A discreet inquiry as to whether he lives alone is met with a torrent of mock indignation: "What is the question?" he bellows.
A few discreet questions here and there, a couple of dollars slipped to a shady character selling coconuts beside the bus stop, and then a boy is summoned to take us around to a house tucked away in Portobelo's ramshackle backstreets, where the raffish accordion strains of vallenato music replace the murmurings of the Nicene Creed.
Tackling a 1950's Taboo Where earlier lovelorn columnists like Dorothy Dix had given measured, modest replies to discreet questions about courtship, the new Ann Landers was a wisecracking tough cookie out of Damon Runyon.
He watches, he listens, he asks discreet questions, and his intuitive intelligence ("He either knew things or he didn't") gives him insight into minds closed to reason.
By 6 15 AM, another nurse popped her head in the door, prodding, "Have you urinated yet?" It would take me a few more days to realize I was the slow pisser of the bunch and that the nurse's question was a discreet command: "Pee now so we can proceed with the schedule".
Low-overhead Internet shopping offers privacy and a discreet way for landlubbers to ask dumb questions.
There was a discreet count in year 10 with just one question, "Have you started yet?" The "no" number among us 14-15-year-olds became smaller and smaller.
When the killer question came, Dick Pound gently rocked on his seat and took a discreet breath.
The difference between kitsch and tasteful nautical ambience is not merely a question of preferring a flock of fiberglass resin seagulls or a discreet cast-iron mermaid in the marigold bed.
He was a "discreet alcoholic" – a discreet everything, in fact.
Theresa kept a discreet distance.
