Who needs them? As if they had a sense of their own uselessness, they stand around pubs at night and beg for oblivion. Just a little smoke and alcohol and a feeling of intimacy, Peter had thought, waiting for Thome in just such a pub, which was patronized primarily by men. Hannah had with the hackers’ help found all sorts of information about Thome. Education, address, favorite pub, and his fondness for young men, at least if you were willing to attach any significance to his search history.

When Thome entered the stuffy room one evening, everything went swimmingly. Peter just looked at him until he came over to him. They always come. They come like moths, they don’t even know what they want from him, perhaps to be touched, perhaps just to be near him, the way it is with beauty, it makes people crazy.

THOME

Has been unable to sleep since that night when he first spoke to Peter. And when he can’t sleep, he plays the entire conversation back in his head, every word he said to Peter. Every word was stupid. And he had been sweating. And, when he’d gone to the bathroom, had realized leftover bits of kale chips had been stuck in the corner of his mouth all day.

And now

PETER

Is standing at the entrance to the private road on Holland Park. Security has been stepped up. New addition: the thousand-volt fence. Now in stock: the constantly circling quadcopter drones. The guards are equipped with the latest machine guns and the full authority to use them. The situation is coming to a head, you could say. Online, more and more stories are popping up about the threat posed by the homeless. The homeless and other unregistered total failures as vectors for multiresistant microbes. Or something.

And yet.

Everything seems so peaceful. The charmingly nostalgic double-decker tourist buses make brief stops and idiots take photos of what they take to be English normality.