“I’ll keep that in mind.” She had to laugh at the thought she would ever need tips (of any sort, but most amusing to her was the picture of her spontaneously taking up flying lessons with him one day, when the most she had ever done in the years since her first at Hogwarts with an actual broomstick was pose suggestively). Still, she wouldn’t rule it out. (To be fair, Ester did not generally rule things out.) Especially not when her new friend was actually rather entertaining. 

“But here I thought artists were the only deviants,” Ester added musingly, eyeing him anew at that little revelation. She was not shocked, of course - there was hardly anything left in the world to shock her, she fancied, and she wasn’t joking about her artistic circles, either - but she was interested, perhaps a little more curious about him now. “Is that why you -?” She broke off to wave vaguely about the room, meaning came to play in the demi-monde, as if maybe he felt more at home here. She thought there had been talk of gambling troubles, or something, (which would explain the disappointingly empty pockets of his), but she also thought he was married, so escaping a probably tedious spouse seemed as good a reason as any to have left.

Ester could empathise; or at any rate, she knew quite well how stifling marriage and propriety and society could be, especially all rolled up in one. It was almost nice to know she was not the only person in the world with that wild reckless urge to sink into other pleasures and disappear.

---