The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [89]
Speusippus introduced me, a hand on my shoulder, as though he knew me well and my accomplishments were his. Plato was slightly younger than my father would have been, and looked tired. He had close-cropped greying hair and lines around the mouth and eyes. Thin, not as tall as me, simple light clothes, hard chips of light in the eyes. I liked the look of him despite myself. I had expected someone soft and jolly, with seriousness represented by the cryptic.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,” he said, as though three years ago was last week. “I wanted to be. I was so sorry about your parents. I thought I could do good work in Sicily, influence many fates, and that it was the better choice. So it seemed at the time.”
“The moral calculus, the choice to serve the greatest good for the greatest number,” Speusippus announced, as though interpreting an oracle.
Around us the crowd murmured and nodded. Plato looked annoyed.
“I would have waited longer,” I said. More murmuring and nodding; a good answer; only I meant it. Your parents, he had said, not your father. He and I shared a bubble: we were both stuck together back in that moment three years ago. I was only now arriving at his school, in his mind; my parents had only just died, in mine. Every morning as I woke they died all over again. Today my true studies would begin.
“I want to spend time with you,” he said.
We were moving away from the ship, swept along by the crowd eager to get him moving, to reinstate him at the school, like a city craving her king back in the palace, or a child his parents in the house.
“Later. I’m too tired right now. I want to tell you a lot of things, and hear a lot from you also. I don’t like not knowing you. Eudoxus has written me—”
I allowed Speusippus to slip between us then and the crowd to peel me away. Was that flirting? At a stall I bought apricots and hung back to eat them while the crowd I had come with disappeared in the distance, sheep guiding the dog. Musicians had already been hired, I knew, and a great supper was being prepared; no one would be working this afternoon. Had they heard him say he was tired?
“You,” the girl said, surprised, when she saw me sitting alone at one of the long tables. Unusually, I had been told to wait. Her hair was loose and her face puffy. I followed her to the back room, where she rubbed hard at one eye with the side of her finger while I undressed. The bed was made.
“Where do you sleep?” I asked.
She pointed at the ceiling. Business quarters downstairs, living up.
“Mornings. You sleep mornings.”
She shrugged, nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no.” She dropped her dress and yawned, then laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m not very sexy today. I worked last night. Need a bath.”
Could have been a slut’s patter—I’m so dirty—but she looked at me a moment too long. I wondered if this too was something I should offer to pay for, or if she was trying to tell me something else entirely: I don’t belong to you. Just to you.
“How about we don’t talk,” I said.
I got back late to the Academy. The sun was setting and the grounds were almost deserted. I could hear the music from the big house, glimpse the light and the movement of dancers through the windows. Laughter, clapping, smell of roast. At the guest house I washed quickly and changed my clothes. Teeth-marks in the soft places. A big meal would be perfect.
In a niche by the front door I passed Speusippus in linen, reviewing some notes. We looked each other up and down and looked away. A roar went up when I walked through the inner door. They were drunk already, my classmates, and roared at