Moolah and Moonshine

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Sam looked down at the Mason jar like he’d just gotten a shock from it, then he obediently twisted off the top and filled the glasses.

  Emmett suspected it wasn’t water at all, and his stomach clenched at the thought of being told to drink it—but he needn’t have worried. The man with the mustache struck a wooden match and lit one of the shots, then pulled a long chain to turn off the light. A tiny flame shone bright against the darkness. “Burns blue,” the man said. “Pure enough.”

  Emmett gave Sam’s arm a covert squeeze. What if it hadn’t? Then it would’ve come to fisticuffs. Or tarring and feathering. Or whatever happened when someone was displeased, wherever they were. Whenever they were.

  “You got the terms?” the man said.

  Emmett and Sam looked at each other. Sam patted down his pockets. Emmett did the same. Pocket watch. Handkerchief. But in the other pocket…a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it to try to determine whether it actually contained “terms,” or whether it was a shopping list for Moxie, Blackjack gum and cod liver oil.

  Mustache Man snatched it out of his hand. “The less you know about it, the better.” He glanced at it himself, holding the paper at arm’s length like he was in sore need of bifocals. “You can take a room upstairs while we sort this out and give your boss an answer. Go catch the end of Amos and Andy…and don’t think about wandering around. Folks’ll remember this one here for sure.” He nodded towards Sam. “That beats all. Kid like you running gin. You could probably score a basketball scholarship from the Jayhawks.”

  “Bum knee,” Sam said.

  It was the first thing either of them said, and it appeared to have been the right thing. Mustache Man grunted sympathetically, then led them up a narrow back staircase and into a drab room with a pair of narrow beds, a pair of narrow chairs, a single narrow window, and a radio that was the size of a major appliance.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Mustache Man said, with a distinct undertone of “don’t go anywhere.” He closed the door. The deadbolt clicked.

  Emmett and Sam stared at each other. Emmett was tempted to continue along the lines of, “where are we” and “when are we” and “what the heck happened to my underwear,” but Sam looked just as spooked as he felt. “Any ideas?” he ventured.

  Sam crossed the room to the window, hooked a finger behind the windowshade, then lifted it away enough to get a look outside. He went pale and let the shade drop. “It’s the same out there.”

  Emmett hadn’t planned on sitting on any of the furniture, since utilizing the objects around him would seem to indicate his corroboration that something real was happening to him, but his knees felt too rubbery to support him. He sat on the edge of one of the beds. Springs creaked.

  A distinctly uncomfortable lump pressed into his right buttock. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a newsboy cap, and fought the urge to put it on for the sake of being ironic. He tried to settle down, but something in the opposite pocket jabbed him on the other side. He pulled it out. It was cash. Not just any cash, but a huge, fat roll of it. He showed it to Sam and set it on the nightstand. “Just in case there was any doubt we’ve reincarnated as a couple of thugs.”

  “This can’t be reincarnation. That would put us in the future.”

  “Retrocarnation, then. Reincarnation’s redheaded stepchild.”

  Sam paced, though the room didn’t really allow for much pacing from someone with as long a stride as he possessed. “Kansas started Prohibition in the 1880’s, but it was legal to go buy liquor in Nebraska until 1919.”

  “You just happen to know that.”

  “History major. So given that we’re probably sometime before the Twenty-First Amendment, and the fact that there’s not war propaganda everywhere, I’d guess we’re sometime in the twenties.”

  “I thought the Roaring Twenties were supposed to be fun.”

  “Maybe not so much in Kansas.”

  Sam peeled off his glasses so he could knuckle his eyes. The earpieces were wrapped painfully around his ears. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn’t been wearing his contacts when they dropped down the laundry chute of time.

  “Why doesn’t he want us going outside?” Sam said.

  “I think we’re doing something especially illegal.” Emmett looked pointedly at the roll of cash, and tried to recall if he’d ever broken any laws quite so flagrantly before. Occasional scores of pot in college, piggybacking onto his neighbor’s unprotected wireless network back when he’d lived in a duplex. As outlaws went, Emmett made a pretty poor showing.

  “I wish we could go out and just walk around. Maybe grab a newspaper. See what there is to see.”

  Emmett gestured toward the radio. “You want to immerse yourself in the hallucination? Be my guest.”

  Sam turned on the hulking behemoth. It actually needed to warm up before it would play. Emmett supposed there were tubes involved. And maybe a bit of sorcery. They joined the station in the middle of a radio play—which was hokey and over-emoted and impossible to follow. Emmett’s fingers itched for a remote control so he could pull up a menu and read the date, time and program guide.

  Sam joined Emmett on the bed. The springs protested even more loudly. “One thing I can say for whatever’s happening…you look pretty slick in that outfit.”

  Emmett tried to look down at himself. White shirt, plaid trousers and gray suspenders that attached to his waistband with buttons. “Yeah. Real dapper.”

  Sam leaned in, cupped the back of Emmett’s head, and drew him into a kiss. Their lips met. Sam’s tongue brushed Emmett’s lower lip and tried to elicit a response. “I think,” Emmett whispered, “that this is at least as illegal as bootlegging. And ten times as taboo.”

  “I know.” Sam kissed him again, deeply this time, sliding his tongue into Emmett’s mouth and sinking his fingers into Emmett’s hair. They kissed, long and hard, until Emmett’s cock, totally unconstrained by whatever his trusty boxer briefs had turned into, rose tall and proud inside his roomy plaid trousers. “I never realized plaid was so hot.”

  “But the Mustache Man—”

  Sam got up, wedged one of the chairs under the doorknob, then turned to face Emmett with a look in his eyes that made it clear he knew exactly how devastating he could be, if he put his mind to it. He’d just been going easy on Emmett…so far. “Don’t you like me?”

  Emmett did his best not to glance down at the peak in his trousers. “I like you more than cosmopolitans and free HBO and scratch-off lottery tickets put together. But this place…” this time, he thought, “is freaking me out.”

  “We can’t go out and look around—not unless we want someone to catch us climbing down the side of the building on tied-together sheets.” Sam sat down and the bedsprings squalled again. He slipped an arm around Emmett. “So why not? Why not have our first time be memorable?”

  Emmett did have to admit—he liked the sound of “first time.” Not only was there something intrinsically sweet and even innocent about the phrase itself, but it implied that Sam was looking forward to additional times as well.

  Sam rose from the bed and knelt between Emmett’s knees. He took both of Emmett’s hands in his. “I’ll bet your house is awesome now.”

  “If it even is my house. We’re working for The Boss now, remember?”

  Sam turned one of Emmett’s hands palm up and kissed the inside of his wrist. A thrill shot up Emmett’s arm and down his spine. “I’ll bet it takes them a while to draft their terms.” The words were cool against the trace of moisture Sam’s kiss had left on Emmett’s wrist. “They don’t have computers to type ’em up on. Or calculators to check the figures, for that matter.”

  “If we get caught, I think they’re gonna lynch us. Whether our moonshine’s good or not.”

  Sam opened Emmett’s fly. Emmett might have had reservations, but his cock didn’t. He supposed the plaid even made it look bigger. Sam wrapped his fingers around the base and admired it for a moment. “So you were uncut
before…right?’

  Emmett rolled his eyes.

  “Just checking.” Sam ran his tongue along the foreskin, then eased it back. If tweed-wearing thugs did burst in, Emmett decided, they’d know. Even if he pulled his pants up and Sam and he jumped apart, they’d know he’d been getting a BJ from the tall kid with the big, brown eyes. But while he assumed that such a realization would have made his interest flag, exactly the opposite happened. The danger—the excitement—made everything intensify.

  Sam’s perfect, wet tongue slid over Emmett’s vulnerable cockhead with such breathtaking exquisiteness it sent Emmett spiraling into the place where libido crushed ego and all thought centered on his dick. “But I want you to get off too,” he managed, somehow. He was surprised he even remembered what words were.

  Sam fumbled one-handed with the waistband of his woolen trousers. “Seeing you like this…I’m halfway there already.” Emmett’s glasses were beside him on the bed, and he didn’t want to risk losing an ear by attempting to put them back on at that very moment, but he could see well enough to tell that Sam was hung. And that if he’d been uncircumcised before the secret door, it was no longer the case. Given that Sam handled himself like his equipment was entirely familiar, Emmett figured everyone’s body parts had escaped whatever mojo transformed their clothing.

  Sam turned his attentions back to Emmett. This time, once he wet Emmett’s cockhead he took the whole thing into his hot, wet mouth. Emmett groaned, and when his eyes wanted to close, he forced himself to watch—because it was a turn-on, seeing Sam kneeling between his legs in that vest, surrounded by the drab grays and browns of the rest of the room with the inane radio show playing in the background.

  Sam tongued and then sucked, tongued and then sucked, all the while jacking the base of Emmett’s cock to bring him off fast and dirty, and eventually Emmett couldn’t watch anymore. He sank his fingers into Sam’s hair, threw his head back and closed his eyes.

  Release was intense and sudden. Emmett clamped down on whatever sound he’d almost made, and it came out as more of a strangled gasp. Sam made a noise of approval around Emmett’s cock while it shot. He’s swallowing, Emmett thought, and like everything else about the encounter, it was primal and intense…and hot.

  Sam pulled away, sat back on his heels, and stroked himself fast and hard for both of them to see. If they’d had male pinups in the thirties (and for all Emmett knew, maybe they had…but he’d never seen any) they would have looked like Sam—lean and handsome, cheeks flushed, lips swollen from giving head, and that big, thick cock shiny-tipped and ready to shoot any second.

  “Gonna come,” he breathed, and his spine arched and stiffened. A glistening, milky strand painted the rag rug at his knees, and another. A third, with less force behind it, rolled down his knuckles. Emmett took in Sam’s expression, eyes closed, lips parted, pure bliss.

  Sam opened his eyes. He looked a bit dazed. Emmett dug in his pocket, came up with the handkerchief, and passed it over. Sam wiped his hand. He stared at the handkerchief for a moment, then gave it back.

  FIVE

  Amos ’n’ Andy segued to a jingle—you’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent—and still the Mustache Man hadn’t come to retrieve them. Emmett and Sam lay in each others’ arms on one of the narrow beds, both keeping still so as to prevent any telltale creaking.

  “When we first met, I wasn’t exactly sure you were out,” Emmett said. What he actually meant was that he hadn’t even known Sam was gay—but he didn’t know how well that observation would be received.

  “I am.”

  “Before…when you said you screwed up…I hope it didn’t mean there was some big melodrama about getting disinherited because someone figured out you’re into men.”

  Sam smiled—a melancholy smile—and his gaze turned inward. “Uh…no. Although my mother tried to make it about that, because I think she’s always been so disappointed that she tries to blame every problem I’ve ever had on the way I’m wired. Like I have any choice. Like if I just tried hard enough, I could….” He traced the contour of Emmett’s cheekbone with his fingertip while he gathered his thoughts. “Well, anyway. My live-in boyfriend ‘borrowed’ a term paper from my hard drive and Topeka State expelled us both. But I was there on a full ride scholarship, and not only did they revoke it, but they charged me for the three years I’d been there.”

  “They can do that?”

  “That’s what the collection agency tells me.”

  Emmett didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m at peace with it now, mostly. Jeff figured he wouldn’t get caught since we had different professors, but I guess they run everything through some kind of plagiarism-detection software nowadays. I think he was more devastated than I was. And I’ve been chipping away at the debt for the past two years. I think I can pay it down in another three, or maybe less, if I can pick up another part-time job.” He grinned, a bit forced. “And then I can move out. If we ever get back.”

  If? “When we get back,” Emmett said, “you don’t have to go sit in that candy store after work just for the sake of having somewhere to go. Unless you’re one of those weirdoes who prefers the scent of chocolate to the refined aroma of sour milk and cabbage.”

  Sam ran his cool fingertips down Emmett’s cheek. “The chocolate smell does get a little cloying after the first half hour or so.”

  On the radio a gunfight ended, and a smooth-talking ad man came on extolling the virtues of Irium in fighting tooth decay for fifteen cents. “I’m really relieved I didn’t bring my toothbrush,” Emmett said.

  Sam looked baffled—and not by the prospect of getting something called “Irium” in his mouth. “Fifteen cents? Emmett, how much money is in that roll you have?”

  Emmett pulled out The Wad. There was a twenty on the outside, probably for show. He’d be lucky if it was wrapped around something other than plain newsprint. He unrolled it and saw another. And another. “Let’s see…twenty, forty, sixty….” The next bill was a hundred.

  They counted it out, slowly, together. Two-thousand, three hundred sixty dollars in all. A respectable wad even by normal standards. But in whatever year it was? “I think you can buy a house for that kind of cash,” Sam whispered.

  “No. No way.”

  “Yeah. If it’s after 1929, we’re talking Great Depression. You can get breakfast for a nickel and a pair of shoes for a buck.”

  Emmett considered his shoes. They were heavy and a bit scuffed, though they were broken-in enough that at least they didn’t pinch.

  “We should go spend it,” Sam said.

  Emmett raised an eyebrow.

  “Why not? It’s your money, right? It was in your pocket. Why not have some fun while we’re here?” He glanced at the rumpled bedspread. “Uh…more fun, I mean.”

  Emmett hoped Sam wouldn’t ask him when the last time was he had fun. Present circumstances not included. “It is a lot of money, but unless they’ve got their mega-radios turned up to eleven, I think they’ll hear us breaking down the door.”

  “What if we don’t go back, not right away. What if we just pretend? We stay in that tunnel and sneak back out a while later. We’ll need to be careful; I think if we get too close to your house, our clothes will change back—and the money will probably go with them.”

  “Whatever happened, it didn’t happen all at once. I saw that vest on you in the tunnel.” Emmett relived the feeling of his balls dropping. “My clothes finished changing in the storeroom.”

  “Okay. I have a plan.”

  Emmett stared at Sam’s earnest young face and tried to imagine himself saying no, let’s go back to our awful little lives without even seeing what it’s like to pull out a big wad of cash—with a flourish, of course—and living the high life. And he had to admit that even he wasn’t that much of a wet blanket. So they hashed out their plan, and they waited for the Mustache Man.

  They were staring at the radio in dismay over
the political incorrectness of Amos ’n’ Andy when he tromped up the hall and unlocked the deadbolt. “I’d tell you that hootch is no good to try and talk you down, but you and me both know I’d be lying. Fact is, times are tough. Don’t even know where your boss found enough good corn for a batch like this, and I don’t care. But I can’t give him what I don’t have. I scraped together a counter-offer. You tell him it’s the best I can do—and the best he’ll get anywhere around these parts.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam mumbled. Emmett didn’t trust himself to say anything, for fear he’d accidentally mention Neil Armstrong, the Internet, or Dippin’ Dots.

  He kept his eyes peeled as they were hustled back toward the basement. The runner had telltale threadbare tracks on it. He could guess which way was out just by looking at the carpet.

  “I’ll leave the door to the storeroom open for you so you can bring me his answer, but don’t get any funny ideas about cleaning me out. Nothing but salt pork and firewood in there. And besides. I know where he’s staying.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam repeated. Emmett lit his lantern from a box of wooden matches not unlike the ones he kept near his stove, and he and Sam dutifully ducked into the tunnel.

  Sam crept to the bend, checking and double-checking his vest with each step. Emmett cupped his genitals to his body—surreptitiously, he hoped—in anticipation of his boxer briefs’ return. It didn’t come. Emmett relinquished his family jewels so he could turn up the lantern and look down the tunnel as far as he could see. There was no finish line, no ribbon strung across it that read “Welcome Back to the Present.”

  “Floor’s dry,” Sam said. “If we’re really gonna do this, I think we shouldn’t go any farther.” He sat down on the packed earth floor, rested his back against the wall, and settled in to wait.

  “Do you think there’s really a ‘Boss’?”