The hesitation on the stairs lasted no more than a couple of heartbeats. Then, as if angry at himself for wasting time, Menedemos raced up to the women's quarter. One door stood slightly ajar. A lamp inside the room - if he had his bearings, the room from which Phyllis had looked out at him - spilled dim, flickering light into the hallway. He went to that doorway and whispered her name.
His own came back as softly: "Menedemos?"
He opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it after him. She lay waiting on the bed, a large himation covering her. His eyes flicked this way and that. No Gylippos. No armed friends. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. Even so, he couldn't help asking, "Where's your husband?"
"His brother is having a symposion," Phyllis answered. "Some little slave girl will be giving Gylippos what he wants tonight. And so - " She threw aside the mantle. She was naked beneath it, her body pale as milk in the lamplight. "You can give me what I want."
"I'll do my best." Menedemos pulled his chiton off over his head. As he lay down beside her, he asked, "The slaves won't blab?"
Phyllis tossed her head. "Not likely. I treat them better than Gylippos does. If he gets home early, they'll warn us." She reached for him. "But I don't want to think about Gylippos, not now."
Like any man among the Hellenes, Menedemos was in the habit of using women for his own pleasure. Here was a woman using him for hers. He smiled as his mouth came down on her breast. She might be using him for her pleasure, but he'd get some, too. She growled down deep in her throat and pressed his head to her.
Presently, she crouched on all fours at the edge of the bed. When Menedemos started to choose the way that would ensure she didn't need to worry about conceiving, she tossed her head. "That always hurts," she said. "And I'd sooner have your seed sprout in there than his."
"All right." Menedemos spread his legs a little wider and began anew. He went slowly, stretching out his own pleasure - and, incidentally, Phyllis'. Soon she was thrusting back against him as hard as he drove into her. She let out a little wailing cry like the one she'd made down in the courtyard the night of the symposion. A moment later, Menedemos spent himself, too.
Being a young man, he needed only a very little while to recover. When he began again, Phyllis looked over her shoulder at him in surprise. "Gylippos would already be snoring," she said.
"Who?" Menedemos answered. They both laughed.
Again, he took his time. For the first round, he'd chosen to; for the second, he had to. Even after Phyllis' cat-wail of pleasure burst from her, he went on and on, building toward his own peak.
He was almost there when the front door to Gylippos' home opened. "Master!" a house slave exclaimed, louder than she needed to. "What are you doing back so soon?"
Phyllis' gasp, this time, had nothing to do with delight. As her husband growled, "My idiot brother and I had a quarrel, that's what," she jerked away from Menedemos. He hissed in protest, but then Gylippos' voice came from the very foot of the stairs: "I blacked his eye, the decayed, impotent monkey."
"Oimoi!" the house slave exclaimed. She went on, "Master, I think the mistress is asleep. She didn't expect to see you till tomorrow morning."
"She'll have a surprise, then," Gylippos said, and started up the stairs.
Menedemos grabbed his chiton. Phyllis pointed to the window as she blew out the lamp. Down below in the courtyard, the slave woman asked Gylippos something else, trying to delay him. Menedemos didn't hear what it was. He flung the tunic out the window, then scrambled out himself. Instead of just leaping, he hung from the sill by his hands for a moment before letting go and dropping to the street: that made the fall as short as possible.
Even so, he turned an ankle when he hit. Biting down hard against an exclamation of pain, he grabbed the chiton as Gylippos spoke from Phyllis' bedroom: "What was that? Is there a burglar trying to break in?"
As Menedemos limped around a corner as fast as he could go, he heard Phyllis answer, "I think it was just a dog, O husband of mine."
"Pretty big for a dog. Pretty clumsy for a dog, too," Gylippos said dubiously. He must have looked out the window, for a moment later he continued, "I don't see any dog. But I don't see any burglar, either, so I suppose it's all right." Maybe he turned away from the window and back toward his wife - his voice was harder for Menedemos to hear when he went on, "Come here."
"I obey," Phyllis said, as demurely as if no other thought had ever entered her mind, no other man had ever entered her body.
Gylippos didn't get what he wanted from a flutegirl or a dancer tonight, so he'll take take what he can get from his wife, Menedemos thought as he wriggled back into his chiton. He hadn't quite got everything he wanted from Phyllis himself. Inconsiderate of Gylippos, went through his mind. Why couldn't he have waited just a little longer to pick a fight with his brother?
He took his bearings. Gylippos' house lay in the central part of Taras, the part where a neat grid of streets superseded the jumble of lanes and alleys going every which way marking the rest of the town. That made things easier. As soon as Menedemos figured out which way was west, he started counting corners. His ankle hurt when he put weight on it, but it bore him.
He had one bad moment: three or four burly men, plainly bent on no good, padded up a north-south street just before he crossed it. But he'd stayed in the shadows and done his best to move quietly. They kept on going without so much as turning their heads his way. He let out a silent sigh of relief, waited till he was sure they'd passed, and headed on toward the rented house.
When he knocked on the door, he expected Aristeidas to be the one who made sure he was himself and not a robber too clever for his own good. But instead, he heard his cousin's voice: "Is that you, Menedemos?"
"Almonds!" Menedemos quavered in a high, thin falsetto. "Who wants to buy my salted almonds?"
Sostratos opened the door. "If I wanted almonds, I'd buy them in the shell and crack them on your hard head," he said. "You're back sooner than I thought you would be. No all-night debauch?"
"Afraid not," Menedemos said as he came in. Sostratos closed the door behind him. He went on, "I had a good time. You don't need to worry about that." He still wished Gylippos had waited a bit longer before coming home from his brother's, but leaping out of the window, landing badly, and having to limp away made not quite finishing his second round seem much less urgent than it had a little while before.
Altogether too observant for his own good, Sostratos noticed the limp even by the weak light of the single torch burning in the courtyard. "What happened to you?" he demanded. "Does Gylippos know who you are?"
"No, he doesn't," Menedemos answered. "He's not even sure I'm anybody, if you know what I mean. He got into a fight at his symposion, and left in a huff. That's why I had to go out the window."
"You're lucky you didn't break your leg, or maybe your neck," Sostratos said. "Is a woman really worth running that kind of risk?"
"If I hadn't thought so, I wouldn't have gone there, would I?" Menedemos said, a little testily. Looking back on it, he supposed it hadn't been worth the risk, but he would sooner have gone up before a Persian torturer than admit that to his priggish cousin. If Phyllis wanted him to pay her another visit, he knew he just might do it.
"Foolishness," Sostratos said.
"Yes, O best one." Menedemos used the honorific with intent to wound. By Sostratos' scowl, he succeeded. He said, "And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep. It's been a busy night." Trying to walk as straight as he could, he headed for the bedchamber. His ankle complained. So did Sostratos. He ignored both of them.
A house slave at Lamakhos' brothel shook her head, as barbarians were wont to do. "Maibia does not want to see you today," she said.