The Sons of Liberty

by James Tow

on his third orange.

  “You’re getting orange juice all over the cards,” complained Chris.

  “Shut up and play,” Gabriel responded and threw down two eight’s and two ace’s. “Dead man’s hand,” he said triumphantly. Chris and Alyse folded their cards and sighed. I smiled, throwing down a deuce.

  “A two? That’s it?” Chris said.

  “One,” I said as I put down one king. “Two,” putting down another, “three, four,” I said putting the rest of my cards down. “And five,” I said pointing my thumbs at my chest.

  “Damn!” Gabriel yelled. “Is this what they taught you in college? How to cheat at poker?”

  “Don’t be a sore loser,” I said and scrapped up my winnings—I was up to three thousand now. “Me and my buddies always played in our spare time,” I clarified.

  “Played, huh?” Chris said.

  “Har har,” I directed back to him.

  “Remember when mom thought you were gay because you still hadn’t had a girlfriend throughout high school?” Gabriel said laughing.

  “Yeah,” I said reminscing.

  “She thought you were gay?” Alyse asked as she dealt the cards.

  “She did everything,” I chuckled. “She tried to hook me up with waitresses whenever we went out to eat. She would ask random girls if they thought I was handsome. She even made me a profile on one of those dating websites, and at the sexual orientation she emphasized ‘Women only.’”

  “Give me two,” Gabriel told Alyse as he tossed her two cards from his hand.

  “She even bought me porn,” I shared. Chris was on his side laughing, and Alyse just stared.

  “What did you do to make her think you were gay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know! And the porn she got me was lesbian porn,” I told her.

  “So there weren’t any penises involved,” Gabriel added.

  “Oh my God. That’s fantastic,” Alyse said.

  “I know! It’s embarassing. Let’s just drop it,” and I handed her three of my cards.

  “That’s pretty pathetic,” Chris said, regaining his composure.

  “You want to talk about pathetic? Gabriel here, had a problem controlling his body,” I started.

  “Don’t you go there,” Gabriel said pointing at me, serious again.

  “Out of know where, he would just shit his pants,” I said and both Chris and Alyse started laughing.

  “I was a toddler, damn it!” Gabriel yelled.

  “Dude, you were like seven years old,” I said and he started throwing orange peels at me. “You didn’t get out of diapers until you were nine.”

  Alyse and Chris continued to laugh, while Gabriel threw more orange peels at me. Chris fell out of his seat, laughing, and knocked over the bottle of Jägermeister.

  “Oi!” Alyse yelled and picked up the bottle. “You don’t waste alcohol in front of me.”

  “What do you care? You’ve hardly drank any of it,” he said and reached over to pinch her cheek. “Aw, Miss Alyse can’t hold her liquor well.”

  She took the bottle, and tilted it back—gulping down the rest of its contents.

  “Jesus. That was like a quarter full,” Chris said. Then music changed, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the Jonas Brothers. We all looked at Chris, and his face turned red.

  “What the hell?” Alyse asked him.

  “Uh, this is Spenser’s playlist,” he said. The three of us laughed.

  “Sure Chris, sure,” we all said in unison.

  He reached over and turned it off, looking for something more suitable. He put on another song, but Alyse said.

  “Whoa, turn that back off.” He listened, and we watched her. She was frozen in her seat with her eyes closed—as if she was listening intently for something. Then I could feel heavy bass tremoring under our feet and I could hear the faint music playing.

  “What is that?” Chris asked.

  Alyse got to her feet and to the door. She opened it and we all followed. Down the street, at the brick warehouse, were crowds of people walking in. Neon lights were flashing through the top windows and into the nighttime darkness. Alyse’s face lit up.

  “It’s a club!” she exclaimed and started walking down to the warehouse. Gabriel and I followed.

  “I’ll round up the gang,” Chris said and ran off.

  We were within a crowd of people in front of the front doors of the warehouse.

  “What is this place,” I asked the guy standing next to me.

  “It’s a speakeasy,” he told me. “They have one every week, and they move to a different location every time.”

  Second generation of speakeasies, I thought to myself—weird. The doors opened and a large bouncer walked through.

  “Fifty dollar entrance fee!” he yelled out over the crowd. I turned to look at Gabriel for approval.

  “Totally worth it,” he said and pulled one hundred and fifty dollars from his pocket.

  “Chris and the others should be covered. Bergstrom gave them plenty of cash.”

  Everybody filed inside, and we were all surprised with the atmosphere. There was a large stage at the other end of the massive room—the DJ’s equipment was already set up. Running along the perimeter were black leather booths with marble tables. Marble round tables with matching chairs cluttered the first half of the room—the other half was presumably the dance floor. Against the far right was a bar stretching along most of the room—several bartenders stood behind it, cleaning mugs. I noticed the large speakers that hung along the walls when the music started playing. The elegant sound of violins came flowing from the speakers, and the DJ added his own mix of beats.

  Gabriel started limping forward.

  “Ah!” he yelled and grabbed his leg. I threw his arm over my shoulder, and guided him to one of the booths to the left. “I feel like an old man,” he said as I sat him down. He put his back against the wall and threw his legs across the rest of his seat. I sat down in front of him and Alyse next to me.

  “Go have fun,” Gabriel insisted. I looked at the dance floor, and there were only ten people dancing.

  “I’ll wait a little bit. Have to warm up,” I said.

  “You’re so lame,” Alyse said playfully and nudged me with her elbow. “I’ll go get a couple of drinks—to help warm up,” she said. “Any requests?”

  “See if they have any oranges,” Gabriel said smiling. “If not, get me some Jack Daniels.”

  “I’ll take a rum and coke,” I told Alyse.

  More people started crowding the dance floor—Chris and his group were among them. The people on the dance floor created a circle—Chris was in the middle, breakdancing.

  “Are you seeing this?” I asked Gabriel, amazed, as Chris was dancing to the music. “He’s making up for that Jonas Brothers slip up,” he said.

  “No oranges,” Alyse said and gave Gabriel a small bottle of Jack Daniels. She handed me my rum and coke, and she sat down with her drink.

  “Bailey’s?” Gabriel asked Alyse and she nodded. “Good stuff,” he added.

  By now, the dance floor was packed and Alyse was getting agitated. Without saying a word, she got up and started walking toward the dance floor. Gabriel just looked at me and shook his head. Alyse was dancing by herself at the edge of the crowd when I looked back. She stared back and smiled, signaling for me to join her with her finger—she moved further into the crowd and out of sight.

  “Alright,” I laughed and started to get up. A large white hand gripped my shoulder, and pushed me back down.

  “Sit your ass back down,” said a burly white man—probably in his mid-twenties. Behind him stood his two goons—both look exactly like him. They were all wearing brown jackets with white shirts and khaki pants.

  “The Backstreet Boys back?” Gabriel asked.

  “Very funny, bitch,” said the goon to the left. Then the man in the front spoke.

  “Those cars out there, the Mustang and the GTO, they’re yours, right?” he said with his deep voice.<
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  “Yeah,” I answered flatly. Then each of them pulled out a Glock from their jackets, and aimed them at the two of us.

  “You’re going to hand them over. If not, well, you’ve heard of us and you know what we can do,” the front man said.

  “Firstly, no we are not,” Gabriel said. “And secondly, who exactly might you be?”

  “We’re the Reed brothers,” said the left one. I doubled-over laughing, but Gabriel just stared at the three of them. What morons!

  “We don’t play!” said the front man as they continued to threaten us with their weapons.

  “We don’t either,” Gabriel said. The three of their smug faces turned sour when they realized three guns were pointed at the back of their heads. Toni held two pistols aiming at the front man and his ‘brother’ to the left while Ebben held up the third. The three morons slowly dropped their weapons.

  “Hey, these guys are claiming to be the three Reed brothers,” I said still laughing.

  “Well that’s kind of hard, considering there are only two of them,” Toni said.

  “Yeah, and you clowns are staring at them,” Ebben said.

  Their eyes widened at the new found information, and they slipped the guns back into their coats.

  “Posing as somebody is one thing, but having the people you’re impersonating being your intended victims? That must be embarrassing,” I mused.

  Struggling, Gabriel stood up and got in the front man’s face.

  “Leave. Or I will take those cars, and run over your useless bodies.” Without a word, they about faced and ran for the door.

  Toni and Ebben started laughing.

  “Why don’t you two sit down and have a drink?” Gabriel invited.

  “But we’re not old enough,” Toni said.

  “Nobody here is going to card