Crazy in the Blood (Latter-Day Olympians) (10 page)

Ah,
this
, I thought, was what it felt like to be a real girl. Nice.

The warm fuzzies lasted until the outskirts of San Fran, when the traffic slowed to a crawl, the clock flipped past five p.m., and I was suddenly concerned that I’d have to go another full day without finding out Uncle Christos’s fate.

“Hey, you all right?” Christie asked, seeing my smile dim.

“Yeah, just…tired. Hungry.” No need burdening her with my problems when she had her own.

“You’re kidding—you can eat again after that mondo burger you had for lunch?”

What could I say? Apparently, ambrosia gave me the munchies.

“In one point two miles turn right on ramp onto Restin Boulevard,” the GPS on my phone piped up. The voice had gotten fainter as my battery wore down. Any time now I was going to have to locate my car charger.
 

“That’s our exit!” Christie perked. She’d not only mastered the obvious, she had it eating out of the palm of her hand.

It took us eight minutes to go one point two miles, but once we took the turn off, we could see the Residence Inn from the ramp. Two seconds later, maybe three, we were parked.

The kid behind the counter looked up as we entered, nearly hyperventilated at the sight of Christie, and quickly tucked the magazine he was reading beneath the counter.

“Can I help you?” he asked, voice breaking only once.

Christie gave him the thousand-watt smile that still sold that tooth whitening system to the masses, and I thought he would keel straight over.

“Uh, one room or…uh, two?” He gave me a once-over and turned straight back to Christie. If my ego were dependent on barely post-pubescent desk clerks, I’d be crushed. As it was, I let her handle the room thing while I looked around. In a Plexiglas stand by the register was a menu/advertisement for a pizza chain that would apparently deliver. Farther on down the counter was a second stand for something called The Rustic Potato. I picked up a menu out of curiosity before wandering over to the wooden rack of pocket-sized brochures for everything from whale watching tours to dinner theatre. Oddly, no pamphlet for creepy cult tours. Huh.

I wandered back to the desk around the time the clerk was telling Christie about the breakfast buffet and handing over two keys.

“Oh wait,” I said, stopping Christie as she reached to accept them. “Is that the quiet side of the street?”

“The what?”

“My uncle stayed here a few months ago, and wherever his room was, he said the traffic noise was just terrible. The big trucks rumbling by at all hours… I think you’d better make sure we’re not near there. His name is Christos Karacis.”

Christie leaned in with her smile and added, “I do need my beauty rest.”

The clerk nearly swallowed his tongue. He clacked away on his computer. “I don’t see a record of him. Um, how do you spell it? Maybe I’ve got it wrong.”

I spelled Karacis for him, but he came up blank again. He looked at Christie, really anxious to impress. “Maybe he registered under another name. Sometimes guys do, you know, for…” he turned rose red, “…uh, privacy.”

“Oh!” she said, playing flustered really well. “Tori, what do you think? Did your uncle have any, you know, aliases?”

Hell’s bells, I didn’t know. He’d gone off on his little Odyssey without so much as a forwarding address. The whole thing was weird all the way around. I felt a
zip
go straight through me and froze, waiting for it to repeat. It wasn’t exactly the
zing
of forewarning. What then? Okay, think back—Christos, alias, Odyssey,
zip
. Something about
The Odyssey
then? I wondered if this were some kind of manifestation of my oracular powers. One zip for yes, zilch for no. Definitely it was trying to tell me
something
. I just wished I had some idea what on earth it could be. Clearly something to do with the Odyssey. I thought back over Odysseus’s adventures…what I could remember anyway. Suddenly, I had it! Odysseus had used an alias when he and his men had been trapped on Polyphemus’s island. When he asked who was there, Odysseus had told him “No one,” which in Greek was—

“Try
Outis
.” I said, not quite believing it was going to be that easy.

“Let me check.” The clerk clacked away again. “Bingo. He was here—C. Outis. But if he had problems with his room, he never complained. He was in the same one the whole time.”

“We’ll take that one,” I cut in.

“But you said—”

Christie leaned in and whispered something in his ear. The clerk went from rose to beet red and gave me a half-frightened look. “Sure, no problem.”

He gave us two new keys and made clear to Christie that she could call if she needed anything…like a cabana boy for herself or a psych referral for her friend.
 

“I’m pretty good at this undercover stuff,” Christie murmured to me as we turned for the door. “We’re like good cop, crazy cop.”

I gave her a smile. We
had
already gotten closer to Christos than I had on my own. “Let me guess which one I am.”

“Aw, don’t take it personally. You’ve just got it goin’ on. You’re tough. I’m…not so much. We use what we’ve got. So, where do you want to eat?” she asked more loudly.

“How about The Rustic Potato?” I asked.

Because I’d just looked—really looked—at the menu, which advertised
Gourmet confections, featuring organic, farm-fresh produce grown locally.
I had a feeling, subtle but there. And if that wasn’t enough, I recognized some of the pics on the cover as the same ones from the Back to Earth website.

“That the new hippy-dippy place way out on Green Hills Road?” the clerk asked, overhearing.

“Is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t go in much for rabbit food, but the boss says it’s to die for.”

Interesting. And hopefully not apt.

Chapter Eight

“Food of the Gods? Which—that hippopotamus-headed one across the way? Sure enough this ain’t people food.”

—Pappous on the trendy restaurant Yiayia had insisted on for their 50
^th
wedding anniversary

The Rustic Potato was, in fact, “that hippy-dippy place” on Green Hills. At least, it was
a
hippy-dippy place. This being California, it wasn’t like there was any lack of restaurants fitting that description. I wondered what kind of signage a “Rustic Potato” would have. It turned out to be a vivid blue background with an overly cheerful sun looking down on aggressively green fields. I was almost inspired to burst into a song featuring words like zippity doo da, and twittering about the blue bird on my shoulder.

“Cute!” Christie gushed.

“You don’t think it’s a little…much?”

“Sourpuss,” she said.

“Hey, you knew this road trip was dangerous when you took it.”

Christie stuck her tongue out at me. “Jeez, you’d think
you
were the one who just got dumped.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no—with you doing all the brooding, there’s hardly any room for me in the role. I’m left with perky side-kick girl. That’s kind of why I love you.”

She said things like that, kind of why I loved her.

Christie had taken twenty minutes back at the hotel to freshen up. Her golden blonde hair was high on her head in a thick ponytail that managed to look cool
and
classy. Her sundress was hothouse orange. Her fingers and toenails were a fuchsia that should have clashed with it, but instead were tied to the whole outfit by the chunky, beaded tri-strand necklace she wore, full of bright, tropical colors. It would have taken a crack team of stylists to make me look half so good, but I gave it a shot. Black capris, a honey-gold silk tank, and some dangly gold earrings, exposed by catching my unruly hair up into a twist with just a few loopy strands framing my face. No one would mistake me for a starlet, but with my Mediterranean skin tone and amber eyes, I didn’t need much but liner, mascara and lip gloss to look as good as I ever got.

Beside the sign was a drive that looked like it was paved in clam shells, which we turned onto with a crunch—a cacophony of crunching, actually. The Potato itself looked like a Tuscan vineyard—all pink stucco and light wooden slats with vines curling up and around light fixtures and lattices. Herb bundles hung from rafters. Waitresses in white pleasant blouses, black gypsy skirts and colorful scarfs and waiters in white collarless shirts, black chinos and those same headscarves tied about their waists bustled about. None of them were above the age of twenty-one or two…tops. All looked to be about bursting with health.

The hostess who met us at the door was styled like the mistress of the hacienda in a wrap dress the same punch-me yellow as the sun on the sign. Her hair was as black as mine, but glossy and as straight as I’d always wished mine could be, hanging in one long, dark curtain to the small of her back.

“Your first time here?” she asked.

Christie nodded enthusiastically.

“Well, welcome!” The wattage from her smile probably could have lit a whole Tuscan town. “Right this way.”

She led us through the packed restaurant to a small, two-person table at the back under a stained glass hanging lamp made to look like bundles of grapes and leaves, and left us with menus to study.
 

“Isn’t this place great?” Christie gushed. “I mean, did you
see
her complexion? What a great endorsement. I’d about kill for pores like that.”

“Um, yeah. Totally.” I’d never noticed another person’s pores in my life and wasn’t about to start now.

Christie propped the menu up before her so that no one else could see her lips move and stage-whispered, “So, what do we do now?”

“We order,” I stage-whispered back.

“Oh, right.”

The look of the waiter who came to take our order didn’t say Ken-doll so much as beanpole, which was a bit of a relief. I wasn’t normally an insecure person—because first I’d have to care—but being surrounded by so many perfect people was starting to give me hives. I ordered a mineral water to fit in. Christie ordered an unsweetened ice tea.

“We have a full bar,” he said, seemingly disappointed we weren’t inflating the price of our bill and thus the size of his tip with booze.

“Really?” I asked. “That doesn’t seem in keeping with the spirit of this place.”

He grinned—all teeth. “Grapes are organic. So are barley, hops, potatoes…”

I laughed. “You’ve got me there.”

“Besides, there are a ton of antioxidants and other health benefits to red wine, for example.”

“Sold!” I said. “I’ll have a glass of Merlot.” I needed a drink after that drive.

“Great. And you?” He turned to Christie.

“Ack, no. Stains your teeth. I’m good with my tea.”
 

“Coming right up.” He vanished off to the bar.

“What’re you having?” Christie asked.

Steak
, I thought. Medium rare with still enough blood flowing to sop my bread in. To my surprise, it was actually on the menu.
 

The waiter returned, a half-full glass of deep garnet wine for me, and a tawny tea for Christie. Between the wine and the red meat, I ought to replace all the blood Thanatos had slashed out of me in pretty short order. I just hoped I’d get to keep it this time.

“Ready to order?” Beanpole…uh, Martin, as he informed us…asked.
 

“I have a quick question first,” I said. “How organic is your food? I’ve heard stories about salmonella in sprouts and E. coli coming from natural fertilizer. I know organic is supposed to be good for you. My friend here swears by it, but…I’m not so sure.” Christie and I had decided on the way over that I’d be the PITA (aka Pain in the Ass), since it came so naturally to me.
 

“Ton
i
,” Christie said, twisting my name and putting just the right note of exasperation into her voice.

Martin turned a beatific smile on her. “No, it’s okay. We get that sometimes. The biotech food people do their best to drum up the hysteria about organics.” To me, he said, “All of our distributors are accredited, and we wash our fruits and vegetables carefully. We’ve never had a problem.”
 

“
See
, I told you it was perfectly safe,” Christie jumped in.

“Are you interested in organic?” Martin asked, laser-like in his sudden focus.

“Absolutely,” she breathed. “Our body is our temple, right?”

They beamed at each other, and I kept my eyes from rolling in their sockets.

“We’ll talk later,” he said with a wink.

We placed our orders and off he went.

“Our body is our temple?” I asked wryly.

“Sure, don’t you believe that?” she asked, doing wide-eyed for me. Unless it wasn’t an act. With Christie, it was hard to be sure.

“Of course I do. I believe all men should worship at my altar.”

“I thought Armani was already taking care of that.”

Oh crap, Armani. I’d promised to call him when we got in.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising to take myself and my phone outside.

“What did I say?”