Page 46 of The House of the Red Balconies

“He may.” He probably would.

“What can I do to help?”

“Oh, I don’t know … ” Zo prevaricated.

There was one obvious thing. It would likely make Timon go away for good. But he couldn’t ask Hylas to pretend to be his lover, and it wasn’t going to happen naturally. If he’d needed more proof of that, the gift of those expensive earrings, thrust into his hands unceremoniously with the cheap tourist items, had supplied that. Those earrings could have been a courtship present, but not given like that.

Hylas went back to the plans for the aqueduct, which he was able to complete now that he had visited the big island, and the work on repairing the pipes in town, which had ground to a halt for no good reason while he had been gone. He thought he might have a solution for the silting-up of the water intake at the new bath complex. The next couple of weeks were satisfyingly filled with real work; he would return to the Red Balconies in the evenings feeling that he had accomplished things.

Zo was busy in the evenings for a while with Djosi, who turned out to be the man Hylas had seen leaving Zo’s room on one of his first nights at the Red Balconies. He was handsome and somewhat younger than Hylas, and he and Zo made an attractive pair, sitting together in the evenings. Hylas wished he could simply be happy for Zo without also feeling naggingly inferior whenever the man was around.

Mistress Aula clearly wasn’t as pleased about Djosi as she had been about Timon of Kos—he wasn’t nearly as rich—but she contented herself with oblique comments and pointed sighs. And then, as suddenly as he had reappeared, Djosi was gone again, this time seemingly for good.

“He offered a garland to a girl at the Amber Lily,” Zo reported dispassionately when Hylas came home to find him lying face down on the divan. “I have to start all over again.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hylas. “Are you just … upset about that, or did you like him?”

Zo laughed as he hauled himself up to a sitting position. “Not tremendously, no. I certainly don’t like his fickleness. What kind of man does that? He was throwing out clear hints he was going to ask to be my patron—was he giving her the same line the whole time, and then just flipped a coin to decide, or what? It’s frustrating. I’m supposed to be good at this—why can’t I get any man to … ” He looked away.

“You will,” said Hylas, feeling awkward. “You are good at this.”

But for a moment he had thought, He doesn’t mean “any man”; he means me. Why can’t he get me to … to what? To admit that I want him? But what good would that do?

The following afternoon, when he had exhausted the work that he could do for the day, Hylas got up from his desk and went into Loukianos’s office. Loukianos sat up in his chair, clearly pretending he hadn’t been about to doze off.

“Would you like to come to the Red Balconies this evening, sir?” Hylas asked.

“Eh? Oh, I suppose we’ve never been there yet, have we? And I said I was going to take you to all the tea houses. Of course, I don’t think we’ve been to Myrrha’s either, which is remiss of me … ”

“Well, yes, but the fact is I have been to the Red Balconies. I’m there all the time—I lodge there.”

“Oh, is that a fact? I had no idea. Come to think of it, I did hear that they’d taken in lodgers. Wasn’t Pantaleon their tenant for a while?”

“Mm. But I thought you might like to come with me tonight. The food is very good, and the music. You might find it … a change of pace.”

“A good thought, yes. A change of pace. I suppose I could. Is … out of curiosity … there used to be a companion there named Theano. Is she still around?”

“She is, yes.”

“Mm. Just curious. Well, I suppose I could come,” he said again. “What time did you think of going?”

“I thought to go now, actually. I don’t have any more work to do here.”

“Right.” Loukianos scanned the surface of his desk, which held nothing in the way of excuses for lingering. “I’ll join you, then.”

Ought he to do this, after all? Did he want Loukianos to become Zo’s patron? He, Hylas, was drawn to Zo, desired Zo himself. And there had been that look in Zo’s eyes, that time in the bath, and that moment when he looked away, yesterday. Hylas held some interest for him that was not friendship. It wasn’t madness to imagine …

But Hylas could not be Zo’s patron. He didn’t even receive a steady salary from the governor, nor did he know how to ask for one.

So it was madness. Zo needed a patron, and Hylas could not fill that role, but Loukianos could. There was no use in thinking more about it.

The sun was beginning to get low in the sky when they arrived at the Red Balconies. Hylas was about to direct Loukianos toward Zo’s room when they were met by Chrestos and Captain Themistokles, coming down the stairs from the gallery arm-in-arm.

“Governor Loukianos!” said the captain. “I didn’t know you came here.”

“I, er, haven’t in some years. But my friend Hylas convinced me to come back.”

“You’ve chosen a good day, sir,” said Chrestos enthusiastically. “Two of our companions are just starting a new fresco in the south sitting room which you must see. It’s the room at the far end of the gallery,” he added to Hylas. “Everyone’s up there already. Mistress Aula is away visiting a friend—she’ll be sorry to have missed you, sir.”