I applauded vigorously, the sound of my hands clapping seeming to come from far away. Claudia applauded as well; then she leaned closer and my arms went around her as her lips spread against mine. Our tongues met as our hands explored one another; then she drew back with a look of consternation.
“What’s this?” I couldn’t guess what she meant; then her hands rummaged in my tunic and came out with the dagger and the caestus. For no good reason, I collapsed into laughter.
“Dangerous place, Rome,” I gasped. “Especially at night.”
She seemed to find this absurdly funny as well, and she tossed the weapons into a corner before she came back into my arms. Our breathing grew ragged and our movements became more urgent. I felt intimately involved yet detached at the same time, and some of the things happening did not seem quite real. When I reached to the shoulder-clasps of her dress, my hands were as clumsy as if they were half-frozen, yet the dress fell away from her shoulders anyway. Another moment, I was dressed only in a loincloth, yet I had no memory of removing my tunic. Gaps began to appear in events, while other things had a clarity such as one ordinarily experiences only when taking part in a unique event, such as an initiation into one of the great Mysteries.
I remember Claudia standing before me naked in the lamplight. Like those of many highborn ladies of that time, her body had been plucked of every hair below the scalp and her skin smoothed by rubbing with pumice. She looked almost like a Greek statue of a goddess, yet I could see every individual pore in her flesh. Slowly she turned and she became my Artemis sculpted by Praxit-eles.
Other things were not so clear. Sometime in the night, I felt Claudia’s flesh with my palms, but realized that there were too many hands on me. I opened my eyes to see Chrysis lying with us in the welter of cushions, a smile of malignant sensuality on her foxlike features. By that time I was too far gone to protest anything. I had lost all rational faculties and became a being of pure sensation.
The night dissolved into a phantasmagoria of tangled limbs, sweaty cushions, guttering light from untrimmed lamps, bitter-tasting wine. I touched and tasted and thrust and I lost all ability to discern where my own body left off and another began. My world became a place of thighs and breasts, of mouths and tongues and fingers that stroked and penetrated in endless combinations. I would be buried in one woman with the other’s thighs gripping the sides of my head and I could not tell which was which. There are libertines who esteem this sort of omnisexual activity to be the most gratifying possible, but I found this occasion not merely confusing but difficult to remember afterward. Since experiences one does not remember might as well not have happened, I have never made a regular practice of such entertainments.
I woke with a ringing head and that much-esteemed gray light of the Roman dawn streaming through the small, high windows onto my upturned face. With loins inert and stomach heaving, I struggled to my feet and fought to keep a precarious balance. My fair companions of the previous night were gone. Standing there, naked, sick and disgusted, I felt thoroughly used. But to what purpose?
I rummaged around the large room, finding my clothes in the oddest places. My weapons were still in the corner where Claudia had tossed them. I tucked them beneath my girdle and looked to see if I had forgotten anything. My memories of the night before were so unclear that I did not remember whether I had been in any of the other rooms, so I decided to explore them just in case.
One room was a tiny, dark kitchen. The stove looked as if it had never been used, although there was charcoal in the storage niche beneath it. Claudia probably had food brought in when she used the place. Next to the kitchen so as to share the same water pipes was a small bathroom, with a lion-footed bronze tub, also looking unused.
There were two small bedrooms, one for Claudia and one for Chrysis, I guessed, although neither contained any personal objects. The last room was a storeroom containing a disassembled litter. I closed the door and turned away, when something about the litter tickled my recently malfunctioning memory. I turned back and opened the door again.
The light was quite dim, since storerooms never have windows, and the windows of the other rooms of the apartment were very small, as is customary with windows opening onto the street. There is no real need to put out a welcome sign for housebreakers. I went back into the larger room and examined the smoky lamps until I found one with a wick still smoldering. With the point of my dagger I teased the twist of tow from its bath of perfumed oil, blowing on it gently until a tiny flame sprang into life. When the flame was well established I carried the lamp back into the storeroom.