The Blood of Athens (8 page)

“
Uh... yeah.
That's about right.” Jason had no idea how to explain the situation
to his father. “She's one of the kids from the school. She came to
me first when she was pregnant.”

“
Jason, you
haven't really practiced medicine in years, and you were never an
obstetrician.”

“
I just
helped her get prenatal vitamins and balance her diet. She needed
someone she trusted,” Jason said.

“
Did you at
least bring her to a hospital for prenatal screening?”

“
Yes,”
Jason lied. Devon had refused to see another doctor. They knew that
when it came time to deliver, there was no hiding the baby, but Devon
hadn't wanted anyone to find out if something was abnormal until
after she'd delivered.

“
Why you
didn't just refer her to an O.B.G.Y.N is beyond me.”

“
It's
complicated. I can't explain. You know, confidentiality.”

Jason’s
father eyed him suspiciously. He opened his mouth to speak, but was
cut off.

“
I was
hoping to meet your girlfriend,” Elizabeth said, rescuing Jason
from further scolding. “And her daughter. You said she has a
daughter, right?”

Jason nodded.
“Penny. She's a sophomore in high school.”

“
That must
be nice for Haley, to have an older girl to look up to.”

“
Penny’s a
good kid. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“
What
happened to Penny’s dad?” his father asked with a raised eyebrow.

“
Died.
Cancer.”

A whistling
from the tea kettle broke their conversation. Jason rushed over to
pull it off the stove while his aunt rummage through the tea boxes to
pick her flavor. “Ooh, rasberry zinger,” she said, trying to
diffuse the tension with idle chatter.

Paul
Livingstone rose from his seat and retrieved three mugs from Jason's
cabinets. “Just remember,” he said after a long and mulled-over
pause, “Haley, Jamie, and Scott. They are your top priority. I have
no doubt that this woman is something special, but your kids come
first.”

Special.
Celene and Penny were certainly special. Jason glanced over at the
business card stuffed into the side of his bill basket. Mr. Spade was
expecting a call. He took a deep breath and nodded. “I know, Dad.”

Jason poured
three mugs of hot water. As their tea brewed, he opened the frozen
pizzas and put them on a cookie sheet for dinner. Family first, he
reminded himself as he slid the pizzas into the oven. The Pantheon
wasn't
his
family.

“
We
hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
”

-Aesop

x.

The
slender trickster stood before a locked door,
a metal barrier,
bolted and chained shut.
As his body turned to a blanket of
mist,
he smirked so slightly.

The
silver cloud of mist passed through the keyhole
and reincorporated
in the god's form,
standing inside the chamber without a
sound,
surrounded by gold.

As
he silently surveyed all this treasure
the subtle smirk
transformed into a broad grin.
Moments just like these were the
reason they called
him the King of Thieves.

“
A lucky
person is someone who plants pebbles and harvests potatoes.”

-Greek
Proverb

X.

“
Where are
we going?” Minnie asked Lewis as he dragged her down the street.
They had left their friends back at the night club and were heading
in an unknown direction through the streets of Athens. Lewis was on a
mission.

“
You ever
see that movie about the Harvard card counters?”

“
It's MIT,
but yes.”

“
We're going
to do that. Or rather, you're going to do that.”

“
So what are
you here for?”

“
I'm the
charisma. Now, you saw the movie, so you remember it, right?”

“
You mean
how to play and how to count cards?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Sure, I
mean, whatever I didn't get from the movie, I clarified with a
YouTube video.”

Lewis clapped
his hands and bounced around excitedly. “Sweet.”

“
This is
insane,” Minnie said.

“
But it's a
challenge. You know your wits love a challenge.”

Ten minutes
later, Minnie and Lewis walked through the doors of the casino. Lewis
pointed to a 3:2 blackjack table with a fifty Euro minimum marked on
a kelly-green sign. Lewis wasn’t eighteen, but he was allowed to
tag along. Minnie was the legal age to gamble, so he handed Teddy’s
starting money over to let her purchase chips.

Minnie, sat
down at the blackjack table. “Alright, Mins,” he said. “One
hand. If you lose, that's it and we go back to the hotel.”

“
Are aces
high or low?” Minnie asked, adopting a higher-pitched voice and
trying to sound like Devon Valentine’s cheerleader friends.

The dealer
changed the cash for chips and pushed them across the table to
Minnie. “Sir, I'll need to remind you not to touch the cards” he
said.

Lewis tapped
the betting circle in front of Minnie. “Right here, Minnie. You put
your bet here.”

“
I know how
to play,” she scolded. “My father used to play me for skittles.”

Lewis stepped
back and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Like taking candy
from a baby,” he whispered. His lips hardly moved and his voice was
inaudible, but he sent his words to Minnie's ears and she heard him
loud and clear.

It was a shoe
game, so the dealer played everyone's hand face-up. This made it easy
for Minnie to look at their cards and figure out what was left. Lewis
watched as she played. In the movies, guys had to practice for weeks
before the basic strategy of card counting was ingrained in them.
Minnie was too smart for this. She ran the calculations in her mind,
deciding almost instantly if probability was in her favor. After half
an hour she had tripled their money. Lewis kept up a steady banter
with the other players, telling jokes and letting a young woman
ramble on about the Greek version of
Next
Top Model.

Twenty minutes
later, that money was tripled again. They now had nine times the
money they had walked in with. Lewis saw an official-looking man in a
suit whispering to one of the security guards.

“
Alright
Mins,” Lewis said. “Your mom’s waiting for us back at the
hotel.”

“
But I'm
winning!”

“
Ever hear
the phrase 'quit while you're ahead'?”

Minnie
finished the hand she was playing, bringing their total to an even
one thousand Euros. She scooped up her chips.

“
Bye,” she
said. “You've been great. This was so much fun.”

She dumped the
chips into the hem of Lewis' shirt and he carried them to the counter
to cash them in. “We were getting noticed,” he whispered, using
his power to make sure that only Minnie could hear him. “That said,
nice performance. I was surprised.”

“
I'm full of
surprises,” Minnie announced as he dumped the chips on the counter.

“
So what do
you say?” Lewis asked as they walked out of the casino, counting
their money, “Pay Teddy back with interest?”

“
Two hundred
for him, two hundred for you, six hundred for me.”

“
Two
hundred?”

“
You were
charming, Lew, but really, without my brain, you had nothing.”

Lewis
sighed. “Fair enough.”

“
Man's life
is like a drop of dew on a leaf.”

-Socrates

xi.

The
body was cleaned with water from the sea
and it was dressed in a
white burial shroud.
A diadem of celery was placed on
the dead
man's forehead.

He
had died in battle and so he was
to be buried in his military
cloak.
A strap for his chin held the coin in his mouth
for the
ferryman.

They
laid him out on a bed with checkered cloth
so that his feet faced
the door of the bedroom.
After the ritual of lamentation
they'd
burn his body.

“
It is
possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death
is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.”

-Epicurus

XI.

“
Yes,” the
tall bouncer said, tapping the photo in Celene's wallet with his
index finger. He was dressed in a long leather coat and wore too many
gold rings. “She and friends, they come in here.”

“
Thank you,”
Celene said. She tried to enter, but the bouncer stepped in her way.
“We are full.”

“
My daughter
is in this club,” Celene said.

“
She is
grown up. She take care of her self.”

“
She is not
a grown up,” Celene hissed. “She’s fifteen.”

Nick put his
hand on Celene's shoulder. “Come on. I have a better idea.”

Nick took her
wrist and pulled Celene down the street. “No offense, Dr. D,
because you're a total MILF, but they wouldn't let us in because I'm
just barely eighteen and you're not twenty-five anymore.”

Celene wasn't
sure if she should be offended or flattered. She knew what MILF stood
for, after all, and it wasn't very polite.

“
So how do
we get in?”

Nick shrugged.
“I dunno. I just didn’t want you to stand in line arguing. That’s
embarrassing.”

Celene shook
her head. “Well how did they get in if they’re not eighteen?”

“
They’ve
got hot girls with them. Duh. That’s how night clubs work. They’ll
take an Evan if it gets them Penny and Minnie.”

Celene
scowled. “Alright. So we wait?”

“
Or,” Nick
said, looking around at the line outside the club, “I could try to
get in with one of those lovely ladies over there.”

“
We wait,”
she said, ignoring Nick’s suggestion. “They have to come out some
time. And when they do, I’ll rip them a new one.”

Lewis and
Minnie pushed their way through the crowd until they had made it to
the table that the rest of The Pantheon had claimed. Teddy was
gesturing wildly as he told a story to Astin, Penny, and Evan.

Lewis clamped
his hand over Teddy's shoulder.

“
Do you have
my hundred Euros?” Teddy asked.

“
Plus some.
We'll talk about that later. Just saw cops talking to the manager at
the back. They want to close-off this joint. Time to go.”

They hurried
to stand up. Nobody wanted to be delayed in getting back to the hotel
before they were missed.

“
Where's
Peter?” Penny asked.

“
Taking a
leak,” Teddy said.

“
Someone
should get him.”

“
No
problem,” Lewis said. He turned his head towards the bathroom and
narrowed his eyes. His lips moved as he whispered. “Got it,” he
finally said. “Unless he wasn't in the bathroom, but the cops were
out at that end of the club, so I'm not risking my ass to drag him
out of the bathroom.”

Peter had
spent the evening alone. He had only come along on their late-night
excursion to be close to Penny, but she had spent the evening talking
about music with Astin and Evan, and Peter had spent it sitting in a
corner booth, invisible. At first he had let himself slip out of
sight to see if anyone would notice. They hadn’t. He had spent the
last hour people-watching, and only had risen to use the bathroom
when a couple had invaded his booth to make out.

Peter scanned
over the graffiti on the door of the bathroom stall. What could he
have done differently? He thought he looked good, or as good as he
could look when all of his clothing came from Goodwill. His clothes
fit, and wasn’t black flattering on everyone? Maybe he should have
flirted with other girls or sat near her and laughed at her jokes.
That kind of jovial facade was just not Peter.