An Accidental Odyssey

by kc dyer

  By the time I’m finished, I realize what I’ve written is really too long for a text, but I fire it off to my boss at NOSH anyway before I can change my mind.

  Then I take a picture of my laden breakfast plate and send that too.

  At that very moment, my dad comes striding into the room. Eyes twinkling, he scoops up a piece of sticky baklava from a plate beside the coffee carafe and pops it in. Then he licks his fingers flamboyantly, like a man who’s performed more of a magic trick than just disappearing a piece of sticky Greek pastry.

  “That’s disgusting, Pops.” I stuff a linen napkin into his hand.

  My dad looks unrepentant and kisses his still-damp fingers toward the door. “Your wife’s talent with baklava—perfection!” he says to Konstantin. “The flavor of the honey—it tastes just like my mother’s.”

  Konstantin beams. “I tell her. Honey is raw, from one of Greek islands. Which one? I can’t remember. It don’t matter—best in world, yes? More tea, sir?”

  He places a fresh teacup and saucer across the table from my breakfast. As my dad sits down, I pour one of the tablets from his bottle into my palm and place it beside the saucer.

  He rolls his eyes at me, but swallows the pill without comment.

  I spoon sliced melon into my mouth and chew it up more vigorously than is perhaps strictly necessary before speaking. “You left the bottle on the table again.”

  He spreads his hands wide. “I left only to take a phone call, koritsi,” he says. “I promise you I will not forget them again.”

  Draining the last, delicious drop of my coffee, I sigh. “I’m not going to give you the chance. I’m coming with you.”

  My father’s face travels the gamut of expressions from stunned to delighted in an instant. “Gianitsa! You have seen the light!”

  This makes me snort. “Seen you in action, more like. The only way I’ll know for sure that you’re looking after yourself is if I’m with you.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Your papa is fine,” he says, slapping his stomach with such a ringing blow I’m sure it’s got to hurt. “I don’t need looking after.”

  “Too late,” I snap and push back from the table. “I’ve just pitched Charlotte a Mediterranean travel food blog. But I’m coming even if she says no.”

  My dad leaps up to join me, his face wreathed in delight. “I can’t believe you take your papa’s advice, for once!”

  Before I can reply, his face falls. “But what about Anthony—the wedding plans? Is it not best for you to return to New York?”

  “I can handle Anthony,” I say recklessly. “His family’s company is just about to go public, and he’s working all the time. I can probably manage most of what I need to do online, and the wedding’s not until July, anyway. He’ll understand.”

  My stomach clenches on this last sentence. I make a sudden decision to e-mail him first, before I call. Just to be on the safe side.

  Once he realizes I’m serious, my dad grabs my head in both his hands and plants a loud kiss just above my eyebrows. Then, while he hurries out front to meet his driver, I return to my room to collect my things. Flipping open the cover of my iPad, I pull up the latest draft of the morning’s apology e-mail. I replace it with a short note explaining to Anthony that my dad needs me to stay with him for a couple of weeks and that I will call and explain as soon as I can.

  Pressing “Send,” I try to ignore the tiny but pervasive sense of delight I feel at the thought of being away from the wedding-planning frenzy.

  It’s just relief about Pops, I tell myself as I gather the last of my things. Pure relief, stemming strictly from how well he’s doing.

  Scooping up my bag, I hurry through the dark corridors to the front door of the hotel. Outside, my dad climbs into the back seat of a tiny blue car waiting at the curb. The sun is already dazzling, gleaming off the windshields and bumpers of other vehicles whizzing off into the balmy Athens morning.

  Konstantin makes a show of sweeping the door open for me and gives me a little bow as I lift my hand in farewell. Sliding into the car, I slam the door closed, and feeling strangely light in spirit, I grin across the back seat at my father.

  “Ready?” he says, beaming back at me.

  I take a deep breath. “Almost. But before we go anywhere, I’m going to need a big hat.”

  chapter ten

  TUESDAY MORNING

  Olive Tapenade

  Gia Kostas, aspiring correspondent, in Athens

  I used to believe olives were for adults only—to be avoided in antipasto and even scraped off the occasional pizza. Perhaps this speaks to my own experience, but their tart, salty flavor was too much for me when I was growing up. Here on the shores of the lush, sun-dappled Mediterranean, however, spotting an olive means it’s time to embrace adventure . . .

  As I slam the car door closed, the driver immediately pulls out into traffic, and I’m flung back against the seat. Luckily, I’ve been well trained by New York City cab drivers, so I just feel around for my seat belt, and try to readjust my dad’s suitcase, which is inexplicably between us on the back seat. As the buckle clicks into place, I’m startled to suddenly come face-to-face with a bird, which I think might be a parrot. The bird hops onto the seat in front of me and clings on to a well-lacerated section of fabric beside the passenger headrest.

  It turns one, bright yellow eye at me and dips its head as the driver performs a series of rapid lane changes. “Kalimera,” it croaks, and winks.

  I manage to stifle my gasp of surprise, but the driver locks eyes with me in the rearview mirror and laughs.

  “You catch Herman’s attention,” he says, and reaches a finger up to scratch under the bird’s chin. “He like you already—I can tell.”

  The bird preens himself on the driver’s finger for a moment and then repeats his greeting.

  I look over at my dad, but his eyes are locked on the passing city. No way to tell if he has even noticed the creature.

  The bird bobs its head twice, whether to compensate for the weaving vehicle or in greeting, I can’t tell. “Kalimera,” it barks again. “Kalimera!”

  “Kalimera,” I repeat hurriedly. This seems to be the correct response, because the bird winks its eye at me again and then hops out of sight down onto the front seat.

  I lean forward toward the driver. “Is your bird—uh—Herman—is he a parrot?”

  “Cockatoo,” replies the driver, and then he executes the kind of screeching U-turn that I’ve only seen employed by getaway drivers in heist movies. “He is my copilot, yes?”

  I swallow hard and clutch the door handle, suddenly thrust back into the memory of the only Uber drive I’ve ever taken. It was a couple of years ago in New York, making my way across town for a university event. The car was nice enough, but the driver had a lizard curled around his neck that stared at me, unblinking, all the way to Javits Center. I’ve never taken another Uber, but I guess that trip was good preparation for the presence of a random bird in a Greek cab. The cockatoo almost seems less weird, somehow.

  The driver turns out to be Konstantin’s cousin Panagiotakis—“call me Taki”—who is a barrel of a man with a shiny bald head and an enormous black mustache. I soon learn that while Taki might well drive like a maniac, at least he knows where he’s going. Within five minutes of diving into Athens traffic, he’s screeched to a stop outside a little market. Shortly thereafter, I am not only safely behatted but have also snapped up six pairs of underwear, a pair of slightly-too-large aviators, and a phone charger that will work all over Europe.

  Clutching the world’s largest floppy hat in my lap, I buckle myself into the back seat of the car, a crazy feeling of lightness flowing through me. I think it’s the hat that does it—soft straw with a brim large enough to shade most of my shoulders. With a hat like this, I’m committed now.

  Sliding myself as far as my seat belt wil
l allow from the curious bird, I turn to watch as the cheerful chaos of Athens unfolds outside the window. In some ways, it reminds me of every large city I’ve ever seen. This district is filled with three-story walk-ups, the city blocks interrupted by the occasional tree-filled public square. Still, tiny details keep leaping out to slap me with colorful Grecian reality. Flowers climbing walls, and here and there a brilliant blue or yellow door gleams out from beneath a shadowy overhang. Still, as we drive through the city, most of the buildings are a little on the dusty side, with back alleys as loaded with graffiti and tags as any block in the Bronx.

  “The garbage in the streets is much worse than I remember,” my dad says quietly. He leans forward and asks Taki a question in Greek.

  As he listens carefully to the driver’s reply, I marvel at my dad’s comfort with the language. I’ve heard him speak Greek perhaps a handful of times in my life, usually only a word or two thrown into the sentence for emphasis. But maybe it’s like riding a bike?

  I have to admit it’s pretty cool.

  When he leans back in his seat, I can’t help grinning at him. His expression, however, is more serious.

  “Taki says the money has fled—first taxes and then corrupt government officials. When the plague took the tourists away, all hope left with them,” he explains. He turns and looks out the window, and my good humor drains away.

  The car isn’t air-conditioned, or if it is, none of it reaches the back where I am sitting. I push the button on the armrest only to see the lock click into place. After a moment of staring blankly at the door, clicking the lock up and down, I realize the window is hand-cranked. I grasp what’s left of the plastic handle and roll the window open. The thing jams halfway down, and sounds of honking horns and squealing brakes fill the car, the inevitable accompaniment to city driving anywhere. But we are moving fast enough that the whoosh of air cuts through the plastic and fake pine-scented heat in the back of the car, and I lean toward the open window in relief.

  We soon leave the sketchier parts of the city behind, and here the streets are wide open and broad. A boulevard dividing the lanes is dotted with intermittent palm trees, and large signs periodically appear, some of them even in English. But just as I’m getting comfortable—or as comfortable as I can get with the handle of my dad’s suitcase jammed into my side—a motorcycle overtakes our car, and then another, and suddenly we find ourselves amid a swarm of motorbikes buzzing like bees and changing lanes as though the whole idea of signaling is merely optional. It’s impetuous and chaotic and very Greek.

  Even after being here only a day, I’m beginning to get a bit of insight into why my dad is the way he is.

  The bird squawks, and suddenly I see the ancient stone lines of the Parthenon rising above us like a venerable, crumbling fortress atop the Acropolis. Large sections of the monument are girded in scaffolding, and only a handful of tourists are scattered across the entire hillside.

  The car takes a sharp corner, and the Parthenon vanishes as we whiz through an open market flagged in tidy-looking square bricks. Taki expertly steers us past vendors under umbrellas who sell everything from flip-flops to bicycles. There are more people down here, but there’s not a single camera—or baseball cap—in sight. Mostly round, dark-haired women carrying net shopping bags and baskets.

  Spying a section of fenced-off ruins behind the last row of market stalls, I turn to my dad and jam my thumb out the window. “Is this a part of the Parthenon too?”

  He leans forward to look. “An element of the Acropolis, yes,” he says, and reaches across me to point a finger as the crumbling walls hurtle past. “This was Hadrian’s Library,” he says. “He was a tremendous scholar. You can still walk through and see the remains of his reading rooms and the places where they shelved books.”

  I stare back over my shoulder as the last of the marble pillars disappear from view. “Isn’t he the guy who built the wall in England?”

  There’s a bark of laughter from the front. “He was trying to keep the damned Scots in the north, where they belonged,” Taki calls over his shoulder. “Not sure how it worked out for them in Britain, but there’s not many of the redheaded buggers here, anyway.”

  I clutch the back of the passenger headrest as we take another corner on two wheels. “I guess Hadrian got around,” I remark to my dad.

  He nods approvingly. “A fellow traveler and a true man of vision. Not a bad guy, for an Italian.”

  As the car gains altitude, I can see other hilltops rising out of the bustling streets. Beneath our feet, the city unfurls like an earth-toned carpet as far as I can see in every direction. The terra-cotta roofs intermingle with tiny dots of color—blossoming vines and the odd splash of green. From this height, I can see that while modern buildings abound, none are really more than ten or twelve stories high, and I can’t spot a single skyscraper.

  Also? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen quite so many cats in one place. The streets are teeming with them, virtually every one sporting the same bored, vaguely annoyed expression as they saunter nonchalantly away from certain death under the wheels of Taki’s car. After lurching around yet another feline obstacle, the car crests a rise, and for the first time, in the distance I spot the twinkling blue of the Aegean.

  This, it turns out, is our destination for the day. According to my dad, Odysseus decided to pause on his way home from the Trojan War and raid a small community called Ismaros. And so our trip today is taking us to the place he thinks is the closest present-day settlement to that stop: Alexandroupoli in Thrace, along the south coast of mainland Greece.

  As the sea stretches out—impossibly blue—before us, Herman flaps his wings once and hops onto the back of the front seat. His skill at moving through an erratically speeding vehicle is remarkable. With a gait similar to a swaying sailor, he makes his way behind Taki’s head, sidles along the narrow verge of the back door, and to my father’s clear delight, onto his outstretched arm.

  I take advantage of his enchanted conversation with Herman to reach for a familiar-looking file folder poking out of the open flap of his briefcase. The last time I saw this folder, Teresa Cipher had been sliding it across the table toward my dad. Since I still haven’t looked at the itinerary in any detail, I flip open the folder and begin to read.

  Turns out the back seat of a lurching vehicle driven by a mad, bird-owning Greek is not really the best place to do any sustained reading. I can only manage a moment or two of focusing on the page before nausea is clutching at my throat. All the same, as the car settles onto a smoother section of tarmac, I manage to take in a bit of the big picture.

  This itinerary is far more detailed than the one I got from Evan. I count eleven separate destinations, spread out across the entire region. This seems to encompass far more ground than we can possibly hope to cover in a mere three weeks. Still, a quick scan of the details tells me that Odysseus would likely have benefited from having ExLibris plan his route. There would have been fewer useless dashes across the Mediterranean, at least. Teresa Cipher’s careful notes spell out the timing of each leg of the journey in specific terms.

  My phone buzzes against my thigh, but by the time I yank it out of my pocket, I’ve got no bars again. I’ve missed a call, but I can’t tell who it’s from. Guilt washes over me, this time tinged with regret. I should be heading back to New York, not sitting with my guts churning in the back of this rattling little car, heading out on some wild goose chase.

  I glance up from the folder to find my dad looking at me. He opens his mouth to say something and then closes it again.

  I choke back all the recriminations that I want to hurl at him. He told me to go home. This is all on me. And I need to at least pretend to take an interest.

  Taking a deep breath, I drop the folder onto the seat between us.

  “Why Thrace?” I ask. “If we’re retracing Odysseus’s route home from the war, shouldn’t we start in Troy?�
�� I glance back down at the map of the Mediterranean stapled into the front of the folder. “Where is Troy, anyway?”

  My dad’s expression clears, and he chuckles. “You won’t find it on that map, Gianitsa. Troy once existed far from here, deep in Anatolia in a region of present-day Turkey. Regardless, the great man’s journey across Asia Minor is of little interest to me. The real magic doesn’t begin until he and his crew try to raid Ismaros, only to be swept away by a storm.” He pulls down his sunglasses and wiggles his eyebrows at me before opening the top of his briefcase.

  With some alarm, I see that he is retrieving his very dog-eared copy of The Odyssey, bristling with a rainbow of Post-it notes. Before I can object, my dad settles back into his seat and begins to recount the saga of the failed raid on Ismaros.

  I think I last five minutes.

  * * *

  —

  Sometime later, the slam of the car door awakens me, and I open my eyes to find I’m lying stiff-necked with my head against one of the backseat windows. Outside, Taki is leaning against the front of the car, which is currently parked on a dusty hilltop. The rest of the car is empty. Even the bird is gone.

  I circle my neck to shake out the stiffness and haul myself out of the back seat into the warmth of the afternoon.

  Taki, eyes slitted against the smoke drifting up from the cigarette in his mouth, reaches into the front seat, pulls a bottle of water from a cooler, and hands it to me.

  “You good sleeper, eh?” he says, wrinkling his eyes at me approvingly as I twist off the cap. “You been out two hours, at least.”

  There’s a flutter of wings, and Herman alights on his shoulder.

  “I think I’m still a little jet-lagged,” I manage after swallowing a sip of the water. “Where are we?”

  Taki takes a last drag of his cigarette before grinding it out under one heel on the dusty ground. He points back down the gravel road behind us.