Mating Read Online Free Page B

colleens I am outraged. He began absurdly backtracking and trying to say something nice about women of Irish descent, but this was Denoon before I managed to tone up his sense of humor. Could there be a little deshabille? Giles wanted to know. I couldn’t see why not.
    I let things stretch to the point where he wanted to neck. At that point he wasn’t being untoward, so when I said no way Raymond and told him what the deal was—which was that I was his if he took me along to Vic Falls—he was in shock. I was absolutely naked about it.
    Obviously my no was a first. He bridled all over the place. I was prepared, though, and had a few things to point out.
    To wit, he was forgetful. Very goodlooking people are as a rule more forgetful than the median. Their mothers start it and the world at large continues it, handing them things, picking things up for them, smoothing their vicinity out for them in every way. I on the other hand remember everything. I’m practically a mnemonist of the kind people study. My mother forgot everything during the raptures of misery she was always involved in, so I had to remember everything for both of us, perforce, before we sank. She also used to lose things as a strategy against people like creditors and landlords. Academically my memory starts out a blessing and ends up a curse because it carries me into milieux where people have been led to make strong assumptions about my core intellect based on it. Recall is not enough. Not that I’m stupid. I don’t know if I am, yet. But my photographic memory was useful to Giles. The panoply of things I had been keeping track of for him constituted everything except his camera. I gave him some recent examples.
    Then there was Africa. His experience was the Republic of South Africa plus a little Rhodesia during UDI. He seemed to feel this qualified him for all of Africa. He walked around as though he knew what he was doing, but I knew better—as I had proved. Black-run Africa is different. He didn’t take Botswana seriously. More than once I’d stopped him from shooting scenes with public buildings in the background, which is not appreciated by the Botswana police. Also I had convinced him it was not smart to be continually using the adjective “lekker” for great, terrific. He had picked that up in South Africa and it was doubtless okay at the bar in the Grenadier Room at the President Hotel but not out among where the people could hear. He slightly disbelieved me when I told him the Batswana disliked Boers, because he had been overwhelmed by Boer hospitality, which is a real entity, if you happen to be white.
    He said he needed to think about taking me along.
    After a little swallowing he came around, but would I mind paying for my own breakfasts and lunches at Vic Falls if he picked up my dinners and everything else, all the travel? That made it perfect and crystal clear all around. We shook on it. I can take breakfast or leave it anyway. I could tell he needed some kind of reassurance that I found him physically attractive, our negotiations notwithstanding. Finally I just told him so, and that worked. It was all set.
Bulawayo
    The train trip from Gaborone to Victoria Falls is in two stages—a night and half a day to Bulawayo, then a layover until ten and then overnight to the falls. There is no Rhodesia, I had to tell Giles over and over, to grind into his brain that we were going to a country called Zimbabwe and only Zimbabwe. I made up a rhyme to help him.
    We toyed with the idea of doing it in our compartment but decided to hold off until Vic Falls and luxury. There’s no hot water on the train, only cold water that comes out of a little tap and down into a zinc basin that folds out of the wall between the windows and which you know has been used as a urinal by people not eager for the tumult you standardly get in the corridors on your way to the toilets. This is the case with basins in any accommodation not accompanied by a private bath,