As he approached the pub he registered a black man at the edge of the crowd of drinkers, then knew it was Leo, then pretended he hadn't seen him. So he was quite small; and he'd grown a kind of beard. Why was he waiting in the street? Nick was already beside him and looked again, very nervously, and saw his questioning smile.

"If you don't want to know me…" Leo said.

Nick staggered and laughed and stuck out his hand. "I thought you'd be inside."

Leo nodded, and looked down the street. "This way I can see you coming."

"Ah… " Nick laughed again.

"Besides, I wasn't sure about the bike, in this area." And there the bike was, refined, weightless, priceless, the bike of the future, shackled to the nearest lamp-post.

"Oh, I'm sure it will be fine." Nick frowned and gazed. He was surprised that Leo thought this a bad area. Of course he thought it was rather dangerous himself; and three or four corners away there were pubs he knew he could never enter, so bad were their names, and so intense the mana of their glimpsed interiors. But here… A tall Rastafarian strolled by, and his roll of the head was a greeting to Leo, who nodded and then looked away with what seemed to Nick a guarded admission of kinship.

"We'll have a little chat outside, eh?"

Nick went in to get the drinks. He stood at the counter looking through to the back bar-where in fact there were several people talking, perhaps one of those groups that meet in a pub, and the room was brighter than he remembered it or would have wanted it. Everything seemed to be a bit different. Leo was only having a Coke, but Nick needed courage for the evening and his own identical-looking drink had a double rum in it. He had never drunk rum before, and was always astonished that anyone liked Coke. His mind held the floating image of the man he had longed to meet, whom he had touched for a moment and left outside in all his disconcerting reality. He was too sexy, he was too much what he wanted, in his falling-down jeans and his tight blue shirt. Nick was worried by his obvious intention to seduce, or at least to show his capacity for seduction. He took the drinks out with a light tremble.