Old Lovers Don't Die (7 page)

Christian wondered where the courage and confidence had come from. It was almost as though part of Sophia was with him prompting replies. Although he rationalised that while she might have planted the suggestion of confidence, it was more likely his subconscious decision in the presence of someone who exuded confidence. He found Petrea an intriguing mix of beauty and intelligence, someone who also had control over her destiny.

“So I’ve talked about me, now here’s the reciprocity. You need to tell me where you are going and why you are going there in ten minutes because that is all you have before they call my flight. Christian looked at Petrea, fascinated that she would want to know more about him, but also concerned that he did not have a resume as interesting as hers to talk about. He had already decided that he liked her and wondered whether she was just going to be gone in ten minutes. One of those chance meetings beyond serendipity, but which never fulfilled a hidden potential. He decided to give her the abbreviated version of his resume.

“I’m going to London and then on to Kigali in Rwanda. I’m going to work at a small hospital down on the Congolese border for three months at a place called Garanyi which is where my father once worked as a surgeon.”

“Wow, impressively concise. So much information in two sentences. Let me see how I decoded it. You are going on the same flight as me, your father was a surgeon, and you are imbued with an adventurous nature and quite possibly possess a philanthropic gene.”

“Well to be honest, I didn’t really know how to start and you said there was only ten minutes”

“Well, you have got my interest, and I want to know more and now there’s only five minutes.”

“Perhaps the detail wouldn’t be as interesting.”

“No, I’m a fairly good judge if you’ll pardon the expression; I think the detail would only be interesting. How good a judge of character are you? Do you trust me after knowing me for fifteen minutes?”

Christian looked at Petrea while she held his gaze waiting for him to answer. Everything about her seemed to personify integrity. Even after knowing her for such a short time, he not only liked what he saw but also trusted her and wanted to know more about what she did and stood for.

“I trust you.” He said with a large querulous smile.

“Okay, give me your ticket and your boarding pass.”

Christian looked at her, then reached down into his bag, took out his ticket and boarding pass, and handed them to Petrea.

“Good,” she said as she stood up.

“I’ll be back in two minutes. If I’m not, you’ll know that I’ve met someone else and we are both flying to London together.”

As Petrea walked off towards the frequent flyer service desk, she turned and winked at him without breaking stride.

Christian sat looking at his passport, suddenly the victim of a wave of post-cognitive dissonance. Was he that insecure that, after being flattered by an attractive woman for fifteen minutes, he had given away his ticket and boarding pass? He could imagine trying to explain it to his mother. He had just made up his mind to go and find Petrea and ask for them back when he saw her stride around the corner holding his ticket and boarding pass in front of her.

“There you are, and for trusting me, you can sit next to me on the plane to London and fill me in on the details.”

Christian reached out and took both the boarding pass and airline ticket and was about to put them both back into his bag when he noticed on the top corner of his boarding pass there was a small sticker which said business class. He looked up as Petrea was bending over to pick up her bag. She stood up, looked at him, smiled, and said,

“That’s what happens when you trust people. Good instincts Christian. You will go a long way following those instincts, so let’s go and board and I can find out more about what drives you, which I’m sure will be interesting. Certainly it will be more interesting than sitting next to Gloria Monkhouse, the mining magnate.”

Christian reached up and placed his overnight bag and laptop into the overseat compartment. It was a tight fit; he needed to move Petrea’s laptop further inside the compartment so that it would close. As he moved the laptop, out of the corner of his eye he saw the Qantas hostess looking at him, a little strangely he thought, as she poured the first glass of champagne. He stopped adjusting the laptop and looked back at her, wondering whether he was doing something incorrectly with the overhead locker; she just smiled at him when he caught her eye. It was a more knowing smile than the welcome aboard type. Perhaps she could sense that he was not a normal business class traveller but a young male upgraded by an attractive woman with all the implications that possibly had for the mile high club.

“Making new friends already?”

Petrea gave him a wink as she put her hands on his waist and slid past him to the inside seat.

Christian laughed and, for the first time despite their age difference, felt a little more at ease with Petrea. He realised he enjoyed the way that she had put her hands on his waist as she brushed past him. The momentary touch felt like an approval of sorts. Given his penchant for over-interpreting, he looked at Petrea again as she sat down.

That small fraction of doubt which had hovered, was removed by the look that she gave him; holding his gaze for a few seconds, it was an approving look. He relaxed a little. His normal confused state when it came to understanding women was not interfering for once, although Petrea’s look was difficult to misinterpret. The only thing that puzzled him slightly from the little that he had already learnt about Petrea was that an approving glance was not what she would utilise. He imagined that someone with Petrea’s experience and worldliness would tell you they liked you, removing any doubt from looks and glances. But then again, she had been talking about signs and how men should interpret them. Perhaps that was his first test and he had passed.

“So are you wondering about me or the Hostess? Remember I made friends with you first.”

Christian laughed again.

“Yes, I do remember that you made friends with me first. That was fully fifteen minutes ago. And yes, I was thinking about you and the nice feeling that being with you engenders.”

“So now I’m surprised. It looks like I have someone who is going to be seated next to me who is not afraid to talk about their feelings and emotions. That should make for an even more interesting trip to London.”

Christian closed the overhead compartment, thinking about Petrea’s comment while adjusting his laptop to sit neatly on top of hers, wondering whether that was a metaphor of any kind.

“A glass of French champagne for you both?” asked the hostess.

“Yes,” said Petrea, looking at Christian who nodded his agreement. As the glasses were put on the tray between them, Petrea took her glass and touched Christian’s.

“Here’s to our friendship.”

“To our friendship,” Christian replied.

“So do you want to tell me a little bit more about why you’re going to Rwanda and what motivated you, or do you want to tell me about your last girlfriend and why she isn’t here with you?”

“Are you always that direct?”

“Part of being a prosecutor, I’m sorry. Does it make you feel uncomfortable?”

“No, not uncomfortable. It just takes a little bit of adjusting to. My background is white South African mixed in with lots of Aussie; both are quite direct cultures, but I don’t think I managed to receive that ‘out there’ gene which seems to be so typically Australian.”

As he finished talking, he briefly thought about which option he would be most comfortable talking to Petrea. To tell her about his father would take him at least half an hour, even for the abridged version. His father, the liver transplant surgeon in apartheid South Africa, who was brutally murdered. He sensed that with her background in the ICC, she would be interested in the corruption and intrigue, in which his father had been involved. However, part of him also sensed that Petrea had a worldly experience and to have her input into his love life, or lack of, would be a potentially valuable discussion. He looked up from his champagne; Petrea was studying him.

“There looks to be more in there than I suspected,” she said, eyes smiling. “A few girlfriends and you are processing which one to discuss?”

Christian smiled back.

“Not as many as you may think. I was wondering whether to tell you about my father, particularly as there is no current girlfriend. Girlfriends and relationships I don’t seem to have been particularly successful with, so I’m always fascinated to have any kind of female input into relationships and how they work.”

“Well, let’s start with the easy things,” Petrea said laughing. “Fathers are straightforward and mine is no exception. So we can swap father stories and then after a few glasses of champagne and somewhere over Cairns, will be ready to really deal with the deep and intriguing aspects of what makes the world go round: relationships.”

“Just so we have an understanding: is this where I share my experiences and you share yours. Or is this more about your experience guiding my inexperience?”

“What would you like it to be?”

“I’m not sure,” Christian said. “Part of me wants it to be on an equal footing, but I know that I probably don’t have your experience when it comes to relationships to really be able to offer sage advice in return. Then there is the other part of me that is attracted to you which doesn’t really want to know about your past experience.”

“Don’t complicate it just yet. I like you too and what you represent, but now the
sine qua non
is not that I am thinking about making love to you in the business class toilet. It is far too small for someone your size. Seriously, you may not have the experience that I have, but I suspect that you have a sharp mind. That in itself is very attractive and what usually goes with it is the ability to provide insight into whatever I might tell you. That generally means the possibility of presenting me with a number interesting dimensions that I might not have thought of. So I do see you as having potentially an equal footing, just not in the very boyish way that you may be thinking.”

“Perhaps we should talk about our fathers first,” Christian said, feeling a little uncomfortable with such directness from someone he had just met.

“We can, but I think we both are establishing boundaries for a much more interesting conversation. I am sorry if my statement sounded prosecutorial; sometimes my work interferes with my private life. There, we have already established that there is something that you could give me advice on.”

Christian decided to buy a little more time before he replied and took a sip of his champagne.

“You’re going to tell me about your father, aren’t you?” she said before he could reply

“Very intuitive. I take it that comes from scrutinizing many witnesses in trying to determine the truth before it emerges, or I suspect more often determining whether it’s a substitute for the truth.”

“Partly true, and it’s partly what women do. We have radar that is more finely attuned to the emotional parts of human beings. Evolutionary psychology is the more scientific term. I studied that as a free subject at Cambridge along with epigenetics.”

“You mean evolution had a significant psychological component worthy of study?”

“Spoken like a true sceptical scientist. Psychology was an important part of survival in the hunter-gatherer period especially for women. In the days when it was all about strength, a woman’s advantage was to be able to know intuitively how man was going to react. Women understanding any situation, particularly involving men, often determined not only her survival but also mateship and preservation of the species. Men were good at hunting and gathering, women were good at risk assessment. Then as we evolved, those genes became more sophisticated evolving into the radar that we use today. Something which is called epigenetics, the evolutionary modification of our genes.”

“So that’s where women’s finely tuned intuition comes from, evolution and epigenetics. Women learning over the years and being able to influence their genetic code so they end up emotionally smarter than men in the way that they react,” Christian said, unable to contain a wry smile.

Petrea laughed. “You are right, although I see your scepticism is alive and well. Intuition is built on thousands of years of assessing males genetically, working out what works, and discarding that which doesn’t.”

“And you seriously studied that.”

“Yes. And seriously back at you, I thought it would help me in my job as a prosecutor, understanding not only plaintiff’s body language but also my own counsel. However, it became fascinating as a subject in its own right. One of the things women do, I learnt, was a subconscious visual scan similar to you and me in the Qantas lounge. That scan determines interest or otherwise, based on a number of well-defined evolutionary anatomical points. Over the years we have evolved to a secondary peripheral scan with more sophisticated elements.”

“Okay, you have my interest. Tell me about this visual scan.”

“For a female in the early days, it was all about a continuation of the species. Therefore, the scan centred on body shape. Shapes were subconsciously identified with protection and successful healthy procreation.”

“So males who were big and strong would be what a female was scanning for. That does not sound too different to the modern-day situation, considering the emphasis on six-packs in the magazines.”

“It’s not, but what we do now, or have evolved to, is scanning for someone who is attractive to us not just as a protector/provider. There will be elements of the past embedded in our genes, but it’s no longer completely about procreation. Attractiveness and projected personality/intelligence has been added to our visual scanner, both male and female.”

“So what you’re saying is if I see a woman in the street, some part of my primitive brain is processing her shape and that determines future action.”

“Correct. Think about situations where you have been walking down the street or in the gym and something just registers with you that suggests there is a pleasant shape in your peripheral vision that you want to examine more closely. Ever had that experience?”

“I have. I can remember being in the gym one day, and a woman walked past and without looking at her directly, I can remember feeling she seemed really nice.”

“That’s evolutionary psychology in action. Your brain processed her shape, referred it to your genetic centre of evolutionary assessment, and sent a pleasant feeling to your temporal lobe. And then you did a more sophisticated secondary scan, am I right?”

Christian laughed. “Yes you are right, although I don’t know that you would describe it as more sophisticated. Her shape caught my attention, I liked her hair, the way she walked, the way she smiled and I then looked at her as she walked along and thought she was really nice and in many ways my type.”

“But you did not follow her and ask her out?”

“No, I did not because that’s the frustrating thing, how do you tell whether there is real bilateral interest?”

“That’s what you boys don’t do well; you don’t have confidence in the signs that you reading and you have this hugely disproportionate fear of being rejected. In the past, man never had to deal with rejection. The need for procreation overrode everything else. That is partly why it is such a problem for men now, this huge lack of evolutionary development. You are now being forced to evaluate and make choices based on limited experience and retarded evolutionary history.”

“I do remember reading somewhere that over 60% of males have no idea how you progress from that point after they see someone who is attractive to them.”

“That research could, despite sounding like it comes from one of those authoritative woman’s magazines, quite possibly be possibly true. Most males end up being so worried about being rejected that they do not do anything. On the other hand, if they manage to get close enough to a work colleague that they fancy, they make very weak enquiries about what she may be doing or where she is going at the weekend, hoping that that will initiate a relationship. From an evolutionary point of view, you can understand that kind of unsophisticated approach. Unfortunately, they have no evolutionary experience on which to build greater sophistication, as mostly it was the females who initiated preselection. There were exceptions, such as a few dominant Neanderthal males just selected a female and dragged her back to the cave by the hair. Either way, rejection was not something that males had to face back then which is why they have a crisis with that now.”

“From the rejection point of view, I think I’d prefer to go back to days of the cavemen, much simpler than trying to sort out the complexities of attraction nowadays and whether you are wanted and for what reason. It appears broad shoulders, strong arms, plus a large club might have made things a lot easier.”

“Back then procreation was the driving force so that approach was fine but now what the female wants is a relationship. Men haven’t evolved fast enough to deal with the current reality of relationships.”

“Isn’t that vaguely sexist?”

“No. Well yes, but it is the science of evolution talking. Men have to get better at reading the signs. Men, young and old, are hopeless when it comes to reading the signs we give, a woman almost needs to come up and say, “You’re the most attractive thing I have seen on this planet,” before you ask them out. And then, we still have man mistranslating that into we want to have instant sex with them.”