The Payback?

She was naked under her robe, but she didn’t care. Her robe was light enough not to be bulky and cumbersome but heavy enough to not be considered sheer.

Plus, she was new enough to the development that no one knew who she was. And even if they did know her, they would’ve already known that MiMi ain’t hardly care what anyone thought of her. The sun went down hours ago, and she liked to fill her new apartment with fresh air before she went to bed.

With confidence she slid open her balcony door and stepped outside. She then reached into the small wicker box that was sitting atop a small patio table, pulled out a stick of incense, a joint and a lighter.

She lit the incense first. She was careful to let the aroma of the Nag Champa permeate the air for a while before sparking up her evening medication.

Part of MiMi didn’t give “a good gat damn” what her neighbors, or anyone else for that matter, thought of her. But she also knew as long, arduous, dangerous, and sometimes down right sad, journey it was to get her little apartment together from scratch and she “wasn’t fittin to draw no unwanted attention to herself.”

Not for nothing, that’s how she ended up without a place to live in the first place.

By accepting the attention of a man.

The man did what was called “a long con”.

For over two years, the man sniffed up behind MiMi showering her with attention, affection, accolades and trinkets.

One day, the man noticed MiMi was running low on juice and other things in the refrigerator. Instead of just purchasing a couple of items, the next time the man came over, he sent MiMi a text for her to “open the front door”.

She was surprised two-fold. Number one, she wasn’t expecting the man. Number two, when she opened the door, not only was the man standing there, lookin all handsome, carrying bags of groceries; but behind him it looked as though the Uber he took to come see her had its trunk open with the rest of the groceries he bought her.

MiMi just stood there smirking holding the building door open with her shoulder as the man walked back and forth from the Uber to the vestibule with the groceries. As he was bringing the last bag to the vestibule he handed it to MiMi who just looked at him with her eyebrows raised.

“I dunno why you handin me the bag. I ain’t ask you to buy all this.”

Instead of being irritated with her obvious ungratefulness, the man took it in stride, shook his head and chuckled. He picked up the majority of the bags he placed in the vestibule and began to bring them downstairs to MiMi’s basement apartment. Over his shoulder, the man quipped back at her.

“Well if I didn’t, it looks as though I wouldn’t be eating.”

MiMi sucked her teeth and took her key out of her cleavage to open the apartment door.

“No one asked your ass to come over,” she retorted as she made her way inside with the man following behind her.

“Then your ass wouldn’t have eaten either.” The man quipped back as he started putting the groceries he bought away.

Again, MiMi sucked her teeth, “Bamma, I just would’ve heat me up some of these left overs and been just fine.”

She joined him in the kitchen and started finding the bags with the perishables to put them away. As she pulled a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, she smiled softly to herself because the last time the man came over, the man and her shared the exact flavor while wrapped in a king sized down blanket sitting on the floor of the living room watching a light snowfall cover the tree lined path behind her porch.

It was romantic. He was romantic. As a matter of fact, that night that he bought MiMi the groceries, he was being so romantic that MiMi needed a cigarette afterwards. Without a second thought, she handed the man her debit card and sent him down the tree lined path to the corner store to grab her a couple of packs of cigarettes.

Which he did.

Then after that he wiped out her bank account and MiMi never saw him again.

It devastated her.

Emotionally

Financially

Spiritually.

She was completely empty.

It took her years to recover from most of the residual effects of the theft and build her self-esteem back up again. When she finally was handed the key fob to her new place, she wept, thanked God and made a promise to herself that nothing nor nobody was gonna get the best of her again.

MiMi huffed to herself as she finally took a long drag off of her meds. When she blew the smoke out, she swore she heard a buzzing sound.

So, she stopped and waited then took another drag. And she heard the buzzing again but this time she felt something brush by her ear.

“Ugh, I though the skeeters were all dead by now,” MiMi said to no one as the buzzing got louder. MiMi began to become frantic, stood up and began swatting at the air around her.

Then she hit something.

Which hit her patio door.

It was small, black, velvet box.

MiMi frowned picked up the box and pulled the string to open it. Then because she wasn’t completely stupid instead of reaching down into the box, she turned it upside down and shook it unleashing about fifty, one- hundred-dollar bills. She frantically began to grab the scattered bills so they wouldn’t fly off the balcony.

MiMi was so busy trying to grab the bills and stiff them back in the box and her robe pockets that she almost didn’t see the folded note at her feet.

Of course, she was in a panic ,but MiMi just wanted to go back in the apartment before anyone saw her. So, she grabbed everything, came back in, locked the door closed the blinds, and brought everything to the kitchen island. It was then she opened the note and read:

With interest

Open the door

I also have groceries.