The narrator is on his way home from work when he runs into Mr. Mascarenhas, who is trying to get him to buy some sweets at a nearby cafe. The two of them have been talking for a while now, and the narrator admits that he's a little nervous about how he'll look when he gets home. He says that when he was a kid, he used to be a model and his father's modeling business went bankrupt, so he had to go back to his parents' house to get the newspapers delivered. So now he has to go to the grocery store to pick up the newspapers and wash dishes. The narrator says that he doesn't care what other men think of him because he'd rather look pretty than do anything about it. He's not a professional stylist, he says, but he does care about how other men look at him. He tells the narrator to be careful around his ears, because the other men are looking up at him too much.