Free Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous by J. Brandon Best

couldn’t make her question any plainer even if he had understood Russian.
    Get real! Do I look like Santa? ‘You can use it now, yes of course’.
    ‘You will present it to me, da?’
    He sat dumfounded. No way could she have his phone! Besides, he was paying it off on a phone company plan. But just when he thought she was about to pressure him again, another girl arrived at the table and captured the conversation. Nice looking red-herring he thought.
    She glanced at Bronte and began a rapid exchange with Zhana who made no attempt to introduce him. After their brief chat in Martian, she looked again at Bronte and said goodbye. Then leaning over and kissing Zhana giggled in English, ‘Bye bye Rita’.
    ‘That was my friend from work. She is from another city,’ Zhana said aloofly, waving casually as the girl walked from the restaurant.
    ‘Did I hear her call you Rita?’ Zhana stared at him blankly.
    ‘I thought just now I heard her call you Rita?’ She looked down at the table then picked up his phone again before answering confidently,
    ‘Zhana is my middle name. Most people know me as Rita and usually, only family call me Zhana. You can call me Rita or Zhana.’
    I’d like to call you crazy, strange, maybe Twisted, but not Rita. ‘I like Zhana thanks.’ Her black eyes were intense and her cheeks flushed as she desperately tried to throw him off the subject.
    ‘Let’s get out of here’ she stated. Bronte was too confused and bewildered to answer. Wishing the tide in his beer would come back in, he simply shrugged his consent.
                  As they sidestepped people passing crowded shop fronts, he felt more and more troubled and less and less enthusiastic about his internet blind date. The first night started out with a whimper and from that moment things appeared to be progressively going downhill. First, he discovered the letters he’d been receiving were actually written by someone else. Now he learned that Zhana was not always Zhana. He had travelled thousands of miles to meet three girls in one quasi Russian schizophrenic. He was romancing Zhana, corresponding with Oly yet meeting Rita!
    Confronting the realization this venture was not over yet and that another week lay ahead, he tried to relax and make the most of it. There was at least some comfort with Zhana or Rita or whoever she was nestled on his arm. When they passed an up market shoe shop, she did an immediate left turn, dragging him into the store with her.
    ‘Please, I want to look in here’. He thought that was obvious as he stumbled through the doorway with his arm tangled in hers, attracting the attention of the sales staff and other customers. Everyone in the shop stared like they’d just seen the abominable snowman with a suntan. He took refuge from view behind a large pot plant against the back wall.
    Bronte began to think Zhana knew the Ukraine traditions for lovers after all, although she’d learned them in reverse - First the shopping, next the cards, then the alcohol ? While he wondered if she knew about the wild sex, she returned from another part of the shop holding an exquisite pair of boots. Seemed the plant hadn’t hidden him well enough.
    ‘You like?’ They reminded Bronte of something the original sex kitten, Bridget Bardot would have worn at her age. Of course when Bridget was a star and made leopard skin look hot, Zhana - or Rita hadn’t even been thought of. She held them higher, ‘They are nice Bronte, yes?’
    Very bloody Italian nice, thank you very much. ‘Yes, they are exquisite’. Bronte wanted to simply ask how much they were.
    ‘You will present for me these?’ She asked, looking like the Queen of Sheba when she was a very naughty girl. The shop keeper stared, Zhana stared and Bronte stared. In a Mexican standoff where the weapon was the unwanted bill, he wished for the nuclear alarm warning to sound, or anything of sufficient disaster or distraction to happen and happen quickly. He knew