Chapter 4, section 2: where the gods are

Sometimes Dionysos wished the family weren’t scattered quite so far apart. Okay, scattered wasn’t quite the best way to put it; they had a tendency to wander around a lot is all. As far as places they called home, there were really only two centers of gravity: Titusville, Florida and Montréal, Québec. The military gentlefolk all gathered around Cape Canaveral to dip their paws into the space program and its dozens of spin offs. Zeus’ Olympian Aerospace Industries serviced not only NASA and the US Air Force, but space programs in Europe, Brasil, South Africa and China. Aries split his time between strategic duties at the Pentagon and overseeing military experiments in space. Apollo was a crackerjack test pilot. He had more than once survived when the prototype he flew broke apart spectacularly. Zeus and Aries were using their influence to try and get him a seat on the first manned mission to Mars. Hera was there too, running one of Florida’s most successful one-stop bridal boutiques.

Space geek central, one-stop bridal shops, geriatric group homes and The Republic of Nepotism. So much for Florida’s charms. Then there was Montréal, the Amsterdam of North America. A city so cold in winter that witches tits froze and cracked off, and in summer one big outdoor house party. Home of the Cirque du Soleil and killer cafés, where everyone used three languages per sentence, no one understood a word of it. With more artists, musicians, writers, models, gurus and internet porn queens than the rest of the continent combined, the City of the Royal Mountain was the place to be for the wired Olympian.

As far as family went, first there was the Loft, which was a giant abandoned warehouse he and Hephaestos had converted into living space together. The moody, introverted sculptor had created a maze of studios for himself: a most wonderful place to lose yourself in art! Aphrodite shared the Loft with them when she wasn’t flouncing off around the globe playing supermodel. She had her own suite that Hephaestos was continually working on frills, additions and sculptures for. And Dionysos was there to heat the place up over the interminably harsh Québecois winters, together again with his most beloved Ariadne. They were on their own adventure into the wilds of fame, along with a few of his old gang of forest revelers from Naxos. They had formed the jungle break-pop band Passover Satyr. Their first release had broken cross-genre sales records, fueled partly by the singles “You Tear Me Apart” and “Deus X.” And of course their pay-what-you-want policy online had their old record label apoplectic. He loved the rehearsal studio Hephaestos had built them. Some of the band members hung out at the Loft so much he couldn’t remember if they had their own pads or not. It didn’t really matter, the place was enormous, and they were off on a round-the-world tour as soon as their next album was launched.

On the other side of town, Hermes and Pan ran an underworld empire that made the biker gangs look like overweening amateurs. Pan seemed happy with the local bar & café scene, but Hermes flitted around a lot, taking care of business in Toronto, Boston, New York and a dozen small towns in between, like North Troy and Seneca Falls.

As a home fit for the gods, Montréal’s charms were undeniable. Even Zeus had stopped trying to make everyone move to the sunshine state and bought a sprawling piece of wooded mountainside in Minerva, New York. When there was a family gathering, it usually happened there.

Then there was Persephone. In the last few months she started jetting around the world as a dresser for her supermodel cousin. For a few years before that, she had spent most of her time at the Loft with the occasional visit with her mother Demeter, who lived in Paradise, Nova Scotia, two kilometers past the end of the cart track off the country road running alongside the Fundy shore.

The gentle folk of Montréal had an expression, “Le plus que ça change, le plus c’est pareille.” The more things change, the more they don’t. Something like that.