After our shower, Nico turned to all business, directing me to go to the laptop and start writing and that he'd order an in-room breakfast for me and would see me at 1:00 p.m. on the terrace for lunch.
That dispelled all doubt in my mind that Nico too was a writer. He was able to see and honor the needs of a writer.
I, of course, couldn't start composing immediate, although the prompt room service obviated any suggestion that I wouldn't be able to compose. As I ate, I considered what I had let Nico do last night. The march to seduction of it wasn't a surprise to me. I had had this effect on both men and women all of my life. One lover had once told me that I must have special pheromones, a scent or come-hither aspect to me that made both men and women want to bed me. I had sensed that about Nico ever since I'd seen him at the window of the hotel while I was swimming—even without having any idea, for sure, who was at the window. There was something in me that drew certain other people, like Nico to the window, to me.
And when I'd seen him cross the floor at the Blue Restaurant and felt him looking at me, even as briefly as he did, I knew that we probably would fuck, unless some act of nature intervened.
I hadn't realized it when I'd set up this vacation, but I had to admit to myself now, that I knew that the freedom I felt in coming up to Platres was the freedom of knowing, subconsciously, that I had come here to let loose—to fuck my way through the week—as one last hurrah before Carolyn descended upon me and I had to shut my instincts down again and walk as if on eggshells. The writing had just been an excuse. I knew I had come here to let loose.
The danger now was not to let it control me and for me to be able to walk away from the week and back into my embassy life with no problems. Nico was a champion cocker; I needed to be careful not to want more than that. I had gone over that line with Richard Thornton, and it had burned me badly.
After I was finished with the breakfast—the sex having famished me—I sat down in front of the laptop and fingers started dancing on the keys, giving print to what my mind had been spinning out since the last time I sat here. The sex had been good—very good. It had been the same with Richard. It served as inspiration. The character I was weaving into my manuscript had taken on life. It was Nico. But that was OK; the book was about someone very much like Nico. He informed, in real life, how my character would respond on the page.
When I next looked up from the laptop it was twenty minutes after one. I jumped up from the desk and went straight to the window and saw that Nico was at a table on the terrace below—but that there were two men with him now. Panicked that he might leave with them, thinking I wasn't showing up for lunch, I slipped my feet in loafers, took a swipe at my hair in the mirror of the bathroom in passing, and rushed out the door and down the stairs.
"Ah, we'll make a Cypriot of you yet," Nico said in a jolly voice as I approached the table.
"Meaning?" I asked.
"Because Cypriots always are late. I was only on time because I assumed you were on the American clock and I didn't want you to desert me for not showing up. Costas's and Thano's excuses are that they are still eating breakfast. Come, sit. Meet the new arrivals for the Platres Conclave. Costas, Thanos, This is Collin Stevens, a certified cultural ambassador of America. And, yes, he's that Collin Stevens, the man who writes heart-thumping gay novels."
"Not anymore," I interjected immediately. "I've gone legit."
"Yes, I know of your work," the smaller, ferret-looking of the two men said. "And I've read some of your recent work too. Lyrical. Quite good."
"That's high praise," Nico said. "Costas Spyrou here is our poet. I caught our Mr. Stevens reading George Seferis, Costas, so we can dream that he got his lyrical bent from good precedence."
The other man, in maybe his early forties and short and a bit paunchy, but with very expressive hands, acknowledged the introduction, but I was somewhat taken aback because he was studying me closely and I felt like he was just itching to take my face in his hands, as if he were a blind man trying to give me a unique identity.
"Thanos here is our sculptor, Collin," Nico said. "I believe he is already imagining you in clay or marble. Isn't that so, Thanos?"
"Yes, certainly," Thanos answered. "He is beautiful. He would live and breathe beauty in marble. I do hope you will sit for me while we're here, Mr. Stevens. I could take time away from the exercise—if you would consent to model for me."
"Which leads to the question of what theme Elias has picked out for us for this conclave," the ferret-like poet said.
"Oh, I know that. He has picked 'beauty,'" Nico answered. "Isn't that a coincidence?"
"Of course you would know what Elias picked before the rest of us do," the sculptor shot back. I deduced a bit of venom in his voice and was taken back a bit on how quickly it was snapped back.
"Thanos here was a favorite of Elias at one time," Nico said, turning toward me. "You know how finical Elias can be, Thanos. By the end of the week, he'll probably be sighing in your lap again."
"Beauty again?" Costas then said, a bit pouty, I thought. "It seems he strikes on a variation of this every other conclave."
"Yes," Nico said, "But it will be convenient for Thanos. He already has his inspiration. He can do a bust of Collin here. I will be bringing Collin to the conclave with me."
"Bringing him the conclave?" both Costas and Thanos said at the same time, with a tone of disbelief.
"Elias has invited him?" Costas then asked.
"I am inviting him," Nico said.
The heads of both of the men swiveled to me almost in unison.
"Don't look at me," I said. "This is the first I've heard of it."
"But you will come, won't you?" Nico asked in a low voice.
