Free The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene by David Carter Page B

nothing wrong with that. Gringo liked women who thought ahead, especially when it involved him. It boded well. It might yet fit in with his strict three strikes or you’re out rule.
       Strike one. Date one. English, Shaman’s Wine Bar, again, but who cared?
       ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘get your coat.’
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
 
 
Eleven
     
     
                 
    Gringo always went out on a Saturday night. What was the alternative? Sit in and watch crap talent shows on the television, a pizza on your lap, and bloody football, and then news of the latest disaster unfolding somewhere on the globe. Television companies weren’t happy unless they were unearthing some catastrophe somewhere or other, and the world was a big place. If you looked hard enough and far enough afield, you could always find pictures of human misery, and that wasn’t Gringo’s idea of entertainment, or of what life was all about.
       Saturday night was dress up and smile night. Kiss and cuddle night, and maybe, just maybe, a heck of a lot more.
       He was taking her to the Bombay Kings Indian Restaurant, reputedly the best Indian eating place in the city, and he was looking forward to it. He enjoyed it, the big build up, everything about it, the preparation of the car, the collecting of sufficient cash from the gob in the wall that spat out his money, the wallowing in the bath, the careful dressing, ensuring that everything was just so, the arriving ten minutes late, the casual check on his date to ensure that she had made at least some effort to please him, the long drawn out meal in an expensive place, the conversation and banter, the teasing and an occasional double entendre, though nothing and never too crude, the paying of the bill with a flourish, the arm-in-arm amble back to the car, the kiss and cuddle on the front seat, the starting of the engine, and the big decisions to be made: Your place or mine? Would you like to come back for coffee?
       Damned right! Never say no to coffee, even if you detest the stuff.
       Yes, Gringo adored the courting ritual, and through constant practice he had become good at it, and he knew it too, and most times the intelligent women he dated, the ones he infinitely preferred, realised it too.
       Strike two. Date two. Indian Meal night.
       As he drove toward her apartment he thought back to Wednesday night. Everything had gone pretty much according to plan. They had ended up back at her new apartment just along the tracks from the railway station. She’d invited him in and he’d said yes.
       She insisted that she never heard the trains, that she soon became used to them, but when he eased back the floor to ceiling lace curtains and looked out from the third floor window, gazing through the darkness at the arc lights that lit the station approach, he saw there were four parallel sets of tracks, and constant movement of passenger and goods trains alike, all too often making that hideous Bee Po noise as they departed the station.
       No, he would never get used to that, never.
       Maria Almeida had rules too, strict ones that she never deviated from, though he had no idea about that, and frankly wouldn’t have cared less. All rules are made to be broken, at least once, that was Gringo’s mantra.
       He’d eked a kiss from her, strictly no tongues, no parting of the teeth, jammed together like a medieval chastity belt, and even that had been hard work. She had made it plain there would be nothing more on offer. There never was on date one in Maria’s rulebook. That wasn’t a problem. He liked something of a challenge. Sure, he would have jumped into bed with her without a second’s thought if the opportunity had arisen, but it hadn’t, and that just made him all the more determined.
       She had dry lips. He noticed that.
       Not cracked and damaged lips, but dry, ultra responsive lips. Strange, full lips. Warm and arid, like fresh and fragrant