Mnimi

2 - Cold Sandwich

Yum. A cold and probably soggy ham sandwich. It'll go great with this burnt coffee. The plastic sandwich-wrapper makes that satisfying ripping sound I love so much when I peel it open. 

"You goin' pay for that?" asks the clerk, with one eye on me and the other distracted by the baseball game. 

"I did," I look up at him. "Remember?" 

He turns his full attention to me. His face is all screwed up.  

"You did?" 

"Yeah," I take a bite out of the sandwich. "Just earlier, when I paid you for a box of reds, which I'm still waiting for, by the way." 

His eyes glaze over as the memory suddenly enters his mind and he remembers. 

"Oh yeah," he says, still looking halfway drunk. "Here." He hands me the cigarettes and turns back to his TV. "Have a nice day." 

I smile and walk out of the stop-n-shop, into the busy city, with a soggy sandwich,  burnt coffee, and a box of cigarettes.

It's 8:00 a.m. which means in a couple of hours the cleaning lady's going to walk into that hotel room and scream bloody murder when she finds it full of... well... bloody murder. Meanwhile, I'll be here, 20 miles away from it all, with the pretty girl who's walking toward me now -my new client, Chesta Bukee. 

Miss Bukee's some kind of Afrikan royal something or other, whose family moved here years ago due to the civil unrest in their country. The girl's gorgeous and she knows it. Dark skin. Green eyes. A body that's probably categorized as a leading cause of global warming. And she's got more money than she knows what to do with. I heard she's got hand-picked tailors on staff who make her clothes for her. All her bags and shoes come directly off the runway. Haven't even hit stores yet. Of course, it doesn't mean the rich bitch is without problems, otherwise, she wouldn't be coming to me.  

"Mnimi?" she asks as she reaches me. I stuff the rest of the sandwich into my mouth and smile, sticking a hand out to shake hers. She looks at my hand with disgust and shakes her head softly. 

"So?" I say. "I assume you know the drill."

She opens her bag and pulls out a white envelope. 

"A thousand now, all Twenties. A thousand when the job is done."

I smile and take the envelope. "Who's the target?"

"First, Timothy," she says, then taps her phone a few times and pulls up his picture, "My boyfriend." 

"Oh yeah," I say looking at him. He's a big, good-looking fella.  "I know him."

She gasps and her eyes go wide.

"Isn't he the good guy in like every single teen-vampire movie ever?"

She stares at me like I'm an idiot. Probably cuz I'm an idiot. 

"Okay, sorry," I say. "And what is it you want him to remember. Or is it forget? Did you cheat on him? Is that it?"

"No!" she says. "Nothing like that. Our relationship is basically perfect. We're supposed to get married this weekend. Daddy's going to fly him and his entire family to our country for the biggest ceremony they've ever seen. His mother's been so excited about it all, she won't stop calling mine. The problem is his sister, Taryn."

"Uh-oh," I say. "She doesn't like you?"

"Taryn loves me," says Chesta, "Which is why she told me the truth about Timothy. Something I'd suspected for some time now. He's gay."