French Kisses

She was licking the envelopes repeatedly. In her mind, she knew he must be in a panic at this point but she couldn't clearly remember what it was that made this entire situation switch from bad to worse. The taste from the glue on the envelopes was starting to make her gag but she had already run out of time and knew that the envelopes needed to be sent or this plan would never work. It must have been two or three hundred envelopes at this point and to her this meant that she could finally lay this entire manner to rest. She could buy a ticket to no where and disappear as if this nightmare had never dragged her along. David, the night clerk at the motel was standing so close to the window that fog was starting to appear in circles on the pane glass from his breath. He had been standing there for more than an hour, checking his watch, and waiting for me to finish. I finally got to the last one and he mutters under his breath, "Finally." I knew he lost his patience with the matter but he knew I didn't have anyone else even if it meant that he didn't get to fully understand why I was doing this. I tried to explain but he insisted that the less he knew, the better and this is pretty much how it started. I called him about 3 hours before we met up downtown at the Motel across from the deli. I was just walking at the edge of the side walk avoiding people when I look down at the gutter hole and see what looks like a mannequin hand holding a small sweat stained note book. The book itself was old and had the impression of a paper clip embedded onto the side of it as if the paper clip had sat there for years. I took the last drag of my cigarette and bent over to grab it . When I opened it all of the pages were equally sweat stained and blank. I find things like this all of the time. Its a big city. People stuff all types of things into the gutter. How was I suppose to know I should have left it in that gutter to become someone's problem other than myself? How was I suppose to know that this sweat stained notebook would destroy any chances of a normal life? How would I have known? About eight minutes go by, and I'm still heading north on the main drag. This man comes up next to me and I couldn't help but feel like something wasn't right about his jagged smile. After another minute another man walks up close behind me and I do a double take because they both have the same face! Immediately my stomach turns upside down and that is when I feel them both grab me on each arm turning right in the alley between the pawnshop and that fancy lobster joint that no one can afford. Before I can speak a word, everything goes blank and I wake up in a room tied to a chair. The entire room was dimly lit and the walls were lined with money. So much money that a person wouldn't believe that it was real despite the obvious smell. My hands were barely tied, and finding this odd I bolt my left hand out of my ties and into my pocket with my phone in it. I had three missed calls from David but based on time it said , only about 45 minutes had passed since I was snatched. Snatched? Yeah, that feels like it describes it. I click on his name and press talk but were not about to talk about the small baggie of coke I was delivering to him to help expedite his graveyard shift. I had to tell him the truth. I was overall pretty calm to start but once I realized that he did not want the details. He wanted his blow and I wanted him to lend me a room at the motel for a while. We both Win. He showed up and did not believe his eyes. I laughed as his fidgety hands were nonchalantly grabbing stacks of cash and stuffing each one of his pockets. The trunk of his piss poor Honda Civic was empty so he helped me load it up fully with the closest bills we could grab. Each wad was roughly 5k but not each stack was the same because some had twenty's and some had fives. David wanted to leave but I needed a little more. I'm sure at this point I seemed as if I was selfish but my thought were racing and its not like I was going to keep the money. It looked like it wanted to rain and about a block from the motel was a little gas station and I waved him to pull into the parking lot. I asked the chick who was working to throw me a stack of the bags behind the counter. I had to get the money in some way. I decided tat I was going to send this money to any person who has ever helped me and that list was damn long. Davis snatched a few boxes of enveloped from th managemet office and started to fill them. I was like French kisses. Open one, fill it, lick it press it. Repeat. I had literally used all of my saliva and David stepped in for a few minutes to help. I was never picking up anything on the street again. Never.