I walked to his table, taking care not to knock any table corners, but trying to look sexy at the same time – this was me, after all. He stood up, a big smile on his face, as soon as I reached his table and gave me a light peck on the cheek.

“Hi, Gaby,” he said. I was silent for a moment, the effect of his super-masculine cologne combined with the way his stubble had grazed my skin lightly as he pecked me. His proximity and the pheromone loaded atmosphere around him sent a sick little thrill down my spine.

“Hi Cooper,” I replied, sinking into the cushioned seat. I found that I had to clear my throat. Then I smiled at him as he sat down.

“So,” he said, gesturing around the bistro, with the paintings on the wall courtesy of the art gallery next door and the pastries displayed enticingly in fancy glass covers, “Welcome to my favourite place in the whole world.”

I didn’t know at the time that he actually owned the bistro. He beckoned to the waiter, some local guy I had seen around a few times. The waiter’s gaze had a slightly surprised element in it as he stood by the table, waiting to take my order.

“Ummmmm,” I said, “a chocolate croissant and coffee.”

Cooper beamed, as if I had somehow passed a test. He leaned forward and whispered, “I was afraid you were gonna order tea. People here have the strangest obsession with it! I just can’t understand why. Coffee, on the other hand, that’s the way to go. Do you know that this place grows the best coffee in the world and the people here” – I noticed he said people like the people he was referring to weren’t like normal people but a pathetically bad imitation of – “don’t know or appreciate that.”

The coffee arrived, dark, with only a dash of milk and, strangely enough, tangawizi at the bottom.

“You know Gaby, you really are beautiful,” Cooper murmured as I bit into my croissant. I almost choked. That was a fast turnaround from the whole people and coffee lesson.

“Wh-what?” I stammered. I was dressed in a simple top, Capri pants and sandals, nothing to put in a fashion magazine. Before I could realise the ‘thank you’ that my mind told me, reproachfully, that I should voice, Cooper had reached forward and started running his hand along my skinny arm. It was more ticklish than sexy. I kept my expression neutral though.

“I mean, you don’t have to bother with make-up and fancy clothes to look beautiful,” Adonis was saying. I found myself lowering my eyes and, oh my, a blush came on.

“Thanks,” I said, my mind again tut-tutting that I said it too fast. I was feeling a bit out of my depth in this encounter. The few times we had met, we had just flirted mildly, none of this full-on feathery happy fluffy flattery business.

Cooper lifted his hand off my skin and leaned back in his seat. He casually threw one arm over the back of the chair and regarded me with a rakish grin. I smiled back, a tad timidly, as I later realised.

“Aren’t you afraid of being seen with an old man like me?” he asked me, playfully. Where would this be coming from? For some reason it was making me annoyed and I looked straight at him and rolled my eyes.

“You’re not old,” I said.

“Yes I am.” The grin was still there. He was a handsome man. Of that I had no doubt.

“No you’re not,” I insisted. Why was I insisting and where was this bit of conversation headed? We were supposed to be having coffee and fun.

“Yes I am, I’m twenty-nine and you’re nineteen,” said Cooper.

‘What does that have to do with the price of milk?” I smiled as I said this.

Cooper laughed at the unexpected retort. “You know, you’re quite bold, little girl,” he said, smiling. “I quite like you.”

My eyes unconsciously narrowed. There was something condescending in the way he said it and the flimsy dam behind which my inexplicable annoyance was building up collapsed. I gulped down my coffee (it was nice coffee) and stood up, banging my thighs on the edge of the table as I did.

“The nineteen-year old would like to leave now,” I said with as much dignity as I could, and I walked out of the restaurant. My heart was beating fast and my ears were buzzing. I hoped Cooper would come running after me, silly as it was. My mind, that remarkable paragon of twenty-twenty hindsight also slowly and carefully explained that I may have just acted my age back there.

The afternoon sunlight half-blinded me as I stepped out of the bistro. I walked slowly, looking back every now and then, but no Cooper emerged, running after me and swearing that he was in love with me. The BMW was nowhere in sight and I cursed inwardly. Now getting home would be such a hassle. I sighed and decided to walk the two or so miles to where I could get a matatu. It would be cheaper that way.

A car hooted as I made to cross the road and stopped right behind me. Cooper stepped out and, as I couldn’t help it, I started smiling. Cooper was shaking his head slowly and reproachfully as he walked towards me. He also had that stupid grin on his face.

“Let’s strike a deal, Gaby,” he said as he paused right in front of me and placed his hands on my shoulders. He looked into my eyes and said, “You’re not nineteen and I’m not twenty-nine. I’m just Cooper and you’re just Gaby. But you cannot be just Gaby, seeing as you’re so beautiful. Am I forgiven?” That smile! It was brilliant, in every sense of the word.

I nodded and smiled some more myself.

“Come with me, fair Gaby. Let’s take a drive.” He did a little mock bow and allowed me to lead the way. I was getting into his car already. We hadn’t even had a proper date. He put his arm around me and held me close. I wasn’t worried right then, blissful in the comfort of the moment as I was. It all felt a bit strange and wonderful at the same time. But I liked it.

“I’m sorry about back there,” he said, squeezing my shoulder affectionately. I was gazing up at his face, a half smile on mine. How lucky could a girl get? Here we were, in his expensive and comfortable car, all leather and wood trim, going god knows where, snuggling. And he did look truly remorseful.

“I should apologise,” I said, “for storming out like that. It wasn’t cool.”

“Pah!” he said, flapping his free hand in dismissal, “bygones. Don’t let it bother you.” He squeezed my shoulder again. It felt nice and I wanted him to do it again. “This is quite the interesting start to our first date, isn’t it?” he laughed. I could hear it in chest. It was very masculine, rich, comforting.

“Interesting is better than not, isn’t it,” I said. “Would you rather it was boring, or mundane, or perhaps tedious?”

“Tedious?” he laughed loudly. “You, Gaby, couldn’t be tedious if you tried. Not to me anyway.” He stroked my head. That felt so much better than the shoulder.

“Where are we going by the way?” I murmured. The driver had slowed down and turned off the highway and down an unfamiliar road.

“Home, of course,” he said confidently. He was smiling easily as he drew me even closer and slipped a well-practised hand under my top, tracing a meandering course up my back that made every single nerve that I possessed hum in an electrically ecstatic chorus. His mouth was already covering mine as he said, “My home.”

My pulse raced in my throat. My dreams were coming true. As he gazed into my eyes, I thought I could see right into his soul.

But perhaps I should have been looking into his mind.

***

I know you are already judging me. Cooper Blaine, the white boy with loads of money who took liberties on Gabrielle Wanjohi, a nice young local woman and then broke her heart. But perhaps you should hear my side of the story first.

I was born in Mombasa. Like all my siblings. Second child in a family of three brothers and two sisters. My paternal great-grandparents came to Africa on a ship from Scotland in the early 1900′s. My great-grandfather was a young idealistic missionary out to spread the Gospel and ‘enlighten’ the dark continent. My great-grandmother was a good Christian wife, it was her mission in life to support her husband to the ends of the earth, literally.

And so it begun. I was a third generation Scottish settler in Kenya. Well, my grandmother was English. And my mother was American, with Scottish, Irish, German and French ancestry. Not that it mattered. People like us were lumped in one group. Mzungus. Mixed in with all the other foreigners who looked at Kenya as a place either to come for a safari, or to exploit financially and socially.

I love Kenya. This is my home. That’s why I came back home after the 7 years at Princeton and Harvard. Like my father before me, I started my business not just to earn my living but also to be part of the growing economy and to create jobs for some of the thousands of young Kenyans trying to make it.

I didn’t set out to exploit Gabrielle. When she stepped out of the Beemer, a car I hardly ever used, her eyes caught and reflected the sunlight with a glint like from one of those silly flicks my ex loved to watch.

This was a bit too easy, I thought.

Gabrielle, woman, girl, whatever she was, I her quite found intriguing. She was fresh, naïve to a point, but not daft, like some of these coastal girls. The bangaiza girls – like Mambo, my houseboy refers to them – come with a greedy eye aimed at a man’s pocket, even worse when he just happens to have a lighter skin colour and a foreign passport. Unfortunately most of them were short on brains, so a man would end up treating them like what they really are, prostitutes.

Not Gaby, as I soon learned she liked to be called. She was interesting, I dare say, and not in that fleeting way that some of her friends, those coastal girls who worked at hotel, were. I liked that she could hold her end of the conversation. Even Anil respected her, trusted her with more and more responsibilities at the hotel’s administration offices. She was also rather pretty, but in that way that an unpolished diamond is. A bit of a tomboy, but pretty. There was something about her, the way she carried herself. A frailty hid behind that aloof, rather tough façade she put forth at the hotel when she was at work. I was curious as to what was behind that mask.

I had been working from Mombasa for a little over two years now. Life was easy down here; there was no fuss over anything unlike Nairobi where everything and everyone was in this huge hurry. I had done a few naughty things here in my time, being the unbound young(ish) man that I am. I believed in a man’s right to make his own fun. I was getting bored, truth be told, of the pace. As much as the sun and the sand came together to make life one chilled out moment after the other over here, I was dying for a change in pace. Having run the gamut of local ass, I was looking for something different. I was bored and finding myself considering moving back to Nairobi. I needed a challenge in my life. Maybe that could be Gaby.

Or maybe not.

We flirted at the hotel, or did what passes as flirting down here. She was all for it, showing quite some interest in my person. But all the girls down here pretty much swooned the minute a white boy like me showed them the slightest attention. They all thought we had cash and were their ticket out to financial bliss. But Gaby was different; I think she actually liked me for me. She could talk about current events without skipping off and hinting at something happening between us. Even when she did, I got the feeling it was not anything like the bangaiza girls wanted. Trust me, I know. I have had my share of them. A seemingly good girl turns out not to be anything good so fast it could knock a guy’s feet from under him. You just never know with these people.

I decided to put it all to the test and ask her out on a date. Nothing heavy, just coffee, seeing as I owned a Bistro and all. I thought I would make it extra nice for her by sending my driver over to pick her up from her place.

What would she think when the Beemer drove up to pick her up? Would it have a bearing on her social life, you know, set the locals’ tongues wagging about how their Gaby had become another sprung girl, hypnotized by the power of the white man’s money? Thing is, I really didn’t care. But it was interesting to ponder. Would she think that the gesture was an exhibition of my affection?

I was at the Bistro about an hour before she arrived. I was going through the books, analyzing the previous week’s sales. I didn’t trust my manager and something told me there would be a short in the balance if I concentrated really hard on the figures. But I couldn’t, thinking as I was about Gaby. As I may have mentioned before, she was intriguing. She was also young and, from what I could surmise, inexperienced.

I wondered how easy it would be to bed her. Well, I wanted to get to know her a bit more. But I wondered. Just how easy would it be?

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.