beth devlin

For the Love of Money

$20,000. It was more than I had earned all last year between my waitress job and working at the convenience market. In cash. I held the dirty envelope in my trembling fingers and counted it again. I could pay the rent and the bills and have a decent steak. My mouth watered at the prospect. While the burger joint let me have a burger mistake now and then, ramen noodles can get real old after a year or two. I couldn’t help but notice that this wasn’t a smooth stack of sequential dollars; it was a pile of crinkled, used, notes. I felt that someone had taken a while to put this money together. Maybe it was some waiter’s tips or some poor girl had taken these out of her G-string. Some of them really do want to go to law school, you know. Guilt started to rear its unwelcome head. I sighed.