It is one of those nights where the world is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Everything is beautiful in a way that tears his heart out and crushes the remnants against the city streets, so beautiful he knows it cannot last. Lucy is beautiful, a blur of white skin and golden hair and the city lights reflected in her crystal-blue eyes. Max is beautiful, tawny like a lion and nearly as graceful, even with his skin flushed from drink and his trousers all but falling from his narrow hips – and what the hell happened to his belt? Jude is…

Pissed drunk, he thinks, catching his unkempt reflection in a shop window. Bloody hell. I've gone past 'scruffy artist' to 'drunken, homeless protester'.

"Look! Jude!" Lucy takes Jude's pause to examine himself as a moment of introspection. Perhaps it was. Either way, she throws her thin white arms around him from behind and places her rounded chin against the sharp slope of his shoulder. "See how amazing you are when you catch yourself by surprise?"

"Okay, Lu," Maxwell says, moving round to gently disengage her. "Think you've had enough."

Lucy swats at Max's chest to ward him off – Jude is certain her hand leaves a fuzzy white trail as it slices through the air – and presses a kiss to the shadow of stubble that's been dusting Jude's pale jawbone for the past week or so, so engrossed has he been in charcoals and canvases. "You smell like smoke." She beams up at him with a trust that is as dizzying as it is misplaced, her fingers wrapped in his Nehru jacket (four dollars, fire sale in the Village, threadbare but clean, spattered with turpentine like the rest of his clothes). "And paint."

"You smell like smoke." He imitates her pause and presses his cheek against the crown of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. "And strawberries."

This elicits a groan from Max. "You all kids are giving a brand new meanin' to dirty hip--" And he cuts himself off to pull up his baggy trousers. "Jesus Christ. Lu, do you still have my belt?"

She pulls away and makes a pantomime of checking her hemp shoulder bag. The loosely-woven satchel is too narrow to fit anything but Max's empty flask and Jude's silver cigarette lighter and a picture of a man she once loved in uniform, the same uniform he was wearing when he was shot and killed. "I think it's still on that guy's card table." The unasked question of why the hell did you take it off? lingers in the air.

"Er, listen, mate," Jude breaks in. "Remember when I said I was brilliant at cards?"

Max's husky voice is underscored with his irritation. "Yeah?"

"I lied. I'm absolute shit at cards, and I never played Texas What's It before tonight. I owe you this month's rent." He pauses, trying to keep a straight face. "And a new belt."