The sober lover

part one, the beginning

It's a cold foggy morning. My old boss tells me to get on the six o'clock bus and ride it to a Speakeasy not too far from where I am. The bus rolls up and I step on. I pay the toll and I walk my way to the middle and take my seat. While I wait to get to my stop, I sit and ponder on if this is a good idea. All I know about this gang is that they would like me to join them and I guess the old deli stand I used to work at was a place that they made deals and protected. What would have happened if I didn't do that odd job for Boss? I mean the money was good but I didn't know what was in that bag and it's better if i don't know. After a few more painful minutes of thinking, the bus gets to my stop. I step off to a coffee shop with not a lot of people in it. I step in and the bell rings and everyone looks at me then returns to their drinks. I walk up to the person at the counter and the man asks. “What's the name you want on your coffee cup?” “Zack.” He looks down at a checkbook looking thing. As he is doing this, a man walks out of the back and looks at me and explains to the other guy “don’t worry he's our newest janitor” the man from the back turns to me and says “names Fred” “zack” “follow me, I’ll take you to our boss.” while I look around he leads me to a janitor's closet and opens it up. I peek inside and it looks like a normal janitor's closet. As I'm thinking about what I'm looking at, he pulls a book on a shelf and a click can be heard, and after a second the floor lifts up and Fred leads the way down and motions me to follow him. As I climb down the ladder look around and see what looks to be wine barrels. I take a step back to take in what I'm looking at, after the 18th amendment being passed things like this would be a death sentence to have around. He turns around to see me in shock and says “don’t worry, none of this will be near you if you're afraid of being caught.” I shake my head and explain, “no no, it's just been a while since I had some wine.” Fred laughs, takes a bottle off of a shelf and hands me the bottle, it being of blackberry wine. I take it and say thanks. “It's on the house, let's call it a welcome gift for joining us.” I smile and continue following him towards a bar. We both sit down and an old looking fella waltzes over and sits with us and he speaks. “Nice to finally get to meet you in person, you can call me Father” as he says this and reaches out to shake my hand, knowing this is the head person I shake his hand. “So that your here, its time for me to tell you what your job is here, for now you will be working upstairs with Fred and Sergo. Fred nods his head and says “yea its not too bad for the first day,  just clean up the cafe and deal with the drunks and a few teens here and there.” i nod my head and before I start to walk back to the ladder, Father says “oh by the way, welcome to the family of the wine masters.”