Late Evening.
He cursed his words the moment after he had slid up next to her and made the same sort of insipid offer everyone makes "May I buy you a drink."
Salamah didn't know what was wrong with him. Sure, he'd said it well enough, no stuttering for him, but it was clearly an entirely inadequate way to start a conversation. He had seduced far more women than he should have, and never had he resorted to some line like that. Salamah felt almost detached from himself as she replied, "Sure, but only one. I have to walk home safely, I have a kid at home."
A responsible woman who knows her limitations and is demonstrably fertile, that cold reptillian part of his brain reminded him. It seems as if she might be the one.
"Very well, what do you like to drink?"
"Maybe something a bit fruity..." she said, her smile playful, but not quite flirty.
Salamah ordered a drink himself, and they got to talking, mostly about nothing in particular. Their histories came up and he proceeded with the lies he had planned, and learned more about her. A single mother who worked two jobs, waitress at a night-club and a cashier at a middle-class sort of clothes shop. She dressed quite well, that was to be sure, better than her class would normally afford. And she chose well, dressed to mix modesty, practicality and femininity into a heady brew. By his view, his wife leaned a bit towards the last two: Salamah had nothing against practicality per se but, well...he was prejudiced against his wife.
She did not seem to be brilliant, but nor was she a fool. He introduced himself as Lawrence Salam, and she called herself Ginerva Lu. She had a sunny smile and, while no blind optimist, tended to think the best of people and situations. When she didn't know one way or the other, she thought the best, whether it was on politics, sports, fashion, or any of the subjects that eventually came up, passed briefly over, during the next several hours.
He was startled to find that he liked her and was still attracted to her, and that she seemed to be taking to him as well, though it had taken some work. This made his job harder and easier. Easier to seduce her, harder to inevitably betray her, leaving her with nothing but memories and some money, and him with a child. And it would end like that, he knew, it had to end like that.
"May I walk you home?"
She was a slight bit suspicious--good that she had survival instincts, and knew what such actions often were--but she agreed. It was the genuineness in his eyes that did it. For, well, he planned on doing nothing more than that and then getting her number. Better to come off as the gentleman since, even if she got pregnant after the first time, there would be many months of lies ahead.
Quite late, local time, the pair left the bar. Bars, always bars, he thought as they did...
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