The Blonde and the Bootlegger: A Percy Jackson story

The Ogygia

New York City, 1930
Percy P.O.V
The Lotus Hotel was one of the swankiest joints in the entire city. Those who were in the know would give the password "Mount Saint Helen" at the front desk and a bellhop would show you to the top floor, which held the Lotus Hotel's biggest attraction.
A man called Dionysus ran a number of speakeasies across Manhattan but the jewel in his crown was the Ogygia which was hidden on the top floor of the Lotus Hotel. My friends and I often went there since my buddy Leo was sweet on a girl named Calypso, who worked there as a waitress, and my other buddy Jason was seeing a jazz singer named Piper, who was the club's headliner.
Dionysus himself was there that night, mingling among his guests.
"Peter Johnson," he shouted when he saw me walk through the door.
"It's Percy Jackson," I corrected him with a scowl.
Dionysus was short and chubby with thinning dark, curly hair, and a ruddy complexion. He looked like a cherub from a Renaissance painting, who had a beer gut, an alcoholic nose, and an annoying habit of getting people's names wrong. The bastard didn't scare me, even though he was an Olympian, a member of the gang that ran this part of the city. Zeus, the head of the Olympian outfit, practically owned Manhattan.
The Ogygia was decorated to look something like an Ancient Greek temple with marble Corinthian columns, potted palms, and mosaics that told the stories of mythological heroes. My usual table was by the one about Perseus, who I had been named after.
Calypso, the waitress, came over to the table. She was a gorgeous girl with caramel colored hair and almond shaped brown eyes. Waitresses at the Ogygia wore revealing, Egyptian inspired outfits and she looked like a million golden drachmas.

Calypso was famous for the bad luck she had in her love life. She fell in love with practically every guy who showed up at the Ogygia but they were usually uninterested or eventually went back to their wives. We'd had a brief fling a couple of summers ago but things didn't work out between us. Luckily Calypso never had any hard feelings towards the men who left her. She gracefully accepted that her lovers would leave her in the end as an unfortunate fact of life.
"What'll it be tonight, Percy?" she asked me.
I ordered a cocktail called a "moonlace," a mixture of nectar and moonshine, which was the house special.
"Leo and the gang not with you?"
A word about what I do for a living. My friends Jason, Leo, and Frank, and I smuggle in illegal booze in from the Canadian border. Frank has connections in Canada, being from there originally, who give us our booze. The four of us drive to the Montreal warehouse where we pick up our supply then bring it back into New York City. Leo's day job is being a grease monkey at the Hephaestus Garage, which we use to store crates of beer, whiskey, and gin until we can hand them over to the Stoll brothers, who distributed to the Olympian speakeasies.
"Jason should be here later," I said to Calypso, "He's meeting up with Piper after she performs tonight. Frank is visiting his girl Hazel and who knows what Leo is up to."
The band began to play Red Lips Kiss My Blues Away. Piper appeared on stage and seductively crooned the lyrics.
"Red lips, kiss my blues away. Red lips, kiss the night to day. Any old-time that you come cud-dl'-ing near, isn't it strange the way that blues disappear. Red lips, hold them close to mine. Sweetheart don't de-lay. Come make a dozen trips, let your ruby red lips, kiss my blues away."