'I just want the sun to shine again, to lighten up the women's quarters and dry out the courtyard, and to let me see farther than Lysistratos' house from my window.' As a proper wife, especially one wed to an older, more conservative man like Philodemos, Baukis wouldn't get out of the house much. Being a man, Menedemos could go where he would. This little space was Baukis' world. He hadn't thought about that before complaining of being shut up here. He changed the subject in a hurry: 'Sikon has a fine mullet in the kitchen.' Her expression sharpened. She wasn't particularly pretty - she had buck teeth like a hare's, and pimples splashed her cheeks - but no one who spoke with her for even a moment would ever have thought her a fool. 'A mullet? What did he pay for it?' she asked. 'I don't know,' Menedemos said. 'I didn't even think to find out.' 'I'll have to,' Baukis said fretfully. 'Too much, unless I miss my guess. Sikon spends silver as if it grew on trees.' 'What with the profit the Aphrodite made, we have plenty,' Menedemos said. 'We do now,' she said. 'But how long will it last if we throw it to the winds?' 'You sound like Sostratos.' Menedemos didn't mean it altogether as a compliment. With luck, Baukis wouldn't know that. She just sniffed. 'I don't think any man really knows, really cares, about money.' Menedemos let out an indignant yelp, but Baukis went on, 'Men don't have to manage a household, but wives do. Money and children. We'd better be good with those. We don't get much chance to deal with anything else.' 'Well, of course,' Menedemos said, and didn't stop to wonder if it felt like of course to Baukis. He'd heard similar things from the bored wives he'd seduced. That was probably why some of them had let him bed them, in fact - to get something out of the cramped and ordinary into their lives. 'I'd better go talk to him,' Baukis said. 'A mullet? That can't have been cheap. Excuse me, Menedemos.' She slipped down the stairs past him and walked across the courtyard, raising a hand to her face to keep the rain out of her eyes. Menedemos turned to watch her go. Her breasts weren't much more than a maiden might have had, but her hips and her walk were a woman's after all. What does she think about such things, being married to my sour graybeard of a father? Menedemos wondered. Is she bored already? I wouldn't be surprised. He went up the stairs in a hurry, taking most of them two at a time. He trotted down the hall to his room, then went inside and closed the door behind him. For good measure, he barred it, too, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. But what he ran from was in the room with him. So was a good deal of darkness. The slave girl had wanted the shutters kept closed, and he'd humored her. He opened them, which turned things gray. He stared blindly out at the rain. Now he had another reason to wish it would stop. He wanted to flee the house as he'd fled up the stairs to this refuge that wasn't. He wondered if going out would do any good. He doubted it. Wouldn't he take his troubles with him, as he'd brought them here?
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