There wasn't anywhere to sit down, so they stood and leaned against a brown-tiled window sill; in the opaque lower half of the window the word SPIRITS was etched in fancy Victorian capitals, their serifs spiralling out in interlacing tendrils. Leo looked at Nick frankly, since that was what he was here for, and Nick grinned and blushed, which made Leo smile too, for a moment.

Nick said, "You're growing a beard, I see."

"Yeah-sensitive skin… it's a bloodbath when I shave. Literally," said Leo, with a quick glance that showed Nick that he liked to make his point. "Then if I don't shave, I get these ingrowing hairs, fucking murder, have to pick the ends out with a pin." He stroked his stubbly jaw with a small fine hand, and Nick saw that he had those shaving-bumps he had half-noticed on other black men. "I tend to leave it for four days, say, five days, maybe, then have a good shave: try and avoid both problems that way."

"Right… " said Nick, and smiled, partly because he was learning something interesting.

"Most of them still recognize me, though," said Leo, and gave a wink.

"No, it wasn't that," said Nick, who was too shy to explain his own shyness. His glance slipped up and down between Leo's loose crotch and the neat shallow cushion of his hair, and tended to avoid his handsome face. He was taking Leo's word for it that he was handsome, but it didn't quite cover the continuing shock of what was beautiful, strange, and even ugly about him. The phrase "most of them" slowly took on meaning in his mind. "Anyway," he said, and took a quick sip of his drink, which had a reassuring burn to it. "I suppose you've had lots of replies." Sometimes when he was nervous he asked questions to which he would rather not have known the answers.