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My back cramps on the toilet bowl I stretch it Then I take two more painkillers and look down at the space between my legs In the dim light, my phone blinks blue before going off again, indicating the arrival of a new message   I hear my colleague Dean stumble into the next stall His knees drop on the floor and he starts to heave, the room filling up with the smell of vomit Without fail, Dean brings a hangover to work with him every Sunday Saturday nights, he plays drums for the house band at The Purple Turtle, a popular punk bar on Long Street The owner, a Rastafarian named Levi, keeps half the earnings the bands bring him at the door He compensates for this by keeping a bar tab open for the performers when they finish a set I stand on the toilet seat and give Dean the rest of my painkillers Then I sit back down and press a button to take my phone off standby   Ruan maintains the email account we use for orders The new message, cc’d to Cissie, is about a bulk order I open it and read the email body on the toilet seat   It’s one paragraph long, and it doesn’t have a lot to describe The client says he’ll buy everything off us, paying us double He doesn’t want any parcels or messengers, he specifies, we have to meet him in person or there’s no deal I read it twice and look at my phone for another moment Then I flush the toilet and rinse my hands off at the sink   On my way out, Dean looks up from his open stall and thanks me   Dude, really, he says, and I nod   His blonde hair sticks to the sweat on his forehead, and he sits crumpled on the floor He’s wearing an old torn Pantera shirt I reach for the handle and shut him in   Then I walk back out to work   I have this job I guess I should’ve mentioned by now I work in Greenpoint, at a DVD rental store – the Movie Monocle – and