"Yes. Thank you. You?"
"Very rewarding."
The smile had decayed into a thin line beneath his —"You"ve grown a moustache."
It was an unhealthy example of the species. Thin, patchy, and dirty-blond, it wandered back and forth under Quaid's nose as if looking for a way off his face. Quaid looked faintly embarrassed.
"Was it for Cheryl?"
He was definitely embarrassed now.
"Well..."
"Sounds like you had a good vacation."
The embarrassment was surmounted by something else.
"I've got some wonderful photographs," Quaid said.
"What of?"
"Holiday snaps."
Steve couldn't believe his ears. Had C. Fromm tamed the Quaid? Holiday snaps?
"You won't believe some of them."
There was something of the Arab selling dirty postcards about Quaid's manner. What the hell were these photographs? Split beaver shots of Cheryl, caught reading Kant?
"I don't think of you as being a photographer."
"It's become a passion of mine."
He grinned as he said ‘passion'. There was a barely-suppressed excitement in his manner. He was positively gleaming with pleasure.
"You"ve got to come and see them."
"I—"
"Tonight. And pick up the Bentham at the same time."
"Thanks."
"I've got a house for myself these days. Round the corner from the Maternity Hospital, in Pilgrim Street. Number sixty-four. Some time after nine?"
"Right. Thanks. Pilgrim Street." Quaid nodded.
"I didn't know there were any habitable houses in Pilgrim Street."
"Number sixty-four."
Pilgrim Street was on its knees. Most of the houses were already rubble. A few were in the process of being knocked down. Their inside walls were unnaturally exposed; pink and pale green wallpapers, fireplaces on upper storeys hanging over chasms of smoking brick. Stairs leading from nowhere to nowhere, and back again.