Page 42 of The Smoke Hour

I let him get ahead of me, and I took another route to meet up with him. He would stop by the liquor store and then head home.

I was thankful that my boy Finn owned these brownstones. So, when he’d received a call that the exterior building lights were out, he promised to get them changed, but he dragged his feet on that shit.

The lights would be replaced in the morning. But tonight, it was darker than a muthafucka out here. After I parked a few spots down from the nonworking streetlamps, I jogged across the street to the inner courtyard. My eyes quickly acclimated to the darkness.

I walked around to the rear and jimmied the back door open. I didn’t have much time. I ran upstairs and checked the usual spots where people kept guns and found nothing. When I returned downstairs, I checked the front hall and then the living room and bingo! That nigga had a gun in the foyer table.

Because he would have to walk through the living room to get to the stairwell or the kitchen, I took a seat on the couch and waited for him to come home. I glanced at my watch. He would be home soon. I pulled a blunt out of my inner jacket pocket and lit it.

After I reclined on the sofa with my ankle propped on my knee, I rested my arm across the back of the couch and smoked my blunt. I looked around and noticed a woman’s touch with the lace curtains, the colorful knickknacks on the floating shelves, the framed pictures of people I assumed were his family, decorative pastel pillows, an area rug, and the artwork displayed.

A part of me wondered if it was Kaifiya’s touch, but it didn’t quite feel like her. I’d only known shawty a little while, but it felt like I’d known her much longer. I didn’t sense her personalityhere at all. This was probably the work of the woman he had moved on with, if not a woman before Kaifiya.

I heard the key in the lock. I removed an empty cigar box from my pocket and put the blunt out inside of it.

“Shit doesn’t make any sense. How the hell am I paying these high ass HOA fees, and we can’t get decent service. No lights. What’s next?” he complained aloud.

“Me, muthafucka.”

“Who the hell is that?” he asked and flipped on the light switch.

I smirked at him when his eyes widened.

“What the hell are you doing in my home?”

“You like to pay visits to folks, so I decided to pay you a visit for a change.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The runaround you’ve been giving my lady about that damn money she owes you.”

“And she’s going to pay me back every dime!”

“That wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t harassing her and sending your thugs to her place of business.”

“I have a right to collect my money,” Terry argued as he backed toward the foyer table.

I stood and slowly walked toward him.

“You do. But you ain’t got the right to bully women, especially not mine. Looking for this?” I asked and held his gun up when he pulled the foyer drawer open.

His eyes widened. I emptied the gun and shoved the bullets in my pocket.

“Listen, Smoke. I want no troubles with you. I just want my money. Tell her to pay me, and I’ll be out of her life.”

“Yeah? I hear that’s not all she’s worried about. I heard you’ve been saying some slick shit to her ’bout sucking your dick and getting back with you to get a pass on the money she owes.”

He chuckled. “You can’t blame a man for wanting to bounce off that fat—”

I hit him in the mouth with a set of brass knuckles before he could finish that sentence. I followed that up with a punch to the belly. That nigga instantly went down, and I could hear him gasp for air, as blow after blow, I beat his ass with my bare fist and the brass knuckles on my other fist.

I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him back up until we were eye to eye.

“Smoke.” The word came out in a half-choking and half-gurgling sound.

“If I see you again, if my name or her name comes out of your mouth again, that’s the last time you’ll be breathing. I ain’t giving your ass another warning. Your payments will be delivered to you. You don’t go to her. You don’t call her. You don’t muthafuckin think about her. The next time—”

“You gonna kill me?” Terry managed to choke out.

---