“Where my money at, JoJo?” Ricki was saying loudly as she was hurrying toward him. “Where my money at?”
JoJo stared at the girl he’d known since they were in elementary, middle, and high school together. She was the most beautiful girl in the world to him then, and she still was now. Although he couldn’t stand her attitude. “And hello to you, too, Rasheda.”
“Where my money at, boy? I ain’t playing with you!”
“You know I’m good for it girl. Why you trippin’? I told you I’m gonna give it to you.”
“You also told me you was gonna be out of town. You said you wouldn’t be back until next week and as soon as you got back you was coming to see me. And pay up.”
“And I am.”
She reached out her hand. “Then give it here.”
“Damn bitch,” JoJo’s friend said to her. “You’re mighty aggressive to be so little.”
“Ah fuck you!” Ricki shot back. “Just because I don’t take crap from y’all I’m a bitch? Call me whatever you want,” she said as she looked at JoJo again, “but I want my money. You was in a jam. Charlie Red was gonna kill your ass if you didn’t get up that money. And I gave you all I had. It was all my savings to save your trifling life. And this how you treating me?”
She could see he felt bad about his decisions. “You did me a solid for real, Rick, and I know it. But you gotta give a brother some time. And if you get from around here,” he added, “then maybe I can do some business and make some green.”
Ricki looked at him with disgust on her face. “Still selling that junk. Still destroying our community when your ass saidyou was gonna stop that shit. You was gonna pay Charlie Red what you owed him and stop that shit.”
JoJo showed regret in his eyes too. “I am gonna stop.”
“When JoJo? How many lives do you have to ruin before you stop?”
“Girl, get on from round here,” JoJo said with irritation in his voice. “That’s why you ain’t got no man. Always acting like you better than everybody else. I’m not ruining nobody’s life. I don’t put no gun to their heads. I don’t make them buy this shit.” Then he yelled at her. “I’m earning a living over here!”
He was sincere in his outrage, but so was she. “I need my money, JoJo, like I told you when I fronted you for it. I emptied my savings helping you out. I don’t have no four hundred dollars to just give away. Do you realize how many heads I have to do over at Geraldine’s to get up that kind of money? It took me months to save that up.”
JoJo’s voice softened. “I told you I’m gonna pay you.”
“Why can’t you pay me now?”
“Because I don’t have it now, okay?” She could tell he hated admitting it. “I don’t have it.”
Ricki knew he was good for it or she would not have given it to him. “When will I get my money?”
“Today. I’ll bring it by the shop today.”
Ricki knew he was lying. She could see it in his regretful eyes. But what could she do? And besides, she had to get to work.
She pushed him on his chest, which caused him to stumble back and caused his friend to look at her as if she was crazy. “It better be today,” she said to JoJo, and then she headed back to her Mustang.
JoJo’s friend was astonished. “You let that bitch beat on you like that, man? I mean she’s fine,” he added as he watched her walk away, “but her ass so mean who the fuck cares?”
“She’s good peeps,” JoJo said.
“Good? That mean woman? How you know her anyway?”
“I’ve known her since we were kids. We’re from the same hometown.”
“But why would you borrow money from that steamroller of all people?”
“I had no choice. Your ass was broke. So was everybody out here trying to deal. I shorted Red nearly a thousand bucks and he had a hit ready to go on my ass. She ponied up four hundred of that money. That gave me some time to get up the rest. She helped me out of a jam, man. She’s good peeps. She just don’t take no stuff. She’s always been like that.”
His friend shook his head. “I’d rather borrow money from the KKK than from that bitch.”
JoJo couldn’t even smile as he watched her drive away. He always respected Ricki. But even as a kid he knew he wasn’t man enough for a firebrand like her. He doubted if any man ever would be. Or would ever want to be.
