Welfare Wifeys by K'wan

girl who was working the grill and the register did the best she could not to keep people waiting while the rest of their short staff attended to the men eating in the back of the restaurant.
    Rico sat as he always did, with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. He had recently cut his thinning hair down to a buzz cut with a sharp line, making him look several years younger. The sleeves of his starched white shirt were rolled up, and his tie flipped over his shoulder so he wouldn’t stain it with the juicy steak he was devouring. The cook was so gifted that he had twice offered her a position on his staff, but she declined. Rico was thinking that the next time he approached he would make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
    Surrounding Rico were several of his lieutenants and his bodyguard, Changa. Changa wasn’t much to look at, standing a shade less than six feet tall and being of average build, but those who knew him knew that he was not a man to be taken lightly. Before coming to work for Rico in the States Changa had been a soldier of fortune working for a powerful drug cartel in Mexico City. He took greatpride in his work, executing men, women, and children at the behest of his employers until the government finally caught up with them and took the crew down. Changa would’ve faced the firing squad with the rest of his unit had it not been for Rico and a well-placed bribe that got him out of the country. He had since been in Rico’s debt and would do anything for him, which Rico made him prove time and again when he sent him to perform unspeakable acts on his enemies.
    “So, how’re we looking, fellas?” Rico addressed his lieutenants with a mouthful of steak.
    “As good as ever,” Lee said, sliding him a fat manila envelope. He was a light-skinned kid with a box-shaped head and hazy brown eyes.
    Rico peeked inside the envelope and nodded in approval. “That’s what’s up.”
    The second lieutenant, Willie, slid him a folded newspaper that was also full of cash. That just left Ras, who was twirling his fingers in his dreads and looking off into space like he had something better to do. “What about you?” Ras reached under the table and produced a greasy-looking paper bag that he set in front of Rico. “What the fuck is this?” Rico looked at the bag as if he didn’t even wanna touch it.
    “It’s your cut,” Ras said as if it should’ve been obvious.
    “I know
what
it is. I wanna know why the hell it looks like you took an order of ribs out before you put my money in?” Rico asked.
    “Because I did.” Ras laughed but no one else did.
    “You need to take your life more seriously,” Changa said, never turning away from the can of Pepsi he had been sipping. Though his eyes were covered with dark sunglasses everyone at the table knew they were locked on Ras.
    “Chill out, Changa, I was just playing,” Ras explained. Ras was an animal on the streets so it wasn’t that he feared him, but he was smart enough to avoid a problem with him.
    “That’s your problem, bro, you play too much sometimes,” Changa said.
    Rico motioned with his hand for Changa to be cool. “Ras, how come every week we gotta have this conversation?”
    “My bad Rico, man, I was just trying to make a joke and—” Ras began, but was silenced by a wave of Rico’s hand.
    “Fuck your joke. I’m talking about the way you do things in general.” Rico hefted the greasy bag to make a point. “How many cats you know that will transport fifty thousand dollars like this?” Ras mumbled something, but Rico overtalked him. “None, that’s how many. Ras, not only is this shit unsanitary, but it just looks stupid. Think about how crazy I would look if I was walking down the block wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit carrying a greasy ass paper bag.”
    “I didn’t think about it like that, Rico,” Ras reluctantly admitted.
    “And that’s the issue here, Ras, you don’t think before you do shit. Besides Lee, my lil