You’re looking at Italy and Brazil!”

“There are times when I don’t like that any more than you,” Gavin said. “But, well, my family is in big trouble, too. We have this business deal in Brazil... More of a government deal, than a business deal... But, if I could pull that deal off, then my family would be okay. We’d be more than okay. We’d be pretty much where we were back when aerospace was booming in Seattle. It’ll be like my Dad’s good, old Space Age days.”

Madeleine blinked. “Are you going to do that?”

“Maybe. I’ve been working hard to do it. Traveling a lot. I just got back from doing it, and I’m much closer than I was. Really close now. It’s one of those deals that could close fast, if it closes at all.”

Madeleine’s face grew thoughtful. “Why don’t you tell me all about it? Maybe I could help.”

“Well, I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s classified. I mean, literally, it’s a classified defense deal. I have a security clearance. So, I can’t possibly tell you.”

“This is a secret aerospace military deal with the government of Brazil?”

“Look, don’t even say things like that, because that makes me think that I’ve said too much already. My dad has a security clearance, too, because he was a big wheel in Boeing once. So, I can’t divulge that information to you. That is illegal, unethical and immoral. So, I just can’t say the words. It’s never, ever something I would do.”

“It must be pretty easy,” said Madeleine, “to make a whole lot of money when you know secret things and don’t even have to compete in the free market.”

“That’s how the defense business always works,” said Gavin. “And no, it’s not easy at all. It’s just secret. It’s very secret, for good reasons, and I can’t say anything about it. All I can do is to try hard to get it done. As best I can.”

“My family is going down the tubes right now,” said Madeleine, “and your family is going to make a ton of money selling secret airplanes to the government of Brazil.”

“It’s my duty,” said Gavin. “It’s my heritage, it’s an old story. Maybe that story doesn’t sound good to you. Maybe it isn’t much good. But, there is one other thing. An important thing, for us.” Gavin drew a breath. “It’s time for you to leave your family, and join my family.”

“You’re proposing to me.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. I want you to marry me, Madeleine. I think that we should get married. Give up these other things you are doing, and come be with me. Come and be my wife. Please. I am asking you, formally. I am asking you for your hand. I should have brought you a beautiful ring for your hand, but there’s no time for that, sorry. It’s very important. Say yes.”

“No.”

“Say yes, Madeleine, come on.”

“We’ve discussed this before. You know what our situation is supposed to be, before we ever get married.”

“We’re not going to call the social pages in the Seattle newspapers. There barely are any newspapers left now. Forget our fairy-tale Swedish Methodist church wedding with the crowd of our thousand best friends. We don’t have the money, or the time, to do that kind of thing any more. We need to... go to battle stations and get married. Because we’re both in trouble.”

“Gavin, I don’t want to be in your family. I don’t like your family. They’re not getting any better, they’re getting worse. I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life in your haunted castle in Capitol Hill, full of gay, punk Gothic weirdos? I’d go crazy living with them! I like you, Gavin. I never liked your family.” Madeleine sighed. “And they don’t like me much, either.”

“My dad would get over that part. No man ever hates his grandkids. To tell the truth, I think my own mom and dad had a very similar story. It wasn’t easy that the Tremaine son-and-heir picked up some hippie drop-out chick to be his wife, but, you know, they didn’t give up, they made a go of their marriage! And here I am, I’m their son! That’s life! It’s just like John McCain said about Sarah Palin’s grandson! ‘Life happens.’ Life does! That was the best thing that John McCain ever said.”

“John McCain and his advisers betrayed and exploited Sarah Palin. You don’t know about that, but it’s all detailed in her book. I can lend that book to you. I underlined all the best parts.”

“Madeleine... please don’t do this to me. Please. Don’t abandon me. You don’t know what I’ll turn into... If I don’t have you to steady me out. To keep me happy. I’ve been happy with you. Really. We get along great. I don’t think we’ve ever had one really bad day.”

“We don’t fight,” said Madeleine.

“No. We don’t fight.”

“You’re such a sweet guy,” said Madeleine. “Very courtly. You’ve always remembered my birthday, and our first-date-iversary. All my friends envy me, about you. I don’t regret anything about you. We never had any problems.”

“Don’t, Madeleine.”

“I don’t have the time to get married,” said Madeleine. “I’m going to Wasilla.”

“You’re going to Carla Bruni’s home town? You actually know Carla Bruni? Already? Personally?”

“Her name is Sarah Palin,” said Madeleine, rolling her eyes. “And, of course, I know Sarah personally. My family were fund-raisers during the McCain campaign. We were Red Ribbon Pioneers.”

“Does Sarah Palin know that you’re broke now?”

“Now that,” said Madeleine, “was a very crude, tacky thing to say. Sarah Palin is a blue-collar, working class woman. Sarah doesn’t spend her whole life hanging out with Princeton-educated, limousine-liberals. Of course, I’ve met Sarah. It’s amazing how much Sarah has changed with the times, and grown as a national leader. Someday, Sarah Palin’s troops are going to run this country, just like Barry Goldwater’s did. Not because of money. Because of their passion.”

“I begged you to marry me, and you turned me down,” mourned Gavin.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said ‘no.’ You said ‘no’, directly. Admit it, you did.”

“I changed my mind. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. If you love me — you will follow me. Gavin, you know so much about the Internet, and Sarah’s big on Facebook and Twitter! You can come and help out with Sarah’s campaign, and when our country’s on an even keel again... When I can see the real America when I look at the streets... then I’ll marry you. I’ll be happy to marry you.”

“You’re asking me to marry Sarah Palin? You are. What a strange and terrible fantasy.”

“Ha ha ha! You could dream, boy! Sarah’s already married, and he’s one heck of a guy! He’s funny, he’s charming, with a big sense of humor... He looks and talks like Clark Gable!”

Chapter Eighteen: Shadows of Flames

Farfalla was broke. It had happened just like that. Overnight, practically. She couldn’t understand it. All she had done was buy herself a bicycle, and a case of Nebbiolo, and a weekend trip to Geneva to see some World of Warcraft costume players. Those golden-brown fifty-euro notes had taken flight from her purse like so many clothes moths.

Farfalla was so broke that she was reduced to doing technical translations. Luckily, some lunatic had written in from Seattle, demanding that she translate some of Pancrazio’s circuit-design documents. Farfalla had never heard of this person, “Sally Scithers,” but she was willing to pay. Farfalla had done translation work in Seattle before. Seattleites always paid her. Being Americans, they paid on time, too.

She’d meant to ask Pancrazio about it, but when Pancrazio showed up in Ivrea, Pancrazio was busy being very Pancrazio. Pancrazio arrived from Brussels mid-morning, affectionately pinched her on the ass, demanded some lunch, ate it, had some hasty, gleeful sex with her, knocked back three cappucinos and charged into his lab to build robots. Or rather, the interfaces for someone else’s robots. Pancrazio was very big on building interfaces to things that might, or might not, exist, someday.

As usual, Pancrazio’s arrival in Ivrea was followed by a flood of packages. Everybody who used Pancrazio’s circuit boards wanted the great man to see what they had built. They sent their creations straight to Ivrea, as a cordial tribute to the world-famous electronics guru.

Those homemade things were generally crazy. Interactive goldfish bowls. Interactive flowerpots. Interactive joysticks for controlling toy airplanes. All kinds of airplane-control things.

Pancrazio’s geeks would rip these objects out of their package-service wrappers, and try to power them up and get them to function. Commonly, the gizmos didn’t work at all. Then, all the geeks would laugh mockingly. When the gizmos did work, all the geeks would laugh uproariously, and give each other high-fives. The geeks took pictures and videos of these rickety constructions, as they flew around the ceiling, and beeped and blooped, and rolled around on the floor. They uploaded the pictures to FlickR and Picasa and YouTube and Vimeo. So that everybody on the Internet could see.

The geeks were all going broke doing this. Nobody seemed to notice that. The geeks did not care. No, it was worse than that. To care for nothing was their Italian badge of honor. “I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death! Let him who loves his gizmos with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me!” Giuseppe Garibaldi said that. Except the part about the gizmos. That part was pure Pancrazio Pola.

In three days, Pancrazio had another conference on his calendar, and like that, he was gone again. Farfalla was just as broke as she had been before. More so.

So, Farfalla started translating the technical documents she found in Pancrazio’s files. Pancrazio had tons of these documents, because Pancrazio documented everything. It was much cheaper just to publish everything, and get famous, than it was to make some ridiculous fuss about how supposedly secret these technologies were.

There were tons of electronic documents on Pancrazio’s website that nobody ever read. Absolutely no one.

So, she chose to translate the documents read by no one. Documents with no readers at all. That would be a good lesson for somebody. At least it would pay.

Farfalla took some comfort in the brain-numbing work of technical translation. The pure drudgery of it hid her secret sorrows from herself. Translation work took up all of her brain. Not enough to brain left to think with. Or to feel with. Or to hurt with.

Until, a geek arrived and told her that package had arrived for her. This was not one of the hundreds of packages addressed to Pancrazio Pola. This package was addressed directly to her, Farfalla Corrado, care of Pancrazio’s factory.

What could this mystery package be? Farfalla never ordered anything on the Internet, because Pancrazio had cut up her credit-cards with tin shears. Farfalla had to stop work. She had unveil this package right away.

She found books inside the mystery package. Three novels by Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy.

Three old books came from an Internet antique book-finding service. So the three books were wrapped up astight as bubble-packed mummies, but they were still very pretty.

Nobody made books like this any more. The books were a hundred years old, but they were still sturdy. The pages were sewn in signatures. The edges of the pages were marbled. The covers were made of gold-embossed leather. Their titles were Shadows of Flames, Virginia of Virginia, and The Ghost Garden.

No return address, because Gavin Tremaine had never touched these books. But, he had sent the books to her by Internet. Books from that little adventure they’d had, down in the museum basement. Obviously, it was Gavin who had done it, even though, with gentlemanly modesty, he had left no trace of himself.

He hadn’t forgotten her.

Farfalla ran her hands wonderingly over the romance novels. Their once-bright, embossed surfaces gave off a fine but palpable dust. Look how ladylike and fancy these old-fashioned novels were. Somebody — (the princess-authoress herself, most likely) — had made a big fuss about making her books so fancy.

These books didn’t seem to belong in the world any more. They were unearthly books. They looked like they belonged in the boudoir of a drug-addled Southern aristocrat who had married a Russian-Italian prince.

Farfalla paged through the romance novels, to see if Gavin had enclosed some tender love-note for her. No. After the way they had parted in Capri, he would never, ever speak to her again.

However, there were many traces of other people in the books. Because these books were all “associational copies.” They had pasted-in private bookplates. Clearly, these precious books had once been owned by some of the princess’s most devoted fans. The author’s fans were crazy people. These peeling, eldritch bookplates featured cupids, and skeletons, and dragons, and half-nude fairies on horseback.

One of the books had been directly signed to its owner and reader, by the Princess-Author herself. The Princess-Author had beautiful, gorgeous, swishy handwriting. For Miss Ermintrude Cabell, With all best wishes for tomorrow… From her friend and kinswoman, Princess Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy. With a sharp, flying, ink-stroke French accent over the “e” in Amelie.

No woman alive on Earth could sign autographs like that any more, thought Farfalla. Even if some modern woman really wanted to sign her name like that (and she really was a princess) she would never know how to put the ink on the paper.

That kind of big brassy pen-nib no longer existed. Princess Amelie’s ink was time-browned, watery and viscous ink, ink from a squid. Her paper was astonishing. It looked like a special romance-novel paper made from Scarlett O’Hara’s plantation cotton.

One thin sheet of long-forgotten onion-skin paper slid from the dense time-browned pages of The Ghost Garden. This personal note had typewriter marks. The crude, early-model typewriting machine had banged its way right through the fragile onion paper, knocking big manly holes with the o’s. “Thanks fOr cOming tO my birthday party, Princess! COme up tO New YOrk and see a lOnely Old man sOme time — Sam’l Clemens”

Farfalla shoved her laptop to one side. She thumped the three romance books onto her rusty metal factory desk. She glared at the archaic romances. The books looked back at her, ladylike, demure and innocent. Farfalla wasn’t fooled by that for one moment. Okay, dead woman, she thought, narrowing her eyes over the texts. It’s just you and me now. Where did you hide that cosmic statue?

The guilty books said nothing, or rather, the books said what novels said, which was thousands, and thousands, and thousands of words. Silent, inert, ink-on-paper words. Farfalla would have to tackle those words. She would have to break them with her occult understanding.

Farfalla was unafraid of century-old romance novels written in archaic American English. Could reading these novels be any worse than translating electronic circuit-board diagrams? Maybe, well, probably yes, but she was a professional, she was hard and tough! She could read romance novels!

She had Google, and she had Wikipedia. She could look up anything obscure, any words or phrases that she didn’t understand. A romance novel was just a book, while the Internet was the Internet. The Internet would crack these nuts for sure.

Farfalla’s cheerful assumption was wrong. The romance books were much worse than circuit diagrams. A circuit-board diagram was trying to reveal something obscure. These romance novels were trying to hide things that were obvious. They hid ten dark things for every thing they revealed in print.

At first, Farfalla had thought that the book’s occult obscurities were due to the bad writing of the Princess-Author. Maybe the Princess-Author was an unreadable writer – but that couldn’t be true. Because the ghost of the reader was also there, visibly present within the book. The dead reader, “Miss Ermintrude Cabell”.

This dead reader had paged through Shadows of Flames, over and over and over again. The dead reader was worshipping the Princess-Author’s book, mooning over it repeatedly. The dead reader had dog-eared the book’s most sticky, swoony episodes. She left half-moon, chewed-fingernail marks on the margins. The reader had even tear-stained some pages. Hot, raindrop reader tears that had melted the author’s ink into tiny gray circles of grief.

The strange book from 1913, called “Shadows of Flames,” was very disturbing. There wasn’t any sex in this romance book, and that was very weird and not-human. Entire, eerie, passionate non-sex scenes lurked everywhere in “Shadows of Flames.” They popped out of nowhere, screaming at the readers in magical code.

“Sophy found her first mushroom — small, but a beauty. It nestled low in the grass on its plump, naked leg. Its round, white top was faintly browned like a well-cooked meringue. Then, she found another, enormous — a real prize, it seemed. But, something about it was too perfect — too white. She nipped it out of its green bed, and looked at the gills. They were snowy white. Its slender leg was cased in a fine, white-silk stocking that was ‘coming down.’

“’Oh,’ said Sophy, looking queerly at the too-lovely creature,’how very like you are to some other mistakes of mine... And yet... if I ate you... you would cure them all,’ she ended quizzically.

“She threw the false mushroom away. It lay, pale and corpse-like, in the wet grass. It was so like damp, dead flesh that Sophy shivered.”

Farfalla had to look that one up on Google. Yes. At the moment that Amelie’s pen was leaking this over-obvious business about the tall, fleshy mushrooms, Sigmund Freud was busy explaining these things in Vienna. That couldn’t be any accident. The Princess-Author had to know Sigmund Freud.

Was this American-Italian novelist socialite the kind of woman who would know Sigmund Freud? She must have known about him, and maybe met him personally. Did Sigmund Freud like pretty, crazy, artsy, flirtatious women? What did Wikipedia say about “Lou-Andreas Salome’?”

Lou-Andreas Salome’ was all over Google. Because she was very famous, still famous. Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy, weirdly obscured... Farfalla stared at her laptop screen. What was wrong with this woman, Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy? The dates in her biography were bizarre. She was living her life in reverse!

First, there was “Emmeline Rives,” an unknown Virginian rural belle living in genteel poverty. Then, came “Princess Amelie Troubetzkoy,” the celebrated writer of novels and Broadway plays. Then, there was elderly “Mrs. Troubetzkoy,” not a princess any more, not a famous romance author, but just a rural Virginian widow, dying in deep obscurity. Forgotten by time, dying in the very place where she was born. A woman who transformed into her own grandmother. How could a Princess become her own grandmother?

Even her name warped and transformed with the passage of time... The Princess-Author was “Emmeline, Amelia, Amelie...” Some few incidents of her life had survived on the Internet, and they were frightening. Oscar Wilde had introduced this Princess to her Prince. In London, at a society party. That’s where Amelie met the One in her life. Because Oscar Wilde told them, “I think you two need to know each other!”

Then, there was the entire Scapigliati business, which for Farfalla, hit very close to home. The Scapigliati were ancestors of the Italian Futurists, and they were about as Italian as it was possible for any art movement to be. Except, that these artists weren’t all Italians.

Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy was an American Scapigliati. Yes, her. Amelie, the romance writer, was a proto-Futurist. Amelie was a Futurist before Futurism had been invented.

Farfalla kept clawing at the mists of history through Google. Amelie’s mother-in-law was an American Scapigliati, too. These two obscure American women were important, central, Italian cultural figures. Why? Because their Troubetzkoy family was the bomb shelter of the Scapigliati Movement. Their family home, run by these overlooked women, was a place of safety and order for the Scapigliati artists. The Troubetzkoy women maintained the home where the bohemian Scapigliati artists, all hair-tearing, syphilitic and eaten-up with absinthe, could find a place to sleep and a decent home-cooked meal.

So this strange, strange woman, this Emmeline-Amelie... known, when known at all, for her “minor female regional writings”... she was underwriting the whole Scapigliati enterprise. Amelie was their unheard prophet. Amelie was their slave.

That was why Amelie was churning out her overwrought romance bestsellers. Among this whole gaggle of pretentious, nerve-shot Italian artists, this American romance writer was the only one who was earning a living.

In her woman-writerly seclusion, the Princess-Author created imaginary women. Imaginary, “roman à clef” women, women very like Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy.

Amelie Rives was selling pieces of her own identity to women readers. Every lovelorn Amelie Rives heroine was a splintered-off, fantastic version of the young, hungry Emmeline Rives. They were like idols and icons in vast hall of gilded, overlit mirrors. Pretty, romantic, ultra-loveable, spiritual women, dressed in the velvet drapes that Scarlett O’Hara had torn off the walls of Tara, in a brave woman’s last-ditch assault on sex-appeal.

Amelie Rives was shapely and blonde – rather good-looking — for a writer that is, a breed that tended to be near-sighted and portly. However, Amelie’s mother-in-law, the once-famous American actress, was even more romantically gorgeous than Amelie. This mother-in-law, whose older role in this enterprise was so obscure that Farfalla couldn’t even find her name on the Internet... She had propped up this bohemian enterprise with her stage earnings. She had also supplied the Scapigliati movement with a teeming brood of Scapigliati artist kids.

Amelie, with her many names, and her nameless mother-in-law. Gifted, visionary women, strange women nobody had ever heard of, holding up the world on their backs. This was a multi-generational effort. A subterranean, witchy tradition. Maybe, it had been going on for centuries.

The mother-in-law must have been a major presence in the Amelie Rives life, but she never appeared in the Amelie Rives novels. Why was that?

It was because of her story. Not the fake, romantic stories in Amelie’s novels, but the real story of a genuine living woman. This was her forgotten story, the mother-in-law. “I was very famous, gifted, beautiful and rich. Then I met the One. So, I abandoned myself to him, and I loved him, and I vanished completely. I gave him, and the world, seven children. Then, I died.”

From the bright lights of the stage to the wails of seven kids in the nursery. That was not a romance-novel narrative. Why? Not because it didn’t happen, but because it really, truly did happen.

And because — women would never pay to read that story. True Love was a fantasy narrative. True Love was the ultimate fantasy because it was the only story in the world that created new readers.

Women didn’t pay to read romance novels that told them that True Love made women disappear forever and never be heard from again.

All novels were fictions. But, there were certain truths that could never be said inside novels, because they made novels explode. For instance, “I wrote this novel so that you would buy it.” There was no way for Amelie to say that, within a novel. Romance was all about loving tenderness, and never about earning money.

Even if you were a best-selling romance writer, and writing exclusively for women about the tenderest feelings of women, you could never write about that part. That part was a deep, dark secret.

If you were an aristocrat, you couldn’t write for money. How vulgar, how low! If you were a bohemian, you scorned to even think about money. How crass, how bourgeois! If you were Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy, the Scapigliati Princess, and therefore, somehow, amazingly, both an aristocrat and a bohemian, you could never tell the reader that you desperately needed her money.

Money for yourself, for your family, for the people you loved, and especially for him, the man in your life. That dreadful story was super-invisible. Even the sex, and there wasn’t any sex, was less well-hidden than the money.

So, there was something divine, dark and dreadful at stake in Shadows of Flames... and Farfalla sensed that it was all in the flaming shadows of what was not being said to the reader. Awful, flaming, haunting, shadowy things haunted the romance book. Its author, its readers, its world.

There was a lot not being said about drugs, because Amelie-Emmeline clearly knew a whole lot about drugs, and not in a cute dopey party-girl way, either. More in a pit of despair, valley-of-horror, find-my-last-unscarred vein kind of way.

All the romantic sex went unsaid in a very loud way. Not in a modestly ladylike, reticent way, because it was 1913 and all the readers were ladies, but more in a I-know-way-too-much, my first husband was crazy from syphilis, I have intimate bleeding ulcers and I will never have children, suffering flower-of-evil kind of way.

But mostly, there was a whole cosmos of things not being said about the Princess-Author’s own survival. As in, “Please buy this romance book so that I can support all my beloved husband’s crazy, spendthrift artist relatives.” That was the golden key to the whole set of works there: Amelie wrote her novels, as a bleeding act of womanly self-sacrifice. Please Send Me Cash should have been the title of Virginia of Virginia, because it was a book about a woman, who was the opposite of virginal. Virginia of Virginia was an artless tale of rural sincerity, virtue and devotion, written by a money-hustling, globalized, drug addict.

The Princess Author was writing for the sake of the One in her life. He was the One who needed her to work for him, the One who really needed her support. The Prince in her life, the creator of the Cosmic Cupid.

That had been a strange feeling — the feeling that had come over her as she met Amaldi’s eyes. It was as if they were recognizing each other, rather than just becoming acquainted. It was odd how everything about him seemed familiar to her.

The Princess-Author’s books were littered with spiritual events of this kind. Omens, totems, left-handed intuitions, dark forebodings and foreshadowings. Tons of them. Writhing, and screaming the unseen truth. Right, left and center. Huge numinous fits of spiritual insight. They were as common as dirt.

The heroine of Shadows of Flames was named Sophy. Sophy was not a Princess-Authoress, like Amelie, but a Baroness-Poetess. Wisdom was Sophy’s name, and Poetry was Sophy’s calling, but her avocation was Love. Sophy wrote her poetry by fits and starts, while her daily life was devoted to a manly British noble, a sporting New York millionaire, and an aristocratic Italian patriot.

These three wealthy, handsome, charming, sexy men rushed to Sophy through no visible effort of her own. Then, after tormenting her tender heart for several chapters, Sophy’s three fictional men perished horribly of alcohol, morphine and pornography. That was the plot of the 590 pages of Shadows of Flames.

Each one of those five-hundred-and-ninety tiresome pages had been a small scar scraped onto the soul of Farfalla Corrado. But, when Farfalla put her mind to it, she could endure that trial. She could win her way through these romance novels, she could break them and defeat them. Because she was motivated.

To read one page of Shadows of Flames took her about three minutes, the length of time it took to play “Call Me” by Astrud Gilberto. This song had become the soundtrack of Farfalla’s literary pilgrimage to hell. So far, she had played “Call Me” eight hundred and fourteen times. Every time, some new subtlety unfolded within the immortal samba classic. Every time the song touched her ears, it revealed some new level of the Golden Honey Girl’s infamy.

It sometimes struck Farfalla, in her agonized trolling through the witchy depths of the romance books, that there must be an easier way to get Gavin Tremaine’s attention. Forget looking for long-lost cosmic bronze statues of Cupid, forget the tangled history of the Belle Epoque romance genre. Just call him on the phone, for instance. “Call Me.” Why not.

But she was not Gavin Tremaine’s Golden Honey Girl. She was Gavin Tremaine’s Witchy Bitter Poison Girl. So, she would always have to do it the hard way. The occult way. The way of a deeper, darker knowledge.

Back to the romance books. Back to Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy, a dark, troubled, witchy woman with a huge, dirty heap of non-fictional, real-life female problems. Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy, in 1913, had problems that belonged to American female Beatnik poets in 1959.

So, Shadows of Flames was a romance book set at least forty years in the future. Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy was putting ink on paper in a prophetic trance.

This much was obvious to Farfalla, who was also a prophetess... But did Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy actually know? This long-forgotten seer, did she know? Did she realize that her life was premonitory, clairvoyant, scattered, and, somehow, lived in the wrong order?

Did Amelie understand that her craziest fantasies were hidden truths? Did she know that she was cursing people with her foresight? Maybe, she did know that. There were some vague hints of that in the awful, terrific poetry of Sophy, the Baroness-Poetess.

Farfalla hated poetry. Within the pages of Shadows of Flames, everybody read poetry. Every fictional character, every single one of them. They all read the precious poetry of the heroine of the book. Old Virginia landowners, decadent London toffs, motherly Italian housemaids... they all read the slender books of verse, written by the heroine. All the characters in the books were readers.

And without exception, they were stunned, enchanted, amazed and, yes, doomed by the author’s Circean gift. They could get over Sophy’s radiant good looks, her effortless wealth, her innate charm and tenderness, and her lovingly-described wardrobe. But, Sophy was slaughtering them with those poetic verses of hers. Sophy’s prophecies were leaching through the text like a deadly poison. Everyone who understood Sophy’s verses was dying. Dying, unhappily, ever after.

Within the paper cage of Amelie’s book, there was no escape from the deadly poems of Sophy.

Except for Amaldi, the Italian male lead. Amaldi was the most devoted of Sophy’s numerous male admirers. Amaldi was the One. Because he was the only lover of Sophy’s who wasn’t killed dead by her poetry.

Amaldi was an Italian romantic artist. Amaldi was an amazing, monstrous fantasy figure. Everything about Amaldi was impossible and absurd. Amaldi was an Italian artist, who worshipped an American woman as a radiant spiritual being. Amaldi made divine art for Sophy. He treated her like a priestess, and he laid sincere tributes at her feet. Tremendous works of art, stained glass, sacred icons, statues...

No Italian artist would create sacred icons for his own wife, especially for the Princess-Author, Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy, who was not a priestess of Venus, but a big, busty, fried-chicken-eating babe from Virginia.

Unless — thought Farfalla, with a bone-chilling click of intuition — unless some American woman actually did appear in Italy with radiant paranormal powers. A witch whose every word was freighted with a double-dealing truth. A witch cursed to exist without her own proper place. A witch without her own proper time.

A witch who had found the true love of an adept, the One who was meant for her.

Chapter Nineteen: Love Has A Nasty Habit of Disappearing Overnight

After the failure of his marriage proposal, Gavin’s life became much easier to comprehend. Heaps of things became clear to him that he had never grasped before. Gavin was overwhelmed by the clarity of his newfound existence. Life had become as flat and simple as a black-and-white cartoon.

Gavin went about his daily work at the venture capital firm. He took up the loose and tangled threads of the Brazilian circuitry business. He had long talks with his father about the possibility of going into city politics. His dad was all for that plan, of course. His dad was visibly losing his grip on reality, but he was thrilled to see his only son mimicking his activities.

Weeks went on. October left, November commenced and progressed. Things went smoothly. As smoothly as things could go, inside a black-and-white cartoon. Nobody noticed that Gavin had entered a state of enhanced mental clarity. Except for Eliza, who looked at him with pity and dread.

Madeleine was calling him. It was unheard-of for Madeleine to call him, because Madeleine had always depended on him to call her. But now, Madeleine was upset. She wanted to get over their “little tiff,” as she put it, to “get back to normal.” So Madeleine would booty-call him. Late at night. Drunk.

Gavin understood what had happened between himself and Madeleine, but he did not know how to say it. It was embarrassing to admit that he had lost all desire for her. He could not tell her how badly he felt cheated by life. Just demeaned.

He couldn’t tell Madeleine that he had become another man, a man she didn’t know. This man didn’t want her. He didn’t want her perfume, her lingerie, or her warm and obliging bed-manners, any more than he wanted the little red fire truck he took such delight in pedaling when he was five years old. Then there was the other major part of his life — his work. He’d had a similar breakthrough there. Somehow, he’d held the boyish notion that venture capital firms were in the business of making a better future. But that was vague, sentimental thinking. In reality, venture capital firms were all about protecting the interests of investors.

So, Gavin was not in the futurity business. Gavin was in the business of getting rid of far-fetched proposals that wasted important people’s money. Once he internalized this, his work became easy. He could lay out a devastating refutation of a business in five minutes flat.

Gavin had the new force of conviction in what he said. He had become the bottom-line guy. He was realistic, he was talking hard financial sense. Nobody at work could deny that. With his newly assertive tough-mindedness, they even whispered that the job was too small for him now. They said that he belonged in public office.

So, his days went well. It was his nights that were dark, stormy, troubled.

One November night around three a.m., Gavin woke up with a “staring moment.” The fits were a rare affliction for him. They were like his sleepwalking episodes, except that his body was too tired, cold, and paralyzed to rise and move around.

So, his eyes would flick open to stare at the infinity of the ceiling. His conscious and unconscious mind were united as one. Dream-reality. He could see to the Beginning of Time.

He gazed into the depth of the Cosmos — effortlessly, through enormous, telescopic stretches of spatiality — and he realized that he was alone.

He wondered, idly, why he had never had the guts to admit this to himself before. He was alone in the cosmos. Mostly, it was his own misapplied modesty that had blinded him to that truth. He was a Futurist seer, yet he knew that he didn’t know everything. No mortal man could know everything. But, he had sensed that, somewhere, there was a kindly, good-hearted Creative Spirit. Someone in the Universe who did know everything, to Whom it all made sense.

And that was, in some way, to his benefit. It was not his purpose to question such a Person, or His divine right to exist. It was his purpose to eke out his own mortal life, in a righteous spirit.

But, Gavin now saw that these delusions were cotton-candy wishful thinking. If there was any such Cosmic Spirit, He had about as much interest in Gavin Tremaine as Gavin did in a bacterium.

No man had any privileged place in the Cosmos. The Cosmos had no purpose to offer Gavin Tremaine. He was much like the other inhabitants of his home. Like the nine-inch Seattle banana slugs that haunted the damp patches under the refrigerator.

When Gavin woke in the morning, the dark fit of night-brooding had not deserted him. On the contrary, it had set up camp in his soul.

Gavin went to work. He looked over the extensive list of zany venture-capital proposals that he had recently slaughtered like so many mad dogs. He could see that they were idiotic ideas, but... the numbers nagged at him. The numbers didn’t add up. They couldn’t all be bad ideas, could they? Statistically speaking — whether God existed or not, speaking strictly as an accountant — could all business proposals be this lousy?

Not one single success in there, not one plan with potential? Not a single good thing to do?

The world didn’t make any sense to him any more. He was in deep trouble. He was in a jam, a real jam that he couldn’t think his way out of. He had to call his mentor, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante.

Despite the steep time-zone difference between Seattle and Sweden, Gavin found Dr. Svante on video Skype. Dr. Svante sat under a blazing grow-light in the Scandinavian gloom of his home office. The Futurist seer’s snow-white hair was glittering. His ageless face was immobile.

Gavin choked out his unhappy story in disjointed bits and starts. “I’m sorry to make such a mess in telling you all this,” Gavin concluded. “But I’ve heard that — statistically speaking — depressed people are more realistic than people who are in a healthy frame of mind. So, I think something has gone wrong with my judgement.”

Dr. Svante tilted his veiny, pale neck and examined the notes on his yellow legal-pad. “Let me repeat your story to you, to see if I have it right,” he said crisply. “In Italy, you had a sudden, unhappy encounter with an attractive young woman. You returned home to Seattle, and you immediately broke up with your long-term girlfriend. Your work now seems empty and meaningless to you, and you take pleasure in crushing and dismissing plans that your co-workers consider useful. You are confronting the mortality of your father. Also, you are deeply involved in a confidential business deal in Brazil. That you can tell no one about. Not even me.”

“Yes, Dr. Svante. You have summed up my situation really well. That’s just about it.”

“In the long-term,” said Dr. Svante, “it’s all about the Brazilian business deal.”

“Really?”

“Yes, the story is about Brazil.”

“But Dr. Svante, that’s the part of my story I’ve been spending the least amount of my time on. I mean, sure, I have some business interests there in Brazil. But I’m not upset about Brazil. Brazil isn’t breaking my heart, Brazil isn’t driving me crazy. Brazil is far away. Brazil has nothing to do with anything.”

“That is a mistake. I would strongly urge you to consider the long-term implications of Brazil. While you are preoccupied with your domestic difficulties, the signifiers of massive change are in Brazil. Brazil has radically expanded its diplomatic corps. Brazil has become the world’s fourth-largest military exporter. Brazil is lobbying against intellectual property in the WIPO and Brazil is lobbying for a place on a reformed UN Security Council. These are legitimate aims on the part of Brazil. These are sensible things that a superpower of the future would do.”

“I haven’t been following futuristic Brazilian developments,” said Gavin, sheepishly. “I can’t see what that has to do with my problems.”

“That’s why you will be blindsided from that direction. You are obsessing with your personal circumstances and failing to look ahead! For a client that is permissible, for a Futurist, that is a flaw! You have to lift your eyes to the horizon! You have to ask yourself: what kind of world am I creating with this engagement with Brazil?”

“I’ve been too worried about my engagement with my girlfriend. I mean, with Madeleine.”

“That is a problem about two women,” chided Dr. Svante. “Brazil has eighty-five million women. Brazil does not exist for your personal benefit. Brazil will not let your future alone.”

“Well, when you put it that way...”

“A young man’s romantic failures are an episode. You need to find a different partner. A woman who does not merely attract you as a man, but can share your aims and help you steer your life in your chosen direction. You will need to be patient about that. There are not many such women in our world. If you marry in haste, you will repent at leisure.”

“I’ve heard that said. That’s a very Futurist thing to say.”

“I married when I was forty-five.”

“Um, yeah.”

“You need to concentrate, you need to focus,” said Dr. Svante, leaning back in his Swedish bentwood desk chair. “You are miserable today. You are useless to anyone. Disengage from your daily affairs. The time has come for you to study the deeper topics, the topics of lasting importance. I mean philosophy. Study reality, Gavin. Put aside your emotional confusion. Engage with the great intellectual works of world civilization. The works mankind has written, about the bedrock of reality.”

“All right,” said Gavin, undaunted. “Since you say so, I’ll do that.” This was indeed the counsel he had asked for. It might be hard penance — karma — but it felt like something he deserved.

“Learn about human doubt and uncertainty. Learn how we humans know what we do know about our world. All Futurists have to plumb that sea, eventually. This is your opportunity. I will send you a proper reading list. Go to your beautiful Seattle Public Library designed by Rem Koolhaas, and read philosophy books.”

Gavin had to voice a doubt. “I’m not sure I have the mental gift to tackle the world’s truly deep thinkers... I mean, I had to read some of that ‘postmodernity’ stuff in Princeton, and...”

“Never mind that. You will find that all the truly serious philosophers are in as much emotional distress as yourself. That is the ‘consolation of philosophy.’ Go to a place where you can be alone. Go, and find your authenticity. If you live to be my age, young man, you will live another sixty-one years. This world will not vanish while you look within yourself.”

“Right. Thank you so much, Dr. Svante, for telling me that.”

Having sought out counsel and received it, Gavin did his best to follow his mentor’s advice. He went to the handsome Seattle Public Library and ignored the large stacks of romance and science fiction. Instead, he checked out an ominous, looming stack of dense, important nonfictional tomes about the real reality of real reality. Then, he called in sick at work. Gavin had plenty of sick-time at Cook, Bishop and Engleman, because Gavin never called in sick.

He bought a hotplate and some boxes of his favorite macaroni and cheese.

Then, he threw his phone and his computer out of his bedroom. He locked and bolted his bedroom door.

There was no reason for him to leave his house to complete his spiritual work, Gavin thought. The old Tremaine mansion was roomy. Twenty Tremaines could have lived in the place. The place had once housed twenty people, in fact, if you counted all the servants and the in-laws.

His own home was the best place to look into the Abyss.

The Abyss, immediately, looked back into him. The Abyss was very, very interested in Gavin Tremaine.

Until abandoning romance and tackling philosophy, Gavin hadn’t realized that the Abyss was part of reality. He had figured the world for a practical, businesslike affair, made mostly of solid objects.

He’d known in a vague, handwaving way that real, solid objects were made of atoms. And atoms were made of particles. If you messed around way down at the quantum particle level, then ‘reality’ got a little weird. Dr. Svante had recommended a couple of cogent books on the state of modern research there.

It turned out that Gavin’s layman’s notions about the true nature of ultimate reality were thirty years out of date. In the twenty-first century, scientists had discovered all kinds of additional kinky weirdness about quantumness. For instance, science had recently established that atoms could be teleported across China. Real stuff, atoms, material reality, vanishing, and showing up kilometers away.

That was real, true physics, but genuine physical reality got much worse that that. There were two places on Earth where serious people were supposed to tackle the ultimate nature of matter. One was under some mountains in Switzerland, and the other was in rural Texas.

The attempt in Texas had completely failed. After blowing eleven billion dollars, it was lying in a hot sun covered with Texan dewberry briars. The American quest for the ultimate “God Particle” was a complete, total, scandalous disaster. No scientist even breathed the words “Superconducting Super Collider” any more. The SSC was the biggest boondoggle in the history of physical investigation. Total American reality failure. The “Desertron of the Real.”

The other ultimate-reality machine was even older than the Desertron. It was called CERN, or the “Center for European Research Nuclear,” except they never used the word “Nuclear” there any more, because the word “nuclear” in Europe had become politically incorrect. The dirty nuclei of atoms were something that decent people in Europe didn’t want to confront.

The upshot was that this Space Age high-tech showpiece was a European haunted castle. CERN was an eerie Gothic maze of endless secret tunnels and colossal stone dungeons. The Europeans had megatons of eldritch, rotting, duct-taped, scientific hardware jammed in their Gothic Castle of Reality.

The Europeans would not give up on CERN, because the Europeans were huge on heritage castles. Also, there was nothing Europeans loved better than impossible multinational bureaucracies. But there wasn’t much ultimate metaphysical reality coming out of CERN. Maybe one thin trickle of European reality.

This left String Theory and Dark Matter. These powerful ideas were also concerned with ultimate “reality.” They were completely different scientific concepts, yet united in some awful, incestuous way.

They were horrible, brain-warping theories. Maybe the worst theories ever thought up by mankind.

String Theory was what happened to science when you didn’t have physical evidence, but plenty of math. So, you just started pushing the math around, to see wherever the math would go. With enough String Theorists publishing, mathematics would go into all kinds of freaky places. Places like seventeen dimensions rolled up into vibrating cosmic tubes that were too small to detect.

Yes, that sort of “physical reality.” Way too much of it. Then, there was the associated Dark Matter theory of reality. Dark Matter wasn’t really about “darkness” or “matter.” The normal stuff that people called “matter,” and the lack of normal light that people called “darkness,” these were very small parts of the extremely abnormal and scary Dark Matter Reality.

Everything that was material, everything that could be seen, or touched, or tasted, or loved, or kissed, all that good-old-fashioned “real” stuff, was four percent of the universe. The rest of the universe, the vast majority of the universe, was made of two kinds of awesome nonstuff: Dark Energy and Dark Matter. The minor stuff that human beings lived in, loved on, wasn’t real. Not compared to them, the two great Cosmic Darknesses.

If most of the Universe was a dark Abyss, then the Abyss was all the real action. The non-Abyss, left over for material beings like himself, attractive Italian Futurist witches and so forth, was the measly three or four percent that a major corporation would grant for an arts budget.

Gavin was tempted to throw up his hands and simply ignore the stark truth of reality. But, the whole point of his retreat was to not ignore the stark truth any longer. The plan was to abandon all romantic illusion and come to firm grips with the real. He was supposed to mature himself and to steady himself. In order to get over his failed marriage proposal. In order to forget his broken Italian romance.

The Abyss was definitely helping with this failed marriage proposal. The very idea of grown-up decency and marital stability in a world with this description — that idea was laughable.

The Abyss did not help him much with Farfalla Corrado. The Abyss made every bitter loss much more intense. Gavin no longer peeked into his computer to moon over searched Internet photos of “Farfalla Corrado.” Farfalla wasn’t famous and there weren’t that many photos of her for him to find. Gavin had looked at them so often that each of them was burned in his memory.

The pictures that hurt him most were some model-shots on FlickR that a minor Milanese fashion photographer had taken when Farfalla was eighteen. Because the teenage Farfalla was so young, and so brave, and artlessly trying to look grown-up and sexy. The Farfalla he had met six years later was a smart cookie. A smart cookie turning into a burnt cookie. A brittle, burning, hard-eyed cookie,crumbing around the edges.

He could see the difference those six years had made to her. He could see the trend-line there. He hadn’t seen that reality before. Now, he saw it. He knew it.

A cookie that was not his problem. Not at all. Not even of his world. Abyss.

Gavin had a real world. He had to fit into that world. Somehow. It was hard to imagine what a man could do to “fit in” with a world that was Abyss.

By the third day of his intellectual sojourn, Gavin’s studies had begun to prey on his mind. He ignored the polite and timid knockings of his mother and the plantive yells of his sister (because he had firmly explained to them that they had to leave him alone). Instead, Gavin began to lift his bed. Up and down. He needed some serious exercise in order to sleep, and the bed was the heaviest object in his bedroom.

There was something physically reassuring about prying up the foot of his bed and letting it thump back down on the old hardwood floor. The bed was real, really heavy, that was the good part. It reassured him to feel that the phantom universe could still be so heavy.

It was even better when he slithered under the bed and bench-pressed it with his arms. He hadn’t done that since his high-school days, working out for baseball. He could still do it, though. Because he was still a young guy. That was the truth about himself: he was still a young guy, with decades of life ahead. He could get back into good shape. Healthy mind in a healthy body. Nothing stopping him from doing that. A matter of will, really. A matter of setting future priorities.

He fell asleep. He had one of those anxiety nightmares. One of those where distressed reality peeled away like layers of weathered wallpaper.

He was fleeing Seattle, within this nightmare, because his life there had become untenable. Seattle was too dark, too cold, he couldn’t make a go of that life any more, and that much he understood. That much, he had decided on.

The rest of it, though, was all mixed up with the fraudulent flim-flam of dreams.

Like that scandalous dream when he was naked in public. Walking around in public, going about your dream business, and yet, you are naked to the world. Then, there are giant flashes of horrified dream-shame. Somehow, you forgot all your clothes. You’re exposed to the universe.

In this naked dream, somebody was patting his naked shoulder.

“What?” he demanded.

“Pal, what are you doing out here?”

“I’m going away,” Gavin pointed out.

“It’s three in the morning, pal. You’re not gonna get a bus for quite a while.” The guy who was speaking to him — and smiling at him, with kind concern — looked drunk. He had strange laceless shoes, glittering, silky jeans, and a baggy souvenir University sweat shirt.

This three-in-the-morning guy was a dark-haired, grinning, rather exotic-looking character. Like an Indian exchange student, or maybe more like some globalized half-breed Singaporean Chinese-Indian Seattle hipster dude. He had a puka-shell necklace and a cheesy totem bracelet, and a definite buzz on.

He was the kind of strange night-owl you might meet in suburban Seattle at three in the morning. Because it really was three in the morning.

“Do you know your address?” said Night-Owl Guy.

“Yeah,” said Gavin, and he gave it.

Night-Owl Guy stripped off his sweatshirt, and, with an easy and even elegant gesture, silently offered it up.

At this point, Gavin realized that he was really sitting in a Seattle bus stop, naked. Not in some dream bus stop, but in an actual bus stop. And not nightmare naked, either, but barefoot, tooth-chattering, and exposed to the raw elements of late November. That kind of naked.

Night-Owl was a pretty good-sized guy for a Chinese-Indian of mixed ethnicity. His baggy sweatshirt almost covered Gavin’s bare ass. Gavin’s feet were naked, and very dirty. His bare left foot was scraped and bleeding.

“We’re gonna walk you back to your house now,” advised Night-Owl. “Or at least, back to that address you just gave me. I know where that is, pal. Because this is my neighborhood.”

Gavin looked around. “This is my neighborhood, too.”

“Glad to meet you, neighbor. You know what? No matter what kind of condition we may be in, up here...” Night-Owl tapped his close-cropped head with one fingertip, meaningfully — “we’re all in this world together. So, we have to stand by one another. You know what I mean?”

“Not exactly,” said Gavin, limping after him. The sidewalks of Seattle were not designed for shoeless, naked people. Every glittering patch in the streetlights looked like broken glass.

“You ever read the work of Philip K. Dick?” asked Night-Owl.

“I don’t think so,” said Gavin.

“He was a philosopher,” advised Night-Owl. “Big literary classic writer. He’s in the Library of Modern America. You should read him. He’s got a lot to say to people of our West Coast sensibility.”

“You read books?” said Gavin.

“Sometimes, I read books,” allowed Night-Owl. “I admire the twentieth century! The twentieth century has plenty to say to us, now that it’s dead. I was just discussing this with some friends tonight. We all got drunk, and we talked about books. We all agreed that all books, when written on computers, always have the ghost of a computer in them somewhere. Now, I’m all for networks — don’t get me wrong! — but the only network that really matters is the network between the dead and the unborn.”

Gavin had nothing to say about that.

“So, this is your house?” said Night-Owl, gawking at it.

“Yes.”

“This is some kinda house you got, pal. I like these fine old places that people still keep in good condition. It looks like your house needs a moat. You should have guard dogs, or maybe guard tigers, around your house.”

“I have a guardian angel,” said Gavin.

In the morning, Gavin found the sweatshirt inverted, lying beside his bed. His feet were dirty, and his left foot was cut.

So, it wasn’t safe for him to stay in his house any more. Time to give that up that inadequate plan. He knew of another, better place, though. A place better suited to his philosophical needs. There was a Swedish Methodist spiritual retreat in the distant forest of southeastern Washington.

Gavin hadn’t been there in fifteen years, but this retreat had always been in the back of his mind, as an ultimate asylum. A peaceful place, whose reason for being was to aid the spiritually troubled.

No harsh questions would be asked of him there. Not as long as he was sincere about his spiritual difficulties. They would take him in there. No one would throw him out.

Gavin took the bus. The Swedish Methodist spiritual retreat was very much as he remembered it from many years ago. Just a modest chapel in the woods, and some small, bare, mouse-smelling wooden cabins.

The retreat was occupied by a group of portly, scarf-wearing lesbian activists who were holding a series of formal discussions on the ordination of gays. Obviously, this was a serious matter for them. They’d had no warning at all that he would show up on foot there, after limping from the nearest bus stop.

Yet, they were completely polite and supportive. Stubbled, sweaty, male intruder though he was, he was welcome to their last GMO-free tortilla and a bowl of their cruelty-free potato salad.

So, Gavin moved into a tiny cabin. The spiritual retreat was just the same. But, the woods around it had changed. The trees in the forest had been killed. By insects. Bark beetles. The extent of the damage from these bark beetles was colossal. The green and lovely forest, which he remembered from his childhood as a Grimm’s Fairy Tale adventure, was a leafless, skeletal parade of stricken tree-ghosts.

Somehow, summer after summer, these trees had not yet caught fire. But, the trees were going to burn. Gavin knew that. They had to burn in the future, because they were dead.

Gavin walked some of the crooked forest trails that he remembered from his youth. They’d been full of jolly hikers, back in the day. Not a lot of Americans leaving the old computer couch to go out and see a dying, bug-infested wilderness. Far more attractive to update Facebook.

Insects were a reality. Insects were some cold-blooded, very statistical little guys. An advantage of two or three degrees Fahrenheit was enough to give insects an old-school dot-com boom. The bark beetles sucked the sappy life out of forests like a continental horde of bedbugs. And they’d done that years ago, while nobody realized... The future of the American West was already here, and the bad news just hadn’t been distributed.

So, this retreat was a perfect place for Gavin to forget all about love and romance, and confront stark metaphysics. Not just some scientific physics, like before, but metaphysics. Metaphysics was the age-old story of how people really knew what reality was. Metaphysics was hermeneutics and ontology.

The first thing to understand about metaphysics was that it was all about what people knew about reality. People. More to the point, metaphysics was about what writers knew about reality. Metaphysics that wasn’t published wasn’t even in the game.

Since bark beetles didn’t write much, they weren’t considered metaphysical competitors. Although beetles had killed more trees in two years than two millennia of the Dialogues of Plato.

Nobody had ever given those busy bark beetles a word-in. None of ‘em: Kant, Hume, Berkley, Karl Popper...

Maybe Richard Rorty. To be fair. Yet another dead philosopher, Richard Rorty, and pretty upset about everybody else’s lame, lousy metaphysics. But, Rorty was so righteously upset about a world of injustice and oppression that it was hard to stop reading him. Gavin kind of got Richard Rorty. Gavin was getting the bracing feeling that, yes, there were certain things going on in wiser minds that he had overlooked. Things that taught him good lessons about his own ignorance.

There would come a day, in some remote day of his future life, when this trial of metaphysics would help him. It might be thirty years or even fifty years from today. But, there would be a day, of some obscure struggle, some misty conflict of intellectual armies by night, when Gavin Tremaine was going to whip out and lay down some ontological hermeneutics. That would be the act of a gentleman. A scholar and a civilized man.

Gavin was still knee-deep in metaphysics — hip-deep even — when Eliza surprised him at his studies.

He hadn’t known Eliza was coming to visit him. He hadn’t thought about Eliza in quite a while. He certainly hadn’t expected to meet anyone in a forest, dressed in boots, gloves, a toque, and a hot pink tropical dashiki.

“What are you doing here, Eliza?” he said.

“When are you going to stop it with the philosophy?” Eliza demanded. “When are you going to come home? It’s almost Christmas! It’s time for the holidays now!”

“I’ll come home once I’ve got life all figured out.”

“You win,” said Eliza. “Please don’t do this to us any more. Please, please come home, Gavin. Dad says you can marry anyone you want.”

“So,” said Gavin, rubbing his chin. “What’s this all about?”

“Our pastor told us where you were,” Eliza admitted. “We had to have a family-crisis counselling session.”

“Why is that?” said Gavin. They began walking together, back toward the cabins, under the leafless, bug-infested trees.

“The pastor said it wasn’t your fault. He said we should look within our own hearts-- Dad and me. We were wrong to do what we did to you. We relied on you too much! It’s because you were always there for us, that’s why! We knew you were upset. We could see that. We knew you were acting strangely, but... When we started opening up — about all the terrible psychological pressure we were putting on you — we all wanted to die of shame.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Gavin. “What are you babbling on about? I wasn’t complaining.”

“It was always about what we wanted! It was always about what we needed. We never offered you any emotional support! Nothing but scolding and ranting from Dad, and from me... All those immature things I did, and I said, when you were just trying to help me...” Eliza wiped at her reddened eyes with a Thinsulate hiking glove. “What if you died? What if you never came back to us? It’s the worst!”

“Look, it’s only been a few weeks, a month maybe, you know? Philosophy is hard work! I’m only just now getting into Alfred North Whitehead.”

“But it’s been forever! We were sure you were dead! Not a word, not a whisper, not an SMS, not an email... it’s been awful! Dad talks about nothing else! If he loses you, if he loses his only son! What else does he have, he has nothing! He says he’s sorry. He never said that before.”

“What did Mom say about all this?” said Gavin.

“What?”

“You guys, and your big family-crisis... Did Mom say anything about Dad’s health problems? Did Mom intervene? Did Mom come out of his shadow? Did Mom stop worshipping every thing he does? Did Mom do anything?Did Mom assert herself as a person? Did Mom finally raise her voice and speak up for herself... Wait. Did Mom even go?”

“Why would Mom go to a counseling session? Mom is great! Mom is always great. It was just me and Dad.”

“Oh,” said Gavin. “So, well, how are you doing, then, Eliza?”

“Well, I’ve been super-worried about you. I’m very upset. You’re messing up my birthday party plans and everything. You said that you would help me with my party budget. Remember?”

“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 Cupid. 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 him — 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.

It was not prudent to plunge into a complex situation when one was poorly prepared. Gavin chose to do this anyway — to plunge into Brazil. Because of Farfalla Corrado, of course. She had left him with no better course of action. He was doing something crazy, but it was much crazier to stay in Seattle and confront Farfalla Corrado, with clouds of dry-ice pouring off of her, radiating occult fatality.

Gavin endured his twenty-five-hour planetary trip. Seattle-Atlanta, Atlanta-Sao Paolo. This was a long, dreamy, mind-numbing excursion. An endless flight, among an oxygen-starved crowd of people, exposed to an endless number of romantic comedy movies.

During his day-long trip, strapped into a tourist seat, like a victim meant for slaughter, Gavin had time to think about important issues in his life. The battery of his laptop had run out, and without the Internet to distract him, he was forced to meditate.

Gavin thought about the issue of marriage. He also thought a lot about sex, because young men who were strapped down and unable to move had wandering thoughts. But mostly, yes, he thought about marriage.

Sex was not a mystery to Gavin, because he had enjoyed a lot of it, but marriage was truly a mystery. Gavin had always wanted to participate in a serious, full-scale marriage ceremony. Elaborate, formal and huge. With costumes, music, and crowds.

But why? It had never occurred to him to ask himself why.

During his twenty-five hours stuck in his tight airline seat, an answer slowly emerged for Gavin. Marriage appealed to him because marriage was a mystical experience. That was why he desired it. A marriage ceremony transcended rationality, practicality, or common sense. Marriage was all about mystery. The sacramental mystery of men and women.

A marriage ceremony was an occult ritual. Marriage was a supernatural act. Divine power was directly invoked, during a marriage ceremony. A living, mortal man and woman were publicly welded into one flesh. Sacred emblems were exchanged. The man and woman exchanged holy vows. Stern, absolute vows of life and death.

Marriage was not modern. Marriage was colossally ancient. Marriage was vast, pagan, and reverential.

This was why the marriage ceremony spoke to Gavin Tremaine. This was why the idea of marriage comforted him. This was why his existence as a man was incomplete without marriage. He could persist for a mortal lifetime without marriage, but he would be outside the vast narrative flow of his ancestry and his posterity. A world without marriage would be like a world without angels, or water, or the Moon.

And yet, he was denied this experience. Where was it to be found?

Gavin departed the plane in Sao Paolo. He cleared customs, rented a cellphone, exchanged dollars for Brazilian reals, and found a taxi.

The taxi was immediately snarled in choking traffic. It was not a gloomy Seattle winter here in Sao Paulo. Here in Brazil, it was summertime. He was in the Southern Hemisphere, so the seasons were upside down.

Gavin arrived at a hotel.

Gavin opened his luggage. In his frantic retreat from Seattle, he had packed more or less at random. His rolling luggage held a strange heap of Gavin Tremaine’s personal clutter.

Why had these peculiar objects followed him around the planet? Aspirin pills. Triple-A batteries. Seattle house keys that he couldn’t possibly use here. Thumb drives. Many small, persistent, go-anywhere objects. Objects like insects.

Gavin ventured into the Brazilian streets outside his hotel. He had known that Sao Paolo would be hot and crowded. He hadn’t imagined the amazing scale of the city. It was beyond colossal.

Sao Paolo had skyscrapers growing like dandelions. Blazing summer sunlight over chaotic traffic. Chuttering helicopters in the pallid, sooty sky.

The twenty-first century had nine billion people crowding it. Sao Paolo was part of that world already.

Some woman in the street ahead was yelling at a taxi driver in Portuguese. Just shrieking at him, furious, tearing into the guy. She had rolling luggage, a big Italian hat with a ribbon, and big Italian sunglasses.

The taxi driver was cowed by her tirade, and when Gavin arrived at the woman’s side — large, male, foreign and scowling — the taxi driver was terrified of him.

“You’re a thief,” Gavin told the driver in English. “You tried to rip her off. You’ll never manage that, pal, not with her. Beat it.”

The driver fled.

Farfalla pulled off her straw hat and wiped sweat from her brow.

“You look cute, baby,” Gavin told her. “You look great with short, curly hair. Those are cool sunshades.”

“I cut my hair to come home,” Farfalla sighed. “It’s too hot to wear long hair in the summer.”

“Just get into town?” said Gavin tenderly. “For the Futurist conference?”

“I’m avoiding the Futurist conference,” said Farfalla. She took off her sunshades and gave him a serpentine glare. “Of course, I knew that you would be there at that conference, instead of Seattle. You are supposed to be in Seattle.”

“I knew you would be at the big futurist conference here, too,” said Gavin. “That’s why I’m also avoiding it.”

“I am so jet-lagged,” lamented Farfalla. “I drank too much bad wine on that plane. I always forget how hot it is, here at home! Nobody knows I am here in Brazil. I have no money! I’m broke. I fought with everybody. I hate everything. I hate my life. I’m such a mess.” She sighed from the depths of her soul. “But, I have it. I got it. At last, it is mine.”

“You have what, Farfalla?”

“I have the bronze statue. I found the Cosmic Cupid. No one thought I could get it. I got it. I put my hands on it, and I carried it off with me. The Cosmic Cupid is here in this travel bag.”

“Oh,” said Gavin, gazing at her bag. “So you pulled off your mystery quest after all, huh? Good for you.” Farfalla’s bag was huge, cheap, Chinese, plastic, and bilious yellow. It was the kind of bag a street vendor in Naples might sell in some slum for ten euros. It was phony and anonymous, and it said SMASONNITE in phony Chinese knock-off lettering. It was a brand-new bag, yet it was already kicked, scratched and dented.

“You got the Cosmic Cupid through all the security scans?” Gavin said. “They let you get a bronze art statue through customs?”

“I smuggled it here,” Farfalla said. “Now that I’m safe in Brazil, I know many good ways to smuggle. I have many friends in Sao Paolo. Very old friends, my oldest friends.”

“So, you really have the Cosmic Cupid in your possession,” mused Gavin. “It exists! I mean, it genuinely exists as a physical, bronze, solid object!”

“It wasn’t easy to do,” said Farfalla.

“I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”

“I had to work so hard,” mourned Farfalla. “I never worked on anything so hard in my life. I didn’t do anything else. I never thought of anything else.” Farfalla burst into tears.

“There, there,” said Gavin, patting her jutting, Milanese-printed cotton shoulder. “You’re here, and I’m here. It is here. That’s great. Fine. I’m totally with the story. We’ll have a good look at the statue. Together. Very methodical, we’ll work out all the options. We’ll take some photographs... I’ve got notebooks.”

She looked up, wet-eyed. “You must help me with the Cosmic Cupid. You must.”

“Absolutely, I will. I promise.”

“Because you’re here in Sao Paolo.”

Gavin drew a sharp breath. “Woman, where else? Where else could I be, for God’s sake? How could I not be here? I devoted every possible effort to not meeting you! You’re supposed to be on another continent! You are supposed to be anywhere but here! Anywhere but at my side, with me, at last, here and now! And I thank God!”

Gavin lifted his face to the blazing, yellowish, polluted, tropical, urban sky. “Thank you, God! Thank you for making me happy! Forgive me for doubting Your purposes! I surrender to Your higher good! I will never ask for You another favor, God! Thank You very much.”

He reached out and snagged Farfalla’s sleeve. “Stop wandering off, Farfalla.”

“I am not wandering,” moaned Farfalla. “I’m just dizzy. Anyway, you are yelling at God in public. Stop doing that.”

“We are going to my hotel now,” he said. “It’s that hotel right over there. It’s that candy-colored eight-story stack of pancakes. Yeah, that one, that looks like it was built from Legos by a pack of termites.”

“That is your hotel?” said Farfalla, blinking.

“Yeah. Something wrong with it?”

“Only a foreigner would rent a room in that hotel. They shoot science-fiction movies in there.”

“Well, no wonder I like it. The local Futurists reserved the room for me. It’s their favorite Brazilian Futurist hotel. They even have their offices inside there.”

“Maybe it’s better than its reputation,” said Farfalla. “Let’s get out of this heat.” She squared her shoulders and took off. Gavin followed her, hefting and pulling her roll-aboard by its cheap, squeaking handle.

Farfalla heaved through the weird hotel’s rotating glass doors. They were fancy mirrorglass doors and completely disorienting. They chased and heaved and bumped and backtracked, banging into their own reflections.

Finally, they broke into the icy air-conditioning of the Futurist hotel lobby. Gavin was dazed, but Farfalla heel-clicked straight over to the bizarre kidney-shaped plastic desk. Gavin muled along behind, laden with the bag. Farfalla’s travel bag weighed a ton.

“Hello again, Mrs. Tremaine,” smiled the woman behind the desk. “Welcome back, we’ve missed you.” She passed Farfalla a square plastic room key.

“Há alguma mensagem para mim ou meu marido?” said Farfalla.

“Sim, ficamos surpresos, mas alguém deixou uma carta,” said the desk clerk.

Farfalla returned, glancing at the envelope the clerk had handed her. She ripped it up and dumped it in a chromed wastebasket. “What old-fashioned pests! Who sends us letters these days? What year do they think this is?”

They took the long-familiar path to the elevator. Farfalla punched their floor number and they rode the many floors together. Gavin casually hummed an old Beatles song under his breath. Farfalla led him down the hall, opening the door with her plastic key.

“I’m taking a shower,” she said, hanging up her straw hat. She unzipped her skirt.

“Great idea,” said Gavin, setting down the bag. “I’ll order for us.” He pulled a room-service menu off a table in the suite. “What do you want?”

“Get me the usual, baby.”

“No problem,” said Gavin, picking up the phone. He called room service and ordered lunch for two in fluent Portuguese.

Gavin sat on the bed. He picked up the flatscreen TV remote and found some Brazilian music videos. He took off his shoes and relaxed onto the bed.

Then, he gazed at the big yellow nameless bag. With It inside. Gavin had not yet opened that bag, but he found himself entirely, spiritually certain that the bag, in fact, contained the Cosmic Cupid. Not just any statue, but literally It. Gavin was not a guy given to superstition, but it was dead obvious that the thing had tremendous paranormal power.

He could feel the radiating presence of It. It was a distinct sensation, skin-creeping, hair-raising. A hard bronze sensation, oozing out of a plastic suitcase. Maybe it was shooting weird rays through his destiny. Scrambling and mutating the past and future!

Not a bad feeling, though. An exhilirating feeling. A warm, bubbling, fizzing, life-affirming feeling. If an Abyss had a volcanic hot-springs,in it, it would feel just like this. Not a fierce romantic trial, not agony. Something with the emotional fire of that, but on the far side of that. An all-enveloping warmth.

Now, he was totally feeling It.

Farfalla came out of the shower with her hair in a towel. She looked refreshed, cheerful, relaxed, and naked. She pulled back the bedcover, peeled the sheets, and plumped the pillows with a wifely, critical look. Then, she hopped into the bed.

“Room service says thirty minutes,” he told her.

She nodded and lifted her arms. “That’s enough time, come on!”

Gavin undressed. He walked to the window and peered down thirty stories. Such an interesting town. A total urban jungle of wild South American skyscrapers out there. The oversized green trees that lined the boulevards were like sidewalk weeds. He pulled the curtain shut.

They got into bed and made love. Then, they slipped on plush hotel bathrobes. Room service knocked at the door with a trolley.

“This is such a good bauru, baby,” said Farfalla, chowing down with a grin. “There’s just nothing like showing up, first thing, back here in town, and getting exactly what you want from life! It’s just so satisfying!”

“That soupbowl is feijoada,” Gavin pointed out. “I told ‘em to double the garlic for you.”

Farfalla sampled some carne de sol with her sharp little teeth. “It’s all so fantastic! This is my favorite hotel! That bathroom décor is a little too Lina Bo Bardi, but the service in this sci-fi joint is terrific! I couldn’t be more cozy. We should bring the kids here, next time.”

Gavin sipped his beer. “This evening, if you’re not too tired, I was thinking... we whip on over to the MASP. Get in some of that modern art you always like.”

“That is so thoughtful,” said Farfalla, scratching the mark of the brassiere-line under her left breast. She yawned like a shark. “Madonna! Good food and sex make me so sleepy! I’ll have a little jet-lag nap-time now, and then I’ll be fine for later.”

“You have at it,” nodded Gavin. He closed the drapes and turned down the lamp.

Farfalla woke in half an hour, with a heavy sigh. “So, what time is it now?” she said, dazedly.

“Oh, it’s around three.”

“What year is it?”

“What year?”

“Yes, what year is this?”

Gavin leaned across the little work-table and opened his laptop. “Mr. Softie here seems to be having some trouble with his system clock. Must be the jet-lag.”

Farfalla climbed naked out of bed and joined him at the table. “You opened my suitcase.”

“Well, yeah. I had to. I had to take a look at the Cosmic Cupid. How could I not? No real choice about It. I couldn’t stop myself.”

“But, I locked that suitcase.”

“That’s not much of a lock, Farfalla. A Boy Scout could pick that lock.” Gavin gazed at the winged, divine statue. “I should have known that It would look like this. Somehow.”

“The statue is not in very good condition,” Farfalla admitted. “Not any more.”

“I didn’t mean that part. I just would have thought a Cosmic Cupid would be more... Cupid-looking.”

“He was a painter, and she was a novelist. I think maybe something went wrong with their bronze statue mold.”

Gavin rotated the statue in his hands. “It looks so abstract and eccentric! This statue sort of looks like… Like some Futurist abstract-dynamism piece... But they made it way before the Futurists came along. How can this thing looks so... supersonic?”

“I’m glad that it’s not ‘pretty,’” said Farfalla, climbing into a fresh pair of underwear. “The ‘Cosmic Cupid’ is not like a pretty cherub.”

“Yeah. I can’t stand those pretty cherubs. I know exactly what you mean.”

“It does look ‘cosmic,’” said Farfalla. “I mean, if you think of ‘formless chaos’ as being ‘cosmic.’”

“Right again. You put your finger on it.”

“I did a lot of occult research about the ‘Cosmic Cupid,’” said Farfalla, knitting her finely plucked brows. She shrugged into an Italian brassiere. “I had to go to Milan and buy fifteen books in my favorite Esoterica Supermarket.”

“No kidding,” said Gavin.

Farfalla flounced onto the bed to step into her hose. “Most occultists say to us,” Farfalla announced, “that Cupid is the son of Venus and Vulcan. Venus and Vulcan are ‘Love’ and ‘Technology.’ Cupid is their son.”

“’Love’ was married to ‘Technology’?” Gavin rubbed his chin in wonderment. “Hey, I’m a married guy myself, and I never knew that.”

Farfalla smiled. “But, there was always one cult of pagans, who believed a very different thing. They believed that Cupid was the greatest God of all. The almighty God. It was Cupid who created the Cosmos. And Cupid created the Cosmos with a male and female duality.”

“Men and women have two different universes? That is some kind of story,” said Gavin. “Those pagan cultists must have had some hot wedding feasts.”

“It makes you wonder what people would do,” Farfalla said, finding a blouse, “if we all believed that Love was the only, true, divine power.”

Gavin examined the winged bronze statue in the light of the desk lamp. He lifted his small tourist camera and took a few careful pictures.

“You know,” he said, “I think... I think maybe you and I need to make very sure that we keep our hands on this sacred idol.”

“I was thinking the very same thing,” said Farfalla. “I wanted to ship it to that old professor in Virginia because, she said she would give me a lot of money for it, or at least a big reward. But, I think about that now, and I’m think why? Why would I ever do that?” Farfalla stepped into a skirt. “After all that effort I put into getting my claws on this thing? Some nutty romance writer is supposed to get the creation of another nutty romance writer? That’s not what this is about. This is powerful.”

“I would worry,” said Gavin crisply, “about what this very powerful sacred icon might do in the hands of the wrong people. I mean, it could warp reality. Especially, in the hands of people who lack our... uniquely foresightful qualities.”

“That is so true,” nodded Farfalla. “I never thought about that part, but obviously, you’re right.” He looked into her face. “What are we to do, Farfalla? I mean, this matter is serious. We need to be responsible.”

“Maybe,” Farfalla suggested, “we should hide it from everybody. And take care of it, very privately. As our special secret. We tell just a few people, or, well, maybe not anyone. Just you and me, baby. Forever after, like we said at our wedding.”

“That’s a very sweet thing to say, but I’m feeling a little weird about keeping this statue here in a hotel room,” said Gavin. “It’s not practical, it doesn’t make sense. I love this Futurist hotel, but... what if Brazilian intelligence agents decided to search our room? I mean, that door lock is just a cheap computer chip. Those clerks downstairs can make thousands of pass-cards.”

“We should put the Cosmic Cupid in the hotel safe, maybe?” said Farfalla, bright-eyed with sudden worry.

“Same issue there, really,” said Gavin. “This hotel has a safe — but why is the safe, ‘safe’ from the hotel itself?”

“Oh my God! You always have such a smart way of putting things!” said Farfalla, jumping to her feet. “What if we lost the statue, like everyone else lost it? We would never forgive ourselves!”

“You’re right,” Gavin agreed. “We really have to think this through logically. Let me get my notebook.”

“Gavin, you would never believe who had this statue in the past hundred years! I know the Church had It. I know that the Mafia had It.”

“Very interesting,” nodded Gavin. “Maybe they had some kind of rental time-share.”

Farfalla found her slender heritage wristwatch, examined its face, shook it limply and held it to her ear. “You won’t believe how clever I was to find it.”

“Cookie, trust me, I believe every word of how clever you are.”

“First, I had to scan all the old American photographs in that Capri museum,” said Farfalla, putting her watch aside. “You wouldn’t believe how much sexy nudity there was in those hundred-year-old pictures.”

“You don’t say,” said Gavin, raising his brows.

“Which shoes should I wear? These, or these?”

“Wear the sexier ones,” Gavin judged.

“She was the wife of a painter,” Farfalla said. “So, even though she was a novelist, he always needed a model. His wife was just sitting there writing her novels. So they made a hundred nudes. Maybe a thousand. Everybody always says they will clean up the old photographs. But people get busy, they get bored.”

“They had photographs of the...” Gavin inclined his head sideways. “It?”

“Oh yes. Many pictures with It.”

“Nude photographs with It?”

“Those were no use to me,” said Farfalla, slipping into her shoes. “I had to use the photographs where I could identify the locations. The locations from a hundred years ago.”

“A location-sensitive photo-sharing service on the Web?” Gavin suggested.

“FlickR.”

“Great minds think alike,” nodded Gavin. “You are the Internet witch-queen.”

“The collective intelligence in FlickR found the locations for me,” said Farfalla, “but that was just the start of my quest. That part was easy. For the rest, I had to suffer.”

“Cookie, you’re always ‘suffering.’”

Farfalla thought this over. “Yes. I guess I am. I love you and I’m happy with our marriage, but I do have a dark side. I’m Cassandra, I suffer, I worry, I fret. I can’t let it go.”

Gavin rooted around in his shoulder-bag. “’Sottozero,’” he told her.

Farfalla smiled.

“Less ‘suffering,’ cookie, and more Sottozero supervanilla. Sottozero Brazilian-Italian ice-cream gelato. Two scoops in a big waffle cone. Just for my little darling.”

He deftly produced a laptop security cable. Gavin slid the cable through the leg of a bed, through a hole in the tarnished bulk of the Cosmic Cupid, and into the security slot of his laptop. He slid the entire bulk under the bed and disguised it by smoothing the bedspread.

“That’ll do for now,” he said. “Practical problem solved. Let’s go.”

They strolled, tenderly, arm in arm, to the hotel elevator. They shuttled down the floors.

Farfalla’s brow wrinkled as the number-lights flashed by. She looked up at him. “Gavin, do you love me?”

“What?”

“What we just did. In the bed. Do you even like me?”

“Baby, I still don’t get it.”

“My body! I gave you my body! In bed.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Your ‘body’? You don’t even have ‘a body.’ That was my body. Mine, mine, mine.”

The elevator doors opened. They walked across the chilly golden gilt of the hotel lobby. The female desk clerk gave Farfalla a womanly, hateful stare. So. Sleazy girl. Up in the room with that American tourist. I hope he paid you well.

Farfalla stopped in her tracks. She grabbed at Gavin’s arm. She looked up at him in panic.

“Sometimes,” Gavin admitted. “I’m a little slow to catch on. What the hell just happened to us?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“It’s that cosmic thing up there,” said Gavin. “What is with that statue? What a trick of fate!”

Farfalla began to sob.

“Did we just have sex together with that statue of Cupid in our room? Oh my god we did!”

Farfalla wailed in dismay.

“I was calling you ‘cookie’ when I was up there,” Gavin mused. “I never called you ‘cookie’ before.”

“What do you mean?” said Farfalla, staring up at him.

“’Cookie,’ you know, a cookie is like ‘biscotti.’ It’s a sweet handy thing that you eat.”

“That doesn’t sound very dignified,” sniffed Farfalla.

“You don’t like being my ‘cookie’?”

“I never thought about it,” said Farfalla. “I never heard you say ‘cookie’ to me before.” She thought it over. “It sounds so funny... I think I like it! Yes, I love being your ‘cookie.’”

“You know what?” said Gavin. “I think I know what happened just now! We experienced our future. We were living in the future, up there, just then. I mean, just now. In the past, whatever. Because that was us, the two of us, maybe eight or ten years in our future. In a hotel room, as married people. You were my wife, and I think we even had kids! And of course, we had sex. It was sweet. It was easy. I loved it! It was just what I like.”

Farfalla scowled. “You found me in the street here, and you took me up to your hotel room, and then, you had sex with me.”

“Get over yourself, cookie. You were on top.”

Farfalla stared at the carpet and glowered.

“Stop that! Knock it off with that shame and blame story, stop doing that,” said Gavin. “I refuse to feel bad about us being married and loving each other! You know what? We have had a prophetic vision! Us, both of us, together, as a couple! We were granted a vision of futurity! And you know what else? We were happy in our vision. In our future, we were living happily ever after. In our future, we were together and happy, and that’s true, and I know that is true.”

“It felt true… I don’t know. It’s too strange to be good.”

“But it was true! I mean, sure, maybe we were kind of busy in our lives, obviously, we were up to some business together… But that was us, that was really and truly us. We were living together as a happy married couple.”

“Why is this happening ? It’s scary! I don’t like it.”

“Well, you’re the one who dragged the Cosmic Cupid from Italy to Brazil. That Cosmic Cupid has the mojo, cookie. The Cosmic Cupid is bigger than both of us.”

“It is like a curse.”

“I’m thinking that its curse is more like a promise,” said Gavin. “On some deep level of philosophy, maybe every promise is a curse, but since I just experienced this great vision... Well, I believe in my vision. I’m a man, and it’s my vision! I’m a man and I am willing to work for my vision. My beautiful vision! My vision of happiness with the only woman I love!” His face was alight.

“But what about me?” sulked Farfalla. “That is your stupid, man’s, happy love story! Where is my romance story? Where is my Big Kiss? Where are my magic words from my One?”

“Oh, come on, not that old business again.”

“But, that is my story! Where are my fireworks and my ecstasies? I’m in a hotel room with some guy and I had sex with him with a wet towel on my head!”

“Oh, come on, relax! You looked cute.”

“We didn’t even use any protection!”

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Whoa. That could get a little weird.”

Farfalla’s eyes went round. “Are you sick? Do you have syphilis, herpes, AIDS?”

“Look, knock it off with that, Cassandra! Just stop that right now! Put the kibosh on the mourning and panicking! You always see the future in the worst possible light!” Gavin rubbed his chin, guiltily. “Although... Yeah. There should have been a lot more violins and mood music for the first time we ever made love. Where is our first kiss? That wasn’t our first kiss, obviously. Those kisses up there were like our millionth kisses. What gives with that? That’s kind of messed-up! Should I apologize to you? I’m confused.”

Gavin turned on his heel. “Let’s go right back to our hotel room right now, and try that all over again. Let’s try it again from the beginning.”

“No! We can’t do that! It is up there.”

“That’s true, but... whoa. Why did we ever leave that room in the first place? We’ll never get back to that future time and space where we’re happy and married... Not unless we... Wait a minute. How did we get up there in the first place?”

“I’m afraid of your hotel room! It has a magic idol in it with paranormal powers.”

“Well, we have to go back to our own room at some point. I mean, all our travel stuff is in that room. Our passports are there.”

“That’s not my room, that’s your room. I didn’t come to Sao Paulo to sleep with you in a hotel room.”

“Well you did, and it was great. Why did we ever leave?”

“You said you would get me a Sottozero supervanilla.”

“What is that?” said Gavin.

“It’s this very sweet, nice... never mind, come on, I’ll show you.”

They left the Futurist hotel. They walked down the tree-lined avenida, and entered a mercado. Farfalla spoke to the gelato vendor at his glassy case. She bought them two waffle-cones.

Farfalla took a few well-considered licks. “I just can’t be unhappy when I eat a supervanilla,” she said. “They just make life so good! I used to eat these when I was five years old!”

“They’re okay if you like sweets,” said Gavin, shaking melted ice cream from his fingers.

“I feel much better now,” Farfalla admitted. “I can’t even say that I’m sorry that I had sex with you. I mean, at least that part is over and done now! Now that I’m your girlfriend, I can face the future. I’ve betrayed Pancrazio. Also, your beautiful blonde ex-girlfriend is my enemy forever. And also, you have to tell your family all about me now. Also, I may be pregnant.”

“You really are a handful,” said Gavin.

“What?”

“Even my goddamn vanilla ice cream has a cloud of black pepper when you are around!” Gavin lifted a forestalling hand. “Never mind, never mind! I’m sure after five or six years of being your guy, this will become second-nature to me.”

“Anything would be all right, if you were my One. But Gavin, you’re not my One. You can’t be. The real One would have told me his special words before any of this ever happened to me.”

Gavin’s sweating face began to redden in the summer heat. He looked from side to side in the jostling sidewalk crowd. “Look,” he said, “I love you and it’s great that we’re really together now, but let’s get one thing straight, between you and me, now and forever, okay? It doesn’t matter to me if I am your One. I don’t want to be your One. That’s not what my story’s about! I don’t believe I am this One guy, and I’ve heard too much of him from you, and I’m starting to get mad at him! It’s insulting that you keep comparing me to him! You think there’s some sacred guy in your broom closet who’s gonna put up with all your witchy crap? He doesn’t exist!”

“He exists here in Sao Paulo,” said Farfalla, boldly. “This is the town where they told me that my One existed. He is real. He is as real as we are.”

“So, what am I supposed to do about that? This magic fairy creep of yours! Am I suppose to just hand you over to him? There’s no way! I’m going to kick his ass. I’m going to break his tiny magic elf bones.”

“You can’t do that. Because he is my fate. I belong to him, because he is the One I truly love.”

“You don’t love me, then?”

“Well,” said Farfalla slowly, “of course this feels like it’s love, and I feel very happy with you, but if you are not my One, then there must be some other kind of love. Not the love we have, but more like the love in grand operas.”

“That sure figures,” Gavin said. “I always knew that you were Italian, but I didn’t know you were Italian. Look, I don’t want some crazy stage diva in my life! No sobbing, screaming, snake-handing sorceress! My spouse should sort my socks!”

Farfalla blinked.

“I can’t believe I just said something so poetic,” said Gavin, pulling at his lower lip. “I never talk like that to anybody else but you. I’m growing by this experience. It really opens emotional doors.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“When I said that, that was just like my speech in Capri,” said Gavin. “I never make speeches like that! Not by myself. You see, that proves something. Even if I’m not the man of your fate — because I’m not like, this, rainbow fairy, romantic wimp you are destined to be with — well, whenever we’re together, we’ve got one king-hell future. That is the truth. Maybe you and I don’t exactly get along all the time, but we can sure totally wreak havoc on other people. When we are together, we can break clocks and turn this world right on its head.”

“It’s true that you can make a very strong speech when you want to,” said Farfalla. “I believe you. I am almost forced to believe you.”

“We should stay together, Farfalla. Not just for my sake, or your sake, but because — we have paranormal power. I have some insight, and you have some foresight, but when we’re together, we have terrific power. We should look after each other. It would be wrong for us to part, and look for other people to love us. That would be immoral and bad. Because you and I could easily make two innocent people very, very unhappy.”

“In other words,” said Farfalla, “I should sleep with you, even if you’re not the man I truly love.”

Gavin shrugged. “Yeah. I guess that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Men are the worst.”

“Look, we’re both being stupid now, because we both know, in the future, we’re happy!” Gavin said. “I don’t want to stand here bickering with you! Time will prove me right, and in the meantime, I have a business meeting lined up today. I came here to Sao Paulo to work!”

“You’re working today?”

“Why not? You’re not supposed to be here, so of course I planned to work. I planned a meeting with one of my father’s associates. He’s some weird, old geezer from my dad’s days at Boeing — but I told him that I could meet him tonight. It’s a courtesy call on a family friend. I need to do it.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“You don’t have to. He’s speaks perfect English.”

“You have to go. You have to leave me. In the street like this.”

“Why is that my fault? You are supposed to be in Seattle! With your boyfriend, the Italian super-geek! I just made up this meeting with this Brazilian industrialist, so I’d have something to do here in the wrong side of the world! I mean, sure — there’s that big Futurist conference going on over in the Hotel Valor Econômico. But there’s no way I’m going over there.”

“I am coming with you,” said Farfalla, narrowing her eyes. “But later, boy, you have to come with me.”

“Okay. Sure. Great.”

“I came here to work, too. So I want to show you to old friends of mine. My special friends. In a special place.” Farfalla drew a breath. “Their world is not like the silly world of yours. They live in the favela. It’s poor. It’s violent. It’s dangerous.”

“Hey, witch-girl, I am totally cool with that. I’m keen to see more of this town. End of discussion.”

An armored limo was waiting for them at the Futurist hotel. The imposing car seemed to have been lurking there for quite some time. Gavin and Farfalla hurried into its padded, chamois-leather back seat.

“Please apologize to these local dudes, for us keeping them waiting,” said Gavin to Farfalla. “Tell them that we had a mix-up.”

Farfalla leaned forward and spoke in Portuguese through the cruel little grill-holes in the bulletproof glass. The driver and his associate, in their linen suits, sunglasses and Bluetooth earpieces, scarcely turned their close-cropped heads.

“Our new friends here are some kinda bruisers,” said Gavin, leaning back into the plush leather.

“There’s a lot of gangster kidnapping here in Sao Paulo,” said Farfalla darkly. “The favela gangsters steal rich people. Sometimes, they send people back without their ears or fingers.”

“I’m not real thrilled at our lack of interior door-handles.” Gavin examined the smoky, mirror-colored limo windows. “Well, at least we’ve got a lot of personal privacy inside here. And to judge by this endless traffic jam, we’ve got some time on our hands now.”

“Oh, that’s good! Now I can tell you the whole story of how I found the Cosmic Cupid,” said Farfalla happily. “It’s a really good story. I found him in Naples.”

“Okay,” said Gavin, steepling his fingers and leaning back in the seat. “Your big story about Cupid. It must be time for that. Let me have it.”

“Cupid was in a police evidence room.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m skipping ahead now, to the end of my story.”

“That’s all right,” said Gavin kindly. “We both do a lot of that ‘skipping ahead’ business. We seem to do more of it every time we meet! I mean, I have a story, and you have a story, but when we’re both together in the same story, we kind of... bend narrative reality.”

“We do, don’t we?” She paused. “That must be confusing to some people.”

“We Futurists can’t help but be confusing, to the straights and the mundanes! The future, the past, all mixed up, because you can see it all at once… I’m kinda starting to enjoy this!” said Gavin. “It doesn’t bother me, it feels liberating! I’m starting to think that activity is very ‘us.’ No event ever happens to us when it should happen.”

Farfalla gnawed her thumbnail. “I’m still mad at you for that sex you had with me that happens in the future.”

“See, that’s just it! We can’t help that! I’m from the future, and you’re from the future! When we’re together, everything gets ten times more far-out.” He sighed contentedly. “So, then, it’s kind of nice that you and I have some quiet time together, before this aircraft-factory tour with my Dad’s old friend. Just tell me your own story, baby, about your cool, little, mystical divine statue! I promise that I’ll sop up every word.”

“My story of Cupid is an important story.”

“Sure, sure it is important! I told you you could tell it.”

“Well, the police had seized the Cosmic Cupid, because of the huge sex scandal in Naples,” said Farfalla. “I’m sure you heard all about that story. You remember, that gay Communist Party leader in Naples whose lover was a Brazilian transvestite.”

“Well, no. No, I never heard that strange story. I haven’t been keeping up with Italian regional developments. Even a Futurist only has so much room in his head.”

“You don’t know about that story? But, everybody has heard about that famous scandal! Tutto il mondo, Dio Mio, that scandal was huge!”

“All Italian sex scandals are huge. So, how did you get the statue away from the cops?”

“I bought it at a police auction. I had to buy the entire crate, because they sold it in lots. I had to buy the feather boas, the transvestite’s underwear, too.” Farfalla shuddered delicately. “The police thought the statue of Cupid was ugly. But Gavin, it isn’t ugly. It is precious.”

“It is ugly,” Gavin said. “But, it is also precious. It’s holy. It has a sacred precious ugliness. There should be some special word for that otherworldly quality It has. ‘Prugly,’ maybe.”

Farfalla laughed. “What a funny thing to say. Perfetto. Sometimes, you say just the right thing.”

Gavin shrugged.

“Gavin, please tell me my words. Please, just say them to me! I know you’re the One. I don’t want anyone else! I love you! Please do it.”

“Can’t do it,” Gavin said, gazing out the mirrored window. “I’m not magic, I can’t say magic.”

“You are torturing me! Please, I’m so tortured with doubt! You are hurting my heart! I want you to be my One. Please, just say it. I know you must know the words. Somehow. How could you not know what to say?”

“I told you that I would recite anything you wanted,” said Gavin. “It’s all your own stupid stubbornness, for not telling me.”

“But it’s not!” Farfalla wrung her hands in anguish. “It’s never just that! Why can’t you do it? You are killing me! I didn’t even get my Kiss! My story is ruined, you’ve destroyed my story...”

Gavin slid across the seat and kissed her.

“That’s not it! You already kissed me. In the bed. That was like a husband kissing a wife. That kind of kiss.”

“What do you know about ‘that kind of kiss’?” scoffed Gavin. “You’ve never been married yet.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“I love you, but I get tired of you always telling me how to behave,” said Gavin, scowling. “Why are you always the boss in our situation? What about my agenda? I told you that I loved you. I’m ready to marry you. In the future, I did marry you. You know that and so do I! There must be someone I can talk to about this, who’s not a complete, stubborn knot-head, like you. How about your parents? Can I talk to them, please?”

“My parents know nothing that matters.”

“Maybe you had better let me and your parents figure that out. I bet they can tell me how long you’ve been manifesting these episodes.”

“All right,” said Farfalla, pursing her lips. “Fine! Why not? My parents deserve that! My parents deserve to meet you.” She laughed. “You, you and my parents! I can only imagine!”

“Great. Now, we’re getting somewhere. We’ll blow through this little courtesy-call here in Sao Paulo, and then I’m gonna book myself a flight. Not you — you stay here in Brazil. You just stay right here, and sit tight. I’m flying to Ivrea and I’ll go tackle the nutty Communists in their den. I’m going to make an honest woman of you. Where do Mr. and Mrs. Corrado actually live?”

“My mother is a Corrado. My father is Mr. Menotti.”

“So how come you’re not ‘Farfalla Menotti’?”

“My parents never married. Because they are Communists. That was a matter of principle. They are philosophers. They are very principled people.”

Gavin considered this assertion. “That moral decision must have been kind of tough on you and your little brother.”

“Tough?” Farfalla shouted. “They made our lives hell! We suffered every day because of them! Every single day, we suffered because of the moral principles of Enrico Menotti! We had to scratch, suffer, and bleed so that he could be morally pure!”

“So, your dad is that kind of a tyrant, huh? I should have guessed that,” said Gavin. “Your dad’s a big Communist bully, am I right? He’s given you every kind of grief, for your whole life. Yeah, I’ve sure seen that stuff, around Italy. It’s all very macho, these men-of-respect in the family, always swaggering around... So, this punk-ass Red wouldn’t even properly marry your Mom... So typical! I guess he’s carrying on like he’s the great architect Enrico Menotti.”

“He is the architect Enrico Menotti.”

“Yeah, sure he is, but he’s not like the famous visionary ecologist architect Enrico Menotti.”

“Yes, that’s him. That’s my father.”

Gavin sighed. “Please don’t tell me that. There is just no way.”

Farfalla jammed both her hands into her hair. “Do you think another woman like me suffers from an Enrico Menotti? That is him! He is my father.”

“But... every green eco-freak in Seattle totally worships that guy! Enrico Menotti built, like geodesic houses out of dirt! And cardboard! He’s, like, wackier than Buckminster Fuller.”

“Oh, of course, yes, yes they all talk about my father. They never send us money! My father never made any patents for his work! He gave everything away, like a fool, like an idiot! My parents live in a dirty hut! They eat turnips.”

“Wow,” said Gavin. “I was so keen to go punch the lights out of your grumpy moron Dad, but this guy’s a famous international maestro! I’ll have to, like, really work on my Italian, to talk to a genius like him.”

“The ‘great maestro,’” scoffed Farfalla. “My father wears dirty rags. He has rubber shoes on his feet. Shoes cut out of truck tires.”

“So, that’s the great Enrico Menotti,” mused Gavin. “A saint! I don’t want to say I’m intimidated, but... well, I sure feel impressed. I feel proud. Good God, that explains everything to me. No wonder you’re the way you are.”

“You don’t understand! He’s very rigid in his policies! He doesn’t allow any compromise. He’s a 1970’s radical architect. Even, Ettore Sottsass was scared of my father. My father is impossible.”

“Yeah, Farfalla, that is totally you. That is just you to a T. You are just like your Dad. Exactly.” Gavin sighed. “I’m not even mad at you any more. I will never be mad at you again. Not that way. ‘To understand all is to forgive all.’”

“You understand nothing! You only think you understand.”

“Baby, you are underestimating me. I know I’m just some hick American moron, but I get it, all right. Seattle has a very keen design awareness. We’ve got museums full of that Ettore Sottsass, Memphis-style rubbish. Archizoom, Superstudio, Michele di Lucchi, do those Italian names ring a bell for you? Yeah, they do, they have to. In Italy, that stuff is just tableware made by hippie loons. In Seattle, we put that stuff into our vitrines and dust it off every day.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“My dad would wig out if he thought his daughter-in-law was the child of the great Enrico Menotti. It’s like, debate over! That debate doesn’t even start.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Farfalla,” Gavin said, at last, “there’s something tremendous about all this. This is scaring me. We are turning the world inside out, we are literally bending space and time. I was all ready to fight with my father about you. I was going to passionately have it out with him. I was going to assert myself against him, and yell at him that I was going to possess you, no matter what he said or what he wanted. I was finally going to get on my own two feet and face down my old man.”

Farfalla blinked at him. “Why? If your father likes me, then I would be happy.”

“But, that is my whole life story, since I was a little kid! And that very important part of my story is, like, turned to mush now! If my dad adores you, where does my problem go? If my father is all thrilled to meet you, he loves you, like a daughter.… Well, I never expected that to happen! I never predicted that, expected that, not at all! I don’t like it! There’s something eerie about that.”

“Now you know how I feel,” said Farfalla. “I feel eerie all the time.”

“It’s like something in this world is forcing us together. If love is this powerful, where is our free will? It’s worse when we like it.”

“Every time you say something like that, it hurts me,” said Farfalla. “Sometimes you’re mad at me — and that hurts me. And sometimes, you’re sweet to me, and that hurts me more, because it makes me guilty. Then sometimes, just sometimes, you say something terribly weird, and I know it is true. And that destroys me. It kills me that you understand the weirdness of the future. It kills me that you understand me, sometimes. God knows, no one else ever has.”

“We can work our way out of this,” said Gavin. “I promise — we can analyze this problem, we can think about it, we can pick it apart, and figure out how to fix it.”

“That is not true,” she said. “You can’t do that to me. That is not in your power.”

“Well! What can I do, then, if I can’t do that? I’m not your One, so I’m less than dust to you.”

“It’s so true,” she said sadly.

“Is our story together just a cruel, tragic hoax? Are we a wreck when we’re together, and dying when we’re apart? How could that be? Does that make any sense to you? Is that the cruel world we live in? Is the world that bad?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Did you ever consider that philosophically?” Gavin insisted.

“Why? I hate philosophy.”

“Maybe,” said Gavin, “the universe really is divided between male and female principles. Maybe those two cosmic principles can never really unite. Maybe, men and women, because of their love for one another, are doomed to tear each other apart.”

“You never used to talk like this,” said Farfalla.

“I can only talk like this to you. We paranormals really have issues. There isn’t anyone else who remotely gets it about my life.”

“Why do you always say horrible things to me? You are a happy man! You are rich, you are handsome! You have a nice body. You are kind. Women desire you.”

“I say it because I suffer. I suffer because the woman I love cannot love me. Even if she cares for me in some kindly way, she cannot ever be mine. We are star-crossed lovers, with quarrels no one can resolve. Our Universe is an Abyss. It’s Abyss before we are born, and it’s Abyss after we cease to be. All we can do is tear each other’s flesh like animals in the brief period not of the Abyss. We know Love for a few brief moments, but our natural state is Abyss. We are both nothingness, waiting to happen.”

“I never heard anyone tell me that,” said Farfalla, her face crumbling into despair. “I always knew that I would die someday. I always foresaw that. I’m a weak, frail thing with wings. I have wings like paper. I live for one summer and then, I fly away into dust.”

“I suffer because of you,” said Gavin. “Nothing else means anything to me. My life has no meaning without you. Without you, I still go through the motions of living, but I become a phantom in my own life. Without you, I hate the look of my own face in the mirror.”

“I am a drudge,” said Farfalla. “Without you, I pine away, day by day. I’m rags and bones, with a snarl of hair on top. The only thing that keeps me alive is one thought. One thought, one bare, naked hope that I might wake up some day and think, ‘I am his!’ Not even that I’m happy! Happiness is too good for me! Just that someone needs me to exist!”

Gavin looked stunned. “Are you really that miserable?’

“I’m so miserable without you that I can’t go on living. I have no future without you!”

“I think I have a much more searing unhappiness than you do, Farfalla.”

“You are lucky to have a nice, hot, searing unhappiness! I have a cold, wet, rotten unhappiness.”

Gavin looked at his watch. “You know something? Not three hours ago, we were both really happy and completely pleased with ourselves. And here we are, at the point of joint suicide. I’m so totally miserable right now that death would come as sweet relief.”

The limo pulled to a stop.

“Well,” said Gavin, “we’re here at last. Here comes my important business appointment, where I have to play the talking-dog again.” He snagged her by the wrist. “Don’t sit there sulking. Come on, we’ve got to fake it. Pull yourself together.”

Farfalla trudged along behind him, too listless to resist.

Gavin followed the pair of thugs, who were making phone calls in Portuguese, as they gazed through the factory razor-wire.

“Wow, look at the size of this place,” Gavin marveled. “This is just like those assembly plants that Boeing used to run, back in the Space Age.” He gazed around the host of sun-baked metal-sided sheds. “You know, you always hear about ‘globalization,’ and the ‘massive export of American jobs’, but look, that’s really real. Here it is, all around us. I mean, aviation was an American heavy industry, and here it is, relocated to Brazil. My grandmother used to work in an aircraft plant just like this.”

The rippled doors of a hangar slid open, and a chattering army of young women left the huge, air-conditioned structure. These women wore identical overalls and industrial hairnets — and, rather strangely in the Brazilian heat — brightly patterned sweaters. Nice, warm sweaters tied round their tapered, womanly waists, or draped coquettishly over their shoulders.

“So many woman here,” said Farfalla.

“Women are perfect for detailed assembly work,” said Gavin, approvingly. “Especially, electronics.”

Farfalla gazed at the vast marching harem of electronics workers. Some of them were very pretty women. Prettier than herself.

“I never realized that my dad’s old Brazilian associate ran such a thriving enterprise,” said Gavin. “He’s supposed to be semi-retired.”

They entered a second security barrier. They had to have their faces and fingerprints photographed. Then, they were given plastic radio-badges with their names in block letters.

“This old guy was a big wheel in the Brazilian Air Force, back in the ‘70s. He trained in the USA, though. He used to hang out in Seattle with my dad and all his Boeing pals.”

“In the 1970’s,” said Farfalla, “Brazil was a dictatorship. The military made people vanish in Brazil. They turned living people into ghosts. My parents knew some of those people.”

“What, are you trying to freak me out here? This is a courtesy call!”

Their host was still manning his factory office, although it was late in the day. A cloud of model plastic aircraft dangled from his lofty ceiling, like a host of cherubs.

The general-turned-industrialist was courtly and silver-haired. He wore a stiff civilian blue suit.

The general offered Gavin a Brazilian cigar. Gavin accepted it cheerfully, made a mess of cutting it, and pretended to smoke it.

Farfalla said a few cordial words in Portuguese. The general stared at her. He had not expected to meet her. Gavin Tremaine, he had fully expected to see, but he had no idea what to make of her. Not a woman like her, here in his factory, inside his own realm. Her Milanese clothes and her Italian accent seemed to bother him quite a lot.

The general and Gavin began discussing Brazilian military aviation imports. Also, complex technology transfers from the French Dassault aviation works.

“The French make very cute, delicate warplanes,” said Gavin. “That ‘Dassault Rafale’ is the Carla Bruni of fighter aircraft.”

The general laughed through his cloud of cigar smoke. This remark had amused him.

He decided to show Gavin something confidential — from a bound photo-album. The two of them retired into a corner of the office.

Abandoned, Farfalla sat in a padded office chair. She stared at the towering office wall, which was crowded with industrial awards and framed photographs of international business celebrities.

There was a particularly large, gold-framed photograph behind the general’s desk. A very distinguished and handsome old man in full military uniform. Farfalla had seen that man before. She’d seen him sitting in a café, in Capri. He seemed to be looking at her through the picture in the glass. His eyes were following her.

The General and Gavin were going at it hammer and tongs, speaking English. Their negotiations were not going well, though. Gavin was being stubborn and polite, while the general was being scornful and insistent.

Gavin was refusing to do what was asked of him. Or else, he was not in a position to do it. Gavin was in trouble.

Farfalla climbed to her feet. “Excuse me,” she trilled. “Could I have a glass of ice water, please?”

A silence fell. The general turned his angry, gimlet eyes her way.

Farfalla stared back at him. “It’s so hot in here. I’m thirsty.”

“Perhaps,” the general said in English, “the little lady would like a glass of sweet lemonade.”

“That would be perfect,” Farfalla simpered.

The general stepped to his mahogany desk, pressed a metallic button, and barked orders. Some uncomfortable time passed. The two men puffed combatively at their cigars.

A muscular goon arrived with a glass of lemonade on a silver tray, on a delicate cloth doily.

Farfalla put a lipstick stain around the straw in the lemonade, then, insolently left it untouched, staining the perfect wood of the general’s highly polished desk.

This tiny gesture seemed to tip something over in the general. The business meeting was suddenly at an end. Gavin and the general knocked back and forth some boilerplate formalities — “This was indeed a constructive meeting, I will convey your sentiments on this issue to my associates,” that sort of thing. Lies.

Farfalla and Gavin left the compound. “Don’t take that limo,” said Farfalla. “Stay away from that car. I know Sao Paulo. We’ll take the tram back into town.”

“Excellent,” said Gavin shortly. They silently stalked the broken pavements down to a heavily crowded tram stop. A crowd of the blue-collar girls from the factory were hanging around there, gossiping in Portuguese about clothes, booze and boys.

Gavin was taller than everyone there, paler than everyone, and sweating profusely in the summer heat. Farfalla clung to his arm.

The Brazilian electronics women looked on Farfalla kindly. She was the only one there who had brought a boyfriend. Oh, look at the big white elephant you’ve brought to show us! How cute he is!

They waited for a nerve-racking while. This being a Brazilian tram, nothing happened.

“Do you know where the next tram stop is?” said Gavin. “We had better get walking. If you can manage in those heels.”

“Go,” she said.

Gavin kept gazing behind them as they walked.

“Stop acting afraid,” she told him. “That encourages them.”

“You know,” he said, “this is one very complicated business deal. It is a super-intricate global deal. It is crazy, in fact. And it suddenly it occurred to us — to him, and me, too — that if I wasn’t around any more, that deal would become a whole lot less complicated.”

Farfalla nodded. “No people, no problems.”

“That evil guy has made people disappear. He has. He made real people vanish into thin air. Without a trace. He has that paranormal power.”

“The vanished people fell out of his airplanes,” said Farfalla. “They put the people into Air Force planes, flew them off the coast, and dumped them in the ocean. That’s not a secret. It’s only a secret to you.”

“Not exactly Brazilian voodoo magic, then.”

“Oh yes, that is exactly voodoo magic. When people turn into ghosts, and nobody asks why they died, and people are too scared to talk about that, even when they know... That is real voodoo, and that was always real voodoo.”

Gavin wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, “Maybe America is turning into Brazil even faster than Brazil is turning into America. Do you suppose that could be true? A totally voodoo America would be an interesting global dynamic.”

“They passed an amnesty in Brazil. No one gets to ask about what generals did in the past. Because it’s the past. It’s forgotten.”

Gavin sighed. “That old guy has been to my house. I remember seeing him around, when I was a kid. It looks like he’s made his peace with the powers-that-be, around here. He settled right down as their captain of state industry. He’s making jet airplanes and providing labor-union jobs. He’s sitting pretty. He’s in favor.”

Farfalla said nothing. She looked longingly at the revolving doors of an air-conditioned shopping mall. She felt hot.

“You know something, Farfalla? I am truly a prize idiot. I charged down here on a wild impulse, trusting crap that I read in my email, knowing nothing about the real-life situation on the ground! I’m not an impulsive fool, though — am I? I’m careful, I’m methodical! I’m not a young, naïve know-nothing.”

Farfalla held his arm. “Well... if you are, then I went with you. I was there with you, wasn’t I?”

“You were. There, with me. Two hours ago, I was ready to jump off a bridge with you. I was ready for us to die together from our miserable romantic pain. But, baby, not if the honcho there is gonna kidnap us with voodoo needles, fly us over the sea and dump us into the South Atlantic. No way! I mean, once death is right in front of us, staring at us with big hollow skull eyes — when our death is not some kind of wishful romantic crap, when our death is not kidding? There is no way. I love you and I want to live. Better, a million times better, that I suffer from loving you every single day! I want you to make me suffer! I want you to make me live.”

Farfalla brushed her fingertips down the side of his sweating face. “I know that my love makes you suffer.”

“You saved my life in there. Mostly because you didn’t belong in that narrative. That story of ‘ignorant young Yankee hustler caught up in very bad South American business deal.’ Now, I know that I belonged in that story — because I was playing the sucker, in that story. But you never belonged in that story. Because you are ‘the adorable stylish Italian girl who came out of nowhere.’ It occurred to him to kill me — I know that he wanted to make me disappear — but he just couldn’t fit you into that story. You didn’t fit in that story at all. So, it just couldn’t happen to me. Because of you.”

“What did he say to you?” said Farfalla. “When you were talking together, alone.”

“Oh, well, that was confidential. That was classified.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, wait a second,” said Gavin. “It was classified and confidential, but it was Brazilian classified and confidential. I’m American, so I don’t give a damn about Brazilian state secrets! Of course, I can tell you about it. He was showing me mock-up plans for this imaginary airplane he thinks he can manufacture and export. Using French technology. Or maybe American technology. Technology my dad still has, from thirty years ago.”

“So what?”

“So, it was a pink airplane. It was a killer drone airplane, but it was pink, delicate, and made just for girls. It’s a robot drone aircraft made for women. He said that women’s groups are the key to winning the Brazilian drug war. These women are, like, the Dilma Rousseff campaigners, because this Dilma Rousseff woman will be the future President of Brazil. And he needs to be on good terms with her.”

Farfalla shrugged. “Everybody already knows that. Of course Dilma will win the election. People love her.”

“Yes, but this is the Dilma Rousseff killer drone airplane! That’s a very Carla Bruni, Sarah Palin kind of military development. President Dilma Rousseff is supposed to think that Brazilian feminist killer airplanes are great.”

Gavin paused. “Or, maybe that was some kind of joke... Maybe he was fooling me, or, else, seriously warning me about something in the future. He knew me when I was a little kid, after all. Maybe he was trying to wise me up, to educate me about something. I just don’t know. That encounter was very Brazilian.”

“Women with killer airplanes? With flying robots? Like an American ‘Predator’ or ‘GlobalHawk’?”

“I don’t get to talk about those,” said Gavin, gloomily.

“But Gavin, that is no secret. Everyone in Italy knows all about American killer airplanes. The CIA flies Predator airplanes all around the world, and they shoot terrorists. American secret drones are the most famous weapons in the world.”

“Well, I just don’t get to talk about that. Even if everybody in the world knows it’s happening, I don’t get to say a word. I’m sorry, but I took an oath. It’s illegal, it’s unethical, and there’s just no way. I’ve got a security clearance, so I can’t say a word. That’s it.”

“But, it’s all right! I’m not mad at you! I think it’s great! Because I’m an Italian Neo-Fascist Futurist! Americans should be killing more terrorists with flying robots. If I could kill the Mafia with robots, I’d do it tomorrow!”

“Flying robots can’t do that. That is Futurist hype.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t be naïve, Farfalla. This is serious. Covert drone warfare is, like, a major system-design issue for modern global geopolitics. It’s not up to Italians to slaughter the Mafia with flying futuristic robots. You guys don’t even have the atomic bomb.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Farfalla, meekly.

They found a second bus stop. This one was not so densely crowded, the street air was less thick with pollution, and there was less of a sense of imminent dread here. So they stuck around.

“I didn’t realize that Brazilians were so well-dressed,” said Gavin, studying the passing crowd.

“These are not just ‘Brazilians.’ These are the ‘Paulistas.’ Sao Paulo is a Brazilian city with a great Italian heritage.”

“The future is every bit as tricky as the past,” said Gavin. “My futurist mentor, Dr. Gustav Y. Svante, he was right about that. He predicted to me that Brazil wouldn’t leave me alone. He directly warned me about this very situation, the position I’m in right now. At least, I think he warned me. But, I blew it anyway, because well, even though it was an accurate futuristic prediction, he said it in a weird way. He told me all about it, but I didn’t grasp the language.”

“I have a Futurist mentor, too,” Farfalla stated. “She lives here in Sao Paulo.”

“That figures.”

“She was my nanny,” said Farfalla. “She raised me when I was small. She was my father’s ethnological assistant, and his local urban informant. But that was just what my father called her. Really, Nana Hepsiba was our housemaid. And a voodoo priestess, of course.”

“Why would a voodoo priestess be the housemaid and baby-sitter for an Italian radical architect?”

“He had a generous state grant. Anyway, Hepsiba was a very good choice. Because Hepsiba knew everything about the favela. She and her husband, the Great Houngan, they were famous in the favela. They were holy, everyone respected them.”

“Your baby-sitter was a voodoo witch from a slum,” said Gavin. He raised his hand. “That is not a problem! I know you’re telling me the truth. I totally believe you.”

“Nana Hepsiba told me all about my One.”

“She did that, huh? Her. Well! Now, we’re getting somewhere,” said Gavin. “That is a very satisfying thing to hear. I’m keen to have a word with your childhood inspiration. I can’t wait to meet her. Let’s have it out with her.”

“She doesn’t speak English. And you don’t speak Portuguese.”

“Why do I care?” Gavin shouted, waving his arms. “I know that I’m out of my depth here! Dr. Gustav Y. Svante doesn’t make the rules here. I was lucky not to get shot today!”

He stretched both his arms out and began to rotate in place, stumbling on the cracked paving of the bus-stop. “Compared to a technicolor hive like this place, Sweden might as well be Mars! And Dr. Svante has a wife... Oh my God! ‘Vrouw Dr-Professor Agata Svante.’ I met her once! What a Swedish cow she is. She’s got a face like a pancake! He puts all the money in her name.”

“Is he happy?” said Farfalla. “Your great leader, your guru, this wise man you admire so much, is he a happy man?”

Gavin dropped his arms. “What do you mean?”

“They say the very wisest men only love ugly women. ‘If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.’ Some very wise man said that. I think it was Socrates.”

“Look, let’s not make fun of Dr. Svante. He really is the world’s greatest Futurist.”

A tram rambled past them. They ran gasping to catch up with it. They managed to snag it at the last moment.

“So,” said Gavin, wiping more summer sweat, “where are we going now?”

“We must be practical now,” said Farfalla.

“We do? This should be good.”

“I don’t know where Nana Hepsiba is. I know she lives somewhere in this huge, huge city. But I must find her tonight.”

Gavin thought this over. “I was going to say, ‘that’s impossible.’ Forgive me for being presumptuous.”

“I have a plan. I will go back to our Futurist hotel. I will put my hands on It.”

“And, It, the Cosmic Cupid, will somehow mystically lead you straight to your voodoo priestess?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Great plan. I love your logical plan. I’ll go with you.”

“If we are in the room with the Cosmic Cupid,” said Farfalla, “we will forget all our plans and visions. We will jump into bed, together. We will hug, and kiss, and close our eyes in ecstasy, and make sweet, sweet, passionate love.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Think, Gavin. Try to think. Think with your brain.”

“That is a problem,” Gavin admitted. “That magic idol will overwhelm both of us. That’s already a proven fact. We might not stop making love for, like, ten or twelve years.”

“This is my city,” said Farfalla. “Here is my plan. I will go, alone, to the hotel. I will get It out of your room. Then, I will find my mentor, the great famous witch. Then, I will find you and bring you to Her. Then, she will tell me that you are my One.” She sighed. “I hope so.”

“Can your witch do that? How can she do that? You said that I was the only One who could tell you that I was the One.”

“I don’t know,” Farfalla admitted. “Maybe she can do it. Maybe she can tell you, how to tell me, that you are the One.”

“Hey,” said Gavin, widening his eyes. “Neat hack.”

“Voodoo witches are tricky. That is their job. She predicted you to me. So she should know!”

Gavin silently reached into the pocket of his cargo pants. He handed over the small steel key of his computer-security cable.

“I’m so glad you remembered that,” said Farfalla humbly. “I forgot. The Cosmic Cupid is chained to our marriage bed.”

Gavin silently wrote his Brazilian phone number on a slip of torn notebook paper.

Farfalla tucked this vital scrap of data into her purse. “Gavin, you are so smart! It’s good you are with me! It’s so hard to face the future alone!”

“So, where am I going, during this brilliant plan that you have to carry out all alone?” said Gavin.

“Go to your Futurist Congress,” said Farfalla. “They are expecting you there. Your important friends will take good care of you. Nothing will happen to you there. Nothing ever happens when important people talk about the future.”

Gavin winced, considering this. “Look, your plan sounds dumb and dangerous to me. I know you’re doing something scary now, Farfalla. I want to protect you. My story should be all about protecting you from terrifying dangers.”

“You are my terrifying danger! People here would kill you, not me. Nobody will abduct and vanish me. Brazilians love Italian girls.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you this time,” said Gavin, shifting his laptop bag from one sweat-soaked shoulder to another. “So then, I’m off to my Futurist Congress. All alone. In Brazil. What a great idea you just had. I totally love Futurist conferences. They’re always so informative.”

The tram racketed along.

“I am having an attack of common sense,” Gavin muttered at her. “Your stupid plan is mystical hokum! Why, why are we parting in this huge, strange city? When evil voodoo people could kill me and you? They could make us vanish! That can’t be a good idea!”

“It’s not a strange city to me,” said Farfalla. “For me, it’s another home.”

Gavin drew closer. The tram was jostling them. He gave her a kiss.

She wiped at her lips. “Stop that.”

“Baby, how can I not kiss you? I must. I have to kiss you. Let me live! I may never kiss you again.”

“Gavin, you always make me hurt you! Stop it! I don’t want to be kissed, by a man, in this way, that is not The Kiss! How can I kiss a man with my Kiss when he might not be the One I am fated to Kiss?”

Gavin gawked at her. “What?”

“You’re not listening to me!”

“Kisses speak louder than words,” said Gavin. “We are parting. Why don’t you, please, kiss me. Just once, like you should kiss the one you love.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“That is not too much to ask,” he pleaded. “One farewell kiss is never too much for a man to ask of a woman. It’s in romantic movies. Come on.”

Farfalla put her arms around his neck. She rose from her heels on tiptoe. She kissed him. With a red, lipstick-smearing, thundering, magic kiss.

A bird darted through the rattling tram’s open window. The passengers of the tram shrieked in surprise. Trapped by the glass, the bird bulleted over their heads.

The darting bird banged against its own reflection in the window-glass, with a small, meaty whack. Then, the bird collapsed into a meager, feathered bundle. It was tiny, shrunken and still.

Gavin shouldered through the crowd, scattering Brazilians like bowling pins. He rescued the bird from a menacing forest of trampling Paulista shoes.

Then, Gavin held up the bird, nestled inside his fist, with a cordial wave of his free hand. The local Paulista people were completely indulgent about Gavin’s strange activity. They didn’t mind Gavin a bit. They were a wise, cosmopolitan people, the Paulistas. They understood the ways of the world. Of course, the foreign tourist had scooped an injured bird from the dirty tram floor. Any poet would do that. Everything mellow and groovy. Incident over.

“It’s dead,” said Farfalla, shrinking away.

“She is alive,” said Gavin. He preened the iridescent feathers with his solid fingers. “I can feel her kicking for life. Here, inside my hand.”

“What is that bird doing in here?” said Farfalla, peering.

“Well, this little bird is the Blue-and-White Swallow. Notiochelidon cyanoleuca, to give her Latin name. Big crowds of these swallows live under the Sao Paulo bridges. So, I figure our friend here flew over from that big bridge over at the Parque Villa-Lobos. She just got confused, that’s all.”

“What? How do you know all that?”

“Hey, I love birds! I’m a birdwatcher! I’m an outdoorsy kind of guy.”

“But, this is Sao Paulo! You don’t live here! You can’t know any of those things!”

“Farfalla, cheer up, all right? The blue bird of happiness flew in here when you kissed me! Look at this bird. What beautiful plumage.”

Farfalla had a peek at the tiny captured animal. Farfalla hated wild animals. Some were small, and some were large, but they were all wild and bad. There was a small dark disgusting drip of blood on the tip of the bird’s tiny beak.

Gavin reached for an open window. “She’s happiness, but right now she’s kinda conked-out.” He gave the struggling bird an affectionate toss, into free air. “There you go, sister! Voe para um lindo futuro, irmã. Boa sorte!”[12]

The bird winged her way into Sao Paulo’s soot-tinged sky.

“Leave the bus,” said Farfalla. “Get off at the next stop. The hotel is near. Your conference hotel.”

“Right. That’s the future!” Gavin hoisted his shoulder bag. “Don’t worry, I know the way.”

12 “Fly to a beautiful future, sister. Good luck.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Facts of Life

“Nana, it was so good of you to come and find me, in my helpless need and my deep sorrow,” said Farfalla. Nearby, a pig rooted slowly through its cornshucks and torn newspapers. “I hoped I would find you, myself... but I knew I never would! Because, I was so tired and so jetlagged. But you found me, and Nana... I love him, and he is breaking my heart.”

Nana Hepsiba pulled her packing crate closer to the bar’s table, which was a cracked cable-spool. “My dear, I always knew you would come back to see me, one day in the future. I knew you would need my love advice.”

“That man is driving me out of my mind! Today, I went into his bedroom... Something terrible happened in there! I don’t even have words for what happened. It was like ten years passed. I’m not lying! He put his arms around me, it was like ten years!”

“My poor little one!” Nana tongue-clucked. “How long has it been since we had a good talk together? Ten years ago, is it? Well, I know I can help you! And in your later life, you will surely need my help again! I know that... Because, I can see it in your aura! I’m very sure you will need me... But I won’t be there to help you! Not in ten years! Because I’ll be dead, from my poverty, from my suffering! I can promise you that!”

Hepsiba waved her plump, grandmotherly arms through the pink nylon sleeves of her dashiki. Beaded bracelets clattered on her wrists. “Look what the cruel years have done to your Nana! My dreadlocks have all turned white! All my hard work and sacrifice, for the ungrateful sinners who dwell in this dirty favela... Do they understand how I have protected them? Protected from so many dark, terrible forces, for so many years? Oh no! Nobody properly respects the Orixa spirits! Not any more! Now, it’s all about money, drugs, and television!”

“Television?” Farfalla said.

“When I think of how this favela once was, in the good old days, when I was young, like you! The girls were so decent and modest then! Even the prostitutes behaved themselves.”

“When I was little,” said Farfalla, “you once told me.… Well, so many things. Once, you told me, that if I could walk under a rainbow, I could turn into a man.” She smiled. “And I believed you! I believed every one of your stories.”

“That is true, you know.”

“Nana, please! Nobody can ‘walk under a rainbow!’ A rainbow is just the reflection of the sun in wet air.”

Nana scowled. “Who told you that nonsense? Don’t you ever see the rainbow flags, when men turn into women? Are you blind now, did you turn stupid in Italy? If you can’t see the truth in front of your eyes, how can I give you guidance?”

“I do see the truth, in front of my eyes,” mourned Farfalla. “I see the truth all the time. The truth is always naked. Naked and shocking.”

“My dear,” said Nana Hepsiba, “you came to me with a man problem... Yes, I knew you would do that, all along! Don’t you worry any more! You came to the right old woman for your problems! You came to the right place, too. You see that cop helicopter up there?”

“Where?” said Farfalla, craning her neck to peer through the bar’s crooked door-frame.

“Flying over that big smoke column. You see that helicopter full of cops with guns? Well, I can’t give you that helicopter. No. I can’t. Now, look over there. No, right there. Stop fussing with your pretty hair, and turn your head and look. Right there. You see that great blue skyscraper over there, where those fancy rich folk won the TV lottery? To win the lottery and make ten million reals, I can’t give you that, either. No, I can’t. But between women and men? There, I have seen it all! Yes, yes, I know everything about that. I know the very worst.” Hepsiba tapped her ginger-scented tin can of hot quentao pinga. “Your man gave you a disease, didn’t he? A wicked disease a woman gets only in bed.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Farfalla, “I mean, I don’t think he did. I mean, I haven’t had any blood test yet. I guess, for safety’s sake, I should do that right away, but I’ve been so busy...”

“You are pregnant! I knew it!”

“Maybe. Yes. Yes, I could be pregnant. That’s bad, it’s so awful, isn’t it... It’s terrifying! I feel weak, I feel sick with fear... I think I feel changed, deep inside... Is that supposed to happen? Why? Nana, why do women suffer so much in this world?”

Hepsiba fiddled with the long cotton wrapping of her turban. “Well, I can take care of that for you. It takes three days. A lot of herbs. And a lot of spells.” Hepsiba squeezed her wrinkled greenish eyes shut, and she opened them again. “You should have been a good girl. Make this man marry you first, but no! No, you were a headstrong and foolish girl! You surrendered to your wicked passion, and you fell into his arms.” Hepsiba sighed. “You’re not the first such girl, and you won’t be the last!”

“Nana, yes, I did that, but, well, no. It’s not like that at all. He wants to marry me. He wanted to marry me from the first day we met. I think he wanted to marry me before we met.”

Hepsiba blinked. “He did?”

“Yes! He’s very insistent about it! He’s always doing things I don’t expect... He scares me! I don’t want to marry him! My parents never ‘got married’... Nana, he’s always yelling at me! He wants to give me his family name... There’s something wrong with him.”

Nana nodded wisely. “He’s a foreigner. Something about him is just not right for you.”

“Well, he’s not the best-looking guy in the world... That’s not true. He’s a foreigner who speaks terrible Italian, but now that I’m all used to him, if he looked any cuter, I’d die.”

“A man’s good looks won’t make you die,” Hepsiba declared. “I always knew that you were fated to meet a handsome foreign millionaire. That was written on your tiny palm-line when you were three years old. I knew you would marry a rich man, and, also, you would never forget your dear old nanny, Hepsiba. And look, see that was true, here you are! Right here, in good old Dona Ida Cardoso’s Nordestino bar.”

Hepsiba leaned across the battered rim of the cable spool. She dug into a jumbo bowl of Biluzitos Premium pizza-flavored snacks. “My dear, you must listen to me carefully now. God can be kind to wise women. God put the animals and rich men on this earth for the sake of women. What the animals eat, and where animals sleep, nature supplies. Whereas if animals had to do what we women have to do to get by in this world, then the animals would suffer greatly.”

“That is so true,” said Farfalla.

“Whenever I get a little money, these days,” mused Hepsiba, munching, “I always give to the poor little children of these slums, so that they will not have to beg for bread, or coffee, or cigarettes. But, I send my thoughts straight to the sky! My soul flies straight up to the sacred heaven! And I think — what about the spirits of the dead, those of us who live up there? Are they better than us now, those ghosts of our past? Our wise and saintly dead, they look after us! Yes, they do! They want us to look after each other! That’s why, after you are rich, you’ll give me a lot of money.”

“You shouldn’t say such things,” said Farfalla.

“My sweet one, how can I not tell you the truth? Every little bedtime story that I told you — when you were my sweet little girl? Every time — they always had a spiritual truth!”

“Then, he will marry me,” said Farfalla. “You said that he will marry me. And he said that I would marry him. He never lies to me, and neither do you. So now, I know that he will marry me. But, he is not my One.”

“If he’s not the One, that is pretty bad,” Hepsiba admitted, “because that was such a beautiful story... that story about the One? The One who loves you, and you only, and you only love him? Forever? I told you that story, with my own mouth here.” Hepsiba patted her lips, and her bangles clattered.

“That story,” she said was, “well... it was a very good narrative. Of course, that story was the truth, at least, but adepts can interpret the truth...”

“Hepsiba, never mind all that now! Tell me what has gone wrong. Help me, save me!” Farfalla gazed out the broken, chained wooden doors of the favela bar, at a massive tangle of filched electrical wiring and a graffiti-spattered wall of brick-red breeze-blocks. “I know that I belong here... I want to be here, I feel safe here, because the favela is the world as it really, truly is... But him? His world? I can’t begin to tell you what his world is like! I tried, but I have no words for it! No words that make sense here!”

“Where should this man be,” shrugged Hepsiba, “your millionaire boy, who loves his computers, so much better than he will ever love you?”

“Well, this is a favela rum bar. Gavin belongs in a Starbucks.”

Hepsiba put her plump hands to her graying temples. “I will consult the spirits now... Yes... There is a ‘Starbucks Paulista’ on the Alameda Santos. Yes... I can see... I can sense your betrothed. He is sitting there. He is with fancy friends from the fancy districts downtown. They are discussing the many bad things that Seattle does to Brazilian coffee.”

“Oh, Hepsiba, for heaven’s sake.”

Offended, Hepsiba produced a battered but serviceable Nokia Model 1100 cellphone from her rattan bag. “You don’t believe me! You don’t believe what I said to you! Let’s call your handsome lover! Let’s see about that right now, my dear.”

“Can you call him,” said Farfalla, “please, please, and ask if he is my One? My only One, who is meant for me? Is he? Just tell me that, and I won’t bother you any more, I promise!”

“Do you love him?”

“I think that I love him... I don’t love anyone else... but every time we meet, something strange happens... Things happen too fast, or too slow, or they happen in the wrong order, and they wreck my story... What kind of decent life is that? How can I live like that, with him? We cannot get to our ‘Happy Ever After’ part, because our ‘after’ part comes before our ‘happy’ part!”

“A million girls have that problem!” snorted Hepsiba. “Stop thinking that you are so special! Go ahead, marry him! Your belly doesn’t show yet! Handle this right and your parents will never find out.”

Farfalla took a deep breath. “I cannot marry any man unless he is my one true love.”

“He has a million dollars,” Hepsiba pointed out.

“Yes, of course, maybe I’m crazy, but why do I care? Why? He is cursed with his family’s wealth. That curse is written all over him! The money is breaking his heart, I know it is... I can never help him with his money problems! What am I supposed to do, spend it for him faster? I’m terrible with money!”

“My dear, wealth is for the benefit of family and friends. Rich girls go to heaven if they do good works.”

“Fine! Maybe I could marry him! Maybe I could live with him, and speak English for the rest of my life! I don’t care that he’s a foreigner, that he is geeky and weird, that he lives all his days upside down and inside out! If he were my One, I could face all that! I could face any sacrifice, for his sake... Any sacrifice at all, even great wealth, a beautiful house, and maybe an Alfa Romeo! But, if he’s not my One... if we’re together, and the future can’t bear it, because it’s wrong ... nothing will save us! We are doomed! We will doom each other!”

Hepsiba scraped the last crumbled wheat snacks out of her crockery bowl, then wiped her salty fingers on her elastic stretch pants. “Time passes,” said Hepsiba, gently. “That story about the special One meant just for you...” Hepsiba paused. “Well, that was certainly true, but it was a young girl’s truth. Because you were a young girl then. You were innocent. You are a grown woman now. Remember that other fairy story I told you... about the frog, the ball, and the well? And the frog has the golden ball, and the princess has to hold that frog in her hand, and kiss his wet, ugly body? Well, romance is that shining golden ball, while a marriage is that frog in the well. We wise women... we tell the good, old, stories to young, innocent girls. So that they will grow up with some hope in their hearts and live to become women. And be wives. And be mothers of more little girls. Some day, you’ll understand all that.”

Farfalla shook her head slowly. She ran her fingers through her shortened locks. Farfalla was getting used to being back in Brazil. Life in Brazil had always been exactly like this. By the posh standards of Italy, or the money standards of America, life here was completely batty, but life here had a loose, folksy rhythm and interior depth that spoke directly to her soul. Brazilian life had magical resources of resilience.

Farfalla finished complaining. There was no use to Cassandra laments, not here. She could complain all day in Brazil, but instead of Italian heartaches or American headaches, at the end of the day in Brazil it was just: Que diabo! Live your life, while you can!

It was her own future life at stake here, and she did have to live it. Her mentor was telling her — in gentle words, but telling her — that she had to compromise her magic principles, and sell out her true destiny, just because a suitor had some money! Well, Gavin didn’t have any money — he just had the pretense and appearance of money, over a shell of debt — while she, Farfalla Corrado, possessed a genuine magic.

“You are not talking sense to me,” Farfalla said boldly. “What about you? What about your love story?”

“Well, of course, I have a One,” said Hepsiba, indignantly. “I am a Sainted Sister of the Umbanda Terreiro! It would be a scandal if I failed to get my One.”

“Nana, I, too, have powers! I see the ghosts of the past, and the harbingers of the future. I know that they are the same!”

“Don’t you be so proud, my dear! There are a thousand girls in this favela who have much greater magic powers than you have! Do you think life is easy for girls with magic powers? Look around yourself! You stopped living here in the favela, where the true struggle of darkness takes place! You went to Italy, and you put on your pretty clothes, and you forgot all about us.”

“That’s true,” Farfalla admitted. “I ran from reality as soon as I could.”

“That’s all right,” sighed Hepsiba. “You haven’t changed one bit. I still love you, my dear. You will always be my sweet, little girl.”

Hepsiba finished off her tin cup of reeking pinga, and drew a breath. “Voodoo does not exist to make us happy! If magic powers made people happy, then all us voodoo people would be happy. Very, very few of us adepts are ever happy. Did you ever see a happy, cheerful, voodoo adept, with pretty flowers and rainbows? Oh sure, the big star pop-singers. And the government ministers. And the winners of the state lottery, of course. And also, the master thieves and the richest newspaper astrologers. Those are the happy Brazilian voodoo people. Everyone else is dark and terrifying! Voodoo is the black art. Voodoo is necromancy.”

“But, I want to be happy! I want to marry someone who will make me happy. Forever after! That was promised to me!”

“Oh, yes, you say that now. That’s because you haven’t married him yet. Did you ever hear a woman tell a romance story about the tenth year of her marriage? Let me tell you all about that, my girl. Because, even for a very powerful voodoo witch, getting rid of a husband is hard.”

Hepsiba gazed, narrow-eyed, around the favela bar. There were eighteen other customers crammed into the tiny tin-roofed shack, because the speakeasy was as densely crowded as every other place in the Heliopolis favela. However, the local drinkers were red-eyed with the landlady’s cheap sugar-cane cachaca, which cost two reais a shot. Unless you wanted to take a soccer-labelled shot-glass home with you, in which case that cost five reais.

None of these slumping, drunken, penniless customers seemed to be spying or eavesdropping on their magical conspiracy, so Hepsiba continued with her tale. “First, you do not have to kill your husband. I do not prophesy that you will kill this man. No. You can always run away and come home to me instead. Because I have the power to save you! Because I promise you this, you can come and stay in my terreiro, under my holy roof. And your man, this foolish foreign man, he will never, ever find you here. A camel would leap through the eye of a needle first. I would know, if he ever came looking. And he would never reach you or touch you. Because the tongues of favela women are not made of bone, but the tongues of women can break a man’s bones. And that is the truth.”

Hepsiba signaled for a refill of pinga. The landlady brought over a crockery jug, and watched with care as Hepsiba paid her few coins. Hepsiba waited until the landlady had retired behind her bar with her blaring color TV. Then, Hepsiba leaned in and further confided:

“I do prophesy that you will marry this millionaire, because that is just good sense. But, rich men can be wicked men. He might make happy, but before you live ‘ever after,’ he might make your life into hell. So, I will teach you how to escape that hell. This is not a story for innocent little girls. So listen to me closely nowYou do not poison him. No, not right away. Never get too eager. You must wait for him to fall ill of a natural sickness. Because all men, even the strongest men, are born of women and made of flesh and blood. So, when this man you once loved and you have learned to hate, falls sick at last, do not rejoice. No. You do the opposite. You cling to him. You weep for him. You nurse him with tender care.

And you feed him. No one else. Only you. You feed him all his favorite things, made with your own hands, all your dishes that he always liked best. You cry with joy when he eats, but you don’t just cry in front of him. No, you go into the church, and you cry to your confessor. And you confess, too. You confess some small venial sins from your dirty heart, and then you tell this priest: ‘My sins are destroying my happy life with this man who I love so much!’ And then you go to your girlfriends, all the women who love you best, and who trust you, you say to them, weeping, ‘I fear so much that my beloved will die!’

That is just the first part of his dying. Becaus, in that first episode, you have to cure the sick man. He suffers a great deal, because of the secret poisons that you put in his food. But first, you have to cure him. You have to save him from his painful sickness, with your patience and devotion. Then, he does get better and he is slowly restored to his health. That is why he trusts you so much, the second time. That is why he believes in you.

Then you wait, once again. That is the second episode. You wait, like the she-cat at the mousehole. Then, some illness strikes him, because illness will surely come, over time. And this time, you go back again, to your priest, and your girls, and his relatives. You wring your hands and you suffer and weep a great deal, and you tell them, ‘I had hoped that he was all better, and I rejoiced, but this time he is much worse!’ And you suffer twice as much than in the first episode. You refuse to eat, and you grow thin, just as he grows thin. That part of the story is very important. Because he will not walk toward his grave unless you accompany him.

Then again, he recovers from his sickness again, except — not so well, not like before. He remains under the shadow of his sickness — that second time. The shadows of forthcoming doom, they cling to his body, the second time. Then, at last, the third time comes. That is when you poison him and also praise him. You praise him to everybody. You go to the priest and the girls and all the relations, and you tell them, ‘He is fighting his deadly sickness like a hero! I never knew he was so brave!’ And they go to his bedside and they all tell him, unprompted and uncoached, ‘You are fighting this deadly sickness like a hero, you are so brave!’

That’s when you can poison him fatally. Since he is a brave man, and a fighting man, he will die in a noble defeat. Because he is doing what everyone wants him to do. That was his purpose as a man. And he will die, if he has any honor. He will die for you, and for his own pride. Sometimes, you don’t even have to poison him! Many men hurry to die in that way!

When he dies, the voodoo continues. There is a fourth episode. To understand this part is very important. He is a ghost now, but you also become the shadow of yourself. You are thin and dressed all in black. You look the picture of misery. So great is your grief and loss that you are a trial for all to look on. So, when your tormentor is finally deep in the earth, and you find yourself some other man — a younger and prettier man, who is kinder to you — all those around you are very happy about that. They rejoice for you. They do not have any doubts, they suspect nothing. They are glad to be relieved of your awful grief and your suffering. It pleases them to no longer feel so sorry for you. That is how true voodoo is done, my dear. That is how a witch kills a man properly. Not by beating him to death in a stupid rage the way that men do to us women, but by persuading him to die like a hero. That killing is done through patience and womanly wisdom, and by understanding him better than he will ever understand you. Did you listen to my story?”

“Yes,” said Farfalla.

“I’m glad that you were listening.”

“I understand that story completely. You must love me a lot, to tell me a story so terrible. That is the worst story I ever heard.”

“My dear, you are young. You lack experience in these things.”

“That’s true, I am young. I don’t know very much about the world. Not yet. But, my God, my poor boyfriend! He is so futuristic, I could kill him with that magic in a week. He would never stand a chance.”

“If he is that easy,” shrugged Hepsiba, “then you had better make sure that no other witch gets her claws on him.”

“Well, I’ll never kill him. Not him. It would be ten times easier for me to kill myself.”

“Suicide is for cowards! We are the adepts! Don’t be a foolish amateur, who wants the quick way out! And, mind you, any slow poison will do the work. It’s not about some precious powder that you pay the priestess for — it’s all about the hatred. The smallest axe can fell the biggest tree.” Hepsiba gazed upward. “Like an airplane that fells a skyscraper. Black magic can change the whole world!”

“I love him, but maybe I will never understand him,” said Farfalla, slowly. “He upsets me so much, and he loses his temper with me and is rude to me, and there are so many things about him that are dark and terrible, and I know, for sure, that he must be wrong for me in a thousand ways, but, well, never. I could never do that awful thing that you just taught me how to do.” Farfalla looked at her fingernails. “Well, never to him.”

“It’s good that you admit your shortcomings,” said Hepsiba, serenely. “But still, you must always remember my good advice. Because — this nice man you love? — he might well die, for other reasons. Then, some brute might marry you. You will need to remember how to do him in.”

“Oh,” said Farfalla. “Yes, I see. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“This magic works not just for husbands, my dear. It also works for sons-in-law, young grandsons... any man who is a real man. It even works for some enemy women! But, for an enemy woman, you will generally need two or three women friends. To help you conspire to destroy her.”

“You are so much wiser than me,” said Farfalla. “I’m a grown woman now, and I feel like such a child... I don’t even know what to say! But I want you to meet my boyfriend. I want you to learn his name, and look into his face. You are my Nana. I want you to give us your blessing.”

“No,” said Hepsiba. “No, why should I do that? This favela world is not your gentleman’s castle! Look at that boar-pig happily eating his garbage there. We’re going to eat that pig, this very winter. I already know where your man is. I know about his fine hotel. I have seen that building. I can ride a bus anywhere in this city, and I can look at all the fine rich people. They are visible to me. They cannot ever see me, because I am occult.”

“I know that I seem innocent and stupid,” said Farfalla, “and I agree with you about all that, but even if I hid from him, here in the favela... I know that he would come here to get me. He would come here to get me, to make me his own. I don’t want to belong to him, but nothing would stop him! He would show up here faster than email. I swear to God that lawyers, guns and money wouldn’t stop him!”

“My dear,” nodded Hepsiba, “you are pretty, but no pretty girl is that pretty. He will never come here to this favela. Our landlady here at this bar, Dona Ida Cardoso, she is as good as bread. She pays protection to the First Command of the Capital, a gang so scary that the Sao Paulo police have to come here in armored cars. No, even their armored cars will not do. Here, they fly over us in helicopters. He will never come here.”

“Oh, yes, he would most certainly come here. Nevertheless, he would come here. For me, he would come here. I can prophesy that he would come here. I know that my words would come true.”

Hepsiba considered this. “It might be, that we could go to see him. He would never come here to see us.”

“Nana, he would be here. He wouldn’t even realize that this was hard to do. He would come here like tomorrow morning comes here. The future comes to everybody. This place is the future.”

“If you foresee this rightly,” said Hepsiba, “then this man is not your One. He is not even a man with a soul. This man would be your Demon. He would possess you.”

“Nana, yes, he would possess me. He would come to the end of the Earth to possess me. Something about him is already here. Possessing me! I know him, I know what he is!”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Bachelor Party

Gavin sipped his caipirinha through a gleaming steel straw. How could Brazil’s national drink possibly be so fantastically good? As mixed drinks went, a caipirinha was as simple as dirt: just mint, lime, cane sugar, and cachaça. And cachaça was just fermented sugar cane. Three ingredients.

Gavin’s ears were gently ringing. What a wild event this Futurist Congress had been. Never had he given so much of himself, or attracted so much public attention. He wasn’t even billed at the event as a formal speaker. He’d just walked into the place, out of nowhere, really. And yet Carlo, the organizer, had quickly shunted him onto four different panels. As the event’s surprise guest star.

After those panels, came the bloggers, the newspaper people, the Brazilian television crews...

Italians were swarming at this Sao Paulo event. The Italians from the Capri Futurist event were here to repay the favor. To tell the truth, that wasn’t a “favor” at all. The chic Italians were here to awe the Brazilians, and to loot-and-sack Brazil’s emerging luxury market.

Yet, the Paulistas were cool about that. The Paulistas didn’t mind Italians. This city of Sao Paulo was a densely Italian city. A hundred years ago, half the population of Sao Paulo had been Italian. The famous Paulista accent, unique in Brazil, was an Italianized Portuguese accent. Even modern Italians didn’t know about that. That was the kind of weird, local-color detail that you had to show up here to learn.

Brazil was a continental American superpower. Brazil had carelessly swallowed generations of Italians. Many, many more Italians became Brazilians, than Brazilians would ever become Italians. That seemed to be the basic difference between a “power” and a “superpower.” Which nation had the power to suck the living human flesh from another nation?

Gavin had been a hit at this Futurist Congress. More than just a hit — the Brazilians treated him like an oracle. The Brazilians asked him many questions — mostly about the Italians. The Italians, for their part, asked his opinions of the Brazilians.

Nobody asked him one question about Seattle. Nobody asked him about high-tech accounting, either — the one area of life where Gavin had useful and practical knowledge. They simply wanted to hear from him — all about themselves. Their lives to come, their future, theirs, theirs, theirs. They asked with frantic, yet respectful eagerness. Gavin Tremaine: the talking magic-mirror.

Gavin spun a shiny coin on the bar. He loved the idea of a kind of money called the “real.” The Brazilian Real. Brazilian money was long notorious for being un-real.

This shiny piece of Brazilian small change had a beautiful shining woman on it. As the coin spun before Gavin, hypnotic on the dark wooden bar, Gavin had a massive flash of insight. He suddenly understood — he just knew — that Brazil and the United States of America were two sisters.

Not “sister countries” — genuine sisters. Two sister cultures. Their sisterhood was obscure, occult, and hidden. Somewhat scandalous, even. These two big girls were not eager to admit their sisterhood. Why not?

Nations were commonly seen as women, all over the world. There was “Marianne” in France, “Britannia” with her shield, “Germania,” even “Italia,” with a funky old castle on her head. But the USA and Brazil were personified by a genuinely shady pair of babes. America, as a woman was “Columbia.” “Columbia” was a pretty shabby excuse for a mystical national goddess. Brazil was “Efígie da República.” Efígie was the woman on the shiny coin in Gavin’s fingers.

“Columbia” had stolen the name of another American country, “Colombia.” That shady rip-off was obviously pretty bad, but “Efigie,” for all her Latin good looks, didn’t even have a proper name. “Efigie” was just an effigy.

Gavin closely examined his coin, which he had gotten in change for his third caipirinha. “Efigie” wore classical imperial Roman gear. Presumably, Efigie spoke Latin. Efigie lurked in all the pockets and purses of Brazil. Obviously, no Brazilian ever really saw Efigie. She was way too close to them to be understood.

Efigie was the female personification of a colossal empire. Brazil, a country bigger than the ancient Roman Empire had ever been. But just, frankly, made-up. A fantasy. Efigie was a fantasy girl with a powerful fantasy story. Brazil and the USA were two fantasy girls from the very same genre of fantasy. National romantic fantasy. These girls were sisters because they were immigrant chicks. They were two big, beefy, brawny harbor chicks who had stolen some ancient Roman clothes. No wonder they didn’t much want to be seen together in public.

Gavin suddenly jolted upright on his barstool. Carlo had arrived and slapped his back. Dr. Carlo was a balding, bearded Brazilian intellectual in a black, silk turtleneck. Once you got to knew him, one heck of a guy. Carlo was the organizer and the motor of the Futurist Congress, a Brazilian academic, an intellectual commentator, and a sometime Brazilian TV star.

Dr. Carlo was one of those two-fisted Brazilian anthropologists. Dr. Carlo was a world-class stuffy, uptight intellectual, but once the guy unbent a little, he brimmed over with incredible magic-realist war stories. Carlo had spent years up the Amazon, studying the language of a Brazilian tribe, who didn’t even have a past tense. Carlo knew about lost Amazonian cities. Neurotoxic blowguns. Gay Yankee beatnik tribes high on yage’ and ayahuasca. Dr. Carlo seemed to know everybody in the world.

“At last, this event is behind us!” crowed Carlo, who was the picture of happy relief. “All the staff goes out to eat now. It’s a celebration. I want you to come along with us, Gavin.”

“I can’t, I’m waiting here for my girlfriend,” said Gavin. “My fiancee’. She’s coming to get me. Here at the conference hotel.”

“Are you sure you can’t come with us? We have hired a helicopter.”

“Oh, Farfalla will show up here, all right,” Gavin nodded, sipping his metal straw. “You can depend on that. She’s a given.”

“I want you to repeat, to all my good friends tonight,” said Carlo, “what you said to the public, during that amazing panel on digital fabrication.”

“And what was that?” said Gavin, slowly spinning his sugar-crusted glass.

“That connection between the bricolage of Claude Levi-Strauss and the street aesthetic of homemade digital replicators. I had never heard that connection made — but as soon as you said that, I knew it was true!”

“Oh,” smiled Gavin, “I was just riffing! Nothing to that! I’ve got a million of ‘em.”

“Then, you will not mind,” said Carlo carefully, “if I write a paper about that subject. Or, if I tell my friends in the manufacturing industry.”

“Why would I mind?” said Gavin. “That was a fun panel! They were live-streaming that on the Internet. Any clown with broadband could see me say that stuff. Anywhere in the world.”

“That is true,” said Carlo, startled. “I missed your panel on biotechnology and carbon-fixation. I heard some good things about that discussion.”

“All I did there,” shrugged Gavin, “was to point out that Brazil’s sugar-cane bagasse cellulosic-ethanol labs could be bigger than petroleum. If there was a global carbon tax. Of course.”

“I’m an anthropologist,” Carlo confessed. “I don’t know much about that subject.”

“Carlo, that one is dead easy. Just look here. This glass is full of Brazilian sugar and ethanol. It’s literally here in my hand. All you have to do is look. Look at the future.” Gavin tossed back the sugary dregs of his caipirinha. “And, you know, you also have to swallow it.”

“My friend, I know some good people who will swallow that. Yes, I certainly do. We’re all going out to the Clube de Churrasco. It’s the best barbecue club in this city, and I know the owner, personally. He’s as good as bread. You really must come with us. You obliged me by coming from Seattle to my event. Let me oblige you through this small courtesy. You won’t regret it.”

“I’m still waiting for the girlfriend. She sent me an SMS.”

“Call her, tell her to meet us! I’d be thrilled to play the host for your American girlfriend. She must be a wonderful girl.”

“She’s Brazilian,” said Gavin, not moving from his brass-studded mahogany barstool. “And yeah, she’s worth waiting for.”

A smile spread across Carlo’s stony face. “Now I see. That explains how well you know us. The ‘Eternal Brazilian Woman’... Well, it’s good news! So, my friend, since you cannot join us for our dinner, and since you are waiting here, for something that every man agrees is worth waiting for — let me introduce you to someone else. A good friend. He has been dying to meet you.”

Carlo turned toward the crowded ruckus of the underlit hotel bar, and he beckoned. A short man shouldered through his way through the chattering crowd.

This man was wearing a frock coat, gaiters, a top-hat, and brass goggles on a rubber strap. He looked like an utter lunatic.

“Mr. Gavin Tremaine,” said Carlo, in his best courtly fashion, “may I introduce you to one of our most distinguished popular writers, Mr Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque.”

“How do you do, sir,” said Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque, offering a small, deft hand in a tailored pink pigskin glove.

“That’s quite a name,” said Gavin.

“Oh, that is my nom-de-plume, my pseudonym,” declared Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque, smoothing his black mustache with his pink gloved finger. “I print that name on the spines of my paperback novels — so my real employers can’t fire me!” He smiled. “You can just call me ‘Xavier.’ All my fans do that.”

“I don’t meet many literary writer-type guys,” Gavin confessed. “So, what kind of novels do you write, Xavier?”

“I write ‘F-C,’’ said Xavier, sheepishly. “I write ‘Ficção Científica.’”

“My friend Xavier is being much too modest!” Carlo broke in. “When his fans realized that he was appearing here at my event, they rushed to see him from all over Brazil! Hundreds of fans, from every city! They paid full price at the door!”

“So, you’re a science fiction writer,” Gavin said.

Xavier blinked his small, heavy eyes, which bore traces of rubber goggle-marks. “You have heard about ficção científica?”

“’Heard about ‘science fiction?” Gavin bellowed. “Dude, I’m from Seattle! We have the Science Fiction Museum there! We have the world’s best science fiction writers in Seattle! My home town is crawling with those guys.”

A woman in sequins and gold lamé tugged urgently at Carlo’s black silk arm. The organizer of an event rarely got a spare moment. With an unhappy backward glance, Carlo had to leave them.

The crowd was getting drunker. The noise level rose steadily.

“I have never been published in America!” shouted Xavier, “because translation is so hard! But, I read American science fiction! In English! Especially steampunk writing. My Brazilian steampunk trilogy is the best-selling among my twenty books!”

Gavin rubbed his chin and shouted back at him. “Hmmm…You don’t say. Tell me all about that.”

“Well, my Brazilian steampunk trilogy concerns an alternate history in which, instead of a Portuguese Emperor fleeing Napoleon in the year 1807, a Brazilian Emperor replaces Napoleon! So Brazil invades and conquers all of Europe! By 1812, when, in your history, the French would have been invading Russia, in my history, the Brazilians have invaded Europe. Country by country, and industry by industry, all of Europe becomes one huge Brazilian colony! And then, my hero, who is an engineer of course, he builds a giant...”

“I meant, tell me all about this steampunk thing!” Gavin broke in. “How does that concept work out for you people, here in Brazil?”

“You don’t know about steampunk?” shouted Xavier, dubiously.

“Well, I don’t read many novels! Because I’m kinda fully-booked already! But, obviously, you’re a science fiction writer at a Futurist conference! And I can see that you’re all dressed up like some fancy guy from the past, from the 19th century! So what gives with that? What is all that about?”

Xavier took off his velvet-and-leather top-hat. The novelist had a sweaty, gleaming pate, and he was missing a lot of hair. “I went to all four of your panel appearances,” he said. The roaring crowd was hitting one of those lulls that afflicted drunken crowds. “I was listening to you very closely,” Xavier said, in a quieter voice. “I was taking notes on my laptop. And I knew — I knew that if I managed to meet you, we would discuss that matter.”

“Looks like your sci-fi prediction came true right away, Xavier.”

“That can be gratifying,” mused the novelist. “But not all the time.”

“I can’t read Portuguese,” Gavin confessed, twirling his empty glass. “I know that we Americans should read more foreign writers, but, this is more like a general, global, culture-studies issue. Am I right there? So, tell me, what’s with the top hat?”

Xavier pounded his pinked gloved fist on the bar. He waved some Brazilian paper money at the overworked hotel bartender. “What are you drinking, sir?”

“I’m drinking caipirinhas.”

“The classics are always the noblest choice!” said the Brazilian novelist, ordering some top-shelf alcohol for two. “Now, I’m so very glad that you asked me that question. That question has made me a happy man. Because it is a very abstruse matter! Few of my readers ever understand this. My readers of my science fiction novels, they just want to know from me: ‘Does the lonely hero change the universe? With his weapons and his machines?’ That’s all they ever want to know! If I tell them, ‘No! He does not change the universe with his machines. He just kisses his girl,’ instead? The readers feel cheated! They get very upset!”

Gavin gazed over the sweating head of the hatless Brazilian novelist. He was bored by literary discussions. He had never seen the point of them.

Then, his heart stopped in his chest. It stopped for two beats, like a jammed clock.

She was here.

Farfalla came straight for him, whipping through the drunken crowd. His beloved was lithe and dainty of build, but she plowed through the conference-goers as if they were topsoil, just ripping a furrow straight through them.

“Cookie!” said Gavin, beaming at her. “I knew that you would come here. I knew it! I told everyone! I knew you would come. My God, how beautiful you are! Thank you so much for coming to save me from this.”

“You are drunk,” said Farfalla, scowling.

“Baby, I’m just unwinding a little, okay? You don’t know what these people have dragged out of me! I’m a wet dishrag now! I was speaking in public, or on some freakin’ television camera, for the past three days! I’m fried now! I’m totally toast.” Gavin raised his fresh glass. “So this is kinda my bachelor party. It’s great in here, isn’t it? I totally love Brazil.”

“Gavin, how many of those did you drink?”

“This is my fourth one. I think.”

Farfalla put her foot, in a plastic zori, into the bar’s brass rail, and launched herself half over the bar. “Aqui! Traga-me quatro drinks iguais ao que ele tomou.”[13] She turned to Gavin. “You’re paying.”

“What happened to your dress? And your shoes?” said Gavin, gazing at her sweaty T-shirt and wrinkled polyester stretch-pants.

“I had to pawn my Italian clothes for a bus ticket.”

“Who is this?” said Xavier.

“This is my fiancée,” said Gavin.

“Eu estava explicando para o seu marido,” said Xavier to Farfalla, politely, “que as mudanças na linguagem eletrônica estão distorcendo a própria estrutura de tempo.”[14]

Farfalla turned on him savagely. “Você acha que eu me preocupo com isso? Eu tenho meus próprios problemas! Sai daqui, seu steampunk geek!”[15]

Xavier hastily fled the scene.

“Cookie, you shouldn’t have been mean to that guy,” said Gavin, mournfully. “He was being perfectly polite to me. I think he had something to say to me. He was trying to tell me that history and the future are the same thing, somehow.”

Farfalla shrugged in irritation. “You already know that. So do I.”

“Of course, we both already know it, but he might have said it in some more interesting way! Like, something we could put on a bumper-sticker.”

Farfalla’s four separate caipirinhas arrived, in their frosty, sugar-rimmed glasses. Gavin pulled fantastic Brazilian paper bills from his wallet, and paid. “Do you really want to drink all of these? Just to catch up with me? Why? You are so stubborn.”

“I never like it,” said Farfalla, “when I’m behind you, and you’re ahead of me. Or you’re behind me, and I’m ahead of you. We should not do that. We do that all the time.”

“Why are you scolding me about that? You’ve been gone for three solid days! I thought you would never get here.”

“It was not three days that I left you here,” said Farfalla, blinking.

“Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Check the calendar. You said three days ago, that you would come get me any minute, and then you were gone. I was completely alone here, without a translator. I had to wing it with all these Brazilian Futurists.” He belched. “Luckily, I was in top form. In fact, I’ve never been better. I totally wasted those guys.”

“But it can’t be!” cried Farfalla. “If I am living three days in the future, then I didn’t eat for three days!”

Gavin silently passed her a cut-glass fingerbowl of Brazil nuts.

“These are fantastic,” said Farfalla, munching.

“You’re dressed in rags,” Gavin diagnosed. “And you’re starving.”

“Well, you’re fat, and you’re drunk.”

“Cookie, maybe that’s true, but that’s not a logical argument! You can’t just say to me, ‘Well, you’re as bad as me!’ Of course, I’m as bad as you, but that’s not how we repair our situation.”

Farfalla hungrily munched more Brazil nuts. “What is our situation?”

“We are getting married. Till death do us part. I told everybody here. I predicted that to everyone I could see. I staked all my futurist credibilty on that, and thank God, it’s really coming true.” Gavin sighed. “I’m the happiest man in Sao Paulo. No, I’m the happiest man in the entire planetary Google map.”

“I’m glad you are happy,” said Farfalla. “I wish that we lived in two different worlds, instead of one world — but we don’t. It’s all the same world. And so we are doomed to marry.” She reached for her caipirinha glass.

“Cookie, tell me something, while I still remember this. What did you do with that supernatural entity? You know, that bronze statue. The Cosmic Cupid. ‘It.’”

“I hid the Cosmic Cupid in a sacred voodoo temple, where no one from your world will ever find It.”

“Well,” said Gavin, “I sure would have liked to, um, subject that statue to some more scientific study, but, well, never mind! I trust your judgement. I’m sure that burying that awesome thing in some spooky basement somewhere was probably the perfect thing to do... Out of sight, out of mind, that solves a lot of my problems, that’s just great. Let’s blow this town, book a flight to Seattle and get married right away.”

“Just like that,” said Farfalla. She snapped her fingers.

“Yeah, I know, I know, I was gonna make this big fuss about my Swedish Methodist church and the proper costumes and the big occult ceremony... but I changed my mind about that. You and I, we should grab a cab right now. For us, ‘getting married right away,’ that might be too late to get married. We probably should have gotten married years ago.”

“To fix all our troubles, you mean.”

“Cookie, listen. I can see you’re upset about something. I know that sometimes I hurt your feelings. I see things in the wrong way, or I say the wrong things to you, or I can’t say things that you need to be said. But listen, I promise that once we’re married, we will never part. Only death will part us. I promise. I’ll be with you, at your side, and you’ll be with me, and maybe we’ll quarrel or struggle sometimes, but we’ll be together in the same world. We’ll be a comfort to each other. This will all work out. Somehow. Have faith.”

“I’m pregnant,” Farfalla said.

“That figures.”

“I am expecting a baby. Your baby is kicking me, Gavin. A week ago, I was not pregnant, and today your baby is kicking me, right here, inside my stomach! I thought it was hunger pangs.”

“You’re haunted by an unborn baby?”

“That is not funny, Gavin.” Farfalla began to weep. “It’s happening inside my body! It’s scary and weird! To be kicked by a baby hurts so much!”

Gavin sighed. “Cookie, that is one weird omen. Only you could pull an awesome stunt like that. You’re haunted by someone who doesn’t even exist? I never even heard of such a thing.”

“I knew you would get mad at me if I told you I was pregnant.”

“Baby, some weird omens are good omens. Weird can be good. That is the truth. Life happens. How can the promise of renewed life be an evil thing for a man and a woman? We need to find it within ourselves to rejoice at a miracle like that.”

“Well, you’re not a woman.”

“Nevertheless, I rejoice.” Gavin leaned to his right and sharply poked the posh Brazilian businessman at the next barstool. “Hey. Fatso. Rich guy in a suit. Get the hell off that chair. This woman in rags here is pregnant.”

The Brazilian looked up, startled, and faded into the crowd.

Farfalla sat down on the barstool. She smiled. “Well. This is a nice bar. It’s like you said. They make a good caiparinha.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking that thing, not in your tender condition,” said Gavin, gently lifting it from her fingers. “I’ll have to put away all eight of these myself.”

“Stop that. You’ll get too drunk.”

“Baby, it’s true. I am drunk, but I am also entering a state of mystic exaltation. In vino veritas. I understand my life now. I accept my destiny. Marriage, children, weird and difficult foreign spouse, I am saying ‘yes’ to the Cosmos. I feel totally great about everything.”

“You know,” said Farfalla, “for a married woman, maybe a baby is not the worst-case scenario. It certainly seems that way, but first impressions can be deceiving.”

“Now you’re talking,” nodded Gavin. “Loving this new, positive attitude.”

“Everyone lies to us women about babies,” said Farfalla, wolfing her Brazil nuts. “They tell us we should want, want, want a baby, for some reason. They make such a fuss about that! Then, what happens? A mother has to be a slave for eighteen years!”

“I am totally down with the parental-slavery angle,” nodded Gavin. “You and me, we’ll have to maintain our reality because of our kids. We’ll get ourselves a roof, diapers, baby food, all that good stuff. Maturity, and responsibility. Those are good things for two married people.”

“Maybe our children will be born mentally retarded and horribly deformed.”

“Oh yeah, ‘say yes to life,’ cookie!” Gavin nodded, clutching his drink. “Yep, that acid little remark was you all over! I don’t want to belittle your major concerns there — but I’m pretty sure that no other man in this world can survive being with you. I need to make sure you’re kept under wraps. I should be thinking hard about the safety of other people.”

Farfalla swirled her glass. “I hate it when you make fun of me.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t hate that at all. To tell the truth, you kinda like it. Because I’m the only man who knows how to do that. I’m the only man who gets it that you can be hilarious. You know why? Because I am Cassandra’s boyfriend. That’s why. That’s why I get it about you. And as soon as I realized that, a whole lot of things became very clear to me.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“I thought hard about it. I thought: so, what is it about Cassandra? What gives with her? What is it that Cassandra needs from life, that she never gets, that she’s so upset about? Is it the poetry? No, because she’s a poet. Is it some sex, or religion, or money? No way, because Cassandra is a sex-slave priestess and she lives in a palace!

So, I had to hack that issue from whole new angle. I thought, what’s the least Cassandra-like thing in the whole world? Comedy. That’s what. It is slapstick comedy. It’s Cassandra giggling uncontrollably, while her boyfriend tickles her feet. It’s just goofy teasing, raw affection, and a complete loss of womanly dignity. It’s some intimate, silly, rough-house fun from the guy in her life, that’s what Cassandra needs. If Cassandra only had some of that stuff, there wouldn’t be any of that shrieking, axe-murders, and the Medea-like burning on pyres.… Cassandra would thrive like a weed in the garbage. Cassandra would become indestructible.”

“You can’t tickle my feet. Nobody tickles me! I am not ticklish. No! I would scream if you tickled my feet. I would die.”

“Oh, sure, I knew that all along,” slurred Gavin. “Madame’s plantar surfaces are perfectly safe with me. Hey, bartender.”

“Yes, Mr. Tremaine?” said the bartender.

“Call up room service, have them bring the missus a cheeseburger and an order of curly-fries. Actually, double that order. I’m about to pass out here.”

“Certainly, sir. Right away.” The bartender lifted his cellphone.

“They’ve got such great service at this hotel,” Gavin confided, “They’ve got the kind of food that Americans like. Food that is fast! When I throw my own Futurist event in Sao Paulo, I’m definitely gonna hire these guys.”

“Was this a good conference? You liked it that much?”

“Yeah, it was totally a great conference. I was in my element, I could live in a scene like this. You shoulda been here. You missed a lot.”

“I could run a conference like this one,” said Farfalla, turning on her barstool to look at the chattering crowd. “Italians and Brazilians never understand each other, but I do. I know how these gigs get arranged, behind the scenes. I could do work like this. I would be good at it.” She sighed. “I’d need some fool to raise the funds and do the dirty work.”

“That would be me,” said Gavin.

“He’d have to be polite to people. He’d have to make them feel good about doing that.”

“That would be me, too.”

“I could be the queen of a conference like this,” said Farfalla, “and when rich, smart people showed up, they would leave with their brains in small pieces.”

“So,” nodded Gavin, “to continue on this subject of you and your emotional needs. Very compelling topic. This is all about what people really need. From the opposite sex. What we need is not what we want. It’s all all about what we don’t know we need. That’s what it’s all about, between men and women. Love is all about the absences, the mysteries. Love is about the Abyss.”

“Gavin, you are babbling. You are talking nonsense. You are drunk, Gavin. We need to go now.”

“I just ordered us a couple of burgers. Now, listen to me. It’s true that I’m drunk, but I’m also really, really close to saying what you need me to say to you. I know that I haven’t said it. I know that. I know that tortures you. But, I’m finally getting way outside of my own shell here. Brazil is doing it for me. Brazil and you. I think. You know what? I was here, alone, in Brazil, and I was alone in this big hotel with a crowd of total strangers. I thought, what the hell am I doing here? She has deserted me! I’m all alone here, she’s never coming back to me! And then, I thought, you know what? I’m going to say — I’m going to say the things that will make me deserve to have her. Because these are her people. This is her world here, and I am going to say the things to them that only the man who loved her could possibly say. And I knew how to say them. Then, I really said those things. And they went wild for that. They ate it up with a spoon. Because then it came easy, because it wasn’t coming from me, it was coming from us.”

She gazed at him in astonishment and dawning hope. “Yes! Yes! You are! You are getting much closer to saying it! You are saying much too much, but that was almost it!”

“And you did come back to me. You’re here with me right now. See, that proves that I was right all along!”

“No... no, Gavin, that’s not what you are supposed to say! No, Gavin, we have to leave this place now. I have a bad feeling. I have a premonition. We need to leave together. Now. Don’t sit here boasting. We have to go.”

“I am not boasting! I know we have both missed something. I know that we missed it, I can feel it! I feel the lack of it, just like you do. I feel the loss! Listen. We’re both Futurists. We are two Futurists, and we love each other. But, we are never in the right time and space together! We’re just never quite in sync! We can tear this world to pieces, that will never be a problem for us, but what about you and me? We should have had our special time... just, maybe one brief, perfect moment... when two people are truly surprised by finding the one they love. Instead of expecting each other, all along... and predicting each other, foreseeing each other... we should have discovered each other. We should have had these sweet days of surprise and discovery... days of freshness, and promise. Those days of dawning love that are rapturous. A honeymoon for us. Maybe two months of real, true romance, sixty days. Where was that time for us? We didn’t ever get that. What happened to that? We were always too far ahead of ourselves.”

“What a sweet thing to say,” said Farfalla, wiping at her eyes.

“We could have treasured every single day! We could have kept scrap-books about our honeymoon.”

“That is so true,” said Farfalla. “Where is our rapture? My heart should sing.”

“Where was our wild joy, baby? We always outguess our love, or predict our love, or fend it off as if it were some curse. We try to set limits on what love is allowed to do to us. Love should surprise us... sweep over us in a wave... and open us up to feelings that we never knew we could have.” Gavin was choking up.

Farfalla looked at him with pity. “Yes, there should have been more surprise about our love, and... more sense of wonder.”

“Yes. That’s it. Where is that part of my story? My sense of wonder. I don’t get my wonder. I never got it. I misplaced my wonder. Where is my wonder?”

“Our days of romance, our days of wonder,” said Farfalla. “Maybe those days aren’t lost to us. Maybe those days are ahead of us.”

Gavin blinked. “Well, I don’t see how that could be possible.”

“But it is. Because I am a Futurist,” said Farfalla. “So, maybe I can make a promise to you. I can promise you, that we do get our honeymoon. Our sixty days of wild rapture. Love and wonder, too. But not all at one time. We get our honeymoon, but it is just one day within each year. Sixty days, for sixty years. One day, every year, on our anniversary day.” She crossed her heart.

“What a weird thing to predict.”

“That is strange, isn’t it? But it’s so us!”

“Can you do that?”

“Oh yes. I can. I promise you all those days. We will have them, I swear that we will.” She paused. “I’ll need some help from you.”

“You know,” said Gavin, “any married couple that could pull that off would have an epic win. They would never despair of their love. No matter how cruel life was, or what darkness grabbed them by their throats, they would always look forward to some fresh attack of enchantment and illusion. That has got to be the greatest romance hack in all of space and time.”

“I’m glad that you’re happy,” said Farfalla. “Now, get up! We have to leave right away.”

Gavin lurched heavily from his barstool. Then, he wrapped her in his arms.

“Not now, Gavin!” Farfalla screeched, turning her face away. “No, no... Yes, yes, all right, fine! Yes, I love you! Yes, you are wonderful. Stop kissing me, Gavin.”

“We were meant to be together,” Gavin mumbled. “Fate is so kind to us, that even our doom is sweet...”

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Fabio Mascherati.

Gavin looked up. “Ciao, Fabio. Come va?”

“Gavin, what are you doing here in Sao Paulo?” demanded Fabio. “You are not on the registry of speakers!”

“They kinda slotted me in at the last minute,” said Gavin, releasing his boozy grip on Farfalla. “Let me introduce you to a very special somebody here.…”

“I know who this girl is!” said Fabio, sucking air through his teeth. “I was just on the phone to Pancho Pola! Just now! ‘Pancho,’ I told him, ‘you are being a fool!’ I told him! ‘There is no way that your girlfriend is here in Sao Paulo! There is no way that Gavin Tremaine is here with your girlfriend! There is no way,’ I said to him, ‘that Gavin Tremaine is having an affair with your woman!’”

Fabio’s brow grew stormy. “But you are! You are. You made me lie to him. You made me lie to Dr. Pancrazio Pola. My trust with him is ruined.”

“This is not his fault,” Farfalla squeaked.

Fabio nodded, in a courtly fashion, at the wooden bar. “Is that your nice American hamburger that just arrived?”

Farfalla turned and looked at the hamburger. She looked back at Fabio, guiltily. “Maybe.”

“Why don’t you put that greasy hamburger into your big, red, lipstick mouth, and let me speak to this man?”

Farfalla shrank away in fear.

“I know that this little scene looks pretty bad,” said Gavin, “but let me predict something, Fabio. You will forgive me for this, some day. It’ll take a while, but some day, this will all seem funny.”

Fabio slid into the space between Gavin and Farfalla. He put his tailored coat-sleeve on the hotel bar. He glanced with a vague contempt at a second arriving hamburger, amid a litter of untouched drinks.

“Gavin,” Fabio said slowly, “let me ask you something. Is this situation funny? Do you consider us, Italians, an amusing people? Do we exist for your sport? Are we the comic relief, in your world?”

“No,” said Gavin.

“Gavin, why did you have to humiliate Pancho Pola? Pancho has done nothing to you! He’s a business partner of yours, as I recall. He’s a business partner of mine. I heard that you openly boasted to people that his girlfriend was your woman! Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Gavin. “Yes, I did say that to everyone. Because it’s the truth.”

“Gavin, why couldn’t you keep the truth quiet? You couldn’t get a hotel room for that disgrace? I walk into this stupid bar, and you are pawing her in public! That is outrageous! That is not how it is done! How can you expect Pancho Pola to forgive such a thing? I don’t say that you can’t have some woman! God knows why you would pick that woman — but I don’t say that to you! But it is never done in that way. Never! That was vulgar.”

“Fabio, I can understand why you would say that. As an Italian, I really put the foot wrong forward. That’s right, that is not how these things are done in Italy. But well, I’m not Italian. And besides, there were circumstances.”

“I’m waiting,” said Fabio. “For your ‘circumstances.’”

“Well, listen to me, if Pancho had ever done the right thing by her, and if he’d married her... Okay, I’m lying. All right? I’m lying. Let me tell you the truth. I don’t care if that geek married her ten times over. The very thought that he ever put one hand on her drives me crazy. She’s mine, and she’s not his. You know what? To hell with him.”

“That,” said Fabio, “is not what I wanted to hear.”

“Fabio, despite our culture barrier, I’m going to level with you here, okay? I have given offense in a serious matter. I know that. I admit that. I want to settle this thing, openly, honestly, once and for all. Like gentlemen. Old-school. Whip out your phone there, and call your buddy, that European geek. You tell him that I want to meet him on neutral ground. Iceland would be good. Erupting volcanoes, collapsing banks, he can take his pick. You tell him to bring his Italian stiletto and a gold-plated Milanese Beretta. I’m coming over there with a US Army forty-five automatic and a Bowie knife. Two men walk in, one man walks out. That’s my proposal.”

“You are drunk,” sighed Fabio.

“Yeah, I have had a few. That’s why I’m saying what I think.”

“Gavin,” said Farfalla, edging closer, “stop making a scene! You are hurting my feelings.”

“Baby, back off. This is man stuff.”

“He isn’t like this,” Farfalla offered to Fabio.

Fabio examined her as if she were a bug in a cigar box. “Non sono l’unico a sapere cosa avete fatto. L’uomo che hai tradito ha un sacco di amici.”[16]

Farfalla backed off, pale with dread and shame.

Gavin drew a deep breath. “So I’m trusting you to convey my offer for me, Fabio. You can tell him that’s my final deal. He wants the Futurist cupcake there, he can walk in his Milanese monkey-boots over my dead body.”

“Gavin, please, really...”

“Don’t tell me that it’s not the Italian way, buddy. Because it is. That’s more of the Italian way than he has has got the stomach for. Look, I don’t hate him... All right, to tell the truth — I do hate him. I’m jealous of him, and I hate him. If he shuts up, he backs down, and he backs off forever, then, maybe, I’ll forgive him. I’ll forgive him for ever existing. Yeah. That’s predictable. I’m a grown-up, so I will forgive him, some day. But in the meantime, there are some issues between two gentlemen that are timeless. And a woman, that one is issue number one.”

“I will tell him those sad, crazy things for you,” said Fabio, “if you insist.”

“I do insist. I will never change my mind. This matter is final.”

“Pancho is not going to fight a duel with guns in Iceland,” said Fabio, “because he hasn’t lost his senses! Pancho is a man of the world! He’ll get even with you for this act of disrespect... because you deserve that. You are the worst!”

“No, I am not the worst. True love is the worst, pal. I just offered him his chance to get even with me. There is his chance, fair and square. Take it, or leave it.”

“I am witnessing a tragedy,” mourned Fabio. “This is so sad! Why are men like this? We had such a beautiful scene! Me, the entrepreneur. You, the financier. And him, an electronics genius! And all of that destroyed. Why? Why? Because of her!”

Fabio aimed a viper-like glance at Farfalla, who crumpled with shame, as she cowered at the bar. “Yes, it is all about her,” Fabio said. “Why her? What do you plan to do with her? Eh? Hang her on your neck like an anchor? Look at her! She has no education! She has no proper family! She was never one of us! Will you take her to boardroom meetings? Make her the wife of the city councilman? You are destroying your future, damaging me, hurting him, and destroying everything that we built! You are trapped here in a stupid fit of passion.”

“Fabio, you’ve been a good friend of mine, so I’m not going to punch you for telling me that. Okay? But, get over yourself. You can just take your sad, petty, parochial, regional prejudices, which mean nothing outside of downtown Milan, and you can just... Oh hell. Hell. Look at that. You have chased her off, Fabio. She bought all those mean things you were yelling about her. She believed you. You broke her heart. Look, she’s running off with her tail tucked between her legs. What a mess.”

“Well, I never liked her very much,” said Fabio, “but maybe she is an Italian girl, in her heart... Maybe, she has some spark of decency! Maybe, she saw the common sense in this matter! Maybe, she will let you alone now. And stop ruining you.”

“There is no way, man. Her? Common sense? That’s not even possible. I know perfectly well what she’s up to. The Futurist cupcake there is heading straight for the heart-of-darkness. She’s got some kind of goddamn voodoo temple... She’s gonna hole up there in her sulky moody funk, like a snail in a steel shell... Man, why is love like this? Why? I could have been safe in some cab to the airport right now! But, no... No, like an idiot, I had to tell her how I really felt about her! Man, women hate it when men tell them that! Women only want you to feel the way women think you should feel. You level with women — ever — and they freak right out! They lose it.”

“You really do love her, then,” said Fabio, his face settling a little.

“Yeah. I do love her. She’s terrific. She’s aces. I’ll never love another woman.”

Fabio thought this over. “You don’t mind it?... Being shamed, being ruined... Surrendering the whole world for her?”

“Aw, I scarcely had a use for my unruined world,” said Gavin, settling back into his barstool. “Without her in my world, my world’s useless! It’s a non-functional world. It’s half a world. I can’t live in there without her. There’s no room in there.”

Gavin grappled with his hamburger. He munched it loudly.

“You really seem to be enjoying this,” Fabio observed.

“You betcha! They can really cook ‘em, down here. This Brazilian beef, it’s pure ground chuck, no soy in it. This is like a roadhouse burger from the 1950’s. It’s like eating pure time travel. It’s fantastic.”

“Those patatine fries smell good,” Fabio admitted.

“Got her spare plate there, she barely touched it. Why don’t you sit with me?”

Fabio gripped the abandoned burger with his polished nails. Then, he enjoyed a slug of caiparinha. “No Capri parasols in these drinks,” he said. “No girly fruit slices here... They’re a simple, wholesome people, these Brazilians. This is a real man’s drink.”

13 “Over here, bring me the four drinks he just had.”

14 “I was just explaining to your husband that the mutations of electronic language can distort the proper structure of space and time.”

15 “You think I care about that? I have my own problems! Get lost, you steampunk geek!

16 “I’m not the only one who knows what you did here. The man you betrayed has a lot of friends.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Last Man and Woman on Earth

“You must stop crying now,” said Hepsiba. “I haven’t seen you cry like this since your puppy died.”

“When my dog died, I lost someone I loved!” mourned Farfalla. “Everything that Milanese rich-boy said about me was true! I hate it when normal people say prophetic things! Prophecy should be reserved to adepts.”

“Your boyfriend is not your dead puppy,” said Hepsiba. “You’re safe from him here in the temple. Stop making such a fuss.”

“Gavin will lose everything,” said Farfalla. “He’ll be ruined. And all because of me! How can Gavin be in American politics, when I am a Futurist Fascist whose parents are Communists? Why, why did I march in all those Neo-Fascist street marches? And why did I appear naked in their pin-up calendar when I was eighteen? What a fool I’ve been!”

“Well, maybe your boyfriend can be in Brazilian politics,” offered Hepsiba slyly. “Dilma Rousseff will be our next President, and Dilma was a terrorist. Terrorists are even worse than Fascists and Communists.”

“You’re just saying that to cheer me up, Nana! I don’t care about your politics — I don’t even care about exciting, sexy, Italian Fascist politics! I’m wrong for Gavin. That’s why I’m crying. I’m ignorant. I’m dirty. I’m not educated, like he is. I don’t even understand his computers.” She sniffled. “At least, not Microsoft Windows.”

“You were complaining a minute ago that your boy was too stupid for you.”

“Well, yes. That’s true, too. Gavin is great about seeing the future, but that doesn’t require any brains. Because most of the future is stupid. Gavin is sort of dim, actually. If Gavin was smart, he would have just seduced me in Capri, and gone back to America. After giving me an incurable sex-disease. And making me pregnant. Of course.”

The Great Houngan entered the voodoo temple. A reverent hush fell over the sacred space. The Great Houngan always evoked reverent silences. The Great Houngan possessed tremendous, awesome, male supernatural power. He was universally known as one of the greatest voodoo warlocks Sao Paulo had ever seen.

The Great Houngan had also made it clear, in his silent, cagey, eye-wrinkling way that Farfalla’s ceaseless wailing and girlish laments really got on his nerves.

The Great Houngan adjusted his white terrycloth robe. He stuck a pair of chopsticks through his white dreadlocked top-knot. He put on a crackling, eight-track Clara Nunes tape: his particular meditation favorite. Then, he settled down into his foamed pink yoga mat.

Glaring at her through his deeply yellowed eyewhites, the Great Houngan ritually chopped up four gooey buds of Cabrobó marijuana. He filled his sacred smoking-chalice from a white plastic water-bucket. Then, the Great Houngan fired up.

With ritual intensity, the Great Houngan inhaled and expelled vast, face-obscuring wreaths of smoke. The spiritualist temple filled with the pollutant smell of burnt hemp.

The Great Houngan silently persisted at his smoking. He had been at this self-sacrificing effort for decades.

Farfalla was somewhat vague on what the Great Houngan accomplished by his sacred, smokey, ritual breathing. Hepsiba’s contented, respectful face, however, made it entirely clear that her husband was doing one of the most important things in the world.

The Houngan had great magic. He had a magic power much greater than mere foresight. The Houngan’s magic power was forgetfulness. He was the great priest of necromantic forgetfulness: the forgetfulness of the dead.

The Umbanda Terreiro was a Spiritualist church. They held a firm faith in the persistent existence of the dead. All of the dead. Especially the dead of Brazil.

Most Brazilian spiritual mediums were concerned with dead Brazilian slaves and dead Brazilian Indians. These were the dead people of Brazil with the most motive to rest uneasy.

However, as Brazilian history progressed and re-ordered itself, the Great Houngan had achieved a higher plane of spiritual enlightenment. The great man had changed his necromantic tactics. The Houngan still smoked bales of marijuana for the spiritual sake of the resentful dead slaves and dead Indians. But, he had also taken on a singular, more important crusade.

The Great Houngan was engaged in a spiritual duel with the dark legacy of Brazilian President Getulio Vargas, the “Samba Fascist.” President Vargas, who was, of course, a master voodoo adept, had committed an awesome act of necromancy on the dreadful night of August 24, 1954. This tremendous, occult ritual, committed in a bloody haze of murder and conspiracy, had transformed Brazilian national life – seemingly, forever.

But, all hope was not lost — no matter what the wicked Brazilian dictator had done. Because, thanks to the tireless spiritual work of the Great Houngan — many Brazilians no longer remembered what Getulio Vargas had done on the star-aligned, accursed night of August 24, 1954. Brazilians had simply forgotten all about it. It no longer seemed to be of any relevance to them. They were free of the accursed act. They didn’t even care to access Wikipedia and look it up.

Peace could not descend on the dark, accursed soul of the dictator Vargas — that blessing was too much to ask, even of the Great Hougan. However, every ritual exhalation from the Houngan’s chalice would lay another thin, ashy layer of Brazilian forgetfulness on a crime designed to be eternal.

This was the nature of the Great Houngan’s great crusade. Although nobody ever noticed it, he was winning his crusade. Therefore, Farfalla and her Nana Hepsiba had to sit in a meditative silence, broken only the the chutter of the passing copters and the occasional urban ambulance, until the Houngan’s sacred rite was complete.

Then, the Houngan closed his reddened, swollen eyes, and turned off the samba racket from his eight-track tape.

He seemed to collapse right where he sat, on his cheap foam mat, cross-legged.

Farfalla finished off her styrofoam carton of rice and beans. She cleaned up the rest of dinner and exited the temple door.

Farfalla stepped onto the broad and dusty concrete beam, not daring to trust the rain-rotted plywood. She took five careful steps and tossed the airy white cartons off into empty space.

An evening breeze caught the filthy litter. The wind sent it wheeling like a trio of white pigeons over the Heliopolis favela.

Wind stripped the tarry reek of hemp smoke out of her clothes. Farfalla grabbed a taut steel cable and gazed over the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere.

In her youth, her father, the visionary architect, had dreamed of a day of justice when the favela would be transformed. A day when there would be no more dirt-floored, palm-thatched favela huts.

In a certain witchy, paranormal fashion, her father’s wish had come true. The twenty-teens were not the nineteen-seventies, and the favela had indeed changed radically.

Farfalla was overlooking a truly modern favela. Scarcely a trace of bamboo and palm and rattan. This modern favela was made of brick-red industrial breeze-block and rust-red corrugated tin.

The favelas of Sao Paulo were colossal. They were bigger than most people’s cities. So huge were they in their mega-urban proportions that, if every dead African slave and dead Brazilian Indian had leapt from his grave to seek his fortune in these modern slums, they wouldn’t even have raised the rent.

That was how big these modern favelas were, and yet, they weren’t even big — not by Sao Paulo standards. The favelas were obscurely tucked into mere corners and niches of the great metropolis. The favelas were blown there in heaps, like street-litter.

Foreigners obsessed about Brazil’s favelas because the favelas seemed so scandalous. Favelas starred in heart-wrenching European art movies. For Brazilians, the favelas were not dramatic, not exotic. For the people who lived there, who built there, favelas were modest and dull. Favelas were specifically created to be overlooked and ignored. They were invisible homes for invisible people.

Italy had a few small things, rather like favelas — some foreign gypsy squatter camps, mostly. But Farfalla was an architect’s daughter. She knew a lot about Italy’s problem. Not favelas, but the exact opposite. UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

UNESCO World Heritage sites were beautiful gardensand lovely castles, fine churches, royal villas, and sacred monasteries. Place which everyone in the world agreed were wonderful places. Not evil favela slums.

But they were also very, very dead. Italy was littered with dead castles. Zombie architecture occupied the peninsula. Modern Italians had to keep these dead things propped upright, because, being so old and dead, they were always falling into themselves. Nobody lived in them. Inhabited exclusively by ghosts and tourists, the UNESCO World Heritage sites had no children in them. Not even one living Italian child.

So, given her choice for a neighborhood: a dead, cold, frozen heritage, or a reeking, stinking tropical favela — Farfalla would always prefer the favela. It wasn’t even a decision. It was her instinctive allegiance. It was her fate as a living soul.

If Gavin Tremaine escaped her fatal clutch on his life, then someday, this favela was where Farfalla would go. To live. The favela had always been waiting for Farfalla. The favelas were her true futurity. The futurity for the planet’s real people. The people who were planetary losers. The young, the cheated, and the sleazy. The people who never got a break.

The favelas were futurity for anybody who dodged the law and the taxman. People like Farfalla Corrado, a globe-trotting girl with a big mystical streak. Every cute girl, someday, turns forty. Then, she’s not a cute girl, but an aging woman who used to live on her wits and good looks. Time takes those things away from women, and time doesn’t give them back.

It was all about a road ahead. The favela alley road. It’s all about the patient, downhill-strolling process of a woman’s diminished expectations. “Oh well, oh well, oh well... oh well.”

Some lost twin of hers was living that favela life right now. Farfalla knew that she had a double out there, someone who had shared that road ahead. An Italian woman émigré, living in Sao Paulo. Someone, maybe, twenty years older than herself. Some washed-up, hustling, Italian hippie chick. With a prison record, most likely. Drugs, theft, whatever. She got too close to that pretty-girl meat grinder. It chewed up her meat, and her soul, too.

Not even an unhappy woman, necessarily. Just a forgotten, lonely, wrinkly, half-mad creature. With her mangy cat,her hotplate, and her single teabag.

Farfalla began weeping again. Copiously. Endlessly. She could not believe the bitterness that soaked her universe. She squatted on the grimy concrete of the enormous bracing beam, and she clung to her rusty wire. She wept about her dirty rotten future in hot, salty torrents.

Briefly, it occurred to her to fling herself, with a final howl of despair, to her own death. She would plummet like a movie’s special-effect, spinning to the city’s filthy broken pavements, to shatter there like a dropped teacup...

But Farfalla didn’t want that. No, not to die. Not when there was such allure, such melancholy pleasure, such a seduction, in her dark abyss of self-pity.

So she wept, but she knew that she wept from resentment. Not from her sorrow, or from her love, either. From her rage. Resentment was the one guiding emotion that never failed her. The high priestess, Cassandra, would never throw herself from a tall building. Not unless Cassandra could land hard on somebody else.

And who would that guilty person be? Who should Cassandra destroy, in her sacred rage? When Cassandra made a bomb of her own body, whose death would appease her hatred?

Somebody deserved to be destroyed. Somebody out there was darkly guilty of making this world this bad. Some demonic, satanic figure. Just look at the size of that slum! Just imagine the fantastic crowd of downtrodden wretches, stuck in there, crammed in there! The surplus flesh of the Third World, the no-hopers! Who was responsible?

Who could be bad enough, wicked enough, to ruin everything, to make life on Earth so worthless, and a vengeful death so appealing? Somebody had done that.

Adam, maybe. Except in that big story, Eve was the villain.

Farfalla wobbled back inside the voodoo temple. The temple, a complex contraption of plywood, chickenwire and fiberboard, was wedged deep into a shadowy corner of three massive skyscraper beams.

Farfalla sat down on a mirrorcloth pillow, wiping at her swollen, aching eyes. Framed portraits of Brazilian gurus and seers graced the temple walls. Blackout curtains shaded the windows. Gaudy swathes of nylon carpet were nailed to the floor.

A stout mahogany shelf held the little temple’s sacred pantheon of Orixa deities. They were tall occult figures, carefully molded from colorful Taiwanese plastic. The Cosmic Cupid had just been added to their number. The bronze Cupid stood there among the voodoo idols, a little wobbly and pockmarked, but stubbornly upright.

Nana Hepsibah glanced tenderly at her slumbering husband. Then, she seated herself on an overstuffed pillow and clicked on her television.

“’Xica da Silva’ is the best telenovela they ever made!” Hepsiba confided, confronting her cheap Korean vacuum-tube. “The Houngan never wants to watch my favorite show with me, but you should bring that pillow and sit down right here! Xica is just so sweet and good — yes, our dear little Xica! Wait till you see all her lovely costumes! I cry every time I see how Xica’s men make her suffer!”

“You have some pretty bad reception up here, Nana,” said Farfalla. She fetched the broom from the corner.

Then, Farfalla pursued the temple’s cobwebs. It comforted Farfalla to play the housemaid inside the house of her old housemaid. There was something so karmically perfect about that. Wheels within wheels. Yes.

Besides, obviously, no one else was ever going to sweep away these dusty, ghostly, dirty, trailing voodoo cobwebs. Nobody ever did that any more, except her. The older people around her didn’t even notice them any more. All the people of her parent’s generation were getting frail. Black, white, brown, Brazilian, Italian, American, rich, poor, they were all very alike, in a way. Because soon they would all be dead.

They couldn’t see their own decline. They didn’t realize that their world had passed them by. They clung to old people’s illusions. For them, the future was invading the present faster than the past could put it away.

It made Farfalla’s heart hurt.

Nana shook her gray head over her muttering gray screen. “Xica talked much louder, ten years ago! And she looked much prettier then, too! They have cut big pieces out of her soap opera, and put in many more commercials! How cruel people are!”

“Why do you watch these old TV repeats, anyway?” said Farfalla. “I could go onto BitTorrent and download ‘Xica da Silva’ for free.”

Nana was startled. She glared at Farfalla in occult dread. “Stop hurting my Xica! You know that’s a wicked thing to do!”

“But it’s so easy! Oh come on, everybody does that!”

“That doesn’t mean that you should be wicked! You call yourself an adept? You should have higher standards, my girl! If everybody jumped off a skyscraper, would you jump off the skyscraper?”

Farfalla opened her mouth to cruelly riposte: No, I would LEAD all those stupid bastards to jump off the skyscraper! Then, Farfalla gritted her teeth in silence.

Sassing your elders, by boasting to them about your own evil. Could anything be more immature? And to say a fatal thing like that in front of a whole rack of voodoo gods? You’d have to be an utter fool.

Farfalla hefted her witchy broom. The TV program resumed. Farfalla felt a slow, adult resolve growing within herself. Once again, she was bouncing back from rock bottom. She would stop weeping and moaning. Just stop it. And not just shrug it off this time, and pretend to make the best of it.

She would find some moral backbone in her life. She would stop passively embracing the path of least resistance. She would do some kind and good things, yes, just for once. She would make her own world a better place through her own efforts!

For instance, maybe she would find out who the actress was in ‘Xica da Silva.’ She would amend the actress’s Wikipedia article. Actresses were needy women with self-esteem problems, just like herself. Maybe Farfalla would follow the Twitter account of the actress. She would say supportive things about the actress’s faltering career.

And Farfalla would pay money for a video DVD, every once in a while. Every Futurist knew that the DVD medium was doomed. But, kindness to the doomed was a beautiful gesture.

Hepsiba’s cellphone beeped noisily. She glanced at the tiny screen. Then, she tilted her head at Farfalla, “Be a dear, and fetch that basket for me!”

Farfalla fetched up a jute gunnysack. She ventured outside the temple once again. The wind was picking up. Farfalla minced carefully over to the handcrank and rolled the bamboo wheel.

The iron cable thrummed and swayed with tension. The bamboo prayer-wheel squeaked and screeched. The sweat of the effort burst from Farfalla’s armpits and ran down her ribs.

The collection basket finally hove into sight.

Farfalla unlatched the basket’s straw lid. She stuffed all the contents into the gunnysask. She hauled the sack inside and placed the sacred temple offerings at Hepsiba’s feet. Baby-wipes, hooded towels, powdered milk, and oatmeal. Half a dozen packs of freeze-dried Thai ramen noodles.

“She remembered the noodles!” crowed Hepsiba. “Those are the Houngan’s favorites! Be a dear, and make him a nice hot bowl.”

“What’s with all this baby gear?” said Farfalla.

“Her baby died,” shrugged Hepsiba. “We invoke the baby’s soul every Sunday. So, she is grateful.”

Farfalla stared in horror at the pristine, unworn baby rubbish. “Oh Madonna!” she said, in a fresh river of tears, “to be pregnant is awful, but to have a dead baby is ten thousand times worse! How can this world be so cruel? How do we women endure it?”

Hepsiba glanced up in mild irritation. “Can’t this wait until the commercials?”

“Nana, why? Why am I so doomed and bad? I deserve to be this unhappy, don’t I? I was cursed! I am cursed with supernatural powers! Why am I so cynical? I am the future, but it’s like I am dead inside! I should be the source of light and happiness to everybody around me... I should bring everyone joy! Like I did when I was a little girl!”

“You?” said Hepsiba, waving her skinny arm. “Girl, I knew you when you were a little girl! Most nice little girls, when they hear the mousetrap snap... They hide their faces and they cry for the sweet little mouse! But not you, not Farfalla Corrado. You would run over there with your pigtails flying. To see that mouse die!”

“Did I do that?” said Farfalla.

“You did. Because you always knew the mouse was doomed,” nodded Hepsiba. “Your father’s compost heaps brought us plenty of mice. Go boil that ramen. Ramen is such a holy blessing! Ramen only takes three minutes!”

Farfalla gazed at the gaudy Thai grocery packet, which had somehow crossed half the planet to offer nourishment to the Brazilian underclass. “No, I will not do that,” she announced. “I have my moral principles. I am not going to cook this stupid, ugly, fast-food rubbish. I am going to make us a real dinner.”

“Don’t be troublesome,” Hepsiba said.

“Nana, I am Italian. I know how to cook. I can feed thirty European geeks in thirty minutes.”

Farfalla gathered her resolve. She ventured outside to confront the temple’s windowboxes. The big troughs of dirt were full of half-abandoned home-farmed crops. Cilantro, tomatoes, chives, parsley.

The African yam vines were particularly eldritch. Their leafy cascades tumbled way past the nineteenth floor. Farfalla grubbed up one of the yam-roots from its grimy, smelly bed. What a dirty, purple-tinted tuber.

Farfalla washed the yam in the rain barrel. She lugged the yam into the temple. It looked, if anything, even uglier in there.

Farfalla had at the yam with a paring knife. The ugliness flew off the yam in long thin strips. Its shining inner core emerged. The yam was gold inside.

Conviction struck her. A tremendous premonition. Farfalla put the paring knife aside. “I sense the presence of the man who shares my life,” she announced. “My bridegroom is coming for me.”

Bent over her TV romance, Hepsiba serenely ignored her.

“Did you hear me say that? The man I will marry is coming to get me! He is! I know it! He is on the way!”

“Well,” said Hepsiba, “’a man comes in at the door, but a child comes in at the heart.’ My child, he’s just a man, don’t worry so much! I am hiding you here! You are safe from this man! He couldn’t find you up here with an army.”

“But, he needs me now! I must fly to him!”

Farfalla jumped into her shoes.

Far below her, at the rubbled-covered root of the skeleton, a truck had pulled up. From Farfalla’s height, the truck looked as tiny as a boy’s tin toy. But she recognized it anyway. It was an armored Mitsubishi Pajaro, the standard drug trafficker’s truck. Young men were climbing out of it. Young men, carrying guns.

Gangsters. The favela gangsters had kidnapped Gavin Tremaine. The drug gang was going to torture and kill him. Gavin’s sweet body would be torn to bloody shreds before her eyes. Gavin had blundered into deadly trouble in his mad pursuit of her. Her beloved was in mortal peril. His death was all her fault.

She had no hope... Only the dark pleasure of dying with him.

She longed to simply fling herself off the skyscraper to crash on top of him, but it took Farfalla more than half an hour to reach the level of the street, on foot.

Gavin and the gangsters were still busy, down there at street level. They were gluing paper WANTED posters to the walls of the local favela shacks. They were also playing loud baile-funk music out of their pockmarked truck.

The gangsters were fending off a host of the local favela street kids, who were trying to beg from the gangsters, or sell them useless things, or steal something from them. There were mobs of kids living in the favela. The favela produced more kids than any other place in Brazil. The drug gangsters were teenagers, six or seven years older than the street-urchin kids, but on the same road ahead.

The older drug-gang kids were jovially threatening to kill some of the younger street-urchin kids.

Gavin glanced up as Farfalla hurried through the weedy construction rubble. Gavin squared away his stack of posters.

“Well, well, look here she is!” he announced. “Boys, we have a major win! Farfalla, let me introduce you to the boys: Bozinho, Itamar, Edson, and Marquinhos. The big guy driving the truck is Monstro.”

“É realmente ela?” said the gangster named Bozinho. “Pensei que ela fosse muito mais sexy.”[17]

“What did he say to you, just now?” Gavin asked Farfalla.

Farfalla opened her mouth to translate for him, but then Itamar spoke up. Itamar had a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his wifebeater shirt, and two revolvers stuck into his gold nylon gym shorts. “Hey! You! Millionaire’s sexy girlfriend!”

“What?”

“Is your boyfriend here really a big computer man from America?”

Farfalla gazed into the lethal eyes of this feral, teenaged marauder. Slowly, she examined all four of the drug gangsters. They had homemade juvenile prison tattoos. They had scars and scabs and burns and bruises. They were filthy. They smelled. Doom was tattooed all over them. They were the walking dead.

“Yes, he is!” she cried out to them, “That is very true! My cute boyfriend really is a high-tech computer millionaire.”

The teenage killers exchanged high-fives and triumphant gang-signs. “I knew it!” cried Bozinho. “I always, always wanted to meet one of those phantom creatures! I always knew they must really exist!”

Marquinhos spoke up. Marquinhos had the scarred, puffy face of an elderly prizefighter. Some enemy had knocked out half his teeth. “Computer games,” he said, “are the only reason that we live.”

“I can make computer games!” said Farfalla.

“Well,” Bozinho allowed, “I guess that’s why he loves you.”

“I’m a zombie priestess in Warcraft!” said Farfalla.

“Warcraft zombies are a bunch of fags,” said Bozinho, gravely. “We never play Warcraft. We play War. Modern Warfare Two...”

“Halo Three...” said Marquinhos.

“America’s Army has the best small-unit urban tactics,” said Edson, shouldering his rusty rifle.

“Farfalla, I want you to tell these boys,” Gavin broke in, “that I appreciate all their urban reconnaissance work. That poster campaig with your face on it? That was their own idea. Plus, their sound-trucks, and those big announcements at all the local discos... I’m impressed by the way they’ve gotten this community organized. Tell ‘em I’ll always be grateful!”

The gangsters listened to Gavin with respectful incomprehension. Bozinho picked at his scanty goatee. “Your computer wizard almost looks like mortal flesh and blood. Will you marry him?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Let us give you a wedding gift!” said Bozinho. “Edson, tell Monstro to bring out that gift box!”

Edson shook like a leaf in his flat, tattered zoris. “I don’t want to talk to Monstro...”

“I’ll do it!” Bozinho pried with scarred fingertips at the mud-stained Japanese sports truck. The armored rear doors opened with a heavy groan. Bozinho hopped inside the vehicle.

He emerged with a flimsy box of grease-stained cardboard.

“Every newlywed couple can use this!” said Bozinho.

Gavin examined the box.

“This gift means a happy future!” grinned Bozinho.

Gavin moved his bag from one shoulder to another. “Boys, the girlfriend and I kinda need to travel light.”

Bozinho tossed the cardboard box to the shattered earth. He fixed his dead-fish eyes on Farfalla. “I knew the wizard would refuse our gift. Computer millionaires are cyborg robot men. But girl, you are different. I can see you are undead, just like us. So, why don’t you take this gift, for your future? You’re sensible! You know you need it!”

Farfalla gazed in anguish at the cash-crammed box of blood money. American hundred dollar bills, jammed together in thick blocks of stained paper. That fortune in cash could have bought her a house. Two houses. Three houses in three different countries. It could have bought her freedom. Bought security. Money meant comfort and ease. Warmth, food, and dignity. Past, present, and future. Money meant everything there was in space and time. And that money was just sitting there.

“Oh, you want this all right!” chuckled Edson, jabbing at the cash with the rust-specked muzzle of his AK-47. “This stuff is every pretty girl’s best friend!”

Farfalla clutched in agony at Gavin’s sleeve.

Bozinho’s brow wrinkled. “You’re not afraid of us, are you?” he said.

“No,” said Farfalla. “We’re not afraid of you. It’s just... he and I, we have to climb a long way. Our road goes up. We have to climb far up... up till we can see the stars together.”

“Don’t be so afraid of us! We are folk heroes,” Bozinho urged. “The Premiero Comanda de Capital are urban rebels on the side of the oppressed and downtrodden! All we ever asked for was some justice! Some justice, respect, and decent prison food! And some brutal revenge for our dead.”

“I know about that,” said Farfalla. “Everybody here knows all about Premiero Comanda de Capital. But, I’m just a silly girl. You see? So I’m worried. This favela is not your turf. This favela is the turf of the Amigo des Amigos.”

“Oh, the Amigos are a bunch of weak sisters!” said Bozinho. “They only think they’re just like us. So, we kill them. All the time. Besides, they’re not here now. And we are.”

Farfalla silently pointed at a beam three stories above their heads. It held a sprawling, multicolored gang-tag the size of a railroad car.

“We’ll come back here later. With more of our trucks,” Bozinho announced, reaching for the truck’s door. “We’ll cut off their heads. We use their skulls for footballs. We’ll sell their organs to people in China. We know a lot of business people in China.”

“I know a place that buys skin,” said Edson, nodding. “Any color you like.”

The young gangsters piled into their Mitsubishi. The headlights flicked on. The armored truck crunched and rumbled down the littered alleyway.

“I’m so glad that I got to know those kids,” said Gavin, watching the departing truck with a look of mild contemplation. “I never realized that the South American cocaine trade was run by illiterate teenagers. I kept asking around the gang, to find their big kingpin criminal masterminds... But you know what? They’re all dead. Dead for years. They’re all ghosts, those so-called ‘criminal masterminds.’ Those masterminds are totally mythical. The guys who founded that gang all got killed years ago.”

“Those young men adore you, Gavin.”

“Yeah, they do! Brazilians love me! They couldn’t have been more hospitable, these killers! I had my own hammock in their derelict factory fortress. They even gave me my own bulletproof vest. I had to judge their capoeira fights. Those kids beat the crap out of each other.”

“Capoeira fighting makes them happy,” said Farfalla. “Because they’re dead.”

Gavin nodded slowly. “It’s so good to see you, baby. You’re always just the same. That’s comforting. Can we go to the airport and fly to Seattle now? Please.”

“No. Not yet. There is one other great ritual.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that,” said Gavin. “With you, it’s never straightforward and easy. Farfalla, I have harrowed Hell to find you. And I did it — look, here you are. I found you again. I have found you in what must be the worst place on earth. I can’t imagine any place in the world any worse than this.” Gavin craned his neck. “With the exception of that freaked-out, undead building, rising over our heads. What is with that colossal mess? It looks like the Bride of Frankenstein built a Mayan ruin.”

“That’s where I live,” said Farfalla. “That’s where we must go for the great ritual.”

“Okay. Great. I get why that has to happen. How do we get up in there?”

“We go very carefully. It’s full of snares and death-traps. You’ll have to hold my hand.”

Gavin casually kicked the abandoned box of hundred dollar bills. Wads of money scattered in their packets. “Baby, listen to me. I’ve got such a great idea. Let’s not do that. Let’s get the hell out of here. We charter a jet. We’re back in Seattle by morning. All this rubble, the stink, this colossal human tragedy... It’s history. It’s gone. It’s nothing to us. We’re like the last man and woman on Earth.”

“We are mortal,” said Farfalla patiently. “It’s getting dark.” She lifted her phone to call ahead.

17 “Is this really her? I thought she would be much sexier than this.”.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Holy Matrimony

The first three floors of the skeleton skyscraper were just big flat plazas of cement. Heaps of weeds, some rubbish, and chasm-like elevator holes. No kind of building for flesh-and-blood mortal people. A parking garage that might house machines, maybe.

And above that third level, it got much weirder. Much less plausible. Just much more architecturally out-there. Like Russian Constructivism with stray Brazilian weeds.

The fifth level and no sign of humanity at all. A tough climb inside dark narrow stairwells. Black passages with intense stenches of damp rat manure. Batty rustling. Dripping echoes.

“I’m finally glad that I left my laptop behind,” said Gavin. “I haven’t seen one pixel of the Internet in two long weeks. That makes it a lot easier to handle this situation. Losing the Internet is just like moving to another country. They do things differently, here in non-Internet world. It’s a magical place, that past world that had no Internet at all. It’s fading from human memory, like a fairyland.”

Gavin shifted his shoulder bag. Nothing much inside it now. A first-aid kit, spray deodorant, mosquito repellent, latex gloves, a hip flask of cheap rum, and an English-language guide to the Brazilian martial arts.

From below , some happy laughter. Then, shrieks of hysterical glee. Then, feral howls. Then, gunfire.

“They found that drug money,” Gavin observed.

“It is raining soup,” said Farfalla, “and the poor were born with forks.”

“So exactly what have you been up to, in this zombied-out tower, Farfalla? Why did you leave me? Why did you flee here?”

“I gave you the chance to escape me,” said Farfalla. “I didn’t want you to be like me — doomed. You could have gone home, Gavin. That road was opened to you. You could have been a free man. Free of me. This place was never meant for you. You should never have to think about a place like this.”

Gavin enjoyed a cheery laugh at this remark. The gunfire grew a little louder. Gavin was getting used to the sporadic gunfire in the Sao Paulo favelas. Sao Paulo was the murder capital of the planet, as everyone knew, but it took a lively town to seize a major world title like that.

Gavin knew that he should be more morally upset about the murder-capital business. But, to tell the truth, he felt at ease in the favela. From a futurist’s perspective, favelas were great. There wasn’t anything remote or exotic or intellectually difficult about the favelas. They were all about abject poverty, huge blocks of drug cash, and completely disposable human beings outside any legal or property system. And tons of guns. Favela futurism was easy to figure out.

Farfalla led him trudging upward through yet another abandoned stairwell. This one smelled of the bloody excrement from vampire bats. Gavin never smelled this specific reek before, but his body sensed, on a cellular level, that this dark stony space was full of small flying sharp-toothed things that ate people. No human being should ever occupy such a space, and yet, it existed on the Earth. And he was inside it now.

“Baby,” he said to Farfalla, “normally, I have a pretty good feeling for the logic of a situation. I just know the way something is going to play out... You understand that about me, right?”

“Yes, Gavin,” she said, kindly, “I do. I understand you as you are. I know that is your way.”

“I can’t make any sense of this now. How on Earth did we find ourselves in such a bizarre situation? Wouldn’t we be much, much happier almost anywhere else?”

“You are here because you chose to come here,” she said.

“Yeah,” he told her, “because you were running off to ‘protect me.’ Man, only a woman would think like that!”

“I will never, ever protect you like that again,” Farfalla swore.

“That promise is good to hear. I like your promises. Every time you make one, they always come true.”

“In the future, you will pay me back for what I did to you here,” Farfalla prophesied. “When we are married, and you get angry at me, you will vanish. You will run away into the forest. To ‘do your philosophy.’ That’s what you’ll say to me. But I’ll know that you are mad at me. I’ll know that I am being punished. And for me, in the future, that will feel just like this feels for you.”

The gunfire down at street-level was getting more eager. Police helicopters had shown up. Random bullets began panging into the skyscraper skeleton.

The bullets interested Gavin a great deal. Bullets had a very guy-thing feeling about them. Real bullets didn’t make any exciting, phony, Hollywood ricochet noises. Real bullets made tense, quirky, sullen noises. Bullets were pointy pieces of metal flying with the force of sledgehammers.

“You must be right about that,” said Gavin. “I do have a temper, and I guess I always will. I want to do the right thing, I want to be true to myself… But, I’m not an angel. I’m a man, and I have my flaws. I am flawed to the core.”

“It’s good that you can admit that,” said Farfalla. “I agree. I can also foresee you’ll never change, not in that way. But then, neither will I. Not about anything that matters. Not when it comes to loving you.” She sighed.

“You can frame it that way, and maybe it sounds pretty bad,” he said. “But who cares? It doesn’t matter that we’re not perfect, that we’ll never think the same way. What matters, is that we think together.”

“We are together,” she agreed. She gripped his hand.

“This is such a marvelous town,” Gavin said. “Seattle is so foggy, mystical, and magical, while Sao Paulo is so honest, hot, and straight-up. Everything’s right out in the open here. Just look at that vast horde of marching skyscrapers, surrounding this ghetto. I’ve never seen the like, but it sure makes me feel right at home. The inside of my head has always looked like Sao Paulo.”

“I love it here, too,” Farfalla said. “Sao Paulo is beautiful. It’s a great city. It is full of truth.”

“So, you know where I’ve been all this time? I was living right over there.” Gavin pointed helpfully. “Up there on the twentieth floor. I could have leaned off that terrace and waved at you.”

Farfalla glanced at the local skyscraper. Golden lights were appearing at its windows. It was a fine, sturdy building.

“Well,” she said, “I believe in us. I want us to be together. I want us to be together, from now on, as long as we live. I want your arms to be my true home.”

“I had an exciting adventure, searching for you,” Gavin told her. “My story was full of intrigue, conspiracy, and lots of daring.”

“You can tell me your story later,” said Farfalla. “Right now, this is all about you being my One.” She paused. “I love you, and I’m going to marry you. But — every omen says you’re not my One. If you were my One, you would surely have told me that, by now. Even though you tell me all kinds of strange things, you have never told me that. So we need to discuss what we are going to do about that. In the future.”

“Why are we always ‘discussing’ your side of our story?” said Gavin. “My story is amazing! I have such an incredible story to tell! I just spent two weeks with a high-tech real estate developer. Very with-it, local honcho guy. He’s an accountant, like me. He taught me all kinds of astonishing things about this city. He even knows the story of this building — this haunted wreck we’re stuck inside, right now.”

Farfalla fell silent as they worked their way up the echoing tomb of an empty stairwell. This one was strung with rusty razorwire that could slash their heads off. They had to count their steps, bow, and duck.

As Farfalla led him upward — counting to herself, threading her classic labyrinth... the skeleton of the dead unbuildable building grew ever more abstract. It was like a failed political system fading away into partisan insults.

It was also a very tall building. Gavin fancied himself as a guy in good shape, but the endless pitch-dark staircases were wearing him out. Farfalla had a little rhyme to get one to the top, a prayer or mantra. Voodoo as a spiritual practice was always full of death traps that you couldn’t see.

“It would be just like my life,” said Farfalla, breathing heavily, “if you died in here now. Then, I would never know if you were my One. If I never get to know... I swear that would kill me by itself!”

“Baby,” said Gavin. “We’re alive. Get over it.”

“I’m so happy to see you that my heart is bursting,” said Farfalla. “I could die from joy, to see you here. My father designed this building. It was a bad place that failed, and I am bad like that, too. This place is the world’s promise to me, that I’m the badgirl from badworld. It would be easy for me to live in this bad way, always, until I died. But, not with you.”

“Cookie, even though we have our differences, I know, as a proven fact, I can promise you, that —”

A phone chirped in Gavin pocket. Irritably, Gavin pulled it out. “In Brazil, everybody wants to help me! Those posters of you are plastered up all over town. I put my phone number on them.” Gavin shook his head. “Just now, I was about to explain something important to you. It was all about our relationship. I had a great plan. How we would work things out just, from now on. Then this phone yapped and now I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say. It was brilliant, too. I was gonna, like, win our big argument, just for once.”

“I know that I will marry you,” said Farfalla. “I can’t face another day without you.”

“So, we’re definitely getting married.”

“Yes. We are. Tonight.”

“I don’t have to call Eliza back on this cellphone, and have her convince you to do it? Because Eliza just sent me an SMS. Eliza’s very keen on the subject of our marriage. She even wrote you a speech on why you should join our family. She’s all ready to arrange a formal Seattle rave wedding with Brazilian electronica.”

“That’s sweet of dear Eliza, but I already made up my mind. I am marrying you tonight.”

“Okay. Me, too. Same here. I totally concur with your assessment. So we are formally engaged to be married. What a relief! Let’s shake hands on that, so it’s a done deal.”

Farfalla extended her hand and allowed it to be shaken.

“You know something?” said Gavin, dropping his hand. “This is a moment of triumph for us. You and me, by getting engaged like this, we’ve achieved something great. For us, an engagement is practically the same as marriage in itself, since, because we’re Futurists, we’re sure to go through with the ceremony.”

“That’s just how I feel about it, too,” nodded Farfalla. “Like my parents say, the marriage is just the empty formality. We could do that silly paperwork while we’re asleep.”

“Exactly. High time we get that formal marriage hurdle out of our path ahead. Because — as two serious Futurists, you and me? — we need to look right past theso-called ‘happiest day of our lives.’ Rice, flowers, a rapturous wedding night, that kind of hokum is strictly for amateurs. We need to get ahead of that curve and work hard on our ‘living-ever-after’ angle. You can’t compare the brief period of one wedding day to whole decades of our life together.”

“That’s just what I was going to tell you!” said Farfalla. “Now, that we’re formally engaged, well, we’re practically married already. See — just because you marry me... that doesn’t prove that you are my One.”

“Oh ,” said Gavin. “Yeah. That’s always the core for you, huh? Marrying some guy just because he loves you. That’s for the loser girls.”

“It’s because,” said Farfalla, “in a voodoo curse story, it always seems that life will be fine... beautiful, wonderful, the happy ending... a wedding day, songs, flowers... But then, there is some twist of words, and that’s when the awful tragedy strikes!”

“Can’t you be my awful tragedy? Maybe this story is all about my tragedy. Did that possibility even occur to you?”

“Yes, yes, of course, I foresee your tragedy!” Farfalla yelped. “I worry about you all the time — I obsess about you! While you were lost, and wandering around this town... doing whatever silly thing you think you were doing... and taking forever to find me... I had so much time to worry and fret! Is my story my tragedy? Your tragedy? What about the One who really loves me? What about him? That’s the part you never understand! Because my One is sure to show up, in our future life! That is fated, it’s certain, it’s foretold! But, I will be married to you!”

“Oh, come on, come on,” scoffed Gavin. “What kind of lousy creep shows up out of the blue, and breaks up a nice, long-term relationship?” He paused. “Mmm. Yeah... Well...”

“I always thought I would marry my One,” said Farfalla. “But, I’m probably much too wicked to marry my true love. Instead, I will live with you. Because, well, I have a devil inside, and I sure have a lot more dirty fun with you. If I married my One, I’d just be living ‘happy ever after’. With you around, I’m like a witch with jet engines.”

“Interesting image there,” said Gavin.

“Maybe that sounds silly.”

“Not at all. ‘A witch with jet engines,’ that sounds precisely like Carla Bruni in Italy, Sarah Palin in the USA, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. I’m figuring you’re one of a type there.”

“That’s because I am marrying you. I will be paranormal. And you’ll be my husband.”

Gavin watched a set of dirty pigeons scull across the maroon-colored, polluted urban skyline. “I like this new, inventive, farsighted way you’re approaching our issues,” he said. “Weird stuff like this never even occurs to me, when I contemplate our married life. Mostly, I just forecast our fantastic newlywed sex.”

“Gavin, we need to make plans. If you’re not my One, then my One will appear, in the future. You and I, we’ll have to fix that emergency. We will have to get rid of my One. Somehow.”

“We have to ‘get rid of him?’” Gavin said, delicately.

“I didn’t tell you to kill him!” said Farfalla. “Or to poison him. Or put a voodoo curse on him and drive him slowly insane. It’s just that we need to outguess him. And that’s tricky. Black magic is always very tricky.”

Gavin said nothing.

“This black magic problem in our marriage is all my fault, really,” said Farfalla. “I tried so hard to save you from this occult curse that haunts my life. Well, it’s too late for you now. We’re practically married, and there’s no going back.”

“Listen to you carry on!” Gavin scoffed. “We don’t have to stuff some guy in your cannibal pot! Even if your One does show up, and your One really does love you — who’s to say your One is not some gay guy?”

“What?”

“Maybe your One is ninety years old! Maybe your One is in a wheelchair! Maybe your One has cerebral palsy, or he lost both his legs in a war! You never think outside the box, do you?”

Farfalla looked stunned. “But that’s horrible! I always thought my One would be handsome, and strong, and perfect for me in all ways! How can you think that way, how can you say that? That’s so disgusting.”

Gavin struggled with the hot flush of rage creeping up his neck. “Look,” he said, “please don’t get me wrong here. You know I’m very jealous when it comes to you, all right? That’s a flaw, but that is my nature. You inspire me with a mad passion, and if you ever have an affair, I will build a giant Trojan horse and I will kill everyone in your town. But, well... your One, I’ll probably let him survive. Your ‘One,’ I feel sorry for that guy. Because he will have suffered.”

“I wish you would stop doing that,” said Farfalla. “Stop hacking my romantic narrative! Nobody else does that to me. It’s so geeky.”

“I’m just trying to think ahead,” said Gavin.

“No, you are not! Your ‘think-ahead stories’ never help me think about the future! They’re not even witty and funny! They’re just angry, subversive and weird! It’s like you have a compulsion.”

Gavin began to smolder. “Let’s get this straight- you have the compulsion. You have this compulsion to always go for the very darkest, kinkiest, most tortured situation! The kind where love always hurts.”

“But, that’s how real love really is!”

“Okay, fine. Yes, that is true, Farfalla. Exactly true. ‘Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others. Those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.’”

“You really frighten me when you talk like that.”

“Woman, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it. A French philosopher said that four hundred years ago. Men have feelings too, okay? You can’t see that there’s a raw despair under every human narrative! All of them, even the love stories. All! ‘The heart has its reasons that Reason knows nothing of.’”

Gavin’s phone bleeped merrily.

“Can’t you get rid of that thing?” said Farfalla, scowling.

“I’m expecting a call from my dad,” he told her.

“Oh. Oh, well, that is the worst! You and your father! No wonder you’re suffering! No wonder you’re so impossible today.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said. “In these two weeks, while I was hunting all over for you, there have been some big business developments, here in Brazil. My dad’s business deal, with the chips, with the jets — I’m finally about to make that business happen. I’m about to make a lot of money. In Seattle, I can barely hold my own in tech business. Here in Sao Paulo, I’ve got the mojo. Brazil is strange... No, that’s not true — Sao Paulo is normal. It’s Seattle that’s strange.”

“Oh,” she said, “it hasn’t been two weeks. We haven’t been apart two weeks. I would have died of loneliness.”

Gavin put his phone away. “Let’s not fuss about the date on our wedding day. This is our wedding day, let it fall where it wants.”

She took his hand. They lurked and dodged and shuffled through a pitch-black stairwell. Somehow, they came out the far side of it.

“Every time we climb another story in this tower — things get a little clearer to me,” said Gavin. He kicked sticky clots of rotten gunk off his shoes. “It’s like I’m shedding layers of illusion. I am approaching a higher plane.” He coughed. “Does that sound goofy? I’m losing my mind, am I right?”

“You would be goofy in Seattle or Italy. Here, you are realistic.”

“There must be some grand reason that we are climbing a haunted derelict castle in a slum. This must be part of some huge story, which is bigger than your story, and bigger than my own. It signifies that there is some tremendous future purpose we have, as a couple. Yes, I can see that now. Because now that I’m at this tremendous visionary height, I’m in mental command of all reality.”

She looked at him with pity. “Gavin, I live up here. I’m on this higher spiritual plane all the time.”

“I’ve scarcely known you for four months! Imagine when we’ve been married for years! Imagine when we’ve build some kind of daily routine for ourselves. When we’ve created our own future way of life! Farfalla, people should start running away from us right now! A pair of married neutron bombs would be less scary than us.”

“Has it really been only four months?” Farfalla started counting on her fingers. “Let me see, I met you on October 16, and...”

“We will become a star couple. We’re sure to be global celebrities, at the very least. We’re bound to become a world-famous couple, don’t you think? We’re paranormal and know the future, for heaven’s sake.”

“Oh, celebrity life, what a silly idea,” said Farfalla, dropping her hands. “To be a celebrity couple, in Italy. Idiots follow you around all the time, you’re insulted in the tabloids... That’s so degrading!”

“You’re totally right about that,” said Gavin. “I love Italy, but that paparazzi stuff really chews on the nerves.”

“And in Seattle, the famous people are so dull! Never one speck of fun. I would never want to be a famous couple in Seattle. The ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.’ Oh, Dio mio, what a bore.”

“Well, that would leave us with Brazil,” said Gavin. “Our future as a massively famous, well-connected, forward-thinking celebrity couple. In Brazil.”

“Pietro and Lina Bo Bardi,” said Farfalla.

“Who are they?”

“Well, they are dead. But they were just what you said. Exactly. They were Italian, but they lived in Brazil. A famous, influential, very classy, forward-thinking couple. Two married foreigners. Always very trendy.”

“Could we live like that? You and me?”

“Me? Me, be like Lina Bo Bardi?” Farfalla tugged at her hair. “Me, be like Lina? Yes! I knew her. My dad knew her, because she was an architect. Sure, I could swan around in my Pucci robes and play like I’m Lina Bo Bardi. Madonna, that would be such a picnic!”

Gavin stopped where he stood. He stared into the open air. “Hey, look over there. There he is! He’s standing there in his apartment! His curtains are open now.”

“Who is that?”

“That’s my host here in Sao Paolo! My new best-friend-forever, this accountant who’s been putting me up in his cool new castle, right over there. I bet — if you and I had been in there with his broadband connection, instead of this rotten skeleton of a ghostly junkyard, we would have signed-and-sealed that business deal two weeks ago.”

Farfalla followed his gaze. Her legs were trembling with fatigue, or with fear. “Your friend lives in such a nice new building. It is so high-tech and fancy.” She paused. “It would be so sweet to live in there, and not here.”

“That guy has all kinds of cool social contacts,” said Gavin. “He was such a fan of mine, too — he saw my panels at the Futurist event. Nicest guy you could ever meet! Knows all kinds of inside dope about the local urban politics — a fascinating character!”

“What is his name?” said Farfalla. “He must be famous.”

“Oh, he’s got one of those long Brazilian names, that rambles on forever, Something da-Something da-Something... I’m looking right through his window now! He’s got everything in there, and we’ve got nothing, but from up here, we could practically spit on him! I can’t believe his name has skipped my mind somehow. It’ll come back to me. He’s got this sexy girlfriend, who looks like a younger Michelle Obama.”

“How long were you in there with him?” said Farfalla. “It took you forever for you to find me.”

“It didn’t take me forever.”

“Yes, it did. Without you, every day felt like a year.”

“Look, I can settle this right now. Accountants are great at counting. We met in Capri on October 16, 2009, then we parted forever, then we got back together here on January 16 of the next decade, and today is February the 15th, twenty-ten.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Farfalla. “This is Thursday, February 5, because the repeats of ‘Xica da Silva’ are always on Thursdays, and I just saw that program. It was the most famous episode, the one where Xica wears her pink silk dress to the slavemasters’ ball.”

Gavin’s cellphone beeped again. He pulled it out, and spoke Italian into it. “Look,” he said, “my phone screen here states it’s February 15. Beat that for hard evidence.”

“Well, my birthday is Saturday, February 14, because I’m an Aquarian. I wouldn’t forget my own birthday, Gavin. Your phone is broken.”

“No way! Maybe we kinda fight a lot, but we can’t disagree on the date! A date is a matter of solid scientific fact, it’s not some goofy opinion! There are, like, atomic clocks in Colorado that keep track of all that stuff.”

“Well, you’re wrong about that anyway — no matter how atomic you are.”

“If we were standing anywhere, but inside this completely spooky place,” said Gavin, “I would pick a major fight with you about this. Your attitude is impossible sometimes. But... you know what? I can’t even remember how long we’ve been climbing these goddamn stairs. Every time we go inside those dark spaces, I can’t believe we will ever find our way out again.”

Farfalla spoke in a small voice. “Maybe you really are living in the middle of February, and I really am living ten days in your past.”

“You mean that we finally got together... and we both really want to be together... and even want to get married, today… but we’re together here on the wrong day?”

“Well,” said Farfalla, “who can live in the future? Who is truly ahead of our time? Is it Brazil, or America? Not to mention Italy...”

“That’s the freakiest thing I ever heard! That takes the cake! We can’t live together ten days separated in time! That is crazy! How would we kiss on New Years? How would our kids ever get a play date? That’s, like, worse than a restraining order!”

Farfalla put her arms around him. She held him tight. “I love you. I won’t let you go.”

“Are we really mixed-up with time travel now?” Gavin demanded. “Are you serious? Time travel is the wackiest stunt in the whole world! Time travel completely wrecks all rational cause-and-effect! We’re stuck in an Einsteinian time warp! If we’re time-travelling, we’re completely screwed!”

“Why? Let’s travel in time! You’re still here in my arms. I still love you.”

“Sure you do, but as soon as we leave the voodoo limbo of this unbuilt building, we’ll be straight into Schroedinger’s catbox! I’ll never see you again!”

“Oh,” wailed Farfalla, “don’t say bad omens!”

“Voodoo magic is like weak tea compared to a stunt like time travel!” said Gavin. “Time travel, my God! Well, cookie, this one is all my fault. I admit that. I used to fantasize about time travel, all the time. Time travel was always my secret dream. There’s not one techno-futurist in the world who doesn’t drool in his beard about time travel. Even though time travel is totally the most far-out, mystical, self-indulgent, fantasy schlock of all time.”

“Gavin, what on Earth are you talking about?”

“My God, I feel so ashamed of myself... I totally lost my grip, that’s what. I got techno-delusional. And now, look at us.”

“But, you haven’t done anything bad! All you did was come up here to find me. And you did, you found me, look, you are my hero, here you are, I’m so glad.”

“It’s good of you to say that,” said Gavin, “but let’s be honest. All right? Yes, you’re a priestess and a prophetess, who can foretell the future. I admit that, for a while, at first, I was uncool with that. Back when I first met you. Because it kinda clashed with my strictly materialist, cause-and-effect, rational philosophy. But Good Lord, like time travel doesn’t do that? My time travel is ten times worse than your occultist hokum!”

“What?”

“Look, it’s not some dealbreaker for me that you recite spells in Latin and you can conjure up ghosts. Given that we are gonna be man and wife, I’m prepared to overlook the small stuff! Time travel, though, that obliterates all the laws of physics! I mean, compared to that, your sweet little psychic nonsense is adorable.”

“That’s good of you,” said Farfalla, humbly. “You’ll never know how much of a curse that is for me.”

They crawled and staggered up another flight of pitch-black stairs. Farfalla led the way.

“Do you feel okay on this level?” said Farfalla, turning her big lamplight eyes up to him.

“No, I don’t feel okay,” Gavin told her. “Not okay at all. I feel completely freaked-out now. Every time we climb higher in this building, I can feel something stripping away from me. It’s getting very clean inside me now. And it’s bright. Too bright. It’s like being bathed in acid.”

“Let’s sit down for a little bit,” said Farfalla. “Just sit down here with me, and do some deep breathing. You’ll get over it.”

Gavin sat. He pulled his feet out of his boots and tucked his legs in the lotus position.

“I need,” he said, “to say something now. To confess something to you. Something about myself that I never realized before this moment.”

“All right. Tell me, Gavin, I’m listening to you.”

“It’s about me and this other man. This man who let me sleep in his apartment.”

“You are gay?” said Farfalla. She put on the bravest face he had ever seen. “It’s all right to be gay here in Brazil! Being gay is very different here. They don’t even call it ‘being gay.’”

“Look, I’m from Seattle, okay?” said Gavin, opening his eyes in irritation. “We’re also very keen to pretend that being gay doesn’t matter. That’s not the problem. This thing I have to confess is worse than that. It’s much worse. It came to me in a psychic rush as I reached this great spiritual height.”

“Look how pretty Sao Paulo is when the sun sets,” Farfalla hedged.

“I wanted to speak his name to you, and I can’t speak his name aloud. Because his name cannot be spoken. My host in Sao Paulo has no speakable name. I mean, he has no name that is distinct from my own name. Because I’m him. That Brazilian guy, who was so kind and supportive to me, and knew so many things about this place — that guy is me.”

Farfalla said nothing.

“That would mean that there are two of me, somehow,” said Gavin. “It means I have a spirit-double in Sao Paolo. Something about me was always Brazilian, all along. I’m not an American guy who loves Italy, I’m also Brazilian. And I was always Brazilian. In fact, I’m more than just Brazilian, American and also Italian. Clearly, I’m some kind of global phenomenon.”

“How can another man be you?” said Farfalla. She bent and kissed his cheek where he sat. “See, when I kiss you, I don’t kiss him. You should relax.”

“Baby, I’m having a major mystical insight. I’m a little new at this New Age stuff, but I’m getting the hang of it now. In mysticism, things hang together thematically, instead of connecting logically. Magic is always stuff like, ‘As above, so below.’”

“And, ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ Gavin.”

“Baby, I think this Brazilian guy, this guy who is me, is your One. He is your One. Because this guy would be perfect for you. He’s this rich, well-to-do, well-educated, handsome Brazilian. He and I, we’ve got all kinds of things in common... So much so, that we’re like, mystically identical.”

“Gavin... cara, sweetie... You’re not the magical adept type. Not every mystical revelation is... Well, frankly, a lot of them are crap.”

“I was going to say to you, that this great warlock is my Brazilian shadow double, but you’re right. Now, that I think it over, it’s even more obvious. Here in Sao Paulo, I am his shadow double. He’s the real man here. I am just his phantom. Because he lives here. He’s rich and he’s powerful and he knows what is going on here. And I’m some kind of crazy ghost American tourist who is having a mental breakdown while I am stuck halfway up a dead skyscraper.”

“Gavin, you are not a ghost. I know ghosts. Big bears eating fish in the woods are more like ghosts than you.”

“But it all makes sense! That’s why I can’t tell you your magic words! It’s because he’s your One, and not me! He’d tell you those magic, mystic words in one minute! He’d speak them in Portuguese! I’m like his cheap American knock-off replica! I don’t even have a soul!”

“Oh, come on, Gavin, you have a soul! Everybody has a soul. Come with me, come on, get up, stop doing this to yourself. We are almost there.”

“The truth is,” Gavin babbled, as she led him on, “that we’re all supernatural entities! Human beings are supernatural. Why? It’s because we have souls! We think, and that’s why we exist. We’re all spirit immortals, encased in human flesh. We’re all the larvae of ghosts.” Farfalla rolled her eyes. “So what? Everyone knows that already! That’s what everyone believes.”

“Yeah. Of course, I believe that, too. I’m devout. I’m a Swedish Methodist. It’s just, that until I climbed way up into your voodoo pagoda here, I never realized what that implies. If human beings have immortal souls, then we’re living in a magic universe.” Gavin stumbled, and gripped at her arm. “And I say that, and it terrifies me, but then I look at your sweet little face in my gathering darkness here, and it’s like — why do I care? She’s here with me! I love her! There she is, she’s as real as my own life! If I have a soul, then she’s my soul mate.”

“Enough mystic revelations, Gavin. Stop that, you’re not any good at it. We’re almost there. We have to go down one more stairwell.”

“We go down?”

“Yes, to reach the temple, we have to go down one flight. There’s no other way to reach the temple. Sometimes intruders can climb up this far, but to go down again, that’s the simple trick they never figure out. That’s why they always die.”

They clumped down the last stairs, and out onto the concrete beams. They clutched at rusting guidewires for support.

Gavin stopped, reeling. “So, this is it? We’re finally here? That’s your great temple of forbidden voodoo knowledge? Where we get married?”

“Yes. You have to take your shoes off now. This place is holy.”

Rain-catching tin sheets led to ranks of water-buckets. Worm-filled compost barrels and window-sill troughs were full of vegetables. The temple was mostly made of cast-off materials: halfed and quartered truck tires, particle-board, shingles of flattened aluminum cans. Vegetation dangled from it in every direction.

“That is some kinda place, huh?” said Gavin. “This is your Hansel and Gretel favela church. It looks like it was built by airborne cannibal hobbits.” Gavin patted the empty pockets of his cargo pants. “I sure wish I had my camera. This should be in my Windows Live Photo Gallery. I don’t even have words for how freaky this structure is.”

“Not many people come here,” Farfalla told him. “Very few who are alive.”

“Too scared to show up, huh? I gotta admit that this place is terrifying. It’s the scariest, cheapest home-made building that I’ve ever seen.”

“Nobody in Brazil is scared of spirits,” said Farfalla. “It’s just, they’re so old-fashioned now. Umbanda Terreiro doesn’t get many worshippers any more. All the great séance spiritualist Brazilian religions have been losing the younger people to the Protestant evangelicals. My Nana Hepsiba and her Great Houngan... Well, they are both getting old. They won’t be here with us, much longer.”

“I’m eager to meet them,” said Gavin, brushing at his shirt-front. “Does my hair look okay?”

Gavin and Farfalla removed their shoes at the plywood alcove of the temple. Then, they stepped inside in sock feet.

“Nana, this is him,” said Farfalla shyly. “I’ll have to translate what he says, because he’s an American. He doesn’t speak any Portuguese.”

“É verdade,” nodded Gavin, “eu não falo sequer uma palavra de Português. É muito embaraçoso para mim. Eu espero algum dia poder falar um pouco melhor.”[18]

“Well, he’s just like you said he was,” judged Hepsiba. “He’s so cute! He looks just like some hero in a Hollywood TV show.”

“A decoração daqui é incrível!” Gavin marvelled, looking around. “É como alguém que construiu uma discoteca dos anos 1970 e foi remodelado por psiquiatras Amazônia.”[19]

“Gavin, stop speaking languages that you can’t actually speak. You can’t impose your narrative on my narrative.”

“You can’t blame me for this,” said Gavin. “I can’t speak Portuguese, and I never said I could.”

“Ask your nice young man to sit down here,” said Hepsiba. She dug into the straw in a tin tub and fetched a bright pink bottle of “Gasosa Don” soft drink. “We keep this around when we have our services for alcoholics.”

Gavin sat on a gaudy scrap of carpet in the temple’s darkest corner, near the Great Houngan. “Hey,” he said to Farfalla. “I think this shrunken-head guy is still breathing.”

“He is a wizard,” said Farfalla. “Don’t forget, he’s subtle and you don’t want to make him mad.”

Gavin picked up the Houngan’s bamboo chalice. “Your maestro here has been smoking marijuana,” he said. “Not exactly my bag, but I’m cool about that. In fact, in these specific circumstances, I should probably toke up majorly.”

“No, Gavin.”

“Cookie, it’s a little late for being fussy. Look around us. You can’t box me in as some guy who’s bound to conventional behavior. If that was ever true about me, that’s, like, over forever now. I’m inside a freaked-out voodoo temple. And I can handle this. I get it. Bob Marley has always been huge in Seattle.”

“Oh, Gavin, please...”

“Baby, check this out. I’m sitting next to a gentlemen who like, ranks with the Emperor Haile Selassie. Fine. Bring the drugs, bring the drums, bring on the ritual. Let’s have at it.”

“What is your boyfriend babbling to you?” asked Hepsiba.

“He says that, to perform that magic ritual that you promised me, you’re going to make us take drugs.”

“Oh yes, I almost forgot the soothing herbs,” said Hepsiba. “Your boyfriend could certainly do with a tonic! With that Italian rubbish you’ve been feeding him, he’s never had a decent meal! He looks so nervous! Did you ever give him something for worms?”

“Is he my One, Nana?”

Gavin’s phone rang. He squinted at the screen and began tapping out messages.

Nana Hepsiba squinted at him as she fetched out a Chinese aluminum saucepan. “Maybe he is your One. But, I see no aura around him. I don’t think your boyfriend has an aura.”

“Gavin has an aura!” Farfalla protested, though she failed to convince even herself.

“I think he’s one of those walking and talking machines,” offered Hepsiba. “I see those on American television, all the time. I don’t much like those ficção científica shows, but there sure are a lot of them.”

“Gavin is not a robot!” said Farfalla, scandalized. “Gavin just needs coaxing and support! Then, he’s a very warm, exciting man. He is full of fire and conviction! People love Gavin! Even when he’s talking nonsense, everybody think he’s great!”

Hepsiba had another thoughtful look at Gavin. “Yes,” she said, “but I can see that’s not him, who does that. That is you. That is you, giving to him of yourself. Without you in his life, your robot there could live in a small closet with no windows. He would do his sums all day, until he died. If he has any soul, it’s a very small soul. So, I foresee, he will steal your soul. His need will get bigger and bigger, and your soul will get smaller and smaller. Until one day, in your marriage, you won’t have any soul left.”

“Is that true? You wouldn’t tell me witchy lies just to scare me, would you? You’re not saying that, just to sound awful.”

“My dear, listen to me. He’s not one of us, he is a foreigner! He doesn’t share your religion, he doesn’t speak your language... What do you want from him? His money? He doesn’t have any money! I can see that for myself! He just has the gentleman’s appearance of having money. His pockets are empty! You can tell fortunes, can’t you? You should see all that with one look!”

“But, he’s going to give me children! I feel certain of that.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes, he did! He predicted that! And it will come true, too. He’s always predicting things to me. And they do come true! He’s a prophet of the future.”

Hepsiba looked at her in astonishment. “But he has no magic! No mortal man can foretell the future, unless he has divine power and the help of discorporated spirits.”

“Well, he does that, even though he’s got none of that.”

Hepsiba sighed. “Now, I know for sure that he’s not human.”

“I don’t care! I’ll give him half my soul. He can have all of my soul. I have plenty of soul. I’m not even using it.”

Gavin answered his phone. He engaged in a rapid conversation in Italian. Agitated by the incoming news, he jumped to his stocking feet and crossed the temple. He bumped his blond head on the smoke-stained, cobwebbed rafters.

Gavin put his phone away with a grunt of pain. Then, he wiped his eyes, and examined the voodoo pantheon against the temple’s far wall, where it squatted in occult glory.

“You don’t need advice from me,” sniffed Hepsiba. “Just look how rude he is to the immortal gods. He’s blowing the dust off of them. That is never a good sign, my dear.”

“But Gavin is a force for good in the world! I’m sure that the gods must smile on my Gavin because his heart is so pure!”

Hepsiba set her lips. She busied herself at the chopping board. She set to on a set of dried herbs with a plastic-handled Chinese cleaver. Then, she passed Farfalla a garlic-crusher and a poisonous cactus. “Mash this up for me, will you? Not all of it! Half of it.”

“You don’t want me to marry him,” Farfalla said sadly. “You won’t give me your blessing, you are warning me against him...”

Hepsiba was rattling her kitchen junk inside a brightly-colored plastic drawer. She pulled out a whole set of cheap metal debris.

“I can never tell a young woman not to love any young man,” said Hepsiba, “because young girls have long hair and short brains! But oh, what a dreadful price girls pay tomorrow!”

Farfalla spotted one sharp gleam amid the rusty kitchen mess.

“That ring belonged to my cousin,” said Hepsiba at once. “Her name was Maria, and she was as good as bread. But, she married a man who she loved... and she did love him — but he was wrong! He was the wrong man for her. When she needed a kind word, he was silent. When she needed an embrace, he was gone. He wasn’t even a fool, he wasn’t cruel to her... He was just, not of this world.”

Hepsibah dipped a plate into a bucket of sand. “Every day,” she said, scrubbing away, “she struggled to make that man happy! He never understood her heart... Her best efforts made him angry, and he was only pleased by stupid, dirty things... And their house was divided, and they were accursed, and she had to pick ragpaper to live, and he drank pinga all day, and they rendered the bones of pigs and goats in a dirty butcher shop, and she ruined her whole life that way, and then finally he died and, for the sake of his soul, she came and gave me that cursed ring that you’re holding now. Put that ring back.”

Farfalla rolled the thin golden band through her fingertips. It had been a solid band, once upon a time, but it had been worn thin by years of wifely anguish. Worn thin, like a steel butcher knife slashing through too many carcasses. “So, for how many long, suffering years did your cousin wear this dire symbol of her bondage?”

“Nine years. No, I mean nineteen.”

“So, that was a rather brief marriage. Any devoted wife can suffer much longer than just nineteen years.”

“They looked seventy when they died! Her suffering was so awful that he withered just by sleeping next to her.”

Farfalla looked at her Nana’s busy hands. Hepsiba wore no ring. “So, Nana,” she said, “suppose that I don’t marry this useless robot guy. It’s not too late for me to turn him down. Who do you think I should marry? Truly?”

Nana Hepsiba looked up, flinching. “Why do you ask me that question now? Don’t you want to go through this spiritual ritual, to see if your machine-boy is your One? Look, how hard I am working here. I work my bare old fingers to the bone for you.”

“Nana, enough of that. Enough with the old wives’ tales, Nana. Spit it out — you think that I should lead a different life, with some different man.”

“Well,” said Hepsiba, “you are a nice, fancy girl from Italy, and a smart, pretty girl like you... what should you ever care what I think?”

“Nana, knock it off with the sneaky voodoo attacks on my soul, all right? We are two adult women, talking together! I’m not a small girl who believes every fairy story that you tell me! I’m all grown up now.”

“My precious, I say these things only for your sake! I have nothing against your big, handsome robot there. The secular world would be fine for a machine like him, but you are supernatural! I know of another young man. Somewhat like him, but Brazilian, and therefore so much better for you! That boy would be quite the catch for a clever girl like you. He’d give you a much better ring than that sorry worn-out ring, too. He’d give you a casket full of fine golden rings. Give me that ring back.”

Farfalla clenched the ring inside her fist. “I’ll just cling on to this golden symbol of worthless and utter feminine misery you don’t mind.”

“For a witch as powerful and stubborn as yourself, I happen to know of a highly available single man,” said Hepsiba. “He is never quite the marrying kind, but for a bright, footloose, headstrong girl like you, he would be perfect! He’s a local slumlord who launders drug money and builds skyscrapers. Yes, he does that. So he’s evil, but that’s a minor drawback.”

Farfalla drew a breath. “Yes. I see. Now you’re talking straight to me. That makes sense.”

“To speak frankly, he is demonic. But, he’s also very lonely. He’s exactly as lonely as your boyfriend there. Given that you don’t want to marry a human being, with a demon lover like him, you’d become terrific. I’m not lying to you. This happens to women like you every day. You would become the chic mistress of a major Brazilian drug lord. Just imagine the benefits. You would tower over this favela like the butterfly from hell. Men and women would die at your whim. You would never cry or suffer, or ever doubt your dark, awesome abilities. You would never know one moment’s doubt about yourself, and where you stood in this life. You would have every fatal power that a witch ever finds in the darkness. All you’d have to do is kiss his ass.”

“So, you know this gentleman pretty well, do you?”

“Oh,” said Hepsiba, “we all know each other in the high-rise business.”

“That is amazing. That was some great matchmaker advice. I’m touched that you would rank me that highly.”

“My sweet one, he’s never like people say he is. He is a gentleman. I can promise you this: our world would never function without him. Your boyfriend there is merely some robot, but this other man is a spiritual necessity.”

Farfalla took two steps to Gavin’s side. Gavin had casually fetched the Cosmic Cupid down from its mahogany shelf. He was juggling the metal statue, examining it from every angle.

“I’ve got this knicknack right here in my own hands,” Gavin mused, “this goofy idol. That some dead artist created. For his dead wife, the dead novelist.”

“Yes,” said Farfalla. “Yes, they are both very dead now. This is a temple of the dead.”

“They were nutcase people, too. Pathetic. Long-forgotten. Objects of ridicule now, for a thousand good reasons, but... Love. That was it. Their love was the one true love. He was a bisexual manic-depressive Russian, and she had syphilis and a morphine addiction, but their love was way beyond those details. This statue is the divinity of their love. It represents the holiness and the sanctity of their love. And now, I can see that. It is obvious to me, blunt and strong, like a tire iron.”

Nana gently took the Cupid from his hands and replaced it reverently on the pantheon shelf. “He belongs here with his mother.”

“Is that one his mother?” said Farfalla.

“Yes, this spirit. She has many names. She is Erzulie, the goddess of love. She is Love’s mother, she is jealous of him. Because he is not her little boy. He married. His wife is called the Soul. See, this piece of glass, she is the Soul.”

“I’m not following this,” said Gavin. “That sounded like Greek mythology.”

“She says that the Cosmic Cupid has a wife, this piece of glass.”

“Sure, Cupid and Psyche. That’s Greek to me, but even I get that much. Piece of metal, piece of glass, great.”

“These spirits have a story,” Nana confided in a low voice. “A pretty woman doesn’t care to be a grandmother. But Love and the Soul had a child. This is the child. Pleasure.”

Pleasure was scarcely visible on the altar shelf. Pleasure looked like a lowly, humble dripping of candle-wax. Farfalla touched the puddle of wax with one wondering fingertip. Pleasure was a blob, polymorphous and gooey.

She wondered why Professor Milo had never mentioned the existence of Pleasure. Was pleasure something ladies did not speak of? Despite his cryptic, even secretive form, Pleasure had tremendous premonitory presence for Farfalla.

Pleasure was just a gushy puddle of candle wax, yet he looked a lot like his dad the Cosmic Cupid but even more soulful.

“I totally never heard of a story like that,” Gavin marvelled. “Cupid sired a demigod called ‘Pleasure?’ Really? Where are the ancient temples of Pleasure? You and I should go there right away, Farfalla. Hey, we should live there.”

“Pleasure will become the motif of our married life,” Farfalla prophesied. She reached our for him left-handed, still clutching the wedding-ring in her right. “I can’t foresee pleasure, because I’m too gloomy. And you can’t foresee pleasure, because you’re too methodical. But when we see pleasure together, as a married couple, both of us united, oh my God in heaven, wow! Pleasure is our sweet release, pleasure is youthful and ever-renewing!”

Gavin gripped her fingers. “I thought the magic in Capri was pretty heavy-duty, but Brazilian mysticism is colossal! It’s all out in the open around here, they’re very feel-good about it.”

“Why is this knowledge of pleasure so esoteric?” Farfalla said indignantly. “I can’t believe I had to leave Italy and go to Brazil to learn that mystic revelation.”

Nana spoke up. “Don’t tell the gods how to make you a wise woman, my dear.”

“But why did Professor Milo send me running all over ther world?” Farfalla demanded. “All she had to do was tell me, was ‘I’m the Goddess Venus! That statue is my son!’ I would have believed her!”

“Wait a minute,” Gavin objected. “What? Are you saying that Professor Milo, that romance writer from Virginia, is a goddess? She’s the mother of this piece of bronze here? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Gavin, Venus is the mother of Cupid. Don’t be so stupid and literal-minded. We’re in Brazil, the home of syncretic religion. Narratives work in metaphor. Myths are powerful.”

Gavin thought this over. Then he took her arm and drew her away from the pantheon, where Nana was busying herself.

“Look,” he told Farfalla, “given what we’ve been through lately, I’ll suspend judgement. But that’s just for here and now, all right? When we’re married, and we get back to Seattle, we’re both going to have a little newlywed chat with my lesbian pastor.”

“Your pastor will tell us that a pagan god is just a piece of metal,” Farfalla predicted, with a shrug. “I have another piece of metal for us.” She opened her clenched fist.

“That’s a wedding ring,” nodded Gavin. “An old one.”

“I stole it from her,” said Farfalla, glancing over her shoulder. “Quick. While she’s not looking, jam this ring on me. Ram it on my finger! Don’t worry if it hurts, I can take it.”

“Cookie, you just stole that nice old lady’s wedding ring.”

“She’s a witch. She’s evil, like me, but much more evil, because she’s older. She was tempting me to become the mistress of Satan.”

“That’s awfully broad-minded of the old gal,” said Gavin, narrowing his eyes. “This syncretic thing has definitely got its downsides.”

Farfalla stuck her left hand out. “Gavin, let’s do it your way, for once, all right? I’m sick to death of all this romance mumbo-jumbo! I finally know why you can’t stand this stuff! Sure, I’ll live in silk with my One who is the Evil One, and with you, my Mr. Wrong, I’ll have to pick rags and bones, and I’ll drudge in a hot kitchen, and my hair will fall out in clumps and I’ll have tapeworms and radiation poisoning. So what! I need to know the worst -- but once I learn the worst, I’m brave. I am Cassandra, I’m brave! I’m brave enough to deserve you. For better or worse. Put the wedding ring on me, let’s just steal it, and let’s run away.”

Gavin casually slipped the ring into his pocket.

Farfalla dropped her hand in despair. “You are not going to do it, are you? You could do it, and you won’t. You’re insisting on the mystic mumbo-jumbo, just to get back at me.” She lowered her voice. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go. I’m your woman, I know what you like! I’ll give you my special backrub. With hand-warmed coconut oil.”

“My darling, your sweet appeals to pleasure cannot move me. I’m far above that low carnality now.”

“Oh, why not, why not, for God’s sake! All men ever want is one thing and here I am offering it to you, and you’re all full of mystical crap!”

“We should build our future home on a foundation of the sacred,” Gavin intoned. “Because my love for you is sacred. Between you and me — that space is sacramental. The abyss between the sexes is the one true holy ground. I swear to you, I vow to you, that our love will always be a cosmic, holy gift. You are the priestess of the meaning of my life.”

“What?”

“I need a magic ceremony! I want the occult ritual! Can’t you see that, for God’s sake? Our love is holy to me, it’s our divine love! You can’t profane my deepest feelings for you! That is not even possible! Sorry, my phone is ringing.”

“Gavin, don’t answer that phone! Please talk to me. You were so close to saying it. Really, you were going to say it and be my One, and we would run away and love each other forever and everything would be perfect! Please, Gavin...”

“Sorry baby, we’re global people, we will always have to answer the phone... Cosa? Non esiste! Cos’ha fatto? Perché! Non ne ho mai sentito parlare. Non pensavo nemmeno che fosse possibile!”[20]

Farfalla took four steps back to Hepsiba. The old woman had left the altar and was silently laboring with her mortar and pestle.

“Nana.”

“What.”

“Nana, I forgive you for lying to me, and trying to make me the mistress of Satan. Because I know that you were only trying to help me. I’m really in big trouble, aren’t I? This is terrible. Can you put a curse on his phone and make him stop ignoring me?”

“Why would I curse phones, even if I could? I talk to all my clients with phones.” She glanced up at Gavin. “He is talking to your brother.”

“He’s talking to Rafael? Why? What do they have in common?”

“They have you in common, of course! How can you call yourself a fortune-teller? You are so blind, Farfalla! I can tell that without even speaking Italian. Anyone can see that he is speaking to a member of your own family! Open your eyes and ears! Then, the future will speak for itself!”

Farfalla trudged back to Gavin’s side. “You were speaking to Rafael, just now.”

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

Farfalla said nothing.

“Just because you can’t stand Rafael, that doesn’t mean I don’t like him,” Gavin said, sheepishly. “I enjoy creative European tech-artist types! Rafael is just a cool, Italian hipster kid, and that’s why he was filling me in behind the scenes about your former boyfriend, over there.”

“You mean Pancrazio.”

“Don’t say that name. I’m so jealous I can’t even speak his name, all right? That guy should go into that married-couple memory-hole of former boyfriends whose names are never spoken aloud. But, well, I stole his girlfriend. I did that. I injured him, that was an insult. And now, Pancho’s paying me back by screwing up my big Brazilian business deal. Pancho Pola is a very Italian guy. Pancho doesn’t get mad, he gets even.”

“And you’ve got a spy, who spies on Pancho?”

“Yeah, I do. Your little brother, he’s my favorite spy. To tell the truth, I’m Brazilian, American, and also rather Italian. I do great with Italians. They complete me somehow, I belong with them. Just look who I’m about to marry here. Italian life is full of weird intrigues, and that’s not their bug, that’s their feature. I love Italy. That’s the truth. I really wish I was in dear, old, sunny Italy right now, having a vintage Barolo, instead of twenty stories up in some rotting Brazilian skyscraper about to take voodoo drugs.”

Farfalla looked around the cobwebbed temple. “We live in a world where you can be connected in a moment to faraway people, to people you forgot, to people you remember, just like that...”

Gavin brandished his mobile handset. “This wondrous device is all about the collapse of space and time. To collapse space and time, that always feels just like magic.”

“It is magic,” she said. “It’s our magic. That’s the magic part of the world that brought us together. It’s the one kind of magic you and I will always have. Together.”

“Baby, you are right. Right now, all around the world, people are doing everything they can to make computers feel just like magic. Although, computers aren’t really magic.”

“No,” she agreed, “but on the very deepest level, they are magic.”

“Well, no, precious. On their deepest, deepest level, computers are just electrons and circuits and logic.”

“I mean the level below the logic.”

“There is no level deeper than the logic. It only feels that way.”

“Well, a feeling is a fact.”

“Why do we argue about this? Hey, that reminds me,” said Gavin. “I just asked your brother what the date was, and he told me the date. For him, the date was two days ago. That means these plots of Pancho’s that he was warning me about? Those things have already happened. I mean, they’ve happened to me, anyway — I don’t know if they happened to you yet, because you are living ten days behind me.”

“Tell me the date,” she said.

Gavin drew a breath. “It’s February 14. It’s Valentine’s Day. It’s your birthday.”

“But that is today’s date. It is my birthday. You finally got it right, Gavin.” She smiled in triumph. “So you can marry me, now, today, on my birthday, and you should never marry anyone else! I’m the only one in the world who can manage your crazy schedule.”

Hepsiba brought over a steaming teacup. “Porque o seu amado robô está tão preocupado?”[21]

“He’s had a setback in a business deal,” said Farfalla.

“This herbal tea will calm him down,” said Hepsiba.

Gavin accepted the brimming cup of poison with a philosopher’s resigned smile.

“Let me make sure I’m completely with the program here,” he said. “I drink this witch’s potion, and then I start hallucinating. I go completely out of my head.”

“I’m drinking it, too,” she said. “We’ll go on a sleepwalk, Gavin. And I will sleepwalk with you.”

“No. Forget that. No way that you are drinking this crazy stuff. Let me drink it first, and you can wait to see if I drop dead. I’m sure there are weird Amazonian alkaloids in this booze that spaced-out William Burroughs beatniks could only dream about.”

“It’s just herbal tea.”

“Yeah, sure it is. The point is that I drink this poison, and I go into a space I can’t reach. But then, then, I finally tell you your magic words. I finally say this magic thing that totally proves I’m your One, the magic words you’ve been waiting for me to say, ever since I met you. If we can do that, then it’s all worth it.”

“Gavin, it’s just herbal tea. It’s a ritual. It’s all about faith.”

“Cookie, drugs don’t scare me. Drugs are just chemistry. It’s the idea that drugs make you a better person. That’s pretty bad. That is a lie and a snare. To live a lie is against my principles. I refuse the path of self-deception. I am doing this now, because I want to see you happy and for no other reason. But never again, no other time will I do this, all right? I don’t want a life where we’re we’re both strung out, just so we can be together.” He looked moodily into the teacup.

Farfalla wiped at her eyes. “What a sweet thing to say! I know you’ll never be a junkie, my darling. I’ve met plenty of junkies, and you’re not the junkie type.” She leaned closer, to whisper to him. “This is all just a silly ritual, all right? Voodoo is all about the power of suggestion! No one is going to poison you. It’s a placebo. Voodoo has no real power over you. Not unless it can trick you into believing in the power of voodoo.”

“Yeah. Okay. I knew that all along.”

“Drink it, just to make our hostess happy. They’re going to all kinds of trouble for us.”

Gavin held the cup steadily, but did not move it to his lips. “There’s another thing first. I’m expecting an important phone call. It’s about my family’s business. It’s a phone call from my Dad.”

“Your Dad will have to wait.”

“No. He can’t wait. That is not in his nature. It’s a critically important business deal that’s worth thirty million dollars. It can make all the difference between the survival and collapse of my family. This is a deal I’ve been pursuing since before I ever met you. It’s based on an important secret that my father has guarded for thirty years.” Gavin sighed. “Responsible men do not take narcotics when they are patching together top-secret Italian-Brazilian-American techno alliances.”

“I’ll talk to your father.”

“No, don’t joke about that. My father might really call me. We have a very serious family crisis going on. Deadly serious. It’s top-secret, there’s a lot of money and military power involved, and it’s... Well, you know about that. You were there. You were translating that.”

“Yes. I was there.” She took the phone from his hand. “Gavin, try to be here for me now. If we are ever going to make our life work, even though we are Futurists, we will have to be together in the moment.”

Gavin thought this over. “Right.” He gulped the teacup.

Then, he waited.

“It’s not bad,” he said. “It’s just like that weedy junk that hipsters drink in Seattle health-food joints. So, now what happens?”

“Now, we have the ceremony,” said Farfalla. “A ceremony can’t be rushed, it will take a while. There is incense, repetitive trance music, voodoo chalk outlines on the floors... We have to anoint ourselves in the sacred blood of the Lamb...”

“Fantastic,” said Gavin, belching politely into his hand. “I mean, our hosts are true professionals. This is a ceremony, and they mean to do this up brown.”

“Yes. They are the magic people, the voodoo people. They exist, and I am one of them.”

“And I’m marrying you. You know what? I will never understand this, but I can get behind this. For your sake. Farfalla, I feel such a sense of tenderness and devotion to you now… Because our marriage is like pagan warpaint, it’s a Burning Man freak scene. So, listen. Since it’s like that, I am going to get naked. That’s what! I’m going to cover my flesh with mud and body-paint! I’ll be naked! A naked spiritual warrior!”

“No, Gavin.”

“Oh yeah! Heck yeah! Occult Futurity! Sleepwalking naked! Bare-ass naked, sister! Orgiastic! Eyes like two dinner saucers!”

“Gavin, no. Put your shoes back on.”

“Why not? I want to do it! If a woman throws off her robes in a magic ceremony, it’s like, look, she’s nude, ooh, everybody look at the spiritually heightened atmosphere... What about me, what about my naked male sexuality, where is my naked truth, where is my freedom?”

“Gavin, this place is a church.”

Gavin looked at Hepsiba, who gazed back at him with stern, judgmental eyes. “Why are women always such pills about all this?” Gavin grumbled. Then, he swooned.

“He certainly is gullible,” Hepsiba observed.

Farfalla sighed. “He just trusts me. That’s all.”

“Well,” said Hepsiba, “at last, we have him helpless. He is silent now, and he is helpless. His robot story can end right here. Now, his narrative becomes a horror story. One hour from now, and he is dead as a stone. The eyes are gouged from his head, and the heart is cut from his body. He is dangling from his heels from bloody ropes in a concrete cellar fifteen stories in midair. Rats will eat his flesh and maggots will drip from his carcass. He is there beside the other bodies of people who will never, ever be seen again. The vanished people. The disappeared people.”

“That story doesn’t scare me, you know,” shrugged Farfalla. “I’m from Italy. The Italian Mafia has been vanishing people for a thousand years.”

“But, he doesn’t know that your story is that scary,” Hepsiba persisted. “The true darkness of your story will always be closed to this man. His silly little story can end right now, and you can go on with your dark, tremendous story, and he doesn’t have to be in it. It’s just your story. Yours alone.”

“I understand why it would give me joy to kill him,” said Farfalla. “Because I am dark inside, and my passionate love for him has many elements of hatred, and there are times when his stubborn lack of sense truly makes me crazy, and the deep pangs I feel in my heart truly wound me, and I can feel myself truly bleeding over him, but, well, even the suffering is sweet. It is sweet to be in love, it is wonderful. I’m so mixed-up over this guy that I even enjoy my suffering. Sometimes, my urge to kill him even makes me laugh. In the black and dirty depths of my witch’s heart, maybe I will want to kill him, but I never will. Instead, I will love him with all my heart. I will always cherish and protect him, every day, as long as I live. Do you know why?”

Hepsiba handed over a brimming teacup. “Why, my dear?”

“Because the world is full of other people who want to destroy this guy. They hate him, and hate everything he stands for, and he doesn’t even know that. He’ll never know. He’s not the kind of man who can know such dark things. But, the thought that they would ever hurt him — when he belongs to me, when he is mine — that thought fills me with fury. Not the small anger that I feel at him sometimes, but a deadly, vengeful, serpentine rage. You want me to stay here in Sao Paulo with your Brazilian boy, but with this man at my side — my futurist Prince Consort — I will become Queen Cassandra.”

And then, Farfalla stopped speaking. But, she did not stop thinking aloud: Royalty. Not the shrieky drop-out priestess with her hippie hairdo, but Cassandra as royalty. I will be the queen-mother of the coming century, and I am going to litter the earth with the foes of this man. They are going to perish from history in a way so tormented, twisted, sneaky and occult that they will never guess who pulled the trap beneath their gibbet. They will be expunged from history, erased from the narrative entirely, they will be so bewildered, lost and despairing that they will lose the will to live and embrace death like a lover. Not because of what I told them about the future, but because of things I didn’t tell them. Not because Cassandra cursed them aloud, but because I was so near and dear to them, because I was so quiet, kind and understanding. At their graves, with their tattered handful of scared, scarred mourners, I’ll be the only one who brings them flowers. ‘Always a class act, Queen Cassandra,’ that’s what they will say about me. ‘Those whom history forgot, high or low, rich or poor, they always had one final friend in her.’

“What a very scary thing you are thinking, my dear.”

“Nana, when it comes to Sao Paulo, I don’t amount to very much. But outside this place — well, I am a priestess. And outside this place, I rank. I am tomorrow.” Farfalla lifted her cup in a toast.

Gavin’s phone rang.

“Go ahead,” Hepsiba urged. “Drink that.”

“Just one minute.” Farfalla stooped carefully and set the brimming teacup on the floor. “This must be Gavin’s dad.” She glanced at the screen of the ringing Blackberry. “Yes, Gavin knew this would happen. He predicted this. It’s his father calling.”

“Don’t answer that.”

“Are you kidding? This old fool is the torment of my boyfriend’s life. Everything in Gavin’s life is frozen because of his father. I’m going to have it out with this curse of his life, right now.”

Farfalla put the phone to her ear. “Hello?” Then, she listened.

“No,” she said firmly, “he is not available. He’s sleepwalking.” Pause. “No, that is not a problem. I know all about that. I can handle that.”

Squeaking noises.

“Yes, of course,” said Farfalla. “The electronic chips, the flight control systems, the autonomous military drones. The Brazilian defense market. I grew up here. I am Brazilian. I translate electronic documents into Portuguese. For a living.”

More squeaking.

“Stop that,” Farfalla broke in, “because I don’t care. I don’t care about your big so-called secret — I can tell you what happened. Pancho Pola brought in one of the open-source control chips from his lab in Ivrea. He took your Space Age military secret, and he made that secret obsolete in thirty minutes. You think that is such a great secret of yours? Nothing that he did is secret to me. I translated that document myself. Why didn’t you come to me? I know more about those stupid chips than he does. I have to translate all their boring technical stats, and all he does is fly up to Brussels and win his design awards. What a stupid, dirty thing this whole business is. My God, you men are impossible.”

More scratchy noises.

“Look, I’m sick and tired of your millions of dollars!” shouted Farfalla. “It’s all I hear out of you Tremaines! You know what you people need? You need someone in your family who doesn’t believe you’re all dead.”

Faint squeaks.

“Quit whining, old man! What have you lost here? You didn’t sell your precious secret plans to your supersonic jet-plane! What is your big American problem, you think Brazil will land on the Moon when you’re not looking? What is wrong with you Americans, these days? All you do is sit on the couch, play video games and eat cake!”

More squeaks.

“That’s right. I do have a lot to say for myself,” said Farfalla. “And if you give my boyfriend any more trouble about these stupid broken business deals of yours, I’m going to fly up there and tell the truth to you. In three languages. I’ve got a Green Card and frequent flyer miles, and I can be there by morning. That’s right. On your doorstep. In Capitol Hill, in Seattle. No, I know where your house is. I used to live two blocks away.”

More static.

“Really,” scoffed Farfalla.

More silence.

“Well, maybe. If you really mean that.”

More silence.

“Well, I’d have to talk to Gavin about it, but if he says okay, sure. Sure, why not? Goodbye.”

Farfalla put the phone away.

Hepsiba spoke up. “That was the grandfather of your unborn child.”

“He’ll see the first child,” said Farfalla. “He’ll never live to see the third one. God, Nana, why do we know awful things like that? To be a prophetic witch is so dreadful.” She bent at the waist, picked up her cup of poison, and drained it.

“His family loves you,” said Hepsiba, squinting. “I can see that they adore you, especially that sick old man... But what about the mother? I can’t see the mother. There’s like a large absence there. An abyss.”

Gavin stirred and sat up. He lifted both his arms before him. His eyes were tightly shut.

“Gavin is a sleepwalker,” Farfalla explained.

“No, he isn’t,” said Hepsiba, pleased. “Look, he has an aura now! He has a nice normal aura, just like any other fine, young man.”

Gavin faced Farfalla with his blind eyelids. “Funny thing, jetlag,” he quipped. “Well, that nap sure was refreshing. So, what’s with the big wedding party here? Our hosts have brought in quite a crowd.”

“What crowd?” said Farfalla.

“All those people with the white robes and the amulets,” said Gavin, with a discreet nod of his blind head. “Those Brazilian guys with no feet.”

Farfalla stared. She could barely see them. Fading in from the nothingness of modernity. “Ghosts,” she said. “The ectoplasmic ghosts of the Brazilian dead.”

“So, I’m seeing ghosts. The wedding guests are ghosts?”

“Yes. Every rite at an Umbanda Terreiro is a séance.”

Gavin shrugged, his eyes still closed. “Well, I’d better go mingle, then.”

“Gavin, no. Sit down, I can take care of this. Lie down and sleep, Gavin.”

“What, I’m supposed to neglect the guests at my own wedding? How rude! No way!” Gavin drifted into the temple’s darkest, most spidery corner.

“Now, that I can see your boyfriend’s aura, I like him much better!” confided Hepsiba. “He is American — and there are dark streaks in his aura that make our Brazilian boys look innocent! I see a shadowy, giant, blind angel that wanders the earth. It is not love, but death. It deals death from a clear blue sky. It carries terror for the masters of terror.”

“That’s not an angel of death. It’s only a metal machine.”

“Well, in one sense, it is your robot boyfriend’s flying metal machine, but in a deeper sense, it is an angel of death. And so is he.”

“Well, yes, he is, because his sister is, but on a deeper reality yet, he’s just my sweet boyfriend. He’s kind of a dope, actually.”

“No, on a deeper reality, your boyfriend really is a demon. He comes from an empire that can burn the world to death in three ways. And he’ll do all he can to help.” Hepsiba’s face was swimming out of focus. She reached out and gripped Farfalla’s arm. “Don’t fall! Let me help you lie down.”

Gavin ambled over, blind and smiling. “Madame, por favor me ajude com ela. Ela é jovem e forte, mas ela é teimoso. Ela tem paixão mais perversa que ela tem bom senso comum.”

“Eu poderia ter dito isso,” said Hepsiba. “Eu a conheço desde quando ela era uma menina, coitada.”

Gavin nodded soberly. “Eu sei que você se preocupou por ela, mas eu posso cuidar disso. Talvez eu não sou o melhor homem para ela, mas ninguém nunca vai fazer melhor.”

Hepsiba cackled and slapped his shoulder. “Não me admira que ela gosta de você! Há algo de tão engraçado sobre você! Pelo menos eu sei que ela se divertirá!”[22]

The Grand Houngan entered the temple. He carried a squirming mass of white fleece, cradled in his arms.

“So,” said Gavin, opening his eyes. “It would appear that the master of ceremonies has brought us our sacrificial animal.”

“Yes, he did,” said Hepsiba. “That is the holy lamb of sacrifice.” She paused. “Am I speaking English now?”

“I’m sure that you can speak English, madame. You must have seen plenty of American television. Just like everybody else in the world.”

“No,” said Hepsiba, thoughtfully. “Like a lot of other spiritual leaders, I’m very patriotic. I make a point of never speaking one word of English.”

“Never mind, this too will surely pass,” Gavin predicted. “Can you tell me this other thing? How did your husband, the Great Houngan, manage to get a sheep when we’re living twenty stories in midair?”

“He gets his sacred animals out of the sky,” said Hepsiba, shyly.

“What, out of the sky? The sheep comes from above us, that’s what you’re telling me? They’re up their frolicking in the fields with the flying cherubs?”

“To tell the truth, I never asked the Houngan about his livestock. That is a man thing. As his priestess, it’s not my business to ask him.”

Gavin got a little closer to the innocent lamb of sacrifice. The lamb had perfect unsoiled fleece, and the red bee-stung lips of a woman, and the white-rimmed rolling intelligent eyes of a grown man.

“Okay,” said Gavin, “this is just... otherness.”

“It’s always been part of the ritual,” Hepsiba offered.

“But this thing can’t even fit in a story,” Gavin complained. “There aren’t even human words for a... thing... like this thing. This thing is not even an it. There’s no way to explain it, or make it make any sense, to anybody, ever. And it’s alive!”

The Houngan tucked the confiding body of the innocent lamb into the sheltering crook of his left arm.

“Put out your hands,” said Hepsiba, with a gesture of prayer.

There was a gleam of metal in the Great Houngan’s right hand, and then suddenly, shockingly, instantly, he had slashed the lamb’s throat. The priest had killed the innocent lamb, and bright, winey jets of its life-blood were heart-jumping out of its slashed neck, and all over Gavin’s hands, his wrists...

And then onto Farfalla’s sleeping face. Gushing blood across her neck, her breast, her body.

***

Birds sang, the field was green, and the sun was shining.

“So,” Gavin croaked, “where are we?”

“We left the what-there-is,” Farfalla told him, “and we are in the what’s-to-be.”

“So let me look at you!” Gavin shouted. He removed thick glasses from his face. “Oh my God! You’re horrible.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. You’re an old lady! You must be a hundred years old! Anyone who looked at you would know in ten seconds that you are a witch.”

“You should look at yourself,” Farfalla said, with a thin, wrinkled smile.

“I should look at myself?” Gavin shouted. “Why am I shouting? I can’t hear myself talk, that’s why I’m shouting! Why can’t I stand up? I’m all bent over! And I can’t see! I can’t see, I must be almost blind.”

“Gavin, stop that ranting. It’s not use, there is no one here but me. We are sleepwalking together. We have walked to the very end of our lives. We’re very old now, Gavin. We have been together a long time, and we have become very old.”

“So, this is our old age, then. We got married and lived happy ever after, and this is the very edge of our ever-after. This is as far as life goes.”

“Yes, we’re both very old now. We got married, and we really, truly loved each other for as long as we could.”

Gavin looked at his hands. “Hey, you’re right,” he remarked. “These are my grandfather’s hands, here on the ends of my arms. I can remember seeing these old hands, when I was a kid. I never knew I would have these hands on my own body. Man, this body of mine is a worn-out wreck! I can’t even stand up straight.”

“You lost your hair,” Farfalla pointed out.

Gavin ran his wrinkled hands over his naked scalp and the sagging flesh of his face. “You’re right about that, too! You’re always right when you predict these awful things. What a wild experience! This is so fantastic! I’m a wise old man. It’s like I’ve become an alien from another planet.” He paused. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings by insulting your looks. You make a very dignified old lady, Farfalla. You look extremely wise. You’re not young and pretty any more, but you are obviously someone of consequence. I bet the younger people are very respectful of a wicked old broad like you.”

“I’m wise because I suffered,” said Farfalla, patting at her sparse white witchlocks of hair. “Yes, I had a woman’s full life, and I suffered, all because of you... Well, no! When I was a young girl, a foolish girl, a romantic girl, I thought I would suffer, all because of you... I even wanted to suffer because of my One true love, but in fact, I was just young and stupid. I was such an idiot, because you were not my doom at all. You were just my husband. I got used to you, my One true love. I liked you, you made me laugh. You were just fine, but my God in heaven, it was the children who made me suffer! Yes, them! Why does no one ever tell us women that? It was the children who tore my poor heart into pieces, who tormented my soul, who never gave me one night of rest... Madonna, I’m as old as the dirt now, and my dear children still make me suffer.”

“Isaiah, Miriam, and Jeremiah,” said Gavin.

“Yes, them, them! Why do they never call me, Jeremiah, Miriam, Isaiah? They live all over the stupid world, and they can’t call their mother?”

“I’m just glad that our kids are human beings,” mused Gavin. “They have every right to wander this planet, like the rest of us... Why did I burden my kids with such heavy, portentous, hippie-kid names? The birth of a child really makes me sentimental.”

“What if something happens to my children? I’ll always worry so!”

“Look, Mama, knock that off! Our kids must be fifty years old by now.” Gavin swivelled his naked head from side to side, and placed a hand to his crooked, aching neck. “Where are we? This seems like a nice place, from what I can see by peering at it, half-blind with my cataracts.”

“This is my parents’ house,” Farfalla noted. “We are in their house, and looking at their little garden.”

“We live in your parents’ house? That sure figures.”

“A lot of things have changed here...”

“That figures, too,” croaked Gavin. “A great place to grow old and die, sunny old Italy... I feel so happy and serene, here and now, at the final end of my story... I know it’s okay that we somehow ended up here... I am contented. I don’t know what the day is... or what the year is... I don’t know what is north, west, or south... And I don’t even care. Not one bit do I care! You know what? That makes me the supreme master of space and time. No wonder I feel so great! It’s because I’m senile. My senile dementia has made me the ascended master of the Cosmos.”

“I still love you,” Farfalla murmured.

“What?”

“I asked my heart, and my heart tells me, that I still love you! We must have been together for sixty long years, and you’re old and awful, and the sight of you still makes me blissful! I’m so glad you’re here, sharing my life! Our marriage must have been a grand success!”

“Sixty years of marriage, huh? Hey, I bet it’s our anniversary today! This day is always very special day for us, our day of magic. I bet people all over the world are sending us loving messages of support and respect and congratulations!”

Farfalla hesitated. “How would we know that? Where is our email?”

“Email, forget that, come on! It’s whatever email is, nowadays, in the middle of the 21st century. It’s probably augmented ubiquitous telepathy of some kind.”

“Well, surely, the children would at least send me a message.”

“How could they not, grandma? Let’s go inside and look around!”

Gavin turned slowly, tottered into their modest shelter, then stopped and looked at the cottage’s crowded walls. “What is with all these plaques and medals?”

“Oh,” said Farfalla, with a partial, indifferent, arthritic shrug, “those are yours.”

“Wow, my awards and medals are all over this house. There’s a zillion of them! They’re like mice! There are so many that we can’t even fit ‘em in this building! Obviously I’m old and dirt-poor and mostly forgotten now, but seriously, look at the public’s tributes to my fabulousness!”

“We got bored with the awards. They’re just pieces of dead metal, they’re for show.”

“Of course, woman, obviously we’re bored with them now, but people must have thought I was awesome! Imagine how many big acceptance speeches I had to deliver, to win all these awards and medals. You must have spent half your life in the front row with that worshipful, adoring-wife look on your face.”

“Yes. I did that. And I wore Milanese couture, too.”

“I must truly be a genuine sage of some kind. Gosh, I should have had a higher opinion of myself.”

“You are a sage. Because I helped you. I always helped. “Per tutti questi secoli le donne hanno avuto la funzione di specchi, dal potere magico e delizioso di riflettere raddoppiata la figura dell’uomo.”[23]

“Well,” said Gavin, “that’s a very bitter, mad, prophetess thing to say to a guy but, at least you did possess the delicious magic power to make me look twice my size. Where was my magic power, in all these years?”

“You never had a magic power.”

“I did.” He whispered into her ear.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s it. You said it. You finally said it! You really are my One, Gavin. You finally said my words, and you always were my One. You must be saying my words on the very last day of my life! You finally said my words, and now my story is finally fulfilled, so that means I will die tomorrow! How like you that is!”

“Cookie, come on. Maybe it’s me who dies tomorrow. Maybe I said your words at last, because this is the very last day of my own life.”

“Oh. I see. Hmm. Because I am a woman, and I’m younger than you, and women outlive men statistically, so, in all probability, you are the dying one. Not me, but you. Our universe is numbers, and the laws of the numbers say that men die first. My beloved dies, not me. And I outlive you, and I totter around in my grieving abyss of widowed darkness for a couple of useless years. I love Futurist statistics. They’re so useful.”

“I’m so happy that you understand how to reason in that way! You’ve finally caught on, baby! The scientific method is the hardest karma that there is! It’s the last of all beliefs — because there is no need to believe in it. No act of faith is required. You just try the experiment for yourself — and the result just the same as the last hapless dunce who went through that ritual.”

“Gavin, it used to upset me when you said dreadful things like that,” said Farfalla serenely, “but now I’m an old woman, and I have no more inner furies. Especially now that you finally fully entered the romance narrative and made the climactic male-lead emotional statement that fully validates the happy-ever-after conclusion. Why didn’t you tell me my magic words, Gavin? It was never so hard, to tell me those few words. They are just the secret words of a woman’s heart.”

“But I did tell you the words,” said Gavin. “It took me forever to say it, because we are Futurist lovers. Because, I just could not believe those words, enter into that story, grasp that meaning, not until now, here at the end of our lives, when it’s one vast, backward-looking, ironic perception. We are Futurists, and we are lovers, but we have lived a life of inversion — blown backward into futurity, beating our wings like two angels in a tempest of debris... Hey, wait, what’s that cool thing way out there?”

“What?”

“That weird entity, flying over our garden.”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

“Come on, I’m practically blind, but I can see it! Baby, we’ve got an angel in our back yard! There is like, a winged, uncanny, otherworldly presence out there. These are, like, the 2070’s or something, and all metaphysics aside, that thing is a solid fact. It’s probably virtual or augmented or geolocative or something. Look at it.”

“Yes. I do see it.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s something futuristic that normal people don’t understand. It’s hype. It’s speculation. It’s extrapolation. There’s no there there. It appears to us, because of who we are. But now, why should we care? Should we care now? We’re old! We’ve seen a thousand things like that!”

“But it’s a blessing! It’s an advent! It’s a glowing promise of hope! It’s a youthful, smiling, airborne glimmer of joy when existence seems darkest!”

“Gavin, it’s just some gadget, all right? We probably installed it ourselves. It’s in our own back yard, it’s not on the astral plane. It’s probably our lawn sprinkler.”

“You’re telling me that my encounter with divinity is a lawn sprinkler?”

“I am telling you,” she said, “that even if it was that, or something ten thousand times funnier, I would still love you. I am the sober one now, I trust in facts, and you became the mystic seer. But my heart has followed your heart. What a comedy love is. We are comic, and we have no dignity, and we ought be be a joke, even to ourselves by now, but... Well... Gavin, my sweet one, my precious one, what is that thing? I see it flying around over there, and I wish I could make some rational sense of it... but it’s really, just, so different.”

“Baby, we should have everything like that figured out by now, because obviously we’re almost dead now and we’ll never get any wiser — but we dwell within the House of Difference.”

“You must be right — and I’m really, really glad I’m not in that house alone.” She laughed, with a witch’s cackling laugh. “We had a pretty good time in this garden,” she said. “We did things in here that would make a snake blush.”

“That snake should write poetry about the things we did in this garden. Snakes and cherubs, very same line of work, just different uniforms. We went through every thrill-ride that a man and woman can, and you know what? My love was true love.”

“Honey, yes. How strange love is.”

He said nothing.

“We’re not really here right now,” she announced.

“Baby, I was surmising very same thing. We can’t be ninety years old, we are imagining all this. We are forecasting this. We’re not within this space and time. We can’t possibly be here, not without enduring every single dawning day and fading sunset that brought us here. We are in the space of spectral imagination.”

“Then we must be young people,” she said.

“Maybe, but how can you know?”

“Only young lovers can dream together like we are dreaming. An old couple, they wouldn’t dream of their future. They would have had their time. They would reminisce.”

“That must be a beautiful thing, reminiscence.”

“It is,” she said, “but we have to earn it first.”

“We are sleepwalking. Tell me to wake up.”

“Gavin, wake up.”

***

Gavin woke up. He was already standing on his feet. “Sleepwalking,” he said, into the air. “Sometimes I do that.”

“Help me up.”

Gavin reached to her. He looked around. “Good God, look at all this. Look where we really are.”

Farfalla gripped his hand, sat up, and rubbed at her dizzy head. “Where are we?”

“We’re still in the sacred temple, but…”

It was certainly the temple, and yet... The temple was not perched in the middle of any spectral skyscraper. The temple was a dismal shanty, under an overpass. Cars were racketing overhead, and the air smelled of traffic jams. The walls of the temple were stripped bare, no gods, no idols, no garlands or icons, everything caked with mildew... There was no one in sight, and sooty dust on every surface.

Gripping Gavin’s hand, Farfalla pulled herself to her feet. They stood on a tilted mass of bare and grainy overpass cement. The chalk outlines of their two bodies were inscribed there, like street-graffiti. All around their united figures, an intricate pattern of voodoo lines. Pretty. Like wedding lace.

“Look at this pattern that they drew around us,” said Farfalla. “They drew us together and united us.”

“That must have been a lot of work,” said Gavin. “Quite a ceremony.”

“It’s not magic. It’s just chalk.”

Gavin knelt and touched the pattern. He broke one slender line with his fingertip, and gazed at the dust on his hand. “’From this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.’ That’s the most beautiful pattern I’ve ever seen. Wow, marriage makes even poverty and sickness seem romantic.”

“They have married us. We’re married now!”

“Oh yeah, we must be married,” he agreed. “We definitely have that morning-after sensation. I can feel that.”

“Look what they did to the temple. All the voodoo illusions are gone! How did that happen?”

“It’s revealed as rubbish,” said Gavin. “The sacred temple of romance is paper-thin, it’s cardboard hokum, and it’s just about the shabbiest fictional structure that could ever pretend to stand up.” He drew a breath of polluted air. “On the plus side, though, we’re definitely married.”

“They took the magic away, it’s all gone! Not a shred of a ghost. Not a trace of an aura. It’s us, you and me, and our... our bare existence as a couple.”

“That is so true,” said Gavin, patting grime from the back of her skirt.

Farfalla took two steps to the sagging door of the shack, which leaked daylight in all directions and was shackled with a rusty chain. There was no knob, there was no key. She gave the shabby door a kick, and the rusty hinges broke off it. She kicked it again. Staples snapped in cardboard and part of the wall broke loose.

Gavin rubbed his eyes. “So, what’s out there waiting for us?”

“It’s the world,” said Farfalla. “The here and the now. We obsolesced the past... we outwitted the future. And here we are, you and me, together, forever at last!”

“Well,” he said, “it’s the end, and that’s a start!”

18 “It’s true, I don’t speak one word of Portuguese. Very embarrassing for me. Hopefully some day I’ll get a little better.”

19 “The decor in here is amazing!” Gavin marveled, looking around. “It’s like someone built a nightclub from the 1970s that was remodeled by Amazonian psychiatrists.”

20 “What? No way! He did what? Why did he do this? I’ve never heard of this. I did not think that was possible!”

21 “Why is your beloved robot so worried?”

22 “Madame, please help me with this. She is young and strong, but she is stubborn and perverse. She has more passion than she has good common sense.” “I could have said so,” said Hepsiba. “I’ve known her since she was a girl, poor thing.” Gavin nodded soberly. “I know you cared for her, but I can take care of this. Maybe I’m not the best man for her, but nobody will ever do better.” Hepsiba cackled and slapped his shoulder. “No wonder she likes you! There is something so funny about you! At least I know she will have a good time!”

23 “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“We started reading Black Swan and couldn’t put down our Kindle until the last word.”

[Brain Pickings]

2009 Sidewise Award Nominee

More

«I love both her and them. I have come to understand that she is what they are. A woman accepts a man, expecting that he will change. A man takes a woman, expecting that she will never change. They are both disappointed. Yet within this very disappointment is the primal source of all new men and all new women.»

More

Love is Strange

Bruce Sterling

© 2012 by Bruce Sterling

Copyright for all languages

© Digitpub srl 2012

Via Adige, 20 – 20135 Milano, Italia

www.40kbooks.com

info@40kbooks.com

ISBN EPUB 978-88-6586-106-6

ISBN MOBI 978-88-6586-606-1

Cover by Roberto Grassilli

warehouse.robertograssilli.com

December 2012

Follow us

Twitter: @40kbooks

Facebook: 40k

Table of Contents

Cover

Welcome

Love Is Strange

1. The Haunted Hotel

2. The Convent of Crossed Destinies

3. Notre Grand Amour Est Mort

4. The Secret Statue of the Princess Amelie Troubetzkoy

5. The Bohemian Loves of the Scapigliati

6. Modern Dentistry

7. Tomorrow’s Trends in Web Couture

8. Prada Goth

9. The Disco Volante

10. Old-Fashioned Bossa Nova

11. The Return on Investment

12. Forever Right Now

13. Translation is Treason

14. Why I Hate You Forever

15. Consequences Ever After

16. The Chips Are Down

17. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away

18. Shadows of Flames

19. Love Has A Nasty Habit of Disappearing Overnight

20. Seattle Voodoo

21. Looking for a Factory Girl

22. The Facts of Life

23. Bachelor Party

24. The Last Man and Woman on Earth

25. Holy Matrimony

You May Also Like

Copyright

Table of Contents

Cover

Welcome

Love Is Strange

1. The Haunted Hotel

2. The Convent of Crossed Destinies

3. Notre Grand Amour Est Mort

4. The Secret Statue of the Princess Amelie Troubetzkoy

5. The Bohemian Loves of the Scapigliati

6. Modern Dentistry

7. Tomorrow’s Trends in Web Couture

8. Prada Goth

9. The Disco Volante

10. Old-Fashioned Bossa Nova

11. The Return on Investment

12. Forever Right Now

13. Translation is Treason

14. Why I Hate You Forever

15. Consequences Ever After

16. The Chips Are Down

17. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away

18. Shadows of Flames

19. Love Has A Nasty Habit of Disappearing Overnight

20. Seattle Voodoo

21. Looking for a Factory Girl

22. The Facts of Life

23. Bachelor Party

24. The Last Man and Woman on Earth

25. Holy Matrimony

You May Also Like

Copyright