Page 45 of The House of the Red Balconies

“No? Are they l-love token earrings, do you think?”

“A little bit. Just be prepared to have a conversation about your relationship if you give him those.”

“Maybe I’ll save them for his birthday. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”

He was looking forward so keenly to seeing Zo that it seemed almost wrong, as if he should have needed Zo’s permission to think so much about him. He arrived back at the Red Balconies as the sun was setting, and just managed to catch Zo before he left his room to join the other companions upstairs. The way Zo beamed at him and shouted, “You’re back!” was better than any of the sights of Tetum.

“I got you presents,” he said, thrusting the parcel into Zo’s hands as a substitute for what he suddenly wanted to do, which was hug Zo.

He’d completely forgotten to take the earrings out of the parcel, but Mutari had been wrong, or underestimated Zo, because there was no conversation about them. Zo gasped and exclaimed over them, took out the earrings he had been wearing to put them in, pinned back his hair to show them off, and looked at himself in his mirror.

“How did you know to pick these? I used to have a pair just like this when I was a boy. They were my favourite earrings.”

“I just … thought they would suit you.”

“I love them. And the fan, too.” He picked it up, tracing his fingertips over the painted animals.

“I tried to pick the hippopotamus with the best expression,” Hylas said.

“So how were things around here while I was gone?” Hylas asked Zo the following morning as they sat in his room.

Zo took a moment to think about that, under cover of sipping his tea. There were different ways he might have chosen to answer.

“Honestly, not too bad,” he said finally. “Mistress has been in a good temper—or, to do her justice, learning not to take it out on us when she isn’t, I think. We have one new regular, a Zashian gentleman, Nahaz—did you ever meet him? Anyway, he’s been coming pretty often, and he’s a nice addition. Good manners—not court manners, just a solid middle-class type. He likes Taris because she reminds him of his mother, and she likes him because she likes reminding a man of his mother, I guess, and Mistress has decided she likes Taris’s headscarf after all now, because it’s part of the reminding-him-of-his-mother situation.”

“Amazing. That’s all working out, then.”

“Mm. I have a new prospect myself,” he added, reluctant to talk about it but feeling he should. “Or, well, a revival of an old prospect. One of my old regulars, who’d stopped coming for a while, is back with apologies. A man named Djosi. I had my eye on him as a patron a while back … around the time you moved in.”

“Ah! That’s good,” said Hylas eagerly.

Zo found himself annoyed with the eagerness, and then felt childish. It wasn’t as if he wanted Hylas to feel jealous.

“Well, we’ll see. It came to nothing once before. On the opposite side of the ledger, Timon of Kos has been around a few times.”

Hylas nodded. “Theano told me. She said he’d been bothering you. I, uh, didn’t like to hear that.”

Zo was glad he had mentioned it, then. He hadn’t wanted to, but if Hylas had already known, he’d just have looked like he was keeping secrets.

“I knew you wouldn’t. She didn’t mean he’s been doing anything sinister. Just making a fuss and sending letters and things. He’s an unpleasant man, when you get to know him.”

Hylas had a pained look on his face that Zo wanted desperately to smooth away somehow. “I should never have … I knew—I thought he was unpleasant myself.”

“You didn’t do anything, Hylas. You just talked about the Red Balconies around him, you didn’t tell him to come here.”

Hylas shook his head. “I’d heard him say things that revealed his character, and I should have told you instead of letting you pursue a-a liaison with him. What did he do?”

“Nothing. Hylas, don’t blame yourself. I don’t know what Theano told you. Timon came here a couple of times in an ill temper because he’s had a quarrel with his wife.”

“His wife?”

“Yes, Hylas. All these men are married.”

“R-right. Loukianos isn’t, so I suppose I forgot.”

“Anyway, he came here. He followed me to my room one night and wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, but I pretended to be feeling ill, and not in a pretty way … ” It had been a transparent ruse, and he wasn’t proud of it.

“Do you think he’ll come back?”