“No.” Menedemos shoved the stopper back into the jar. “You will have bought perfume before, I’m sure. You know what it’s worth. And what perfume is finer than essence of Rhodian roses?”

Melite sent him a sly, sidelong look. “Half what you asked, then-and what you asked for earlier,”

With real regret, he tossed his head. “I’m sorry-I am sorry-but no. Business is business, and pleasure is pleasure, and I would be a fool to mix them. I’m not just in business for myself-I have my cousin and my father and my uncle to think of. How would I explain the owls I ought to have?”

“Gambling losses?” she suggested, with the air of a woman who’d made such suggestions many times before. “You can always explain such things if you use a little wit. Who would know?”

But Menedemos answered, “I would.” Melite’s shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. The Rhodian went on, “Family counts for more than half an hour of fun. Family lasts.” His lips quirked again. “Family, you’re stuck with.”

“If you say so.” Melite’s tone showed she had a different opinion. She pointed to the perfume. “What I say is, you still want too much.” She named a new price, higher than her first offer but still much lower than Menedemos’.

“No,” he repeated. “I didn’t give you a price much too high to begin with. I can haggle well enough when I need to, but I don’t always haggle for the fun of it; I’m no Phoenician. I’ve told you what I need. If you don’t feel like paying it, I’ll go back to the market square.”

“Maybe I should have taken you to bed at the start,” Melite said thoughtfully. “Then you might not have been so stubborn.” She came up again.

Now Menedemos moved down, just a little. He had left himself some room to maneuver. He sold her four jars of perfume at a price as good as he’d got in Athens. Melite went upstairs for the money herself; she didn’t trust the slave woman to bring it. She gave Menedemos a mix of coins from all over Hellas, a mix that said not all her friends were Athenians. Some of the coins were lighter than the Athenian standard; others, like the turtles from nearby Aigina, were heavier. Overall, he thought it evened out. Sostratos would probably have insisted on finding a scale and weighing every drakhma and tetradrakhm from other poleis. Menedemos didn’t intend to bother.

Melite spoke to her slave, who carried away the jars of perfume she’d bought. To Menedemos, the hetaira said, “Now I can smell like roses the rest of my life.”

“May it be long,” he answered politely. “Have you a sack I can use to carry this silver back to the Rhodian proxenos’ house where I’m staying?”

“Of course.” Melite called after the slave woman, telling her to fetch one. Then she said, “For someone like me, I wonder whether long life would be gift or curse.”

“Why would you want to die?” Menedemos asked in surprise.

“You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re healthy, and you can’t be poor if you just spent so much money on perfume.”

“But when I get older, when my looks fade?” Melite sounded genuinely worried. “I bought the perfume because I think it will earn me more in the long run. But if I don’t get rich now, what will I do if I’m still alive in twenty years? I won’t be able to do this anymore; men won’t want me. Maybe someone will marry me, but more men make promises to hetairai than ever keep them. I don’t want to end up a washerwoman or something like that, fretting over every obolos and going hungry half the time. In your trade, no one will care if you go gray or get wrinkled. Me? It’s a different story.”

She wasn’t the first woman Menedemos had heard who was alarmed about losing her looks. Hetairai, though, depended on theirs more than most women. Even so, looks weren’t all that counted for them. He said, “If you sing well, if you quote from poetry and plays, if you make men feel good about themselves while they’re with you, all that will stave off the evil day.”

“It helps,” Melite agreed. “Still, though, if a man has a choice between a sweet young thing who can sing and quote and do everything else a hetaira should do and a dumpy older woman, where will he go? That works for me now, but I’ve seen women who were famous once trying to sell themselves to slaves for a couple of oboloi so they could buy sitos.” She shivered. “Death is better than that, I think.”

Menedemos thought of his father and uncle, who no longer put to sea. They weren’t sitting around waiting for death to overtake them, though. They were still busy with the family firm. But Melite was right: what they looked like had nothing to do with how well they could carry on. Briefly, Menedemos wondered what he would be like if he reached his father’s age. He felt his imagination failing. The only thing be was sure of was that he wouldn’t be eager to go to his tomb. He didn’t think Melite would, either, no matter what she said now.

Here came the slave woman with a cloth sack, Menedemos dumped the silver into it. He dipped his head to Melite. “Farewell.”

“And to you,” she replied. “I hope you go back safe to Rhodes.”

“Thanks,” he answered. “I hope you do well here. I hope the perfume helps.”

“It will-for a while.” Melite shrugged. “After that? Who knows?” The slave led Menedemos to the door. Neither he nor Melite said any-thing about her. Who worried over whether a slave did well? No one doing well ever became a slave in the first place.

On his way out of Melite’s home, Menedemos suddenly stopped: so suddenly, he might have turned to marble like a man who’d seen Medusa’s head; so suddenly, one foot stayed up in the air, almost but not quite completing a step. That last thought wasn’t quite true. If your polis fell, anything might happen to you, no matter how well you were doing. Anything at all.

Sostratos went into the storeroom at the back of Protomakhos’ house. The room was nearly empty. Hardly any wine, little perfume, only a few jars of crimson dye, and a few rolls of papyrus remained. The silver he and Menedemos had earned for their goods, and die honey and other bits of merchandise they’d acquired here in Athens, already lay aboard the Aphrodite. Sostratos smiled a slow, pleased smile. He knew what they’d spent. He knew what they’d made. He knew they would go home with a solid profit for this journey.

Menedemos came in behind him, perhaps to look things over, too; perhaps to make sure he wasn’t someone else who aimed to pilfer what remained here. Over his shoulder, Sostratos said, “Hail.”

“Oh. It’s you. Hail,” Menedemos answered, which showed what he’d been thinking. “Everything safe here?”

“Safe enough,” Sostratos said. “And it seems to me we’ve done about as much as we can do here in Athens. We aren’t likely to make enough from now on to cover the cost of our rowers day by day.”

“Are you sure?” Menedemos asked, and then waved his hand, “Forget I said that. Of course you’re sure. You don’t tell me things like that unless you’re sure. You want to head back to Rhodes, then? It’s earlier than I expected to leave.”

“Which only means the weather is likely to stay good,” Sostratos said. “Don’t you want to be somewhere else before Demetrios starts wondering how much money we’ve made and whether he can get his hands on it?”

“He wouldn’t do that. We’re Rhodians. His father would skin him if he angered Rhodes… wouldn’t he?” But conviction leaked from Menedemos¹ voice, sentence by sentence. When he laughed, it was sheepishly. “Who knows what Demetrios might do if he set his mind toil?”

“That’s how it seems to me, too. We have good reasons to go. To the crows with me if I can find any good reason to stay,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos looked back over his shoulder. No one from Protomakhos’ household stood within earshot. “Xenokleia..” Menedemos whispered.

Sostratos tossed his head. “Any good reason, I said. If she’s not a bad reason, I’ve never heard one,”