Free Old Lovers Don't Die by Paul G Anderson Page B

“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