Maibia took the silver coins and made them disappear. With luck, they'd disappear from Lamakhos, too. "Better nor nothing?" she said. "Sure and it is. What I'd hoped for?" She sighed and shook her head, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "And I suppose you'll be wanting it once more, for good-bye's sake?"
"Well . . ." Sostratos hadn't been able to keep his eyes from traveling along her sweetly curved body. I could deny myself, he thought. That would make me feel virtuous. Then he laughed at the absurdity of virtue in a brothel. And he did want her, virtue or no. He compromised with himself: "However you please. The silver is yours either way."
"What a strange man y'are, Sostratos," Maibia remarked. He couldn't tell whether that was meant for praise or curse. A moment later, she pulled the thin chiton off over her head, and he stopped caring one way or the other. "Why not?" she said as she stepped into his arms. "Better you nor plenty of others I can think of." Again, he wondered whether that was praise or something else. Again, he didn't worry about it for long.
He thought he pleased her when they lay down together. Afterwards, though, she started to cry. Awkwardly, he stroked her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I do have to go."
"I know," she wailed. "And I have to stay." Her tears splashed down on his bare shoulder. They felt hot as melted lead.
"There's no help for it," Sostratos said. "Maybe it will be better from now on. We've tried to do things so it would be." Yes, I'm trying to salve my own conscience, too, he thought.
"Maybe." But Maibia didn't sound as if she believed it, and Sostratos' conscience remained unsalved.
With the coast of Italy on his right hand, with the Aphrodite's steering oars firm in his grip, with the poop deck rolling gently beneath his bare feet, Menedemos felt at home once more. "By the gods, it's good to get back to sea."
"I suppose so." Sostratos didn't sound convinced.
"You've been sour ever since we left Taras yesterday morning." Menedemos eyed his cousin. "You're pining for that redhead girl. Foolish to get yourself in such an uproar over a slave."
"You're a fine one to speak of foolishness," Sostratos snapped: that had got his notice. "How's your ankle feeling these days?"
"It's doing pretty well," Menedemos answered blithely. "It hardly bothers me unless I turn just the wrong way." That exaggerated his improvement, but not by a great deal. He got in a jab of his own: "At least I never imagined I was in love with Phyllis."
"I wasn't in love with Maibia," Sostratos said. "She hoped I would be, but I wasn't. I'm not so silly as that."
"Well, what is your trouble, then? Was she that good in bed?"
"Never a dull moment - I will say that," his cousin replied. "I do feel bad about leaving her back there to take on all comers again."
"All comers, indeed," Menedemos said, and Sostratos gave him a dirty look. Trying to get Sostratos to show a little common sense, Menedemos went on, "Do you think she thinks you were all that wonderful?"
His cousin turned red. Stammering a little, he answered, "I - I like to think so, anyhow."
"Of course you do. But are you thinking straight? To a girl in a brothel, a man's just another man, a prick's just another prick." Menedemos leered at Sostratos. "Or are you another Ariphrades? He found a way to make the girls in the brothels happy with him." Grinning, he quoted from Aristophanes' Wasps:
Sostratos looked revolted. "I wouldn't do anything like that," he said.
"I did hope not, best one," Menedemos said. "But if this girl was really mooning over you, I wondered if you'd given her some strange sort of reason." He quoted Aristophanes again, this time from the Knights:
"Nor with me." Sostratos raised an eyebrow. "I read the historians, and try to remember things they say that will help us when we trade. You read Aristophanes, and what do you remember? The filthiest parts, that's what."
"If you're going to read Aristophanes, that's the stuff worth remembering," Menedemos said. "And I read Homer, too, and there's nothing filthy about him." He glared a challenge at Sostratos. His cousin was so infected with radical modern ideas, he might even try to argue about that.
But, to Menedemos' relief, Sostratos dipped his head. "Nothing wrong with Homer."
